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.

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.

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.

Raúl Castro: "Con un pueblo como este se puede llegar al año 570 de la Revolución"

Cuba Hoy

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.

Castro to Pocket 92% of Worker Salaries from Foreign Companies

Breitbart

By Frances Martel

Just one day before President Obama announced sweeping changes that would allow potential American investment in Cuba, the Cuban government apparently had begun preparing itself by announcing new measures that would allow Cubans who work for foreign companies to keep only 8% of their salaries.

In an official announcement in state newspaper Granma, government officials announced a system in which employees who work for corporations with foreign capital will be paid two Cuban Pesos for every Convertible Cuban Peso (CUC) the corporation actually pays them. The Convertible Peso (CUP) is almost exclusively for the use of tourists and is of significantly greater value; one CUC is the equivalent of an American dollar and the equivalent of 26.5 CUPs. The other 24 CUPs Cuban workers will not receive amount to 92% of their salaries.
Granma explains:

The payment will now be agreed to with businesses possessing foreign capital taking into consideration the salaries issued to workers in jobs of similar complexity in entities in the same area or sector of our geographic area, the salary scale that is applied in the country (as a reference point) and some additional payments for the corresponding law.

In other words, even if a foreign company has the means to pay more than a Cuban company, the worker will receive the same salary as if he were working for a Cuban company, and the government will pocket the rest.
The Havana Times, an online publication dedicated to issues related to Cuba, notes that Zamira Marín Triana, vice-minister of Labor and Social Security, described the new laws as offering a “significant increase” for workers.
In addition to the 92% of salaries being pocketed by the Cuban government, Cuban government employment offices will charge 20% of the salary of each worker they connect to the corporation for the service of finding said corporation employees. Employees will also lose 9.09% of their salaries for “vacation time.”
The new measures, though enacted hours before the release of USAID worker Alan Gross and President Obama’s announcement of new trade measures, should inspire caution in American companies that would like to do work on the island. American companies would be keeping very little of the money they invest and earn in business on the island, while lining the pockets of the communist government. As Raúl Castro noted in his speech, the Cuban government made no concessions in this recent negotiation with the United States, save the freedom of Gross and one other American agent whom President Obama did not name, which leaves it open to sanctioning American companies who dare attempt to do business on the island as they see fit.

A Day in Infamy - Barack Obama’s Cuban Pact

canadafreepress

Anonimo

By Obie Usategui  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cuba and now America under dictatorship

canadafreepress

By Judi McLeod 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saving Comrade Castro

canadafreepress

By Daniel Greenfield 

Erik Ravelo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s exactly what Obama gave him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama chose to stand with Raul Castro and his Communist dictatorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

El Pichy Films

Habla madre de piloto de Hermanos al Rescate asesinado por los pilotos castristas

no olvidar que raul castro reconocio haber ordenado personalmente el derribo de las avionetas por el teniente coronel Lorenzo Alberto Pérez Pérez, piloto del MIG29 UB desde donde se lanzaron los misiles asesinos; también, el copiloto de Martínez, teniente coronel Francisco Pérez Pérez [hermanos].

AmericaTeVeCanal41

Horacio Cambeiro

Obama's Announcement: Issues of Credibility, Geo-Political Vision and Executive Overreach

capitolhillcubans

President Barack Obama has just announced a series of changes to Cuba policy, pursuant to a deal with dictator Raul Castro for the release American hostage, Alan Gross.

These policy changes are in addition to a prisoner exchange, in which three Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States have also been released.

(Please see our statement regarding the prisoner exchange here.)

These policy changes raise serious questions regarding the President's credibility and geo-political vision. They also represent an abuse of his executive authority under U.S. law.

As regards credibility --

Just last year, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee:

"[The Castro regime] has been attempting to trade Alan Gross for the five spies that are in prison here in the US, and we've refused to do that because there's no equivalency."

Yet, that -- in fact -- is what the Obama Administration has done today.

As regards geo-political vision --

President Obama has placed democracy in the Western Hemisphere on the chopping bloc.

In his remarks at noon, Obama cited China and Vietnam as examples of why the United States should normalize relations with Cuba.

So what exactly is the model that Obama seeks for Cuba?

Is it the "China model" whereby U.S. business helps to build the most lucrative dictatorship in human history?

A "Vietnam model" of state capitalism under an iron-fisted rule?

"Burma model" whereby reforms achieved through pressure are rolled back as soon as sanctions are lifted?

Raul Castro, Nicolas Maduro and their puppets revel in such models. But none should have a place -- geographically or politically -- in the Western Hemisphere.

In this hemisphere, every nation (except Cuba) made a commitment to representative democracy in 2001.

Today's announcement sends a message to the Western Hemisphere's wanna-be authoritarians that the U.S. now (once again) views such models as acceptable in the Americas.

Globally, it has sent a blueprint to the other nations on the U.S.'s state-sponsors of terrorism list (Iran, Sudan and Syria) of how to have that designation removed -- take an American hostage.

As regards executive powers --

U.S. policy towards Cuba was codified into law under the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, and the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000.

The policy changes announced by the President are an overreach of his executive powers under the law.

For example, the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (§910(b) of P.L. 106-387, Title IX), codified the ban on tourist activities, which are defined as any activity not expressly authorized in the 12 categories of travel set forth in the regulations. It further specified, "as such regulations were in effect on June 1, 2000."

Obama's announcement to issue a general license for all twelve categories of authorized travel exceed these regulations, as they were "in effect on June 1, 2000."

Moreover, the official legislative history of the law clarifies that the President has power to tighten economic sanctions, but not to ease them beyond the baseline set on March 1, 1996.

It reads:

"The conference substitute (subsection (102(h)) codifies the 'economic embargo of Cuba' as defined in section 4.  It is the intent of the committee of the conference that all economic sanctions in force on March 1, 1996 , shall remain in effect until they are either suspended or terminated pursuant to the authorities provided in section 204 of this Act (requiring a Presidential determination that a democratic transition is underway in Cuba).  It is not the intent of this section to prohibit executive branch agencies from amending existing regulations to tighten economic sanctions on Cuba or to implement the provisions of this act."

The banking and credit card portions of Obama's announcement exceed economic sanctions, as they were "in force on March 1, 1996."

Finally, under the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, there is a direct prohibition on "investment in domestic telecommunications services." Moreover, that an "investment" in the domestic telecommunications network within Cuba "includes the contribution (including by donation) of funds or anything of value to or for, and the making of loans to or for, such network."

It remains to be seen whether the telecommunications portion of Obama's announcement abides by this direct prohibition.

These are issues that the U.S. Congress should carefully look into.