The Cuban Archipelago

cubaprison

Crazy 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]

The Castro regime also has a long, grotesque record of torturing and murdering Americans. During the Vietnam War, Castro sent some of his henchmen to run the “Cuban Program” at the Cu Loc POW camp in Hanoi, which became known as “the Zoo.” Its primary objective was to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human being could withstand. The Cubans selected American POWs as their guinea pigs. A Cuban nicknamed “Fidel,” the main torturer at the Zoo, initiated his own personal reign of terror.[vi]

The ordeal of Lt. Col. Earl Cobeil, an F-105 pilot, illustrates the Nazi-like nature of the experiment. Among Fidel’s torture techniques were beatings and whippings over every part of his victim’s body, without remission.[vii] Former POW John Hubbell describes the scene as Fidel forced Cobeil into the cell of fellow POW Col. Jack Bomar:

 The man [Cobeil] could barely walk; he shuffled slowly, painfully. His clothes were torn to shreds. He was bleeding everywhere, terribly swollen, and a dirty, yellowish black and purple from head to toe. The man’s head was down; he made no attempt to look at anyone. . . . He stood unmoving, his head down. Fidel smashed a fist into the man’s face, driving him against the wall. Then he was brought to the center of the room and made to get down onto his knees. Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length of black rubber hose from a guard and lashed it as hard as he could into the man’s face. The prisoner did not react; he did not cry out or even blink an eye. His failure to react seemed to fuel Fidel’s rage and again he whipped the rubber hose across the man’s face. . . . Again and again and again, a dozen times, Fidel smashed the man’s face with the hose. Not once did the fearsome abuse elicit the slightest response from the prisoner. . . . His body was ripped and torn everywhere; hell cuffs appeared almost to have severed the wrists, strap marks still wound around the arms all the way to the shoulders, slivers of bamboo were embedded in the bloodied shins and there were what appeared to be tread marks from the hose across the chest, back, and legs.[viii]

Earl Cobeil died as a result of Fidel’s torture.

Maj. James Kasler was another of Fidel’s victims, although he survived the treatment:

 He [Fidel] deprived Kasler of water, wired his thumbs together, and flogged him until his “buttocks, lower back, and legs hung in shreds.” During one barbaric stretch he turned Cedric [another torturer] loose for three days with a rubber whip. . . . the PW [POW] was in a semi-coma and bleeding profusely with a ruptured eardrum, fractured rib, his face swollen and teeth broken so that he could not open his mouth, and his leg re-injured from attackers repeatedly kicking it.[ix]

The reign of terror against American POWs in Vietnam was just a reflection of Castro’s treatment of his own people. In addition to physical hardships even for those who don’t wind up in prison or labor camp, Cuba’s police state has denied Cubans any freedom at all. Cubans do not have the right to travel out of their country. They do not have the right of free association or the right to form political parties, independent unions, or religious or cultural organizations. The regime has outlawed free expression; it has consistently censored publications, radio, television, and film. There is a Committee for the Defense of the Cuban Revolution (CDR) for every single city block and every agricultural production unit. The CDR’s purpose is to monitor the affairs of every family and to report anything suspicious. A Cuban’s entire life is spent under the surveillance of his CDR, which controls everything from his food rations to his employment to his use of free time. A vicious racism against blacks accompanies this repression. In pre-Castro Cuba, blacks enjoyed upward social mobility and served in many government positions. In Castro’s Cuba, the jail population is 80 percent black, while the government hierarchy is 100 percent white.[x]

Cuban Communism follows Lenin’s and Stalin’s idea of “equality,” wherein members of the nomenklatura live like millionaires while ordinary Cubans live in utter poverty. The shelves in the stores are empty, and food is tightly rationed for the average citizen. Teachers and doctors drive taxis or work as waiters to support their families. Under the system of tourist apartheid, ordinary Cubans are not allowed inside the hotels designated for tourists and party functionaries. There are, of course, police inside every such hotel to arrest any unauthorized Cuban citizen who dares to enter.

The $5-billion-a-year Soviet subsidy that just barely kept the Cuban economy afloat during the Cold War is long gone. And notwithstanding the $110 billion that the Soviets pumped in over the decades, Cuba has become one of the poorest nations in the world. Its sugar, tobacco, and cattle industries were all major sources of exports in the pre-Castro era. Castro destroyed them all.[xi] Because of his belief in “socialism or death,” Cuba is now a beggar nation. Even Haitian refugees avoid Cuba.

Denied the right to vote under Castro, Cubans have voted with their feet. Pre-Castro Cuba had the highest per-capita immigration rate in the Western hemisphere. Under Castro, approximately two million Cuban citizens (out of eleven million) have escaped their country. Many have done so by floating on rafts or inner tubes in shark-infested waters. An estimated fifty thousand to eighty-seven thousand have lost their lives.[xii]

Not content to trust the sharks, Castro has sent helicopters to drop sandbags onto the rafts of would-be escapees, or just to gun them all down. Epitomizing this barbarity was the Tugboat Massacre of July 13, 1994, in which Castro ordered Cuban patrol boats to kill forty-one unarmed Cuban civilians—ten of them children—who were using an old wooden tugboat in their attempt to flee Cuba.[xiii]

These are the heart-breaking stories, and only a few among many, of the Cuban people who have suffered excruciating pain and agony under an evil tyranny that now, as it stands on its last legs, is having its life extended by an American president.

It is food for thought.

Notes:

[i] For one of the best accounts of the brutality of the Castro regime, see Pascal Fontaine, “Cuba: Interminable Totalitarianism in the Tropics,” in Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, pp. 647–665.

[ii] Armando Valladares, Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag, trans. Andrew Hurley (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), p. 137.

[iii] Ibid., p. 379.

[iv] For China’s case, see chapter 7 of my book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror; for Cambodia’s, see John Perazzo, “Left-Wing Monster: Pol Pot,” FrontPageMag.com, August 8, 2005.

[v] Valladares, Against All Hope, p. 378.

[vi] Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, chapter 19, “The Zoo, 1967–1969: The Cuban Program and Other Atrocities,” in Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia 1961–1973 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999).

[vii] Humberto Fontova, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, (Regnery, 2005). pp. 141–142.

[viii] Rochester and Kiley, Honor Bound, p. 400.

[ix] Ibid., p. 404.

[x] Fontova, Fidel, p. 88.

[xi] Ibid., pp. 14–15 and 49.

[xii] Ibid., pp. 8 and 56–57.

[xiii] Ibid., pp. 157–163.

*

To get the whole story on why leftists venerate Castro’s tyranny, order Jamie Glazov’s United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror:

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  • Hank Rearden

    What an article!

    Congress should hold hearings next year on Cuba. Just on what is in this article, including the Vietnam POW’s if they are still with us.

    It is hard to understand the depravity of the Left, but Obama revels in it.

    • kiwi41

      The truth eventually comes out. I’ll admit to having had NO idea of the levels of depravity of the Castro regime

  • UCSPanther

    Cuba has also been a “staging area” for terrorism against the west as well.

    It has harbored terrorists from groups like the FLQ, May 19th terrorist organization and the BLA, and aided and abetted the Los Macheteros in their terrorism on Puerto Rico.

  • Texas Patriot

    Using the words of Che Guevara to argue against reconciliation with Cuba in 2014 would be like using the words of Vladimir Lenin to argue against reconciliation with Russia in 1992. Times have changed. The Soviet Socialist Revolution that dominated the 20th Century is dead, and the Cold War is over. It’s time to move on to the new ideological struggle facing humanity in the form of the combined global forces of Islamic Jihad, and in this new war the substantially Christian nations of Russia and Cuba and the increasingly Christian nation of China are likely to be among our very best allies in what is shaping up to be the most dangerous threat ever encountered by the civilized world.

    • John Pallyswine

      The Castro takeover of Cuba could never happen without CIA and the Rockefellers. This is the source of his weaponry, radios, etc..

      Cuba under Battista was the best between South America,Mexico and Central America. Head and shoulders above in terms of living standards.

      It was done to snuff out competition, part of the plans the ANGLOS had for the world since the 16th century; to control all, here, there and everywhere.

      This is most likely why Latrino America is such a disaster too as well as America’s sick and disgusting debts

      In time, all will be known as Kohelet or Ecclesiastes wrote but we are approaching the end of the ANGLO control on things.

      • cree

        Well, there is always more truth and the other side to the story.

        Do you really think that whoever might replace “ANGLO” control will be better? Are you trying to deny the truth of history within this article?

        Castro turned out, like Obama, as someone other than what they portrayed themselves to be.

        • John Pallyswine

          Cannot be any worse than the past 101 years. The Anglo-American axis – the true axis of evil, has turned this world into a psychotic freakshow of mendacious lies and horror.

          I can only wonder who are keeping Communism alive in North Korea. Same gang.

          • http://www.drbukk.com/ Nancy Albert

            Bud, your Mohammedans enjoy a stainless history of more than 1000 years because you kill 90+% of the people you conquer. Then you loot and burn down the towns and churches, leaving no vestige. Lastly, you take those you can sell, marry or enslave. It’s incredibly bloody but ultimately tidy when the stains wash away and vegetation takes over. Nobody is left to remember and wail about “imperialism”.

          • John Pallyswine

            I am not a Muslim you idiot. Rockefeller and his CIA are responsible for Castro gaining power. ANGLOS exterminated the natives of America to where nobody alive knows the real and full meaning of Miami,Dakota, Idaho, Ohio, Utah, Texas, Nantuckett, etc..

            WHY DO YOU ANGLOS REFUSE TO EXAMINE YOURSELVES TOO.

            I WANT MUSLIMS OUT OF THIS PLANET but the ANGLO is guilty of EXTERMINATION

        • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

          Do you really think that whoever might replace “ANGLO” control will be better?

          Sure. The Egyptian Pharaohs were jolly fun, and decent lovers of humankind. And the Mongols, let’s not forget how they healed the world of its ills with their generosity and skilled learning. The Aztecs were a sports-loving, gentle people who were brutally conquered for their gold, and not because the streets ran with blood from their willing human sacrifices. And no, the Chinese would never murder their own people and the Norks would never starve their own like Castro does.

          The only privilege is power. Race has nothing to do with it.

          • cree

            Every once in awhile, I reflect on this: Post WW2, the magnitude of “privilege is power” that Anglo America had, had the ability to conquer just about anyplace on the planet but restrained that power for free trade peace that enabled much of mankind to emerge out of darkness and into hope of better lives for many other nations, for the most part of 70 years count. And still, where America was involved in single nation conflicts, it was not to conquer or steal oil, but again to maintain balance of power for world economies’ needs in free trade and peoples’ choice for freedom from tyrrany.

          • John Pallyswine

            Yes it was all to spread good cheer and baseball. What a bunch Bovine Scatology!!! the purpose was to spread DEBT and DEATH. The few countries since 1945 which enjoy a democracy are far less than the countries who have been led by a US placed dictator. All invasions by the US were also to steal as much gold and other resources as possible or to engage in drug smuggling or opium cultivation such as in Afghanistan. Why does the US tabulate the annual growth of opium???

          • cree

            Seems you’re on to me. It’s just that most who come to this site are in the same BS category as me, and well, we know BS when we read it.

            It’s only occasionally when swine like you comes along and blows my cover. But hey, I’m just playing the odds.

    • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

      So, you stopped reading at Che.

      • Texas Patriot

        The story of Che Guevara is the sad tale of yet another 20th Century man who lost his way and fell into the trap of lies and hatred instead of following Jesus Christ and his Father, the God of Abraham, the One True God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. Unfortunately, millions of others fell into the same trap and some are still working their way out of it, even today. The truth of the matter is that it’s time to wake up and move on. The Cold War is over and WWIII is well underway.

        • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

          Brutally cold comfort you supply to Castro’s currently imprisoned population. I’m sure they’re heartened by your sensible approach, as it makes the beatings easier to bear. Oh wait, they’re not even allowed to read it. I must scorn it for them.

          • Texas Patriot

            Better the comfort of knowing that the people of the United States do not intend to leave the people of Cuba to the tender mercies of the Castro brothers but rather are reaching out to them in friendship, which of course is the death knell of all tyrants.

          • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

            You do know that Cuban troops are putting boots on necks in Venezuela, don’t you? It’s a package deal. Money that flows into Cuba will not make it to the streets as much as it will make it to their industrial military complex, their cronies in gov’t and to points South. They’re not sitting still, frozen in amber. They have plans to expand. They have no intention of freeing their people or they would have done so by now.

          • Texas Patriot

            How do you suppose that the Cuban people will be better off if the American people are out of the picture?

          • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

            I know they won’t be better off with us in whatever imaginary picture you’ve painted.. We haven’t impeded, imprisoned or oppressed them. They had billions flow in from the Soviets and it didn’t free them. They never saw it. The elite class stole it for themselves and their death-cult of Communism. Their normalized relations with Canada and other tourism efforts haven’t helped them. No amount of money we spend there will go toward freedom. None of it.

          • Texas Patriot

            JOA: I know they won’t be better off with us in whatever imaginary picture you’ve painted..

            Ever heard of Adam Smith, free trade, or his book the Wealth of Nations? It sounded like a fairy tale when it was published in 1776, but it works for the benefit of all concerned, especially the people of the nations engaging in it. It’s working for the people of Russia and China, and it will work for the people of Cuba as well. And that’s not an imaginary picture; that’s a fact!

          • Mjolnir

            So TP, regale us with tales of free elections and individual rights that are breaking out in China and Vietnam. Tell us how far on the road to democracy and economic freedom those countries are. Then tell us how Cuba is *magically* going to be any different.

          • Texas Patriot

            Mjoinir: So TP, regale us with tales of free elections and individual rights that are breaking out in China and Vietnam. Tell us how far on the road to democracy and economic freedom those countries are. Then tell us how Cuba is *magically* going to be any different.

            The best way to facilitate the “breaking out” of individual freedom, human rights, and constitutional democracy anywhere else in the world is to set a fantastic example of it ourselves. We can’t force democracy or freedom on anyone, and ultimately people are going to have to want it themselves and be willing to worker it and fight for it themselves. If we set a great example, at least they will know that it’s possible and worth working for, and that’s something.

          • Mjolnir

            The only countries freed from communist or other tyranny were ones where we helped cause the government to collapse or overthrew it militarily. Unless the government collapses and is replaced, the people remain oppressed and impoverished and unfree.

            The only ones who benefit from this are the Castro government, who will be enriched, though their people will not see any more money or services for the increased trade. I’m guessing the military and internal police will benefit from the new equipment all that additional revenue will buy.

          • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

            You’re a nice guy, Tex. And I totally get your enthusiasm and breathless hope. But it would be like trying to “free” Haiti, which btw, freed themselves several decades ago. They are children. Lack nutritious food, lack of explorative education, lack of IQ keeps them as children. They, like Cuba, cannot govern themselves, no matter how romantic it sounds. They have been denied the tangible advantages of freedom for so long that it is like trying to free a slave that knows nothing else but his master’s care. Only a full assumption, overtaking, and benevolent monarchy can help Cuba. Normalizing relations may have small advantages, but if you doubt the vitality of the money and agenda behind the Castro regime, you need to quit talking.

          • tickletik

            TP: that is greatest bunch of hooey I have ever seen written in a single comment. Once again, I could literally take your comment and substitute anything and get the same effect. Eg.

            The best way to facilitate the “breaking out” of environmental policies anywhere else in the world is to set an example of it ourselves.

            The best way to facilitate the “breaking out” of dodgeball as a national sport anywhere else in the world is to set an example of it ourselves.

            The best way to facilitate the “breaking out” of religious tolerance in Iran is to set an example of it ourselves

            The best way to facilitate the “breaking out” of babbling nothing as a matter of discourse anywhere else in the world is to set an example of it ourselves.

          • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

            Cuba isn’t free because Castro doesn’t desire it. Period. No money, relationship, or rhetoric can change the fact that if Castro wanted his people to flourish, he’d have freed them years ago. Nobody was stopping him from liberating his island. No sanctions have affected him making a decision for the good of his nation. He does NOT desire it. He says NO. He says, “eff you” to your bright-eyed optimism.

          • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

            Oh heh: China bans Christmas and look what happens to Google traffic: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-28/china-bans-christmas-and-happens-google-traffic Or, you know, don’t look. Keep the fantasy alive.

          • Texas Patriot

            JOA: ,b.Oh heh: China bans Christmas and look what happens to Google traffic: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/… Or, you know, don’t look. Keep the fantasy alive.

            Thanks, Joan. I enjoyed that. The number of young people converting to Christianity should be viewed as enormously positive. That wouldn’t have happened in Maoist China or Stalinist Russia. The trends are clearly moving in the right direction.

        • tickletik

          That was meaningless rhetoric. I could literally substitute any name for “Che” and get the same effect.

          E.g. “The story of Stalin is the sad tale of another 20th century man who…”

          “The story of Joseph Mengele is the sad tale of yet another 20th century man who lost his way and fell into the trap of being consumed by lies and aphatred…”

          “The story of Pol Pot is the sad tale of yet another…”

          Utterly meaningless.

    • Bamaguje

      I’ll have to strongly disagree with you.
      Communist tyranny is over in Russia, Eastern Europe and China – so there’s a basis for a new relationship.

      But Castro’s Cuba remains repressive. Cubans have no access to internet or mobile phones. Private businesses and property hardly exist.
      I think only North Koreans, and probably Eritreans are worse off than Cubans in terms of basic human rights. So there is no basis for Obama to reward the cash-strapped Castro tyranny with an economic lifeline.

      Contrary to your assertion, Castro’s Cuba is not an ally in the fight against global Jihad. Along with Venezuela’s Chavez-Maduro tyranny, Castro’s Cuba allies with Palestinians against Israel.

      • Texas Patriot

        Bamaguje: Communist tyranny is over in Russia, Eastern Europe and China – so there’s a basis for a new relationship. But Castro’s Cuba remains repressive. Cubans have no access to internet or mobile phones. Private businesses and property hardly exist.

        How free was Russia when Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and James A. Baker III started laying the groundwork for reconciliation with the Russian people and the dismantlement of the Soviet Union? The Cold War has been over for more than twenty years, and the risks of beginning the path of reconciliation with Cuba today are far less severe than the ones faced by the architects of peace in those bygone days. The truth is that Cuba is a Christian nation and far more likely to align with the West against the forces of Islamic Jihad than to join with them, and whatever obstacles there may be to a fully peaceful and prosperous reconciliation with the people of Cuba can be, and should be, overcome with prudence and careful watchfulness. As Ronald Reagan said regarding our future dealings with the former Soviet Union, “Trust but verify.”

        • tickletik

          The Soviet Union was not being run by Stalins brother at that time, something you conveniently forget when discussing this. The Soviet Union went through an armed revolution by the people during Bushs tenure, something which also is not the case here.

          Cuba is a “Christian nation” in much the same sense the Warsaw Ghetto was a “Jewish city”. (NOT invoking Godwin’s law!). The slaves/prisoners may belong of a religion but the the men with the guns, hoses, and whips certainly do not.

          Whether the Cold War is over or “on”, is irrelevant. We are not dealing with a lone murderer who has been wandering in exile for 20 years and made peace with society. We are dealing with a totalitarian prison state that tortures people for writing poems of freedom.

          Their purpose in opening their doors to businessmen is to gain money to fund their little nightmare. Anyone who contributes to it is doing so out of greed and is supporting the continued enslavement of an innocent population. God damn whoever does so!

          And yes, it is VERY telling that there is no internet or mobile phones available. Naturally the dictator of Cuba does not want to repeat the mistakes of Gorbachev and find justly put up against a wall like Ceauscu.

      • Vahe Demirjian

        You make a number of errors in your statement:

        “Cubans have no access to internet or mobile phones.”

        Didn’t you read six years ago Raul Castro let his people own cell phones? Today, there are almost 2 million mobile subscribers in Cuba (http://www.cellular-news.com/story/64923.php
        ).

        • George Clark

          LMFAO–Cubans have the same number of mobile phones that Obama voters have. What name do these cousins of “Obamaphones” have in Cuba? Are they “Fidelphones,” or “Raulphones?” Good lord, you are a funny person.

    • tickletik

      Ah, now I see who you are. You did very well up until this comment. But you overplayed your hand with Che.

      • Texas Patriot

        tickletick; Ah, now I see who you are. You did very well up until this comment. But you overplayed your hand with Che.

        I hope you finally see who I am. Che was created in the image of God just like every other human being ever created on the planet earth. Unfortunately for him and for so many others unfortunate enough to be brought up in the Marxist-Nihilist extremes of the 20th Century, the idea that all human beings are entitled to a certain level of respect and dignity did not seem to register.

    • tickletik

      There is an obvious major difference between a country that is clearly surrendering a fight and one that is continuing a fight.

      In 1992 the regime was bankrupt and was forced to release its chokehold over Eastern Europe as signaled by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

      Have the Castros agreed to allow its prisoners freedom? Have they released its chokehold on the populace? No?

      Well in that case quoting Che is as relevant to understanding the Castro regime as quoting Locke is to understanding the United States while Thomas Jefferson was president.

  • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

    Just the other day, the Cuban Coast Guard purposely rode their boat on top of another full of people trying to escape, sinking it. The gulags persist.

  • El Cid

    There is absolutely nothing except ideology that is compelling Obama to “normalize” relations with Cuba without demanding radical political change on that Island prison.

    Where is the free press to hold him accountable?

    • JayWye

      socialists targeted education in the early 1900′s;
      they’ve been working at it a long time,have been wildly successful at gaining control of it,and now we’re seeing the effects of that,all across our society.
      Legislators,JUDGES,doctors,scientists,MEDIA,teachers,etc,all a product of a socialist education system. All indoctrinated in socialism,and applying it in their everyday lives.
      Never forget that the socialists have a dominance at nearly every university,and at most every public grade school.
      socialist indoctrination begins at an early age and continues throughout high school and college.
      THAT is what is really hurting America,and I’m not so sure we can overcome it,it may already be too late. it took a long time for the commies to become entrenched in education,and it will take a long time to weed them out,if it can be done at all.

    • DontMessWithAmerica

      Indeed! Despicable Marxist-racist-Islamist Obama is one thing. America will be rid of him but the press will remain as America’s enemy number one.

  • http://www.drbukk.com/ Nancy Albert

    The Castro brothers are in dire need of another sponsor. Obama is a buffoon. No industry but hotels have resulted from international investment, because these brothers take 50% of the gross. It’s only possible in hotels, where people work for $10 a month and tourists pay rates comparable to other resorts.

    The nickel and gold deposits will not be mined. Their net is 4% and the Castros demand 50% of the gross. The cruise ships will not be stopping for non-existant infrastructure and re-supply of what? For several years, the state of GA has been selling vegetables to them C.O.D. or the people would starve. I did not see a single tractor. They are plowing with oxen. I did not see a single fishing or pleasure boat or container ship. They are not an island of “ecological purity”. They refill their Bic lighters with pesticides.

    Survival under communism requires government connections and deep corruption. There is an insurmountable ingrained dependency among the poor and a ruthless cabal of corruptocrats who are fabulously rich. I don’t think this island will ever dig its way out, even after the brothers die.

  • Daniel

    It’s only right that Jamie G is doing this article.
    As great as FrontPage is……..Jamie’s yearly tribute to his anti-Soviet dissident father, for me, is always the highpoint. The first time I saw it, it all became clear to me. Only a guy who lived through Left Wing repression could have Jamie’s sensibility. It’s a tremendous thing.
    I want the FrontPage faithful to google up something. Armando Valladares and “Against All Hope.”
    When Ronald Reagan wanted to bring in the heavy psychological artillery against the Soviets….he invoked Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
    When Reagan wanted to expose Castro as a totalitarian fraud…….who did he send to the UN?
    The “Cuban Solzhenitsyn” as he was known……….Armando Valladares.

    • cree

      Checked it out Daniel. I shouldn’t have missed this, but did; must have missed Humberto’s mention of him too. Sure hope more become aware of this important man and his story. Thanks the info. The Reagan to Obama is real hard to take.

  • Rebecca Lakerfan

    Obama’s kiss fest with the Castro brothers will not make anything better for the citizens of Cuba. Obama’s aim, in my opinion, is to close Gitmo and turn it back over to Castro. Then they will have more room to do business as usual! It’s a terrible idea that will not be undone.

  • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

    And yet, when you read an illustrated National Geographic style story on contemporary Cuba, all you’ll see are pictures of brightly painted buildings, healthy-looking, smiling Cubans who were interviewed and had nothing negative to say, and scores of 1950′s model cars spiffied up by their alleged owners roaming the streets. What a crock! Glasov’s article reveals the truth behind the Potemkin facade.

  • amoral100mil

    I read the motorcycle diaries and that quote is not on his book. At least on on that one.

  • http://twitter.com/WinstonCDN WinstonCDN

    Obama is America’s Hugo Chavez

  • drygoldfeld

    To turn people by torture into new human beings according to to the code of communism , fascism and islamism is the aspired goal of psychopaths in power in our age .

  • SwayL

    Gradual change is best for Cuba – and America too. The last thing Florida needs is millions of refugees. The embargo has been a conspicuous failure. Every other country in the world knows that already.

    • John Pallyswine

      The Embargo or El bloqueo in Spanish, is not THE issue and never really was. The issue is Fidel. Until the Castros are removed from power and confined to a cage where they have metaphorically placed Cuba since 1959, nothing substantial will change.

      Fact is that the typical Cuban earns $20 a month!!!! This may change to $50 or $60 or even a $100, but nothing will change.

    • John Pallyswine

      By 1938, nearly every country bowed to Germany or was about to bow.

      Using your weak logic, the USA should have done likewise too.

  • RMThoughts

    Cuba is bringing brought into the communist/capitalist synthesis of the NWO which we will all suffer in equally.