Deja vu! Russians arming Cuba's military

Posted: October 26, 2009
9:17 pm Eastern

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WorldNetDaily

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.

Russian missiles install in Cuba in the 1960s. (CIA photo)

Russia is offering to modernize Cuba's deteriorating weapons systems – installed when the former Soviet Union was expanding worldwide – and it also wants to reactivate a sensitive electronic eavesdropping station on the nearby island at Lourdes, use Cuba as a base to refuel its bombers and a port to replenish supplies on its warships, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

These developments emerged following the visit to Cuba in late September by Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the Russian General Staff. Makarov met with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana.

Cuba's Soviet-made military equipment has been falling apart. After an assessment, the Russian military has decided to undertake a comprehensive modernization. In addition, the Cuban army also will receive Russian military training.

(Story continues below)

Cuba is only 90 miles south of Florida, where the U.S. has considerable military facilities which the Russians could easily monitor.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

"We inspected the condition of this equipment, and outlined the measures to be taken to maintain the defense capability of this country," Makarov said. "I think a lot of work needs to be done in this respect, and I hope we will be able to accomplish this task."

Makarov pointed out that during the Soviet era, the Russians delivered considerable military equipment to Cuba. After all these years, he said, most of the weaponry has become obsolete and needs repair.

Then in August 2008 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared that Russia needed to rebuild its links to the Cuban island.

He was careful not to say that Russia was establishing bases in Cuba, even though Moscow apparently intends to use the Caribbean island as a potential refueling stop for its nuclear-capable bombers and for ports of call for its warships.

Then Russian Air Force chief Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev in March 2009 had made it clear that Cuba, as well as Venezuela, could be used to base Russia's strategic bombers, although the Kremlin was quick to add at the time that such a development was "hypothetical."

"We need to reestablish positions on Cuba and in other countries," Putin said.

The moves have been developing for some time. In December 2008 a group of Russian warships, headed by the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko, visited.

And In 2007, Putin began to focus on Cuba in response to the Bush administration's plans to install a permanent missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. He said that such action was analogous to the time in 1962 when the then-Soviet Union deployed rockets on Cuba and provoked the Cuban missile crisis.

Deja vu! Russians arming Cuba's military

Illinois Youth Center 'dangerous,' study suggests

I have a couple questions concerning the following story.

1). ""I'd kill myself, too, if I lived in a place like that," responded Rep. Annazette Collins, a Chicago Democrat who chairs the state's Juvenile Justice Reform Committee. "I'm disgusted."" If Ms. Collins is the Chair of the Juvenile Justice Reform Committee is she taking any responsibility for these conditions?

2) From what I understand these facilities were taken away from the Department of Corrections to improve the standards for these youths, I believe this happened in 2005 or 06. So what happened with that dream?

Illinois Youth Center 'dangerous,' study suggests

Daily Herald staff report

Published: 10/19/2009 10:30 AM | Updated: 10/19/2009 6:34 PM

More Coverage

Related documents

• Full report on issues found at IYC
• Press release from the John Howard Assoc.

Years of neglect and underfunding at the state's largest youth corrections facility have resulted in unsafe conditions that lend themselves to suicides, prison reform advocates said in a scathing report Monday.

The report by the John Howard Association of Illinois highlighted potentially dangerous beds, toilets and air vent covers at the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles, as well as "crumbling infrastructure" and "chronic" sanitation problems.

"I'd kill myself, too, if I lived in a place like that," responded Rep. Annazette Collins, a Chicago Democrat who chairs the state's Juvenile Justice Reform Committee. "I'm disgusted."

The association's findings were made in the weeks after the Sept. 1 suicide of a 16-year-old boy from the South Side of Chicago.

Charles A. Fasano, director of the association's prisons and jails program, said the teenager used a piece of cloth to hang himself from a bunk-style bed that is common throughout the 125-acre campus.

Among the association's recommendations is to replace those beds with a slab style designed for prisons.

"It's not possible to totally eliminate suicide risks, but you can minimize them," Fasano said. "It sounds like this kid was checked on and within five minutes had succeeded in hanging himself."

In addition, the report found numerous buildings, including the prison chapel, that are "crumbling and abandoned due to years of neglected maintenance." It also called attention to a facility practice of covering deteriorated walls with metal sheets that can be unscrewed and removed, as two escapees discovered last December.

Yet another area of concern is staffing. Currently, each of the prison's 10-room cottages is assigned one guard a night, the report found, and there is no way to monitor what's going on in any of the rooms without a walk-up inspection. Another of the report's recommendations is to provide intercoms in each sleeping room and video surveillance in some.

Hanke Gratteau, the association's executive director, said the "appalling" findings should demonstrate the need for immediate action by lawmakers.

"Incarcerated youth deserve to be safe and housed in a humane environment that speaks of care, not abandonment and neglect," Gratteau said in a statement.

Januari Smith, communications director for the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, did not return messages seeking comment. Neither did Gov. Pat Quinn's office.

But both Collins and State Sen. Chris Lauzen, an Aurora Republican whose district includes the youth prison along Route 38, blamed politics for inadequate funding and attention.

According to Lauzen, who said he supports additional funding, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich embargoed a John Howard Association report in 2007 proposing upgrades and repairs that may have clued in legislators to the severity of the situation.

"It shows there are consequences to political corruption," Lauzen said. "The idea that these facilities would be so run down that kids who have gone sideways with the law and are in despair see the only solution as either death or the most brutal violence, you just say, what have we come to?"

Collins said she believes the answer might be closing youth prisons across the state and moving inmates to group home settings, where they could receive more personalized rehabilitation services.

Currently, 275 of the state's 1,400 juvenile offenders are housed at the St. Charles facility.

Collins said about 40 percent of all incarcerated juveniles in Illinois are in prison because of parole violations rather than new offenses, and it costs $70,000 a year to house each one.

"It costs us so much money to keep these big facilities open, and we don't need them," Collins said. "They're all old and dilapidated; we could save a lot of money closing them down."

State Rep. Dennis M. Reboletti, an Addison Republican who also serves on the Juvenile Justice Reform Committee, said shutting down facilities is not the answer. Rather, he said, lawmakers considering $40 million in unsolicited funding for an expansion at Chicago State University should use money from that endeavor to immediately address safety issues at the prison.

"We've already lost one life, and that's too many," he said.

Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

Voters to be asked next year if they want power to recall wayward governors

10/15/09

Posted by Ray Long and Monique Garcia at 12:10 p.m.; updated at 2:50 p.m.

SPRINGFIELD---After months of delay, the Illinois Senate approved legislation long coveted by Gov. Pat Quinn that will ask voters if they want the ability to recall wayward governors.

The recall legislation isn't the version Quinn wanted, but it's the best that could be negotiated among lawmakers as ethics reforms were under discussion this year following the impeachment and ouster of the indicted ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Under the measure, voters will be asked on the November 2010 ballot to approve a constitutional amendment allowing recall.

If voters approved next year, they would permit Illinois citizens to launch a petition drive to recall a future governor. But several additional hurdles must be cleared, including getting authorizing signatures from as many as 10 senators and 20 representatives.

Sponsoring Sen. Michael Noland, D-Elgin, said it is time to "empower the people" who did not have the chance to launch a petition drive to recall Blagojevich.

Quinn, who as lieutenant governor supported the recall measure and rose to his position when Blagojevich was dumped from office, watched with approval as the vote unfolded on the Senate floor.

The Senate approved the legislation on a 56-1 vote.

The lone vote against the recall proposal was made by Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline, who argued the recall measure would "lessen the independence of a governor."

He contended future governors would be consumed even more than they are now with how voters would react to everything a chief executive does, and that would means a governor could back away from making some of the toughest decisions before him.

Several Democrats and Republicans suggested the proposal should have gone further than just allowing voters to consider whether they should be able to recall a governor. Earlier ideas on recall would have added state lawmakers and other officials to those who could be recalled by voters. But many also realized that a vote against recall, no matter what the reason, would be a tough vote to explain to voters already fed up with state government.

Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago) acknowledged he would "reluctantly support" the bill, but he warned that giving the electorate a chance to throw out a governor puts the state on a "path of danger."
He warned that a governor could back off of bold ideas because he would fear a backlash from "well-financed special interests" that would oppose him.

Quinn hailed the recall measure as "the very best way to make sure the governor does the right thing all the time."

“I think that we will see that this is the ultimate ethics measure for the people of Illinois to use, I think, wisely and prudently to make sure that our government stands up right and our governor stands up right all the time," Quinn told reporters minutes after the vote.

Earlier this year, Quinn repeatedly said recall was his top priority of the legislative session.

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Black Republicans Say 2010 Will Be Their Year - Political News - FOXNews.com

Black Republicans Say 2010 Will Be Their Year - Political News - FOXNews.com

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Repair the window | CapeCodOnline.com

The last 3 paragraphs are worth reading. This is what is needed!

Focus on juvenile offenders before they become adult felons

October 06, 2009 2:00 AM

Violent crime in the United States fell last year by 1.9 percent and property crimes by 0.8 percent, according to an analysis by the Justice Policy Institute.

The analysis, based on the 2008 FBI Uniform Crime Report, also found a drop in incarceration rates from previous years. The Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, say the numbers bolster the case for a connection between effective alternatives to incarceration and public safety.

"The report shows that we can preserve public safety while expanding the use of community supervision and improving the systems that help people be successful, including treatment, housing and job services," said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute.

Velázquez said the new numbers demonstrate that criminal justice reform efforts in many states are beginning to show results.

For example, the Redeploy Illinois Program supports community-based alternatives to incarcerating juvenile offenders. The program provides funding to counties to deliver individualized services for young offenders, such as therapy, substance abuse treatment, and life skills education. The program also encourages victim offender panels, teen courts and other measures.

Research has found that nonviolent youth are less likely to become further involved in criminal behavior if they remain in their home communities and receive services that address underlying needs, such as mental illness, substance abuse, learning disabilities, unstable living arrangements and dysfunctional parenting. It has also been demonstrated that it is less expensive than a jail sentence.

"This progressive effort builds on the work done in other states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, which successfully reduced juvenile incarceration rates through similarly structured programs," said Velázquez.

While programs such as those in Illinois are effective for first-time juvenile offenders, adults convicted a second or third time for violent crime must be kept behind bars. After all, the Justice Department reported a few years ago that 40 percent of those discharged from parole went back to jail or prison for violations. The revolving door must stop.

Another way to reduce crime is for local police departments to embrace the "broken-window theory." First articulated by criminologists James Wilson and George Kelling, the theory holds that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of apathy and lawlessness spreads.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, ''The Tipping Point,'' wrote that New York City used this theory to combat crime in the 1980s and '90s. They found that small things, such as keeping the subways free of graffiti and arresting fare jumpers, helped combat crime because these small actions related a sense of caring as opposed to apathy. Also, thugs figured that if they could get away with misdemeanors, they could graduate to felonies.

Unfortunately, many U.S. cities tolerated too many "petty'' crimes. They also let some of their best crime-prevention strategies collapse, such as building partnerships among law enforcement, social service providers, church and community leaders in preventing crime.

Copyright © Cape Cod Media Group, a division of Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Repair the window | CapeCodOnline.com

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Suzanna Gratia Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment!

Best Movie Line Ever!!!

Nuclear engineer from Cern lab arrested for al-Qaeda links - Times Online

Fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack on the nuclear industry in Europe were renewed yesterday after French secret agents arrested a physicist working at an atomic research centre.

The 32-year-old man, who was detained with his brother, 25, is suspected of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals. He worked for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, according to French police sources.

(Full story) Nuclear engineer from Cern lab arrested for al-Qaeda links - Times Online

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"How Modern Liberals Think"

CNSNews.com - Finance Committee Democrat Won’t Read Text of Health Bill, Says Anyone Who Claims They’ll Understand It ‘Is Trying to Pull the Wool Over

Sen. Thomas Carper (D.-Del.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, told CNSNews.com that he does not “expect” to read the actual legislative language of the committee’s health care bill because it is “confusing” and that anyone who claims they are going to read it and understand it is fooling people.

“I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life,” Carper told CNSNews.com.

CNSNews.com - Finance Committee Democrat Won’t Read Text of Health Bill, Says Anyone Who Claims They’ll Understand It ‘Is Trying to Pull the Wool Over Our Eyes’

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Minneapolis area - home of the largest Somali population in the U.S.

Oct 4, 7:42 PM (ET)

By AMY FORLITI

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - The president of Somalia on Sunday denounced the recruiting of young men from Minnesota's huge Somali community for terrorist activity in his war-ravaged homeland, and said he plans to work with the U.S. government to bring those still alive back home.

President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed spoke with The Associated Press while visiting the Minneapolis area, where authorities believe as many as 20 young Somali men - possibly recruited by a vision of jihad to fight - returned to the impoverished nation over the last two years.

At least three have died in Somalia, including one who authorities believe was the first American suicide bomber. Three others have pleaded guilty in the U.S. to terror-related charges.

"We believe this is a wrong action, that these young men were wronged, they were robbed out of their life. Their parents were wronged," Ahmed told the AP through an interpreter. "The laws of the United States were violated. The security of Somalia was violated. So we condemn (them) without reservation."

Ahmed was in the Minneapolis area - home of the largest Somali population in the U.S. - to build support as his government tries to bring peace to the Horn of Africa country that has been plagued by violence for decades. The nation of 7 million people has not had a functioning government since 1991, when clan-based warlords overthrew a dictator and then turned on each other.

Ahmed was elected by Somalia's parliament in January, but his government has little control. A group called al-Shabab, which the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida, has taken over most of Somalia and boosted its numbers with foreign fighters. There are near-daily battles in Mogadishu, the country's capital, and tens of thousands of civilians have died.

Many of the country's former leaders, scholars and other dignitaries relocated to the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas. Many were educated and started successful businesses in the region and send millions of dollars back to Somalia.

The Somali community in Minnesota numbered 35,000 in 2007, according to the Census.

Ahmed told the AP that the young men who left the area "were stolen and taken without the knowledge of their parents and imams." He said he met with imams from area mosques and "we agreed that they were really sorry with what happened, which tarnished their image and that of our religion."

He said the Somali government agrees to work with state and federal governments, as well as imams and parents, to prevent more recruiting.

When asked what the Somali government could do to help, he said "we hope to reach out to these young men and explain to them how wrong what they are doing is, and that they should return to the safety of their families."

Ahmed met Sunday afternoon with relatives of some of the young men who died. They told him about their sons and what had happened to them.

"He gave us very hearty condolences," said Abdirizak Bihi, a community leader and uncle of one of the boys. "We feel much better."

Ahmed told Bihi that he thinks about Bihi's nephew, 18-year-old Burhan Hassan, every day and is reminded of the tragedy of young lives lost to terrorism, Bihi said.

The president also said he wants an ongoing relationship with the families in Minnesota and to work with them to "stop the evil at work," Bihi said.

Ahmed is in Minnesota for three days as he tries to build support for his struggling government. He's met with scholars, university students, former Somali leaders, women, elders and others. A public rally for Sunday in Minneapolis was expected to attract 5,000 people.

He also plans trips to Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, another city with a large Somali population, as he continues to advocate for peace in Somalia.

His message was resonating in Minnesota, where he was welcomed with support. But many know he has a long struggle ahead.

"To support the government is the only solution to bring back peace," said Eng Hassannow Mohamud, a former cabinet member in Somalia who now lives in the Twin Cities. "We really want to help. ... We are ready to take our part."

Ahmed said he has strategies for rebuilding Somalia such as to build up security, education and health care systems. On the humanitarian front, he said, the government needs to reach out to the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who are displaced, both in and outside the country, and get them assistance they need.

He said he hopes it will "not be long" before he brings peace to Somalia. He knows he needs to rid his country of terrorism.

"We ourselves cannot stay there if we don't do that," he said.

Mayor Richard Daley sought Olympics to solve myrid problems. Now what?

By Dan Mihalopoulos
Tribune reporter

Mayor Richard Daley and his supporters hyped the 2016 Olympic bid as Chicago's best hope for a sorely needed economic boost, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to raise the city's global profile and even a way to help keep more kids from dropping out of school.

"The next five years, six years, tell me one thing that is going to have economic opportunities for any city," Daley had said in July, when asked about criticism of his Olympic dream. "If you have something better, I'd love to see it."

But Daley headed home from Denmark on Saturday without a trump card. He faces an increasingly dire budget crunch, concerns about crime and school violence -- and an approval rating at the lowest point since he was first elected two decades ago.

Read rest of article at

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