Wildfires are spiraling out of control in Los Angeles, raising further questions from critics of far-left Mayor Karen Bass.
Mr Basu was in Ghana when the fire broke out and stood silently in front of a Sky News reporter before he peppered him with embarrassing questions. She cut $17.5 million from the fire department and focused on homelessness.
Now, her past as a key operative of the Venceremos Brigades, a communist Cuban intelligence operation that infiltrated the American left in the 1960s, comes back to life.
The bus goes to Ghana. ignore fire alarms
For all we know, Bass was dancing to the beat of African drums in Ghana when Nero was playing the violin while Rome burned. She was a member of President Joe Biden's delegation that attended the inauguration of Ghana's new president.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven explained:
As the flames crackled and spread, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana for the presidential inauguration.
It is unclear exactly when the bus left for Ghana. Her office has not responded to my questions regarding her travel schedule. But it was likely after January 3 that President Joe Biden announced he would send a four-person delegation to Ghana for the January 7 inauguration.
By that time, predictions of dangerous fire conditions were already in place.
On January 4, the Los Angeles Times reported that a “potentially damaging” offshore wind event was expected to hit all of Southern California in the next week, adding to the dry climate that had not seen meaningful rain in eight months. It was reported that flames could break out in the area quickly.
On Monday, the day before Ghana's presidential inauguration, the National Weather Service Los Angeles office issued a warning of a “destructive and life-threatening storm!!!” “Extreme fire conditions” began Tuesday, prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom to pre-position critical firefighting resources to the area.
So when the fires began their destructive rampage through the Pacific Palisades, now a 17,000-acre inferno, the bus was nowhere to be found.
“It is difficult to understand why she chose to go to Ghana if Bass was not already there at that time,” Hoeven wrote. “And if she was already in Los Angeles, it's hard to understand why she didn't return to Los Angeles right away.”
not much. Perhaps Bass, despite his career as a politician, doesn't quite understand his responsibilities as mayor. She served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2022.
Sky News reporter David Blevins caught a bus at the airport returning to the United States. She was taken aback by his cruel question.
“Fire chiefs are saying they're really maxed out and they're running low on water. What do they say to that?” Blevins asked. “No response to that?” he continued.
He then continued:
Is the public obligated to apologize for being absent while the house was on fire?
Madam Mayor, do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars? Don't say anything today? …
Elon Musk says you are totally incompetent. Are you considering your position? Mayor, do you have anything to say to the citizens who are dealing with this disaster today? Is there no apology for them?
Do you think you should have visited Ghana while this was happening in your home country?
The bus sped away.
fire department budget reduction
The city of Bath has also been criticized for drastically cutting the city fire department's budget months before the fires began. She prioritized the city's homelessness agency.
In the 2023-24 fiscal year, the city budgeted $837 million for the fire department, “about 65% of the $1.3 billion budget for homelessness,” Fox News reported.
But half of the homeless budget, about $665 million, went unspent. Meanwhile, Bass further reduced the fire department's budget from $837.1 million to $819.6 million for fiscal year 2023-2024.
She wanted to cut $23 million.
Venceremos Brigade Agent
Her past with the Venceremos Bridge resurfaced when Joe Biden thoughtlessly considered Bass as a potential candidate.
Founded in 1969, the communist brigade is “one of the Cuban regime's most ambitious intelligence operations against the United States,” Cibel Cuba reported in 2019 (translated from Spanish here).
As has been the case since the group's creation, the regime has used historical circumstances to encourage the group's formation, with the aim of positively influencing American society. It obscures the true purpose of political efforts.
In the late 1960s, Castro led a process of deepening indoctrination, subversion, and espionage within the United States through the then Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI), following a policy of exporting the revolution across the continent. The creation of the Venceremos Brigade was an important element in this process.
The group targeted radicals like Basu and “Marxist students for a democratic society.”
As for Bass' membership, the future congressman and mayor was heavily involved in the group, Tablet reported in 2020 that Biden was considering her.
“A blurb about the incident in the October 1975 issue of the communist Daily World newspaper described Bass, then 22 years old, as 'the leader of the Southern California Venceremos brigade,'” the website says. Reported.
Bass himself explained his work with the brigade to doctoral candidates working on their 1996 Ph.D. Paper submitted to the Fielding Institute, “Women Activists from Diverse Backgrounds: A Qualitative Study of Perceived Influence and Values.” “Another significant influence for Bass began at the age of 19 and lasted for the next five years, and that was in Cuba,” said the document, written by Dawn Nogle, now director of mental health services for the Maricopa County Correctional System. It is written. “As part of the 'Brigade' and as organizer of the Venceremos Brigade, Karen visited Cuba every six months.”
But this outfit wasn't just a cutout from Cuban intelligence. The New York Times, citing experts, reported that Venceremos executives learned how to make bombs during their visit to Cuba.
As The New American's Bill Jasper wrote in 2008 about the Venceremos veterans working to elect Democratic presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama, the brigade is “propaganda, espionage, sabotage, and terrorism training.” sent thousands of Americans to Cuba.”
Mr. Bass' work for the organization raised concerns among Democrats in Florida, a state with a large Cuban electorate.
Again, Mr. Bass is not the first Los Angeles mayor to join this group. So did former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
