Gerard Dion's Blog, page 18

Obama will travel to Orlando on Thursday

President Obama will travel to Orlando, Fla., on Thursday to meet with victims of the early Sunday shooting at a nightclub that killed 49 people. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Obama will travel to Orlando on Thursday

Dion Publishing Proudly Presents the following article from Washington Examiner By Pete Kasperowicz (@PeteKDCNews) • 6/13/16 9:30 PM

President Obama will travel to Orlando, Fla., on Thursday to meet with victims of the early Sunday shooting at a nightclub that killed 49 people, and forced authorities to shoot the terrorist assailant.

Spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama would “pay his respects to victims’ families, and to stand in solidarity with the community as they embark on their recovery.”

Obama on Monday pushed again for tougher gun control laws in the wake of the tragedy, but the White House has acknowledged that after his executive actions on guns, there isn’t much more authority he can use.

“The president has taken substantial executive actions using as much executive authority as he can,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday.

Trump: Obama ‘doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing’ on terrorism

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Washington Examiner By Anna Giaritelli (@anna_giaritelli) • 6/13/16 10:44 PM

Donald Trump stepped up his attacks on the president following the Orlando attacks. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

 

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump doubts President Obama has the ability or desire to confront terrorism by Islamic extremists. The criticism comes two days after 49 people were gunned down at a gay nightclub in downtown Orlando early Sunday morning.

Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly late Monday the commander in chief’s response to Sunday’s shootings in Orlando and other recent terrorist attacks has been lacking.

“We don’t know who’s coming in and frankly, our president doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing,” Trump said.

The New York businessman added Obama has not been fighting the Islamic State overseas “as aggressively as he could.”

O’Reilly asked Trump what sinister reasons the president would have for not buckling down on the terrorist group. Trump danced around the question and would not offer a specific reason.

“I think nobody knows, Bill. I have absolutely no idea,” Trump said. “Why he doesn’t fight and why he doesn’t fight it with strength and vigor, nobody knows.”

Trump attacked Obama earlier Monday for refusing to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” when referring to attackers affiliated with the Islamic State.

The immigration hawk said Monday he is considering planning a trip to Orlando at the urging of supporters.

Obama announced late Monday he will visit Orlando on Thursday

Immigration from Muslim nations doubles to 550,000

Dion Publishing Proudly Presents Washington Examiner By Paul Bedard (@SecretsBedard)

Immigration from Muslim nations doubles to 550,000

America’s newest wave of immigrants are coming from Asian, Muslim and Central and South American nations. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

America’s newest wave of immigrants are coming from Asian, Muslim and Central and South American nations, significantly ending Mexico’s long-standing reign as the nation’s top supplier.

New figures from U.S. Census offices show explosive growth in legal and illegal immigration from Cuba, Vietnam and China, all communist-controlled nations.

Among the biggest growth is from Muslim South Asian countries such as Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. That has more than doubled in five years, surging from 271,000 in the 2010-2011 period to to 550,000 in 2014-2015, according to Census data.

A 17-page analysis of the numbers from the Center for Immigration Studies showed that newly arrived immigrants in 2014-15 from several areas reached record highs: East Asia, including China, Vietnam, hit 583,000, and the Caribbean, including Cuba, was 307,000.

The report also revealed that those from Latin American nations other than Mexico nearly doubled since 2013, jumping from 458,000 in the 2012-13 period to 878,000 in the following two years.

The number of immigrants from Mexico, meanwhile, increased slightly to 338,000 in 2014-15, but that is about one-third of those who arrived legally and illegally just 10 years ago. That drop-off had led many policy makers to predict that overall immigration would slow, but it never happened.

“Mexican immigration has rebounded significantly from the lows of 2010 and 2011, but it is still nowhere near the level it was a decade earlier,” wrote CIS research director Steven A. Camarota.

“Nonetheless, as we have seen, the long-term fall-off in Mexican immigration has not prevented the overall level of immigration from reaching levels not seen for more than a decade because an increase in immigration from other countries has offset the Mexican decline.”

Legal immigration makes up about two-thirds of the overall growth to 1.5 million new immigrants a year. Typically, they are family members arriving to join their relatives, a trend that spirals bigger with more arrivals, Camarota said.

But while that may be a positive message of American openness, he said it raises significant questions about how communities can absorb new immigrants, especially in schools and jobs, and how much it costs taxpayers.

He also dismissed suggestions from some experts that the latest 15-year immigration peak is a fluke.

“I think we can assume that it will remain high,” Camarota said of immigration, legal and illegal, to the United States. “Will it remain that high? Maybe not, but is it likely to fall down to the level of 2010 and 2011? No.”

Adele Dedicates Concert to Orlando Victims: ‘The LGBTQA Community, They’re Like My Soulmates’

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Adele Dedicates Concert to Orlando Victims: ‘The LGBTQA Community, They’re Like My Soulmates’

Adele performs at SportPaleis on June 12, 2016 in Antwerpen, Belgium.

Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images

Adele was moved to tears on Sunday night during her show in Antwerp, Belgium, when she told the audience she was dedicating the concert to the victims of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which took the lives of 49 and injured 53.

“I would like to start tonight by dedicating this entire show to everybody in Orlando at Pulse nightclub last night,” she told the crowd at the Sportpaleis on the first night of a three-show run. “The LGBTQA community, they’re like my soulmates since I was really young, so I’m really moved by it.” Welling up with tears, she cut the tension by adding, “I don’t know why I’m crying already because most of tonight is pretty miserable because my songs are f—ing miserable.”

Patrons on Orlando’s Pulse Before the Tragedy: ‘We Could Be Our Authentic Selves’

She added her voice to the chorus of entertainers and politicians who have spoken out against the attack on the popular gay nightclub, which was also honored by Sunday night’s Tony Awards telecast, which was opened by host James Corden saying, “hate will never win.”

Cuba wants back the ‘illegally occupied’ base at Guantanamo. The U.S. isn’t budging.

U.S. President Barack Obama smiles as he attends a wreath-laying ceremony the Jose Marti monument in Havana, Cuba, March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

When U.S. President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro stepped up to a podium Monday in Havana to mark the first visit by a U.S. president there in 88 years, the event came with a remarkably sharp exchange on several issues. Among them: It’s time, Castro said, for Washington to give back the “illegally occupied” naval base at Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba.

Castro characterized the U.S.’s control of Guantanamo as one of the “two main obstacles” to the United States and Cuba normalizing its relations. The other, he said, is the financial, economic and commercial embargo that Washington has long had on Cuba.

While the Obama administration has shown some willingness to opening trade relations with Cuba, it has “no intention at present” to alter the lease that gives it control of the naval base at Guantanamo, a senior administration official said Monday after Castro spoke. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about diplomatic relations, reaffirmed the president’s desire to close down the military prison on the base, but said the naval base has a large and varied mission that stretches well beyond the detention facility.

“The administration is determined to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility,” the official said. “The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging out relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists.  We are taking all possible steps to reduce the detainee population at Guantanamo and to close the detention facility in a responsible manner that protects our national security.”

 

Another U.S. official said the administration has consistently said giving back Guantanamo is not in its plans.

The United States has maintained the base, which lies on Cuba’s southeastern tip, since 1903. Cuba has long protested its presence, saying the land was taken by force during the U.S. invasion of Cuba at the turn of the 19th century. But a treaty signed between the two nations in 1903 and reaffirmed in 1934 states that the United States has control of Guantanamo Bay unless it vacates it or strikes a deal with Cuba that says otherwise.

“So long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station of Guantanamo or the two Governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits, the station shall continue to have the territorial area that it now has,” the treaty states.

Following Fidel Castro’s rise to power in the 1950s, the naval station at Guantanamo became increasingly isolated. According to the U.S. Navy’s history of the station, Castro cut off water to the base in 1964, and since then Guantanamo has been completely self-sufficient in regards to both water and power. The perimeter of the base is littered with Cuban mines and U.S. ground sensors. American mines also were once part of the security for the base, but President Clinton ordered them removed in the 1990s. The guard posts are manned by U.S. Marines — something that was popularly depicted in the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men.”

In the early 1990s, the base assisted in a numerous humanitarian relief mission that involved both Haitian and Chinese refugees. The naval station has a number of tenets currently, including a communications station and the Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Command.

The base’s most recent addition is Southern Command Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, the unit that runs the military prison. It was once a myriad of different lettered camps that were rolled into one in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

At least 12 released Guantanamo detainees implicated in attacks on Americans

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The Washington Post / National security

At least 12 released Guantanamo detainees implicated in attacks on Americans

By Adam Goldman and Missy Ryan

An American flag flies behind the barbed and razor wire at the Camp Delta detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Brennan Linsley/AP)

The Obama administration believes that at least 12 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have launched attacks against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan, killing about a half-dozen Americans, according to current and former U.S. officials.

In March, a senior Pentagon official made a startling admission to lawmakers when he acknowledged that former Guantanamo inmates were responsible for the deaths of Americans overseas.

The official, Paul Lewis, who oversees Guantanamo issues at the Defense Department, provided no details, and the Obama administration has since declined to elaborate publicly on his statement because the intelligence behind it is classified.

But The Washington Post has learned additional details about the suspected attacks, including the approximate number of detainees and victims involved and the fact that, while most of the incidents were directed at military personnel, the dead also included one American civilian: a female aid worker who died in Afghanistan in 2008. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, declined to give an exact number for Americans killed or wounded in the attacks, saying the figure is classified.

[Pentagon official: Release of Guantanamo detainees has led to American deaths]

Lewis’s statement had drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the violence against Americans as further evidence that the president’s plans for closing the prison are misguided and dangerous. They also describe the administration’s unwillingness to release information about the attacks as another instance of its use of high levels of classification to avoid discussion of a politically charged issue that could heighten political opposition to its plans.

One U.S. official familiar with the intelligence said that nine of the detainees suspected in the attacks are now dead or in foreign government custody. The official would not specify the exact number of detainees involved but said it was fewer than 15. All of them were released from Guantanamo Bay under the administration of George W. Bush.

The official added: “Because many of these incidents were large-scale firefights in a war zone, we cannot always distinguish whether Americans were killed by the former detainees or by others in the same fight.”

Military and intelligence officials, responding to lawmakers’ requests for more details, have provided lawmakers with a series of classified documents about the suspected attacks. One recent memo from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which was sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Lewis’s testimony, described the attacks, named the detainees involved and provided information about the victims without giving their names.

But lawmakers are prohibited from discussing the contents of that memo because of its high classification level. A similar document provided last month to the office of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a vocal opponent of Obama’s Guantanamo policy, was so highly classified that even her staff members with a top-secret clearance level were unable to read it.

“There appears to be a consistent and concerted effort by the Administration to prevent Americans from knowing the truth regarding the terrorist activities and affiliations of past and present Guantanamo detainees,” Ayotte wrote in a letter to Obama this week, urging him to declassify information about how many U.S. and NATO personnel have been killed by former detainees.

You Can’t Promote Freedom In Cuba By Denying It To Americans

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Ric Herrero Executive Director, #CubaNow

You Can’t Promote Freedom In Cuba By Denying It To Americans

By Ric Herrero for the Huffington Post

There is no better way to promote openness in Cuba than by allowing everyday Americans to travel freely to the Island and serve as on-the-ground ambassadors of our democratic values.

This would seem obvious to just about any American who ever traveled to a foreign country. Yet as the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act finally secures bipartisan majority support in the U.S. Senate, pro-embargo lobbyists attempt to quell the momentum by claiming that American visitors only strengthen the Cuban government’s repressive apparatus because many stay in hotels owned by the military.

The facts simply don’t support this correlation. On the contrary, if we compare conditions in Cuba between the decade when restrictions on American travel were in full force and the seven years since the Obama Administration began easing them, the evidence weighs overwhelmingly in favor of travel serving as a catalyst for meaningful change.

The Cuban “travel ban” as we know it today became law under the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000 (“TSRA”), which prohibits the issuance of general or specific licenses by the U.S. Treasury Department for travel to, from, or within Cuba for “tourist activities.”

While TSRA didn’t outlaw American travel to Cuba altogether, it did make it exceedingly cumbersome and expensive for U.S. citizens to visit the Island for close to a decade. During that time, the Cuban government’s grip over the activities of its people, especially in their interactions with the few Americans who managed to visit, remained as stifling as it had ever been.

In his first year in office, President Obama began shifting U.S. policy away from attempting to punish the Castro government, and toward empowering civil society and supporting independent economic activity through greater contact with Americans. The changes that followed are simply too numerous to dismiss as mere happenstance, especially when compared to the preceding decade.

From 2010 to 2015, the number of self-employed licenses issued by the Cuban government increased from approximately 150,000 to more than half a million, creating private sector jobs for approximately 35% percent of the Cuban labor force. A significant number of these businesses secured seed capital through remittances brought by visiting Cuban-Americans, and many found success thanks to the tourism market, which has nearly doubled since our two nations began normalizing relations. Just last month, it was reported that the Cuban government would recognize small and medium sized independent businesses as legal entities separate from their owners.

In 2013, the Castro government enacted its first political reform by eliminating the exit visa that for decades made it extremely difficult for Cubans, and particularly political dissidents, to travel abroad. Since then, the number of Cubans exploring the world, including countless civil society leaders, has skyrocketed. Earlier this year, in preparation for Carnival’s Adonia, the first American cruise ship to arrive in the Port of Havana in over 50 years, Cuban officials eliminated a longstanding ban on Cubans traveling to and from the Island via commercial vessel.

The government also began expanding Internet access in 2015, increasing the number of public Wi-Fi hotspots from zero to 65 and cutting the cost of usage by 50 percent (though at $2 an hour, it remains high for most Cubans). Cuba also announced it would pilot broadband service to Cuban homes, with a goal of reaching 50 percent household penetration by 2020.

It is still difficult to draw a direct casual relation between President Obama’s travel policy and the Cuban reforms that have coincided with his administration. Short-term political detentions may have increased, but so have street protests. What is clear, though, is that a surge in American visitors over the same period has not lead to lesser freedoms and opportunities for Cubans than those they had a decade ago. If anything, the facts strongly suggest that expanded American travel has contributed to the growing autonomy of the Cuban people.

Restrictions on “tourist activities” under TSRA continue to limit the right of U.S. citizens to freely visit Cuba and expose the Cuban people to the alternative that we represent as a nation. As Speaker of the House Paul Ryan recognized in 2002, “it has been a bedrock principle of American policy that travel is a device that opens closed societies.” These words are no less true today. It is time for Congress to finish the job that the President started, and bring an end to this failed policy.

CUBA UNCHAINED

By Gerard Dion

 

$9 million sting on Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro titled “The Cuban Coffee Caper”

 

Dion Publishing Presents Article found in archives of IMBd

Peter F. Paul

Biography

Before coming to Hollywood in 1986, Peter Paul was an international corporate attorney in Miami Florida where he developed the Miami World Trade Center and 65 story office tower designed by I.M.Pei. Mr. Paul directed a $9 million sting on Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro titled “The Cuban Coffee Caper” by Time Magazine in February, 1979. Leslie Moonves, then President of Lorimar telepictures, now CEO of CBS, optioned this story in 1985, but production never proceeded when Moonves left Lorimar.

Paul began producing Hollywood Gala’s when he was President of the California Bicentennial Foundation for the US Constitution and Bill of Rights created by Governor Deukmejian and the California legislature. In 1987 Paul created the Spirit of America Award program and produced the first of a series of annual Governor’s Balls which included award presentations by and to President Ronald Reagan, President Lech Walesa (of Poland), President Boris Yeltsin (of CIS), Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, Stan Lee, Yo Yo Ma, Muhammad Ali, Helen Hayes, MCA/Universal, Jaime Escalante, Robert O Anderson, Rafer Johnson, among others.

Paul co-produced with Merv Griffin, President Reagan’s Welcome Home Gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills ten days before Reagan left the White House.

Paul Executive produced and created two floats for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses on New Years Day 1988 and 1990 to announce the Bicentennial of the US Constitution and of the Bill of Rights. The 1988 float carried the largest American flags ever created with roses, along with Muhammad Ali, Buzz Aldrin and Mickey Mouse, and two Californians selected by the California lottery. The 1990 Float led the parade carrying the Official Monument to the Constitution and Bill of Rights dedicated by President Reagan at Independence Hall, along with Will Smith and Kirk Cameron representing the Youth of America. Paul produced Will Smith’s first press conference in Los Angeles and assisted him in concluding his television acting project produced by Benny Medina, Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

In 1992 Paul masterminded the career of Romance Icon Fabio, taking him from an unemployed ex-Ford fashion model to a best selling Romance Novelist and household name in the United States and in eight languages.

In 1996, using the newly emerging motion capture performance emulation technology, Paul created, copyrighted and produced the first computer generated virtual actress, VM2-Virtual Marilyn, which adopted the persona of Marilyn Monroe, to live in cyberspace and perform in all media. Sony Corp. selected and licensed VM2 to portray the Avatar based computer of the future, and she co-hosted a one hour pilot for a TV/Internet show, “What’s Hot, What’s Not” and was featured in a Japanese music video for “Love Me, Love Me.”

In 1998, Paul F.Paul co-founded Stan Lee Media with comic book legend Stan Lee and took the company public via a reverse-merger into a trading shell in August 1999. Peter Paul supervised the negotiation of a new agreement for his partner Stan Lee with Marvel Comics, enabling Lee to obtain a non-exclusive contract with Marvel Comics for the first time in his lifetime employment with Marvel. This enabled Paul and Lee to start a new Internet-based

In February, 2000, in the midst of the Internet stock market boom, Stan Lee Media built a 165 person studio that surpassed Disney and Warner Brothers in online animation, and the company’s market capitalization grew to well over $370 million, about $100 million more than Marvel Enterprises.

– IMDb Mini Biography By:

“Patriot Guard Riders: Soldier Down – Kickstands Up,”

This week end I had the honor of watching a very touching 73-minute film takes viewers on a solemn ride to funerals of  soldiers killed in action. The Patriot Guards are a  250,000-strong volunteer motorcycle group that originally formed  to protect grieving families from harassment by a hate group or protesters. At the invitation of the family, the riders escort a  fallen soldier from airfield to grave, and form a protective  shield of honor and respect.  “Patriot Guard Riders” has garnered awards at a variety of film festivals, and reveals an unlikely but strong bond between the riders and the grieving families, as well as with the military. Director Ellen Frick examines the usually untold legacy of war the families of fallen soldiers. The film also explores group members’ capacity for healing from the ravages of war, where  strong bonds help veterans recover from PTSD and other mental health problems.

“Standing for those who stood for us

Soldier Down, Kickstands Up     This Memorial Day, across the nation Americans will be spending the day off work honoring soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country and its people. Tears will flow and hearts will rend on this last Monday of May, as families grieve the loss of their loved ones taken from them in war.

For some, however, honoring our nation’s heroes does not stop when the rest of the country returns to work on Tuesday – rather, it is a way of life all year long. These men and women are the Patriot Guard Riders (PGR), a diverse group of more than 250,000 motorcyclists and supporters. Their mission: to attend the funeral services of fallen American heroes as invited guests of the family to both show high respect for the deceased and to shield the mourning family and friends from interruptions created by any protestors. Bereaved families nationwide invite the riders to escort fallen soldiers from the airport to the burial grounds where the riders stand solemnly in flag lines, even when protestors do not show up. Seattle filmmaker Ellen Frick has made a documentary film about these intrepid bikers.

Wallace Jenkins member of The Patriot Guard Riders stated “We are a diverse group of riders and other citizens from across the United States of America. We have one thing in common, an unwavering respect for those who risk their own lives for America’s freedom and security.”

We Are Patriotic!    We Love America!

You tube links https://youtu.be/Fd0jH6mN-aI

Dion Publishing Company

Foreword Magazine Summer 2016 Issue (June 2016/July 2016/August 2016)

/https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/cuba-unchained/ 

Cuba Unchained

Book Information Author Gerard Dion

Publisher Xlibris  Genres Thriller

ISBN-13 978-1-5035-7953-8

Reviewed by Katerie Prior From the first page, it’s clear that Dion has extensively researched the plot, delving deep into Cuban history and culture.

Fidel Castro once said, “Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour.” It’s a powerful idea that ordinary men can sometimes step out of everyday life to do something for the greater good. This idea is the centerpiece of Gerard Dion’s latest novel, Cuba Unchained.

After years of building a successful defense contractor business, Nickolas Harvey is in semiretirement. A wealthy man with loving family and friends, he aches to make a bigger, more positive impact on the world. With the help of his colleagues, he launches Americans for Reconciliation with Cuba, an organization to reopen interests between the United States and Cuba. As Nickolas campaigns, his cause gains traction and attention, but not everyone agrees with him. Soon, Nickolas finds that leading a social cause can be a dangerous thing.

From the first page, it’s clear that Dion has extensively researched the plot, delving deep into Cuban history and culture. Throughout Cuba Unchained, Dion crafts speeches where Nickolas talks in detail about Cuban political topics, such as the effects of the Cuban-American voting bloc in recent elections or how Castro came to power. He also builds a realistic side story where Cuban citizens Rose and Manuel Rodriquez discuss their plans to leave their homeland and make it to America.

The combination of details and sharp dialogue give this political thriller a realistic and cinematic feel. When Nickolas makes an impassioned speech, it sounds like it might be a clip from C-SPAN or another news network. That realism spreads into warm and engaging conversations between Nickolas and his wife or friends.

But sometimes that cinematic feel is too strong. As good as the dialogue is, the book relies too heavily on it, making is seem more like the work started as a screenplay before switching to a novel. This shows in some sections of dialogue where action or crowd reactions are written in parentheses and italics. The book also switches between present tense (which screenwriters use when writing action) and past tense within the same paragraph.

In the end, it’s these small things that trip up Cuba Unchained. The book has the potential to be a political thriller in the vein of The Hunt for Red October. Still, this novel may appeal to anyone who enjoys history or fiction centered on American politics. Maybe with a little more editing, destiny may yet turn Nickolas Harvey into the man of the hour.

 

http://www.cubaunchained.com/reviews-.html