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.

The Bartender who Accidentally Saved the World

warontherocks

Paul Kan

October 13, 2014 · in Molotov Cocktail

The evening of October 24, 1962 must have been quite a shift for the bar staff at the National Press Club. Only two nights before, President John Kennedy addressed the nation about Soviet missiles being discovered in Cuba and the imposition of a naval “quarantine” around the island. The uncertainty combined with the high stakes of a nuclear stand-off between two superpowers would’ve been enough to send DC’s elite searching for a place to grab a drink and seek out more news. As one of the few spots in Washington for power players of the day to blow off steam and exchange information, the tap room at the Press Club would’ve been packed.

Johnny Prokov, a Soviet émigré of Lithuanian decent, was working at the bar that night in a smoky atmosphere of heightened chatter. He had worked at the Press Club for three years and, like most bartenders, he would’ve been busy, juggling drink orders and cash while being friendly with regulars. Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that night shifts at bars move quickly. They’re exciting and exhausting at the same time.

So it’s understandable that in the midst of a hectic night, Prokov caught only a snippet of a conversation between two regulars. Warren Rogers, a reporter with the New York Herald Tribune was sharing a drink with the paper’s Washington bureau chief, Robert Donovan. Prokov overheard Donovan saying that he would fly south later in the night to “cover the operation to capture Cuba.” Prokov, however, misheard the conversation and didn’t catch the most important part of the entire exchange. It was to be Rogers, not Donovan, who would fly south “to cover the operation to capture Cuba” as part of the Pentagon’s approved list of media members…if the decision was made to invade Cuba. It was a pretty big “if” to miss. As we know, the president and his advisors had not decided to invade Cuba.

At the end of his shift, the snippet of conversation he thought he heard was stuck in his head. At closing, bartenders are usually pre-occupied with settling the tabs of the remaining customers, cleaning up and prepping the bar for the next day’s opening. It’s mundane. But as the bar was closing, Anatoly Gorsky, a KBG spy working under cover as a Soviet journalist from Tass, dropped by for a late night drink. Despite all the urban mythology surrounding the adeptness of Soviet espionage, Soviet intelligence gathering in the United States was rudimentary at the time. No one in the Kremlin knew Kennedy’s intentions. It must have come as quite a surprise to Gorsky when Prokov passed along what he thought he heard. In fact, it was such a surprise that Gorsky left without his nightcap and went straight to the Soviet embassy to send a message to Moscow about the exchange.

Seeking to confirm what appeared to be Kennedy’s intention to invade Cuba, a Soviet embassy official arranged to coincidentally run into Rogers the following morning. When asked by the embassy official if Kennedy means what he says, Rogers recalls saying, “You’re damn right he does. He will do what he says he will do.”

News of the encounter went directly to Khrushchev’s office. A personal assistant and translator to the Soviet Premier recalled the great alarm that Khrushchev felt upon reading the intelligence of the conversation. It was in this context that Khrushchev penned an emotional letter to Kennedy that outlined the possibility of a deal—a pledge by the United States to lift the quarantine and not invade Cuba in exchange for missiles being removed from the island. It was this letter that Kennedy and his advisors responded to and used as a framework to gradually deescalate the crisis.

One wonders what might have happened had the events at the National Press Club bar played out a little differently. What if Prokov accurately heard the exchange between Donovan and Rogers? Would he have passed the information along to Gorsky at all? If he had, would Gorsky have thought it important enough to report to Moscow right away? If Gorsky hadn’t, would Khrushchev have taken a tougher line; one that Kennedy couldn’t accept? Would events have then begun to spiral towards a war, possibly involving a nuclear exchange?

Nothing about the Cuban missile crisis was a foregone conclusion. Key events in history are often near-run things. No outcome is inevitable. Fate often turns on an individual’s decision, like deciding to share a misheard conversation with a bar patron who just happened to be a Soviet spy.

There other things we don’t know about that night. We don’t know what Rogers, Donovan or Gorsky ordered to drink that night, but we do know what the popular drinks were of the time: martinis, manhattans, Rob Roys, brandy Alexanders. So fix one of these and raise your glass to Johnny Prokov. He may be the reason we’re still around to toast anyone at all.

Paul Kan is Professor of National Security Studies at the US Army War College and a former bartender. This particular episode in the Cuban Missile Crisis is recounted in two excellent books: Michael Dobbs’ One Minute To Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War and William Taubman’s Khrushchev: A Man and his Era.

Cuba's Soviet Legacy: Inside the Caribbean island's unfinished nuclear power station that lays just 180 miles off the Florida coast

Daily Mail Online

Cuba is an nation full of 1950s automobiles but at one time the Caribbean island was almost a nuclear power, less than 100 miles from the United States coastline.

It was 1976 when Cuba’s revolutionary government, headed by Fidel Castro, was began looking for a solution to create a reliable and stable form of energy.

After talks between Cuba and the USSR, an agreement was reached to construct a twin-reactor nuclear plant near the southern town of Juragua.

Built with Russian money, it was suggested that just one of the reactors would provide enough energy to cater to 15% of Cuba. A new city was built in 1983 to house the site’s workers known as Ciudad Nuclear.

The United States were horrified at the idea of two 440-megawatt Soviet-built nuclear power reactors within 30 minutes flying time of the Florida coastline.

In the end, they need not have worried and it's unlikely that Cuba's nuclear power station will ever be completed. When the Soviet Union began to crumble in 1991, the completion date got pushed back to the mid-90s and the money began to dry up.

Now all that remains are the ruins of bigger political ambitions to provide true power to the people. 

Photographer Darmon Richter managed to sneak in and take some revealing photos. 

See the full collection here: http://www.thebohemianblog.com or www.facebook.com/TheBohemianBlog

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Cuba’s revolutionary government, headed by Fidel Castro, had long been looking for a solution in the form of nuclear energy

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The solution seemed to arrive in 1976, after talks between Cuba and the USSR resulted in an agreement to construct a twin-reactor nuclear plant

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The plant near the southern town of Juragua, was funded with Soviet money, with early projections suggesting that the completion of the first reactor alone would cater to over 15% of Cuba’s energy needs

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Construction began in 1983, as the foundations were lain for the two reactors along with a sizeable turbine hall at a site close to the Caribbean

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The United States, however, opposed Cuba’s nuclear program from the get-go. The Juragua site lays just 180 miles south of Florida

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The US was less than enthusiastic about having two 440-megawatt Soviet-built nuclear power reactors at their back door

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The fall of the Soviet Union had a crippling effect on the project. The money from Moscow dried up, and in September 1992, Fidel Castro announced the Juragua project temporarily suspended

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The first reactor was estimated somewhere around 90-97% complete, with 37% of equipment fully installed; the second reactor had not reached more than 30% completion

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There have been numerous talks about bringing the Cuban nuclear program back to life

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In 1995, the Russian Federation granted Cuba a $50 million loan for support work at the Juragua site. It still fell a long way short though, of the estimated $800 million required to complete the two reactors

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In 1997, an official from the Ministry of the Russian Federation stated their intention to resume construction of the Cuban nuclear power station

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President Vladimir Putin visited Cuba in 2000, and supposedly offered Fidel Castro $800 million with which to finish the project… which Castro refused

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in October 2013 Cuba’s new president, the younger brother Raúl Castro, accepted Russia’s gesture of ‘brotherly love’: and Putin cancelled $32 billion of debt owed by Cuba to the Soviet Union

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The building twisted in on itself, a labyrinthine knot of winding passages and worn stairvases

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The building contains various chambers including some with half-furnished with half-built apparatus, others open and bare

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A narrow alley runs between the security wall and the back of the turbine hall. Photographer Darmon Richter spotted a gap in the brickwork – a hole large enough to climb through, that had been hastily patched up with a few clinging strands of barbed wire

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The view from the top of the reactor on the sixteenth floor provides an overview of the doomed containment structure

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The bare chamber was riddled with deep holes and square pits that dropped away into darkness. According to some of the local stories the reactor went as far beneath the ground as above

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Other rooms contained pillars, festooned in switch boxes and wires… others with arms and frames presumably designed for holding something delicate

Hemming: "Lee Harvey Oswald was going to Cuba."

Assassination of JFK

Convinced by the Communists? Some theorize Soviets or Castro inspired Oswald to kill JFK

By Elisha Fieldstadt, NBC News

AFP / Getty Images

In 1961, the U.S. attacked newly socialist Cuba in the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion.

In 1962, Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev allied his country with Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro and constructed missiles on Cuban soil pointing at America — threatening to fire until the U.S. promised never to invade again.

In 1963, the president of the United States was assassinated.

Coincidence? 

“When Castro chose an alliance with the Soviet Union, it was more than our intelligence service could stand … it’s 90 miles off our shores,” said Bryan Ghent, an expert in the assassination of John F. Kennedy at Winthrop University.

So after JFK was shot, some couldn’t help but make a connection.

“Right wing activists very shortly after the assassination started blaming communism and Castro,” said John McAdams, the author of  “JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think about Claims of Conspiracy.”

Both Castro and Krushchev provide a path into what Ghent calls the “wonderful rabbit hole” of speculating and circular thinking around who killed Kennedy.

Keep reading on usnews >>

The Soviet Union Planned To Leave 100 Nukes On Cuba After The Cuban Missile Crisis

Fidel Castro and Anastas Mikoyan during the Russian diplomat's visit to Cuba in 1962 Photo: AP

Jon Swaine, The Telegraph 

The Soviet Union secretly planned to leave 100 nuclear weapons on Cuba after the end of the crisis but were so scared by Fidel Castro's instability that they made up a law to retrieve them.

Documents released by the US National Security Archive disclose how close Cuba came in 1962 to becoming Latin America's first nuclear power.

Minutes of a meeting with Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet deputy prime minister, show Castro was furious at the USSR ending the crisis by agreeing to remove its strategic missiles.

Unknown to Washington, the Soviets had left 100 tactical nuclear weapons on Cuba, and documents suggest they planned to train Cubans how to use them.

But Mikoyan was so concerned at Castro's erratic behaviour during a diplomatic visit that he wrote back to Moscow that they must urgently take back the remaining bombs.

"What do you think we are?" an emotional Castro asked during the four-hour November 22 meeting. "A zero on the Left, a dirty rag. We tried to help the Soviet Union to get out of a difficult situation."

Mikoyan was driven to cite a non-existent Soviet law banning the transfer of tactical nuclear weapons to other countries. "And when are you going to repeal that law?" Castro asked. "We will see," he said.

The documents, which came from the archives of Mikoyan's late son, feature in a new book titled The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/soviets-almost-left-100-nukes-on-cuba-2012-10#ixzz296V8dDEl