Posted on 12/24/2014 4:58:48 PM PST by Veto!
I am furious, in pain, and deeply offended by those who laud this betrayal of the Cuban people as a great moment in history.
My family and native land were destroyed by the brutal Castro regime. In 1959, as an 8-year-old, I listened to mobs shout “paredon!” (to the firing squad!). I watched televised executions, and was terrified by the incessant pressure to agree with a bearded dictator’s ideals.
I am now a professor of history and religion at Yale University….
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Had I stayed in Miami instead of leaving home when I did, I might have married a Cuban.
I had crushes on a couple of Cuban guys in high school.
With one of these, Carlos, we used to hang out a lot together, park our ancient cars nose-to-tail, and visit each other's houses. I even attended a pig roast at his house.
One day, out of the blue, he tells me, "My mother says I can marry anybody except a Jew."
I was stunned. He had never touched or even kissed me. In retrospect, his mother's rejection of me helped me to dodge a bullet--because really, who the hell needs to marry into a family where they hate the religion you were born into--something over which nobody has any control? And I knew some Jewish Cubans growing up. I'm with a good man now, have been together for about 13 years.
And as an American citizen, I also feel betrayed by the impostor in the White Hut!
His mother apparently didn’t care whether he married a Muslim.
And neither did Moochelle’s.
I think you’re absolutely right!
Obama’s act was a Christmas gift to one Marxist thug from another Marxist thug. If there was anyone Obama would rank closest to in ideology and character it would be Castro.
Well you might as well jump on board, every one else has been pi$$ed on by this muslim thug.
You mention some interesting possibilities. Another is that the lease on Guantanamo Bay is open-ended. It will last as long as payment is made or until both parties agree to end it. With Obama's promise to close Gitmo's detention area, his love affair with any and all murderous Communist dictators and hatred of the U.S. military, I wonder if U.S. military presence at Gitmo might be nearing an end?
“... American companies like ADM will rush into Cuba...”
In spite of your feelings, American companies have long memories. Some of them had their factories stolen (nationalized) in the ‘50’s in Cuba. I think they will be much more cautious than you seem to think. They might form arm’s length subsidiaries with all Cuban personnel but no US personnel as a way to re-introduce their products but American brick and mortar - not for quite a while.
“so what could their agenda possibly be?”
Maybe some billionaire land developer(s) who’s a mega-contributor to the RATS is just itching to build some kind of Club Med- type thing around Havana.....
Betrayed by Obama?
Get in line.
They understand. The difference is that they think it's a good thing, and we think it's an abomination.
Cluelessness on Cuba (Humberto Fontova)
12,26,2014
Excerpts
First off, if Castro “secretly favors the embargo,” then why did every one of his secret agents campaign secretly and obsessively against the embargo while working as secret agents? Castro managed the deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Department of Defense in recent U.S. history. The spy’s name is Ana Belen Montes, known as “Castro’s Queen Jewel” in the intelligence community. In 2002 she was convicted of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and today she serves a 25-year sentence in Federal prison. Only a plea bargain spared her from sizzling in the electric chair like the Rosenberg’s.
In fact, few U.S. foreign policy measures in recent history have been as phenomenally successful as our limited sanctions against the Stalinist Robber-Barons who run Cuba. First off, for three decades the Soviet Union was forced to pump the equivalent of almost ten Marshall Plans into Cuba.
This cannot have helped the Soviet Union’s precarious solvency or lengthened her life span. Secondly, the U.S. taxpayer has been spared the fleecing visited upon many others who reside in nations who eschew “embargoing” Cuba.
Per-capita-wise, Cuba qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation with a foreign debt of close to $50 billion, a credit–rating nudging Somalia’s, and an uninterrupted record of defaults.
In 1986 Cuba defaulted on most of her foreign debt to Europe. Seven years ago France’s version of the U.S. government’s Export-Import Bank (named COFACE) cut off Cuba’s credit line. Mexico’s Bancomex quickly followed suit. The Castro regime had stuck it to French taxpayers for $175 million and to Mexican taxpayers for $365 million.
Bancomex was forced to impound Cuban assets in three different countries in an attempt to recoup its losses.
A bit later we heard from another Castro sucker: “The Cuban regime has a long track record of failing to pay back our loans,” lamented South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Trade & Industry, Geordin Hill-Lewis. “In 2010, South Africa had to write off R1.1 billion in bad Cuban debt, and on Friday we wrote off another R250 million in bad debt. The time has come for South Africa to invest in strategic partnerships that deliver prosperity for our people.”
in 1960 stormed into almost 6000 U.S. owned businesses (worth almost $ 2 billion at the time) and stole them all at Soviet gunpoint. A few American business-owners resisted. One of these was Howard Anderson who owned a filling stations and Jeep dealership (not a casino or brothel, which were relatively rare in pre-Castro Cuba, by the way.) I’ll quote from Anderson v. Republic of Cuba, No. 01-28628 (Miami-Dade Circuit Court, April 13, 2003). “In one final session of torture, Castro’s agents drained Howard Anderson’s body of blood before sending him to his death at the firing squad.”
The Inter-American Law Review classifies Castro’s mass burglary of U.S. property as “the largest uncompensated taking of American property by a foreign government in history.” Rubbing his hands and snickering in triumphant glee, Castro boasted at maximum volume to the entire world that he was freeing Cuba from “Yankee economic slavery!” (Che Guevara’s term, actually) and that “he would never repay a penny!”
This is the only promise Fidel Castro has ever kept in his life. Hence the imposition of the Cuba embargo, not that you’d know any of this from the mainstream media.
The burglarized (and often brutalized) American owners filed those property claims against Castro’s regime with the U.S. government. They’re worth $7 billion today—and must be settled before the so called embargo is lifted.
This settlement provision for lifting the embargo was codified into U.S. law in 1996 by the Helms-Burton act, which means only Congress can lift the embargo, obviously after a vote. But the votes are not there.
Shouldn’t Rand Paul know this?
In 1967 libertarian icon Murray Rothbard seemed highly bereaved and aggrieved to hear of Che Guevara’s whacking. Here’ his encomium to the Stalinist who outlawed private property under penalty of torture-chamber and firing-squad:
“Che is dead, and we all mourn him. Long live Che! Why? How is it that so many libertarians mourn this man?...What made Che such an heroic figure for our time is that he, more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of Revolution… we all knew that his enemy was our enemy–that great Colossus that oppresses and threatens all the peoples of the world, U. S. imperialism.”
Ron Paul regards Murray Rothbard as one of America’s “greatest men” and “greatest heroes of freedom.” Rand Paul, considers it an honor to have met Murray Rothbard and a “privilege” to have once driven him to the airport.
So let’s hope simple “cluelessness” motivates Rand Paul’s comments on Cuba. Let’s hope the motivation is not something more troublesome.
Extraordinary post, thanks.
How could Obama resist the chance to screw American taxpayers again? We’d better find someone with enough huevos in congress to put a stop to this madness. Big sigh.
FRANCIS, OBAMA, CASTRO, A PACT IN HELL
After more than 55 years of violations of their human rights, is inconceivable that once again the Cuban people is betrayed by those most called to defend and demand their right to freedom and the respect for their human dignity.
“During those years, with the purpose of forcing us to abandon our religious beliefs and to demoralize us, the Cuban Communist indoctrinators repeatedly used the statements made by some representatives of the American Christian churches. Every time a pamphlet was published in U.S., every time a clergyman would write an article in support of Castro’s dictatorship, a translation would be given to us, and that was far worse for the Christian political prisoners than the beatings or the hunger. Incomprehensible to us, while we waited for the embrace of solidarity from our brothers in Christ, those who were embraced were our tormentors.” Armando Valladares
Pope Francis negotiated and blessed a Faustian accord in which an apprentice of tyrant came to the rescue of the regimen of a genocide tyrant throwing under bus and condemning the Cuban people to eternal damnation. By this accord, the American taxpayers will keep afloat the Cuban government assuming the financing the Stalinist regime.
YOUR post brings tears to my eyes. I wonder how long the Cuban people will even remember the rich religious virtues they once had….
There were several hundred peasants that heroically fought for several years (1960-1966) a guerrilla war against the communist regime in the Escambray Mountains. The Cuban exiles supplied the freedom fighters arms and munitions from Florida until the second betrayal of John F Kennedy. During the Bay of Pig invasion the Cuban freedom fighters were betrayed by Kennedy who denied them the promised air support. The second great betrayal was during the October Missile Crisis when Kennedy was check mated by Khrushchev. In order to get the missiles from Cuba, United States retired its missiles in Italy and Turkey. Even worse, JFK promised that U.S. will become the guarantor of the security of the Castro regime no allowing any attack not only from U.S. soil, but from any other point in this hemisphere. The result was that the exiles could not send anymore military aid to the guerrillas fighting in Cuba who were annihilated by the much superior forces of the Stalinist regime. The Kennedy/Khrushchev accord abrogated de facto the Monroe Doctrine by allowing an extra-hemispheric potency to maintain a permanent enemy base at 90 miles of Florida.
I didn’t realize the extent of the betrayal of Cuban people. Pure evil.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.