U.S. Southern Command warns congress of growing threat to national security by Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea

The media and “Cuba Experts” portray Cuba as friendly neighbor who just wants to get along with the U.S. In reality, the island’s terror-sponsoring dictatorship has been and continues to be a serious threat to U.S. national security.

Via the Center for a Free Cuba:

Southern Command alerts Congress to threats by Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and North Korea. American diplomats suffered brain injuries in Havana

  • Southern Command alerts Congress to threats by Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and North Korea.
  • American diplomats suffered brain injuries in Havana.

Earlier this week, Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, Commander, United States Southern Command testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Admiral’s posture statement covered U.S. intelligence and security concerns for the hemisphere. In his appraisal he mentioned Russia’s increased role throughout the region, mentioning Moscow’s intelligence and cyber capabilities. The Admiral called attention to “Moscow attempts to falsely shape Latin America’s information environment through its two dedicated Spanish-language news and multi-media services, and through its influence campaigns to sway public sentiment. Expanded port and logistics access in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela provide Russia with persistent, pernicious presence, including more frequent maritime intelligence collection and visible force projection in the Western Hemisphere.”

He alerted the Committee to the dangerous alliance between Caracas and Havana.  “This relationship is symbiotic, as Cuba receives oil and financial support in exchange for keeping the Maduro regime afloat,” he said.

For the full report visit the following link. Complete testimony available here.

Reports from Cuba: Six Cuban activist denied right to leave the country for reasons of ‘national security’

Julio Antonio Aleaga Pesant reports in 14yMedio from Havana via Translating Cuba:

Six Cuban Activists Denied Right To Leave The Country For Reasons Of “National Security”

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Aimara Peña was one of the activists who was not allowed to travel to Argentina this weekend.

Cuban authorities refused to allow six activists to travel to Argentina to participate in a workshop on “electoral process,” according to information provided to 14ymedio this Sunday by Julio Aleaga, member of the independent platform Candidates for Change (CxC).

“There were ten activists planning to travel to Argentina this weekend, but only four were able to do so, with no information about why some were allowed to go and others were not. There were two forms of repression: some were informed at José Martí Airport that they were prohibited from leaving because of ‘national security’ interests, and others were stopped before they arrived” at the terminal, Aleaga said.

The activists are member of different organizations including CxC, Independent and Democractic Cuba, and the #Otro18 [Another 2018].

“Neither Midiaysis Marrero nor Niurka Carmona were allowed to board the flight to Buenos Aires, Niurka was arrested at the airport on Saturday and told that she was barred from leaving due to matters of national security,” Aleaga said.

The opponent Juan Antonio Madrazo Luna was also prevented from boarding the flight and, according to what he told this newspaper, also prevented from leaving were María Mercedes Benítez (from #Otro18), José Ramón Polo (from Dialog Roundtable), and a third person not yet identified.

According to Madrazo, a police patrol car stopped the taxi in which he was heading to the airport and he was taken by officers of the National Revolutionary Police to the 10th of October Police Station. Madrazo explains that once there they asked him many questions about an alleged relationship with the opposition platform ‘Cuba Decides’, since that movement’s “propaganda had appeared” in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood.

Among the four activists who managed to travel are Juan Moreno, lawyer Amado Calixto (both from CxC) and independent candidate Aimara Peña, resident in Las Tozas, Sancti Spíritus.

Restrictions imposed on activists by the authorities with the objective of preventing them from participating in events outside the Island have increased significantly in the last year.

Along with the arbitrary arrests, threats and confiscation of the equipment and supplies they use to carry out their work, refusal to allow them to leave the country is part of the government’s repressive measures, according to reports gathered by independent organizations such as the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Since the Government of Raul Castro approved the travel and immigration reform measures of January 2013, the presence of Cuban human rights activists in international meetings and forums has been notable. But at present there are many opponents who have been arbitrarily prevented from being able to accept the invitations to attend these events.

Police kidnappings of activists on their way to the airport, exit “regulations” imposed, legal cases that prevent the activist from leaving the country, and threats of reprisals if he or she “misbehaves” abroad, are some of the pressures denounced by the activists.

Brutal leftist dictatorships have found a friend in Pope Francis and the Vatican, and they are taking advantage of the friendship

Since the arrival of Pope Francis, it appears the Vatican has gone from an advocate for the oppressed to an advocate for the oppressors. Brutal and oppressive leftist dictatorships have found a friend in Pope Francis and the Vatican and not surprisingly, they are taking advantage of that friendship.

Via the Catholic Herald:

How despots exploit Vatican foreign policy

The Holy See is doing little to challenge authoritarian regimes

Could it be that the Holy See under Pope Francis is curiously indulgent of authoritarian regimes? The Holy Father is an undisputed friend of the downtrodden, but it sometimes seems that he is also a friend to those who tread upon them, especially if they are on the left side of the political spectrum.

The comments of Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo on China will not, it can be expected, be repeated by other Vatican prelates. Global incredulity and barbed ridicule rained down upon the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Science and the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences after he held up China as a model of Catholic social teaching. Consequently, it is likely that others inclined to profess admiration for those in Beijing who persecute the Catholic Church, procure compulsory abortions and pollute the air with reckless abandon will now keep their mouths shut.

It would be grossly unfair to associate the Sinophancy of Bishop Sánchez Sorondo with any others in the Holy See. Yet the chancellor, who has served since 1998 and is now 75, has grown in prominence since the election of his fellow Argentine, Pope Francis, in 2013. He has turned the academies away from scholarly exchanges toward political activism of a leftist sort. While the propaganda turn for the Chinese regime was an unusual step, to be sure, it does fit a pattern of what one might mischievously consider a preferential option for the left, even when the regimes in question are tyrannical.

Of course, the priorities of the political left can fit within the broad principles in Catholic social teaching. In his 2016 book Without Roots, Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “In many respects democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.”

When The Economist accused Pope Francis of sounding like a Leninist, he told an Italian newspaper that “the communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the centre of the Gospel.”

Yet while the Holy See stands in solidarity with the poor, there is also a recent pattern of it associating itself with those who oppress them – often, but not always, on the left.

[…]

In 2015, the Pope’s trip to Bolivia included the world meeting of popular movements, at which Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president, took a prominent role. It can be debated precisely where on the socialist-Marxist-communist spectrum Morales fits, but there is no doubt that he belongs in the parade of leftists of authoritarian tendencies that have plagued Latin America. Morales himself gave a hint of where he sees himself when he infamously gave the Holy Father a blasphemous “crucifix” of Jesus nailed upon a hammer and sickle.

Two months after the Bolivian visit, Francis added Cuba to the front end of his trip to the United States, a follow-up to the Holy See’s role helping the US and Cuba to reopen diplomatic relations. Earlier that year, Raúl Castro received an unusually warm welcome at the Vatican. The warmth towards the Castros continued in Havana. Victims of the Castro brothers’ 50-plus years of oppression were not accorded a papal reception. Taking the measure of the Vatican diplomacy, Castro tightened the screws on religious freedom after the papal visit.

No matter, a few months later, in early 2016, Pope Francis honoured Castro with another papal visit, this time a short layover for the historic meeting with Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Read the entire article HERE.

After being told he was not welcomed, Venezuela’s boorish dictator Nicolas Maduro threatens to crash Latin American summit

Nicolas Maduro, Cuba’s puppet dictator in Venezuela, is threatening to crash a Latin American summit in Peru after being informed his presence there was not welcomed. With the support of his puppeteers in Havana and dictatorships in Nicaragua and Bolivia, Maduro is boldly stating he intends on attending the summit and will crash the party although the boorish despot has been told he will not be received.

Via Reuters in Stabroek News:

“Do you fear me?”: Venezuela’s Maduro vows to gatecrash regional summit

Venezuela’s unpopular socialist president Nicolas Maduro said yesterday his right-wing Latin American counterparts showed intolerance by trying to exclude him from an upcoming summit in Lima – and he vowed to go anyway.

“Do you fear me? You don’t want to see me in Lima? You’re going to see me. Because come rain or shine, by air, land, or sea, I will attend the Summit of the Americas,” Maduro told foreign journalists at the Miraflores presidential palace.

Peru’s centre-right government this week said Maduro would not be welcome at the April summit, reinforcing his growing diplomatic isolation during a crackdown on dissent and a brutal economic crisis in Venezuela.

Later on Thursday, Peru’s Prime Minister Mercedes Araoz told journalists that Maduro “really needs to understand that in Peru we don’t want to receive him.”

[…]

Maduro can still count on support from leftist allies including Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. And Communist-run Cuba’s Foreign Ministry also said it rejected Venezuela’s exclusion from the summit and vowed “unshakeable solidarity” with Maduro’s government.

Venezuela, home to the world’s biggest crude reserves, has further backing from global giants China and Russia, which have both lent Caracas billions of dollars. Still, even their support has cooled somewhat during a fifth straight year of recession and widespread accusations of mismanagement and corruption.

Read the entire article HERE.

Marriott International bows to pressure from communist China, apologizes for ‘wrongful Twitter like’

One of the funniest ironies you will find in those who invoke “freedom” to justify their right to do business with despotic and corrupt dictatorships is how quickly and easily they are willing to give up their own freedom to continue doing business with despotic and corrupt dictatorships.

Via the Dissident:

Marriott’s “Wrongful Twitter Like” and the New Chinese Censorship

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February 13 marks Tibetan Independence Day. One hundred and five years ago today, the 13th Dalai Lama broke away from the collapsing Qing Empire and proclaimed Tibet an independent nation. Since 1951, however, Tibet has been occupied by the People’s Republic of China. The 14th Dalai Lama lives in exile in Dharamsala, India. Any mention of him on the international stage is enough to send Beijing and its minions into fits of apoplexy.

Unfortunately, not only is Tibet today occupied territory, but global corporations are falling all over themselves to apologize for even suggesting that Tibet is anything but an “integral part” of China. Why? Because they desperately fear losing access to the lucrative Chinese market, either because of an edict from Beijing or after drowning in a sea of online nationalist outrage whipped up by tabloid media.

The seemingly endless CEO apology tour began in January, when it was discovered that Delta Airlines listed Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as countries separate from China on their website. The Civil Aviation Administration of China “demanded an ‘immediate and public apology’” from Delta, which it swiftly received. Chinese state-backed media reported that 24 airlines had similar online country categorizations, prompting a flurry of self-correction.

Marriott International was next. The global hotel chain’s website and booking app were blocked in China until amends were made.

However, Marriott’s sins went further than listing Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as independent countries. It was soon discovered that an employee had “wrongfully liked” a tweet posted by the human rights NGO Friends of Tibet. The employee was promptly sacked. Next, among the stacks of cardboard display books in a Marriott hotel lobby in Chongli, a mock copy of David Kilgour and David Matas’ Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for Their Organs was discovered. A Marriott representative confirmed that hotel management was “assisting” the Chinese state security services “with their enquiries” about the incident.

Descending into self-parody, Marriott dusted off Maoist rhetoric and declared an “eight-point rectification plan” to win back Chinese trust. “To regain confidence and trust, the first thing is to admit the mistake, then fix it, and it would come back slowly as we prove we really mean what we say,” said Craig S. Smith, president and managing director of Marriott’s Asia-Pacific office to the Chinese state-backed tabloid China Daily. “This [was] a huge mistake, probably one of the biggest in my career.”

Continue reading HERE.

Reports from Cuba: Cuban authorities confiscate all copies of a book about rap at the Havana Book Fair

Luz Escobar reports in 14yMedio from Havana via Translating Cuba:

Cuban Authorities Confiscate All Copies of a Book About Rap at the Havana Book Fair

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A book of testimonies and interviews, Rapping a Utopian Cuba by writer Alejandro Zamora Montes from the Spanish publisher Guantanamera, was withdrawn by the authorities from the recently concluded Havana International Book Fair, an act that activist Juan Antonio Madrazo Luna labelled as censorship in statements to 14ymedio.

Madrazo visited the exhibition stand of the Sevillian publishing house in La Cabaña fortress, home of the book fair, where he was informed that on the second day of the Fair, 2 February, authorities from the General Customs Office of the Republic (AGR) confiscated all copies of the book. Several other sources confirmed this confiscation to this newspaper.

Rapping a Utopian Cuba is a collection of interviews conducted by Zamora Montes with singers and promoters of the urban genre. It was published by Guantanamera in March 2017, although its first presentation on the island was delayed until this February.

“Shortly after one of the publisher’s representatives had given the author four copies of his book, a Customs official appeared without any papers or anything and took them all,” said Madrazo.

One of the young women who worked at that stall told Madrazo Luna, “This book can not be distributed.” The dissident and the directors of Guantanamera tried to get more details at the book fair, in order to submit a complaint, but received only the timid answer, “We’re not looking for problems.”

Daniel Pinilla, director of the publishing house, told 14ymedio that “there was a problem with Customs due to an administrative issue and it was one of the books they considered to be a problem and so it could not be presented.”

Despite the inconvenience, Pinilla reiterates that the editors of the imprint, which was created to disseminate the works of Cuban authors, are continuing the project “with the hope of achieving good visibility for the catalog in 2018, through a literary prize with the prestigious Carmen Balcells literary agency and other initiatives.”

The author, Alejandro Zamora Montes, declined to make a statement to this newspaper about the incident, saying he was not in a position to talk about it.

The book includes an interview with the rapper Aldo, from the duo Los Aldeanos, a group censored in the official media of the Island. This may be the reason for the withdrawal of the book from the Fair.

Read more

Marxist narco-terrorist group FARC cancels election campaign in Colombia after public pelts them with rocks and eggs at campaign stops

After decades of crime, bloody violence, rape, kidnappings, and thousands of murders, the people of Colombia have had their fill of FARC, the Marxist narco-terrorist group that has been terrorizing Colombia since the 1960s. Despite having this criminal terrorist organization funded by drug trafficking rammed down their throats, Colombians are letting FARC know just how they feel about them and the fraudulent peace deal negotiated by the country’s corrupt president, Juan Manuel Santos.

Frances Martel reports in Breitbart:

Colombia: FARC Terrorists Cancel Election Campaign After Crowds Pelt Them with Eggs

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Members of Colombia’s Marxist FARC terrorist organization—who Bogotá has allowed to field candidates in the 2018 elections—indefinitely suspended all its campaigns on Friday after crowds pelted presidential candidate “Timochenko” with eggs and rocks at his campaign stops, chanting “rapist” and “murderer.”

The terrorist “Timochenko,” whose real name is Rodrigo Londoño, is the head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which remains a U.S.-designated terrorist group. In its half-century of existence, the FARC’s violence has resulted in 220,000 known deaths and tens of thousands of unsolved disappearances.

The FARC renamed itself the “Revolutionary Alternative Common Force” in September before launching its nationwide political campaigns. Under a peace deal forced upon the Colombian people by President Juan Manuel Santos, the FARC may function as a political party and field candidates for any office. The deal also reserves ten congressional seats for FARC members only through 2026. As the FARC has largely funded itself on ransom cash and drug trafficking, there is a high chance that illicit money will enter the Colombian political system through them.

Colombia voters rejected the peace deal in 2016. That Santos went ahead with it anyway—in violation of the Colombian constitution, critics note—appears to have done little to improve popular sentiment towards the terrorist organization. On February 2, “Timochenko” made his first official campaign appearance in Quindío, an area that Colombia’s El Tiempo notes was chosen because it was the “cradle of history commanders” of the FARC like “Timochenko” himself. Crowds in the town received the presidential candidate and terror chief with chants of “terrorist, murderer, get out!” The FARC canceled a second appearance in public that weekend.

In Cali, “Timochenko” received an even colder welcome. Upon attempting to leave his hotel, a crowd hit him with a barrage of eggs, rocks, and assorted refuse. Protesters also surrounded his car to ensure he could not get out and deliver a message on behalf of the terrorist group.

At yet another campaign stop in Yumbo Valle, protesters surrounded his car and shouted, “Get out, son of a bitch!” A woman can be heard yelling “Pedophiles! Rapists! Murderers!” which is a reference to the FARC’s history of using child soldiers and impregnating the girls, later forcing them to endure violent unwanted abortions.

Protesters also yelled at police, “Why are you protecting him? We have lost family, we have all lost family!”

In Bogotá, a group of women victims of the FARC surrounded the national electoral council, waiting to protest FARC candidates scheduled to appear on February 6. The FARC candidates failed to show, and the women accidentally protested conservative senator Hernán Andrade’s car, instead.

The outcry against the FARC has been so unanimous that FARC senate candidate Pablo Catatumbo announced on Friday that they would suspend all campaigns indefinitely, blaming the Colombian government for not providing “guarantees” against the freedom of speech of the protesters.

Continue reading HERE.

Cuba after one year of the Trump administration

John Suarez reports in Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:

Year one of the Trump Administration and a new Cuba policy: Trade is up and detentions are down

A look at some numbers for 2017 and U.S. – Cuba relations.

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Cuba in 2017 remained a repressive totalitarian regime with prisoners of conscience, and a one-party communist dictatorship that has used its military and intelligence apparatus to control Venezuela, turning that nation into a colony that it is plundering.Things had gotten worse for Cubans, especially following the Obama Administration’s engagement with the Castro dictatorship, including a state visit in March of 2016. The current Administration has rolled back a number of Obama era Cuba policies, spoken out on the human rights situation in Cuba, and Ambassador Nikki Haley defended the morality of U.S. sanctions on the Castro regime.

Despite the claim by the architect of the previous Administration’s Cuba policy, that President Trump’s turn around on the Obama Administration’s Cuba policy would fail, trade between the United States and Cuba was at its highest level in 2017 following its collapse between 2014 and 2016 when the previous Administration was pushing its new Cuba policy.

President Barack Obama announced his new Cuba policy on December 17, 2014 and the following year U.S. trade in goods with Cuba dropped $118.9 million from $299.1 million in 2014 to $180.2 million in 2015. This economic relationship has improved under the Trump Administration despite news that the Cuban economy is worsening and the regime’s creditors are nervous.

Obama Cuba policy flawed
President Obama downplayed commuting the sentences of three Cuban spies, including Gerardo Hernandez who was serving a life sentence for his role in a murder conspiracy that claimed four innocent lives in 1996 and freed them the same day.  This was part of the price paid to free an American hostage, Alan Gross, that had been an impediment to normalized relations.

The Obama Administration apparently ignored the mysterious attacks that began in November of 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Havana when 24 American diplomats and their dependents suffered severe injuries, including brain trauma.

On the human rights front the Obama Administration’s new Cuba policy was also a disaster. The suspicious deaths of human rights defenders such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (2012), and Harold Cepero Escalante (2012) is a terrifying alternative to the long prison sentences that the Castro regime would use to take opposition leaders out of circulation, as was the case in 2003, during the Bush administration.

Continue reading HERE.

Reports from Cuba: Elections and the future of the Cuban government

By Ivan Garcia in Translating Cuba:

Elections and the Future Cuban Government

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“What concerns me most right now is to finish building the room for my eldest daughter who plans to give birth to a girl at the end of February,” confesses Eduardo, the warehouse manager of a bakery west of Havana, as drives along in his uncomfortable and tiny Fiat made in communist Poland.

The car, with forty years of service, continues along in the right lane of Infanta street. The old Cerro Stadium, the National Funeral Home and the pediatric hospital of Centro Habana are left behind. Eduardo swerves around the potholes and avoids confrontations with the drivers of city buses, “The real kings of Havana’s jungle roads. They drive with their balls,” he says. And in a neutral voice, he details his priorities in life.

“In addition to finishing my daughter’s room and giving the house a touchup, I want to continue in my job as a warehouse manager in the bakery, what I’m looking for there is to be able to support my family. And, of course, to have four pesos in my wallet and have a few drinks with my friends and to have a look at a young girl from time to time.”

The current electoral process in Cuba and the predictions about who will be the next president are issues that Eduardo does not care about. “Buddy, I don’t give a rat’s ass. What’s the next one going to solve? What have the neighborhood delegates to the Assembly of People’s Power resolved? The ’Five Heros’ (also called The Spies) were knocked up in prisons in the US for several years. For the Cuban system, that should be enough. But for me, the truth is, they mean nothing to me: whatever position they hold, it’s not going to solve people’s problems.”

Although academics, specialists and Cuban expatriates abroad along with the Florida media follow with a magnifying glass the official protocols of the hermetic olive-green autocracy –those who will elect the new president of the Republic of Cuba — the expectations of ordinary Cubans are extraordinarily low.

I am afraid to disappoint my editor and readers. But in the circle of people where I move, family, friends and neighbors, there is not a hint of optimism about it. Quite the opposite. Astonishing indifference and full-bodied pessimism.

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