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gsirvitor · 11 months

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Me when I was young: Man Halo ONI and assassin creed Templars stuff seem so crazy about shadowy organizations.

Me after you reveal the JFK stuff: Oh…it accurate to real life organizations.

It's also a lot dumber in real life.

Numerous sources state that there were a few assassination attempts by the CIA, among several, which involved his Cigars.

One plot was to poison his cigars with botulinum toxin strong enough to kill anybody who put one in their mouth.

The other was exploding cigars.

Ah hell, let's tell the rest.

At the end of President Dwight Eisenhower's term, the CIA used a series of middlemen to enlist two gangsters to help with Castro's removal.

The agency was willing to pay $150,000 (at least $1.2 million in today's money), according to the Church Committee's report.

These mobsters were Sam Giancana, the boss of the Chicago mob, and Santos Trafficant, the head of the mob’s Cuban operations. Both of them were members of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.

Giancana suggested that poison pills were more reliable than guns, so the CIA provided six pills of "high lethal content" to a cash-strapped Cuban official who had access to Castro, the subcommittee said. However, after several unsuccessful attempts the Cuban got cold feet and the plan was abandoned.

Undeterred, the CIA tried an even more elaborate plan in 1963.

Intelligence officials thought they could use Castro's love of scuba-diving to topple him.

They planned to hide explosives inside a large seashell and paint it with exotic colors to lure the attention of the ocean-loving communist.

Like many others, this idea was "discarded as impractical," according to the committee's report.

The same year, the CIA planned to contaminate one of Castro's diving suits with a fungus that would produce a chronic and debilitating skin disease.

The diving suit, as well as an infected breathing apparatus, was meant to be given to Castro by the American lawyer James Donovan, who had been involved in hostage negotiations with the Cuban leader.

This plan was abandoned after Donovan gave Castro a different suit.

Richard Helms, who would become CIA director, later called the plan "cockeyed" and said the suit never left the laboratory.

Marita Lorenz was Castro's femme fatale.

Lorenz told Vanity Fair in 1993 that, while she was Castro's lover in late 1959, she was recruited as a contract-agent for the CIA and tasked with assassinating the Cuban leader.

She was given two botulism-toxin pills to drop in Castro’s drink, so her story goes. Just one would kill him in 30 seconds, but she got cold feet.

"I knew the minute I saw the outline of Havana I couldn’t do it," she told Vanity Fair, describing her emotions on landing in the Cuban capital.

Even if she had wanted to kill him, she had botched the job. She said she stashed the pills in a cold-cream jar that made them gunky and unusable. In any case, Castro had her rumbled.

"He leaned over, pulled out his .45, and handed it to me," she recounted. "He didn’t even flinch. And he said, 'You can’t kill me. Nobody can kill me.' And he kind of smiled and chewed on his cigar ... I felt deflated. He was so sure of me. He just grabbed me. We made love."

Another was a plan to kill Castro using a hypodermic needle concealed within a pen.

The needle would be so fine that "the victim would not notice its insertion," according to the Church Committee.

Its report said the needle was to be rigged with poison and injected into Castro by a "highly placed Cuban official" who was in discussions with the CIA.

However, the Cuban official "did not think much of the device" and complained that surely the CIA could "come up with something more sophisticated than that?" the committee's report said.

The official also suffered bad timing. He was offered the pen on Nov. 22, 1963, the date of John F. Kennedy's assassination. The event saw the agency withdraw its support of the attempt on Castro's life and the official never took the pen to Cuba.

Not all of the attempts were on Castro's life: America's intelligence services initially tried other methods to undermine the leader's public image as a charismatic strongman.

In 1960, the CIA planned to sabotage Castro's speeches by spraying his broadcasting studio with a chemical that would make him suffer similar hallucinations to LSD.

Other plots included spiking the dictator's cigars with a chemical that would disorientate him, hoping he would smoke one before delivering one of his marathon oratory performances.

They also tried dusting his shoes with thallium salts — which would have made Castro's iconic beard fall out.

Like the hundreds of other plots against Castro, all failed. The LSD-like substance was abandoned because it was too unstable, the cigars were never smoked, and Castro canceled the overseas trip that would have given spooks the opportunity to dust his shoes.

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lboogie1906 · 3 months

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Emilio Antonio Cruz (March 15, 1938 – December 10, 2004) was a Cuban American Artist who lived most of his life in New York City. His work is held in several major museums in the US.

Harry Rand, Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, described him as one of the important pioneers of American Modernism of the 1960s for his fusion of Abstract Expressionism with figuration. Geno Rodriquez, Curator and Executive Director of The Alternative Museum, wrote in 1985, “Emilio Cruz, is a brilliant and impassioned artist whose current paintings are monumental, imbued with intelligence, fury and an apt sense of irony. They reflect the turbulent world within which we live.”

Geoffrey Jacques wrote in 1990, “Emilio Cruz paints humanity’s essence. Mythology and archeology are the foremost concerns of the painter Emilio Cruz. Dinosaurs, skeletal humans, and fossil-like images are used in his work as metaphoric signposts in a consideration of the basic questions of existence.” Art historian and curator Paul Staiti wrote in 1997, “Emilio Cruz’s Homo sapiens series is a strange and haunting genealogy of the modern soul... What is at stake here more than biopolitical culture, is the remystification of the body and mapping of consciousness ... For all the trauma, explicit and implicit, his style is masterful, classical, even beautiful.” #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

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tienramadan · 23 days

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A report reveals that vandals behind the antisemitic protests at Columbia University may have trained in Cuba

Recent investigations reveal that several of the anti-Israel protests that have taken place on university campuses in the United States have been influenced by activists trained in Cuba.

According to DNA America's findings, The People's Forum (TPF), a radical antisemitic group based in New York with ties to the communist parties of China and Cuba, has supported and trained "student" protesters using protest tactics similar to those of Black Lives Matter.

The co-executive director of the organization and leader of these operations is allegedly Manolo De Los Santos, who has been identified as a radical activist with deep connections to the Cuban dictatorial regime. De Los Santos has traveled to the Caribbean island on several occasions, has trained there and has already worked closely with leaders of the Cuban communist party, including its president Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Additionally, he has participated in and organized multiple rallies in support of leftist causes and has expressed his admiration for figures such as Fidel Castro and former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez.

The DNA report states that in addition to De Los Santos, there are already other activists in the United States who are linked to antisemitic groups who have also been traveling to Cuba.

De Los Santos is allegedly inciting more violent protests

De Los Santos allegedly incited student protesters to escalate protests to recreate "the summer of 2020," referencing the violent Black Lives Matter protests that followed the death of George Floyd. Hours later, protesters illegally entered Columbia University's Hamilton Hall, blocking entrances and vandalizing the academic building.

The financing of these operations

According to research by Alexander Reid Ross for New Lines, The People's Forum, which bills itself as a "movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities," has been able to organize its pro-Hamas protests largely by a donation of $12 million made by pro-Chinese tech entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham, who is in a relationship with Jodie Evans.

Evans has been involved in pro-Cuban protests in the United States, including the occupation of the Venezuelan embassy in DC to protest opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

The links between Cuba and Palestinian terrorists

The Cuban regime has already been accused of training and providing logistical support to Palestinian guerrillas and terrorists since the early 1960s.

It would not be the first time that Cuba has made international efforts to promote its political ideology. FBI reports have revealed that Cuban intelligence played a crucial role in the formation of the Venceremos Brigades, whose objective is to recruit people with a certain political orientation so that they can eventually occupy elected or appointed positions in the United States government and provide information to the Cuban regime.

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wikiuntamed · 4 months

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On this day in Wikipedia: Wednesday, 21st February

Welcome, merħba, ողջու՜յն (voġčuyn), მოგესალმებით (mogesalmebit) 🤗 What does @Wikipedia say about 21st February through the years 🏛️📜🗓️?

21st February 2022 🗓️ : Event - Prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine In the Russo-Ukrainian crisis Russian President Vladimir Putin declares the Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic as independent from Ukraine, and moves troops into the region. The action is condemned by the United Nations. "In March and April 2021, prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces began massing thousands of personnel and military equipment near Russia's border with Ukraine and in Crimea, representing the largest mobilisation since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. This..."

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21st February 2019 🗓️ : Death - Stanley Donen Stanley Donen, American film director (b. 1924) "Stanley Donen ( DON-ən; April 13, 1924 – February 21, 2019) was an American film director and choreographer. Donen directed some of the most iconic films of the Golden Age of Cinema. He received the Honorary Academy Award in 1998, and the Career Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2004. Four..."

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21st February 2014 🗓️ : Death - Héctor Maestri Héctor Maestri, Cuban-American baseball player (b. 1935) "Héctor Anibal Maestri Garcia (April 19, 1935 – February 21, 2014) was a Cuban-born Major League Baseball pitcher. Maestri was one of nine ballplayers to have appeared for both of the 20th century, American League Washington Senators franchises, and one of only three to have played for them in..."

21st February 1974 🗓️ : Event - Suez Canal The last Israeli soldiers leave the west bank of the Suez Canal pursuant to a truce with Egypt. "The Suez Canal (Egyptian Arabic: قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, Qanāt es-Suwais) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt). The..."

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21st February 1924 🗓️ : Birth - Thelma Estrin Thelma Estrin, American computer scientist and engineer (d. 2014) "Thelma Estrin (née Austern; February 21, 1924 – February 15, 2014) was an American computer scientist and engineer who did pioneering work in the fields of expert systems and biomedical engineering. Estrin was one of the first to apply computer technology to healthcare and medical research. In 1954,..."

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21st February 1824 🗓️ : Death - Eugène de Beauharnais Eugène de Beauharnais, French general (b. 1781) "Eugène Rose de Beauharnais ([øʒɛn də boaʁnɛ]; 3 September 1781 – 21 February 1824) was a French nobleman, statesman, and military commander who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Through the second marriage of his mother, Joséphine de Beauharnais, he was the stepson..."

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21st February 🗓️ : Holiday - Birthday of King Harald V (Norway) "Harald V (Norwegian: Harald den femte, Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈhɑ̂rːɑɫ dɛn ˈfɛ̂mtə]; born 21 February 1937) is King of Norway. He succeeded to the throne on 17 January 1991. Harald was the third child and only son of King Olav V of Norway and Princess Märtha of Sweden. He was second in the line..."

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#OnThisDayInWikiHistory #WikiUntamed #WikiWandering #WikiWonders

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20thpresidium · 6 months

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KGB Internal Memo: Attacks on Cuban High Value Targets (HVT)

16 September 1957

There have been reports that poisonous pills have been found at the office of Fidel Castro, President of Cuba. Furthermore, there have been a string of assassination attempts on key Cuban government leaders.

Preliminary investigations by the Cuban Intelligence Directorate have raised suspicion of possible American intervention in Cuba. As of now, there has been increased security patrols and bodyguards posted to the Cuban HVTs and members of government.

In the meantime, Castro has ordered the US Embassy in Havana to reduce its 300-member staff, suspecting that many of them are spies under the US CIA.

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summarychannel · 9 months

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Russia and Ukraine | After the American failure to support Ukraine, the US Department of Defense resorted to internationally prohibited methods Russia-Ukraine news and updates on the war file between Russia and Ukraine at the G20 summit

New news about the Russian-Ukrainian war presented by this episode of Samri Channel.

And starting with the final statement of the G-20 summit in India, which sparked a great controversy regarding the Ukrainian war, as the statement refused, as a result of differences between the members, to mention the name of Russia or describe the Russian aggression in the statement to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This angered Ukraine and raised doubts about the ability of the United States and the West to mobilize international support against Moscow. The US administration of President Joe Biden, through US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, tried to praise the closing statement of the summit, stressing his ability to show the international alignment behind the position refusing to change the existing international borders.

On the other hand, in field developments, the Russian forces succeeded in thwarting Ukrainian attacks against the Crimea peninsula. While British intelligence said in its latest statements published on the X platform (formerly Twitter) that Russia is changing its strategic plans to repel the Ukrainian counter-attack by conducting a partial mobilization to protect the areas it controls in southeastern Ukraine, specifically the Ropotyn-Tokmak axis, which the Ukrainian forces are trying to seize. To open the way for access to the Sea of Azov.

The episode also stops before the Ukrainian attack and uses an interview conducted by the British magazine The Economist with Trent Mull, Director of Intelligence of the US Department of Defense, who said that the continued reliance of the Ukrainian army in its counter-attack on heavy artillery bombardment plays a decisive role in the slow progress of this attack, and that the continuation of the current situation will lead The attack failed within the next five weeks. This statement contradicts what was said by the head of the Ukrainian Intelligence Service, Kyrilo Budanov, who confirmed the continuation of the Ukrainian offensive in the coming winter.

Finally, the episode features special coverage of the Cuban government's dismantling of a human trafficking ring that attempts to recruit Cubans to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine. She also points to a New York Times report about the Biden administration's use of a local arms dealer to supply munitions to the Ukrainian military.

#Russia #Ukraine #America

Dangerous developments discussed in this episode about the war between Russia and Ukraine and what came about it at the G20 summit currently held in India. What is new? This is what this episode of the summary channel will cover. Watch to know the story from the beginning

#youtube

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whatisonthemoon · 1 year

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Clouds Over George Bush (1998)

By Robert Parry Dec. 29, 1998

The night of Sept. 21, 1976, was a grim one in Washington.

That morning, one of the worst terrorist incidents in the capital's history had shaken the stately buildings along Embassy Row. A bomb had ripped apart the car carrying Chile's former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and two American co-workers. Letelier and a woman, Ronni Moffitt, died from the blast. Moffitt's husband was wounded.

That evening at a dinner at the Jordanian Embassy, Rep. James Abourezk was distraught. Letelier had been a personal friend, and his violent death in the heart of Washington was weighing heavily on Abourezk's mind.

In the room, the congressman spotted the gangly, preppy figure of George Bush, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Abourezk thought he might enlist Bush's help in solving the murder.

Given Letelier's status as an ascerbic critic of Chile's military dictatorship, there already were suspicions that agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet had planted the bomb.

Abourezk button-holed the CIA director and asked Bush to commit the CIA to the search "to find the bastards who killed" Letelier. Abourezk recalled that Bush looked concerned and responded, "I'll see what I can do. We are not without assets in Chile."

The problem with Bush's promise, however, was that some of the CIA's top "assets" in Chile were implicated in the murder.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, one of those CIA assets was Gen. Manuel Contreras, the head of the intelligence agency, DINA, and the architect of the Letelier assassination.

The other trouble with Bush's pledge was that the assassination had been carried out almost literally under the CIA's nose -- and Bush had little interest in exposing his own failings.

At best, Bush could be accused of gross negligence as a CIA director. He had missed a clear warning and allowed a major terrorist operation to unfold in the U.S. capital. There was also the darker possibility that Bush's CIA had granted DINA license to hunt down and neutralize a Chilean dissident on American soil. This 22-year-old story of international intrigue and murder -- like other unsolved mysteries involving the 41st president -- has fresh relevance today since Bush's oldest son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, is seen as the Republican frontrunner for the 2000 presidential campaign and an early favorite to capture the White House.

George W.'s experience, however, is in state government and largely limited to Texas. Sources close to the Bush entourage expect that the governor will look to his father's network for national political skills and for foreign policy expertise.

In other words, George W.'s foreign policy would likely be an extention of his father's. So, the lingering suspicions about President Bush's involvement in a variety of illegal acts are reasonable issues to weigh when considering George W. Bush's candidacy for the Republican nomination.

These mysteries include:

--Bush's connection to the Letelier assassination and to other Latin American human rights catastrophes, such as the launching of the Argentine Dirty War in 1976, also on Bush's CIA watch.

--Bush's precise role in the now-corroborated accounts of Republican secret contacts with Iranian radicals holding 52 U.S. hostages in 1980, while President Carter was trying to negotiate their release.

--Bush's knowledge about his Cuban-American allies and their participation in cocaine trafficking under the umbrella of President Reagan's Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.

--Bush's participation in supplying secret military assistance to the armies of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, including supplies and technology through Pinochet’s Chile.

--Bush's close financial relationship with Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a major conservative political funder but also a controversial religious-business figure who favors the subjugation of the American people and who has close ties to figures from Asian and South American organized crime.

None of these issues was settled during Bush's one-term presidency. By the late 1980s, national news outlets were unwilling to take on these types of tough investigations and accepted the guidance of Bush's well-connected advisors that most of these stories were unfounded.

After leaving office in 1993, Bush also blocked closure about his responsibility for the Iran-contra scandal. He stiffed Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who believed he had Bush's assurances to undergo a final interview in 1993 but was denied access to the ex-president.

Bush, therefore, was never questioned in detail and under oath about any of these issues. He was able to escape with cursory denials, often made in fleeting news conference comments. Though there were questions about Bush's possible intelligence ties earlier in his political career, his CIA relationship became official in January 1976 when President Ford named him director of central intelligence.

Bush took over the spy agency at a crucial juncture. The CIA had struggled through a series of congressional and other investigations that pried loose some of the CIA's most embarrassing secrets, from assassination plots to drug experiments on unsuspecting subjects. The proud CIA had become a national laughingstock.

Bush moved quickly to reassure the badly shaken agency that its mission was still appreciated. He gave pep talks at Langley and trooped up to Capitol Hill where he vigorously defended the CIA and its personnel.

Bush got high marks cooperating with congressional leaders to set up the first permanent oversight committees.

"For that period, Bush did a remarkable job," senior clandestine services official Theodore Shackley told me. "He was very warm, very human, very interested. You could get in to see him without difficulty."

But Bush's year at CIA was not all handholding and back-slappnig. It was a violent time when CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched another bloody round of terrorism that included attacks on Cuban diplomats and the fatal bombing of a civilian Cubana airliner.

Bush's CIA also failed to stop DINA's efforts to extend its Operation Condor assassination program to the United States. That failure occurred even though clues were in the hands of top CIA officials, apparently including Bush, two months before the bombing.

The first clue that a terrorist operation was under way came from Paraguay. There, two Chilean DINA agents went to the U.S. embassy to obtain U.S. visas to attach to phony Paraguayan passports.

A senior Paraguayan official told U.S. Ambassador George Landau that the two agents were on a mission to the United States to investigate front companies being used by Chilean dissidents. The agents were supposed to rendezvous with Bush's deputy, Gen. Vernon Walters.

Landau smelled something fishy. Normally, he knew, operations of this sort were coordinated through the CIA station in the host country and were cleared with CIA headquarters in Langley.

To check on the curious visa request, Landau fired off an urgent cable to Walters. Landau also copied the fake passports and sent the photostats to Langley.

The urgent return cable came from CIA director Bush and informed Landau that Walters was in the process of retiring and was out of town. When Walters returned, he reported that he had "nothing to do with this" mission. Landau immediately canceled the visas.

The next step should have been for Bush's CIA to query DINA about what was afoot. Normal procedure -- as well as common sense -- would mandate a call from Langley to Santiago asking whether some mistake had been made, a message missed.

To this day, Bush has never responded to this question and the CIA has not released the communications between Langley and Santiago over the Paraguay mission.

The obvious question was whether the CIA had sanctioned the attack, which originally was conceived as a discreet poisoning of Letelier, not his death by car bomb.

According to intelligence sources, the CIA did contact DINA after the bombing. Santiago station chief Wiley Gilstrap questioned Contreras.

Gilstrap reportedly cabled Langley with Contreras's assurance that the Pinochet government was not involved. Contreras pointed the finger at communists supposedly trying to turn Letelier into a martyr.

Bush's CIA promptly adopted Contreras's false denial as its own analysis and leaked it. Typical was Newsweek's report that "the Chilean secret police were not involved. .... The [Central Intelligence] agency reached its decision because the bomb was too crude to be the work of experts and because the murder, coming while Chile's rulers were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago regime." [Newsweek, Oct. 11, 1976]

Rather than fulfilling his pledge to Abourezk, Bush did little during his remaining months at CIA to shed light on the murder. "Nothing the agency gave us helped us break this case," said federal prosecutor Eugene Propper.

The CIA never volunteered Landau's cable about DINA's suspicious mission or copies of the fake passports that included a photo of the chief assassin, Michael Townley.

Nor did Bush's CIA divulge its knowledge of the existence of Operation Condor, the cross-border assassination program run by South American military dictatorships hunting down dissidents abroad.

FBI agents in Washington and Latin America broke the Letelier case two years later. They discovered Operation Condor and tracked the assassination to Townley and his accomplices in the United States, right-wing Cubans.

The CIA's analysis clearing the Chilean government had sent investigators in the wrong direction. But it was unclear if Bush had authorized the leaking of the false assessment.

Bush's career as CIA director ended in January 1977 with the inauguration of Jimmy Carter.

The Democratic president appointed Navy Adm. Stansfield Turner, who pushed through unpopular reforms at the CIA, including downsizing the agency's powerful operations directorate. CIA “old boys” fumed.

By 1980, with Bush running for president, senior CIA officers were openly pining for the election of their former boss.

"The seventh floor of Langley was plastered with 'Bush for President' signs,'" recalled George Carver, a senior CIA analyst. A host of former CIA officers signed up for the campaign.

Bush failed to win the GOP nomination in 1980, but he was picked as Ronald Reagan's running mate. That choice swept the ex-CIA officers into the Reagan-Bush campaign.

Many of the former spies manned a 24-hours-a-day Operations Center at Reagan-Bush headquarters in Arlington, Va. A chief concern of those intelligence agents was President Carter's delicate negotiations aimed at bringing 52 American hostages out of Iran before the November election, the so-called "October Surprise."

According to a suppressed chapter of a later congressional review of the October Surprise case, "many of the [Operations Center's] staff members were former CIA employees who had previously worked on the Bush campaign or were otherwise loyal to George Bush."

The center was run by Stefan Halper, son-in-law of former CIA official Ray Cline, the "secret" chapter read. "Halper often wrote memoranda on the hostage issue addressed to senior campaign officials urging them to attack Carter more aggressively on his handling of the crisis," stated the chapter, which I uncovered in 1994 while digging through unpublished material from the congressional inquiry. [For details, see Robert Parry's The October Surprise X-Files.]

One question raised by the advice from Halper and others was why Republicans felt confident enough to highlight the hostage issue. Such a strategy could have backfired if Carter did secure the hostages’ freedom in late October.

One possible answer was the existence of back-channel contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Iranian government that offered assurances that a release would not come until after the election.

Over the years, more than a score of witnesses -- including senior Iranian officials, top French intelligence officers, Israeli intelligence operatives and even PLO chief Yasir Arafat -- have confirmed the GOP-Iranian contacts. [See Robert Parry's Trick or Treason and iF Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 1997.]

Two witnesses connected to the October Surprise activities have stated that Bush had a personal role in the secret Iranian contacts. Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe and pilot Heinrich Rupp placed Bush in Paris for meetings with Iranians on Oct. 19, 1980.

To make that trip, however, Bush would have had to slip away from official Secret Service protection, and Secret Service logs indicated Bush was at his Washington home that day. Bush also denied at two news conferences in 1992 that he sneaked off to Paris.

The suspicions persisted, however, because the Bush administration blocked access to potential alibi witnesses whose names were blacked out on the Secret Service logs. The only Secret Service officer who claimed to recall Bush’s side trips that day supplied details that proved to be bogus. The officer, Leonard Tanis, then recanted his recollections.

Bush himself has never spelled out what he was doing during the time that would have been necessary for a flight to and from Paris. [For details on the Bush Secret Service story, see iF Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1998.]

While the Paris meeting remains one of the most controversial parts of the October Surprise allegations, other documentary evidence proves that Bush did have a direct role in the October Surprise monitoring.

Among the records I pulled from the congressional files were confidential notes taken by Reagan's national security aide, Richard Allen.

According to Allen's notes, Bush called Allen at 2:12 p.m., Oct. 27, 1980, with a worried message from former Texas Gov. John Connally. A onetime-Democrat-turned-Republican, Connally was hearing some disturbing news from his Middle Eastern contacts: the possibility that Carter might yet pull off a pre-election hostage deal.

Bush ordered Allen to check out Connally's tip. When Allen knew more, he was to relay the information to "Shacklee [sic] via Jennifer." The Jennifer was Bush's long-time assistant Jennifer Fitzgerald. "Shacklee" was Theodore Shackley, the legendary CIA covert ops specialist known as the "blond ghost."

Though Connally's warning proved to be a false alarm, the notation indicated that Shackley was representing Bush on the sensitive October Surprise issue.

Shackley also had close ties to active-duty CIA personnel inside the Carter White House. As Saigon station chief during the Vietnam War, Shackley was the boss of Donald Gregg who was then the CIA representative on Carter's National Security Council.

According to Ben-Menashe, Gregg and another key CIA officer, Robert Gates, assisted in the Paris contacts with the Iranians. Gregg and Gates both have denied the allegation.

But like Bush, Gregg has had trouble establishing an alibi. Then, when Iran-contra investigators put Gregg on a polygraph and asked whether he took part in the October Surprise operation, Gregg's denial was judged deceptive.

As the former head of the CIA’s JMWAVE covert operations against Fidel Castro, Shackley had strong contacts, too, inside the right-wing Cuban community. One of those associates was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who also knew Gregg and Bush.

After Carter’s humiliating defeat, Vice President Bush emerged as an important foreign policy advisor to President Reagan. Many of Bush’s former CIA associates filtered into key roles as well.

Gregg became the vice president's national security advisor. Gates advanced quickly as one of CIA director William Casey's golden boys, rising quickly to deputy director.

This close-knit team around Bush had a hand in nearly every important foreign policy initiative of the Reagan administration. Their fingerprints also were found on virtually every national security scandal.

According to a 1995 deposition by Reagan national security aide Howard Teicher, Gates joined in a secret operation in the 1980s to funnel sophisticated military equipment to Iraq via Carlos Cardoen, an arms dealer in Chile with close ties to Gen. Pinochet.

Teicher stated, too, that to help Iraq in its war with Iran, Bush conveyed secret tactical recommendations to Saddam through Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Gates and Bush have denied a secret program to enlist third-country support for arming Iraq in the 1980s, although Reagan-Bush officials acknowledge passing along sensitive battlefield intelligence to help Saddam in his eight-year-long war against Iran.

But Teicher’s affidavit depicted a much more active role in which U.S. officials assured Saddam that he would get the military hardware he needed.

"Under CIA director Casey and deputy director Gates, the CIA authorized, approved and assisted Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of cluster bombs and other munitions to Iraq," Teicher wrote in the affidavit submitted as part of an arms-smuggling case in federal court in Florida.

Meanwhile, in private business, Shackley kept busy in the Middle East power game. The former CIA official made some of the initial contacts that led to secret U.S. arms shipments to Iran -- and eventually to the arms-for-hostage scandal known as the Iran-contra affair.

On the contra front, Felix Rodriguez stepped in when the Reagan administration needed help in funneling secret support to the Nicaraguan contra rebels.

Placed in the region by Gregg, Rodriguez reported directly to Gregg and Bush about developments in El Salvador, where the contra resupply operation was based.

The Rodriguez connection proved controversial when Bush insisted, implausibly, that he was “out of the loop” on Iran-contra. Rodriguez, Gregg and Bush all denied that Rodriguez had ever mentioned the contra supply operation although one memo for a three-way meeting cited “resupply of the contras” as a topic.

Rodriguez’s work in Central American was cast into an even less flattering light with the disclosures in October by CIA inspector general Frederick Hitz, who acknowledged that the CIA had covered up evidence of contra-connected cocaine trafficking in the 1980s.

The Hitz report and a companion Justice Department report noted that the Drug Enforcement Administration received repeated tips that cocaine shipments were going through Hangars Four and Five at El Salvador's Ilopango airport, the location for CIA and contra supply operations.

Other drug evidence implicated Cuban Americans who worked closely with Rodriguez as he assisted the contra resupply operations.

Hitz's discovery of connections between the Cuban-American contingent and leading Latin American drug lords also added corroboration to assertions of Medellin cartel money launderer Ramon Milian-Rodriguez.

Milian-Rodriguez had identified a Costa Rican-based shrimp exporter, Frigorificos de Puntarenas, as one of the money-laundry centers.

That allegation is now supported by other witnesses and by new CIA evidence that two of the firm's Cuban-American principals, Moises Nunez and Felipe Vidal, had drug connections. [See iF Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 1998.]

The corroboration of Milian-Rodriguez is significant because he also has testified that the Medellin cartel funneled up to $10 million to Felix Rodriguez, a charge that Felix Rodriguez has denied.

With new support for Milian-Rodriguez's other claims, however, the allegation against Felix Rodriguez would seem to deserve more attention than it received in the 1980s.

The drug charge against Felix Rodriguez was a particular threat to Bush whose office had placed the CIA veteran in Central America.

Bush's unsavory links to South American underworld figures extends through Rev. Moon's business-political-religious operation as well.

From the 1960s and ‘70s, Moon's Unification Church developed close ties to organized crime figures in Asia and South America.

In 1980, Moon's organization collaborated with a right-wing military putsch in Bolivia that turned that country into the region's first narco-state. The operation, supported by ex-Nazis and neo-fascists, was called the Cocaine Coup. [See related story on page 7 or iF Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1997 & Nov.-Dec. 1997.]

Over the past two decades, Moon also poured billions of dollars into conservative media and political organizations. Moon's Washington Times newspaper became a flagship of the conservative movement, with the paper’s editors and reporters appearing regularly on CNN and C-SPAN.

Yet, according to Moon's close associates and court records, Moon has financed his operations, in part, with vast sums of cash smuggled into the United States as well as through a suspected money-laundering base in Uruguay. [See Nansook Hong’s In the Shadow of the Moons and iF Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1998 & Nov.-Dec. 1998.]

In recent years, as his religious mission in the United States shrank, Moon grew bitterly anti-American. In speeches, he denounced the United States as "Satan's harvest" and vowed that once his movement triumphed Americans who insisted on maintaining their individuality will be "digested." [See iF Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1997.]

Still, Bush maintained close ties to Moon and The Washington Times. In 1991, when Wesley Pruden was named the new editor, Bush invited Pruden to a private White House lunch "just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day." [WT, May 17, 1992]

Once out of office, Bush went to work for Moon as a paid speaker in Asia, the United States and South America. Bush’s office has refused to divulge how much Moon’s organization paid Bush, but a source close to Moon put the total as high as $10 million.

Bush proved especially valuable when Moon launched a newspaper in South America. The theocrat confronted a skeptical reception because of his past support for the region’s brutal military dictatorships and evidence linking Moon associates to the drug trade.

On Nov. 22, 1996, Bush came to rescue. He flew to Buenos Aires and paved the way for Moon with Argentine president Carlos Menem.

Bush also was the keynote speaker at a gala reception for the new paper, Tiempos del Mundo. With Moon sitting just a few feet away, Bush lavished praise on the theocrat.

"I want to salute Reverend Moon, who is the founder of The Washington Times and also of Tiempos del Mundo," Bush declared.

"A lot of my friends in South America don't know about The Washington Times, but it is an independent voice. The editors of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to Washington."

Bush's gushing praise thrilled Moon's supporters. "Once again, heaven turned a disappointment into a victory," proclaimed the Unification News, the church's internal newsletter. [Dec. 1996]

But Bush's claim of journalistic independence at The Washington Times was false. Since the paper’s inception in 1982, editors and reporters have resigned in protest of editorial interference by Moon's lieutenants. The first editor, James Whelan, resigned in 1984 confessing to "blood on my hands" for giving Moon legitimacy.

Former President Bush, however, seemed to have no such qualms. One source close to the Bush camp said the ex-president saw the value in building an alliance with the powerful Moon organization, as an asset for his son's presidential run.

The elder Bush's long history of the associations with questionable and even sinister characters from the intelligence world justify some troubling questions about the political rise of his oldest son.

As Gov. George W. Bush registers double-digit leads in early polls pitting him against Vice President Al Gore, those questions include:

Is the personable Texas governor, in part, a front man for the restoration of his father's unsavory cronies who relied on national security secrecy to avoid accountability for serious mistakes and even criminal acts?

Will the sins of this father -- many of them still only hazily understood years after the fact -- be played out again in a presidential administration of his son?

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/c122898a.html

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byneddiedingo · 1 year

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John Vernon and Karin Dor in Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock, 1969) Cast: Frederick Stafford, John Forsythe, Dany Robin, John Vernon, Karin Dor, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Claude Jade, Michel Subor, Per-Axel Arosenius, Roscoe Lee Browne. Screenplay: Samuel A. Taylor, based on a novel by Leon Uris. Cinematography: Jack Hildyard. Music: Maurice Jarre. There's one Hitchcockian touch, almost the only one, in Topaz, that's become known as "the purple dress scene": As a woman, shot at close range, collapses to the floor, the skirts of her dress spread out around her like blood. It's a striking effect, but also a distractingly showoffy one in a film that is remarkably free of other such irruptions of style. Topaz may not be the worst film Alfred Hitchcock made -- there are some strong contenders in his early silents as well as in some of his other late films -- but it's certainly one of the dullest. There are four sections that cry out for some of the Hitchcock wit to make them more tense and entertaining: In the opening sequence, we watch as a highly placed official in the KGB defects to the West, along with his wife and daughter; then the French agent Andre Devereaux ( Frederick Stafford) is tasked with retrieving a crucial document from a Cuban officer residing in a Harlem hotel during the opening of the United Nations; next, Devereaux goes to Havana to obtain further information about Russian missiles in Cuba (the film is set in October 1962); and finally, Devereaux is charged with unmasking the high-ranking French intelligent agents, whose code name is Topaz, who are selling secrets to the Soviets. Staging all of these sequences should have been child's play to the director whose mastery of the spy thriller was well-established in such films as Notorious (1946) and North by Northwest (1959), but each of them somehow fizzles into overextended business without real suspense. Part of the problem seems to be that Hitchcock was working without a finished script: After Leon Uris's attempt to adapt his novel was rejected, Hitchcock turned at the last minute to Samuel A. Taylor, who had written the screenplay for Vertigo (1958). Whatever you may think of Vertigo, the strengths of that film are not in its screenplay, and Taylor, working under intense deadline pressure, was unable to come up with a script that successfully ties together the four big sequences of Topaz. The frustration and ennui that Hitchcock felt with the situation is palpable. The ending was reshot several times, the first time after a preview audience rejected the notion of a duel between Devereaux and the Topaz agent Henri Jarré that took place in a soccer stadium, the second after audiences were confused by a scene in which Jarré manages to escape to the Soviet Union. The final version, in which Jarré commits suicide off-screen, lands with a thud, partly because Philippe Noiret, who played Jarré, was unavailable for the filming, so that we see only the exterior of his house and hear the sound of a gunshot. More interesting stars than Frederick Stafford and John Forsythe would have helped the film, but most of the blame for the dullness of Topaz has to be given to Hitchcock.

#Topaz #Alfred Hitchcock #John Vernon #Karin Dor

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politicoscope · 2 years

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Cuban Missile Crisis: Russia New Warnings to American Elites About Utterly Dangerous Consequences

US elites continue to believe that they can pursue aggression against Russia as long as they want, this short-sighted conviction is teeming with utterly dangerous consequences, Chairman of the Russian Historical Society and Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin said on Monday. “Today, American elites continue to believe that they can wage aggression against our country for as…

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#American Elites #Cuba #Cuban #Cuban Missile Crisis #Russia #Soviet Union #United States #War #War and Conflicts

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newstfionline · 2 years

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Saturday, October 1, 2022

Hurricane Ian, which left at least 21 people dead in Florida, made landfall on the South Carolina coast. (WSJ) The Category 1 storm had maximum sustained winds of 85 miles an hour after regaining strength over the Atlantic, and was expected to dissipate by tomorrow night near the North Carolina-Virginia border. More than 185,000 customers in South Carolina and 55,000-plus in North Carolina were without power around the time of landfall, according to tracking site poweroutage.us. The National Hurricane Center projected a possible storm surge of 4 to 7 feet along a roughly 100-mile stretch of coastline.

Hurricane Ian’s Staggering Scale of Wreckage Becomes Clear in Florida (NYT) The extent of Hurricane Ian’s destruction became clearer on Thursday as people across southwestern Florida, left without electricity, drinking water or inhabitable homes, began to assess the damage and gird for what Gov. Ron DeSantis said would be a yearslong recovery. The scale of the wreckage was staggering, even to Florida residents who had survived and rebuilt after other powerful hurricanes. The storm pulverized roads, toppled trees, gutted downtown storefronts and set cars afloat, leaving a soggy scar of ruined homes and businesses from the coastal cities of Naples and Fort Myers to inland communities around Orlando. Although state officials had not released a death toll by late in the day, Mr. DeSantis said Thursday night that “we absolutely expect” to learn of storm-related fatalities as rescuers work through a backlog of 911 calls and scour the most devastated neighborhoods. More than 500 people in Charlotte and Lee Counties, the hardest hit, had been rescued on Thursday, the Florida Division of Emergency Management said; the small town of Fort Myers Beach, on a barrier island just off the coast, appeared decimated.

The Crypto World Is on Edge After a String of Hacks (NYT) Not long after dropping out of college to pursue a career in cryptocurrencies, Ben Weintraub woke up to some bad news. Mr. Weintraub and two classmates from the University of Chicago had spent the past few months working on a software platform called Beanstalk, which offered a stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency with a fixed value of $1. To their surprise, Beanstalk became an overnight sensation, attracting crypto speculators who viewed it as an exciting contribution to the experimental field of decentralized finance, or DeFi. Then it collapsed. In April, a hacker exploited a flaw in Beanstalk’s design to steal more than $180 million from users, one of a series of thefts this year targeting DeFi ventures. This year, $2.2 billion in cryptocurrency has been stolen from DeFi projects, putting the overall industry on a pace for its worst year of hacking losses.

Small protests appear in Havana over islandwide blackout (AP) A few hundred Cubans took to the streets Thursday night in Havana demanding the restoration of electricity, protesting more than two days after a blackout hit the entire island following the passage of Hurricane Ian. It was the first public outpouring of anger after electricity problems spread from western Cuba, where Ian hit, and knocked out all of the island’s power grid Tuesday night, leaving its 11 million people in the dark. The storm also left three people dead and caused still unquantified damage. In addition to power problems Thursday in Havana, internet service was out and cellphones did not work. Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik Inc., a network intelligence company, describes it as a “total internet blackout.”

Inflation hits record 10% in 19 EU countries using euro (AP) Inflation in the European countries using the euro currency has broken into double digits as prices for electricity and natural gas soar, signaling a looming winter recession for one of the globe’s major economies as higher prices undermine consumers’ spending power. Consumer prices in the 19-country eurozone rose a record 10% in September from a year earlier. Only a year ago inflation was as low as 3.4%. Price increases are at their highest level since record-keeping for the euro started in 1997. Energy prices were the main culprit, rising 40.8% over a year ago. Food, alcohol and tobacco jumped 11.8%. Inflation has been fueled by steady cutbacks in supplies of natural gas from Russia and by bottlenecks in getting supplies of raw materials and parts as the global economy bounces back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In one tiny German town, nobody worries about energy bills (AP) Europeans are opening their energy bills with trepidation these days, bracing for hefty price hikes as utility companies pass on the surging cost of natural gas, oil and electricity tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Many are trying to conserve by turning down the heat and shutting off lights this winter. Not so the people of Feldheim, population 130. Located about an hour and a half south of Berlin, this modest but well-kept village has been energy self-sufficient for more than a decade. A bold experiment launched in the mid-1990s saw Feldheim erect a handful of wind turbines to provide electricity to the village. Then it built a local grid, solar panels, battery storage and more turbines. A biogas plant put up to keep piglets warm was expanded, providing extra income to the farmers’ cooperative, which pumps hot water through a village-wide central heating system. Now, 55 wind turbines can be seen but not heard on the sloping farmlands around Feldheim and residents enjoy some of the cheapest electricity and natural gas rates in Germany.

Putin’s illegal annexation (NYT) President Vladimir Putin signed decrees declaring four Ukrainian regions part of Russia and delivered a fiery speech assailing the U.S. for “Satanism.” The move marked an escalation in the war and positioned Russia as fighting an existential battle with Western elites he deemed “the enemy.” Putin said that residents of the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south would become Russian citizens “forever” and that Russia would now fight for these regions “with all the forces and means at our disposal.” Even by Putin’s antagonistic standards, the speech was extraordinary, a combination of bluster and menace against the American-led “neocolonial system” with an appeal to the world to see Russia as the leader of an uprising against the U.S., my colleague Anton Troianovski writes. His speech came against the backdrop of Russian setbacks on the battlefield. Even as he spoke, the Ukrainian army had moved closer to encircling the Russian-occupied town of Lyman, a strategically important hub in the Donetsk region.

‘Making up lines on a map’ (Washington Post) As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared to declare his annexation of Zaporizhzhia and three other regions across southeastern Ukraine, here in the regional capital, Ukrainian flags still fluttered above government buildings and Ukrainian officials still scurried through the halls. Despite the Kremlin’s announcement that Putin would sign “accession treaties,” the 10,000-square-mile province of Zaporizhzhia is neither under full Russian military nor under full administrative control of Russia’s proxies. Ukraine still holds roughly a quarter of the region, including Zaporizhzhia, the capital city, located on the Dnieper River in the northwest corner. The regional administration is paying salaries, including in occupied cities. On the slender road stretching out between the last Ukrainian position and the first Russian flags, doctors crossed the line to help in hospitals that Russian forces now oversee but barely restock. And in the mismatch between Moscow’s fantastical rhetoric and the enduring reality of life in their sprawling province, many Ukrainians here said they saw Putin’s gambit as somewhere between surreal and absurd. “It’s serious, but how can you take it seriously,” asked one woman who escaped Russian-controlled areas on Wednesday. “They’re just making up lines on a map.”

Hundreds of kids from east Ukraine stranded in Russian camps (AP) The Russian occupation radio and newspaper ads promoted the camps as a summer break from the war for Ukrainian children under their control, free of charge. Hundreds of families agreed in the occupied east and the south, Ukrainian officials and parents say. One bus convoy left Izium at the end of August, with the promise that the children would return home in time for the school year. Instead, Ukrainian forces swept though in early September, driving the Russians into a disorganized retreat and liberating territory that had been in enemy hands for months. Fifty-two children from Izium and around 250 more from other towns in the Kharkiv region, all between the ages of 9 and 16, are now scattered in camps, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official and a mother who hitchhiked into Russia to retrieve her daughter. “Our main goal was to give the children a break from everything that was happening here, from all the horrors that were here,” said Valeriya Kolesnyk, an Izium teacher whose 9-year-old is now in Russia. “The problem is that the Russian side does not plan to return the children to us.”

Fewer trips for China’s Golden Week amid quarantine fears (AP) While China’s top leaders commemorated revolutionary martyrs Friday, far fewer Chinese are expected to be traveling during the upcoming “Golden Week” National Day holidays amid rigid anti-COVID-19 restrictions and calls from health officials for people to stay put. China’s transport ministry estimates some 210 million trips will be made by road during the week-long holiday that begins Saturday—down 30% compared to the same time last year. China remains the only major country that has yet to reopen and continues to enforce strict case tracing, quarantines and mask wearing policies, along with rolling lockdowns affecting millions and the manipulation of health designations to prevent people traveling. China’s railways are also expected to see a 50% drop in travel.

Despite Iran’s Efforts to Block Internet, Technology Has Helped Fuel Outrage (NYT) In the physical world, Iran’s authoritarian leaders answer to no one. They try, but often fail, to keep Iranians away from Western entertainment and news. Thanks to their rules, women are required to shroud their hair with head scarves, their bodies with loose clothing. On the internet, Iranians are often able to slip those bonds. They squeal over the Korean boy band BTS and the actor Timothée Chalamet. They post Instagram selfies: no head scarf, just hair. They can watch leaked videos of appalling conditions in Iranian prisons, inspect viral photos of the luxurious lives that senior officials’ children are leading abroad while the economy collapses at home, read about human rights abuses, swarm politicians with questions on Twitter and jeer their supreme leader, anonymously, in comments. Among Iranians, growing online outrage has helped fuel successive waves of protest against the autocratic clerics who rule them, culminating this month in countrywide demonstrations that have challenged the foundations of the Islamic Republic. Though the battle is being fought with bodies in the street, with women burning their head scarves and Iranians of all classes confronting security forces, it was protesters’ phones that first swept them there.

Lebanon’s dwindling rain leaves farmers struggling for water (AP) Farmers in a small town perched on a northern Lebanese mountain have long refused to accept defeat even as the government abandoned them to a life off the grid. Harf Beit Hasna receives almost no basic services. No water or sewage system, no streetlight or garbage collection. The only public school is closed. The nearest pharmacy is a long drive down a winding mountain road. “We live on another planet,” said Nazih Sabra, a local farmer. “The state has completely forgotten us, and so have the politicians and municipalities.” Its around 2,500 residents have gotten by because of an ingenious solution: They dug trenches, lined them with plastic and use them to collect rainwater. For decades, the rainwater enabled them to grow enough crops for themselves, with a surplus to sell. But where government neglect didn’t kill Harf Beit Hasna, the combination of climate change and economic disaster now threatens to. In recent years, rainfall in Lebanon has decreased, straining even the most water-rich country in the Middle East.

#headlines #news

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entangledmuses · 2 years

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Muse Round up June!

New muses since March!

CANONS

Amy March: Little Women Amy starts as a young lady who is quite often very much vain and spoiled due to being the youngest. Out of all the sisters, she is most probably the opposite of Jo. Though her morals improved throughout the books, she is still obviously spoiled. If you look closer, you will see that Amy is the most practical when it comes to romance in that time, for she understood marrying a rich man is very practical and will grant a life of stability, in contrast to Meg. She later decides that she will not be happy doing that and marries Laurie instead. Amy is rather artistic, creative, and is very intelligent if you look at her vocabulary. Even at the beginning, with her selfish demeanour, she reprimands herself for it and truly wants to change.

Paloma: James Bond: No time to Die (Canon Divergent) Paloma is a Cuban intelligence operative employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. She is confident in her skills, despite still being relatively new to the job. But she should be, she is incredibly skilled. Paloma has worked hard to be where she is, she is dedicated to her job, and is a fast thinker, able to think on her feet.

Liv: Vikings Valhalla (Canon DIvergent) Liv is a Greenlander, who followed Leif Erkisson and his sister Freydis across the sea for 5 weeks to Kattegat, in search for the Christian Viking who attacked Freydis. Liv is a feirce shieldmaiden, one strong in her beliefs, and in the unity of her friends. She is loyal and would follow Leif anywhere. She was raised in a very harsh environment that requires a survivalist mentality. WHich has helped Liv become the strong woman she is today.

Sophie Inman: This is us Sophie is a kind, caring, and intelligent woman. When she was younger, she wasn't always viewed as a smart woman, many thinking she was just some simple blonde. Her relationship with her parents was a little strained growing up, but she found comfort in her friend Kate, and her boyfriend Kevin, and their family. She and Kevin married young, and she followed him to Hollywood to persue his career in acting. However, they ended up divorcing, when Kevin had cheated on Sophie. Sophie left, and headed to the city, and trained to become a nurse. She loved her job, loves taking care of others, and helping others.

Vic Hughes: Station 19 (Just finished season 4- not really seen GA.) Vic is a firefighter at Station 19 of the Seattle Fire Department. Growing up, she mainly lived with her Grandmother, due to her parents being busy in their restaurant. When her Grandmother began to suffer from dementia, it was Vic who looked after her. She used to enjoy singing to her, to help her and comfort her. Vic decided to become a Firefighter, when one day, during rehersals for a musical, a fire broke out backstage. Unfortunately her director, Copper, died in the fire. The whole experience made her decide to get into the Fire Academy. She's fun-loving, sarcastic, and loyal.

Claire Dearing: Jurassic World (Bringing her back) Claire was a park operation manager and one of the scientists who researches dinosaurs. She is a work-a-holic, who is always busy. She hasn't had time to date or socialize since working here. She was devoted almost entirely to her job and was very good at it, but had found little time for personal pursuits and was a bit cold and aloof. Initially believing the dinosaurs to be little more than beasts with limited, if any, intelligence, she was shaken when she discovered a fatally wounded Apatosaurus and Owen comforted it in its final moments, which made her realize that they were living, thinking creatures. From that moment, she wanted to protect them. She founded the Dinosaur Protection Group to organize a rescue mission to save the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar from Mount Sibo's impending eruption that threatened to kill the remaining dinos. When they go on the rescue mission, they are double crossed, and find themselves having to save the Dinosaurs from being auctioned off. When a fire broke out, and the ventilation system broke down, they had to make the tough decision to either allow them to die, or release them into the real world.

Lally Hicks: Fantastic Beasts:Secrets of Dumbledore Professor Eulalie Hicks, also known at Lally, is an American witch and a Charms professor at Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She grew up in the neighbourhood of Harlem, Manhattan, New York. Despite the fact that she grew up living in the No-Maj world, she displayed signs of magic from an early age and was taught about the traditional magic that existed in their family by her grandmother. She attended Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and gained a wand made of rosewood with an African mermaid hair core. During her school life, she became best friends with Porpentina Goldstein, and knew her younger sister Queenie as well, growing up together. She is a very intelligent and Witty woman.

Cassia: Pompeii Cassia is a bright, honest and caring person. She clearly adores her parents, and also shows kindness to those considered slaves, as shown by her bond with Ariadne, who she considers not only her close friend, but like a sister. She is equally passionate for animals, especially horses. Having a strong bond with Pompeii, Cassia is happy to return to the town. However, she isn't impressed with some of the company that soon arrives. She is not a fan of the gladiator shows, and, although she participates in them as a spectator, she clearly states that people killing each other for their amusement is not a sport.

#muse round up! Muses added in the last month #(actually in the last 3...?)

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andrd-har-13 · 2 years

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(Howard Charles, 38, He/Him) Have you seen [Q Murray] around Faerune? They’re a [witch] who [supports] restoring the Seelie Court. People have heard they’re [strong willed, exact, & intelligent] but can also be [explosive, cruel, merciless]. We’ll see where they fall when the revolution arrives, but until then they can be found working as a [torturer Faerune Bureau of Construction & Labor Director] and looking for [Helena Theriot], their [fiancé]

> Backstory time *ehem* When Lou was a boy he dreamed of becoming a professional boxer; he was good, damn good, a champion at that. He was barely a teenager when he was given the nickname “Quake” because of how people said the ground shook when he walked into the ring.

> But despite his talent, his sport was seen as an extracurricular to more important magic (and bloody) activities.

> Q was born into the Theriot Coven, and it was established while he was still an idea in his parents’ minds he would serve one purpose and one purpose only for the coven — their warning sign.

> He was trained to do horrible things — things adults shouldn’t ever have to see much less a child. But as was the expectation in his Coven nothing less than perfect was sufficient.

> It wasn’t long before he was old enough to really start working for Alyosius. And when Alyosius said traveling outside of Faerune to box professionally was out of the question (despite Q having a contract ready for him to sign in front of him), it was out of the question. He watched his dreams slip through his fingers that day. From then on he stopped dreaming. Because what was the point?

> What the boss says goes. So after Helena killed her first fiancé and her father needed a replacement that would be a little… sturdier… a little bit harder to off… What was Q supposed to say? No? This was the daughter of one of the most powerful men in Faerune— the only man Q himself was semi-weary of… It has never been and will never be a match made in heaven.

> In fact, Q wouldn’t be surprised if Helena tried to choke him out with her bare hands and she shouldn’t be surprised that (on more than one occasion) she’d made him so fucking livid he considered doing the same.

> As far as the killing and beating (and torture or whatever else he’s assigned to do to get people to talk or cough up their end of the deal, or heed a warning) goes he’s desensitized. Q was conditioned to do such awful things for so long that he loses himself in it. He learned how to dissociate early; it’s a survival method.

> Speaking of, Q’s a functioning alcoholic. He’s not sure if the drinking helps him remember when he was happy or just makes the night terror that is his life now easier to forget.

> Needless to say, this dude is strong and dangerous and mean when working. In his day to day life he’s fairly well spoken, charming if a bit ominous. He doesn’t go out of his way to make small talk.

> Sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, he still sees blood on his hands and face. It won’t come off no matter how much he scrubs. He logically knows it’s not there, but it haunts him.

> All this said, overall (despite the icky inner turmoil that he refuses to acknowledge), Q is pretty damn into himself! Who needs therapy when you can punch a hole in the wall amirite?

> He knows everything about everybody, it’s just business don’t worry about it.

> Very food motivated and an avid reader; he has quite the refined palette and is pretty damn intellectual despite his meat head aesthetic. more often than not he just wants to enjoy his Cuban sandwich and be left alone.

> The man works for Alyosius Theriot, so if he shows up at your door it’s no good news. You don't want to see him twice. The first time is a warning to pay up your debts or else, the second he'll just kill you. Literally. (It’ll be a slow painful death please please please do not test this man).

> That is unless you're en route to his favorite falafel place. Then he might be in a good mood.

> Due to his work knows this town like the back of his hand. He knows every tunnel, every abandoned building, evert man hole, every sewer entrance, etc. He knows the best places to take people to make them talk. And the best places to dispose of them.

> Perhaps, some way, some how be cares about both Theriot sisters — Helena especially — In that way that you protect your own… Not that it mattered. He gets along well enough with Cass but his relationship with Helena has always been strained. They’ve both been through some bullshit. Maybe one day it’ll form some sort of bond.

> Don’t ask him for NOTHING THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS NO. (Though he could probably be bribed with a food item.)

> VERY quick to anger. He goes through a lot of punching bags. He’s like a bull, he just sees red and blacks out leaving carnage in his wake.

> Q is his coven’s best kept “secret.” I’m sure there are rumors that Alyosius has people to do his dirty work but Q’s not just good at what he does, he’s the best. If you see his face when he comes to greet you you won’t live to tell anyone what or who you saw.

#faeruneintro #i will burn you that's a promise ( q | musings )

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lboogie1906 · 1 year

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Emilio Antonio Cruz (March 15, 1938 – December 10, 2004) was a Cuban American Artist who lived most of his life in New York City. His work is held in several major museums in the US. Harry Rand, Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, described him as one of the important pioneers of American Modernism of the 1960s for his fusion of Abstract Expressionism with figuration. Geno Rodriquez, Curator and Executive Director of The Alternative Museum, wrote in 1985, "Emilio Cruz, is a brilliant and impassioned artist whose current paintings are monumental, imbued with intelligence, fury and an apt sense of irony. They reflect the turbulent world within which we live." Geoffrey Jacques wrote in 1990, "Emilio Cruz paints humanity’s essence. Mythology and archeology are the foremost concerns of the painter Emilio Cruz. Dinosaurs, skeletal humans, and fossil-like images are used in his work as metaphoric signposts in a consideration of the basic questions of existence." Art historian and curator Paul Staiti wrote in 1997, "Emilio Cruz's Homo sapiens series is a strange and haunting genealogy of the modern soul... What is at stake here more than biopolitical culture, is the remystification of the body and mapping of consciousness ... For all the trauma, explicit and implicit, his style is masterful, classical, even beautiful." #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpzy_MLr90j/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

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tienramadan · 24 days

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Anti-Israel activists behind Columbia University protests trained in Cuba for years

Some of the anti-Israel protests taking place at U.S. college campuses, including the recent demonstrations at Columbia University, have been supported by organizations that traveled to communist Cuba to receive resistance training, an ADN investigation has uncovered.

ADN’s investigation coincides with a recent Sunday report published by the New York Post that revealed a radical NYC based organization known as The People’s Forum familiarized anti-Israel activists with Black Lives Matter protest techniques just hours before they stormed Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, and that the group was incited by Manolo De Los Santos–a radical activist organizer with deep ties to communist Cuba.

De Los Santos, who has long been the subject of past ADN investigations, has a lengthy, storied history of working with some of Cuba’s top communist party leaders including its president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.

This past weekend the former seminarian turned radical leftist activist urged pro-Palestinian Columbia student protestors to “give Joe Biden a hot summer” and criticized Columbia's “Zionist” administration for wanting to “resemble its masters in Israel.” He praised demonstrators for “deciding that resistance is more important than negotiations” and incited protesters to “make business as usual in this country unsustainable.”

Hours after Monday’s meeting was convened, dozens of protesters broke into and illegally stormed into Columbia University's Hamilton Hall, seizing control of the university building in a standoff with education officials–the culmination of decades of Cuba promoting anti-Israel sentiment within U.S. based radical leftist organizations–and De Los Santos was credited for recreating “the summer of 2020,” a reference to the Black Lives Matter violence that besieged northern U.S. cities after the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.

The People’s Forum is known for having sympathies to the Chinese and Cuban communist parties, and describes itself as “an incubator of movements for the working class and marginalized communities,” and has been a cornerstone of anti-Israel protests since Hamas' attack on the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023.

One day after Hamas' attack on southern Israel, TPF organized a protest in Times Square where attendees celebrated the terrorist organization and waved signs with anti-Semitic slogans and images.

According to a New Lines investigation conducted by journalist and foreign influence researcher Alexander Reid Ross, TPF's operations are largely made possible by a $12 million donation from pro-China tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, through the People's Support Foundation (PSF).

New Lines also reported that Singham is in a relationship with Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans who also serves on PSF’s board, which occupied the Venezuelan embassy in D.C. to protest against opposition leader Juan Guaidó, and organizes pro-Cuban regime initiatives in the U.S.

Manolo De Los Santos: A TPF leader who was “based out of Cuba for many years”

The group’s co-executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, is longtime researcher at the Marxist Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and was “based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations,” according to his biography at the anti-Israel group Black Alliance for Peace.

At least since 2016, De Los Santos has been documented in Cuba with delegations of U.S activists received by the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), whose current director was prosecuted and convicted by the U.S. for espionage as part of the infamous WASP network in the 1990s.

Cuban intelligence Officer (DGI) Juan Reyes-Alonso has said that about 90 percent of ICAP personnel are thought to be DGI-affiliated, according to a 2009 Washington Times column by DIA officer Chris Simmons.

Manolo was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His family moved to the South Bronx, New York when he was five years old. He first visited Cuba in 2006 with the organization, Pastors for Peace. Pastors for Peace is a member of the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) in the United States, a coalition of U.S groups who support the Cuban regime.

He later studied in Cuba at the Matanzas Evangelical Seminary in the area of Marxist-driven liberation theology on the island, an ideology that former Romanian intelligence officer Ion Mihai Pacepa says was created by the KGB “to enroll Latin leaders” in the Soviet Union’s espionage operations.

Inspiring Marxist revolution and race riots in the U.S.A.

While in Cuba De Los Santos also represented the U.S. based radical leftist Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).

“Founded in 1967 by the Reverend Lucius Walker, Jr. and a number of fellow progressive church leaders and activists, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) is an ecumenical agency whose mission is “to help forward the struggles of oppressed people for justice and self-determination” through its “support of community organizing.”

In 1968, the IFCO helped establish Operation Connection, which dispatched teams of activists into American cities that had been struck by race riots, “to open dialogue and work through alternatives to violent confrontation.”

The IFCO has served as a fiscal sponsor for numerous activist organizations including the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, a group that advocated for the liberation of Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal an activist convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner.

In 2018, after living in Cuba, De los Santos assumed the role of founding director of the NYC based People’s Forum, a group that identifies itself as “serving as a movement incubator for working-class communities to foster unity across historic lines of division both domestically and internationally.”

He has been traveling to Cuba since at least 2009, and has been prominently featured in the Cuban-regime press for almost a decade. Reports indicate that back in the U.S he organized rallies in the U.S. to support the Cuban regime and that he is a staunch admirer of Fidel Castro.

“Fidel for us is a great example,” he said in 2016. “I wish all leaders were like him, and many of them had the dignity and integrity of the Commander.”

De los Santos has also expressed admiration for former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, recalling multiple times when the late leader returned to power after a coup attempt against him in 2002.

“It's always good to remember how the Venezuelan people defeated a U.S.-backed coup and returned Chavez to power in less than 3 days!" De Los Santos wrote on social media in April.

In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of "elaborating a new consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of social movements and countries, on the path of socialism."

In May 2023, over 300 activists from the United States, who traveled with the People’s Forum to the island, met with Cuban-appointed president Miguel Diaz-Canel, as reported by Cuban-state press (Granma). Palestinian flags were visible in the pictures of the meeting.

“Our commitment upon returning,” De los Santos said during an interview, “will not only be to raise our voice, but to organize a different political project in the United States, and we will always be by Cuba’s side.”

In April 2023, another coalition of 150 American activists had previously traveled to the island to "exchange" with "grassroots activists" in Cuba, according to Liberation News.

This delegation remained in Cuba for 10 days and was organized by the International Peoples' Assembly (IPA) and included leaders from organizations such as Black Men Build, Black Lives Matter Grassroots, the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the People’s Forum, among others.

This meeting occurred months after Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian visited Cuba and met with President Miguel Díaz-Canel on February 5th. According to a statement from the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they discussed "issues of mutual interest and international topics." Then, on February 25th, a Hamas delegation publicly visited the Cuban Ambassador in Lebanon.

Hamas reported that its delegation consisted of Hamas representative to Lebanon Ahmad Abdul Hadi and Head of the Hamas Political and Media Relations Office Abdul Majeed Al-Awad, according to the Counter Extremism Project.

For decades the Cuban regime has been training radical groups in the United States under the auspices of ‘solidarity movements,’ such was the case of the Weather Underground, a militant antiwar organization, in the late 1960’s.

In February 2023, De Los Santos, spoke in Havana during one of the intermissions of the sessions of the First International Meeting of Theoretical Publications of Leftist Parties and Movements that took place in Cuba at the Casa de las Américas.

The Palestinian pro-Cuba connection

This year, Cuba held a second theoretical meeting. Among the panelists at the meeting was Watam Jamil Alabed, whom Granma identifies as a “young Palestinian doctor,” but who studied in Cuba and is the representative in Cuba for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated as a terrorist organization by the European Community, the United States, and Israel.

NGO Monitor has documented the PFPL role in the Oct. 7 attacks.

According to the Center for a Free Cuba, “Havana under the Castro regime, has trained and provided logistical support to Palestinian guerrillas and terrorists beginning in the early 1960s, and continues to do so to the present day.”

This Monday, De Los Santos was using its social media to promote a Havana-based rally in support of Palestine. Watan Jamil Alabed, a representative of the PFLP, was also present at the meeting. The PFLP is responsible for a string of attacks on Israeli civilians and is closely allied to both Hamas and Hezbollah. Students from the NYU encampment sent videos to Havana expressing their gratitude for its support.

During the pro-Palestine protest in Havana, Jamil Alabed said: “The students are in the vanguard and they believe in the victory of our cause, because they know that to fight for Palestine is to fight for the world.”

He was followed by Shaquille Fontenot, a co-chair of the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) in the United States. She demanded that President Biden “stop spending money on wars and use it on health and the desperately needed building of affordable homes for our people.”

The NNOC, is an umbrella of more than 72 Cuban regime solidarity groups in the U.S that Mr. De Santos has been linked in the past to anti-Israel protests.

American activist Calla Walsh, a co-chair of the NNOC was arrested last year for attacking the offices of an Israeli company in New Hampshire. The former Disney actress and her associates were recently indicted in February by the New Hampshire Justice Department for spray-painting the building, smashing windows, and setting off incendiary devices.

Ms. Walsh has also reportedly traveled to Cuba for years with the Venceremos Brigade.

According to the FBI, Cuba’s intelligence apparatus played a significant role in setting up the Venceremos Brigades. The federal law enforcement agency has said the Brigade’s objective “is the recruitment of individuals who are politically oriented and who someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the U.S. government, which would provide the Cuban government with access to political, economic and military intelligence.”

Ms. Walsh has previously promoted the infamous “Mapping Project” on social media, which lists the names and addresses of nearly 500 institutions in Massachusetts, many of them linked to the Jewish community or Israel. Additionally, she has shared online that “there is no ‘peaceful solution’ under military occupation” for Palestinians.

Other U.S based activists connected with anti-Israel groups in the U.S have also been traveling to Cuba for “exchanges” and “workshops.”

Promoting pro-Palestinian antisemitism within the radical Black community

Onyesonwu Chatoyer, who is on the National Coordinating Committee of the Venceremos Brigade and the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) in the U.S said “There has never been a moment where we questioned the necessity of a struggle to smash Zionism,” referring to A-APRP and other “Black revolutionary movements.”

About her trips to Cuba, Chatoyer has said: “Participating in the Brigade for just two weeks provided me with several years’ worth of political growth. It is a remarkable opportunity for leadership development and political education and the building of political maturity.

Getting as many U.S. organizers as possible to participate in work-based solidarity delegations to Cuba would produce a qualitative leap forward in the organizing of movements for justice in the U.S. and to the global movement to end the U.S. blockade and U.S. attacks against the Cuban revolution.”

Since 2024, the A-APRP have been building work study circles across the state of Florida, “recruiting organizers we have been working in coalition with to participate in the next contingent of the Venceremos Brigade, and organizing seminars, webinars, workshops, and any kind of educational space.”

Onyesonwu is also a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, a group that has been organizing anti-Israel meetings across campus and claims to have led an “International Coalition” condemning Israel.

On Oct. 11, the Black Alliance for Peace, a self-described human rights-focused group led by former Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka, released a statement condemning “the murderous assault on occupied Palestine” committed by “the illegal Zionist settler-colonial, apartheid state” and declaring “that a colonized people have a right to resist occupation and fight for self-determination by any means necessary!” according to the ADL.

Onyesonwu Chatoyer, an editor of the Marxist publication “A Hood Communist,” was part of a “delegation that attended and presented at The Second International Meeting of Theoretical Publications of Left Parties and Movements in Havana, Cuba, along with co-editor, Erica Caines.

At that meeting was also present, Watan Jamil Alabed, representative of The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP has also been involved in some of the “seminars” with Columbia University students.

In April, Khaled Barakat, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) spoke to members of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Group in a 2 hour seminar called “”Resistance 101,” according to the New York Post.

Barakat has also participated in forums with ICAP discussing how “Palestine, Cuba & Venezuela are at the frontline of anti-imperialist struggles.”

Cuba and the Democratic Socialists of America

Cuba has one of the most sophisticated intelligence services and regularly conducts influence campaigns in the U.S. One such group that has promoted U.S. protests with close Cuban ties is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has been running candidates in local elections to oust mainstream, moderate Democrats.

The DSA's ties with Havana are so prevalent, that its New York chapter even held a soccer match in May 2023 with Cuba’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

Cuba’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations has been a longtime hub for Cuban intelligence to recruit agents of influence and future assets. Still, the FBI’s New York field office has 12 counterintelligence squads dedicated to Russia, it only has one for Cuba, according to a recent report published by the Wall Street Journal.

In September 2019, two members of New York Cuba’s Mission were expelled from the U.S. for conducting influence campaigns, according to the State Department.

“The Department of State notified the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the United States requires the imminent departure of two members of Cuba’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations for abusing their privileges of residence,” the State Department wrote in a statement.

A few months before an unnamed representative of the Cuban Mission in New York was at an event at the People’s Forum on a panel discussion supported by several anti-Israel groups such as the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, which provides legal support to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movements.

Other groups organizing rallies are chapters of the Peace Action Network, such as the Massachusetts Peace Action Network (MAPA) which have also taken activists to Cuba on “solidarity trips.”

Among the U.S. groups supporting the protests, those who have included "young leaders" in delegations to Cuba to learn about revolutionary movements include The Palestinian Youth Movement (“PYM”) and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

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