Cuando la Base Naval sea una playa de Oriente -U.S. prepares to accelerate detainee transfers from Guantanamo Bay prison

siguiendo las motivaciones politicas e ideologicas de barack obama era posible predecir la aceleracion del traslado de los terroristas detenidos en la base naval de guantanamo, tal y como recientemente subrayabamos aqui >>, no se necesita mucha mollera neuronal para dejar establecido que antes que el actual inquilino de la white house la abandone, la actual instalacion militar arrendada a cuba desde 1903, aunque los castros se nieguen a aceptar el pago, se convertira en una nueva victoria de los que ahora si van a construir el socialismo prospero y sustentable, cuando se convierta en una "playa de oriente" como pedia el trovador erik sanchez ["cuando aparezca el petroleo" >>], o en el exclusivo complejo turistico para pesetuos -aunque algun charquito le dejaran a los guantanameros- con terminal de cruceros y marina incluidos: victoria resort-patria o muerte, venceremos.
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The Washington Post

U.S. prepares to accelerate detainee transfers from Guantanamo Bay prison

By Missy Ryan and Adam Goldman

The Obama administration is accelerating its efforts to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center, preparing to move dozens of inmates out of the prison in coming months in a step forward for President Obama’s redoubled attempt to achieve a core national security objective before he leaves office.

U.S. officials, describing administration plans to significantly reduce the Guantanamo population over the next six months, said they are in talks with a wide range of countries that they hope will accept all 64 detainees approved for transfer.

President Obama has spoken to fellow heads of government in an effort to arrange transfers, the officials said, one sign of the increased personal role they expect he will take as he inches closer to the closure of the prison.

“He does not want to leave this to his successor,” Paul M. Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for shutting down Guantanamo, said in an interview.

After a virtual halt to detainee transfers in 2011-2013, officials hope to whittle the prison’s population from 132 to the mid-120s by the middle of next month. That would leave roughly half the number of detainees housed at the military complex in Cuba when Obama took office in 2009.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved the transfer of five detainees to a host country by the end of 2014, officials said. Relocating those prisoners would bring to 28 the total number of detainees transferred this year. Five or six more prisoners are expected to be moved in the first weeks of January.

Obama remains a long way from achieving his goal of closing Guantanamo and could yet be forced to threaten executive action if he cannot overcome congressional opposition to moving or releasing detainees. But officials are optimistic that they can make significant progress in pressing other countries to accept transfers.

They are betting in particular on leaders in Latin America, who they hope will follow the lead of Uruguay, which welcomed six Guantanamo detainees this month. Officials also are hoping that Obama’s decision to recast U.S. policy on Cuba and recent calls by the Vatican for the prison’s closure will encourage potential host countries.

At the same time, officials still must resolve the fate of detainees from Yemen, who make up the largest portion of the remaining prisoners and are unlikely to be sent home anytime soon because of U.S. concerns about militant activity in their home country.

“We’ve been able to break the logjam,” said Clifford Sloan, who steps down this month from his position as Lewis’s counterpart at the State Department. “There’s a very clear path ahead for significant progress and ultimate closure of the facility.”

The accelerated effort to close Guantanamo is at the center of a larger effort to wind down a war-time detainee system that was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Also this month, the U.S. military shut down the Parwan detention facility in Afghanistan, which held a small number of prisoners on a military base near Kabul. Parwan was a final vestige of what was once a massive U.S. military operation to capture, process and house around 30,000 prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If officials can find host countries for all 64 detainees who have been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo, they will then tackle the even harder task of dealing with the remaining prisoners. Ten detainees, including five accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, are at some stage of a military trial process. Almost 60 more are slated to undergo official reviews that may result in some being deemed eligible for transfer. But officials expect that others — perhaps more than a dozen — will remain permanently in legal limbo, considered too dangerous for release but ineligible for trial because of insufficient or problematic evidence.

Increasingly, Obama is making a financial argument for closing the prison, which costs $400 million to $500 million a year to operate. Keeping the lights on at Guantanamo becomes even more costly on a per-detainee basis as the prisoner population falls.

Keeping Guantanamo open “is contrary to our values, and it is wildly expensive,” Obama told CNN over the weekend.

But he faces significant obstacles to closing the prison, including deep congressional opposition and turnover among his top detainee officials. Sloan and J. Alan Liotta, a senior Pentagon official on detainee policy, are stepping down around the end of the year.

There also has been friction between the White House and Pentagon over the pace of detainee transfers.

Administration officials see glimmers of hope in Congress despite lawmakers’ long-standing ban on moving prisoners to the United States for trial or detention. They hope that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has expressed some support for closing the prison, will build momentum as he takes leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee next year.

But Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), now the committee’s top Republican, cautioned that political fault lines on Guantanamo may remain unchanged.

“Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate — they’re not real excited about lining up with him on these things that he’s doing,” Inhofe said. “I don’t think he’ll get by with it.”

Congressional objections are driven in part by the reappearance of some released Guantanamo detainees on the battlefield. U.S. intelligence officials have said that 17 percent of the more than 600 Guantanamo detainees released or transferred since 2002 have reengaged in militant activity and that 12 percent more are suspected of doing so.

The phenomenon is not limited to Guantanamo detainees. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, was once a prisoner at a U.S. detention center in Iraq.

Obama “is definitely putting his agenda way ahead of our national security,” Inhofe said. “He should not be doing this, but it’s consistent with other things that he’s done.”

Officials declined to say what actions Obama would, or could, take if hoped-for congressional support does not materialize. But any steps to circumvent Congress are sure to stir the kind of Republican outrage that followed the president’s recent executive action on immigration policy.

Liotta said that the risks of transferring or releasing detainees could be reduced but not eliminated. “The only way to have a zero reengagement number is to never release anybody, a position the Defense Department has never supported,” he said.

Julie Tate and Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

Telequinesis coital y Gitmo

la sapiencia popular sentencio aquello que "secretico en reunion es mala educacion", pero esta gentuza se pasa por los overocos la opinion publica ciudadana y la transforman de conciencia critica social en objeto de manipulacion. varias son las clausulas secretas del pacto que se iran develando como el que no quiere la cosa. luego de la telequinesis coital autorizada del gerardito con adrianita o de ella con el, sobre el que levita -entre otros quizas- el ghost del infeliz aquel a cargo de su atencion en cierta epoca y que voluntariamente se reventara la cabeza contra la acera en caida libre desde el piso 14 del edificio de linea y A, porque eso de mariquitas y tarruos es pasatiempo publicitario de la infanta marielita castro, pero defenestrados para los cojonudos guerrileros geriatricos.

y gitmo no puede faltar en la agenda por revelar.

es un viejo sueno compartido por los brothers y el califa. en lo que va del mes de diciembre este ultimo mando a 6 terroristas para uruguay, donde el godfather guerrillero de mujica les brindo proteccion humanitaria con todos los gastos pagados y libre circulacion nacional e internacional y gustoso espera a otros; mientras tanto 4 aterrizaron en kabul. de los 132 restantes, 63 tienen aprobados sus traslados y en el caso de otros 59 se esta evaluando. quedarian 10  con cargos o cumpliendo sentencias que seran levantados o cambiados por asuntos si importancia y definitivamente devueltos a casa o a la capital que mas les plazca.

entonces, con los recortes al presupuesto de defensa andando, para que quiere el imperio una base militar en cuba, si esta no representa ningun peligro militar ni geoestrategico -putin por donde va y su complejo de tipo duro en cualquier momento se pone a vender hielo siberiano derretido como agua potable-, maxime ahora que somos pangas?: cambiarsela a raulito por 11.2 millones de vasitos de leche.
la operacion patty candela 2 esta en marcha, asi que en mayami que vayan levantando el protestodromo. estan avisados.

Sarah Palin: Light a Candle for Cuban Freedom Fighters

The Sarah Palin Channel

Breitbart

By Tony Lee

On Monday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin urged Americans to light a candle and put it in their windows this Christmas eve to show solidarity with Cubans who are still fighting for their freedom and human rights.
Palin accused under President Barack Obama of emboldening the oppressive Castro regime with his announcement last week that the two countries will begin to ease its relations.
“I am so ashamed with what the Obama administration has done to Cuban people. I do not support it,” Palin, speaking in front of a lit candle, says in a video that will be seen on The Sarah Palin Channel. “This Christmas eve, I intend to light a candle and put it in my window to show my solidarity with every brave Cuban fighting for freedom and every political dissident languishing in Castro’s prisons.
“I encourage you to do the same. Let’s join together in this. Let’s show them that the light of freedom shall never be extinguished.”
Palin is taking a page out of President Ronald Reagan’s playbook. In 1981, Reagan addressed Americans and asked them to light a candle to support Polish freedom fighters against the oppressive Soviet Union.
After the Soviet Union declared martial law in Poland in 1981, former Polish Ambassador Romuald Spasowski defected and was granted asylum in the United States. In a meeting with Reagan, Spasowski asked if Reagan would light a candle and put it in his window for the people of Poland.
Reagan, Palin says, “did him one better” with a televised address in which Reagan urged every American to light a candle for the people of Poland so the millions of candles can give notice that the light of freedom won’t be extinguished.
“Once, earlier in this century, an evil influence threatened that the lights were going out all over the world. Let the light of millions of candles in American homes give notice that the light of freedom is not going to be extinguished,” Reagan told Americans then. “We are blessed with a freedom and abundance denied to so many. Let those candles remind us that these blessings bring with them a solid obligation, an obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers and an obligation to the children of the world, whose future will be shaped by the way we live our lives today.
“Christmas means so much because of one special child. But Christmas also reminds us that all children are special, that they are gifts from God, gifts beyond price that mean more than any presents money can buy. In their love and laughter, in our hopes for their future lies the true meaning of Christmas.”
Palin said Obama’s actions on Cuba reminded her of how Ronald Reagan dealt with communists. She referenced Stephen K. Bannon’s In The Face of Evil documentary, which Palin said was one of her “favorite documentaries about President Reagan.” It is clear that Obama has probably neither seen it nor learned its lessons.
Reagan, Palin says, rejected the notion that the Soviet Union was here to stay and Americans “had to get used to it” and pretend there was some type of moral equivalency.
Palin contrasted Reagan’s “moral clarity” during the Cold War against the Soviet Union with Obama’s recent appeasement on Cuba. She mentioned that Reagan knew that the Soviet Union’s economic model was “a total failure” but did not collapse only because the Soviets were able to manipulate Americans into propping it up with grain deals and technology exchanges. She blamed “naive diplomats” and “Wall Street greed” for combining to “prop up the most repressive regime in human history” that “would have crumbled so much sooner under the weight of its own incompetence if it were not for” the policies of appeasement.
Reagan, Palin notes, had the “moral clarity” to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and declare that his strategy for the Cold War was simply, “we win, they lose.”
When Reagan supported Lech Walesa and the shipyard workers in Poland who were demanding basic human rights and freedom, it was a pebble that would start an avalanche, Palin says. Reagan’s gestures were not “empty” and “symbolic” because he “gave assistance behind the scenes to the freedom fighters,” and that is how Reagan won the Cold War.
Palin urged viewers to contrast Reagan’s moral clarity with Obama’s decision to “spit in the face of every human rights activist in Cuba.” She said Obama’s decision to reverse U.S. policy toward Cuba “enriched their oppressors and sanctioned their abuse.” She said that “greedy crony capitalists are propping up a failing Communist regime” in Cuba, and Obama just gave the “Castro regime the hard currency and the economic boost to remain in power forever.”
Palin said it is “ludicrous” to think that Cubans will enjoy democracy and human rights because corporations can sell products there.
“Ask human rights activists in China how that’s working for them,” Palin said, noting that the Cuban government will pocket 92% of wages of their workers to empower the apparatus that controls them.
She ultimately accused Obama of giving “away all of our leverage to fight for human rights” and betraying “the people who are courageously putting their lives on the line fighting for freedom.” She even said Obama was “spitting in the face of every human rights activist on the globe” before asking Americans to light candles to support the Cuban freedom fighters that the Obama administration betrayed.

WSJ: Who Would Benefit if the Cuban Embargo is Lifted?

capitolhillcubans

By Mary Anastasia O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal:

Who Benefits if the Embargo Is Lifted?

The Castros already welcome foreign trade and investment. Fat lot of good it’s done for Cubans.

On a trip to Havana in the late 1990s, I toured the restoration of a 17th century convent with a Cuban architect. He told me the project was having trouble getting replacement floor tiles because of the U.S. embargo. I smiled and told him there was no blockade of the island and that the tiles could be sourced in Mexico. He grinned back at me.

“Well, OK,” he said. “The real problem is that we don’t have any money to buy them.”

Cubans are programmed from an early age to complain to anyone who will listen that “el bloqueo” is the cause of the island’s dire poverty. They know it’s a lie. But obediently repeating it is a survival skill. It raises the odds that the demented dictator won’t suspect you of having counterrevolutionary thoughts, boot you from your job, kick your children out of school and haul you off to jail.

President Obama appeared to be trying to prove his own revolutionary bona fides when he announced on Wednesday new diplomatic relations with the military dictatorship and plans to make it easier for Americans to travel to the island and engage in commerce with Cubans. He repeatedly linked the isolation of the Cuban people to U.S. policy, as the regime teaches Cuban children to do. He complained that the embargo strives to keep “Cuba closed off from an interconnected world.” In a reference to the limited access that Cubans have to telecommunications, he said “our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe.”

Even the humblest Cuban peasant would split his sides laughing if he heard those statements, which none did because they do not have access to anything other than Cuban state television—speaking of isolation. Cubans know that the island is not isolated from foreigners. According to Cuban statistics in 2013 there were 2.85 million visitors to the island of 11 million inhabitants. These included European, Chinese, Latin American, Canadian and American tourists and investors. In the first six months of this year, according to The Havana Consulting Group, there were 327,000 visitors to Cuba from the U.S.

The isolation (news flash Rand Paul) is caused by the police state, which controls and surveils foreigners’ movements, herding most visitors into resort enclaves. Foreign journalists who vocally oppose the Communist Party line are not allowed into the country.

More visitors won’t do anything to reduce Cuban poverty. The regime pockets the hard currency that they leave behind and pays workers in worthless pesos. Foreigners who decide to reward good workers without state approval can face prison.

It’s true that the Cuban people lack access to technology, but Mr. Obama’s suggestion that it is because of the embargo is a howler. Carlos Slim , the Mexican telecom monopolist and global player; Telefónica , the Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider; Vietnam’s Natcom; Ireland’s Digicel and countless other companies can do business on the island. But they can’t provide Internet access in homes because the state prohibits it.

U.S. telecom companies are lobbying Washington to be able to do business with the dictator. So to peddle the idea to the rest of us, Mr. Obama claims that this small, backward Caribbean country is a huge untapped export market. Question: How come the likes of Mexico and Spain haven’t flooded the virgin paradise for capitalists and turbocharged the Cuban middle class? Maybe because a couple of hoodlums have rigged the game. They decide who and what enters the country, treat Cubans like slaves, and arbitrarily jail foreign entrepreneurs and take property when it suits them.

Some delusional pro-market pundits think the anti-market Mr. Obama is suddenly pushing their ideas in Cuba. Mr. Obama wants us to believe that when Americans do business in Cuba, Cubans will be empowered. Funny that he didn’t feel that way about helping democratic Colombia when its U.S. free-trade agreement was up for ratification. Back then the White House was fretting about Colombian workers’ rights. Now, well, never mind.

The Castros are in full-blown panic mode because Venezuela, which has been their financial lifeline for 15 years, is broke. The last time things were this bad, when Soviet subsidies dried up in the early 1990s and the regime ran out of money, Castro introduced the “special period.”

Cubans were permitted to run restaurants in their homes, operate taxis and provide other services to foreigners and locals. As entrepreneurship blossomed, the state began to lose the absolute control it had relied on since 1959. Fidel clamped down as soon as Cuba stabilized.

Now the gangsters are again on the ropes. If they can up the number of U.S. travelers to the island and later wrangle multilateral funding now blocked by the U.S., they might squeeze by. But if not, the dictatorship is likely to come unglued, which raises the question of just who Mr. Obama is trying to help by stepping in now.

Obama’s Faulty Logic on Cuba

capitolhillcubans

By Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post:

Obama’s faulty logic on Cuba

The most revealing sentence in President Obama’s explanation of his radical revision of U.S. Cuba policy last week was his admonition to Americans, and Cubans, that they should not seek the “collapse” of the Castro regime. “Even if that worked,” the president asserted, “we know from hard-earned experience that countries are more likely to enjoy lasting transformation if their people are not subjected to chaos.”

Embedded in that short remark is the essential logic behind Obama’s decision to lift — or seek to lift — all U.S. sanctions on Cuba without requiring the “significant steps towards democracy” he once said would be needed for such a normalization. It is also the organizing principle of much of his foreign policy. If regime collapse is not a desirable outcome in Cuba — or, for that matter, in Syria, Iran and other dictatorships — it follows that the correct policy is U.S. “engagement” or “direct diplomacy” with such regimes, aimed not at overturning them but at gradually nudging them toward more civilized behavior.

The no-chaos rule explains why Obama would have declined to support the 2009 Green Movement in Iran while dispatching letters to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offering detente. It lies behind his refusal to provide decisive support to Syrian rebels, instead seeking a negotiated solution with the regime of Bashar al-Assad. And it answers those who wonder why he would provide what amounts to a bailout to the Castros just as they were facing the twin threats of losing Venezuelan oil subsidies and mounting popular pressure for basic freedoms.

Obama cited “hard-earned experience” for his nostrum, and he’s certainly had some he can point to: Libya, Iraq or Egypt, where the overthrow of regimes led to counterrevolution or civil war. The president, however, articulated his ideology before he took office — and the failures on his watch stem in part from his own reluctance to vigorously support democratic transitions.

They also don’t negate two historical facts: A large number of successful democracies have grown out of regime collapse; and U.S. “engagement” with Stalinist-style totalitarian regimes, such as Cuba, has never produced such a transition.

Obama’s chaos theory won’t make much sense to former citizens of East Germany, who last month celebrated the 25th anniversary of the sudden collapse of their regime — and the Berlin Wall. Nor to Romanians, who a month later lived through bloody anarchy in the streets of Bucharest and Timisoara as the Stalinist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu imploded — and for the past two decades have built a peaceful and increasingly prosperous democracy.

As a visiting journalist I witnessed the havoc wreaked on Jakarta in 1998 when the Suharto dictatorship abruptly collapsed and mobs looted the capital. Indonesia shortly thereafter became the world’s largest majority Muslim democracy, and it remains so nearly 17 years later.

It’s easy to go on: the Philippines in 1987; Serbia in 2000; Georgia in 2003. People took to the streets; regimes quickly collapsed; “chaos” ensued for a time; and the result was an enduring transition to democracy. U.S. “engagement” with dictatorships, on the other hand, has a much thinner record of results — and none in the former Soviet Bloc.

Authoritarian leaders themselves, from the Castros to Egypt’s generals to China’s first secretaries, routinely offer a version of Obama’s argument — that the alternative to them is chaos — as reason for dodging the liberalizing steps Washington urges. Governments such those in China and Vietnam have proved far more adept than U.S. policymakers anticipated in pocketing the profits of U.S. investment and trade while preventing political liberalization.

Cooperating with such regimes yields other goods, of course. The opening to China has helped produce the largest reduction of poverty in history. Dictatorships in the Middle East offer bases for the U.S. military, not to mention oil supplies. While Cuba has little value in strategic terms, detente with Havana will remove an irritant from U.S. relations with more important countries, like Brazil. And though Obama didn’t say so, a Castro collapse could have unpleasant short-term consequences for the United States, such as a massive flow of refugees.

It’s possible, in short, to articulate a rationale for engaging with regimes like Cuba’s. Contrary to Obama’s rhetoric, however, it is a policy that reduces the possibility of near-term democratization in favor of economic benefits and geopolitical stability. China is a country where the gains from such a strategy outweigh the costs, particularly as U.S. leverage to bring about political change is limited. In Cuba the calculus is different: The economic benefits of engagement are minor, while the possibility that continued sanctions could be used to engineer regime change — or at least meaningful political concessions — is far greater.

Obama, of course, can make the case for appeasing the Castros. But his claim that Cubans should not hope for their collapse as a route to freedom is not only patronizing; it’s wrong.

Acuerdos Castro-Obama y los actores encubiertos

Foto: Alberto Borrego-Granma

si a ricardo alarcon a.k.a. "cabeza de bombillo", lo tronaron de presidente de la asamblea nacional el 24 de febrero de 2013 supuesto por el asunto de asesor y la mujer de este, que HACE en 1ra plana del granma junto a los 5 espias en el 1er balcon de la asamblea nacional???

su historia de estar en el pasado a cargo de la causa de los 5 desaparece ante el truene. luego, paso a formar parte del equipo negociador despues de su salida de la presidencia o incluso podia haberlo encabezado.

todo el mundo desde agencias de prensa y medios, hasta expertos y anticastristas emborronan paginas con los protagonistas del pacto obama-castro. que si el papa francisco 1ro y sus taimados lugartenientes, que si el catracho-yuma zúñiga, que la complice hospitalidad del conservador primer ministro de canada mr. harper; pero nadie menciona ni a los negociadores del regimen de la habana ni a la iglesia catolica cubana que encabeza al cardenal jaime ortega y alamino, quien envio una numerosa delegacion al vaticano con motivo de la colocacion de una imagen de la virgen de la caridad del cobre en los jardines vaticanos.

entre los mas 80 "invitados", la mayoria de ellos haciendo "bulto", se encontraban el Cardenal Tarcisio Bertone quien presidio la ceremonia por parte del vaticano y los cubanos  Mons. Dionisio García Ibáñez, Arzobispo de Santiago de Cuba y Presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal de Cuba, Mons. Arturo González Amador, Obispo de Santa Clara, y Mons. Juan de Dios Hernández s.j., Obispo Auxiliar de la Habana, estos últimos Vicepresidente y Secretario General de la Conferencia Episcopal respectivamente, Mons. Emilio Aranguren Echeverría, Obispo de Holguín, Mons Wilfredo Pino Estévez, Obispo de Guantánamo – Baracoa y Mons. Héctor Peña Gómez, Obispo Emérito de Holguín.
tambien estuvieron presentes los cardenales Antonio Cañizares, prefecto de la Congregación para el Culto Divino y Giuseppe Bertello, presidente del Gobernación del Estado de la Ciudad del Vaticano, así como Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, secretario general del Gobierno de la Ciudad del Vaticano. no podia faltar en la ocasion, el embajador del regimen cubano ante la Santa Sede y su distinguidisima esposa. 

esto ocurre el  28 de agosto de 2014, cuando ya estan definidos los borradores de los acuerdos y el convite con el pretexto de la virgen esta servido con la carne de los carneros y la sangre de los muertos.

Miami Protesters: 'It's not the time' for more Cuba ties

WSVN-TV - 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Deco

Read at WSVN-TV >>

Line By Line: Every Empty Promise in Obama's Cuba Speech

Breitbart

By Frances Martel

President Obama announced sweeping changes to the United States’ approach to diplomacy with Cuba yesterday, in a statement broadcast simultaneously with a speech by President Raúl Castro in which he declared the changes a step towards “prosperous and sustainable socialism.”

Many on both sides of the aisle are expecting President Obama’s policies to bring about significant improvements in the lives of average Cubans– and, were President Obama’s promises to ring true, this might well be the case. However, the President is promising the Cuban people something that, without the Castro government yielding to any demands, is simply impossible. Below, a line-by-line analysis of every inaccurate statement and unfulfillable promise in President Obama’s speech yesterday that he does not have the power to fulfill, and for which there is no evidence that the Castro regime will help.
“Proudly, the United States has supported democracy and human rights in Cuba through these five decades. We have done so primarily through policies that aimed to isolate the island, preventing the most basic travel and commerce that Americans can enjoy anyplace else. And though this policy has been rooted in the best of intentions… it has had little effect beyond providing the Cuban government with a rationale for restrictions on its people.”
The idea that the embargo has not had any effect on the Cuban government’s ability to function is a hugely flawed one, based almost entirely on the fact that it has failed to dethrone the Castro brothers. It ignores the ambitions for international influence that led Cuba to send soldiers to fight in far-off wars in Africa– most prominently in Angola, where an estimated 10,000 Cubans died fighting for communism– and advisors to Venezuela. Thanks in large part to Cuba’s influence, Venezuela’s socialist government has turned an OPEC nation into a place where products such as oil, eggs, and even water are either rationed or bought on the black market. Had the Castros enjoyed an influx of millions from the American tourism industry, it is feasible that dangerous ties to even more distant nations like Iran and China could have been strengthened, threatening American interests.
While the embargo failed to create regime change, it certainly has not “had little effect” on the Castros.
“As a start, we lifted restrictions for Cuban Americans to travel and send remittances to their families in Cuba. These changes, once controversial, now seem obvious. Cuban Americans have been reunited with their families, and are the best possible ambassadors for our values.”
It is true that the United States has eased its restrictions on travel to Cuba. It is not true that restrictions no longer exist. In September, the Cuban government applied more restrictions on travel by family into Cuba, possibly in response to the US government easing its own restrictions, which significantly limit the amount of necessary goods that enter the country. It does not limit tourism or how much a foreigner without family on the island can bring to the country, but those with known relatives in Cuba will have their goods confiscated if they bring too much underwear or shampoo for their families in their luggage.
This is not so much a lie on the President’s part as it is misdirection. It blames the American government solely for any distance between Cuban Americans and their families, when the Castro regime made very clear this year that it will work diligently to keep those family ties broken. And as this current deal demanded nothing of the Castro regime but the release of Alan Gross and an unnamed U.S. agent, there is no guarantee that any of these reforms will have an effect.
“Where we can advance shared interests, we will -– on issues like health, migration, counterterrorism, drug trafficking and disaster response.”
America has no shared interests in any of these fields. For America, health is a humanitarian mission, one into which the government pours billions of dollars internationally. For Cuba, health is an $8 million a year slave trade (doctors are paid only a “living stipend” when they are forced to leave the country for medical work, which hardly pays for food and shelter). Similarly, migrating out of Cuba is a near impossibility. Restrictions have grown so much in 2014 that Florida is seeing the highest influx of exiles braving the 90 miles on rafts since the 1994 balsero exile. While America leads the international war on terror, Cuba provides safe harbor for the leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the biggest non-jihadist terrorist group in the world– which is also one of the largest drug trafficking operations on earth. And so on.
“I’ve instructed Secretary Kerry to review Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism… at a time when we are focused on threats from al Qaeda to ISIL, a nation that meets our conditions and renounces the use of terrorism should not face this sanction.”
It is complete misdirection to imply that, because Cuba does not have openly known ties to jihadist groups, it is not supporting terrorism internationally. As mentioned above, the Castro regime has been indispensable to the FARC.
“So we will facilitate authorized transactions between the United States and Cuba. U.S. financial institutions will be allowed to open accounts at Cuban financial institutions. And it will be easier for U.S. exporters to sell goods in Cuba.”
There is no way for President Obama to guarantee that “it will be easier for U.S. exporters to sell goods in Cuba” without the cooperation of the Cuban government. There is no indication that President Obama demanded and received the cooperation of the Cuban government. While it is true that, now, U.S. exporters may attempt to do business in Cuba without having to worry about American sanctions, there is no guarantee that the Cuban government will not punish them, or expropriate their inventories on the island as they did in 1959.
“Unfortunately, our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe. So I’ve authorized increased telecommunications connections between the United States and Cuba. Businesses will be able to sell goods that enable Cubans to communicate with the United States and other countries.”
Without Raúl Castro’s approval, businesses will not be able to sell anything on the island. Yes, this new policy means businesses will not face legal action in the United States for trying to sell these items, but there is no guarantee they will not face retribution from the communist government.
José Martí once said, “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest.”
José Martí actually said: “Libertad es el derecho que todo hombre tiene a ser honrado, y a pensar y a hablar sin hipocresía”– “Liberty is the right that all men have to be honest, and to think and speak without hypocrisy.” Wonder why President Obama left that out?
Much of the rest of President Obama’s rhetoric that does not directly address the reforms– his homage to Miami as “a profoundly American city,” his call to “leave behind the legacy of both colonization and communism, the tyranny of drug cartels, dictators and sham elections”– rings disingenuous given how little the Castro regime has had to sacrifice in order to attract the piggy bank that is American tourism, if he chooses to allow it. But most disturbing are the details that he provided on how America will approach this nearby enemy, and how little it appears the United States will actually do to empower a viable opposition movement in Cuba, or even protect American companies who dare do business on the island from any future expropriation.

A Day in Infamy - Barack Obama’s Cuban Pact

canadafreepress

Anonimo

By Obie Usategui  

For the most part of the Cuban-American community residing in Miami, Florida, the day of Wednesday, December 17th, 2014, will—more likely than not—go down in their history books as a day in infamy, much the same as did December 7th, 1941, for all Americans. The former, when Barack Obama announced the U.S. restoring full relations with Cuba, including the opening of an embassy in the island—a bold move aimed at ending over 50 years of hostility between the two countries—the latter when the Royal Empire of Japan attacked the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

While, for the average American, it would seem almost impossible to establish any kind relevancy whatsoever between these two dates, for the average Cuban-American, it is precisely the opposite. The reasons are simple and unpretentious. First of all, Americans have been, and are for the most part, highly uninformed regarding their own country’s affairs, let alone being familiar with an insignificant little island of the Caribbean, even when this island is located a mere 93 miles south from the southernmost tip of the U.S., in Key West, Florida.

I would dare say that, to most Americans, other than an elite group of Washington politicians, perhaps, Cuba is a foreign word - an alien term of sorts. Little do most Americans realize that this irrelevant and unbeknownst island-nation, has, in fact, had a magnanimous sway in global politics and geo-political affairs throughout the years. Such was this island country’s relevancy in global politics back in October 1962, when Cuba stood at center stage, playing [the] leading role in the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis as the world came to a stand still while the United States and Russia traded threats over Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in the “irrelevant” Caribbean island - a tense and overwrought moment, which escalated as close as the world has ever come to a full scale nuclear war.

Notwithstanding the presumable ignorance now presiding over this unheard of island nation, I shall then proceed to cite some of the issues which qualify my contemptuous conclusion on Obama’s bold move to renew political ties with the communist Caribbean island as nothing short of a treasonous and antithetical assault on democracy; a travesty and desecration to the otherwise most basic principles of righteousness on which our country, the United States of America, was founded.  A betrayal to the American legacy, hence the relevancy to the Pearl Harbor attack comparison—a conjecture, mind you, which I shall dare try to demonstrate by quickly reviewing the history preceding Obama’s treachery, albeit daringly constricted by the size of this dissertation.

As a matter of record, in the years prior to the communist revolution takeover on December 31st, New Years’ eve of 1958-59, led by Fidel Castro and his dirty band of revolutionary militia men, the Republic of Cuba, in spite of a tumultuous history of corroded political leaders teetering the legitimacy of its political system, the island did enjoy a most enviable leadership position amongst all countries in Latin-American, comprised, namely, of 26 nation-states bound by the Romance languages of Spanish and Portuguese.

Some of Cuba’s leading statistics compared to other Latin American nations and/or the world just prior the advent of the communist revolution in 1958, were as follows:

• 3^rd most-stable economy in Latin America with highest gold reserves, slightly behind Venezuela and Brazil.
• Lowest inflation rate [1.4%].
• 4^th in world in income earned by blue-collar workers.
• 3^rd in red-meat production per capita.
• 1^st in the production of mineral cobalt in the world.
• 3^rd in caloric consumption.
• 3^rd in the highest per-capital telephone ownership.
• 3^rd in the highest per-capital automobile ownership.
• 2^nd in the highest per-capital radio ownership.
• 1^st televisions per household.
• 3^rd in most radio-stations.
• 3^rd in T.V. networks.
• 2^nd in movie theaters per capita.
• 2^nd in number of physicians per capita.
• Lowest index of infant mortality in all Latin America.
• 4^th lowest per capita index of illiteracy.
• Highest percentage of public debt earmarked for education.
• 5^th in per capita colleges and universities attending students.
• In 1959, the Cuban monetary unit, the “peso” was par with the U.S. dollar - at times slightly higher.
• Highest number of movie-theaters in the world.

Now, to suggest that any of these statistics would have been possible were it not for the prosperous relationship that had once existed between the U.S. and Cuba preceding Castro’s takeover would be, if nothing else, a preposterous lie at that. After the takeover, simply put, communism managed to set back light years the once flourishing Caribbean paradise island, turning the latter into a ghostly status of its past glories.

Cuba, the once-affluent island, was soon to become but a faded version of its joyous past. The nation’s once thriving economy and proud statistics would soon turn into sorrowful epitomes of human deprivation of the most basic necessities, including but not limited to the pursuit of freedom and happiness. The island’s once picturesque promenades and harbors would soon become the stage of escapade outlets for thousands of freedom-seeking Cubans, daringly leaving the island in home-made rafts, willing, if you will, to perish in crossing the Florida Straits in their quest for freedom; a preferred alternative to the oppression of the Castro regime. Statistical accounting of the Cuban prominence before Castro would soon turn into grief-stricken statistics of the regime’s genocidal prominence; statistics, which, as much sparse and imprecise as could be expected under a reign of oversight and repression by Castro’s tyrannical regime, would still claim a death toll in the hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women who perished between 1959 and 1987[1], exclusively as a result of their political conviction; all dying while bravely daring to challenge a system now sanctioned of by none other than U.S.‘s impostor president Barack Obama.

Besides the home-made rafts, desperation for leaving the island incited Cubans on using all sorts of cunningly constructed crafts, including but not limited to, inflatable tubes used in truck-tires - needless to say, a less-than-safe artifact for crossing the dangerous currents in the Straits of Florida.

The escalating death toll of Cubans crossing the Straits paved the way for the founding of Brothers to the Rescue - a good-willed missionary group of Miami-based pilots, touched by the death of a fifteen-year-old Gregorio Perez Ricardo, who had perished from severe dehydration while fleeing from Castro’s communist island on a raft. The group,Brothers to the Rescue, described itself as a humanitarian organization aiming to assist and rescue raft refugees emigrating from Cuba and to “support the efforts of the Cuban people to free themselves from dictatorship through the use of active nonviolence”[2].

On February 24^th, 1996, two of the Brothers to the Rescue Cessna Skymasters were shot down by a Cuban Air Force MiG-29UB, while a second jet fighter, a MiG-23, orbited nearby. Killed in the shoot downs were pilots Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. A third plane, flown by Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto, was able to escape unharmed. In the days that followed, the controversy over the shoot-down grew steadily over the merciless killing of civilian U.S. air-pilots by trained pilots of the Cuban Air Force, while the victims flew in international air-space.

The shoot-down incident also led to widespread condemnation of Cuba back in the day, and was instrumental on the outcome of the trial of the “Cuban Five” consisting of five Cuban intelligence officers arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States. The trial of the ”Cuban Five” on espionage and conspiracy charges resulted in convictions and long-term prison sentences for the five Cuban agents who, for one, had been known to spy on the Brothers to the Rescue missions.

In May, 2012, the Obama administration, in the same old spirit of deceit that has forever characterized this impostor president, deceivingly declined a “spy swap” proposed by the Cuban authorities, in exchange for the release of U.S., contractor Allan Phillip Gross, imprisoned in Cuba for allegedly providing equipment to Cuban Jews striving to have internet access. While leading public opinion to believing that such a sullied swap would never take place only seven month back, the swap did take place on December 17th, 2014, whereby Gross and Rolando Sarraf, a Cuban who had worked as an agent for American intelligence imprisoned in Cuba 20 years back, were exchanged for the last three remaining prisoners of the “Cuban Five”, as two others members of this hideous group had been released earlier.

My dear fellow Americans, one more time, Barack Hussein Obama utilizes the noble office and power bestowed upon him as president of the United States of America, to desecrate the most basic values inherent to our democracy; the most basic principles that stand for what United States is all about. As far as I am concerned, by shaking the hands and making any agreement with the Castro brothers, two of the most renowned assassins in the world, Barack Obama is, one more time, shamelessly and brazenly admitting his willingness to share in and be a part of the thousands of deaths attributable to the Castro brothers and to communism itself. Obama’s hands are as bloody today as the Castro brothers’ are. Obama’s announcement of a renewed relation with Cuba and the Castro brothers, is proof, one more time, of the man’s avatar communist incline, and long history of Marxist devotion - a pious advocate of the Saul Alinsky model. Barack Obama’s agreement with Cuba on December 17^th , 2014, shall make him, in my estimation, as responsible as the Castro’s brothers for the thousands of deaths suffered by young Cuban men and women who perished while crossing the Florida Straits in search of freedom. Obama’s daring hypocrisy shall, I hope, serve only as an everlasting reminder to the American public of this man’s evil political nature. The lifeless remains of all the Cuban martyrs who perished in the pursuit of freedom, I hope, shall only serve as a friendly remembrance to all us that communism, that poisonous system responsible for the death of over 100 million people throughout the history of the world, is alive and well in the United States of America - dangerously so represented, of all people, in the persona of Barack Hussein Obama.

Throughout the past few days I have mournfully listened to the many arguments made by media folk and otherwise, presumably astute political contributors from both sides of the aisle, claiming the president did not get enough in exchange for what he gave up in his trade with Cuba. It was an unbalanced or uneven exchange, they claimed. To all those making this argument, I say hogwash to all of you as I politely remind you that there are no agreements whatsoever, bar none, which can be construed as good or positive when you are dealing with communists or communism, as in the end you will always be on the losing end, regardless. Obama’s trade was no exception, and it is time for me to remind all good people in this country to realize that we are in for the greatest revelation of our lives if we, for a moment, think of this man as anything other than a miserable diehard communist ideologue whom a majority of Americans elected as our president twice in a row. Shame on all of us and prayers for the end of this ugly chapter in American history.

As a Cuban-born immigrant who came into this great country at age 14 in 1960, also fleeing from communism, I do consider Obama’s renewed relations with the communist island and look upon it as one of the most despicable political acts I have ever been a witness to. As a naturalized citizen of this great country which we call the United States of America, I can only forewarn you of the inherent evils of Barack Obama and his administration. As an immigrant and citizen of the U.S., both, I shall forever, reminisce of December 17th, 2014 as I do on December 7th, 1941, both - “a day in infamy”,  as I truly hope that, for the simple and straight-forward reasons stated above, you will too. May God save us all and may God save the United States of America.

[1] “Cuba”: The Human Cost of Social Revolutions.
[2] ^ Jump up to: a b Website of Brothers to the Rescue - Background and information

Cuba and now America under dictatorship

canadafreepress

By Judi McLeod 

Just as Fidel Castro became Cuba’s dictator when he and his guerrillas triumphantly entered Havana on January 7, 1959, President Barack Obama became America’s dictator on Dec. 17, 2014.

Swaggering into Havana dressed in army fatigues with his signature cigar, Castro claimed the island as his own.  Like a thief making off with a nation in the middle of the night, Obama waiting until Congress was out of town, opened America to a Communist totalitarian state.

Obama’s dictatorship is one that patently ignores countless thousands of Cuban prisoners, some of them who have been in some of the worst jails in the western hemisphere for decades and comes as a knife in the heart for the loved ones of the so many Cubans already tortured and murdered.

Thousands who fled for their lives from the Castro brothers, losing everything they had won’t be sleeping tonight in Miami.

Swapping a single hostage for spies found guilty by American juries and jailed for killing Americans is how Obama began the ‘re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba’ for the first time in more than half a century.

Obama and his administration boast it is business.  But they are not now, and never will be,  doing business with the bread-and-butter Cuban people, but with the ice-hearted Communist Cuban government, which jails, tortures and murders its own people and which has been doing so ever since Castro seized power as dictator.

With nothing to legalize it on paper, and with no one even talking about it, there is no onus on Cuba to back off its shameful record on human rights. Yet Obama spouts ‘isolation has not worked’ since the Castros’ communist regime hasn’t softened its position since JFK was president.

“We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result,” is the propaganda stated on a White House ‘fact sheet’.  ‘It does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse.”

It was never the Cuban people but their government under a crushing Communist system pushing Cuba toward collapse.  Just as Obama blames the American people for everything he personally sees wrong with America, is he now expanding his destructive Fundamental Transformation of America to Cuba, which sits only 90 miles off the coast of Florida?

Just as Obama last May released five generals back to the Taliban for the outrageous swap of AWOL American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, Obama swapped three spies for the release of American aid worker Alan Gross, who arrived back in the U.S. today after five years in captivity.

Gross was released along with an unnamed U.S. ‘intelligence asset’ in exchange for three Cuban spies held by America—including one serving two life sentences related to the downing of two airplanes in 1996. (Daily Mail, Dec. 17, 2014)

Town Hall, Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Humberto Fontova, who was earlier on the Mark Levin Radio Show, told CFP last evening that according to the FBI’s affidavit, the 26 charges against the convicted Castro-spies included:

• Gathering intelligence against the Boca Chica Air Naval Station in Key West, the McDill Air Force Base in Tampa and the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Homestead, Fla.;
• Compiling the names, home addresses and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers, along with those of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica. •Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command;
• Sending letter bombs to Cuban-Americans;
• Spying on McDill Air Force Base, the U.S. armed forces’ worldwide headquarters for fighting “low-intensity” conflicts;
• Locating entry points into Florida for smuggling explosives.

“These spies also infiltrated the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, who flew unarmed planes to rescue Cuban rafters in the Florida straits, also known as “the cemetery without crosses,” said Fontova.  “The estimates of the number of Cubans dying horribly in the “cemetery without crosses” run from 50-85,000. Brothers to The Rescue risked their  lives almost daily, flying over the straits, alerting and guiding the Coast Guard to any balseros, and saving thousands of these desperate people from joining that terrible tally. (Prior to Castroism, by the way, Cuba was swamped with more immigrants per-capita than the U.S., including during the Ellis Island years.) So you can imagine how the Cuban exodus embarrasses the Castroites, including those in the U.S.

“By February of 1996, Brothers to The Rescue had flown 1,800 of these humanitarian missions and helped rescue 4,200 men, women and children. That month Danny Glover’s and Pete Seeger’s cause célèbre’ passed to Castro the flight plan for one of the Brothers’ humanitarian flights over the Cemetery Without Crosses.

With this info in hand, Castro’s Top Guns jumped into their MIGs, took off and valiantly blasted apart (in international air space) the lumbering and utterly defenseless Cessnas. “Four members of the humanitarian flights were thus murdered in cold blood by communists.

“Three of these murdered men were U.S. citizens, the other a legal U.S. resident.”

Obama’s Open for Business Cuban initiative ignores the fact that his own administration lists Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

“..Second, I’ve instructed Secretary Kerry to review Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism,” he said today.  “This review will be guided by the facts and the law. Terrorism has changed in the last several decades. At a time when we are focused on threats from al Qaeda to ISIL, a nation that meets our conditions and renounces the use of terrorism should not face this sanction.”

Today’s announcement followed more than a year of secret talks between the U.S. and Cuba.

Creepier still, those secret talks did not take place on American soil, but in another country—Canada.

The fix was already in because as Obama was speaking, Cuban President Raul Castro was addressing his own nation from Havana.  Obama and Castro had spoken by phone for more than 45 minutes Tuesday.

The New Year worry for a watching world is if Obama can open up channels for drastic policy changes in Cuba without the knowledge of the American population and Congress, when will he do the same for Iran?

Saving Comrade Castro

canadafreepress

By Daniel Greenfield 

Erik Ravelo

The Soviet Union did not have to fall. If Carter had won a second term and Mondale had succeeded him, the Communist dictatorship might have received the outside help it needed to survive.

And we would still be living under the shadow of the Cold War.

Carter couldn’t save the Soviet Union, but he did his best to save Castro, visiting Fidel and Raul in Cuba where the second worst president in American history described his meeting with Castro as a greeting among “old friends”.

Raul Castro called Carter “the best of all U.S. presidents”.

Obama’s dirty deal with Raul will make the worst president in American history, Castro’s new best friend.

Carter couldn’t save Castro, but Obama did. This was not a prisoner exchange. This was a Communist bailout.

Obama boasted that he would increase the flow of money to Cuba from businesses, from bank accounts and from trade. When he said, “We’re significantly increasing the amount of money that can be sent to Cuba”, that was his real mission statement.

The Castro regime is on its last legs. Its sponsors in Moscow and Caracas are going bankrupt due to failing energy prices. The last hope of the Butcher of Havana was a bailout from Washington D.C.

Obama has protected the Castros from regime change as if Communist dictators are an endangered species

And that’s exactly what Obama gave him.

Obama has protected the Castros from regime change as if Communist dictators are an endangered species.

From the beginning, Obama put his foreign policy at the disposal of Havana when he backed Honduran leftist thug Manuel Zelaya’s attempt to shred its Constitution over the protests of the country’s Congress and Supreme Court. And its military, which refused to obey his illegal orders.

Obama’s support for an elected dictator in Honduras should have warned Americans that their newly elected leader viewed men like Zelaya favorably and constitutions and the separation of powers between the branches of government unfavorably. It also showcased his agenda for Latin America.

His embrace of Raul Castro brings that agenda out into the open even if he still insists in wrapping it in dishonest claims about “freedom” and “openness” while bailing out a Communist dictatorship.

Obama opening lie: “The United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.”

Obama began his Castro speech with a lie, declaring, “The United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.”

The Cuban people have no relationship with the United States because they have no free elections and no say in how they are governed. The only Cubans who have a relationship with the United States fled here on rafts.

Obama did not make his dirty deal with the Cuban people. He made it in a marathon phone call with the Cuban dictator. When Obama claims that his deal with Raul Castro represents a new relationship with the people of Cuba, he is endorsing a Communist dictatorship as the legitimate representative of the Cuban people.

This is a retroactive endorsement of the Castro regime and its entire history of mass murder and political terror. Obama is not trying to “open up” Cuba as he claimed. He likes Cuba just the way it is; Communist and closed.

Obama did not consult the Cuban people, just as he did not consult the American people. He disregarded the embargo, Congress, the Constitution and the freedom of the Cuban people.

Obama chose to stand with Raul Castro and his Communist dictatorship

His dictatorial disregard of the embargo, which can only be eliminated by Congress, in order to support a dictatorship, is a disturbing reminder that the road he is walking down leads to a miserable tyranny. Cuban-American senators from both parties have been unanimous in condemning the move. These senators are the closest thing to Cuban elected officials. But Obama disregarded Senator Menendez, a man of his own party, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz.

Instead Obama chose to stand with Raul Castro and his Communist dictatorship.

Obama tried to whitewash his crime by exploiting Alan Gross, a USAID contractor who was imprisoned and abused by the Castro regime, as if the release of an American hostage justified helping the men holding him hostage stay in power. And the media, which was reprinting Castro’s propaganda claiming that Gross’ imprisonment was justified, is busy now pretending that it cares about his release.

He had similarly tried to whitewash his Taliban amnesty by using Bergdahl and his parents as cover. If a deal is struck with Iran, the release of Robert Levinson, Saeed Abedini or Amir Hekmati will almost certainly be used to divert attention from the fact that their own government has collaborated with the thugs and terrorists who took them hostage.

Even though Obama criticized European countries for paying financial ransoms to ISIS, his own ransom paid to the Castros is worth countless billions. And the blood money pouring out of American banks into the Castro regime will encourage other dictatorships to take Americans hostage as leverage for obtaining concessions from the United States. Americans abroad will suffer for Obama’s dirty deal.

No European country recognized ISIS in exchange for the release of hostages. Only Obama was willing to go that far with Cuba, not only opening diplomatic and economic relations, but promising to remove the Communist dictatorship from the list of state sponsors of terror despite the fact that the last State Department review found that Cuba continued to support the leftist narco-terrorists of FARC.

FARC had taken its own American hostages who were starved and beaten, tortured and abused.

Now Obama has given in to the demand of a state sponsor of terror to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for releasing a hostage.

Obama has sent a message to Iran that the best way to secure a deal is by wrapping it in an American hostage. He has told ISIS that we do negotiate with terrorists. And he has once again demonstrated that his vaunted “smart power” is nothing more than appeasement wrapped in excuses and lies.

But Obama did not act to help Alan Gross. He did not even act because he genuinely thought that diplomatic relations would open up Cuba. In his speech, Obama used the claim commonly put forward by Castro apologists that the very fact that the Castros were still in power proved that sanctions had failed. Yet the lack of sanctions against Cuba by the rest of the world certainly did not usher in the new spirit of openness that Obama is promising. Rewarding dictators with cash never frees a nation. This was not about saving Alan Gross. It was about saving Raul Castro.

Obama and Castro are both weakened leaders of the left. Like the Castros, Obama has lost international influence and his own people have turned on him. The only thing he has left is unilateral rule.

If Obama saw something of his own hopes and aspirations to engage in a populist transformation of the United States in Manuel Zelaya or Hugo Chavez, his horizons have narrowed down to those of Raul Castro. His ability to remake the world has vanished and the American people are revolting against his collectivization efforts. They want open health care markets, free speech and honest government.

No matter how often Obama claims to be “on the right side of history”, the Castros are a living reminder that to be on the left is to be on the wrong side of history.

Obama can no longer remake the Middle East, he certainly can’t bring the Soviet Union back from the dead, but he could still bail out Raul Castro and maintain Communist rule in Cuba.

No matter how often Obama claims to be “on the right side of history”, the Castros are a living reminder that to be on the left is to be on the wrong side of history.

Obama did not want to see the “Berlin Wall” fall in Havana on his watch. After watching his own grip on the United States collapse, he did not want to see the left fail again.

We can never know how history might have been different if Carter had gotten a second term or if Mondale had replaced Reagan. But Obama’s deal with Castro reminds us that the end of the USSR was not inevitable. It happened because we stood up against the tyrants in the Kremlin and their useful idiots in the White House.

A good man like Reagan could make a difference by bringing down the USSR. A bad man like Obama can make a difference by keeping Cuba Communist.

This article originally appeared as Obama’s Bailout for Communist Dictators at Front Page Magazine.

Ricardo Zúñiga, el negociador de Obama con Raul Castro

el hondureño ricardo zúñiga de madre norteamerica y un oficial del ejercito hondureño, es un asesor especial del presidente Barack Obama y director para Latinoamérica en el Consejo de Seguridad Nacional de la Casa Blanca. su tia paterna fue ministra en el gobierno del presidente ricardo maduro. mas aqui >>

-----------------------

Voz de América

La Casa Blanca abre en su sitio web una sección sobre Cuba

Ver Aqui >>
O en http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/cuba-politica#section-derechos-humanos

El tabacon de Obama

martinoticias

Se cuenta que la víspera de firmar el embargo contra los Castro, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, quien fumaba puros, pidió a su secretario de prensa, Pierre Salinger –también cigar aficionado–, que le comprara 1.200 Petit Upmann, su marca favorita de habanos.

Salinger relató años después que una vez que el Presidente comprobó que su abasto de tabacos cubanos se había renovado con 1.200 puros "sonrió y abrió un cajón de su escritorio. Tomó un gran papel y lo firmó inmediatamente. Era el decreto que prohibía todos los productos cubanos en nuestro país. Los puros cubanos eran a partir de ese momento ilegales en nuestro país".

Esta semana el presidente Obama, tras anunciar su decisión de restablecer las relaciones con Cuba, recibió con agrado el regalo de un puro habano de la marca Montecristo.

Fue en la fiesta de Janucá celebrada en la Casa Blanca el mismo miércoles en que hizo el histórico anuncio, cuando uno de los invitados, John Berzner, le ofreció como regalo un puro habano.

"Tuve la distinción única de regalar al Presidente deEstados Unidos uno de los mejores puros de Cuba, de la serie de Montecristo, en la Casa Blanca después de la ceremonia en la que se encendió una menora", explicó John Berzner a ABC News.

El Presidente anunció un aumento en la cantidad de bienes cubanos que los estadounidenses podrán traer de Cuba incluyendo el tabaco.

Los residentes en Estados Unidos podrán importar $400 en bienes, de los cuales no más de 100 pueden ser productos de tabaco y alcohol combinados.

YouHitNews

La verdadera razón del acuerdo entre Obama y Raúl Castro - Humor

El Pichy Films

La cláusula secreta del pacto Obama-Castro

Neo Club Press

Manuel Ballagas

www.taringa.net

Como tantos otros acuerdos concebidos y sellados en conciliábulos ocultos, el pacto de Barack Obama con Raúl Castro tiene cláusulas secretas. Si los resultados anunciados ayer en Washington y La Habana provocaron la indignación de muchos, parece que lo que se avecina es peor. Mucho peor.

En los altos círculos militares de Estados Unidos se alistan ya los trámites, sotto voce, de la puesta en práctica de una de las partes ocultas del pacto Obama-Castro. No se trata ya de intercambios de prisioneros ni de temas de comercio e inmigración.

Algunos temen, por ejemplo, que la Ley de Ajuste Cubano peligre. Otros, más a la derecha, creen que Washington podría aprovechar para conseguir la extradición a Estados Unidos de algunos delincuentes asilados en la isla, como Joanne Chesimard, buscada por el asesinato de un policía en Nueva Jersey, y el puertorriqueño Víctor Manuel Gerena, buscado por el asalto de un transporte blindado de Wells Fargo. Pero por ahí no vienen los tiros.

Parece que en su afán de dar hasta el fondillo a los Castro, y de paso cumplir una vieja promesa de campaña suya, Obama se dispone, en un plazo no especificado, quizás durante la visita que se propone hacer a La Habana, a entregar la Base Naval de Guantánamo al gobierno cubano. Mataría, así, dos pájaros de un tiro: congraciarse con sus nuevos amigos, y clausurar la prisión para yihadistas que allí funciona, con el pretexto de que la base ya no estaría bajo jurisdicción norteamericana.

¿Tiene potestad nuestro dadivoso mandatario para hacer semejante concesión? Pasando revista al Tratado Cubano Norteamericano de 1903, suscrito por el presidente cubano Tomás Estrada Palma y el presidente estadounidense Theodore Roosevelt, no resulta claro si su anulación requeriría la aprobación del Congreso.

El tratado en cuestión fue firmado a perpetuidad, lo que significa que sólo podría rescindirse con la aprobación de ambos gobiernos, y a lo que parece, al cabo de todos estos años, Barack Obama resultaría el único mandatario estadounidense capaz de semejante disparate, con tal de cumplir su pendeja agenda política.

Quizás incluso los Castro estarían dispuestos, a cambio, de entregar a EEUU a Chesimard, Gerena y las decenas de otros estadounidenses prófugos que se hallan en la isla. Quién sabe. Habiendo considerables sumas de recompensa ofrecidas por ellos, y conociendo la avidez castrista de divisas, no sería de sorprender que los arrojaran por la borda. El botín de la base, un viejo reclamo de los Castro, serviría de justificación.

Me pregunto qué podrán decir cuando eso suceda el montón de sesudos que nos gastamos en el exilio, que aplauden las medidas de Obama y hasta ven una “transición” en el horizonte. ¿Será que nos van a decir que ya era hora de entregar esa vieja base? Y por cierto, ¿qué van a decir nuestros presuntos líderes?

Nada me extrañaría ya.

Obama Acting Like a Valet — Working for Communists, Terrorists, Lip-Syncersshes

breitbart

By Charles Hurt

So this is what foreign policy by Beyonce looks like.
It’s been two years since the sultry and suave music power couple of Beyonce and Jay-Z were publicly humiliated across the globe after they realized it’s not “cool” to visit countries like Cuba run by totalitarian regimes that sponsor terrorism, steal private property, jail people for no reason, and freely make critics disappear without a trace.
No, it’s not “cool” to travel to places like Cuba, financially support the regime’s tourism industry and pose in a massive ad campaign broadcast to the ends of the earth showing the world’s most beautiful couple enjoying all the tiny streets and bright colors and spicy foods of Cuba, as presented to you by one of the world’s nastiest and most brutal totalitarian governments.
So Bey Bey and Jay-Z complained to their buddy, President Obama, who shares their embarrassment over America and this rigid unwillingness to be totally cool with Cuba. Totally cool with communist totalitarianism.
C’mon, dude! Lighten up! That communism stuff is so old, man.
It reminded Mr. Obama of his Choom Gang days back in Hawaii shooting hoops, being lazy and smoking reefer all day. I mean, Cuba is an island, too, man. Uh, isn’t it?
So, now that Mr. Obama literally has nothing more to lose, he flushes down the toilet five decades of rare principled diplomacy where America stood with the unjustly jailed, the tortured, and families of the dead against an evil authoritarian tyrannical regime.
And what is it about this guy and releasing terrorists? Is it their methods or their ideology that makes him want to free all these beasts?
And the infatuation with communism?
The callow ignorance and communism illiteracy in this country today is staggering, especially among young people. But when did “liberal” come to mean “stupid?” When did liberals quit learning history? Have they really forgotten the millions upon millions of victims around the world who have been brutalized under these totalitarian regimes?
Truly, President Obama is on the march — against America. The people have turned on him. So he has turned on us. Full tilt. He has nothing to lose. And he aims to punish us all for his loss of popularity and the evaporation of his credibility.
That is why he now puts the interests of illegal foreigners ahead of legal Americans. He puts the interests of terrorists ahead of law abiding, freedom-loving citizens. The interests of communists ahead of free market entrepreneurs.
And so he sits down for an interview with People Magazine to complain that America is still so racist that he once walked out of a restaurant only to be mistaken for a valet.
Well, you know, if you don’t want to be mistaken for a valet, stop acting like a valet. Especially a valet working for terrorists, communists, and really terrible songstresses who can only sing the National Anthem if they lip-synch it.