LET'S FIGHT BACK

LET'S FIGHT BACK
GOD BLESS AMERICA

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Cuba cracks down on goods in flyers' luggage

Cuba cracks down on goods in flyers' luggage

Associated Press 
FILE - In this Dec. 19, 2011, file photo, travelers wait in line with their luggage at Miami International Airport before traveling Cuba in Miami. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans and Cuban-Americans fly in and out of Cuba each year thanks to the liberalization of U.S. and Cuban travel rules over the last five years. On Monday, Sept. 1, 2014, the Cuban government will enact new rules meant to take a big bite of that traffic, sharply limiting the amount of goods people can bring into Cuba in their luggage, and ship by boat from abroad. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
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FILE - In this Dec. 19, 2011, file photo, travelers wait in line with their luggage at Miami International Airport before traveling Cuba in Miami. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans and Cuban-Americans fly in and out of Cuba each year thanks to the liberalization of U.S. and Cuban travel rules over the last five years. On Monday, Sept. 1, 2014, the Cuban government will enact new rules meant to take a big bite of that traffic, sharply limiting the amount of goods people can bring into Cuba in their luggage, and ship by boat from abroad. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
HAVANA (AP) — A carload of burly nephews and grandsons greeted Martha and Alfredo Gonzalez when they stepped out of Havana's international airport into the blazing heat of an August afternoon.
A round of embraces and the young men got down to business, hefting the retired couple's seven massive duffel bags into a crude two-wheel trailer hooked behind an antiquated sedan for the sole purpose of hauling the half-ton of clothes, medicines and other items the Gonzalezes bought in Miami. A few cars down, Claribel Torrez watched a trailer being loaded with baggage that included a 40-inch television and a bicycle.
"The reason I work 40 hours a week is to bring all this to my family," the 50-year-old Miami fast-food restaurant worker said as her companions tied a tarp over the groaning trailer.
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans and Cuban-Americans fly to and from the island each year thanks to the liberalization of U.S. and Cuban travel rules over the last five years. Their Cuba-bound checked baggage has become a continuous airlift that hauls nearly $2 billion a year worth of car tires, flat-screen televisions, blue jeans, underwear and shampoo to an island where consumer goods are frequently shoddy, scarce and expensive.
That could change on Monday, however, when the Cuban government enacts new rules meant to take a big bite of that traffic, sharply limiting the amount of goods people can bring into Cuba in their luggage, and ship by boat from abroad. The Cuban government says the restrictions are meant to curb abuses that have turned air travel in particular into a way for professional "mules" to illegally import supplies for both black-market businesses and legal private enterprises that are supposed to buy supplies from the state.
Among ordinary Cubans, reactions range from worry to outrage that their primary, and for many only, source of high-quality consumer goods may be throttled.
"People are really unhappy," said Maite Delgado, a 75-year-old retired state worker. "All the clothes and shoes that I have come from my granddaughters in Spain or my siblings in the U.S."
The rules that go into effect Monday run 41 pages and give a sense of the quantity and diversity of the commercial goods arriving in checked bags at Cuba's airports, whose baggage carousels often look like they're disgorging the contents of an entire Wal-Mart or Target store. Travelers will now be allowed to bring in 22 pounds (10 kilos) of detergent instead of 44; one set of hand tools instead of two; and 24 bras instead of 48. Four car tires are still permitted, as are two pieces of baby furniture and two flat-screen televisions. Cuban customs also bars passengers from bringing in items worth more than $1,000. Rather than examining receipts, customs agents are given a long list assigning pre-set values to certain goods ($250 for a video-game console, for example.) Those prices rise sharply under the new rules, making it far easier to reach that $1,000 limit.
The new rules similarly increase the duties paid on goods shipped from abroad, another major source of foreign merchandise for the island.
Authorities have taken to the airwaves and pages of state media in recent days to assure Cubans that the vast majority of travelers won't be affected. The change is intended "to keep certain people from using current rules on non-commercial imports to bring into the country high volumes of goods that are destined for commercial sale and profit," Idalmis Rosales Milanes, deputy chief of Cuban customs, told government newspaper Granma in Friday editions.
The government has justified the new rules with examples of prolific mules including one passenger it said brought in 41 computer monitors and 66 flat-screen TVs in a single year. Another supposedly brought in 34 printers, 58 monitors and 74 computers between 2011 and 2014.
Between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion worth of goods were flown to Cuba in traveler's baggage last year, with the average flyer bringing in goods worth $3,551, according to a 2013 survey of 1,154 Cuban and Cuban-American travelers conducted by the Havana Consulting Group, a Florida-based private consultancy that studies the Cuban economy.
"It's sustenance, support that greatly aids in the survival of the Cuban family," Consulting Group President Emilio Morales said. "Along with cash remittances, it's the most significant source of earnings for the Cuban population, not the salaries the government pays."
While his study did not look at the final destination of travelers' goods, Morales said he estimated based on his knowledge of the phenomenon that about 60 percent went to families and 40 percent to black-market retailers.
"A sort of long-distance wholesale market has established itself to supplement the lack of a wholesale market in Cuba," he said. "Many people are trying to meet the needs of their family, and other needs that are outside those of the family, like bringing things to sell them."
With foreign reserves dropping sharply over the last two years as Cuba tries to pay off sovereign debt and make itself a more attractive destination for foreign investment, Morales said, the government is desperate to reduce the flow of goods and push Cubans' relatives abroad to send help in the form of cash remittances, which are subjected to hefty government fees. Limiting informal imports also would presumably help boost business in state-controlled stores.
The rule change already has had an effect in Miami, where many stores are dedicated to selling goods to island-bound Cubans and Cuban-Americans.
""Normally I can't even sit down for lunch," said Diana Calzadilla, 28, a cashier at Cadalzo Fashion, a store in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood that sells discount clothing and accessories to travelers on their way to Cuba.
"Look around," she said, nodding at the empty aisles of leggings, baseball caps and tank tops. "I haven't sold almost anything this morning. ... People look around but they don't buy anything because they're not sure how much they're going to be able to bring."
Several "mules" have commented that they are going to look into other ways to make money, she said. At least one customer, she said, appeared decided.
"It was their last trip," she said. "They don't know if they'll go again."
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Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana, Christine Armario in Miami and Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador contributed to this report.-
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Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
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France Arrests Suspected Jihadist Teen Girl at Airport

France Arrests Suspected Jihadist Teen Girl at Airport

The Atlantic Wire 
France Arrests Suspected Jihadist Teen Girl at Airport
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France Arrests Suspected Jihadist Teen Girl at Airport
A 16-year-old girl suspected of of making her way to Syria to join Muslim extremists was arrested Sunday at an airport in southern France, according to officials. 
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement that border police at Nice International Airport arrested the girl on Saturday, before she departed "for jihad."
Suspicion was raised when a 22-year-old Chechen man was attempting to pay cash for her one-way ticket to Turkey. Turkish Airlines alerted French border police to the purchase.
The girl unconvincingly told the authorities that she was going to Istanbul to visit her grandmother. Upon contacting her home, the girl's parents told police they have no family there and objected to her traveling to Turkey. 
The Chechen man, who is believed to be the girl's recruiter, was detained shortly thereafter. He is apparently an individual known to authorities for similar activity. 
France estimates that as many as 800 of its citizens have left to join Islamist organizations in Syria. 

European NGO: EU Must Pressure Cuba to Respect Human Rights

European NGO: EU Must Pressure Cuba to Respect Human Rights

Sunday, August 31, 2014
From the Stockholm-based, Civil Rights Defenders:

The EU must put pressure on Cuba to respect human rights

The EU and Cuba held subsequent negotiations concerning the possibility of future political dialogue and assistance between the two sides. To ensure that the agreement will lead to human rights improvements in Cuba, Civil Rights Defenders, together with the Cuban Campaign, Por Otra Cuba, have developed a platform on how these negotiations should be conducted and what should be included in the agreement.

Negotiations between the EU and Cuba, to achieve a bilateral agreement on the subjects of political dialogue and assistance, began in early 2014. Cuba is currently the only country in Latin America the EU has no bilateral agreement with, the reason being the total lack of respect for human rights in the country.

When the Cuban government signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in 2008 it represented a first step towards change. But since then, no real improvements have followed as far as human rights is concerned.

Civil Rights Defenders calls on the EU to put pressure on Cuba to ratify and implement human rights conventions – before any discussion on an agreement can continue. Prior to any final agreement it is essential that the EU includes civil society in Cuba and the political opposition in the dialogue in order for it to have legitimacy amongst the population.

During the negotiations, it has also emerged, that the EU, in addition to the agreement on political dialogue and assistance, intends to initiate a trade agreement with Cuba. The platform states that no trade agreement should be entered into before Cuba ratifies and implements the two human rights conventions.

Netanyahu Defends Ceasefire Deal, Notes New Threats in the Region

UNITED WITH ISRAEL




Netanyahu
PM Netanyahu defends the implementation of a ceasefire, saying that Israel had pulverized Hamas and must now focus on other major terrorist groups at its borders.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the wake of public criticism for his decision to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, said that the terror group was severely weakened by the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 on Saturday, the Israeli leader insisted that Israel’s defensive attacks on Hamas in Gaza over the last month and a half have weakened the terror organization sufficiently to prevent a major threat to Israel.
Netanyahu did not rule out the option of retaking Gaza at some point in the future, but now is not the time, he said.

IDF Dealt Hamas a ‘Terrible, Terrible Blow’

“I believed that what we should do at this time is simply to pound them,” Netanyahu stated. “So maybe they remain in power, but they are pulverized. They are isolated. They cannot smuggle weaponry.”

Cruz Invites Obama to Border — to Play Golf

Cruz Invites Obama to Border — to Play Golf

AUGUST 30, 2014 9:43 PM  
(National Review) – Ted Cruz brought his anti-Washington crusade to Americans for Prosperity’s Defending the Dream summit in Dallas on Saturday.
“I spent last week in Washington, D.C,” he said. “It’s great to be back in America.” Barry Goldwater, the late Arizona senator who upended the Republican establishment, and to whom Cruz has often been compared, couldn’t have said it better.
The Texas senator threw the sharpest elbows, however, at President Obama. Six months ago, Obamacare was the dominant issue shaping key Senate races, but in a sign of how the political ground has shifted, Cruz predicted they would be a“national referendum on amnesty.” Though many have speculated about the brewing rivalry between Cruz and his fellow Texan, Governor Rick Perry, with both eyeing a presidential bid in 2016, Cruz offered praise for Perry’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to the secure the border.
And he invited the president to the Texas border — to play golf. Addressing reporters after his speech, he dwelled further on the theme. “It almost seems like the PGA oughta put him on retainer,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never known anyone who plays that much golf. It’s almost like he doesn’t have a job, like he’s retired or something.”
The Cruz who showed up in Dallas played to the right flank of the Republican party that rocketed him to national fame, continuing to defend his push last year to shut down the federal government. “As a result of that fight,” he said, the president’s “popularity has plummeted,” and he told reporters he still believes Obamacare will be repealed. That’s a reversal for Cruz, who argued the government shutdown was necessary because once an entitlement program took root, people would become addicted to it. Now, he is singing a different tune. “Any student of military history knows wars not typically won in the first skirmish,” he said Saturday.
Asked about the Republican governors who have agreed to the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, including some of his potential 2016 rivals like Indiana governor Mike Pence, he said he would “urge any governor not to be complicit in the disaster.”
Cruz also made clear he’ll position himself on the hawkish end of the party’s foreign-policy spectrum which, in a potential 2016 matchup, will put him at odds with his fellow tea-party superstar Rand Paul. He told the crowd on Saturday that the U.S. should bomb the Islamic State “back to the Stone Age” and mused that the “Obama diet” is simply letting Russian president Vladimir Putin “eat your lunch every day.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/386750/ted-cruz-brings-anti-washington-shtick-dallas-eliana-johnson
- See more at: http://www.teaparty.org/cruz-invites-obama-border-play-golf-53378/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cruz-invites-obama-border-play-golf#sthash.NFCoZgb3.dpuf

Ted Cruz: Bomb ISIS ‘Back to the Stone Age’

Ted Cruz: Bomb ISIS ‘Back to the Stone Age’

AUGUST 30, 2014 10:02 PM  
(Newsmax) – Sen. Ted Cruz rallied the conservative faithful at the Defending the American Dream Summit in Dallas on Saturday, saying that the U.S. should bomb the Islamic State (ISIS) “back to the Stone Age” for beheading American journalist James Foley.
“ISIS says they want to go back and reject modernity,” the Texas Republican told 3,000 people at the event, which was sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. “Well, I think we should help them. We ought to bomb them back to the Stone Age.”
“ISIS is the face of evil,” Cruz said, adding that by executing Foley on Aug. 19, ISIS was “mocking America to the world.” He described the group, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as “monsters.”
“America has always been reluctant to use military force, but we have never shied away from defending the United States of America,” he said.
Cruz, who is considering a run for the White House in 2016, was among several likely Republican presidential contenders who spoke at the two-day summit, held at the Omni Hotel. AFP is backed by the billionaire Koch brothers.
Other speakers included Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both of whom spoke on Friday. Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling followed Cruz.
For nearly a half-hour, Cruz slammed President Barack Obama policies — likening his dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, for instance, to a weak “kitty cat.”
“The Russian bear is encountering the Obama kitty cat,” Cruz said. “The reason Putin feels no fear to march into his neighbors, the reason our allies up and down Europe are terrified of what happens next, is because our president is leading from behind.”
He illustrated Putin’s influence another way at the start of his speech: “Back in Washington, there’s a diet that is now very, very popular. It’s called ‘The Obama Diet.’ It works very, very well. You simply let Putin eat your lunch every day.”
The first-term senator issued a “call to action” to the AFP summit participants as the November congressional elections draw near, saying that four issues would be “front and center.”
They are beating back illegal immigration, repealing Obamacare, restoring America’s world stature, and defending the U.S. Constitution. Cruz also pledged undying support for Israel.
“Sixty-six days from now …, we’re going to re-take the United States Senate, and we’re going to retire Harry Reid,” Cruz said, referring to the Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader. “We’ve got 66 days and we’ve got a job to do.”
On immigration, “President Obama has decided to make this election in 2014 a national referendum on amnesty,” Cruz said. “If you support amnesty, vote Democrat. If you oppose amnesty, throw Harry Reid out.”
He declared that his battle to defund Obamacare last year was successful because “as a result of that fight, President Obama’s popularity has plummeted. As a result of that fight, Obamacare’s popularity has plummeted. … It’s even plummeted with Democrats.
“I’m convinced that we’re going to win in 2014 — and 2016 is going to be even better,” Cruz said to cheers from the crowd. “And in the year 2017, a Republican president, in the Rose Garden, is going to sign a bill repealing every word of Obamacare.”
In their remarks on Friday, Perry and Paul attacked the “we don’t have a strategy yet” remarks Obama made about ISIS earlier this week.
“Yesterday, the president admitted he had no strategy to deal with ISIS,” Perry said, drawing hoots and hisses from the crowd. “The deepening chaos in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, and Ukraine is all the clear and compelling evidence the world needs of a president one step behind, lurching from crisis to crisis, always playing catch-up.”
Paul said that Obama’s lack of leadership showed that he’d been on the job too long.
“If the president has no strategy, maybe it’s time for a new president,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/cruz-dream-summit-americans-for-progress-isis/2014/08/30/id/591841/
- See more at: http://www.teaparty.org/ted-cruz-bomb-isis-back-stone-age-53380/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ted-cruz-bomb-isis-back-stone-age#sthash.1SAPDkia.dpuf

WOMAN BURNED TO DEATH

Yemen: Woman burned to death by brother for converting to Christianity

Nazeera-receiving-hospital-treatment-after-fire-attack.-Morning-Star-News-via-SaeedMuhammad commanded: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.
Yet in the West, Islamic apologists blandly assert that Islam has no death penalty for apostasy, and that’s that: human rights organizations and Western governments do nothing for these threatened people.
“Woman in Yemen Burned to Death for Her Faith,” Morning Star News, August 29, 2014:
ISTANBUL (Morning Star News) – On the morning of June 9 in southern Yemen, Saeed woke to the sound of screaming. He shot out of bed, pushed panicked family members aside and saw his wife stumbling out of their kitchen, engulfed in flames.
His wife, Nazeera, had been preparing breakfast at about 9 a.m. when she poured liquid from a cooking oil bottle into a hot pan. The liquid flashed, and the bottle exploded. While her four children watched, screaming, Nazeera was being burned alive.
“I rushed out of the room,” Saeed (full name undisclosed for security reasons) told Morning Star News, weeping. “I couldn’t even speak to ask her what happened. All I could think about was putting the fire out and then getting her to the hospital. But my 16-year-old son, he couldn’t stop himself and held on to her, hugging her while she was burning. He got hurt, and I had to pull him away from her.”
About two weeks later, Nazeera, 33, died as a result of her burns. When Saeed returned to his home in a village (undisclosed for security reasons) after her death, a relative told him the unthinkable – members of both his family and hers had taken the vegetable oil out of the bottle and replaced it with gasoline. Saeed knew the reason – many years ago, the two had become Christians and refused to return to Islam.
After living in hiding in Yemen for several months, Saeed was able to flee to the relative safety of another country, he told Morning Star News.
Before the attack, Saeed and his wife had already decided to flee their families and the 99 percent Muslim country on the Arabian Peninsula. They got their travel papers two days before the sabotaged bottle exploded.
Medical Care
After doctors said there was nothing more they could do for Nazeera, friends of the couple were able to secure a room in a hospital in Egypt for further treatment. Nazeera died that day, before they could go.
Saeed was with her when she died. Among her last words to him was not to worry and to take care of their children. Saeed left the hospital and took the two-hour trip back home. There a relative told him that one of his brothers and one of her brothers had conspired against them to punish them.
“I was told by one of our relatives that it was a set-up, and they replaced the cooking oil with petrol, which caught flames as soon as she poured it out,” he said.
When Saeed went to police for help, officers told him to bring witnesses who could testify about the alleged conspiracy to sabotage the cooking oil bottle. His children only saw the explosion and could not testify regarding sabotage, and Saeed’s relatives refused to incriminate the alleged conspirators, their own family members.
“No one will be a witness for us,” Saeed said. “And my family told me that if I was killed and cut into pieces, they wouldn’t do anything to help or be a witness on my side.”
Saeed buried his wife and tried to sell everything left in his home, but family members blocked his efforts. Initially his four children lived at his mother’s house after the attack, but he secretly took them to another country before relatives could take them from him.
His last image of home was his relatives descending on his house, he said.
“I lost the way to support myself and everything we had,” he said. “And when we were leaving, I was trying to sell things we had, but some of my family members stopped it so I wouldn’t get anything. Even the day I took the children to leave [the country], they attacked our house and divided our things among themselves. They destroyed the rest.”
A New Faith
Saeed, 45, was born into a Muslim family in a small village in south Yemen that he would not identify for security reasons.
As a high school Arabic teacher, Saeed read a lot of newspapers to incorporate current events into his classes. In 1997, he was reading an article about a member of the Yemeni Parliament doing something seen as a sin in Islam. Later he was struck by a columnist’s article about the incident urging forgiveness.
“A local journalist wrote an article saying, ‘Why don’t you forgive him like Essa [Jesus] said. If you forgive other people, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive other people, your Father will not forgive you,’” Saeed said. “I heard this verse and was amazed that God talks about forgiveness, and I wanted to know more about Him, but as you know, you can hardly find Bibles in Yemen. I waited, and in 2003, I heard one of my students talking about a Christian radio station that broadcasts for half an hour a day in the Yemeni dialect. That’s how I came to know about Jesus.”
Saeed married Nazeera in 1998. By 2003, when he began drifting from Islam to become a Christian, he had two sons and his wife was pregnant with their first daughter. All of them, including his wife, followed him in his newfound faith.
When people in his village started to notice a change in the way he acted, they started harassing him.
“I was also punished at work,” Saeed said. “In 2003, I was suspended for being a Christian from my work for a year, and then when I returned, instead of putting me back in my place as a secondary school teacher, I was demoted and placed in a primary school. Instead of working in a school about 100 meters away from my house, the new school where I taught was 5 kilometers [3 miles] away, which I had to walk to every day.”
At the primary school, things got worse. He was suspended once, he said, for refusing to donate 500 rials (US$2.40) that the school was collecting from every worker for Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic organization designated as a terrorist group by the United States and other nations.
In March he refused to give a donation at school to a charitable Islamic association affiliated with another terrorist group. A member of the charity accused Saeed of being an “infidel” and then encouraged another teacher to assault him. The teacher beat him in front of more than 1,000 students. Saeed did not fight back, he said.
Persecution from Nazeera’s family was no less severe. They essentially kidnapped her three times in three years in hopes of convincing her to leave “the infidel.”
“But she kept saying that she wanted to be with me, and that she believes in what I believe, and that no matter what, she won’t leave me and the children,” Saeed said.
At least one human rights group that advocates for persecuted Christians and a group of Christians assisting Saeed have confirmed the details of his ordeal. One religious freedom advocate said that while today’s headlines are full of stories about terrorist groups brutalizing Christian communities in the Middle East, the day-to-day life and death struggles of converts often go forgotten.
“Though clearly an extreme case of persecution, this incident illustrates the pressure converts are under,” said the advocate, who requested anonymity for security reasons.
The killing was “a huge tragedy,” he added. “That is not anything anyone should have to go though alone. It is the worst place to be.”
Defying common logic, Saeed said God allowed the atrocity to take place to “strengthen our faith and use us more in His Kingdom.”
“We ask people to pray for us, as we are all alone in this new place,” he said (Morning Star News has confirmed the country, undisclosed for security reasons). “Pray for my children, as now I am their mother and father and only friend. We need prayers for God’s strength and to give us strong faith. I want people outside to know that even if we get cut into pieces, we won’t leave Jesus Christ.”