Free Republic

“They saw in Castro and Che Guevara the hipster who in the era of the Organization Man had joyfully defied the system,” wrote President Kennedy’s adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr back in 1961. Indeed, this “hipster” cachet hovers around the leaders of the Cuban Revolution and persists to this day, despite a half century of Stalinist crimes. Then thanks largely to President Obama’s recent “rapprochement” with these “hipsters,” Stalinist Cuba became the absolute “coolest” place on Earth. Last year close on the heels of Katy Perry, the Rolling Stones and the Obama family itself, Karl Lagerfeld showcased his Chanel “cruise line”...

If someone would have told me a month ago that I'd spend my recent trip to Cuba obsessing over a missile crisis I would have told them I'm not that kind of historian. But there I was in Old Havana in early July, thinking about whether another missile crisis half way around the globe would lead to the world war that was so narrowly averted here five decades ago. Of course the missiles in question today are in North Korea, not in Cuba. But the fact that 55 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis and over a generation removed from...

The opposition MUD is subjected to tremendous challenges, all coming from the fact that they need to face off a criminal-narco-state without any help from the outside police. Why the world is not acting on Veneuela knowing very well that it risks receiving a refugee wave of millions is the subject of another text. Never mind that if the regime manages to hold power at the cost of a dictatorial communist "constitution" and thousands of deaths this will set a bad precedent for regimes dreaming of such a perpetuation of outcome, like Bolivia, the FARC in Colombia, Nicaragua, to name...

The legend of King Robert the Bruce, exiled from Scotland in a cave off the Irish coast in 1306, resembles a similar story in the Bible about King David when he was a boy. King Robert watched a spider finally manage to make a web after failing in several attempts. Thus the child’s rhyme: “If at first you don’t succeed, Try, try, try again.” Our Lord’s parable of the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-8) is about a poor widow who persisted in getting the judge to hear her case. The refined translation says that the judge wearied of her importuning, but...

“Now that I am your President, America will expose the crimes of the Castro regime and stand with the Cuban people in their struggle for freedom….For nearly six decades, the Cuban people have suffered under communist domination. To this day, Cuba is ruled by the same people who killed tens of thousands of their own citizens, who sought to spread their repressive and failed ideology throughout our hemisphere, and who once tried to host enemy nuclear weapons 90 miles from our shores.” (President Donald Trump, June 16, 2017.)In a vicious sucker punch to the Fake News Media and Deep...

Reflections on the Trump Administration's changes to our Cuba policy: In 1959, following six years of organized Marxist-Leninist rebellion, mostly run by Fidel and Raul Castro and their partner Che Guevera, the Battista government of Cuba was overthrown and Fidel Castro claimed dictatorial powers, which he eventually turned over to his brother Raul, in 2008. The Castros spent their sixty years not only oppressing their people – robbing, raping, beating, imprisoning, torturing, and killing, as all communist governments do – but they also spent those years, particularly the years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, spreading violent revolution across...

Joy Reid, radical leftist news commentator, went Tweet crazy when President Trump announced on Friday he was rescinding much of President Obama’s order loosening diplomatic relations with communist Cuba. And although most of them amounted to outrage that yet another imprudent Obama administration policy was going by the wayside, there is one President Trump should print out and tape to his office wall. “Trump name checks Assata Shakur (calls her by her former name, Joanne Chesimard) as a dog whistle to his people. #Trumping Cuba,” she tweeted. Reid is angry Trump not only rescinded what he called the “completely one-sided...

Trump slams Obama's deal with Cuba and says he is 'cancelling it' as he puts Castro on notice to the delight of Little Havana's exiles Trump will announce Cuban policy change at the Manuel Artime Theater, which is named of a Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veteran Break with Obama is primarily over tourism (his administration looked the other way) and spending at military-run establishments (it will be barred) Commercial flights and cruise liners will still be allowed to ferry Americans to the island nation 90 miles south of Florida Passengers will face the threat of a Treasury audit if they...

In Miami, the heart of America’s Cuban exile community, President Donald Trump sounded the death knell of predecessor Barack Obama’s “normalization” policy towards Cuba, vowing,” we will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer.” Opening with a recognition of recent victims of leftist violence – U.S. citizen Otto Warmbier, recently released by Cuba ally North Korea, and Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) – Trump called for the audience to pray for them and all the American and Cuban people. He then listed some of the Cuban dissidents present for his speech in Florida, including Jorge Luis García...

In Miami, the crowd was standing and cheering Friday as President Trump smiled broadly after pledging to reverse key provisions of the Obama administration’s historic Cuba opening. A world away, in Portland, Maine, Ben Rhodes could not contain his frustration. “The few people in Miami enabling Trump in carrying out this charade should be embarrassed/held accountable,” Rhodes wrote on Twitter. “He could care less about Cubans.” It was the first of four tweets Rhodes, a foreign policy aide to former president Barack Obama, fired off attacking Trump as the president was speaking. Rhodes was in Maine to attend the wedding...

It's an expensive thorn-in-the-side to the Castro regime. The moozlem prisoners cost a million bucks apiece per year to incarcerate. Rent is $5k/yr. I say turn it into a penal colony and staff it with foreign guards, including Cubans. Put those land mines back into place that Bill Clinton removed without reciprocation-the Cubans have their own mines still there. Prisoners can be the illegals(ms-13 types) waiting to finish out there terms in the continental US. Bring the navy ships and their families back home. Trump can thereby DEAL with the next Government for total withdrawal. The moozlems? Build the same...

Fans of Cuban rum and cigars can rest easy. So can the Starwood chain, which has a deal to manage a historic hotel in Havana. But Americans who want to vacation in Cuba or start doing business there will find it harder as a result of President Trump’s misguided decision to slam the brakes on a two-year-old diplomatic opening with the island. Mr. Trump told a cheering crowd in Miami on Friday that his goal is to achieve a “free Cuba.” In truth, his new policy is just the latest chapter in a spiteful political crusade to overturn crucial elements...

RUSH: Trump is getting standing ovations down in Miami. He has announced he’s reversing much of the Obama legacy vis-a-vis Cuba. He is going to double down on the Cuban embargo. He’s going to reinstitute the travel ban. He just said that any change in American policy is gonna be dependent on the Cuban government, not the United States. So another aspect of the Obama legacy is being unraveled here today to wild applause down in Miami. I don’t know what this means for Cuban cigars, which have become legal in a way. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So Trump has made...

...The NSC memo obtained by The Hill stated that reverting back to the pre-2014 policy on Cuba would have shown “a strong commitment to human rights and democracy” and pleased anti-Castro “interest groups,” but would have also come with a number of risks.  “Global adversaries, such as Iran, Russia and China, would likely develop an even stronger footing in Cuba” if ties with the island were severed, the NSC document says.   The memo warned that cutting off relations would have eliminated economic and political leverage over Cuba to extract reforms, damaged U.S. objectives in Latin America, hurt U.S. businesses...

President Donald Trump offered the most forthright criticism of Cuba since John F. Kennedy when he addressed a crowd in Miami ahead of signing an executive order reversing the Obama administration’s policy of normalization. In a speech frequently interrupted by applause, and by cameo appearances from Cuban-American activists, Trump laid out a moral case against the Castro regime and its policies that few previous presidents have dared to make. “We will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer,” Trump said. He laid out his principles and policies, including regime change: “With God’s help, a free Cuba...

Three men carrying false identification were denied access to the federal courthouse in downtown Miami Thursday. They attempted to enter at multiple vehicle check-points until security guards recognized one of the men and immediately contacted deputies from the U.S. Marshals Service. The men used badges that resembled those from three different federal agencies, including a U.S. Marshal badge, but within seconds of examining the badges, security guards knew they were fraudulent. Once the men were detained, officers searched their vehicle and discovered other fraudulent law enforcement clothing. One man was arrested and could face charges by the U.S. Attorney’s Office,...

As Venezuela’s oil industry goes down it flames, it’s looking like it may just take Cuba down with it. Venezuela, once the crude powerhouse of South and Central America, is no longer able to produce enough oil to sustain its own economy, much less those of other countries. Cuba is frantically drilling in search for new reserves and reaching out for new suppliers, but there is no guarantee they’ll be able to stabilize their oil income any time soon. Cuba became dependent on Venezuelan oil in the 1990s, when they were sold cut-price crude in exchange for the services of...

I recently got back from a 10-day trip to Cuba. And during those days I gained some insight into what thousands of Americans are going to find when they leave their luxury hotels and lavish supermarkets and spend significant amounts of money to travel to an island hobbled by embargo and food shortages. In a nutshell, it’s going to be a huge, huge mess. But (probably!) worth it, particularly for the adventurous and culinarily unambitious. The trip I went on was a “people-to-people” educational group voyage, in compliance with U.S. State Department guidelines. I like to think of it as...

President Trump will head to Miami on Friday, home to a large and influential Cuban-American community, to unveil his administration’s new Cuba policy -- which will roll back central parts of his predecessor’s efforts to normalize ties with the Communist island nation, according to a senior administration official and other sources.  While details on the changes to the policy have yet to be fully revealed, a U.S. official suggested that Trump would call for Cuban President Raul Castro to push for more political freedom and to release democratic activists in Cuban prisons, among other initiatives. Trump is at the same...

“A New York Times story about alleged Trump team contacts with Russian officials was “in the main not true.” (The New York Post quoting James Comey, 6/8.)Now over to the opposite end of the media’s political spectrum:"The assumption of the critics of the president, of his pursuers (especially The New York Times) …is that somewhere along the line in the last year the president had something to do with colluding with the Russians…and yet what came apart this morning was that theory," (Chris Matthews, MSNBC 6/8.)In brief, after this week’s Senate hearings (and especially after “Little Marco’s” gutsy performance) it...