<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Cuba</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/cuba/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 06:51:03 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Books and Movies by Cubans Themselves</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/books-and-movies-by-cubans-themselves/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=books-and-movies-by-cubans-themselves</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/books-and-movies-by-cubans-themselves/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:41:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Films]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Orlando Jimenez Leal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Valladares]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248326</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where those who seek actual knowledge about Cuba can find it.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ah.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-248336" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ah-231x350.jpg" alt="ah" width="231" height="350" /></a><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/">The Sacramento Bee</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Former California legislator Tom Hayden contends that key episodes in Cuban history are “best recalled” through “The Godfather: Part II” (“50 years later it’s time for closure and moving on”; Forum, Dec. 21). Those who seek actual knowledge of Cuba will find it in two films by actual Cubans.</p>
<p>When Cuban Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa returned from his military campaign in Africa, “8A,” a play on his name, began to appear on walls all over the island. Cubans believed the popular general was the only one with a chance to topple Fidel Castro’s communist dictatorship. Castro knew it, too.</p>
<p>He held a show trial for Ochoa and put it on satellite television. Cuban filmmaker Orlando Jimenez Leal taped it and made the documentary “8A.” Viewers can see the regime’s lawyers demanding that their clients get the death penalty.</p>
<p>Castro agreed and on July 13, 1989, duly carried out the sentence by firing squad, just like back in the day. No appeal process, and no more threat from Arnaldo Ochoa and others.</p>
<p>In “Improper Conduct,” Jimenez Leal and cinematographer Nestor Almendros portrayed the Castro regime’s repressions against political dissidents, journalists, poets and homosexuals. The New York Times called the film “convincing,” and former Castro supporter Susan Sontag said, “The discovery that homosexuals were being persecuted in Cuba shows how much the left needs to evolve.”</p>
<p>Hayden has written a new book, “Listen Yankee! Why Cuba Matters.” Sounds fascinating, but readers might want to compare it to books by actual Cubans.</p>
<p>In “Against All Hope,” which has been compared to Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” Cuban dissident Armando Valladares charts 20 years in Castro’s prisons, and the violence he and other political prisoners suffered. Arrested in 1960, Valladares was not freed until 1982, through the efforts of French President Francois Mitterand and human rights organizations.</p>
<p>In “Family Portrait With Fidel,” Carlos Franqui charts the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 1964. Franqui broke ranks over Castro’s shift to Soviet communism, after which “nothing worked.” The privations of the regime get extensive treatment in Heberto Padilla’s novel, “Heroes are Grazing in My Garden.”</p>
<p>In “The Longest Romance,” Humberto Fontova calculates that between 65,000 and 85,000 people have died trying to escape Cuba, 30 times the number of casualties at the Berlin Wall. Cuba’s prison population includes Eusebio Penalver, “the world’s longest suffering black political prisoner.”</p>
<p>Hayden has written a great deal about himself but recently showed up in “Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton.” Author Lee Ellis was shot down over North Vietnam, imprisoned and tortured. Americans were kept in cages with their legs tied together and arms laced behind the back until the elbows touched and shoulders pulled out of joint.</p>
<p>Some were kept awake for two weeks and beaten, but the treatment wasn’t just physical. As Ellis explains, the guards piped in propaganda broadcasts by Hayden, a “regular speaker” who supported the regime and said the reports of torture were nothing but lies.</p>
<p>Hayden issued an apology of sorts, but his worshipful public relations for the Cuban regime questions his sincerity. That regime remains a one-party military dictatorship and massive violator of human rights. So Amnesty International reports will also serve as helpful companions to Hayden’s new book.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
<div style="width: 1px; height: 1px; color: #000000; font: 10pt sans-serif; text-align: left; text-transform: none; overflow: hidden;">Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article4941084.html#storylink=cpy</div>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/books-and-movies-by-cubans-themselves/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>12</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Islamic Republic Is Not Cuba</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-islamic-republic-is-not-cuba/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-republic-is-not-cuba</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-islamic-republic-is-not-cuba/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:40:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diplomatic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[normalize]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sanctions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248371</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the Mullahs really think of Obama's surrender to Castro. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/39.si_.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248372" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/39.si_-450x253.jpg" alt="39.si" width="329" height="185" /></a>The diplomatic deal between the Obama administration and Raul Castro&#8217;s government and the transformation of the relationship between Cuba and Washington have made some scholars, politicians and policy analysts excited with respect to utilizing the same method in the case of another longstanding foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Some have been calling for applying a Cuban-style deal &#8212; back-channel diplomacy and the lifting of the embargo and economic sanctions &#8212; to Iran in order to restore full diplomatic ties with the ruling clerics.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, this point of view totally ignores the complexity of the Iranian government and the nature of its ideological, political and institutional underpinnings. In other words, an analogy between Cuba and the Islamic Republic falls apart when the reality is examined.</p>
<p>First of all, Iran poses a much stronger geopolitical threat to the US (and its allies) than Cuba does.  The Islamic Republic has been a major player in scuttling US foreign policy objectives and opposing its allies (including Israel) in the Middle East. Cuba, unlike the Islamic Republic, did not repeatedly call for elimination and annihilation of the State of Israel.  In addition, the Iranian government is supporting and is behind the creation of several crucial militia proxies in the region which have led to further destabilization and conflict in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Secondly, a deal with the US would likely be viewed as a zero-sum game for the Iranian leaders. Iran’s ruling clerics would not be likely to accept any compromises on their top foreign policy priorities, such as: Keeping President Bashar al Assad in power; withdrawing its financial, advisory, intelligence, and military support to the Iraqi and Syrian governments; and assisting formidable proxies such as Hezbollah and Shiite militia groups in Iraq and Yemen.</p>
<p>In addition, in the Cuban case, there did not exist any international consensus on the embargo or economic sanctions against the Cuban government. For example, many European countries were doing business with the Cuban government. On the other hand, in the case of the Islamic Republic, the four rounds of economic sanctions on the Iranian government resulted in the approval of the five members of the UN Security Council, including Russian and China. Unlike Cuba, many regional and global powers are dubious about Iran’s nuclear and regional hegemonic ambitions.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, unlike Castro, Khamenei has shown no real interest and willingness in fully normalizing diplomatic ties with the United States. For example, the Obama administration received no positive response from Khamenei through President Obama’s recent letter or through back-channel diplomacy. In addition, there is no official public debate among Iranian politicians, across various spectrums of Iran’s political system, to even allow the opening of a US embassy in Tehran.  The Islamic Republic’s domestic opposition to normalizing ties with the US is much higher in comparison to the Cuban case.  Although the Obama administration has taken some back-channel steps to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, Iran’s Supreme Leader has not responded with signs of willingness to normalize relationships, and he has been clear in not trusting the “Great Satan.”</p>
<p>The signal that Iranian leaders received from the Cuban deal is not what the Western mainstream media depicts: That Iran is optimistic about normalizing ties with the US. The message that Tehran received was that the Islamic Republic has to persist in its policies as well as ideology, and that economic sanctions will ultimately fail. As foreign ministry spokeswoman <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/iran-hails-us-cuba-thaw-proof-sanctions-dont-193418574.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Marzieh Akfham</span></a> articulated, &#8220;The defense by the Cuban government and people of their revolutionary ideals over the past 50 years shows that policies of isolation and sanctions imposed by the major powers against the wishes of independent nations are ineffective.&#8221;</p>
<p>The fundamentals of the Islamic Republic are centered on opposition to the United States, which Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, established. The Supreme Leader derives power and legitimacy from this stance. If the Iranian government changed this fundamental organizing principle, it would not be able to yield power from its loyalists, hard-line constituents, and define itself as the “Islamic” Republic of Iran.</p>
<p>Finally, it is crucial to point out that many young and middle class Iranian people would like to see the normalization of relationship with the United States. Some have expressed their hope through twitter and other social media outlets. However, there is a significant gap between what ordinary Iranian citizens desire to happen, and what the ruling clerics hope to ideologically and geopolitically achieve.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-islamic-republic-is-not-cuba/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Cuban Archipelago</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/the-cuban-archipelago/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-cuban-archipelago</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/the-cuban-archipelago/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:17:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oppression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tyranny]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248186</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A reflection on the suffering of the Cuban people under a vicious communist tyranny.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cubaprison.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248187" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cubaprison-450x296.jpg" alt="cubaprison" width="307" height="202" /></a><strong class="alignleft  wp-image-248187"><br />
</strong></p>
<p><em>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.</em></p>
<p>—Che Guevara, <em>Motorcycle Diaries</em></p>
<p>President Obama’s <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/" target="_blank">recent move</a> 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 <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/">an economic lifeline</a> to a barbaric tyranny, it is our duty and obligation to shine a light on the dark tragedy of the Cuban Gulag &#8212; and to reflect on the unspeakable suffering that Cubans have endured under Castro&#8217;s fascistic regime.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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, <em>Against All Hope</em>, serves as Cuba’s version of Solzhenitsyn’s <em>Gulag Archipelago. </em>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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 <em>the individual</em>, 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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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:</p>
<blockquote><p> 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]</p></blockquote>
<p>Earl Cobeil died as a result of Fidel’s torture.</p>
<p>Maj. James Kasler was another of Fidel’s victims, although he survived the treatment:</p>
<blockquote><p> 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]</p></blockquote>
<p>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&#8217;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]</p>
<p>Cuban Communism follows Lenin’s and Stalin’s idea of “equality,” wherein members of the <em>nomenklatura</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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 <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/">its life extended</a> by an American president.</p>
<p>It is food for thought.</p>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong></p>
<p>[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., <em>The Black Book of Communism</em>, pp. 647–665.</p>
<p>[ii] Armando Valladares, <em>Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag</em>, trans. Andrew Hurley (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), p. 137.</p>
<p>[iii] Ibid., p. 379.</p>
<p>[iv] For China’s case, see chapter 7 of my book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/product-description/1935071602">United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror</a></em>; for Cambodia’s, see John Perazzo, “Left-Wing Monster: Pol Pot,” <em>FrontPageMag.com</em>, August 8, 2005.</p>
<p>[v] Valladares, <em>Against All Hope</em>, p. 378.</p>
<p>[vi] Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, chapter 19, “The Zoo, 1967–1969: The Cuban Program and Other Atrocities,” in <em>Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia 1961–1973</em> (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999).</p>
<p>[vii] Humberto Fontova, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fidel-Hollywoods-Favorite-Humberto-Fontova/dp/0895260433/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419483023&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=humberto+fontova+fidel"><em>Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant</em></a>, (Regnery, 2005). pp. 141–142.</p>
<p>[viii] Rochester and Kiley, <em>Honor Bound</em>, p. 400.</p>
<p>[ix] Ibid., p. 404.</p>
<p>[x] Fontova, <em>Fidel</em>, p. 88.</p>
<p>[xi] Ibid., pp. 14–15 and 49.</p>
<p>[xii] Ibid., pp. 8 and 56–57.</p>
<p>[xiii] Ibid., pp. 157–163.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>To get the whole story on why leftists venerate Castro&#8217;s tyranny, order Jamie Glazov&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/product-description/1935071602">United in Hate: The Left&#8217;s Romance With Tyranny and Terror</a>:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/un.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-248192 size-medium" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/un-450x299.jpg" alt="un" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/the-cuban-archipelago/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>77</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama’s White Whale</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-r-timmerman/obamas-white-whale/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-white-whale</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-r-timmerman/obamas-white-whale/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Dec 2014 05:46:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kenneth R. Timmerman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[normalize]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248064</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After Cuba, could embracing Iran be next?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rouhani-ayatollah-khomeini.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248067" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rouhani-ayatollah-khomeini.jpg" alt="rouhani-ayatollah-khomeini" width="305" height="234" /></a>President Obama is not one to be rebuffed.</p>
<p>As he showed when the Castro brothers rejected repeated entreaties to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba, Obama can display exceptional determination, even imagination, in finding a path to surrender.</p>
<p>When the Castros wouldn’t accept his entreaties, Obama turned to the Vatican to offer the candy.</p>
<p>The Castros have no intention of loosening their grip on Cuban society, or of opening the Internet to free speech, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-ogrady-who-benefits-if-the-embargo-is-lifted-1419205562"><span style="color: #0433ff;">as Obama has claimed</span></a>. But they will take U.S. taxpayer subsidies from the Ex-Im Bank to finance purchases from fellow-Communist China. How’s that for a good deal!</p>
<p>And so, Iran. Obama has now written to Supreme Terrorist – sorry, Supreme Leader &#8211; Ayatollah Khamenei four times since taking office in 2009. And each time, Khamenei has responded with insults and rejection.</p>
<p>The most recent offer was in October 2014, when Obama reportedly offered a whole plate-full of goodies – extensive relief from U.S. economic and financial sanctions, and perhaps much more – in exchange for the Ayatollah accepting Obama’s capitulation on the nuclear agreement.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t good enough for Khamenei, who immediately denounced the United States as a <a href="https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/532514135020695552"><span style="color: #0433ff;">“nuclear criminal”</span></a> &#8211; and on Twitter, no less!</p>
<p>Now we are told that Iran is “cooperating” with the United States in the fight against ISIS, most recently by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/.../iran-airstrikes-hit-islamic-state-in-iraq.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">bombing ISIS targets inside Iraq</span></a>.</p>
<p>But Iranian sources in Europe with access to current regime intelligence told me last week that Iran has provided 30 percent of the weapons ISIS has been using in its offensives in Syria and Iraq, mainly from Chinese sources.</p>
<p>Surprise? Not really. Despite what some “experts” in Islam will tell you about how Shiite Iran is irrevocably opposed to Koran-citing, Sunna-invoking, Sharia-inflicting ISIS, the two have a common cause: the triumph of Islam throughout the world.</p>
<p>Iran’s Islamic regime is also Koran-citing, Sunna-invoking, and Sharia-inflicting. They stone to death female rape-victims for “adultery” and make child-brides of young girls, imitating the example of the Prophet of Islam. They just disagree with ISIS – as they do with Turkish president Erdogan, and the al-Saud family – about who should be leading the Islamic caliphate.</p>
<p>Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin disagreed about whose army should march first into Berlin. Roosevelt caved. Stalin won. A fifty-year Cold War ensued.</p>
<p>Shiite Iran has a long and well-documented history of supporting Sunni terrorist groups. They <a href="http://www.iran911case.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">helped al-Qaeda recruit, train, and elude U.S. surveillance</span></a> before the 9/11 plot, and they have sheltered senior al-Qaeda operatives ever since.</p>
<p>They continue to publicly support Sunni jihadi groups including the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Hamas in Gaza.</p>
<p style="color: #202020;"><span style="color: #000000;">In 2011, the U.S. Treasury Department <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1261.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">exposed Iran</span></a> for sheltering al Qaeda’s top financiers. Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2613.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Treasury identified yet another top al Qaeda financial operative,</span></a> </span>Abdul Mohsen Abdullah Ibrahim al-Sharikh, whom Iran nurtured and protected until he moved to Syria and joined the al-Qaida affiliated Nusra front, “later becoming one of its top strategists.”</p>
<p>So don’t be surprised to see that the Islamic Republic of Iran has provided weapons to the Islamic State (of Iraq and Syria). After all, on most days ISIS uses those weapons to slaughter America’s “allies,” the weak-kneed, slightly less Islamified opposition to Iran’s ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.</p>
<p>It’s an old trick of totalitarians everywhere. Light a fire on your enemy’s doorstep, then offer to help him put it out. The Soviets used it repeatedly.</p>
<p>Now the Pentagon wants to provide yet more goodies to Iran. Under the misguided leadership of outgoing SecDef Chuck Hagel, DoD has asked the U.S. Treasury Department to <a href="http://www.nasdaq.com/article/pentagon-sought-sanctions-exemptions-for-iranian-investment-in-afghanistan-20141104-01797"><span style="color: #0433ff;">remove sanctions so U.S. companies can help Iran</span></a> with multi-billion dollar development projects in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Let me spell that out. The Pentagon has identified “worthy” projects in Afghanistan and turned them over to the Iranians, and is now “inviting” U.S. companies to provide financial and technical assistance so the Iranians can make it rich.</p>
<p>There is more than just stupidity at work here.</p>
<p>Listen to “progressive” Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen, <a href="https://docs.zoho.com/writer/ropen.do?rid=b6wwvf87260bd94514057851fd5200ffab291#bookmark=http://video.foxnews.com/v/3951118421001/van-hollen-alan-gross-exchange-a-good-deal-for-us/?"><span style="color: #0433ff;">speaking to Foxnews</span></a> after “bringing back” U.S. hostage Alan Gross from Cuba. (Remember, Alan Gross was jailed five years ago for helping Havana Jews get access to the Internet.)</p>
<p>Cuba’s human rights abuses and its lack of freedom “have resulted from 54 years of failed U.S. policies,” Van Hollen said without even blushing.</p>
<p>For Obama and his acolytes, America is the problem. We have “caused” the world’s problems with our sanctimonious nonsense about God-given freedoms. Any self-respecting Socialist would naturally react to men and women who fear God and love life by banning God and substituting a government that robs citizens of their freedom.</p>
<p>And so, Obama’s mission as president is to make America as small as possible so we can’t continue to spread freedom and the values underpinning it around the world. We are going to stop causing harm by vacating the premises and allowing <i>real</i> bad guys to take over.</p>
<p>Former Brookings Institution scholar Michael Doran calls Obama’s obsession with making bad deals with rogue states his “white whale.”</p>
<p>“The president is dreaming of an historical accommodation with Iran. The pursuit of that accommodation is the great white whale of Obama’s Middle East strategy, and capturing it is all that matters; everything else is insignificant by comparison,” <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2014/08/13-doran-obama-middle-east-policy-danger-to-allies"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Doran wrote earlier this year.</span></a> “The goal looms so large as to influence every other facet of American policy.&#8221;</p>
<p>The ship of state is taking on water in Iraq? Let’s make a deal with Iran and hand it over to them. Afghanistan can’t stay afloat? Not to worry, Obama’s Iranian allies will come to the rescue.</p>
<p>There is only one thing Iran’s leaders can do to prevent Obama from rushing to conclude a deal with them that will allow them to develop a militarily-useful nuclear arsenal, impose their hegemony over the Persian Gulf, swallow up Lebanon and install their genocidal legions on the borders of Israel: they can just say no.</p>
<p>So far, that’s just what Khamenei has been doing. He has swallowed all the goodies Obama has offered without even saying thank-you. And Obama’s response has been to offer more.</p>
<p>Don’t think for an instant that cooler heads will prevail. They won’t. This president is determined to take America down, and he is pursuing that goal with all the single-minded intensity that Captain Ahab displayed in his chase for the white whale.</p>
<p>Will someone please wrench the harpoon out of his hands?</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-r-timmerman/obamas-white-whale/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>27</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>New Left Totalitarians Celebrate Castro&#8217;s Victory</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/new-left-totalitarians-celebrate-castros-victory/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-left-totalitarians-celebrate-castros-victory</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/new-left-totalitarians-celebrate-castros-victory/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2014 05:20:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tom hayden]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247965</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Tom Hayden hails Obama for completing the objectives of the Cuban "Revolution." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/518024350_15_ov1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247968" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/518024350_15_ov1-406x350.jpg" alt="518024350_15_ov1" width="324" height="279" /></a>“I first went to Cuba in January 1968, during the height of revolutionary aspirations,” writes New Left celebrity Tom Hayden in “50 Years Later It’s Time for Closure,” a <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article4699068.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Dec. 21 oped piece in the <i>Sacramento Bee</i></span></a>. On recent visits Hayden hung out with Cuba’s former minister of foreign affairs Ricardo Alarcon, and that inspired Hayden to write the forthcoming <i>Listen Yankee! Why Cuba Matters</i>. Meanwhile, Tom Hayden is excited about recent moves by President Obama.</p>
<p>“The Cuban Revolution has achieved its aim,” Hayden explains, “recognition of the sovereign right of its people to revolt against the Yankee Goliath and survive as a state in a sea of global solidarity.” Further, “After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a decade of American triumphalism based on the mistaken belief that the Cuban state would collapse like East Germany. We underestimated Cuban nationalism.”</p>
<p>However, “a sticking point on the U.S. side was the persistent funding of ‘democracy promotion,’ or our secret efforts to promote a more open society.” Hayden further explains that Alan Gross “was a covert agent, not a home appliance distributor.”</p>
<p style="color: #272727;"><span style="color: #000000;">Cuban spies </span>Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez, were all tried and imprisoned in the United States for gathering intelligence on U.S. air bases. They also <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/pastors-for-peaces-shameful-visit-to-cuba/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and tipped off the Castro regime</span></a>, which scrambled MIG fighters and downed one of the Brothers’ unarmed planes, killing four people. Tom Hayden’s take is rather different: “<span style="color: #000000;">The Cuban Five were protecting Cuba’s security from us, not acting as terrorists.”</span></p>
<p>Hayden contends that key episodes in Cuban history are “best recalled” through Francis Ford Coppola’s <i>The Godfather: Part II.</i> Fortunately, American viewers can gain knowledge of Cuba in films by actual Cubans that cover events Tom Hayden and Ricardo Alarcon prefer to avoid.</p>
<p>When Cuban general Arnaldo Ochoa returned from his military campaign in Africa, “8A,” a play on his name, began to appear on walls all over the island. Long oppressed Cubans believed the popular general was the only one with a chance to topple Fidel Castro’s Communist dictatorship. Fidel knew it too. He held a show trial for Ochoa and put it on satellite television. Cuban filmmaker Orlando Jimenez Leal taped it and made the documentary “8A.”</p>
<p>Viewers can see the regime’s lawyers demanding that their clients get the death penalty. Fidel Castro agreed and on July 12, 1989 duly carried out the sentence by firing squad, just like back in the revolutionary days. No appeal process, and no more threat from Arnaldo Ochoa.</p>
<p>In “Improper Conduct” Jimenez Leal and cinematographer Nestor Almendros portrayed the Castro regime’s repressions against political dissidents, journalists, poets and homosexuals. The <i>New York Times</i> called the film “convincing” and former Castro supporter Susan Sontag said “The discovery that homosexuals were being persecuted in Cuba shows how much the Left needs to evolve.”</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see what Tom Hayden says about this in his new book <i>Listen Yankee! Why Cuba Matters</i>. In the meantime, readers might consult books written by actual Cubans.</p>
<p>In <i>Against All Hope</i>, which has been compared to Arthur Koestler’s <i>Darkness at Noon</i>, Cuban dissident Armando Valladares charts 20 years in Castro’s prisons, and the violence he and other political prisoners suffered. Arrested in 1960, Valladares was not freed until 1982. This came through the efforts of French president Francois Mitterand and human rights organizations. A ballpark figure for the number of Cuban dissidents the American New Left has supported is zero.</p>
<p>In <i>Family Portrait with Fidel</i>, Carlos Franqui charts the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 1964. Franqui broke ranks over Fidel’s shift to Soviet Communism, after which “nothing worked.” The privations of the regime get extensive treatment in Heberto Padilla’s novel, <i>Heroes are Grazing in My Garden</i>.</p>
<p>In <i>The Longest Romance,</i> Humberto Fontova calculates that between 65,000 and 85,000 people have died trying to escape Cuba, 30 times the number of Berlin Wall casualties. Cuba’s prison population is 90 percent black and includes Eusebio Penlaver, “the world’s longest suffering black political prisoner.” That wasn’t a sticking point for Barack Obama.</p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/lessons-on-the-new-left-from-the-hanoi-hilton/">Tom Hayden recently showed up in <i>Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton</i>.</a></span> Author Lee Ellis was shot down over North Vietnam, imprisoned and tortured. Americans were kept in cages with their legs tied together and arms laced behind the back until the elbows touched and shoulders pulled out of joint. Some Americans were kept awake for two weeks and beaten, but the treatment wasn’t just physical.</p>
<p>As Ellis explains, the prison guards piped in propaganda broadcasts by Tom Hayden, a “regular speaker” who supported the regime and said the reports of torture were nothing but lies.  Given that record, Cuban prisons may soon ring with readings from <i>Listen Yankee! Why Cuba Matters</i>, by Tom Hayden.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/new-left-totalitarians-celebrate-castros-victory/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>34</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama Comes to Castro&#8217;s Rescue</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/obama-comes-to-castros-rescue/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-comes-to-castros-rescue</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/obama-comes-to-castros-rescue/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Dec 2014 05:06:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[embargo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247879</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The U.S. becomes the new patron of a monstrous communist regime. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/castro.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247880" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/castro-450x311.jpg" alt="U.S. President Obama greets Cuban President Castro at the memorial service for Mandela in Johannesburg" width="285" height="197" /></a>Did you notice the timing of  President Obama’s economic lifeline to Castro as announced on December 17<sup>th</sup> under the guise of “changing [our] relations with the <i>people </i>[emphasis mine] of Cuba?”</p>
<p>No? But you <i>have </i>noticed the price at the gas pumps, right? These two items are closely related. Oh, and by the way, every atom of evidence shows that the actual <i>people </i>of Cuba actually want U.S. sanctions against the Stalinist regime that tortures them <a href="http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2014/06/over-830-cuban-democracy-activists-sign.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">tightened</span></a>. So perhaps President Obama should stop insulting the intelligence of Cuba-watchers by claiming to speak and act on their behalf.  Here’s their reaction to this week’s early Christmas gift from Obama to the Stalinist dictator who tortures them:</p>
<p>&#8220;Sadly, President Obama made the wrong decision. The freedom and democracy of the Cuban people will not be achieved through these benefits that he&#8217;s giving &#8212; not to the Cuban people &#8212; but to the Cuban government. The Cuban government will only take advantage to strengthen its repressive machinery, to repress civil society, its people and remain in power.&#8221;  (Berta Soler, leader of &#8220;The Ladies in White,&#8221;<i> </i>Cuba’s biggest dissident group.</p>
<p>“[Alan Gross] was not arrested for what he did, but for what could be gained from his arrest. He was simply bait and they were aware of it from the beginning<i>&#8230; </i>Castroism has won.” (Yoani Sanchez, Cuba’s most internationally famous dissident.)</p>
<p>&#8220;I feel as though I have been abandoned on the battlefield.&#8221; (Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet<b>, </b>former Cuban political prisoner awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush.)</p>
<p>The list of back-stabbed and outraged Cuban dissidents <a href="http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2014/12/cuban-dissident-leaders-react-to-obamas.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">is much, much longer.</span></a></p>
<p>At any rate, Cuba’s post-Soviet sugar-daddy (Venezuela) is currently in dire economic straits from the precipitous plunge in the price of oil, Venezuela’s top export. Their economic lifeline to the Castro regime looks shaky, hence the “Here I come to save the day!” by President Obama.</p>
<p>But let’s face it. Castro’s Stalinist regime has jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands (including some U.S. citizens) for over half a decade and most Americans don’t seem to give a flying flip. Fine. So let’s consult yet another Cuban dissident who actually serves up some red meat.  Let’s notify Joe Sixpack and Soccer Mom (who quite understandably find all this human-rights stuff regarding a foreign country utterly irrelevant) that maybe it’s time to pay closer attention to the issue:</p>
<p>“If the U.S. allows financing towards Cuba, it will be the U.S. taxpayers who would sustain the Castro regime<i>. </i>Since it has run out of doors to knock on [for credit], the Castro regime is now focused on the United States.&#8221;<i>  </i>(Cuban dissident and three-time Amnesty-International prisoner of conscience Rene Gomez Manzanoin.)</p>
<p>Well, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the farm lobby, Council on Foreign Relations and Castro’s agents of influence (but I repeat myself) understandably avoid this issue like the plague, hence its invisibility in the mainstream media. So please listen up: For over a decade the so-called U.S. embargo, so disparaged by President Obama, has mostly stipulated that Castro’s Stalinist regime pay <i>cash up front</i> through a third-party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. And that’s what infuriates Castro, and motivates his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>U.S. agents of influence.</i></span></a><i> </i></p>
<p>Enacted by the Bush team in 2001, this cash-up-front policy has been monumentally beneficial to U.S. taxpayers, making them among the few in the world not rooked by the Castro regime, which per capita-wise qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation, with a foreign debt estimated at $50 billion, a credit rating nudging Somalia’s and an uninterrupted record of defaults. Standard &amp; Poors refuses even to rate Cuba, regarding the economic figures released by its Stalinist apparatchiks as utterly bogus. Just this year the Russians wrote off almost $30 billion Castro still owed them.</p>
<p>Interesting that a Cuban dissident should plumb this matter more accurately than those “champions of the U.S. taxpayers,” Rand Paul and Jeff Flake, who loudly applauded President Obama’s Christmas present to Castro this week. From the White House “Fact Sheet; Charting a New Course on Cuba”:</p>
<p>* U.S. institutions will be permitted to open correspondent accounts at Cuban financial institutions to facilitate the processing of authorized transactions.</p>
<p>* The regulatory definition of the statutory term “cash in advance” <i>will be revised to specify that it means “cash before transfer of title”; this will provide more efficient financing of authorized trade with Cuba.</i></p>
<p>Whoops! Though still a bit sketchy, it certainly sounds like we’re moving in the direction Rene Gomez warned against. This matter was recently explained in more detail by a Townhall columnist on Canada’s <a href="http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/3949008632001"><span style="color: #0433ff;">SunNews network.</span></a></p>
<p>Obama claims we’ve been “isolating” Cuba. Again, stop insulting our intelligence, Mr. President. To wit:</p>
<p>In 1957 when Cuba was a “U.S. economic colony,” as we’re constantly told by the media (though U.S. investments in Cuba accounted for only 14 per cent the island’s GNP), the U.S. exported $347.5 million worth of goods to Cuba.</p>
<p>In 2013 (when Cuba was being “strangled by a U.S. economic blockade,” was we’re constantly told by the media) the U.S. exported $457.3 million to Cuba. In fact for every year Obama has been in office the “Cuba-embargoing” U.S. has exported more goods to Cuba than it did in 1957.</p>
<p>In 1957 (when Cuba was a “playground for U.S. tourists,” as we’re constantly told by the media) 263,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S</p>
<p>In 2013 (when Cuba was being diabolically “blockaded” by the U.S., according to the media) an estimated 500,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S.  So under Obama <i>twice as many people</i> are visiting Cuba as in the golden 1950s.</p>
<p>In 1958 with Cuba under a “U.S.-backed dictator,” with the U.S. “controlling Cuba’s economy,” (according to the media, though in fact, U.S. companies employed 7 percent of Cuba’s workforce) the staff of the U.S. embassy in Cuba numbered 87, including Cuban employees.</p>
<p>Today with supposedly no diplomatic relations with Cuba (according to the media) the staff of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana numbers 351, including Cuban employees. In fact, for well over a decade the U.S. has had <i>twice </i>as many diplomatic personnel in Havana as Canada and Mexico <i>combined.</i> In the Twilight Zone occupied by the U.S. media this is termed “diplomatic isolation.”</p>
<p>In executive order after executive order, President Obama has already abolished President Bush’s travel and remittance restrictions to Castro’s terror-sponsoring fiefdom and opened the pipeline to a point where the cash-flow from the U.S. to Cuba last year was estimated at $4 billion a year. While a proud Soviet satrapy Cuba received $3-5 billion annually from the Soviets. In brief, almost every year since Obama took office more cash has been flowing from the U.S. to Cuba than used to flow there from the Soviets at the height of their Cuba-sponsorship. In the Twilight Zone occupied by the mainstream media this is known as an “economic embargo.”</p>
<p>In sum, the proof is long in: record tourism and foreign investment into Cuba = record repression for the Cuban people. Every shred of observable evidence proves that travel to Cuba and business with its Stalinist mafia enriches and entrenches these KGB-trained and heavily-armed owners of Cuba’s economy. Thus they remain the most highly motivated guardians of Cuba’s Stalinist and Terror-Sponsoring status-quo.</p>
<p>This week they’re all toasting Obama, snickering and rubbing their hands. So <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">grab your wallets, amigos.</span></a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/obama-comes-to-castros-rescue/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>18</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Senators Vow to Halt Obama&#8217;s Castro Odyssey</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/senators-vow-to-halt-cuban-relations-thawsenators-vow-to-halt-obamas-castro-odyssey/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=senators-vow-to-halt-cuban-relations-thawsenators-vow-to-halt-obamas-castro-odyssey</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/senators-vow-to-halt-cuban-relations-thawsenators-vow-to-halt-obamas-castro-odyssey/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:58:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diplomatic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247801</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But is Congress a match for the president's pen and phone?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/obama-on-cuba.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247802" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/obama-on-cuba-450x300.jpg" alt="Barack Obama" width="375" height="250" /></a>Lawmakers opposed to President Obama&#8217;s sudden move to cozy up to Communist Cuba are vowing a full-court press to prevent official diplomatic recognition of the tropical prison republic from going forward.</p>
<p>But it is far from clear if lawmakers will be able to do much about Obama&#8217;s Cuban escapades. Presidents typically enjoy great latitude in foreign policy, especially concerning recognition of foreign governments. Lawmakers are probably on stronger ground in resisting repeal of the trade embargo that has been in place since the 1960s. On the other hand, Obama has a pen and a phone, as he likes to say, a reference to his brazen contempt for the rule of law and the strictures of the Constitution.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s dramatic actions are setting off a feeding frenzy as American companies salivate at the prospect of doing business in Cuba. Little do they realize that Cuba, a dilapidated Stalinist state that, thanks to the absence of good paying jobs, serves largely as a seedy sex tourism destination for Europeans and hardly has an economy at all. Some business restrictions were already eased by the U.S. around 2000. Some companies are allowed to sell medical equipment to the Cuban government. There is not much money to be made, at least not initially.</p>
<p>Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who are both of Cuban ancestry, have made strong statements about their intentions.</p>
<p>Rubio said it mattered not a whit to him if &#8220;99 percent of people in polls&#8221; disagreed with his position. &#8220;Appeasing the Castro brothers will only cause other tyrants from Caracas to Tehran to Pyongyang to see that they can take advantage of President Obama&#8217;s naivete during his final two years in office.&#8221;</p>
<p>Rubio said he reserved the right &#8220;to do everything within the rules of the Senate to prevent that sort of individual from ever even coming up for a vote,&#8221; a reference to confirmation proceedings for a prospective U.S. ambassador to Cuba.</p>
<p>Menendez said he was &#8220;deeply disappointed&#8221; and that it was &#8220;a fallacy to believe that Cuba will reform because an American president opens his hands and the Castro brothers will suddenly unclench their fists.&#8221;</p>
<p>The chill in relations between the two countries has its roots in the Cold War.</p>
<p>Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, whose forces overthrew the comparatively mild authoritarian regime of Fulgencio Batista, tried to start a nuclear war with the United States and in 1963 openly called for the assassination of President John Kennedy and his brother Robert, the U.S. attorney general. War was only narrowly averted after the Soviet Union turned around ships that were carrying nuclear weapons to Cuba. A short time later one of Castro&#8217;s followers, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald, murdered President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Cuba is a longtime state sponsor of terrorism and has meddled militarily and otherwise in the affairs of its neighbors and in faraway countries such as Angola. President Reagan ordered an invasion of Grenada after its Marxist dictatorship grew too close to Cuba and he struggled heroically to aid the anticommunist contras in their war against the Cuban-backed Communist regime in Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Many conservatives in Congress and elsewhere are saying Obama is a weak leader.</p>
<p>For example, former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said on the Fox News Channel on Wednesday that Obama&#8217;s moves on Cuba constitute &#8220;appeasement&#8221; and are a &#8220;very, very bad signal of weakness and lack of resolve by the president of the United States.&#8221;</p>
<p>Bolton and others are correct in terms of how the U.S. is perceived abroad under Obama but this does not reflect weak leadership on Obama&#8217;s part. This president knows what he is doing and when given the opportunity to do the right thing reliably chooses to do the wrong thing. Obama is taking the country&#8217;s foreign policy in exactly the right direction in terms of his sinister ideology. Obama does not mean well. He does not, unlike traditional U.S. presidents, think of himself as the leader of the free world. He wants to fundamentally transform America inside and out and is quite content to enfeeble the nation by crippling its military, betraying its allies, and embracing its enemies.</p>
<p>All of this excitement follows the sudden release Wednesday of Alan Gross, a U.S. development worker held in a Cuban prison. (An intelligence operative loyal to the U.S. was also released as part of the deal. Details about that individual are scarce.) Gross is a garden-variety leftist who is being used by President Obama to justify establishing diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.</p>
<p>Obama is repaying a debt to his Marxist friends and allies. Just as President Bill Clinton rewarded his neo-communist supporters by pardoning Marxist Puerto Rican terrorists, Obama is rewarding his Castro-admiring base by freeing Communist spies working for a hostile foreign power.</p>
<p>Gross was reportedly a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is frequently a home for meddling left-wing activists. He reportedly worked on a program aimed at improving Internet access for Cuban Jews. Why the Obama administration would knowingly send an American into Cuba to perform services they had to have known were considered illegal by Cuban authorities is not clear. The free flow of information is a threat to any totalitarian regime, so a Cuban court convicted Gross of crimes against the state in 2011, sentencing him to a 15-year prison term.</p>
<p>Under a deal that Pope Francis, among others, helped to facilitate, Gross was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/17/meet-the-cuban-five-at-the-center-of-the-blockbuster-u-s-announcement-on-cuba/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">exchanged</span></a> for the remaining three members of the so-called Cuban Five &#8212; Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramón Labañino &#8212; who had been held in U.S. prisons.  All five Cuban nationals were convicted of spying in 2001. They gathered information on Cuban exiles in the U.S. in order to lay the ground for violent action against them in the future. Hernández was also convicted of conspiring to commit murder.</p>
<p>As Gross prepared for his press conference Wednesday, there was a portrait of  Communist mass murderer Che Guevara <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/17/why-does-freed-cuban-prisoners-lawyer-have-a-picture-of-che-on-his-wall/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">clearly visible</span></a> in the Washington, D.C. office of Gross&#8217;s lawyer, high-profile attorney Scott D. Gilbert of Gilbert LLP. The bloodthirsty Guevara was minister of industry and president of the Cuban National Bank. He also administered kangaroo courts that condemned enemies of Fidel Castro&#8217;s regime to death. In other words, as Gross prepared his statement about being freed from a Cuban jail, an iconic photograph honoring Cuba&#8217;s most infamous jailer stared down at him.</p>
<p>Guevara, incidentally, wanted to annihilate the United States.</p>
<p>&#8220;If the nuclear missiles [from the missile crisis] had remained [in Cuba] we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.&#8221;</p>
<p>In the press conference Gross maligned the U.S., <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/12/17/Freed-Prisoner-Alan-Gross-Slams-Two-Governments-Mutually-Belligerent-Policies"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pulling</span></a> a cowardly pox-on-both-your-houses stunt. Gross drew a moral equivalency between the U.S. and the ruthless authoritarian regime he just escaped:</p>
<blockquote><p>I also feel compelled to share with you my utmost respect for and fondness of the people of Cuba. In no way are they responsible for the ordeal to which my family and I have been subjected. To me <i>cubanos</i>,<i> </i>or at least most of them, are incredibly kind, generous and talented. <strong><i>It pains me to see them treated so unjustly as a consequence of two governments&#8217; mutually belligerent policies.  Five and a half decades of history show us such belligerence inhibits better judgment. Two wrongs never make a right. I truly hope that we can now get beyond these mutually belligerent policies and I was very happy to hear what the president had to say today.</i></strong> It was particularly cool to be sitting next to the secretary of state as he was hearing about his job description for the next couple of months. In all seriousness, this is a game-changer, which I fully support. [Emphasis added.]</p></blockquote>
<p>Who condemns his own countrymen as imperialist warmongers after they cut a deal to get him repatriated from the clutches of a dictatorship? And why would he use his opportunity in the spotlight to praise President Obama’s decision to normalize relations with the regime that he believes unjustly imprisoned him?</p>
<p>The whole thing doesn&#8217;t smell right. Clearly it was in the works for a long time.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, Gross thanked Jill Zuckman of left-wing PR firm SKDKnickerbocker for helping to free him. SKDKnickerbocker also employs former resident Maoist in the Obama White House, Anita Dunn, and Democrat operative Hilary Rosen. Gross also thanked Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Communist-friendly lawmakers Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) for freeing him.</p>
<p>Those who follow President Obama&#8217;s policy initiatives already know that he delights in trading Americans who hate America for foreign terrorists and murderers who also hate America. Not so long ago there was the swap of U.S Army deserter and Taliban collaborator Bowe Bergdahl for five members of the Taliban&#8217;s high command.  Not exactly a good deal for America.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s next for Obama, who is hellbent to knock America down a few pegs?</p>
<p>Diplomatic recognition for Iran? At first glance such a development might seem unlikely, but Obama does harbor deep affection for hardline Islamic states. He aided Mohamed Morsi&#8217;s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and during anti-government unrest that began in Iran in 2009, Obama effectively propped up the Islamist regime there by doing nothing to oppose it.</p>
<p>Anything could happen with Obama in his final two years in the White House.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/senators-vow-to-halt-cuban-relations-thawsenators-vow-to-halt-obamas-castro-odyssey/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>80</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama’s Bailout for Communist Dictators</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2014 05:44:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alan Gross]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[normalize]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247702</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Americans will suffer for Obama’s dirty deal with Castro.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Getty_121013_ObamaCastro.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247703" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Getty_121013_ObamaCastro-416x350.jpg" alt="Mandela memorial service (30)" width="289" height="243" /></a>The Soviet Union did not have to fall. If Carter had won a second term and Mondale had succeeded him, the Communist dictatorship might have received the outside help it needed to survive.</p>
<p>And we would still be living under the shadow of the Cold War.</p>
<p>Carter couldn’t save the Soviet Union, but he did <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2011/04/02/jimmy_carter_charms_the_castro_brothers_in_havana/page/full"><span style="color: #0433ff;">his best to save Castro</span></a>, visiting Fidel and Raul in Cuba where the second worst president in American history described his meeting with Castro as a greeting among “old friends”.</p>
<p>Raul Castro called Carter “the best of all U.S. presidents.”</p>
<p>Obama’s dirty deal with Raul will make the worst president in American history, Castro’s new best friend.</p>
<p>Carter couldn’t save Castro, but Obama did. This was not a prisoner exchange. This was a Communist bailout.</p>
<p>Obama boasted that he would increase the flow of money to Cuba from businesses, from bank accounts and from trade. When he said, “We’re significantly increasing the amount of money that can be sent to Cuba”, that was his real mission statement.</p>
<p>The Castro regime is on its last legs. Its sponsors in Moscow and Caracas are going bankrupt due to failing energy prices. The last hope of the Butcher of Havana was a bailout from Washington D.C.</p>
<p>And that’s exactly what Obama gave him.</p>
<p>Obama has protected the Castros from regime change as if Communist dictators are an endangered species.</p>
<p>From the beginning, Obama put his foreign policy at the disposal of Havana when he backed Honduran leftist thug Manuel Zelaya’s attempt to shred its Constitution over the protests of the country’s Congress and Supreme Court. And its military, which refused to obey his illegal orders.</p>
<p>Obama’s support for an elected dictator in Honduras should have warned Americans that their newly elected leader viewed men like Zelaya favorably and constitutions and the separation of powers between the branches of government unfavorably. It also showcased his agenda for Latin America.</p>
<p>His embrace of Raul Castro brings that agenda out into the open even if he still insists in wrapping it in dishonest claims about “freedom” and “openness” while bailing out a Communist dictatorship.</p>
<p>Obama began his Castro speech with a lie, declaring, “The United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.”</p>
<p>The Cuban people have no relationship with the United States because they have no free elections and no say in how they are governed. The only Cubans who have a relationship with the United States fled here on rafts.</p>
<p>Obama did not make his dirty deal with the Cuban people. He made it in a marathon phone call with the Cuban dictator.</p>
<p>When Obama claims that his deal with Raul Castro represents a new relationship with the people of Cuba, he is endorsing a Communist dictatorship as the legitimate representative of the Cuban people.</p>
<p>This is a retroactive endorsement of the Castro regime and its entire history of mass murder and political terror. Obama is not trying to “open up” Cuba as he claimed. He likes Cuba just the way it is; Communist and closed.</p>
<p>Obama did not consult the Cuban people, just as he did not consult the American people. He disregarded the embargo, Congress, the Constitution and the freedom of the Cuban people.</p>
<p>His dictatorial disregard of the embargo, which can only be eliminated by Congress, in order to support a dictatorship, is a disturbing reminder that the road he is walking down leads to a miserable tyranny.</p>
<p>Cuban-American senators from both parties have been unanimous in condemning the move. These senators are the closest thing to Cuban elected officials. But Obama disregarded Senator Menendez, a man of his own party, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz.</p>
<p>Instead Obama chose to stand with Raul Castro and his Communist dictatorship.</p>
<p>Obama tried to whitewash his crime by exploiting Alan Gross, a USAID contractor who was imprisoned and abused by the Castro regime, as if the release of an American hostage justified helping the men holding him hostage stay in power. And the media, which was reprinting Castro’s propaganda claiming that Gross’ imprisonment was justified, is busy now pretending that it cares about his release.</p>
<p>He had similarly tried to whitewash his Taliban amnesty by using Bergdahl and his parents as cover. If a deal is struck with Iran, the release of Robert Levinson, Saeed Abedini or Amir Hekmati will almost certainly be used to divert attention from the fact that their own government has collaborated with the thugs and terrorists who took them hostage.</p>
<p>Even though Obama criticized European countries for paying financial ransoms to ISIS, his own ransom paid to the Castros is worth countless billions. And the blood money pouring out of American banks into the Castro regime will encourage other dictatorships to take Americans hostage as leverage for obtaining concessions from the United States. Americans abroad will suffer for Obama’s dirty deal.</p>
<p>No European country recognized ISIS in exchange for the release of hostages. Only Obama was willing to go that far with Cuba, not only opening diplomatic and economic relations, but promising to remove the Communist dictatorship from the list of state sponsors of terror despite the fact that the last State Department review found that Cuba continued to support the leftist narco-terrorists of FARC.</p>
<p>FARC had taken its own American hostages who were starved and beaten, tortured and abused.</p>
<p>Now Obama has <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cuba-demands-removal-from-list-of-state-sponsors-of-terrorism/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">given in to the demand of a state</span></a> sponsor of terror to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for releasing a hostage.</p>
<p>Obama has sent a message to Iran that the best way to secure a deal is by wrapping it in an American hostage. He has told ISIS that we do negotiate with terrorists. And he has once again demonstrated that his vaunted “smart power” is nothing more than appeasement wrapped in excuses and lies.</p>
<p>But Obama did not act to help Alan Gross. He did not even act because he genuinely thought that diplomatic relations would open up Cuba. In his speech, Obama used the claim commonly put forward by Castro apologists that the very fact that the Castros were still in power proved that sanctions had failed. Yet the lack of sanctions against Cuba by the rest of the world certainly did not usher in the new spirit of openness that Obama is promising. Rewarding dictators with cash never frees a nation.</p>
<p>This was not about saving Alan Gross. It was about saving Raul Castro.</p>
<p>Obama and Castro are both weakened leaders of the left. Like the Castros, Obama has lost international influence and his own people have turned on him. The only thing he has left is unilateral rule.</p>
<p>If Obama saw something of his own hopes and aspirations to engage in a populist transformation of the United States in Manuel Zelaya or Hugo Chavez, his horizons have narrowed down to those of Raul Castro. His ability to remake the world has vanished and the American people are revolting against his collectivization efforts. They want open health care markets, free speech and honest government.</p>
<p>Obama can no longer remake the Middle East, he certainly can’t bring the Soviet Union back from the dead, but he could still bail out Raul Castro and maintain Communist rule in Cuba.</p>
<p>No matter how often Obama claims to be “on the right side of history”, the Castros are a living reminder that to be on the left is to be on the wrong side of history.</p>
<p>Obama did not want to see the “Berlin Wall” fall in Havana on his watch. After watching his own grip on the United States collapse, he did not want to see the left fail again.</p>
<p>We can never know how history might have been different if Carter had gotten a second term or if Mondale had replaced Reagan. But Obama’s deal with Castro reminds us that the end of the USSR was not inevitable. It happened because we stood up against the tyrants in the Kremlin and their useful idiots in the White House.</p>
<p>A good man like Reagan could make a difference by bringing down the USSR. A bad man like Obama can make a difference by keeping Cuba Communist.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-bailout-for-communist-dictators/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>113</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Chavez Revolution Is Over</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-chavez-revolution-is-over/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-chavez-revolution-is-over</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-chavez-revolution-is-over/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Dec 2014 05:50:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hugo Chavez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nicolas Maduro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Revolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247440</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Venezuela is going down.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Part-MVD-Mvd6654303-1-1-01.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247443" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Part-MVD-Mvd6654303-1-1-01-450x330.jpg" alt="Part-MVD-Mvd6654303-1-1-0" width="342" height="251" /></a>Officers chant “Chavez Lives” at their &#8220;Studies of the Thoughts of the Supreme Commander Hugo Chavez&#8221; classes. But Supreme Commander Chavez was killed by Cuban medicine and his regime and philosophy are on their last legs as the Venezuelan people have turned against his successor.</p>
<p>When Cuban medicine let Chavez die, it also raised a tombstone for the Castro regime. Chavez gave away 100,000 barrels a day to Castro keeping the Communist regime afloat. In return Cuban secret police, organizers and teachers helped keep the Supreme Commander in power. But Hugo Chavez is dead and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, is wildly unpopular. Venezuela has turned into Cuba with food shortages and soldiers in the street and no one wants to live like Cuba.</p>
<p>Not even the Cubans do.</p>
<p>The cult of Chavez portrays him as a holy figure to Venezuela’s poor and to its military officers who are the last firewall of a collapsing government which needs soldiers and street thugs to protect Maduro. But the revolution is collapsing faster than the next wave of officers can be indoctrinated with chants of “Chavez Lives”. This inevitable failure of Socialism is being unintentionally sped up by Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>The Saudi campaign against American fracking has dumped cheap oil on the market hurting Russia, Iran and Venezuela; all of which rely heavily on energy exports.</p>
<p>Chavez had screamed against capitalism in fiery speeches while building his Socialist revolution around oil exports and financial credit. Now Maduro is stuck with a $5 billion bill and no way to pay it. The former bus driver and community organizer vowed that he would make oil $100 a barrel. Not only does he have no way of doing that outside his own miserable price controlled country, but oil is headed for $50 a barrel and Maduro is stuck denouncing credit rating companies for ranking Venezuela below African countries with Ebola. African countries with Ebola however have lower debt and a financial plan that doesn’t involve delivering a speech denouncing the CIA every hour on the hour.</p>
<p>Maduro and his Cuban handlers know that a debt default is coming. There are basic shortages all over the country of everything from milk to toilet paper. A debt default will make Venezuela’s deeply dysfunctional economy in which no one can buy a new car and people fly out of the country to get dollars to buy basic products on the black market even worse.</p>
<p>But Maduro can’t cut off Cuba’s oil without being overthrown. He can’t trim the ranks of the country’s massive bureaucracy because they represent his last remaining bastion of support. His attempts at central planning have failed miserably, but introducing free market reforms would be an admission that Chavez was wrong and that the revolution is over. All Maduro can do is fight the inevitable overthrow.</p>
<p>Indoctrinating the military is one way of doing it. Forced redistribution of flat screen televisions from electronics stores by the military is another. It’s no longer a matter of winning elections, even rigged ones, it’s about maintaining a radical base willing to fight to prevent the return of freedom.</p>
<p>Chavez won the loyalty of slum dwellers by giving them everything from government supermarkets to government clinics, but the supermarkets are low on food and the clinics are low on Cuban doctors. Maduro’s approval rating fell from a bare majority to barely a quarter of the population. Identification with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela has fallen to 16 percent of the population; a significant comedown from a party that recently claimed a quarter of the population as members.</p>
<p>Members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela smell blood in the water and are fighting to throw Maduro into the water to salvage the cult of Chavez by using the former bus driver as the scapegoat. Those Marxist groups that didn’t join the USPV are readying their own street protests to exploit the opportunity. If both the populist right and left fully go out into the streets, Maduro won’t survive.</p>
<p>Maduro still commands the street thugs of the UBCh (Units of Battle Hugo Chavez) and the Chavista generals are doing their best to indoctrinate officers with the cult of Chavez, but just as in the last days of the USSR, everything will be determined by the willingness of the soldiers in the street to shoot.</p>
<p>The big question mark is how far will Castro go to protect his 100,000 barrels of oil a day? Normally the United States might have served as a check on Cuban intervention, but Obama is highly unlikely to interfere over anything short of total genocide. Opposition sources have estimated that there are thousands of Cuban troops in the country and unknown numbers of agents of influence. And with a Latin American map of governments dominated by Marxists linked to Cuba in Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Uruguay and a mini-Chavez in charge of Bolivia, there won’t be much local opposition.</p>
<p>And yet the current system is economically unsustainable.</p>
<p>Venezuela took over the job of subsidizing and organizing the Latin American left when the USSR ceased to exist and Cuba could no longer afford to play puppetmaster without funding from the Kremlin. Now it’s too deep in debt and its oil is worth too little, there are too many angry people in the streets and too little food in the stores. Under Cuban guidance, Maduro has tried to impose a radical system that even his own bosses in Havana have been slowly backing away from. The only way he can stay with it is by killing enough of his people and establishing a full dictatorship under the gun.</p>
<p>That’s what Cuba wants him to do, but the transition from a populist regime that promised to give everything to everyone using oil money to a dictatorship in which party members gorge themselves while the rest of the country goes hungry isn’t going well.</p>
<p>Chavez might have made it work, but Maduro’s populism is a weak echo of his old boss. Where Chavez seemed powerful, Maduro only seems paranoid. His attempts to pick a fight with America, his constant conspiracy theories and his claims of supernatural phenomena involving Chavez only make him seem unstable. Havana wanted a weak dim Venezuelan leader with few ideas of his own to carry out their agenda, but now many of the Chavistas want another Chavez. And they’ll have to fight the Cuban puppeteers who have been running their country into the ground to get him.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the street protests of the right will rise again and the street protests of the left will come. And whatever happens, Venezuela’s credit will be shot and its generous economic projections based on high oil prices will collapse leading to a major crisis.</p>
<p>Maduro’s reliance on the military to do everything from breaking up protests to handing out flat screen televisions has become a liability. Hugo Chavez came out of the military and attempted to organize a coup with fellow officers. The military is still the likeliest force to end up running the country once the chaos becomes too much for the Maduro regime and its rivals to manage.</p>
<p>Indoctrinating officers with the &#8220;Studies of the Thoughts of the Supreme Commander Hugo Chavez&#8221; is among other things a final gamble that the next military dictator will be a man of the left.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-chavez-revolution-is-over/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>52</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Communist Dictator of Cholera-Ridden Country Offers US Help Fighting Ebola</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/communist-dictator-of-cholera-ridden-country-offers-us-help-fighting-ebola/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=communist-dictator-of-cholera-ridden-country-offers-us-help-fighting-ebola</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/communist-dictator-of-cholera-ridden-country-offers-us-help-fighting-ebola/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 14:55:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ebola]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fidel Castro]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243381</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If Michael Moore catches Ebola, we'll be sure to ship him your way]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_243382" style="width: 353px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cuba-hospital.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-243382" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cuba-hospital-343x350.jpg" alt="Pictured: Cuban Medicine" width="343" height="350" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Pictured: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/humberto-fontova/cuba%E2%80%99s-healthcare-horror/">Cuban Medicine</a></p></div>
<p>Thanks but no thanks, Fidel.</p>
<p>If Michael Moore catches Ebola, we&#8217;ll be sure to ship him your way by media mail. He may arrive in 6-8 weeks. Then you can figure out how to suck the Ebola out of him.</p>
<blockquote><p>Fidel Castro has expressed Cuba’s readiness to cooperate with the US in the global fight against Ebola. Cuba has been on the frontline of international response to the worst outbreak in the disease&#8217;s history.</p></blockquote>
<p>There&#8217;s even a Cuban Ebola summit.</p>
<blockquote><p>The meeting in Cuba is aimed at keeping Ebola at bay and it brings together senior officials from the ALBA bloc of nations &#8212; Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia and Dominica.</p>
<p>&#8220;The best place to have this meeting without a doubt is Cuba because of its advances, its discipline, its solidarity,&#8221; Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said as he arrived in Havana on Sunday night.</p></blockquote>
<p>Maduro would be the dictator who turned an oil-rich country into a place where people have to wait on line for toilet paper. But it&#8217;s brave of him to put his faith in Cuban medicine since that&#8217;s what killed his predecessor, Hugo &#8220;Magic Bird&#8221; Chavez.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m just hoping that Maduro and the rest of the Ebola summiteers don&#8217;t catch Cholera, <a href="http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/watch/cholera-cuba">which is a real problem in Communist Cuba</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Cuban health authorities have reported more than 700 cases of cholera, including 3 deaths, since July 2012. The outbreak is ongoing, and cases have been reported from the provinces of Artemisa, Camagüey, Granma, Guantánamo, Havana, and Santiago de Cuba. Several cases were reported in travelers returning from Cuba, including travelers from the United States.</p></blockquote>
<p>If they reported 700 cases, then the real number is 7,000. Socialist medicine is notorious for spreading disease.</p>
<p>Maybe we should have a real travel ban on Cuba.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/communist-dictator-of-cholera-ridden-country-offers-us-help-fighting-ebola/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Commies vs Caliphate: Muslims Demand Mosque from Castro</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/commies-vs-caliphate-muslims-demand-mosque-from-castro/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=commies-vs-caliphate-muslims-demand-mosque-from-castro</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/commies-vs-caliphate-muslims-demand-mosque-from-castro/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2014 12:35:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242598</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Cuba currently has zero mosques.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_242599" style="width: 356px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/gitmo.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-242599" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/gitmo-346x350.jpg" alt="Not those Cuban Muslims" width="346" height="350" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Not those Cuban Muslims</p></div>
<p>Communist Cuba is known as a beacon of freedom, human rights and socialized medicine, where gays were locked up, and is a net exporter of leprosy to America. So <a href="http://clashdaily.com/2014/10/country-mosques-just-shut-muslims-demanding-build-one/">this debate should be fun for the whole family.</a> (via <a href="http://vladtepesblog.com/">Vlad Tepes</a>)</p>
<blockquote><p>Cuba currently has zero mosques. Muslims are forced to meet and pray in the privacy of their own homes, reports the World Bulletin.</p>
<p>Pedro Lazo Torres, the leader of Havana’s Muslim community, decided to take action, joining forces with Turkey’s Religious Affairs Foundation (TDV).</p>
<p>In April, TDV assistant manager Mustafa Tutkun requested permission to begin construction on a large mosque, which was to be designed after the famous Ortakoy mosque in Istanbul.</p></blockquote>
<p>Cuba might not exactly fancy being told to engage in a Caliphate glorification project by an Islamist NATO member. But the media, which jumps on any bit of Muslim grievance, has remained fairly silent.</p>
<p>In a fairly typical arrangement for Communist countries, Cuba has a mosque that foreign Muslim visitors can pray at, but not the locals, some of whom appear to have been converted to Islam back when Cuba was building ties with Pakistan. Its <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/08/18/cuba.havana.muslim/">Muslim students began engaging</a> in missionary activity.</p>
<p>And a local Muslim enclave and fifth column was set up.</p>
<blockquote><p>Yahya was introduced to Islam by exchange students and converted more than a decade ago.</p>
<p>Many also find it hard to adopt certain Muslim customs here in the touchy-feely tropics. In Cuba, men and women usually greet each other with a kiss.</p>
<p>Ibrahim Kinsan, a physical therapist, says most of his co-workers are women. &#8220;Now I&#8217;ve converted to Islam, but I can&#8217;t just turn into an alien,&#8221; he told CNN. &#8220;Most of them greet me with a kiss and that tradition isn&#8217;t going to disappear.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s what the mosque is for, to build a base community for Islamization.</p>
<p>Now Turkey, via its various arms, such as IHH, appears to be poking into Cuba.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/commies-vs-caliphate-muslims-demand-mosque-from-castro/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Cuban Intelligence Targets Academia</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/cuban-intelligence-targets-academia/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cuban-intelligence-targets-academia</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/cuban-intelligence-targets-academia/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Sep 2014 04:05:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Academia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[universities]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241056</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The alliance between university leftists and communist spies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fidel-castro.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-241060" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fidel-castro.jpg" alt="fidel-castro" width="300" height="250" /></a>“Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service],” says an FBI report from Sept. 2<sup>nd</sup>.</p>
<p>“One recruitment method used by the <i>Cubans is to appeal to American leftists’ ideology.</i> “For instance, someone who is allied with communist or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because of his/her personal beliefs.”</p>
<p>Not that any of the above should come as earth-shaking news to anyone who:</p>
<p>A: Attended a typical college and suffered through typical Liberal Arts courses.</p>
<p>B. Knows anything at all about the history of Cuban spying in the U.S.</p>
<p>Let’s face it: FBI agents tasked with ferreting out Cuban spies in the U.S face a daunting task. Just think of how many Liberal Arts college professors match the potential Cuban-spy profile—ideology-wise that is, competence at sleuth-work is a different matter.)  Just how many Liberal Arts college professors actually eschew “leftist ideology?”</p>
<p>Indeed, of the most recently convicted Cuban spies&#8211;Ana Montes, Walter Kendall Meyers and Carlos and Elsa Alvarez, three were recruited by Castro’s agents from academia&#8211; John Hopkins, for Montes and Florida International University for the Alvarez couple.</p>
<p>Cuba’s Intelligence services “will actively exploit visitors to the island” continues the report. “Intelligence officers will come into contact with the academic travelers (from the U.S.) They will stay in the same accommodations and participate in the activities arranged for the travelers. This clearly provides an opportunity to identify targets….Castro’s intelligence aggressively targets U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service,”] continues the FBI report.</p>
<p>“A preferred target are ‘study abroad’ programs (in Cuba,)” adds  America’s top Cuban spycatcher  Chris Simmons, recently retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency, “as participating students (from the U.S.) are assessed as inherently <a href="http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/fbi-cuban-intelligence-aggressively-recruiting-leftist-american-academics-as-spies-influence-agents/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">sympathetic to the Cuban revolution.”</span></a></p>
<p>It’s not customary for U.S. administrations to increase the size of an enemy spy agency’s “preferred spy-recruitment target,” but we’re talking the Obama Administration here, amigos. To wit:  Academic and cultural exchanges along with various types of legalized “people-to-people travel” between the U.S. and terror-sponsoring Cuba now allow hundreds of thousands of people to visit Cuba annually from the U.S. —over half a million visited just last year.</p>
<p>By the way that‘s DOUBLE the number who visited Cuba from the U.S. in 1958, when Cuba was a “tourist playground” for Americans. Surely, you remember that from Godfather II?</p>
<p>Let’s stand back for a second and ponder this issue: When Cuba was a “U.S. tourist playground” 263,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S.</p>
<p>But now that Cuba suffers from a beastly “blockade” or “embargo” (as the media calls it) by the U.S. 599,426 people visited Cuba from the U.S. 102.396 of these, by the way, went under “educational and cultural exchanges” approved by the Obama State Department.</p>
<p>In brief, Obama has greatly simplified matters for Castro’s Intelligence. Used to be that for recruiting U.S. spies, Castro relied on Obama’s Chicago ‘neighbors, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.</p>
<p>You read right. You see during the late 60’s and early 70’s the terrorist offshoot from the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) known as The Weathermen and staffed most famously by Barack Obama’s future “neighbors” Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn served as the Cuban DGI’s <i>(Directorio General de Intelligencia)</i> top U.S. recruitment officers. They accomplished this recruitment primarily through their sponsorship of the then famous <i>Venceremos </i>Brigades.</p>
<p>During that  heady Age of Aquarius hundreds of starry-eyed college kids were volunteering to “help build Cuban Socialism” and “fight U.S. Imperialism,” mostly by joining these<i> Venceremos</i> Brigades (many via the Weathermen,) making their way to Cuba and joyfully cutting Cuban sugar cane.</p>
<p>&#8220;The ultimate objective of the DGI’s participation in the setting up of the <i>Venceremos</i> Brigades,” says an FBI report declassified in 1976 “was the recruitment of individuals who are politically oriented and who someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the U.S. Government, which would provide the Cuban <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Government with access to political, economic and military intelligence</span></a></p>
<p>Sure sounds like what the very recently de-classified FBI report claims about <i>current </i>recruitment objectives by Cuba’s intelligence, except now the Cubans have tens of thousands more spy candidates to choose from!</p>
<p>In brief: nowadays instead of relying on terrorist groups as an employment agency to screen their spy recruits, the Castro regime&#8211;thanks to &#8220;People-to-People&#8221; &#8220;academic exchanges, etc.&#8211; relies on the massive apparatus of academic “Cuban Studies Programs” and their U.S. government facilitators!</p>
<p>“So what?” some readers might rebut. “So what’s the big deal? So what kind of threat does tiny, impoverished Cuba present to the U.S.?”</p>
<p>&#8220;Cuba is intelligence trafficker to the world,&#8221; reveals U.S. spycatcher Christopher Simmons. Among many others, the U.S. military secrets stolen by Castro’s spies have been sold to former regimes in Iraq, Panama and Grenada, alerting these dictatorships to U.S. military plans <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">against them and costing untold American lives.</span></a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/cuban-intelligence-targets-academia/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Go to Cuba as Lefty Academic, Come Back as Commie Spy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/go-to-cuba-as-lefty-academic-come-back-as-commie-spy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=go-to-cuba-as-lefty-academic-come-back-as-commie-spy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/go-to-cuba-as-lefty-academic-come-back-as-commie-spy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 06 Sep 2014 15:06:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240377</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“College campuses are seen as fertile grounds for the recruitment of the ‘next generation’ of spies,” ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/carter-castro_1862067i.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-240378" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/carter-castro_1862067i-450x309.jpg" alt="carter-castro_1862067i" width="450" height="309" /></a></p>
<p>The 1980s called an<a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/fbi-cuban-intelligence-aggressively-recruiting-leftist-american-academics-as-spies-influence-agents/">d they&#8217;re bringing their foreign policy back.</a></p>
<blockquote><p>Cuba’s communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents, according to an internal FBI report published this week.</p>
<p>Cuban intelligence services “have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service],” the five-page unclassified FBI report says. It notes that the Cubans “devote a significant amount of resources to targeting and exploiting U.S. academia.”</p>
<p>“Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service],” the report concludes.</p>
<p>One recruitment method used by the Cubans is to appeal to American leftists’ ideology. “For instance, someone who is allied with communist or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because of his/her personal beliefs,” the FBI report, dated Sept. 2, said.</p>
<p>“College campuses are seen as fertile grounds for the recruitment of the ‘next generation’ of spies,” Simmons said. “Cuba heavily targets the schools that train the best candidates for U.S. government jobs, like Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and George Washington University.”</p></blockquote>
<p>How hard do you really need to work people who are already traitors? It&#8217;s like shooting fish in a barrel or reds in a cafe.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/go-to-cuba-as-lefty-academic-come-back-as-commie-spy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Place Where Every Week Is &#8216;Shark Week&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/a-place-where-every-week-is-shark-week/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-place-where-every-week-is-shark-week</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/a-place-where-every-week-is-shark-week/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2014 04:00:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[escape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239432</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And why thousands of people have risked their lives to flee it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/gh1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239457" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/gh1-450x299.jpg" alt="gh" width="274" height="182" /></a>The Discovery Channel just ran another of its wildly popular “Shark Weeks” without mentioning what is probably the shark attack capital of the Western hemisphere—the Florida straits.</p>
<p>“Getting attacked by a shark just might be the scariest event in nature!” gasped a Discovery Channel narrator during Shark Week. “Australia recorded 56 fatal shark attacks between 1956 and 2008!”he gasped again<em>. </em>“Find out what it&#8217;s like from people who&#8217;ve lived to tell the tale!”</p>
<p>So the Discovery Channel goes back over half a century and to a distant continent to interview the victims and dramatize the attacks. But why the distant timeline and setting, ask many people in south Florida?</p>
<p>“The Florida Straits probably record 56 fatal shark attacks <em>every few years</em>,” says Matt Lawrence, who spent years rescuing desperate Cuban rafters. &#8220;Probably every <em>month</em> during the early &#8217;90s,” adds Bay of Pigs vet Arturo Cobo who ran the rafter rescue center in Key West and for years heard the sobbing, gut-gripping details of these attacks almost daily.</p>
<p>“Something was moving in this raft,” recalls an airborne rescuer.</p>
<blockquote><p>So I went in lower. The water all around the raft was turning red…the cloud spreading. Then I saw the shark—about the same length as the raft. The rafter was in fact a Cuban woman in her early twenties. Upon her rescue we found she had two bullet wounds in her legs from Castro’s frontier police. All others in the raft, including two infants had died, as did the shark, from being repeatedly stabbed by the pointed end of a broken oar by Maria. The Shark had bitten the oar in half as Maria pounded him&#8230;I started flying rescue missions full-time after that.</p></blockquote>
<p>“The boys’ father, delirious from thirst and exposure, finally jumped in the water,” recalls another rescuer.</p>
<blockquote><p>So the sons threw him a rope tied to the raft and he clutched it. They turned away for a second, slightly relieved—but only to spot a huge shark approaching, then another. Soon an entire school surrounded the raft and they ripped into their father…The water turned red as their father was eaten alive….. I can tell you from decades of and heart-breaking work from our center here in Key West that in the <a href="http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-longest-romance-the-mainstream-media-and-fidel-castro/">Florida straits every week is shark week.</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Were the “root cause” of this drama and horror more politically-correct can you imagine its popularity in movies? Docudramas? Reality TV? But as usual, Castro also escapes censure for this form of torture and mass-murder.</p>
<p>The waters surrounding Cuba are famed for their hordes of sharks. Most people entering them for extended periods (all those showboat swimmers and surfers) insist on a defense against them. Yet a quarter to a half million Cubans have crossed these waters with little between them and the sharks than thin rubber or canvas &#8212; and knowing the odds were close to 50-50 that their craft would overturn or crumble.</p>
<p>Not that (given the media silence) most of you would have any reason to know this, but right off the <em>southern</em> Florida coast an estimated  70,000-80,000 people have perished since 1961 on the high seas, a large but unknown number of these at the hands (jaws, actually) of sharks. To this day most airborne rescuers report seeing sharks in the vicinity of most Cuban rafters. Many have observed attacks. Most survivors mention sharks and shark attacks often during their terrible voyage.</p>
<p>So here’s one of America’s most populous states and one bounded by beaches crammed with tourists. You’d really think this setting right off the U.S. coast could provide the Discovery Channel with material much more dramatic and relevant (titillating) for its U.S. audience. But where’s the Discovery Channel on this?</p>
<p>Perhaps the Discovery Channel’s budgets remain unscathed by Obama-nomics and the expense of flying production crews to Australia, South Africa, etc. rather than to Miami seems trivial?</p>
<p>On the other hand, upon viewing a Shark Week segment set in Florida, some viewers might ask: “But why is it that for over half a century so many thousands of people have risked the &#8216;scariest event in nature&#8217; in the Florida straits?”</p>
<p>Ah! And there’s the rub.</p>
<p>The Discovery Channel, you see, is a major business partner of the Castro regime. So such a show would probably not sit well with their communist client. When it comes to the U.S. media and U.S. celebrities, after all, this communist client is much more accustomed to seeing such items as Newsweek hailing Cuba as among the “best countries in the world to live,” to hearing Jack Nicholson hail Castro’s Stalinist fiefdom as “a paradise” and to hear Bonnie Raitt commemorate Cuba in song as a “Happy Little Island!”</p>
<p>Never mind that <em>ten to twenty times</em> as many people have died attempting to flee Castro’s Cuba as died trying to flee East Germany, who—best we can tell &#8212; won no awards from Newsweek for its “quality of life.” What makes these stats even worse is that prior to Castroism Cuba took in immigrants at a higher rate than did the U.S. And mostly from Europe. Indeed more Americans lived in Cuba than Cubans in the U.S.</p>
<p>The Discovery Channel’s “Buena Vista Fishing Videos” dramatizes their business partnership with Castro. This show features sport-fishing videos filmed in full partnership with the Stalinist regime’s ministry of tourism. These attract a large number of well-heeled sport fishermen from around the world to Cuba’s “unspoiled” and “fish-filled” coastal waters.</p>
<p>By the simple diktat of banning boat ownership under penalty of torture chamber and/or firing-squad for everyone except top-regime officials many other nations could boast fishing grounds every bit as “unspoiled” as those surrounding the Castro brothers’ fiefdom.</p>
<p>He&#8217;d be loath to admit it, being a Che-T-shirt-wearer and all, but Eric Burdon of the Animals wrote a song that resounds with many Cubans: <em>&#8220;We gotta get outta this place &#8212; if it&#8217;s the last thing we ever do!&#8221; </em></p>
<p>The last thing, indeed, for an estimated one-in-three of the desperate Cuban escapes during the &#8217;60s, &#8217;70s and &#8217;80s. This is according to a study by the late Cuban-American scholar Dr. Armando Lago. A consistently hot item on Cuba&#8217;s black market is used motor oil: poor man&#8217;s shark-repellent, they call it. Perhaps for a few minutes. I suppose we all cling to false hopes when desperate. And people get no more desperate than <a href="http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-longest-romance-the-mainstream-media-and-fidel-castro/">when striving to flee the handiwork of Newsweek’s “quality-of-life” winner.</a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/a-place-where-every-week-is-shark-week/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Fidel Castro Denounces Palestinian &#8216;Holocaust&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/fidel-castro-denounces-palestinian-holocaust-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fidel-castro-denounces-palestinian-holocaust-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/fidel-castro-denounces-palestinian-holocaust-1/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 04:25:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238596</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The hypocrisy of a communist mass murderer.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/lj.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238597" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/lj.jpg" alt="lj" width="273" height="215" /></a></p>
<p>“I think that a new, repugnant form of fascism is emerging with notable strength…The Nazi genocide of Jews outraged all the earth’s peoples. Why does this (Israeli) government believe that the world will be insensitive to the macabre genocide which today is being perpetuated against the Palestinian people?” <a href="http://www.granma.cu/idiomas/ingles/cuba-i/5agosto-fidelgaza.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">(Fidel Castro, August, 5, 2014)</span></a></p>
<p>“Who <i>cares</i>, what that senile ZOMBIE Castro says!” strikes me as a reasonable retort from many readers.</p>
<p>“Unfortunately,” I’m forced to answer. “Many otherwise reasonable care <i>very much</i> what Fidel Castro says.” Take Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu:</p>
<p>“The remarks attributed to Castro demonstrate his deep understanding of the history of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.” <a href="http://www.jpost.com/International/A-late-blooming-romance-between-Castro-and-Israel"><span style="color: #0433ff;">(Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu, Sept. 24, 2010.)</span></a></p>
<p>Take former Israeli President Shimon Peres: “I thank you (Fidel Castro) from the bottom of my heart. I must confess that your remarks were, in my opinion, unexpected and rife with unique intellectual depth. Your words presented a surprising bridge between a harsh reality and a new horizon. You tried to sail to bigger seas, to show that a small geographical size doesn’t have to reflect human smallness.” (Israeli President Shimon Peres, Sept. 24, 2010.)</p>
<p>At the time Fidel Castro had granted The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg an exclusive interview and the smitten Israeli leaders were reacting to the following remarks by the Stalinist dictator:</p>
<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews….I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything….The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust….Yes, without a doubt (Israel has a right to exist as modern state.)&#8221;</p>
<p>Cuba-watchers rolled their eyes and groaned at that latest of Castro’s frequent scams, but the media (naturally) ate it up, savoring every syllable. Astoundingly so did normally shrewd Israeli leaders. Wishful thinking often fogs the brain. And who can blame friendless Israel for wishing she had a new friend –and and one carrying enormous cachet among her traditional enemies?</p>
<p>So why did Castro—who sent troops to fight try an “erase” Israel during the Yom Kippur war, and who co-sponsored the infamous 1975 UN resolution branding “Zionism as Racism”&#8211; suddenly go Likudnik?</p>
<p>&#8220;For now we use a lot of sleight of hand and smiles with everybody. There will be plenty of time later to crush all the cockroaches together.&#8221; This admonition from Fidel Castro to a revolutionary colleague in 1954 gives a clue to his diplomacy. Cuba-watchers also know that Castro plumbs the workings of the U.S. legislature better than most home-grown lobbyists and well knows the main power brokers. Indeed Cuban intelligence defectors report that promptly upon publication in 1979, David Halberstam&#8217;s book <i>&#8220;The Powers That Be,&#8221; </i>detailing the inner workings and identities of Washington D.C’s power brokers, became Castro’s favorite book.</p>
<p>In September 2010 it was time to use that sleight-of-hand on Israel-backers. Jeffrey Goldberg’s visit with Castro, you see, <i>just happened</i> to coincide with a pending vote by the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations (HCFR) on further opening U.S. travel to Cuba. Goldberg’s visit to Cuba, <i>just happened</i> to be arranged by The Council on Foreign Relations Julia Sweig, identified as a “Cuban agent of influence” by America’s top Cuban spycatcher Lieut. Col. Chris Simmons, recently retired <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">from the Defense Intelligence Agency.</span></a></p>
<p>Cuba’s tourist industry is majority-owned by Castro’s military and secret police. As used to be common knowledge during the Cold War, secret police and military (the only outfits with guns in such nations) maintain Communist regimes in power.</p>
<p>So the HCFR vote could open the floodgates of American tourist dollars to the Stalinist regime’s most zealous (and heavily armed) guardians&#8211;and at a time when the financial lifeline to Cuba from Hugo Chavez’ looked shaky. Most importantly, steadfast Israel-backer Howard Berman chaired this House Committee at the time, and steadfast Israel-backer and committee member Senator Gary Ackerman seemed to hold the vital deciding vote. Do you see where I’m going with this, amigos?</p>
<p>Alas, even with Rep. Ackerman taking Castro’s bait, at the last minute Chairman Rep. Berman took a rough count and recognized that the bill would not squeak by. So he postponed it. Short weeks later Castro’s roaming ambassador, Aleida Guevara (Che’s daughter), was in Lebanon posing next to Hezbollah missiles <a href="http://babalublog.com/2010/10/che-guevaras-daughter-chumming-it-up-with-hezbollah/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">aimed at Israel.</span></a></p>
<p>The Cuban-born (and steadfast Israel-backer) Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was among those bemused with Netanyahu and Peres at the time. “Look, this guy has been an enemy of Israel,” wrote Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen to Netanyahu. “Just because he said something that a normal person would say — after 50 years of anti-Israel incitement, its one phrase from an old guy who doesn’t even know where he’s standing.”</p>
<p>“When countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and the like, who do not know the concept of human rights, point an accusing finger towards us, it is a sign that we are doing the right things.&#8221; Here Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman was reacting to Cuba sponsorship of the United Nations Human Rights Commission resolution to investigate Israeli “War Crimes,” upon last month’s launch of Operation Protective Edge.</p>
<p>Well that’s more like it, Israeli leaders. Hopefully you learned your lesson regarding Fidel Castro’s public pronouncements. This lesson came at catastrophic cost to U.S. policymakers and millions of Cuba over half a century ago. Among the Castro pronouncements these now older and <i>much</i> wiser people took at face value:</p>
<p>&#8220;You can be sure we have no animosity toward the United States and the American people….we are fighting for a democratic Cuba and an end to the dictatorship.” (New York Times Feb. 24, 1957.)</p>
<p>“We are not communists. And communists will never have influence in my country… Political power does interest me in the least. I will never assume such power.<i>” </i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">(Fidel Castro, April 1959.)</span></a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/fidel-castro-denounces-palestinian-holocaust-1/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>42</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Jesse Ventura Swoons Over Fidel Castro and Che Guevara</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/jesse-ventura-swoons-over-fidel-castro-and-che-guevara/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jesse-ventura-swoons-over-fidel-castro-and-che-guevara</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/jesse-ventura-swoons-over-fidel-castro-and-che-guevara/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Aug 2014 04:00:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Che Guevara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jesse Ventura]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vietnam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237728</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What has Fidel ever done that's "inhumane"?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140729-jesse-ventura-1427_45df380f4821c3fbf603ff8619fbe4a4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237729" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140729-jesse-ventura-1427_45df380f4821c3fbf603ff8619fbe4a4-450x300.jpg" alt="140729-jesse-ventura-1427_45df380f4821c3fbf603ff8619fbe4a4" width="261" height="174" /></a>Maybe it’s just a coincidence that somebody like Jesse Ventura is also a major fan of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara? (Or <i>claims</i> to be for the publicity value among the “hip”?)</p>
<p>Recalling his visit to Cuba and meeting with Fidel Castro in 2002 Ventura grew misty-eyed: “Fidel Castro looked into my eyes and told me I was a man of great courage…Maybe he (Castro) saw a little of him in me.”</p>
<p>Recall the Cowardly Lion’s reaction when the Wizard grants him <i>“the NERVE</i>.” Well, Jesse Ventura’s moronic gloating outdoes even the lion’s <i>(“Shucks, folks, I’m speechless..ha-ha…Ain’t it the truth! Ain’t it the truth!”</i>)</p>
<p>And this imbecile and buffoon (or is it master fraud and expert showman?) was elected governor of a populous and prosperous state, and honored by Harvard University with the title of  “Visiting Fellow,” to say nothing of his career as media host  and author.</p>
<p>“And I’ll tell you another thing that shows me a little bit more about Castro” also revealed Ventura in an interview. “The main downtown building in Havana has this huge flat wall and it has got a huge portrait on it. It’s not Castro. It’s Che Guevara. The biggest photograph in downtown Havana was a mural on a wall of Che. Now if Castro was such an egomaniac and all this, wouldn’t he put himself up there instead of Che?”</p>
<p>For a man with Ventura’s (mostly self-) vaunted “street smarts,” Fidel Castro’s blandishments of (the conveniently dead) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1595230270/ref=s9_asin_image_1-1966_p/103-5425239-0953451?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=center-1&amp;pf_rd_r=1QKFYRWWEX7QKY38DXMK&amp;pf_rd_t=101&amp;pf_rd_p=278240701&amp;pf_rd_i=507846"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Che Guevara</span></a> should be a cinch to plumb. Didn’t Don Barzini send the biggest and fanciest flowers to Don Corleone’s funeral?</p>
<p>The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported how on his Cuba visit Ventura spoke at the University of Havana where he “exhorted students to dream big and work hard to achieve success!” Here one blinks, looks again—and gapes. You long to believe otherwise, you grope for an extenuation, you hope you misread—but it’s inescapable: A man elected as governor of a populous and prosperous U.S. State (and a “Harvard Visiting Fellow”) cannot distinguish between the subjects of a Stalinist police state and the attendees of an AmWay convention.</p>
<p>Ask anyone familiar with Communism. To achieve “success” in such as Castro’s Stalinist fiefdom, you join the Communist Party, you pucker up and stoop down behind Fidel and his toadies and smooch away. (Either that or jump on a raft.)</p>
<p>So come to think of it, Jesse Ventura indeed had much to teach those Havana U. students. On his Cuba visit he performed brilliantly.</p>
<p>Years later when, during an interview, The Daily Caller’s Jaime Weinstein suggested to Ventura that Castro runs a very inhumane dictatorship, a “shocked” (or expertly performing?) Ventura gasped:  “They have the highest health care of any Latin American country! … What has he (Fidel Castro) done that’s inhumane?”</p>
<p>For the benefit of the esteemed academics who granted Ventura’s “Visiting Fellowship” at  Harvard<i> </i>University&#8217;s  John F. Kennedy School of Government  here’s a few fully- documented  items that might address their esteemed “Visiting Fellow’s” question:</p>
<p>Fidel Castro’s regime jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s during the Great Terror, murdered more Cubans in its first three years in power than Hitler’s murdered Germans during its first six and came closest of anyone in history to starting a worldwide Nuclear war. In the above process Fidel Castro and Che Guevara converted a nation with a higher per-capita income than half of Europe and a huge influx of immigrants into one that repels Haitians and boasts the highest <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">suicide rate in the Western Hemisphere.</span></a></p>
<p>&#8220;What has Cuba ever done to us?!” the again “shocked” (or masterfully miming?) “Harvard Visiting Fellow” gasped recently on his show On the Grid. “We&#8217;ve been practicing terrorism against them!”</p>
<p>“War against the United States is my true destiny,” Fidel Castro had confided in a letter to a friend in 1958. “When this war’s over I’ll start that much bigger war.”</p>
<p>“Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear- armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely <i>why</i> I urged Khrushchev <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">to launch them!”</span></a></p>
<p>But for the purposes of this discussion let’s overlook the above trivialities, as they’re obviously regarded by Harvard’s esteemed academics. Instead let’s focus on the fact that Jesse Ventura claims some sort of “fellowship” with American servicemen, especially Viet-Nam veterans. (Granted, this fellowship is–to put it mildly—not fully reciprocated.)</p>
<p>So again, for the benefit of the esteemed academics who granted Ventura’s “Visiting Fellowship” at Harvard<i> </i>University&#8217;s John F. Kennedy School of Government, we’ll  mention a few items to highlight their “Visiting Fellow’s” ignorance (or expert burlesque?) To wit:</p>
<p>In 1967 Fidel Castro sent several of his regime&#8217;s most promising sadists to North Vietnamese prison camps to instruct the Vietnamese reds in finer points of their profession. Testimony during Congressional hearings titled, &#8220;The Cuban Torture Program; Torture of American Prisoners by Cuban Agents&#8221; held on November 1999 provide some of the harrowing details.</p>
<p>The communists titled their torture program &#8220;the Cuba Project,&#8221; and it took place during 67-68 primarily at the Cu Loc POW camp (also known as &#8220;The Zoo&#8221;) on the southwestern edge of Hanoi. In brief, this &#8220;Cuba Project&#8221; was a Joseph Mengelese experiment run by Castroite Cubans to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human can endure before cracking.</p>
<p>The North Vietnamese—please note!&#8211;never, <i>ever</i> asked the Castroites for advice on combat. They knew better. Unlike director Steven Soderbergh, they saw through the whole &#8220;Che as Guerrilla&#8221; hoopla for what it was and is: a Castroite hoax to camouflage the Inspector Clousseau-like bumblings of an incurable military idiot&#8211;and more specifically, Castro&#8217;s own hand in the idiot&#8217;s offing.</p>
<p>No, the North Vietnamese sought Castroite tutelage only on torture of the defenseless, well aware of the Castroites expertise in this matter.</p>
<p>For their experiment the Castroites chose twenty American POWs. One died: Lieutenant Colonel Earl Cobeil, an Air Force F-105 pilot. His death came slowly, in agonizing stages, under torture. Upon learning his Castroite Cuban affiliation, the American POWs nicknamed Cobeil&#8217;s Cuban torturer, &#8220;Fidel.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;The difference between the Vietnamese and &#8220;Fidel&#8217; was that once the Vietnamese got what they wanted they let up, at least for a while,” testified fellow POW Captain Ray Vohden USN. “Not so with the Cubans. Earl Cobeil had resisted &#8216;Fidel&#8217; to the maximum. I heard the thud of the belt falling on Cobeil&#8217;s body again and again, as Fidel screamed &#8220;you son of a beech! I will show you! Kneel down!&#8211;KNEEL DOWN!” The Cubans unmercifully beat a mentally defenseless, sick American naval pilot to death.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Earl Cobeil was a complete physical disaster when we saw him,&#8221; testified another fellow POW, Col. Jack Bomar. &#8220;He had been tortured for days and days and days. His hands were almost severed from the manacles. He had bamboo in his shins. All kinds of welts up and down all over; his face was bloody. Then &#8216;Fidel&#8217; began to beat him with a fan belt.”</p>
<p>According to the book <i>Honor Bound</i> the tortures of U.S. POWs by Castro’s agents were <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/fidel.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">“the worst sieges of torture any American withstood in Hanoi.”</span></a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/jesse-ventura-swoons-over-fidel-castro-and-che-guevara/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>23</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Putin Robbed Blind by the Castros</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/putin-robbed-blind-by-the-castros/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putin-robbed-blind-by-the-castros</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/putin-robbed-blind-by-the-castros/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237012</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why many Cuba-watchers snickered.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pp.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237078" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pp-450x253.jpg" alt="pp" width="301" height="169" /></a>Russian president Vladimir “Teflon” Putin is on a roll—or so we’re led to believe by the media. The Russian president combines the slick machismo of James Bond, the <em>cojones</em> of George Patton and the craftiness of Cardinal Richelieu.</p>
<p>Actually, in his dealings with Cuba, Putin looks more like Barney Fife. We’re not accustomed to seeing Mr Macho-Cool Vladimir Putin made an international jackass. But many Cuba-watchers snickered as the hapless Russian President met with the Castro brothers on July 11th and “wrote off” their $32 billion debt to the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>“That old thing? I never liked it anyway,” Cuba-watchers easily imagine Putin hissing through gritted teeth. &#8220;We will provide support to our Cuban friends to overcome the illegal blockade of Cuba,&#8221; is what Putin actually hissed for the record.</p>
<p>Vladimir Putin rose to the rank of Lieut. Colonel in an organization that tortured and murdered at roughly TWICE the rate of the Nazi SS. So his offense at the “illegal” U.S. embargo of a KGB-founded, terror-sponsoring regime should provoke only chortling and snorting. Instead it’s probably causing a fit of the vapors at the State Dept. and in faculty lounges nationwide.</p>
<p>Not that Putin left Cuba completely empty-handed. Instead the Russians reclaimed the Evil Empire’s largest foreign spying base, located in Lourdes just south of Havana. The Soviets built this complex&#8211; capable of electronic spying on everything from the U.S. Military’s Central and Southern command to NASA facilities&#8211; in 1967 and manned it until 2001. That year financial problems and pressure from the U.S. forced the Russians to close and abandon it. Interestingly it was (then) Russian President Vladimir Putin <a href="http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2014/07/russia-set-to-reopen-military.html">who felt compelled to lock it up and scurry out.</a></p>
<p>This re-colonization by the Russians of a spy base on our very borders is obviously important, but surely a true Russian Richelieu could have reclaimed the base for less than $32 billion, especially with an Obama in the White House.</p>
<p>Putin’s visit to the colonial outpost his “old” outfit (the KGB) helped convert from a vibrant capitalist nation swamped with European immigrants into a vast sewer, slum and prison that repels even impoverished Haitians disgusted most Cuban dissidents. The loathing of most Cubans (including many communists) for <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/che.html">Che Guevara</a> owed much to Guevara&#8217;s groupie-like devotion to the Soviets who infested Cuba and roundly repelled almost all Cubans.</p>
<p>Putin’s fleecing by the Castro brothers provides more proof (if we actually needed any) that rarely in modern history has any item of U.S. foreign policy triumphed as patently (or hilariously) as the so-called U.S. embargo of Castro’s Stalinist kleptocracy. Here’s a glittering gem amidst the rubble of so much recent U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>Actually the Castros stuck it to Russia years ago, claiming they owed only an outfit named The Soviet Union, which no longer existed&#8211;so neither did this outfit’s invoices. Putin, faced with an offer he couldn’t refuse, simply ratified the rooking. The Castros stuck it to Mexico just last year, when its state development Bank Bancomex wrote off almost $500 million Cuba owed them from 15 years back. The Castros stuck it to Europe back in 1986, defaulting on most of their debt to the Paris Club. Fifteen years later the Castros stuck it to French taxpayers again for $175 million.</p>
<p>In 2011 the Castros stuck it even to their old “friends” Nelson Mandela’s South Africa. “The Cuban regime has a long track record of failing to pay back our loans,” lamented South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Trade &amp; Industry as he <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">wrote off almost 2 billion Rand in Cuban debt.</a></p>
<p>In sharp contrast, thanks to the so-called U.S. embargo of Cuba, the U.S. taxpayer remains unfleeced (at least at the hands of the Castros,) even after almost $4 billion in trade over the past dozen years with Cuba, the world’s most notorious deadbeat. “Wanna trade?” says the current version of the U.S. embargo. “No <em>problemo, </em>Mr Castro<em>.</em> Cash up front, buddy. The American taxpayer will NOT extend you credit. <em>Comprende</em>?</p>
<p>Enacted by the Bush team in 2001 this cash-up-front policy has kept the U.S. taxpayer snickering on the sidelines, much as we snickered at Oliver Douglas dealings with Mr Haney or Steven Spielberg and Larry King’s with Bernie Madoff.</p>
<p>“The problem with Socialism,” famously quipped Margaret Thatcher, “is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.” True enough. But when the communist Castros run out of one sugar-daddy’s money, there’s always another suitor waiting in line. From the Soviets to the Europeans to the Mexicans to the Venezuelans, etc. the Castro brothers—unlike, say, Bernie Madoff—possess a singular talent for keeping their scam running longer than the Energizer Bunny. One born every minute, Mr P.T. Barnum? Ask the Castro brothers. They’ll tell you that ten are born every second.</p>
<p>Alas, an extremely well-funded campaign to include us among P.T Barnum’s cherished customers (i.e. lift the Cuba embargo) is building steam in Washington. Fascinatingly, “libertarians”&#8211; those self-described defenders of the U.S. taxpayer, those self-described champions of American sovereignty and pocket books against snooty, sneaky and predatory supranational cabals and elites—these very libertarians now serve as an echo-chamber for David Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, along with The Trilateral Commission , the Davos Groups, the United Nations, The Arca Foundation, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, The Ford Foundation, a KGB Lieut Colonel, The Brookings Institute, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Piece (founded by Soviet spy Alger Hiss.)</p>
<p>Today’s “libertarians” march arm in arm chanting the anti-Cuba embargo mantra in perfect rhyme and cadence with every socialist elitist and every secretive supranational outfit mentioned above. Bedfellows don’t get much stranger. Let’s stand back and have a look:</p>
<p>All of the above clamor for an Imperial Democratic President to further circumvent the U.S. Congress and nullify the work of legendary conservative Republican legislators Dan Burton of Indiana and Jesse Helms of North Carolina.</p>
<p>Another name for the Cuba embargo in its current form, after all, is the Helms-Burton act of 1996, sponsored by these Red-State Republicans and constitutionally voted upon and passed by U.S. legislative branch.</p>
<p>But today’s “libertarian constitutionalists” have signed on to one of David Rockefeller’s <a href="http://babalublog.com/2013/03/06/mr-chavez-you-were-no-fidel-castro/david-rockefeller-and-fidel-castro-shaking-hands/">longest-running and most cherished labors of love. </a> All the above clamor for a brazenly imperial President and disciple of Saul Alinsky to further trash the congressional work of Jesse Helms and Dan Burton (also a Tea Party stalwart until his recent retirement.) This trashing would enable U.S. taxpayers to subsidize the Communist terror-sponsoring regime that stole $7 billion from U.S. stockholders at Soviet gunpoint and came within a hair of nuking us. This nuking was barely foiled at the last second by the aghast Butcher of Budapest:</p>
<p>“What?!” Khrushchev gasped on Oct. 28th 1962, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we launch missiles from Cuba?&#8230;.But that is insane!&#8230;<em>Remove them</em> (our missiles) <em>as soon as possible!</em> Before it’s too late. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">Before something terrible happens!”</a></p>
<p>Oh, I know…I know, Camelot’s court scribes concocted a different version of why the Russian missiles left Cuba. And naturally this version went instantly viral in the MSM, Academia and Hollywood.</p>
<p>At any rate, too bad Rod Serling isn’t around. This freak- show of anti-“embargo” lobbying would make a great episode for The Twilight Zone.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/putin-robbed-blind-by-the-castros/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Border Massacre of Children the Media Ignored</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/a-border-massacre-of-children-the-media-ignored/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-border-massacre-of-children-the-media-ignored</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/a-border-massacre-of-children-the-media-ignored/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2014 04:31:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[immigrant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[massacre]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Miami]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[refuge]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236349</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where was the media sympathy for immigrant children when Castro slaughtered them at sea? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Cuban-Immigrant-Boat-620x465.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236355" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Cuban-Immigrant-Boat-620x465-450x337.jpg" alt="Cuban-Immigrant-Boat-620x465" width="291" height="218" /></a>No ethnic group in the U.S. matches Cuban-Americans in their <a href="http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2012/10/breakdown-of-cuban-american-voter.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">rejection of the Democratic Party.</span></a> This might explain why most of you, amigos, have probably never heard of this atrocity against “Hispanics” attempting to enter the U.S. This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Communist massacre.</p>
<p>You know it’s bad (or good, depending on your viewpoint) when a mainstream media luminary himself admits to mainstream media “negligence.” To wit:</p>
<p>“In the summer of 1994, something terrible happened out there,” ABC’s Ted Koppel was reporting from Havana in 1998 as he pointed towards the Florida straits. “It was an incident that went all but unnoticed in the US media. The Cuban-American community protested but they protest a lot and as I say, <i>we in the mainstream media all but ignored it. </i>Now we welcome Cuban-American author Humberto Fontova for more details.”</p>
<p>“Thanks Ted! I’ll take it from here.” (Actually I’m making up the part about appearing on ABC. Actually <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/04/08/beyonce-jay-z-criticized-for-celebrating-in-this-communist-country"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Fox News is among the few who will tolerate me.</span></a> But thanks to Ted anyway for notifying the world of this Castroite atrocity, even if four years later.)</p>
<p>In the predawn darkness of July 13, 1994, 72 desperate Cubans &#8212; old and young, male and female &#8212; sneaked aboard a decrepit but seaworthy tugboat in Havana harbor and set off for the U.S. and the prospect of freedom.</p>
<p>Let Jimmy Carter gush that “Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education.” Let Jack Nicholson label their captive homeland &#8220;a paradise.&#8221; Let Bonnie Raitt rasp out her ditty calling it a &#8220;Happy Little Island.&#8221; Let Ted Turner hail their slavemaster as a &#8220;Helluva guy.&#8221; Let Michael Moore hail the glories of Cuba’s Healthcare in <i>Sicko.</i> Let Barbara Walters add gravitas while soft-soaping Castro during an &#8220;interview&#8221;: &#8220;You have brought great health to your country.&#8221;</p>
<p>The people boarding that tug knew better. And for a simple reason: the cruel hand of fate had slated them to live under Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s handiwork.</p>
<p>The lumbering craft cleared the harbor and five foot waves started buffeting the tug. The men sprung to action as the impromptu crew while mothers, sisters and aunts hushed the terrified children, some as young as one. Turning back was out of the question.</p>
<p>A few miles into the turbulent sea, 30-year-old Maria Garcia felt someone tugging her sleeve. She looked down and it was her 10-year-old son, Juan. &#8220;Mami, look!&#8221; and he pointed behind them toward shore. &#8220;What&#8217;s those lights?&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Looks like a boat following us, son,&#8221; she stuttered while stroking his hair. &#8220;Calm down, <i>mi hijo </i>(my son). Try to sleep. When you wake up, we&#8217;ll be with our cousins in a free country. Don&#8217;t worry.&#8221; In fact, Maria suspected the lights belonged to Castro patrol boats coming out to intercept them.</p>
<p>In seconds the patrol boats were alongside the tug and &#8211; WHACK!! &#8211; with its steel prow, the closest patrol boat rammed the back of the tug. People were knocked around the deck like bowling pins. But it looked like an accident, right? Rough seas and all. Could happen to anyone, right?</p>
<p>Hey, WATCH IT!&#8221; a man yelled as he rubbed the lump on his forehead. &#8220;We have women and children aboard!&#8221; Women held up their squalling children to get the point across. If they&#8217;d only known.</p>
<p>This gave the gallant Castroites nice targets for their water cannon. WHOOSH! The water cannon was zeroed and the trigger yanked. The water blast shot into the tug, swept the deck and mowed the escapees down, slamming some against bulkheads, blowing others off the deck into the five-foot waves.</p>
<p>&#8220;<i>MI HIJO! MI HIJO</i>!&#8221; Maria screamed as the water jet slammed into her, ripping half the clothes off her body and ripping Juan&#8217;s arm from her grasp. &#8220;JUANITO! JUANITO!&#8221; She fumbled frantically around her, still blinded by the water blast. Juan had gone spinning across the deck and now clung desperately to the tug&#8217;s railing 10 feet behind Maria as huge waves lapped his legs.</p>
<p>WHACK! Another of the steel patrol boats turned sharply and rammed the tug from the other side. Then &#8211; CRACK! another from the front! WHACK! The one from behind slammed them again. The tug was surrounded. It was obvious now: The ramming was NO accident. And in Cuba you don&#8217;t do something like this without strict orders from WAY above.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have women and children aboard!&#8221; The men yelled. &#8220;We&#8217;ll turn around! OK?!&#8221;</p>
<p>WHACK! the Castroites answered the plea by ramming them again. And this time the blow from the steel prow was followed by a sharp snapping sound from the wooden tug. In seconds the tug started coming apart and sinking. Muffled yells and cries came from below. Turns out the women and children who had scrambled into the hold for safety after the first whack had in fact scrambled into a watery tomb.</p>
<p>With the boat coming apart and the water rushing in around them, some got death grips on their children and managed to scramble or swim out. But not all. The roar from the water cannons and the din from the boat engines muffled most of the screams, but all around people were screaming, coughing, gagging and sinking.</p>
<p>Fortunately, a Greek freighter bound for Havana had happened upon the scene of slaughter and sped to the rescue. NOW one of the Castro boats threw out some life preservers on ropes and started hauling people in, pretending they&#8217;d been doing it all along.</p>
<p>Maria Garcia lost her son, Juanito, her husband, brother, sister, two uncles and three cousins in the maritime massacre. <a href="http://babalublog.com/2014/07/13/we-will-never-forget-the-20th-anniverssary-of-the-castro-regimes-13-de-marzo-tugboat-massacre/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">In all, 37 people drowned, 11 of them children.</span></a> Carlos Anaya was 3 when he drowned, Yisel Alvarez 4. Helen Martinez was 6 months old.</p>
<p>And all this death and horror to flee from a nation that experienced <i>net immigration</i> throughout the 20th Century, where boats and planes <i>brought in </i>many more people than they took out &#8211; except on vacation. (Despite what you saw in The Godfather, actually, in 1953<i>, more Cubans vacationed in the U.S.</i> than Americans in Cuba. And they all happily returned home, as befit a nation with a bigger middle class than most of Europe.)</p>
<p>Thirty one people were finally plucked from the seas and hauled back to Cuba where all were jailed or put under house arrest. They hadn&#8217;t been through enough, you see. But a few later escaped Cuba on rafts and reached Miami. Hence we have Maria Garcia&#8217;s gut-wrenching testimony presented to the UN, the OAS and Amnesty International, who all filed &#8220;complaints,&#8221; reports, &#8220;protests.”(with the customary results.)</p>
<p>This was obviously a rogue operation by crazed deviants, you say. No government could <i>possibly </i>condone, much less directly order such a thing! Right?</p>
<p>Wrong. <i>Nothing</i> is random in Stalinist Cuba. One of the gallant water-cannon gunners was even decorated (personally) by Castro. Perhaps for expert marksmanship. A three-year old child presents a pretty small target. A six-month old baby an even smaller one. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">&#8220;Magnificent job defending the glorious revolution, <i>companero</i>!&#8221;</span></a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/a-border-massacre-of-children-the-media-ignored/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>17</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Remember When Democrats Booted Parentless Hispanic Children From the U.S.?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/remember-when-democrats-booted-parentless-hispanic-children-from-the-u-s/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=remember-when-democrats-booted-parentless-hispanic-children-from-the-u-s</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/remember-when-democrats-booted-parentless-hispanic-children-from-the-u-s/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jul 2014 04:35:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elian Gonzalez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eric Holder]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236022</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At the behest of a Communist tyrant ...]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-10-at-1.24.43-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236023" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-10-at-1.24.43-PM-450x343.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-07-10 at 1.24.43 PM" width="269" height="205" /></a>Attorney General Eric Holder can hardly contain his tears when explaining his program titled “Justice AmeriCorps,” to provide emergency legal representation for the tens of thousands of Central American minors crashing our southern border.</p>
<p>“How we treat those in need, particularly young people who must appear in immigration proceedings, many of whom are fleeing violence, persecution, abuse or trafficking – goes to the core of who we are as a nation,” Holder said while detailing his program to provide 100 lawyers and paralegals for the minors.</p>
<p>And yet it was (then) Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder who concocted the “legal” cover for the INS to mace, kick, stomp, and gun-butt their way into the home of Elian Gonzalez’s legal custodians (legal U.S. citizens and residents all) on the morning of April 22, 2000, wrench a bawling 6-year-old child from his family at machine-gun point and bundle him off to Castro’s terror-sponsoring fiefdom, leaving 102 people (legal U.S. citizens and residents all) injured, some seriously.</p>
<p>Even as the mace dispersed and Elian’s custodians sought medical help for their injuries, FoxNews Andrew Napolitano already had Eric Holder’s number:</p>
<p>&#8220;Tell me, Mr. Holder,” <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2008/06/13/obama-vp-committe-member-helped-enable-2000-elian-gonzalez-seizure">Judge Napolitano asked on April 23, 2000</a>,</span> &#8220;why did you not get a court order authorizing you to go in and get the boy [Elian Gonzalez]?&#8221;</p>
<p><b>Holder:</b> Because we didn’t need a court order. INS can do this on its own.</p>
<p><b>Napolitano: </b>You know that a court order would have given you the cloak of respectability to have seized the boy.</p>
<p><b>Holder: </b>We didn’t need an order.</p>
<p><b>Napolitano: </b>Then why did you ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for such an order if you didn’t need one?</p>
<p><b>Holder:</b> [Silence]</p>
<p><b>Napolitano: </b>The fact is, for the first time in history you have taken a child from his residence at gunpoint to enforce your custody position, even though you did not have an order authorizing it. When is the last time a boy, a child, was taken at the point of a gun without an order of a judge…Unprecedented in American history.”</p>
<p><b>Holder: </b>“He was not taken at the point of a gun.”</p>
<p><b>Napolitano:</b> “We have a photograph showing he was taken at the point of a gun.”</p>
<p><b>Holder: </b>“They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively…”</p>
<p>The nature of this “sensitivity,” I’ve already mentioned, including the number injured by the mace, gun-butts and jackboots. Thanks to the ritual MSM-Castroite collusion most people forget (or missed) the crucial legal and ethical details of the Elian circus/tragedy — which were mostly established during the first week after the boy&#8217;s rescue at sea, after his heroic mother’s drowning.</p>
<p>The “son-belongs-with-his-father” crowd, for instance, “missed” (with the help of the MSM-Democratic complex) that Elian’s father was initially <i>delighted</i> that his motherless son was in the U.S. and in the loving arms of his uncles and cousins.</p>
<p>The evidence — frantically buried by the MSM-Democratic complex — was overwhelming. Mauricio Vicent, a reporter for Madrid newspaper <i>El Pais</i>, wrote that during that first week he’d visited Elian’s home town of Cardenas and talked with Elian’s father, Juan Miguel, along with other family members and friends. All confirmed that Juan Miguel <i>had always longed for his son Elian to flee to the United States.</i> Shortly after Elian’s rescue, his father had <i>even applied for a U.S. visa!</i></p>
<p>Elian’s Miami uncle, Lazaro, explained it repeatedly and best: “I always said I would turn over Elian to his father, when Juan Miguel would come here and claim him. But I [along with practically everyone with experience under communism from Cambodians to Hungarians and from Lithuanians to Cubans] knew such a thing was impossible. He couldn’t do that. I knew it wasn’t Juan Miguel requesting Elian–<i>it was Fidel</i>.”</p>
<p>The legal-weasels forgot (or missed) that on Dec. 1st, 1999 the INS (ostensibly under the jurisdiction of Janet Reno’s and Eric Holder’s Justice Department) asserted that Miami-based uncle Lazaro<i> was indeed Elian’s legal custodian and Florida’s family court indeed the place to arbitrate further issues</i>.</p>
<p>Then on Dec. 5th, 1999, Castro clapped his hands. Instantly the Clinton team and their MSM minions snapped to attention. Within weeks Clinton’s INS had turned its initial decision on its head. Shortly thereafter Clinton’s lawyer chum Gregory Craig was in Havana meeting with Fidel Castro. A few weeks later the INS was kicking down Lazaro Gonzalez’s door, pummeling camera men and elderly ladies to the ground with jackboots and wrenching a screaming Elian from his legal custodians in a blaze of pepper gas and machine guns. When asked for the legal authority for this, they brandished either a search warrant to seize evidence that didn’t exist (and would not have been hidden anyway) or an arrest warrant to seize someone who no one claimed was a criminal or even a lawbreaker.</p>
<p>“They never made it clear just what kind of warrant” it was. &#8220;And neither would it have been legal,” patiently explained Alan Dershowitz (no less!).</p>
<p>So why did Elian’s father change his tune?</p>
<p>Remember Godfather II? Remember the Senate hearings where Frankie Pentangeli, under FBI protection, was prepared to testify against Michael Corleone? The stage was set. Looked like a done-deal for the Feds. Then Frankie looks up and sees his bewildered brother Vincenzo from Sicily, sitting next to Mikey.</p>
<p>Whoops! Frankie sure changed his tune, didn’t he?</p>
<p>Think of Juan Miguel as Frankie Pentangeli. The gun <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/fidel.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Fidel Castro</span></a> held to Juan Miguel’s head was as invisible (to those without experience with Communism) as the one Mikey held to Pentangeli’s head was to most spectators at those hearings.</p>
<p>All that stomping and macing and firepower in the dawn hours of April 22, 2000 horrified and enraged many people for sure – it also amazed. Why such overkill? Why such “Shock and Awe,” many wondered?</p>
<p>Well, it appears that those INS agents <i>genuinely</i> feared that they were on a mission fraught with deadly peril from massive firepower. Fidel Castro himself, you see, had confided to Bill Clinton via his lawyer friend Gregory Craig that Lazaro Gonzalez’s house was crammed with typical Cuban-American right-wing maniacs, all heavily armed, foaming at the mouth, and ready to rumble.</p>
<p>Given that American liberals pretty much share Castro’s view of Americans <i>citizens</i> of Cuban heritage, the Stalinist dictator’s warning was warmly received –and scrupulously acted upon.</p>
<p>But it turned out that the only blasting that morning came from mace and tear gas into the faces of ladies (legal U.S. citizens and residents all) holding infants and rosaries.</p>
<p>A U.S. Justice Dept. that accepted the word of a State-Sponsor-of-Terror whose lifelong dream is to nuke the U.S. (Fidel Castro) over that of lawful U.S. citizens (Cuban-Americans who claimed that from day one Fidel Castro was the one orchestrating Elian’s return, but who mostly register Republican)—such action by a federal agency should really give <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova"><span style="color: #0433ff;">more U.S. citizens more pause.</span></a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/remember-when-democrats-booted-parentless-hispanic-children-from-the-u-s/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>35</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>More to &#8216;Hard Choices&#8217; than Benghazi</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/more-to-hard-choices-than-benghazi/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=more-to-hard-choices-than-benghazi</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/more-to-hard-choices-than-benghazi/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:35:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benghazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hard choices]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Huma Abedin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234358</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton's delusions on North Korea, Cuba, Islamists and more. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #1a1a1a;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/140617_hillary_clinton_hard_choices_ap_605.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234359" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/140617_hillary_clinton_hard_choices_ap_605.jpg" alt="HiIlary Rodham Clinton" width="259" height="209" /></a>Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new book has been in the spotlight over what she says about Benghazi. That chapter, which starts on page 382, is not the only fascinating passage in Hard Choices. Consider, for example, what Hillary says about Islamists.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">“The term Islamist generally refers to people and parties who support a guiding role for Islam in politics and government. It covers a wide spectrum, from those who think Islamic values should inform public policy decisions to those who think that all laws should be judged or even formulated by Islamic authorities to conform to Islamic law. Not all Islamists are alike. In some cases, Islamist leaders and organizations have been hostile to democracy, including some who have supported radical, extremist, and terrorist ideology and actions. But around the world, there are political parties with religious affiliations – Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim – that respect the rules of democratic politics, and it is in America’s interest to encourage all religiously based political parties and leaders to embrace inclusive democracy and reject violence. Any suggestion that faithful Muslims or people of any faith cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous and wrong.”</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Here readers see the straw man at his finest. Nobody is contending that people of any faith “cannot thrive in a democracy.” The issue is whether Islam itself has a problem with democracy, multi-party elections, free speech, women’s rights, gay rights, diversity, co-education and so forth. The evidence suggests that it does.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Islamists want more than a “guiding role” for Islamic law. They want an exclusive, dominating role. In Islamist regimes non-Islamic groups are second- or third-class citizens. In more than 600 pages Hillary includes nothing on the Islamist group Boko Haram, fond of kidnapping hundreds of girls and burning boys alive.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Some readers will be familiar with Huma Abedin, Hillary’s deputy chief of staff and her ties to Islamic supremacism. Consider how Hard Choices handles the matter.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">In one meeting in Cairo, an agitated participant brought up an “especially outrageous canard. He accused my trusted aide <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/huma-abedin-islamist-connections-and-willful-blindness/">Huma Abedin</a>, who is Muslim, of being a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. This claim circulated by some unusually irresponsible and demagogic right-wing political and media personalities in the United States, including members of Congress. . .” Hillary includes no background information on Abedin and her main argument is that Sen. John McCain has publicly defended her.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">So has president Obama, who calls Abedin “an American patriot and an example of what we need in this country.” The president issued that praise “at the White House’s annual Iftar dinner to break the Ramadan fast.”</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Readers of Hard Choices are told that in North Korea the political oppression is “nearly” total. Actually, the oppression is total. “Famine is frequent,” she writes, and many of the people “live in abject poverty” but she does not tie that poverty to oppressive Marxist rule and a command economy, or compare the forced famines in China and Ukraine.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Hillary writes that “for fifty years Cuba had been ruled as a Communist dictatorship by Fidel Castro.” Fidel and brother Raul “continue to rule Cuba with absolute power.” As Humberto Fontova notes in The Longest Romance, Castro’s rule is as bad as it gets, comparable to Stalin’s. But Hillary offers no detail about the regime’s political prisoners and persecution of homosexuals. Chile, on the other hand suffered the “brutal military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.” And the coup that brought Pinochet to power, says Hillary, is “a dark chapter in our involvement in the region.”</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">The author provides no details about the coup and fails to note that the brutal Pinochet, unlike the non-brutal Castro, stepped aside to allow free elections. But readers will observe the first response to blame the United States. Hillary Clinton describes none of the episodes on her watch as Secretary of State, including the Benghazi attack, as a dark chapter in American diplomacy.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">It took a village of handlers to produce Hard Choices, dumbed down to the point of explaining that winter in the southern hemisphere occurs at a different time of year. The book is highly autohagiographical, bulked with gossipy filler such as half a page on Benazir Bhutto’s shalwar kameez, “a long flowing tunic over loose pants that was both practical and attractive. . . We wore it for a formal dinner. I wore red silk and Chelsea chose turquoise green.”</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">On page 595 Hillary says she has yet to make the decision to run for President of the United States. If Hard Choices unsettles readers about her suitability for that office, they might also read Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 1999 book by the late Barbara Olson, a victim of the Islamist terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Readers might also consult Peter Collier’s Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick. Hillary Clinton nowhere mentions Ambassador Kirkpatrick but deciding which woman is the tougher, more intelligent and more successful diplomat should not be a hard choice.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/more-to-hard-choices-than-benghazi/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 1350/1378 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 02:24:06 by W3 Total Cache -->