Cartoons: USA friends again with Cuba after sanctioning it for 50+ years

Good News: Cuba is allowed to breathe by the King of our planet, the USA

Removing sanctions on Cuba and normalizing that relationship, might be the only good thing jotted down to the Obama presidency. 

But, of course, warmongers like McCain's adopted sons, Rubio and Cruz will be hopping mad and doing their theatricals which are better suited for Hollywood action flicks full of violence than in the government of the people.

Rubio: Obama’s Cuba Deal Is ‘A Terrible Setback’ For The Oppressed http://t.co/VJJaysO09S
— Charles Watson (@cwatson34) December 17, 2014

If not for Obama, the world would have been in WW3 by now

And, sadly, it could still happen... what with the warmongers badgering away at him to hit Syria and Iran and Russia and North Korea or any other country that dares to stand up to the ghoulish bastards.  To these warmongers, there's no other way but war, death and destruction.  Dialogue, commonsense and humanity are devoid from their dictionaries.  When dialogue (as in the case with Iran) and commonsense (as in the case with Syria and the false flag chemical attack fiasco) results in avoiding escalation of hostilities, the ghoulish bastards show their displeasure by targeting the man (Barack Hussein Obama) with all sort of criticism.  This is what our world has come to ... a man is criticized and hated for not giving his okay to go ahead and murder people in their tens of thousands.

Josh Gerstein writing at Politico:
....President Barack Obama made clear Monday that he's fed up with critics who are demanding his administration respond more assertively to crises in places like Syria and Ukraine, but are vague about precisely what form that response should take.

"Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force. And the question I think I would have is, why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force after we’ve just gone through a decade of war at enormous costs to our troops and to our budget? And what is it exactly that these critics think would have been accomplished?" Obama said during a press conference with Philippine President Beningno Aquino III. 
Speaking in mid-afternoon in Manila but at 3:40 A.M. back home in Washington, Obama showed some irritation as he responded to Fox News reporter Ed Henry's question about the administration's overarching foreign policy doctrine and about "critics who say they think the doctrine is weakness."

"Frankly, most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American people had no interest in participating in and would not advance our core security interests," Obama said.

After complaining that he lacked time to mount a full defense of his global foreign policy approach, the president took more than seven minutes to address the criticism. He didn't name any particular critics but may have had in mind both former Bush administration officials and think tank experts, as well as some more hawkish voices on Capitol Hill, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz..) (A spokesman for McCain did not respond to a request for comment.)

"The point is that for some reason many who were proponents of what I consider to be a disastrous decision to go into Iraq haven’t really learned the lesson of the last decade, and they keep on just playing the same note over and over again.  Why?  I don’t know," Obama said. "If there are occasions where targeted, clear actions can be taken that would make a difference, then we should take them.  We don't do them because somebody sitting in an office in Washington or New York think it would look strong.  That's not how we make foreign policy."...........

........The president accused his critics of both opportunism and a kind of intellectual dishonestly over issues like Syria and Ukraine.

"Those who criticize our foreign policy with respect to Syria, they themselves say, 'No, no, no, we don’t mean sending in troops.' Well, what do you mean?  'Well, you should be assisting the opposition.' Well, we’re assisting the opposition.  What else do you mean?  'Well, perhaps you should have taken a strike in Syria to get chemical weapons out of Syria.'  Well, it turns out we’re getting chemical weapons out of Syria without having initiated a strike.  So, what else are you talking about?  And at that point it kind of trails off," Obama declared.

On Ukraine, Obama took a similar tack, fencing verbally with an absent opponent who unsurprisingly lost the match.

"'We shouldn’t be putting troops in,' the critics will say. 'That’s not what we mean.'  Well, okay, what are you saying?  'Well, we should be arming the Ukrainians more.'  Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian army?  Or are we more likely to deter them by applying the sort of international pressure, diplomatic pressure and economic pressure that we’re applying?" Obama asked.....

Why the Saudis and their Anglo flunkies have got their panties in a twist

All the warmongers are mad as hell these days. Sulking, sulking and  pouting big time because Syria was not completely destroyed by the Judas nations of the West  ... even after the false flag chemical attack someone took a lot of pain planning and executing.  Tsk, tsk !! 

But wait ... all is not lost.

Saudi Arabia is now backing Al Qaeda Iraq to the hilt.  The new order from the Saudis, for state of the art weaponry, costing close to $7 Billion will be approved by the heavily bribed and compromised US Senate in about a month or so, that plus whatever else the Saudis are buying from here, there, everywhere   will go to further arm the Al Qaida-Iraq terrorists to do their worst in Syria.  And, guess what?  While the Saudis are spending billions on buying anything and everything that they can get hold of, America sends $ 4  Billion worth of armory to the Iraqi military to fight the Al Qaeda-Iraq renewed insurgency which is being backed by Saudi Arabia.  You don't have to be a genius to see that whatever is being done is done to line the pockets of the stinking rich in the Judas countries while at the same time Saudi Arabia has a burning desire to not only remain the lord and master of the Middle East and the Muslim world, but to destroy the Shiites once and for all  ..... nothing else, nothing but.

What a wonderful, wonderful world of priceless deception!!!

Obama is one smart cookie for trying to disentangle from the Saudi grip.  I hope he succeeds.  They are nothing but evil incarnate.

Jeffrey Steinberg writing at ExecutiveIntelligenceReview:
Anglo-Saudi Hysteria Mounts.  
Over Syria, Iran Diplomacy.   After spending months lobbying United Nations member-states, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last week rejected a coveted seat on the Security Council in protest over the failure of the world body to overthrow the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its support for the ongoing P5+1 negotiations with Iran. Last month, after President Obama expressed openness to negotiating a deal with newly elected President Hassan Rouhani in Iran, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud bin-Faisal, cancelled his own scheduled speech before the General Assembly, an unprecedented action.

The primary target of Saudi rage, however, is the United States. In the eyes of the Saudi royal family, Washington has committed a series of betrayals, starting with the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in January 2011. The Saudi royals had been assured in September by the Obama Administration that the President was going to order military strikes against Syria, in retaliation for the alleged Syrian Army chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Goutha on Aug. 21. Never mind that the President cancelled those orders under immense pressure from his own Pentagon, and opposition from an overwhelming majority of the American people, who want nothing to do with another war in the Muslim world, after a decade of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The single biggest betrayal of the so-called strategic partnership between Washington and Riyadh is the recently restarted P5+1 negotiations with Iran. For the Saudi leadership, Shi'ite Iran is the number one enemy and rival for dominance over the Islamic world and the Persian Gulf. With the backing of King Abdullah, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the head of the Saudi intelligence service and the director of the National Security Council, has been waging an overt terror war against Iranian allies throughout the region, from Syria to Lebanon to Iraq.

Over the past month, Bandar's role in financing the al-Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgent groups al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has been widely exposed, including in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times. It is no secret that the hard-core jihadist groups fighting a two-front war inside Syria—against the Assad government and against more secular rebel factions such as the Free Syrian Army—are being armed and bankrolled from the Persian Gulf through covert channels run by Bandar.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session last month in New York City, Jeffrey Feltman, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, excoriated the Saudi Kingdom for sabotaging U.S. policy in the Middle East. In a private discussion with Lebanese and Palestinian delegates, he reportedly fulminated for 20 minutes against the Saudi sabotage of any new government in Lebanon that would include Hezbollah, and Saudi asymmetric warfare inside Iraq aimed at breaking up the country. In the eyes of Bandar and other leading Saudi officials, the 2003 U.S. intervention in Iraq led to the creation of a Shi'ite government that Riyadh views as a puppet of Iran.

According to a senior U.S. intelligence official, it is well-known that Bandar is directly financing al-Qaeda networks inside Iraq that have waged a terror war for months, using suicide bombs and truck bombs to kill more Iraqi civilians than at any time in years. The Saudi objective is to break up Iraq into three parts—a Shi'ite South, a Sunni North, and a Kurdish region in the north along the Turkish border. Over the Summer, the U.S. announced $4 billion in arms sales to the Iraqi military, including counterinsurgency weapons systems to fight the Saudi-backed Sunni insurgency.

At the same time that the rift between sections of leading Washington institutions and Riyadh has reached unprecedented levels—going beyond the break that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks—the same U.S. forces are working closely with Russia and others on.........

Obama withstood pressure from warmongers on additional Syria "opposition" arming

Long article but worth your time.  After reading it, it is apparent that if there was anybody other than Obama as the head of the USA,  we would have been in WW3.  Historians will say that Obama avoided WW3 and historians will be right. By ignoring warmongers he has created many powerful enemies in the USA and around the world .... but he has also saved thousands of innocent civilians in Syria and probably people of surrounding countries by not giving in to the pressure he was under from interested parties.  Give credit where credit is due.  I shudder to think what might have happened if a Republican like McCain was the prez.  

Mark Mazzetti, Robert Worth and Michael Gordon writing at  NYTimes:
With rebel forces in Syria in retreat  and the Obama administration’s policy toward the war-ravaged country in disarray, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived at the White House Situation Room one day in June with a document bearing a warning. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had used chemical weapons against his people, the document said, and if the United States did not “impose consequences,” Mr. Assad would see it as a “green light for continued CW use.”

President Obama had signed a secret order in April — months earlier than previously reported — authorizing a C.I.A. plan to begin arming the Syrian rebels. But the arms had not been shipped, and the collapse of rebel positions in western Syria fueled the atmosphere of crisis that hung over the June meeting.

Yet after hours of debate in which top advisers considered a range of options, including military strikes and increased support to the rebels, the meeting ended the way so many attempts to define a Syrian strategy had ended in the past, with the president’s aides deeply divided over how to respond to a civil war that had already claimed 100,000 lives.


The State Department’s June warning, laid out in a document obtained by The New York Times, proved to be prophetic. A devastating poison gas attack on Aug. 21 killed hundreds of civilians, touching off a crisis that brought the United States close to launching military strikes in Syria and that ended only when Mr. Obama seized on a Russian-sponsored agreement to secure Syria’s chemical weapons.

Now, two years after Mr. Obama publicly declared that Mr. Assad had to go, he is banking on the success of that Russian-initiated plan — which relies on Mr. Assad’s cooperation and which the Syrian president offered in a recent interview as a convenient shield against American intervention.

But as Mr. Kerry held meetings in London with representatives of Syrian opposition groups on Tuesday in the hopes of reviving a proposed peace conference, the prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough appeared dim. Mr. Assad’s position is stronger, and the rebellion has grown weaker, more fragmented and more dominated by Islamic radical factions.............

...........As the president and his advisers debated their options in Syria, two American allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were steadily funneling money and weapons to the rebels — and urging the Obama administration to join them.......

.............Denis R. McDonough, the deputy national security adviser and one of the biggest skeptics about American intervention in Syria, was promoted to White House chief of staff. Mr. McDonough had clashed frequently with his colleagues on Syria policy, including with Samantha Power, a White House official who had long championed the idea that nations have a moral obligation to intervene to prevent genocide.
Ms. Power came to believe that America’s offers of support to the rebels were empty.
“Denis, if you had met the rebels as frequently as I have, you would be as passionate as I am,” Ms. Power told Mr. McDonough at one meeting, according to two people who attended.
“Samantha, we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Mr. McDonough responded crisply........

........In private conversations with aides, Mr. Obama described Syria as one of those hellish problems every president faces, where the risks are endless and all the options are bad. Those views would then be reflected in larger groups by Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, and Mr. McDonough.

“You could read the president’s position through Tom and Denis,” one former senior White House official said.

Slowly, however, Mr. Obama’s position began to change, in no small part because of intense lobbying by foreign officials. During a three-day trip to the Middle East in March, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who warned him that the Assad government’s chemical weapons could fall into the hands of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The pressure was even more intense the next day in Jordan, where Mr. Obama, Mr. Donilon and Mr. Kerry had a late-night dinner with King Abdullah II. Jordan was straining under the weight of more than 100,000 Syrian refugees, and the king urged Mr. Obama to take a more active role in trying to end the war.
Jordanian officials were even offering to allow the C.I.A. to use the country as a base for drone strikes in Syria — offers that the Obama administration repeatedly declined........

........But debate had shifted from whether to arm Syrian rebels to how to do it. Discussions about putting the Pentagon in charge of the program — and publicly acknowledging the arming and training program — were eventually shelved when it was decided that too many legal hurdles stood in the way of the United States’ openly supporting the overthrow of a sovereign government..........

...........Besides the legal worries, there were other concerns driving the decision to make the program a secret.
As one former senior administration official put it, “We needed plausible deniability in case the arms got into the hands of Al Nusra.”........

Is this for real? If so .... what a beautiful morning!!

Daily Mail UK is in the "make everything sound sensational" business.... so, I won't take their headlines as reflecting the real situation.  Let's wait and see.  However, if true .... then at long last that vile cavemen land can be left  alone in that wahhabi wildness and be done with.  Right now, the Saudi billionaires are "threatening a rift" in relations with the USA and nowhere near the Daily Mail's headline "Saudi Arabia severs diplomatic ties ....." although it's too early to tell ...but we can hope, can't we?

...Saudi Arabia severs diplomatic ties with US over response to conflict in Syria
Saudi Arabia is an important ally to the U.S. as it provides a secure source of oil
Saudi diplomats now promise a 'major shift' in relations with the U.S. over inaction in the conflict in Syria
Secretary of State John Kerry says he is committed to keeping a good relationship with the Saudis

Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years.
Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a 'major shift' in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said........

Another huge scandal in the USA .... this time it's the Republicans

This should give the Democrats a breather. Sarah Palin should cut all ties with the obnoxious warmonger John McCain otherwise she will lose the rest of her  fans.  What McCain has done and has been doing is clear indication that the idiots in the USA, especially the Republicans,  know nothing about the taqiyyah masters they are dealing with and will believe anything from anybody because their brains are curdled either with old age or lack of intelligence.   The person who looks the most intelligent from the entire bing bang in their government is   ......Barack Hussein Obama .... and you just don't know how much it pains me to admit that.  Tell the truth, shame the devil .... that's my motto.

From AlAkhbar English:
The Obama administration said on Tuesday  it knew in advance of a trip to Syria by John McCain, a visit that raised questions over whether the Republican senator met with the kidnappers of a group of Lebanese pilgrims held hostage for the past year.

US officials had little to say about the trip by McCain, an outspoken advocate for US military aid to the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

McCain's office said his visit was organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a non-profit group that backs the Syrian opposition and is based in the United States. The Republican senator crossed into northern Syria from the country's border with Turkey on Monday and stayed there several hours in a surprise visit.

McCain saw General Salim Idris, the leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army coalition of rebel groups, as well as 18 commanders of Free Syrian Army battalions from all of Syria, the SETF website said.

"While meeting with Senator McCain, General Idris and FSA commanders asked that the United States increase its aid to the Free Syrian Army in the form of heavy weapons, a no-fly zone, and air strikes on Hezbollah," the SETF website said, referring to the Lebanese resistance group backing Assad.

However, a report aired on Lebanese al-Jadeed television identified two of the rebels who met with McCain.

The report by Nawal Berri said that two men seen in pictures with McCain were Abou Youssef and Mohammed Nour, whom she had met last year when al-Jadeed visited the 11 Lebanese hostages last year. The two men had been in charge of escorting the television crew last summer.

A group of Lebanese pilgrims were kidnapped in May 2012, and pushes for the release of the remaining 11 have so far been unsuccessful.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly shied away from US involvement in the conflict, which has claimed 80,000 lives according to United Nations estimates, although he has kept all options on the table. The Obama administration has sent food and medical supplies to Assad's opponents.

"We were aware, of course, that Senator McCain was going to make this trip," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "And we look forward to speaking with Senator McCain upon his return to learn more about the trip."..........

How the non-existent Agent-15 comes in handy for warmongers every single time

Once again,  I am glad that Obama is reluctant to take drastic action against the Assad regime.  In my books that a mighty PLUS for the democratic president.  The way things are in the Syria of today,  the guys coming up smelling less nasty are those with Assad and if any poisonous gas is used, it will likely be coming from the alluhu akbars Al Qaeda linked gangs armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey which these countries  have procured  from USA, UK and others.

Jeffrey Lewis writing at ForeignPolicy:
....Since the government of Syria's   Bashar al-Assad began to totter, the nonproliferation community has been waiting to see if he will unleash what is believed to be a large stockpile of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, and mustard gas. The possibility that Assad might use chemical weapons is widely regarded as a possible trigger for U.S. intervention. In December, President Obama warned Assad of "consequences" in the event Syria used its chemical weapons. A few days earlier, Hillary Clinton warned that the United States was "certainly planning to take action" in the event of "credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people."
The implication, obviously, is that the "compelling case" is the "credible evidence" that should prompt Washington to rethink its policy limiting itself to "non-lethal" aid to Syrian opposition forces and take action. A reconsideration might be in order, though not for the reason you think.

For starters, somehow, no one has bothered to mention that Agent 15 doesn't exist.

Yep. Agent 15 is one of the bogus bits of intelligence that helped make the case for invading Iraq. Like many good fish stories, this one has a kernel of truth. A single document found by U.N. inspectors (at the infamous Chicken Farm, if you must know) mentioned something called "Agent 15." UNSCOM and others believed Agent 15 was a glycollate, related to laboratory experiments that Iraq admitted to with chemically similar incapacitants usually referred to as BZ or "buzz." But Iraq never produced BZ, Agent 15, or similar incapacitants.......

New York loves Obama ... by a whopping 81%

Go figure !  Also, go figure why visitors to the Smithsonian museums in Washington DC voted Barack Hussein Obama as the 3rd most popular prez....after George Washington and Lincoln. Are Americans smoking something potent supplied  by the WH or are they onto something that we cannot see from over here?  I am at a loss to understand what's going on with our neighbours.  Besides liking the guy for being a family man and NOT a warmonger ... is there anything else to appreciate about him?   Unbelievable that 81% of NY's voters cast their ballots for Obama.  Maybe, just maybe.... Americans wanted to show the Republican party that its thinking is outdated and does not work for the present time and place.  I can't figure out   the kind of love affair going on between Americans at large and Obama.  Fascinating !!


Greg Giroux writing at Bloomberg:
...Obama’s 81% New York City Support is Best in 114 Years.   President Barack Obama won more support from New York City in November’s election than any White House candidate in more than 100 years, according to a final tally of votes.

Obama beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 81 percent to 18 percent in the nation’s largest city, according to a certified vote count released Dec. 31 by the state board of elections. Some New York ballots were counted late in part because of complications caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Obama’s share of the vote is the best showing by a presidential nominee in New York since its five boroughs were consolidated in 1898, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the state elections board and the 2005 books “America at the Polls” and “The Encyclopedia of New York State.”

The results underscore New York’s decades-long status as a Democratic bastion where most residents are racial and ethnic minorities. Of the city’s 8.2 million residents, 29 percent are Hispanic, 23 percent are non-Hispanic black and 13 percent are non-Hispanic Asian, according to 2011 estimates from the Census Bureau.

“Demographic shifts are permanently changing the political landscape,” said Bruce Berg, a political scientist at Fordham University in New York. Census data show New York “is a more minority city than it already was,” he said in a telephone interview.....

The new America's greatly improved new Obama on Syria

Those of us who want to leave the Muslim countries alone to dig their own graves, without any help from the West, not even  in supplying the coffins...will like this.  I sure did. Now, here's hoping Obama keeps his word and remains firm in spite of the intensity of the lobbying from all the "known knowns" as well as the "known unknowns"  and the "unknown unknowns".

Paul Richter and Patrick J. McDonnell writing at LATimes
...President Obama on Wednesday   praised a new Syrian opposition coalition as "a legitimate representative of the Syrian people" but pointedly said Washington was not yet prepared to recognize the group as a government in exile or provide arms to antigovernment rebels.

The president, drawing a tight boundary around the U.S. role in Syria, also repeated warnings about the presence of "extremist elements" within the fragmented ranks of Syrian armed rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

In his first remarks on Syria since his reelection, Obama gave no sign that his administration was reconsidering its generally cautious stance on the conflict. That position apparently is being maintained despite pressure from within the United States and from allies such as Turkey and Persian Gulf states to offer more robust support, including heavy arms, to Syrian opposition forces.

The president's comments squelched, at least for now, speculation that the White House — which has called on Assad to resign — would move more aggressively on Syria once the election was over.....

Obama's visit to Burma, a great new beginning for his 2nd term

Extremely praiseworthy.  This is the very first visit by an US Prez to this country which has a very promising future under the inevitable future leadership of  Aung San Suu Kyi who is the leader of the opposition.




Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets to welcome Obama to a place still learning its basic freedoms.

Speaking to a national audience from the University of Yangon, Obama offered a "hand of friendship" and a lasting U.S. commitment, yet a warning as well. He said the new civilian government must nurture democracy or watch it, and U.S. support, disappear.

The visit to Myanmar was the centerpiece of a four-day trip to Southeast Asia that began in Bangkok and will end Tuesday in Cambodia, where Obama will attend an East Asia Summit.

Obama seemed to revel in the history of what he was witnessing in Myanmar — a nation shedding years of military rule, and a relationship between two nations changing fast......