Doce demandas para la movilización de amplios sectores sociales dentro de Cuba

Diario de Cuba

Juan Antonio Blanco

La artista Tania Bruguera ha convocado a realizar un audaz performance en la Plaza de la Revolución el próximo 30 de diciembre —"Yo también exijo"— para que los ciudadanos cubanos puedan acudir allí a expresar sus anhelos y exigencias. Es de agradecer esta iniciativa a la que me sumo por vía digital, consciente de que en nuestro mundo global toda acción local se expande en el ciberespacio.

Al hacerlo he estudiado y tomado en cuenta las demandas de amplios sectores de la sociedad cubana, así como de la disidencia, la oposición y el exilio. No hablo a nombre de nadie que no sea yo mismo y a partir de ahora estas exigencias pertenecen a cualquiera que desee apoyarlas. A quien las considere desmesuradas le recuerdo que son reclamos de derechos universales e inalienables por los que hay que luchar, no limosnas que respetuosamente se solicitan al poder que los viene pisoteando desde hace medio siglo.    

Como cubano veo la necesidad de abordar y contribuir a resolver la esencia interna del conflicto que el Estado cubano ha desarrollado contra los derechos de la nación  por más de medio siglo. El bilateral entre Cuba y Estados Unidos —en el que han participado otros actores externos como la URSS y Venezuela— no es otra cosa que la internacionalización de ese conflicto interno.

La normalización de relaciones entre La Habana y Washington no deja resueltas las causas de nuestro gran diferendo nacional. Con relación a esto último solo los cubanos podemos y tenemos derecho a definir nuestras perspectivas, demandas y prioridades. Tendremos que luchar para hacerlos realidad.

Entonces, en respuesta a la invitación de Tania Bruguera, hago constar que yo, como ciudadano cubano, también exijo el fin de la beligerancia del Estado contra la voluntad popular y que acepte la inevitabilidad de avanzar hacia la normalización de relaciones del Estado con la nación cubana. Para ello es imprescindible el levantamiento de las medidas gubernamentales de su bloqueo interno al ejercicio de derechos universales básicos y al libre desarrollo de la creatividad y prosperidad general de la sociedad cubana.

Este listado de demandas representa lo que a mi juicio son las condiciones mínimas necesarias para poder recuperar y ejercer la soberanía nacional. Constituye una posible hoja de ruta para poder llegar a elegir libremente a un nuevo gobierno. Una vez alcanzado ese momento fundacional, Estado y nación podrán enfrentar juntos la herencia que nos dejará el pasado y asumir el desafío de construir un nuevo país: moderno, libre, soberano, equitativo, plural, tecnológicamente avanzado y próspero. Ese proyecto, cuando sea factible, requerirá de una nueva hoja de ruta.

En el contexto actual creo necesario exigir de inmediato, entre otras medidas,  las siguientes:

1) Fin de la Ley Mordaza y de la criminalización de la libre expresión personal, intelectual o artística. Derogar de inmediato la Ley Mordaza, titulada Protección de la Independencia Nacional y la Economía de Cuba (Ley 88), así como cualquier otra ley o regulación que coarte el derecho de libre expresión. Ordenar el cese inmediato de todas las actividades policiacas y parapoliciales contra las personas, académicos, periodistas,  intelectuales y artistas  que ejercen su derecho a acceder  y diseminar información o a expresar pacíficamente —de forma privada o pública, individual o colectiva— su opinión sobre cualquier tema.

2) Fin de los actos de repudio. Paralizar y desautorizar públicamente de inmediato los llamados "actos de repudio" contra cualquier ciudadano o grupo de la sociedad civil que libremente haya expresado sus criterios políticos, sociales o económicos en público o privado.

3) Amnistías. Liberar de inmediato a los presos políticos —incluyendo a los que están bajo licencia extrapenal— y decretar también una amnistía general a favor de todo el exilio político para que todos puedan acceder con garantía suficiente de seguridad a la patria y, si lo desean, residir en ella nuevamente. Una vez concluida la reforma del Código Penal se procederá a decretar una amnistía general adicional para todas las personas que fueron encarceladas por acciones que de ahora en adelante se descriminalizarían.

4) Ratificación e implementación de pactos y convenios internacionales de derechos. Ratificar de inmediato y sin reservas los dos Pactos Internacionales de DDHH (Políticos y Civiles; Económicos, Sociales y Culturales) y suscribir el Protocolo Adicional del Pacto contra la Tortura permitiendo la constante supervisión de prisiones del Relator Especial, y comenzar una reforma sustantiva del sistema constitucional y jurídico (Código Penal y otros) para alinearlos con los principios de estos instrumentos internacionales.

5) Libre sindicalización y contratación laboral. Cumplimiento irrestricto e inmediato de los convenios de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT), de la que Cuba es miembro, sobre derechos laborales y sindicales. Debe cesar de inmediato el monopolio estatal de contratación de la fuerza de trabajo para servir a empresas y gobiernos extranjeros y de ese modo evitar que el Estado se apodere de la mayor parte de sus salarios y favorezca a los que desea privilegiar.

6) Libre acceso a internet. Autorizar de inmediato la conexión a internet a cualquier ciudadano en precios adecuados al nivel salarial del país y disponer también de inmediato el cese de toda persecución contra aquellas personas que acceden a internet o a estaciones de radio y TV extranjeras por medios propios.

7) Libertad de medios de comunicación. Decretar una nueva Ley de Medios que comience a regir de inmediato y ofrezca garantías a la libertad de expresión pública y privada, al derecho de acceder y diseminar información como individuos o como institución, y a la cesión de horarios de los medios de comunicación de TV y radio estatales a diferentes, iglesias, instituciones y grupos ciudadanos no gubernamentales.

8) Plebiscito sobre el actual sistema electoral. Se ha de celebrar un plebiscito antes de cualquier nueva elección del Poder Popular para reconocer el derecho soberano de la nación cubana de derogar el artículo 5 de la actual Constitución que otorga el poder supremo al Partido Comunista de Cuba y exigir en su lugar la celebración de elecciones libres, secretas, universales, plurales, directas e internacionalmente supervisadas para elegir al próximo gobierno. El nuevo parlamento que resulte electo se hará cargo de culminar la aprobación definitiva de la reforma constitucional y legal que se requiere en acatamiento de los Convenios y Pactos Internacionales ratificados.

9) Libertad de movimiento nacional e internacional de los cubanos. Decretar de inmediato la plena libertad de movimiento tanto para fijar residencia entre municipios y provincias como para entrar y salir de la Isla en favor de todos los ciudadanos cubanos, sin que ello se requiera de permisos estatales de ningún tipo. Reconocimiento de la doble ciudadanía a aquellos cubanos que así lo soliciten.

10) Igualdad de derechos económicos de todos los cubanos. Decretar una Ley para la Inversión, Producción, Comercio y Desarrollo Nacional que equipare los derechos de los cubanos donde quiera que tengan su residencia actual con los que se ofrecen hoy a los inversionistas extranjeros.  Entre esos derechos se ha de incluir la simplificación y agilización de trámites para registrar legalmente y operar una empresa privada nacional sea personal o cooperativa, el cese de la lista restrictiva de actividades autorizadas, la autorización a los nacionales para invertir y participar en cualquier área de la economía nacional, el levantamiento de las restricciones a los profesionales para ejercer sus especialidades de modo privado, el otorgamiento de privilegios y facilidades fiscales en la etapa de amortización de la inversión inicial y el derecho de contratación libre y directa de la mano de obra por empresas extranjeras y nacionales por igual.

11) Cese del monopolio de comercio y producción estatal. Tanto en la Ley para la Inversión Extranjera como en esta nueva Ley para la Inversión, Producción, Comercio y Desarrollo Nacional se introducirán cláusulas que reconozcan y den garantías a la propiedad privada y se complementará con un código mercantil y un sistema moderno de arbitraje y apelaciones. Dicha ley anularía el monopolio estatal sobre la producción y servicios en cualquier sector económico, así como sobre el ejercicio del comercio nacional y exterior, autorizando a partir de ese momento la participación en todas esas actividades de empresas privadas nacionales y extranjeras. Se derogarán de inmediato las últimas disposiciones de la Aduana para la importación de diferentes medios requeridos para el desarrollo personal y del sector privado.

12) Libertad de asociación.  Decretar una nueva Ley de Asociaciones que las libere del patronato estatal para ser registradas y no incluya clausulas discriminatorias por razones de raza, género, orientación sexual, creencias religiosas o políticas, así como que puedan tener sus propios medios de comunicación y se les permita ser autosustentables por iniciativas económicas propias, cotización de miembros o donaciones. La nueva Ley de Asociaciones debe reconocer también el derecho de libre sindicalización y las organizaciones de esa naturaleza que los trabajadores puedan querer darse a sí mismos.

La mayor parte de estas demandas son escuchadas a diario en la Isla. Muchas de ellas fueron formuladas por grupos disidentes u opositores en sus programas e iniciativas. Su materialización no reclama la unidad de todos en un solo partido u organización. Basta con que cada sector de la nación se empeñe proactivamente en alcanzar aquellas reivindicaciones que le son más cercanas para que se geste un movimiento general emancipador.

Cuando se asiente el polvo de las desmedidas expectativas surgidas al calor de los recientes acuerdos entre la Casa Blanca y el general presidente Raúl Castro, cristalizará  con mucha mayor nitidez una visión genuinamente realista y pragmática. Las ansias de libertad y progreso hay que asentarlas en las exigencias y movilización de los más amplios sectores sociales y no en las dádivas que la elite de poder esté dispuesta a conceder en algún congreso del PCC ni en las transacciones a las que aquella llegue con los actores externos del conflicto cubano. 

Los regalos de Obama

Diario de Cuba

Andrés Reynaldo

Si ayer los demócratas cubanos estaban solos hoy podemos conjeturar que vamos a seguir muy solos. Quizás por un buen rato. El restablecimiento de relaciones con EEUU puede haber asegurado la transición dinástica de la dictadura, que ya tiene posicionadas a su segunda y tercera generación en los puestos de mando de la política y la economía. "¡Ahora sí que ganamos la guerra!", exclamó Raúl Castro ante la Asamblea Nacional parafraseando a Fidel en otra lejana circunstancia. No tanto, Raúl, pero sí ganaste una importante batalla.

Por más de medio siglo, la renuencia de EEUU a aceptar la dictadura castrista marcó una posición condenatoria en la arena internacional. De esa raya en la arena se aferró la oposición interna y externa frente a las habituales  indiferencia de Europa y el compadrazgo de la mayoría de los gobiernos latinoamericanos. Un gesto político que servía de asidero moral. Esta vez, una ola (parece que es la ola del olvido) ha borrado la raya. En el momento de su decrepitud, los Castro reciben un segundo aire. Con las variantes propias de la época, Washington les ayudará a convertirse en los Somoza.

Corridas las cortinas, vemos el entramado. Más de año y medio de negociaciones conducidas desde la parte estadounidense por gente con muy poco conocimiento y mucho menos afecto por el pueblo cubano. En ese período Raúl definió el marco protector de sus intereses. Una ley del embudo sobre las inversiones extranjeras y la actividad privada que deja a la gente de a pie las desventuras del cuentapropismo y promete a la elite la vida loca del capitalismo salvaje. Todo lo demás es decorado.

El modelo raulista es de una represiva perfección cleptocrática. Sus iguales no están en las dictaduras colegiadas de China y Vietnam, ni siquiera en la mafiosa Rusia de Putin, sino en las dinastías postcomunistas de Africa: Angola , República del Congo, Guinea Ecuatorial, por citar. A diferencia de estas, cuenta en su fase de arranque con una amplia red de agentes de influencia, poderosos empresarios (algunos de ellos cubanoamericanos) y líderes congresionales en Estados Unidos. Cuenta, además, con el empuje de una exótica coalición: los grandes intereses de Washington y el ala izquierda del Partido Demócrata. Unos lavan sus crímenes en nombre del progreso y otros en nombre de la distensión.

Ninguneada por el presidente Barack Obama, la oposición interna gana, eso sí, el beneficio de la claridad total. Ya no puede llamarse a engaño. Todas las recetas que se le proponen apuntan a facilitarle tiempo, dinero y prestigio a la dictadura. Hasta la misma tesis de que Obama le ha hecho un regalo envenenado a Raúl es una invitación a cruzarse de brazos. El tren de los cambios pasará de largo por la estación del Estado de derecho. No veo a General Motors, a Caterpillar y al Chase amenazando con cerrar negocio por una pateadura a las Damas de Blanco.

En el exilio, la categoría de los celebrantes no permite dudas de estar viviendo un humillante y retrógrado punto de inflexión en nuestra historia, preñado de desmemoria, deshonor y codicia. Con todo, merecemos sufrir el ruidoso ascenso de esta comparsa de la esclavitud. Estamos enfermos del pusilánime prurito de ser tolerantes frente a un mal radical. Por eso les dimos un sagrado lugar en el debate y nos inhibimos de quebrar a sangre y fuego el diálogo con aquellos que cortan orejas y arrancan lenguas. Hemos sido así de mansos y obtusos que hoy son esos mercaderes de la reconciliación quienes se presentan ante el mundo como los legítimos representantes de una "diáspora" ansiosa de complacer a los verdugos de la nación.

A propósito de la visita papal que nuestra Iglesia Católica le regaló a Fidel y Raúl en marzo del 2012, el líder del Movimiento Cristiano Liberación (MCL), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, alertó sobre la inminencia del cambio fraude. Un cambio sin derechos para el pueblo, con la inserción de poderosos intereses que escamotean la democracia y la soberanía. Ah, y con el concepto de una "oposición leal", salido del taller de trucaje de la brigada de respuesta laica del cardenal Ortega. Cinco meses después, Payá fue asesinado. Triste hora para Cuba si al hablar de la decencia, la justicia y la libertad, el eco de los muertos se oye más alto que la voz de los vivos.

Kerry Speaks about Gross and Cuba

The Pope's Cuban Blunder

capitolhillcubans

By Nicholas G. Hahn in The New York Daily News:

Cuban dissident voices & Pope Francis’ deaf ears

The wives of imprisoned critics of the Castro regime deserved better

When Berta Soler met Pope Francis, it had been a long time coming.

Soler’s Ladies in White, a Catholic opposition movement comprised of relatives of jailed human rights activists in Cuba, had pleaded numerous times for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. He declined and visited the communist island in 2012 only to continue a policy of détente established by his predecessor, John Paul II.

But a short blessing by Pope Francis in March 2013 signaled a slight shift in direction — or that’s at least what Soler believed.

“We think a Latin American Pope is very good for us. Pope Francis knows a little better the problems that our peoples have, he comes from far down and he can help the people who are suffering,” Soler told the Italian newspaper La Stampa after receiving some papal encouragement.

If only Soler and her Ladies had known better. Last week, the Vatican confirmed that for more than 18 months, the Holy See had been working to restore diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. The pontiff seems to have blessed the Cuban opposition with one hand, and the Castro brothers with the other.

Soler’s Ladies, Cuban exiles, and other dissident groups have long lobbied against new relations without any concessions from the communist regime. They aren’t as hopeful as others who say more U.S. trade with the Caribbean island may lead to more freedom.

The international aid worker Alan Gross’ release is perhaps the only Cuban concession — and thank goodness for that — but even so, it came as a small part of a lopsided prisoner swap.

“Democracy and freedom for the Cuban people aren’t going to be achieved by what Obama has given to the Cuban government,” Soler said in a post on her group’s website. In his announcement of re-establishing diplomatic relations, President Obama thanked Pope Francis for helping broker a Cold War-era thawing, saying his “moral example shows us the importance of pursuing the world as it should be, rather than simply settling for the world as it is.”

The President and the Pope may be settling for far less than they might think. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Catholic and son of parents who fled the communist paradise, denounced, warning that the move as “more than just putting U.S. national security at risk, President Obama is letting down the Cuban people, who still yearn to be free.” Rubio didn’t spare any words for his spiritual shepherd, who he politely encouraged to “take up the cause of freedom and democracy, which is critical for a free people — for a people to truly be free.”

The Argentine pontiff should know a thing or two about the church’s cause for freedom. When a military junta in his own country took power in a 1976 coup during what is called the “Dirty War,” Father Bergoglio was head of the Jesuits.

The future-Pope saw many of his priests and seminarians jailed and killed. Bergoglio is reported to have helped many flee the country and even met with the military dictatorship to save the lives of two imprisoned priests.

But those experiences may not have been on the pontiff's mind when he wrote personal letters to Obama and Castro or when he hosted delegates from Cuba at the Vatican.

While it might be fodder for sensational journalism, Rubio and other Catholics who make public policy shouldn’t have to correct their pontiff on foreign affairs. Clerics are spiritual leaders, not political ones. When prelates pretend to be diplomats, it dilutes their authority on issues of faith and morals.

Francis might have done one better by prodding the Castro brothers about their regime’s woeful human rights record. That would have been in a Pope’s wheelhouse.

And it would have been what Berta Soler deserved.

Hahn is the editor of RealClearReligion.org.

Obama’s One Hand Clap With Castro

capitolhillcubans

By Doug McIntyre in The Daily Beast:

Obama’s One Hand Clap With Castro

There was really only one good reason to maintain the embargo: Trade with Cuba strengthens the Castros. So what, exactly, are we getting in return for Obama’s radical step?

“No cerveza, no trabajo” is about all I’ve retained from Brother Victor Serna’s Spanish II class at St. Mary’s High School.

Of course it’s been over 40 years, and that’s a long time to remember anything. But truth be told, I never came close to mastering the language despite my excellent grades.

I did not deserve them.

While I accepted every A- and B+ as a gift from the school gods, Brother Victor Serna was forever chastising me for slacking off from my “usual” stellar A/A+ efforts.

Brother Victor had taught my brother, Jeff, the previous year with far greater success. After years at the head of a parochial school classroom, he could no longer distinguish one blond Irish Catholic kid from another. I coasted through Spanish II on Jeff’s stellar effort.

What I won’t ever forget were Brother Victor’s periodic anti-communist tirades. His face a brilliant crimson, neck veins bulging and spittle flying, he looked like America’s most famous Cuban, Ricky Ricardo, after Lucy had pissed him off and left him sputtering in his native tongue.

A Spaniard by birth, Victor Serna left home shy of his 14th birthday and entered the monastery to become a Marist brother. By 1943, he was missioned to Cienfuegos, Cuba.

In 1950, Serna earned his Ph.D. from the University of Havana, where he had befriended a classmate named Fidel Castro.

By 1961 Castro had seized power and Serna publicly criticized his old friend for his regime’s barbaric suppression of individual and religious rights. This courageous act earned him a late-night knock on the door with orders for Serna to vamos from Cuba. He had 24 hours to pack.

He never returned.

It’s fair to ask exactly what we got other than the return of Alan Gross. Right now it looks like the diplomatic equivalent of one hand clapping.

“I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result,” said President Obama as he announced his intention to undo the policy of isolation followed by the previous 10 presidents.

The prison camp island nation known as Cuba erupted in celebration.

Closer to home, the reaction has been mixed.

With the midterm elections safely in the rearview mirror, Obama is on legacy patrol.

The Affordable Care Act is safely embedded, with repeal unlikely even with a freshly minted Republican Senate. His executive order granting work privileges and immunity from deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants may be headed to court, but not any time soon. Now he’s taking a radical new approach to the hemisphere’s only Stalinist government.

It’s hard to argue for the continuation of the U.S. embargo of Cuba. If the embargo were effective, the Castro brothers would have been doing Love Letters with the Duvaliers years ago. We trade with China and Vietnam, so why not Cuba, right?

Well, here’s one big reason to continue the embargo: Trade with Cuba strengthens the regime.

The Cuban government siphons off revenue from nearly every business transaction in the country. Until 2011, barbers were employees of the state. While cruise ship companies would like nothing more than to add Havana to their ports of call, the people of Cuba will still be paid a pittance. The average Cuban makes between $20 and $50 a month.

That’s not a typo.

On the upside, we’re likely to get better jazz, slick fielding middle infielders, and an army of great mechanics.

Granted, we’ve been waiting for half a century for the Cuban economy to collapse.

It hasn’t. Not even after its parent company, the Soviet Union, took a dive in 1991.

Obama has latched on to the failure of the embargo to topple the Castros as justification to shuffle the deck. But does he really want the Castos toppled? If so he has yet to say so publicly.

What he has said publicly is an apology for colonialism, something we are not guilty of in Cuba. The only other thing he has offered is vague boilerplate about a more “open” Cuba in the future after exposure to “American values.”

But the blunt truth is that nothing we do will free the Cuban people as long as they are subjugated by a thuggish government modeled on Stalin’s police state. Our secret weapon may be the hardening of Fidel’s and Raul’s arteries.

Poverty in the Caribbean worker’s paradise is not the result of America’s embargo. It’s the result of decades of draconian socialism.

While the president correctly points out that the United States is the only country with an embargo on Cuba, he misses the obvious point: If the Cubans are free to trade with the rest of the world, why aren’t they driving Subarus and Fiats?

Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Germany, France, and every other nation on earth does business with Cuba, but the people there are still driving ’56 DeSotos, and many lack Internet access and nearly every other tool of the modern world. The reason? Fidel and Raul Castro.

Obama’s gambit is not irrational. Insanity, after all, is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, right? But the president’s new policy is naive.

For all his gifts, Obama has had one consistent glaring blind spot: He’s a terrible judge of tyrants. The Castros are the latest in a long line of despots he believed he could negotiate with.

From Vladimir Putin to Hosni Mubarak to Bashar al-Assad and the Kim du jour in North Korea, Obama seems the last person to recognize the monstrous evil these thugs represent.

It’s fair to ask exactly what we got in the president’s bargain with Cuba other than the return of Alan Gross. Right now it looks like the diplomatic equivalent of one hand clapping.

While the days of exploding cigars are happily behind us, the iron grip of an intolerant despot has not and is not likely to loosen under Obama any more than it did in the days of JFK.

WaPo: As a Cuban exile, I Feel Betrayed by President Obama

capitolhillcubans

By professor Carlos Eire in The Washington Post:

Talking with Castro

As a Cuban exile, I feel betrayed by President Obama

I am furious, in pain, and deeply offended by those who laud this betrayal of the Cuban people as a great moment in history.

My family and native land were destroyed by the brutal Castro regime. In 1959, as an 8-year-old, I listened to mobs shout “paredon!” (to the firing squad!). I watched televised executions, and was terrified by the incessant pressure to agree with a bearded dictator’s ideals.

As the months passed, relatives, friends, and neighbors began to disappear. Some of them emerged from prison with detailed accounts of the tortures they endured, but many never reappeared, their lives cut short by firing squads.

I also witnessed the government’s seizure of all private property – down to the ring on one’s finger – and the collapse of my country’s economy. I began to feel as if some monstrous force was trying to steal my mind and soul through incessant indoctrination.

By the age of 10, I was desperate to leave.

The next year, my parents sent me to the United States.  I am one of the lucky 14,000 unaccompanied children rescued by Operation Pedro Pan. Our plan to reunite within a few months was derailed by the policies of  the Castro regime, which intentionally prevented people like my parents from leaving Cuba. Although my mother did manage to escape three years later, my father remained stuck for the rest of his life. When he died, 14 years after my departure, the Castro regime prevented me from attending his funeral.

I am now a professor of history and religion at Yale University.

And I long for justice. Instead of seeing Raúl Castro shaking President Obama’s hand, I would like to see him, his brother, and all their henchmen in a court room, being tried for crimes against humanity. I also long for genuine freedom in Cuba. Instead of seeing his corrupt and abusive regime rewarded with favors from the United States, I long for the day when that regime is replaced by a genuine democracy with a free market economy.

The fact that I am a historian makes me see things differently, too. I earn my living by analyzing texts and documents, sifting evidence, and separating facts from lies and myths. I have been trained to read between the lines, and to discern the hidden meaning in all rhetoric.

While much attention has been paid to President Obama’s Cuba policy speech, hardly any has been paid to dictator Raúl Castro’s shorter speech, broadcast in Cuba at exactly the same time.

In his spiteful address, the unelected ruler of Cuba said that he would accept President Obama’s gesture of good will “without renouncing a single one of our principles.”

What, exactly, are those principles?

Like his brother Fidel, whose name he invoked, and like King Louis XIV of France, whose name he dared not mention, Raúl speaks of himself as the embodiment of the state he rules, as evidenced by his mention of “our principles,” which assumes that all Cubans share his mindset. Raúl claims that he is defending his nation’s “self-determination,” “sovereignty,” and “independence,” and also dares to boast that his total control of the Cuban economy should be admired as “social justice.”

In reality, he is defending is his role as absolute monarch.

Cubans have no freedom of speech or assembly. The press is tightly controlled, and there is no freedom to establish political parties or labor unions. Travel is strictly controlled, as is access to the Internet. There is no economic freedom and no elections. According to the Associated Press, at least 8,410 dissidents were detained in 2014.

These are the principles that Raúl Castro is unwilling to renounce, which have driven nearly 20 percent of Cuba’s population into exile.

Unfortunately, these are also the very principles that President Obama ratified as acceptable, which will govern Cuba for years to come.

Although President Obama did acknowledge the lack of “freedom and openness” in Cuba, and also hinted that Raúl Castro should  loosen his grip on the Cuban people, his rhetoric was as hollow as Raúl’s. He didn’t make any demands for immediate, genuine reforms in Cuba. Equally hollow was his reference to Cuba’s “civil society.” He made no mention of the constant abuse heaped on Cuba’s non-violent dissidents, or of the fact that the vast majority of them have pleaded with him to tighten rather than ease existing sanctions on the Castro regime.

But it was not just what was left unsaid that made his rhetoric hollow. Some of the “facts” cited in support of his policy changes were deliberate distortions of history that lay most of the blame for Cuba’s problems on the United States.

Among the most glaring of these falsehoods was the claim that “our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe.” The real culprit is not the embargo, but the Castro regime itself, which actively prevents Cubans from accessing the Internet. Cuba has been purchasing all sorts of cutting-edge technology from other countries for use by its government, its military, its spies, and its tourist industry.

If studied carefully, what President Obama’s artful speech reveals is a fixation on the failures of American foreign policy, and on his role as a righteous reformer. Moreover, the speech is riddled with false assumptions and wishful thinking.

Does President Obama really believe that somehow, magically, an influx of American diplomats, tourists, and dollars is going to force Raúl Castro and his military junta to give up their beloved repressive “principles”?

Dream on. President Obama knows all too well that the Castro regime has had diplomatic and economic relations with the rest of the world and hosted millions of tourists from democratic nations for many years. Such engagement has brought no freedom or prosperity to the Cuban people. He also knows that tourism has only served to create an apartheid state in which foreigners enjoy privileges that are denied to the natives.

President Obama’s disingenuous formulation of a new Cuba policy has been praised by many around the world, but will be challenged by the legislative branch of the government of these United States.

Thank God and the Constitution for that.

The American people and the Cuban people deserve a much better future and a much better interpretation of history than those offered to them in President Obama’s shameful speech.

Posibles consecuencias de la política de Obama con relación a Cuba

cubanalisis

Dr. Antonio Morales Pita

La reciente decisión del presidente Obama con respecto a las relaciones entre Cuba y los Estados Unidos puede tener dos consecuencias generales, es decir, el gobierno cubano procederá o no procederá a introducir cambios fundamentales en Cuba, ya sea en el campo económico, político o social.

El análisis se dificulta debido al alto nivel de asimetría de la información relacionada con las medidas que en realidad vaya a tomar el gobierno cubano. Nadie sabe cuáles son las verdaderas intenciones del presidente cubano por cuanto él tiene una situación ventajosa con respecto a los otros actores políticos participantes en el proceso. Pero esta situación se repite con respecto a la reacción que pueda asumir Obama ante las acciones futuras de los Castro.

Por lo tanto, existe una asimetría general de información entre los restantes actores políticos (o político-económicos), tales como el Papa Francisco, el gobierno canadiense, el Congreso de los Estados Unidos, el pueblo cubano, la disidencia cubana, y los cubanoamericanos. Adicionalmente, no se puede olvidar la influencia de la economía mundial, del cambio climatológico, incluyendo los desastres naturales, de los gobiernos latinoamericanos y, desde luego, de los acontecimientos imprevisibles como las variaciones en el precio del petróleo.

Existe una opinión bastante generalizada en los medios periodísticos en el sentido de que Obama ha dado mucho al gobierno cubano, mientras que el pueblo cubano y el gobierno norteamericano reciben muy poco beneficio de parte de Raúl Castro. La actitud del presidente norteamericano y la forma en que las transacciones han sido llevadas a cabo e informado al mundo podrían dar esa impresión, pero yo no estoy tan seguro de medir las consecuencias de la iniciativa de Obama en estos momentos.

Por ejemplo, si se analiza la influencia del papado católico sobre el gobierno cubano, se podrá apreciar que, como resultado de la visita de Juan Pablo II a Cuba a finales de la década de los noventa, el pueblo cubano recibió el permiso de celebrar las Pascuas por primera vez desde el 1961. El Papa fue capaz de vencer la impenetrable testarudez de Fidel Castro, quien cedió al “concederle” al pueblo cubano el derecho de creer en Dios.  El Papa Francisco ha sido fundamental en este difícil proceso de acercamiento entre los gobiernos de los Estados Unidos y Cuba, el cual de cierta forma fortalece el papel de la iglesia católica cubana. El lector coincidirá conmigo en que este Papa latinoamericano ejerce una influencia muy importante en el mundo.

Pasando a la esfera económica (en la cual el gobierno cubano sale ganando considerablemente), acceder al mercado cubano será conveniente para los hombres de negocio norteamericanos -tal como ha sucedido en China- y también para el pueblo cubano, que tendrá la posibilidad de ampliar su escaso nivel de consumo.

Debe tenerse en cuenta que las compañías norteamericanas han sido excluidas de la competencia con el resto de las empresas extranjeras en el mercado cubano.

Además, ¿cuál será la repercusión de este cambio en la política internacional de los Estados Unidos sobre sus relaciones con los gobiernos al sur del Río Grande? ¿Acaso no es conveniente para los Estados Unidos fortalecer su papel en una región que ha experimentado cambios políticos, que se ha sentido relegada a un segundo plano por los gobiernos norteamericanos y que ha creado tratados de libre comercio como Mercosur y el Alba para excluir a los Estados Unidos?

Recordemos que, después de la muerte de Mao, Nixon abrió a China las puertas de las Naciones Unidas y la inversión extranjera. Hoy en día China es el principal receptor de inversión extranjera en el mundo. Sin la ayuda financiera de los Estados Unidos, China no podría haberse convertido en una potencia mundial que ha jugado y juega un papel fundamental en el crecimiento del producto interno bruto mundial al tiempo que los países desarrollados (Japón, Europa, Canadá, Australia) han visto reducida su participación.

Uno de los principales argumentos que los gobiernos de Nixon y Clinton han esgrimido para justificar la ayuda a China era el mejoramiento de la democracia en la mayor dictadura del mundo. China continúa siendo una dictadura comunista, pero ¿es la misma antes y después de Den Xioping? En el 1989 el gobierno chino masacró en un día a más de tres millares de manifestantes protestando contra la inflación y el desempleo (razones económicas).

Desde finales de la primera década de este siglo ha crecido la oposición de los obreros chinos en los campos y ciudades del este y el oeste de China. Recientemente, Hong Kong experimentó protestas masivas ampliamente superiores a las de la Plaza Tiannamen.  Hasta ahora, que yo sepa, nadie ha sido asesinado. ¿Es lógico considerar que la iniciativa de Nixon hacia China no ha tenido repercusiones positivas en los Estados Unidos? ¿o que haya  sido un error de política internacional?

Un punto transcendental de divergencia en esta discusión multifactorial es si la decisión de Obama provocará cambios democráticos relevantes en Cuba. Tomando en cuenta mi experiencia de vivir en Cuba desde el 1959 hasta el 1996, así como mi conocimiento de la idiosincrasia cubana y como profesor de economía política internacional, he llegado a la conclusión de que la testarudez y la inflexibilidad entre dos oponentes políticos no conducen a la solución de conflictos. Debe existir algún tipo de compromiso para alcanzar algunos resultados que pueden tener lugar a corto, mediano o largo plazo.

Es un hecho indiscutible que la tensión entre los gobiernos de Cuba y los Estados Unidos no ha contribuido al derrocamiento de la dictadura de los Castro, a pesar de la Invasión de Bahía de Cochinos en el 1961, de la crisis de Octubre o Guerra de los Misiles en el 1962, la caída de la Unión Soviética en el 1991, el “período Especial” durante los noventa, el colapso de las industrias azucarera y alimenticia durante décadas, el deterioro de la economía venezolana, y los dos embargos (el externo del gobierno norteamericano, y el interno considerablemente peor establecido por las políticas caprichosas y anti-económicas de Fidel Castro). 

La economía cubana ha sido sistemáticamente destrozada por la incompetencia de sus líderes comunistas. El nivel de vida del pueblo cubano es extremadamente bajo. Mientras que la razón fundamental del derrocamiento de las dictaduras ha sido el deterioro de la economía, ¿cómo es posible que los dictadores cubanos se hayan mantenido en el poder por más de 55 años? Desde el 1959 uno de los pocos ministerios eficientes en Cuba ha sido el Ministerio del Interior (la KGB de Cuba).

¿Por qué la dictadura soviética colapsó bajo la influencia de condiciones económicas desastrosas? Un Sistema comunista solamente puede sobrevivir gracias a su carácter represivo, especialmente contra la prensa.

El comunismo ataca la necesidad eminentemente humana de progresar, de ser libre para tomar decisiones personales elementales, de viajar por el mundo, de expresar su criterio respetuosamente sin  poner en riesgo su integridad física;  por lo tanto, tiene que acudir a la represión contra todo tipo de rebeldía ante la privación de derechos humanos.

Mijail Gorbachov no permitió que el Ejercito Soviético invadiera a Polonia, Checoslovaquia, Hungría, o a ningún otro país miembro del bloque soviético.  Gorbachov permitió libertad de prensa, transparencia informativa, y propiedad privada dentro del  país. El quería reformar el comunismo, pero la eliminación de la represión precipitó su caída inevitable, por los enormes problemas socio-político-económicos heredados de la economía rígida y centralmente planificada de la economía durante más de setenta años.

En resumen, según muestra la historia, desde el 1959 hasta el presente, si la nueva política externa hacia el gobierno cubano no se hubiese tomado, no habría posibilidad de cambio en Cuba. Después de la decisión de Obama, visualizo un poco de luz al final del túnel.

---------

NOTA: La libre expresión de criterios respetuosamente expuestos es saludable y fomenta desarrollo de ideas.  Como profesor, aprendo de mis alumnos; como escritor, aprendo de mis lectores. Si alguien desea comunícame su opinión sobre este artículo, puede comunicarse conmigo a amoralespita@hotmail.com.

Síndrome del Neocastrismo: Cubanos esperan nueva vida para autos americanos

la esperanza que dimana del Síndrome del Neocastrismo, donde la resignacion, como apuntaba balzac, es un suicidio cotidiano. 

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

AmericaTeVeCanal41

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.
--------------------------
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