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  • Ziva Sahl: Asombra, A majority U.S. liberal Jew’s voted for Obama… twice which IMO validates the possibility if not of...

  • asombra: They should have trotted Nosferatu out by now to gloat over Obama’s capitulation. I’m not saying he’s dead,...

  • asombra: And this is Argentina, which looks down on all the other Latrines, officially practicing this obscurantism, not Haiti. I assume...

  • TWFKAP: I need a drink.

  • asombra: I can see the chavista crowd going for this tripe, but Jews? Lord have mercy.

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Photos of the day: 56 years of Revolutionary fervor

unnamed (1)

More images from dissident Martha Beatriz Roque.

This building is in the town of Bejucal.  It was once a pharmacy.

Yeah. You already know about stuff like this.

Everything in Castrogonia is crumbling away, save for facilities that cater to tourists and foreign businessmen and diplomats.

unnamed (2)

But every now and then a reminder helps us all focus on the real culprit, especially in light of recent euphoria surrounding the potential lifting of the U.S. "blockade."

Those of us who knew pre-Castro Cuba can be devastated by these images.

It's a lot like having to stare at the rotting corpse of a murder victim while the murderers collect prizes for their heinous crime.

Raul-Castro-Fidel-Castro--007

Facts and subterfuge regarding the U.S. and Cuba proposals

Jerry Brewer in Mexidata.info:

Facts and Subterfuge regarding the U.S. and Cuba Proposals

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/378800000578427342/2ab34060b7f5a00fbc27fe38dfd8d20d.jpegThe Castro brother’s unscrupulously chosen Communist ideology, and iron-grip hold and rule of Cuba, has forced horrific sacrifices upon generations of Cubans for 55 years.

Neither Fidel nor Raul Castro, the latter having taken over the reins of dictatorial power in 2008, ever, even remotely, disguised their venomous hatred of the United States. As well, their combined goal – that guided them from the start – was to reach the country’s top leadership position and stay there.

Fidel Castro, while he was president, promoted cooperation and a growing involvement with Iran. Hereof he once stated, “Together we can bring America to its knees…. The US regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness close up.”

Many have fallen in defense of human rights and homeland freedoms in Cuba under this rogue regime, many fled the island, many disappeared, and far too many have faced ruthless and bloody confrontations and repression. And all of the people remaining in Cuba, as well as those expatriates now residing in other free nations, deserve respect and consideration from a watchful world of public opinion.

None of us in good conscience can ignore the atrocities of the Cuban government that continue to this day, part of a stranglehold to obstruct and silence peaceful protest and the opposition, as well as national journalists and other worldwide media reporting.

Since 1962, and up until recently, our democratic leaders have expressed the need for an embargo until such time that Cuba would “demonstrate” respect for human rights and liberty.

It is obvious that the arrogance of the Castro regime to date has not complied with essentially any aspect of that mandate.

As far back as 2003, the European Union accused the Cuban government of “continuing flagrant violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” As early as 2008, Cuba had the second highest number of imprisoned journalists of any nation in the world, behind only the People’s Republic of China.

Gladys Bensimon is an award winning multilingual producer and director who has spent much of her career exposing dictators and associated human rights violators. This author recently spoke with her about one of her films, “Celebrating Life in Union,” a factual docudrama narrated by the famed Cuban American actor Andy Garcia.

Bensimon’s courageous spirit and Garcia’s impassioned words powerfully and factually told the story of surviving ex-Cuban political prisoners that had been subjected to physical and mental torture, disfigured, and survived firing squads that killed so many by the tyrannical and oppressive regime.

In the sphere of espionage, it is important not to assume that the “poverty driven” Cuban government is sleeping. The Castros’ have always richly funded their spy apparatchik. Furthermore, Cuba continues to maintain large intelligence-gathering hubs in Mexico City and Venezuela, a fact that reveals continuing Cuban subversion in this hemisphere.

Continue reading HERE.

The true role of Cuba’s political prisoners in Obama’s deal with the apartheid Castro regime

Gary Varvel in the Washington Examiner:

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Wishful Thinking about Cuba

 

And now for some ecumenical magical realism in Argentina…

B5k4NDGIQAET8uz

Aaaaaaaaaaaaay!

This event seems too weird to be true, even by Latin American standards, but --like Argentina's claim on the Falkland Islands -- it's all too real.

Will any newspapers -- other than the Jerusalem Post and the hyper-tabloid  NY Daily News -- pick up on this stupendous manifestation of "magical realism" at work?

Will anyone other than insolent Cuban exiles suggest that Che Guevara might have been a seventh son under this peculiar Argentine curse?

Will any religious publications cover this controversial leap in ecumenism?   Or is this a story about the secularization of religion?

Will anyone point out that this Argentine superstition is wildly reminiscent of medieval anti-Semitism, and that this Jewish family seems all too comfortable with that?

(Could this story prove that Latin American culture has a gravitational pull equal to that of black holes?)

And is anyone going to point out that Queen Cristina may not offer the best protection against werewolves, given that she routinely consorts with Cuban vampires?

121560_12_181241

Here we go.... Hang on to your dentures.  This is one of the wildest rides you will ever take at the Latrine America Carnival.

Scary, yes, but at least it will get your mind off the Cuba policy changes announced recently by the current occupant of the White House.

Argentina werewolf

From The Independent

President of Argentina adopts Jewish godson to 'stop him turning into a werewolf'

The President of Argentina has adopted a young Jewish man as her godson to stop him turning into a werewolf.

President Christina Fernández de Kirchner met Yair Tawil and his family at her office last week to mark the unusual ceremony, which dates back more than 100 years.

According to Argentinian folklore, the seventh son born to a family turns into the feared “el lobison”.

The werewolf-like creature shows its true nature on the first Friday after boy’s 13th birthday, the legend says, turning the boy into a demon at midnight during every full moon, doomed to hunt and kill before returning to human form.

As well as feeding on excrement, unbaptized babies, and the flesh of the recently dead, the lobison was said to be unnaturally strong and able to spread its curse with a bite.

Fear of the lobison was so rife in 19th Century Argentina that some families abandoned or even murdered baby boys – an atrocity that sparked the unusual Presidential practice of adoption, aimed at stopping the deadly stigma.

Starting in 1907, the tradition was formally established by a decree in 1973 by Juan Domingo Peron, which also extended the practice to baby girls.

Seventh sons or daughters – now much rarer than 100 years ago – gain the President as their official godparent as well as a gold medal and full educational scholarship.

Even now, reports of dog-like creatures attacking livestock continue, as does the tradition.

Ms Fernandez said Yair is the first Jewish boy to be adopted, as the tradition only applied to Catholic children until 2009.

Argentine seventh son of a seventh son

Pamfilio Guevara, Argentine seventh son of a seventh son:  "I fully support President Obama's new Cuba initiative and am convinced that the lifting of the U.S. blockade will eventually remove my curse."

 

The Cuban Archipelago: An American president extends the life of an evil tyranny

Jamie Glazov in Frontpage Magazine:

The Cuban Archipelago

http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cubaprison-450x296.jpgCrazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl.

—Che Guevara, Motorcycle Diaries

President Obama’s recent move to cozy up to Communist Cuba is a crucially  important moment not just diplomatically, but as a moral one in regards to human rights, dignity and justice. As we witness a Radical-in-Chief throwing an economic lifeline to a barbaric tyranny, it is our duty and obligation to shine a light on the dark tragedy of the Cuban Gulag — and to reflect on the unspeakable suffering that Cubans have endured under Castro’s fascistic regime.

Until July 26, 2008, Fidel Castro had ruled Cuba with an iron grip for nearly five decades. On that July date in 2008, he stood to the side because of health problems and made his brother, Raul, de facto ruler. Raul officially replaced his brother as dictator on February 24, 2008; the regime has remained just as totalitarian as before and can, for obvious reasons, continue to be regarded and labelled as “Fidel Castro’s” regime.

Having seized power on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro followed the tradition of Vladimir Lenin and immediately turned his country into a slave camp. Ever since, Cuba has distinguished itself as one of the most monstrous human-rights abusers in the world.

Half a million human beings have passed through Cuba’s Gulag. Since Cuba’s total population is only around eleven million, that gives Castro’s despotism the highest political incarceration rate per capita on earth. There have been more than fifteen thousand executions by firing squad. Torture has been institutionalized; myriad human-rights organizations have documented the regime’s use of electric shock, dark coffin-sized isolation cells, and beatings to punish “anti-socialist elements.” The Castro regime’s barbarity is best epitomized by the Camilo Cienfuegos plan, the program of horrors followed in the forced-labor camp on the Isle of Pines. Forced to work almost naked, prisoners were made to cut grass with their teeth and to sit in latrine trenches for long periods of time. Torture is routine.[i]

The horrifying experience of Armando Valladares, a Cuban poet who endured twenty-two years of torture and imprisonment for merely raising the issue of freedom, is a testament to the regime’s barbarity. Valladares’s memoir, Against All Hope, serves as Cuba’s version of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Valladares recounts how prisoners were beaten with bayonets, electric cables, and truncheons. He tells how he and other prisoners were forced to take “baths” in human feces and urine.[ii]

Typical of the horror in Castro’s Gulag was the experience of Roberto López Chávez, one of Valladares’s prison friends. When López went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses in the prison, the guards withheld water from him until he became delirious, twisting on the floor and begging for something to drink. The guards then urinated in his mouth. He died the next day.[iii]

Since Castro’s death cult, like other leftist ideologies, believes that human blood purifies the earth—and since manifestations of grief affirm the reality of the individual, and thus are anathema to the totality—mourning for the departed became taboo. Thus, just like Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia,[iv] so too Castro’s Cuba warned family members of murdered dissidents not to cry at their funerals.[v]

Continue reading HERE.

The top 10 lies in Obama’s Cuba speech

Breitbart's Joel Pollack exhibits great generosity by whittling President Obama's lies during his Cuba speech to just the top 10 (Frances Martel has the full scope of Obama's lies vis-à-vis Cuba's murderous apartheid dictatorship in a line-by-line dissection HERE):

Top 10 Lies in Obama’s Cuba Speech

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President Barack Obama unveiled a new U.S. policy toward Cuba on Wednesday as part of a deal that brought American Alan Gross home in exchange for three convicted Cuban spies. As he has done so often in the past, Obama tried to channel the perspective of America’s enemies and critics, as if his job were to act as a neutral mediator instead of defending U.S. interests and values. In the course of his address, Obama told American ten major lies, both of omission and commission.

Here they are, in order of appearance:

1. No mention of the Cuban missile crisis. “I was born in 1961 just over two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba….Over the next several decades, the relationship between our countries played out against the backdrop of the Cold War and America’s steadfast opposition to communism.” Cuba’s role in helping the Soviet Union project a direct threat to the U.S. mainland is carefully elided (though Obama, as he has done before, refers to his own birth as a kind of watershed.)

2. Suggesting that the president can establish a U.S. embassy on his own. “Going forward, the United States will reestablish an embassy in Havana and high ranking officials will visit Cuba.” An embassy needs to be funded by Congress, and needs an ambassador to be approved by the Senate. None of that is going to happen–nor should it, especially after the disastrous experiment in re-establishing an embassy in Syria, which Obama did in 2009, to no good effect whatsoever.

3. No mention of Cuba’s role in repressing democracy abroad. “Cuba has sent hundreds of healthcare workers to Africa to fight Ebola.” Yes, and Cuba has also sent experts in repression to Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Cuban agents also allegedly beat and raped Venezuelan protestors earlier this year. For decades, Cuba assisted guerrilla armies abroad, fomenting bloody revolution in some countries and propping up communist regimes elsewhere. It continues to do so.

4. Suggesting that Cuba does not support 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.” Yet Cuba was caught, only last year, smuggling “missile equipment” to North Korea, the dictatorship that targeted America with a cyber-terror attack on the day Obama announced the new Cuba policy. Cuba continues to offer other kinds of support to terrorists.

5. False claim that the U.S. is to blame for lack of information in Cuba. “I believe in the free flow of information. Unfortunately, our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe.” This is perhaps the most offensive lie of all, since Gross was detained for trying to help Cubans access technology. The reason Cubans lack news and communication is because the regime censors them brutally, not because of the U.S. embargo.

Continue reading HERE.

#YoTambienExijo: First public challenge of Cuba’s apartheid regime after Obama’s alliance with the Castro dictatorship to take place December 30th

According to President Obama, his most recent appeasement and complete capitulation to the vicious apartheid dictatorship of the Castro brothers is actually a cleverly designed plan to achieve greater freedoms and liberties for Cuba's oppressed and enslaved people. However, we have yet to learn how exactly offering an economic lifeline to a murderous and criminal dictatorship on the verge of economic collapse will accomplish that. Nevertheless, tomorrow, December 30, 2014, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera will attempt to challenge the Castro mafia and hold a non-violent open-mike event in the so-called Plaza of the Revolution, providing a stage and microphone for any Cuban to come up and speak their mind.

Bruguera's campaign is titled #YoTambienExijo: "I also demand." And on Tuesday, the world will learn if Obama's early Christmas gift to the murderous Castro brothers is paying off in spades or if life in Cuba continues to be a living hell as it was before, during, and continues to be since the great Obama capitulation to Cuba's apartheid dictatorship. Considering the fact that Bruguera has already been threatened by Castro State Security with both legal and personal consequences if she continues with her event, it does not look very good for Cubans who want to speak out publicly for human rights and democracy. All we can do hope and pray.

Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter has more on the event:

Performance art as a test for free speech in Cuba

I also demand...

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Rosa María Payá Acevedo... "I also demand" ... "Plebiscite Cuba"

Tania Bruguera, is an internationally recognized installation and performance artist. She is also the daughter of Miguel Bruguera, "a Cuban Political Advisor to the Cuban Embassy in Paris and ambassador to Lebanon and Panama." She is a daughter of the nomenklatura. This may provide some protection for a dissenting voice.

Five years ago in April of 2009 she organized a performance art piece that sparked a debate over free speech in Cuba outside of the island and she is at it again.

This time she is moving her performance art piece to the Plaza of the Revolution and has scheduled it for December 30, 2014 at 3:00pm and has also organized a virtual campaign through Facebook with the hashtag #YoTambienExijo (#ITooDemand) that is also being promoted by Yoani Sanchez through her twitter and online news publication 14 y Medio. This is an open invitation made by Tania which states:

The idea is go to the Plaza the 30th of December at 3pm sharp to talk and peacefully converse about what is worrying us in these moments. To be together letting others know what we think and why, in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect.

Let there be diversity of opinions and topics to talk and discuss together. We do not have an agenda or seek a particular ideological line: we just want people to come, come those who so far have not found a place to share their doubts or experiences or do not feel represented by alternative spaces that have already been created.

Meanwhile in Miami to draw further attention to this performance art piece being held in Havana a second one is planned to be held outside the Freedom Tower in Downtown Miami.An open microphone where in the same spirit described above individuals can come and speak their minds for one minute.

It is being organized by Rosa María Payá Acevedo who has adopted the hashtag #YoTambienExijo (#ITooDemand) and added a second hash tag #PLEBISCITOCUBA (#PlebisciteCuba).

On Tuesday, December 30 at 3:00pm keep an eye out for these acts of performance art that are also a test for free speech and the totalitarian security apparatus in Cuba.

If I have the opportunity to attend on Tuesday this what I would say:

"Four things have to take place for Cuba to begin the transition to democracy and national reconciliation: 1. Free and internationally supervised free elections need to be held in Cuba after the Constitution is changed so that the Communist Party monopoly is ended and rights are respected. 2. All political prisoners need to be freed. 3. An international and transparent investigation needs to be carried out into the deaths of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero. 4. The individuals in the chain of command that ordered and carried out the shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes on February 24, 1996 and the sinking of the "13 de Marzo" tugboat on July 13, 1994 need to be held accountable before a court of law." Finally, I would recommend that all representatives of organizations who are present consider signing the Democracy Accord.

Needless to say that you can say a lot in just one minute when you put your mind to it.

You can also read more about #YoTambienExijo at Capitol Hill Cubans.

Rand Paul’s Cluelessness on Cuba (i.e. este tipo es come-mierda–o se hace?)

rand-paulraul2

"Now where have we previously heard Senator Rand Paul’s cliché-fest that constitutes his rebuttal to Senator Marco Rubio on Cuba sanctions?

Well, from The Council on Foreign Relations to the New York Times and from Hillary Clinton to The Congressional Black Caucus—and that’s for starters....

And oh! We also heard it repeatedly from every SINGLE one of the KGB-trained Cuban spies convicted by U.S. juries recently!

“But the embargo hasn’t worked,” continue the talking points that appear on the anti-embargo teleprompter. “After half a century the Castro regime still stands. So why should we continue this failed policy?”

Please excuse (genuine) Cuba-watchers for rolling their eyes when—like clockwork--this false premise kicks-off every embargo debate. To wit:"

Our friends at Townhall help disseminate a few items utterly unknown outside the microscopic Cuban-American informational ghetto.

Fideless: The last Christmas with Fidel Castro

By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo in Post Revolution Mondays:

Fideless

Last Christmas with Fidel Castro

December is a sad month, precious, blue-lit and dreamily silent. I was born in this month. And in this month, in a year not so distant as it now appears, I shall return to Cuba with a Nobel Prize in Literature, the first of the Cuban Nobels, which I will rub in the face of the dictatorship that we will still have in Cuba by that date, and of which prize money I will use unto my ruination to hasten our liberty.

December is over before it barely starts. It is an atemporal month, achronological, almost uchronic [imaginary], outside the calendar, at the border of that mystery which is the changing year.

We are others, and we die piece by piece every December. In fact, almost never do all of us who started out the year reach the end of it. We who gather together this month do not know if we will get to the next month a year from now. Death reaps the best among us. Every December there are fewer and fewer Cubans left. We survivors are the worst, we are the one discarded, even by the gods.

This Christmas 2014 is also our first Death Celebration* without the dictator, who died on us without ever facing justice. With Fidel deceased ** (1926-2014), all now seems easy, expeditious, unnecessary. The Revolution was a nightmare had by a few million. The memory is renewed at a vertiginous velocity. In a little while, the new Cubans will not know or be able to spell the unnameable name of Fidel Castro – which in a few months will barely resonate in the curriculum for the Prehistory of the Nation, dissolved by the virtue of apathy and the amnesia of new generations.

The death of the hegemonic one has surprised us all. He didn’t even say goodbye, the jerk, just as he didn’t announce his arrival but rather imposed it by death blows, lies and evil. Fidel Castro has gone forever from our nation and he has left us incredulous and distrustful, to the point that we prefer to not pay attention to this historic milestone. We still do not believe ourselves to be alone, without the delirious despot. We will not believe it, either, when his brother Raúl Castro announces it to us, surrounded by his octogenarian military elite — perhaps on January 28, 2015, to make Fidel’s death coincide with the birth of José Martí.

But today once again is Christmas. Part of the lost country will gather together the best of its spirit on this date. Hope will cease to be a congenital illness, and the blue light of the child-god will warm our home-mangers, making them less awful, making us less perverse in being human zeroes who aspire to be human beings,*** after a half-century or half- millennium of multitudinarially murdering each other over nothing.

It is Christmas once again, my soul brothers and sisters, and in 2015 will shine the words that for centuries should have been spoken among Cuban, but which have remained buried by the string of tyrants that have brought about our unnecessary independence. Perhaps it is the season to grow closer to being a civilization of free cosmopolitans and move ourselves away from Slaveamerican barbarity.

It is Christmas, and I love you all.

Translator’s Notes:

*The author is making a play on words in Spanish, using the common name for Christmas, “Navidades” (Nativity) to contrast with the quasi-rhyming word for morbidity, “Morbilidades.” 

**An alliterative play on words – deceased in Spanish is “fallecido.” 

*** A play on words in Spanish – the word for “zeroes” sounds very similar to the word for “beings”

Meanwhile, without any “blockade,” Venezuela becomes more like Cuba with each passing day….

heladeriacoromoto27122014.520.360

In his Cuba policy speech last week the current occupant of the White House blamed the U.S. embargo for Castrogonia's lack of internet access.

He also intimated that most of Castrogonia's woes -- including its political repression -- should be blamed on the isolation imposed on it by the U.S. since 1960.

To top it off, he had the audacity of claiming that genuine change will be magically brought about through the lifting of sanctions.

Many people --way too many -- share all of these assumptions.

Too bad that none of these people are looking at Venezuela, which is rapidly becoming a carbon copy of Castrogonia, without any embargo or sanctions (save for a few minor banking restraints placed on top Chavistas).

Venezuela -- which long ago turned into a poisoned nation (Venenozuela) and a Soviet-style colony of the Castro regime (Caracastan) -- offers ample convincing proof that communism and the so-called 21st century socialism embraced by many Latin American leaders is a total failure.

But do notice, however, that without an embargo or sanctions, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro blames all of Venezuela's problems on his enemies, real or imagined.

Communists always have to blame someone else for the disasters they cause.

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From the keep-calm-and-search-for-local-colour  experts at the BBC:

Venezuela's milk shortage closes famous ice cream shop

A Venezuelan ice cream shop, popular with tourists for its record-breaking range of flavours, has temporarily closed because of a shortage of milk.

Coromoto, in the city of Merida in the Venezuelan Andes, is the latest to fall victim to the country's economic woes.

The shop is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for having 863 different exotic-tasting ice creams.

Venezuela has been hit by acute shortages of certain staples, such as milk and toilet paper, in recent years.

The economic slowdown, high rates of inflation and strict controls on foreign exchange are all seen as contributing factors that have led to the crisis.

"We are closed during the season due to shortage of milk," the ice-cream store announced (in Spanish) on its Facebook page.

Eukaris Castillo, one of the employees, told BBC Mundo that the decision was made after customers complained that the flavours on offer were not as many as advertised.

Manuel da Silva, the shop's owner, decided it was best to close the parlour during the holiday season, because he doesn't want the reputation of his store to be affected, Ms Castillo said.

She said that it was hard to find milk in ordinary shops and the price on the black market had increased six-fold in recent months, making it unprofitable for Coromoto to offer all its usual flavours.

Coromoto, which offers ice cream flavours ranging from beer to beans, hopes to re-open in mid-January.

President Nicolas Maduro has seen his popularity ratings fall over the shortages, which he blames on political opponents waging an "economic war" against him.

The opposition, however, accuse the socialist government of Mr Maduro and that of his predecessor in office, Hugo Chavez, of mismanaging the economy for the past 15 years they have been in office.

130404210402-venezuela-maduro-nicolas-040413-story-top

Why checks and balances? Check out Venezuela today

 

Why we isolated Cuba for 53 years

A few facts for those who continue to fall for the canard that the past five decades of U.S. policy towards Cuba's repressive and murderous apartheid dictatorship has been a failure.

Lee Edwards in The Daily Signal:

Why We Isolated Cuba for 53 Years

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Contrary to what President Obama has asserted, U.S. sanctions have worked. Communist Cuba is so economically weak it cannot export Marxism-Leninism as in the past, and pro-democracy advocates have become emboldened.

For more than five decades, presidents, Democratic and Republican, politically isolated and economically sanctioned Communist Cuba for the best of reasons. Here are four of them:

  1. Cuba has been a communist prison since Fidel Castro came to power. From 1959 through the late 1990s, more than 100,000 Cubans were placed in forced labor camps, prisons and other places of incarceration. Between 15,000 and 17,000 people were shot. Castro justified his reign of terror with these words: “The revolution is all; everything else is nothing."
  2. Communist Cuba exported Marxism-Leninism throughout Latin America, in Colombia, Guatemala, Venezuela and especially Nicaragua, which was taken over by the Marxist Sandinistas in the late 1970s. Another target was the small island nation of Grenada, which was to function as the third leg of a communist triangle of Cuba, Grenada and Nicaragua. President Reagan foiled the communists’ plans by freeing Grenada from a pro-Moscow radical regime. As a Venezuelan communist leader explained, the Cuban revolution was like a “detonator.”
  3. Communist Cuba often provided the ground troops for the Soviet Union’s strategy of inciting Third World revolution, especially in Africa. From 1975 to 1989, according to “The Black Book of Communism,” Cuba was the major supporter of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Castro sent an expeditionary force of 50,000 men to Angola, explaining in part why for decades Moscow propped up the Castro regime in the amount of $5 billion a year.
  4. Communist Cuba brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when it allowed the Soviet Union to build sites for offensive nuclear missiles aimed at major cities in the United States. Castro knew what he was doing: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev has said that Castro requested a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States.

As The Washington Post editorialized, President Obama pledged to lift economic sanctions and establish diplomatic relations at the precise moment when Venezuela’s economic miseries seriously threatened its huge billion-dollar subsidies of Cuba and when more and more Cubans were pressuring the Castro regime to allow fundamental human freedoms.

The Castro regime was on the ropes, but in the words of Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez, “Castroism has won.” Today, Fidel must be smiling and lighting up a large El Rey del Mondo cigar in his Havana palace.

Obama’s sweetheart deal for Cuba’s repressive apartheid dictatorship mired in questions and secrecy

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What else would you expect from the most transparent administration EVAH!

Via Capitol Hill Cubans:

Why Isn't Obama Being Transparent About His Deal With Cuba's Regime?

When President Obama first took office in 2009, he declared that "transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing."

Well, either Obama is not being transparent about his secret deal with Cuban dictator Raul Castro.

Or the deal is even worse than we thought.

In exchange for a myriad of concessions from the United States, the Castro regime was supposed to release 53 political prisoners.

Apparently, Obama was unaware that the Castro regime has been trading political prisoners for concessions for decades -- just ask Jimmy Carter -- and then re-arrests them (or new ones) later.

However, no negotiated political prisoner release has ever been surrounded with such silence and mystery -- or lack of "transparency" -- as the current 53.

As Reuters reported this morning:

"Cuba's most prominent dissidents say they have been kept in the dark by U.S. officials over a list of 53 political prisoners who will be released from jail as part of a deal to end decades of hostility between the United States and Cuba. For years, dissident leaders have told the United States which opponents of Cuba's communist government were being jailed or harassed, but they say they were not consulted when the list of prisoners to be freed was drawn up or even told who is on it. The lack of information has stoked concern and frustration among the dissidents, who worry that the secret list is flawed and that genuine political prisoners who should be on it will be left to languish."

According to Obama, the Castro regime also agreed to release a Cuban, U.S. intelligence asset, who is widely believed to be Rolando Sarraff Trujillo.

Sarraff Trujillo was exchanged for three Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S., including one serving a life sentence for a conspiracy to kill Americans.

As if this 1-for-3 deal wasn't bad enough, there's still no information about Sarraff or his whereabouts.

As Reuters also reports, "his parents said they are desperate to hear from their son as they haven't spoken with him since before Obama's Dec. 17 announcement."

Meanwhile, former spy and double agent, Bill Gaede, who worked closely with Sarraff in the 1990s, has shed further doubts:

"The only reason people strongly suspected that the mysterious spy might be Rolando Sarraff Trujillo (a.k.a. Roly) is that his family can't find him. Cuban prison officials told them that their son had been transferred, but not to worry about him. He was in 'good hands'. Certainly, Roly fit most of the description made by Obama at his press conference announcing reestablishment of relations with Cuba: a Cuban intelligence officer locked up for 20 years for providing cryptographic information that led to the capture of the aforementioned spies. So who else could it be? And if in addition the Obama Administration 'carelessly leaks' the name through 'unidentified official' sources, we have the makings of what appears to be 'disinformation'. This speculation is reinforced by Roly's resume. It certainly meets the '20 years' part. It does not even come close to meeting the part about 'cryptography and the capturing of the Cuban spies'. There's a contradiction somewhere. Either the secret spy is not Roly or President Obama is lying through every corner of his mouth."

Needless to say, we believe the President of the United States over a former double-agent like Gaede.

But Obama's lack of transparency is not making it easy.

A short but important history lesson for Obama on the terrorist Castro regime in Cuba

John Suarez in Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:

President Obama the February 24, 1996 shoot down was a premeditated act of state terrorism

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." - Inner Party member O'Brien in George Orwell’s 1984

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Murdered, 2/24/96 in a conspiracy carried out by Castro regime and its spy network

In the rush to "normalize" relations with a totalitarian regime that systematically represses human rights and murders not only its own nationals but foreign nationals as well, including American citizens; President Barack Obama sought on December 19, 2014 to rewrite history in a Orwellian fashion stating during a year end press conference:

"So, with respect to sabotage, I mean, my understanding of the history, for example, of the plane being shot down, it’s not clear that that was the Cuban government purposely trying to undermine overtures by the Clinton administration. It was a tragic circumstance that ended up collapsing talks that had begun to take place. I haven't seen a historical record that suggests that they shot the plane down specifically in order to undermine overtures by the Clinton government."

Mr. President the events surrounding the February 24, 1996 shoot down began weeks in advance with the dictatorship planning the shoot down and using his spy network to obtain information to advance the conspiracy. It is true that the shoot down was not meant to undermine overtures by the Clinton administration and although it paused the process by the end of 2000 President Clinton had shaken Fidel Castro's hand and a few months later opened cash and carry trade with the dictatorship. However it was not a "tragic circumstance" but a conspiracy to destroy Brothers to the Rescue while at the same time taking attention away from a crack down on a national gathering of the democratic opposition.

Continue reading HERE.