Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park, CaliforniaBiden opens up access to U.S. banks to communist Cuba’s ‘private’ businesses
Translated excerpt:
Professor Omara Ruiz Urquiola, dismissed by the regime from the Higher Institute of Industrial Design, where she served as a teacher, expressed her skepticism and concern about the new measure, which she said had been postponed at least since 2021.
“It’s about ‘Vietnamizing’ Cuba to stop the emigration, nothing more. For that purpose, it is essential to annihilate the true civil society, suffocate it, nullify it, and replace it with one created by the General Intelligence Directorate [DGI] of Cuba, including ‘independent’ media acting as legitimate spokespersons for the strategy,” Ruiz Urquiola stated to CubaNet.
For the academic, the anti-government protests on July 11 and 12, 2021 (11J) “halted” the measures in favor of the Havana regime. “It was too scandalous then, now they are going all out. Here we have to congratulate the agents of influence and the professionals of Cuban Intelligence, this is their triumph,” she said.
Also in statements to CubaNet, Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, president of the Cuban Resistance Assembly, condemned the measure considering it beneficial for the Cuban regime: “They have given a gift to the communist regime in Cuba that contributes to its strengthening. I believe this measure will give more room for maneuver to the communist regime in Cuba,” he said.
Gutiérrez-Boronat also emphasized that only actions that shorten the regime’s lifespan will truly benefit the Cuban people.
Professor and researcher José Raúl Gallego also criticized the decision, saying that “the Cuban DGI and its lobbyists” had managed to get the Biden administration to take “some of the steps needed to facilitate the operation and enrichment of their frontmen disguised as the private sector.”
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Cuban American legislators are also seeing right through this ruse. Knowing how the Cuban regime operates, which the Biden administration’s State Dept. is fully aware of but refuses to acknowledge, they see this change as a major victory for the Castro dictatorship that will give the regime the help it needs to keep its stranglehold on power.
https://www.cubaheadlines.com/articles/282710
In his X account, Republican Congressman Carlos Giménez accused the Biden administration of perpetuating “the Castro dictatorship in power and abandoning the Cubans who fight for freedom,” while calling it “an accomplice” of the communist regime. “President Biden has just granted more concessions to Cuba’s murderous regime,” he stated.
Meanwhile, legislator María Elvira Salazar argued that opening the U.S. banking system to the ‘private sector,’ which she considers “a front for the regime to obtain foreign currency,” will give “more lifeline to the dictatorship.”
For all the Biden administration’s claims of wanting to help the Cuban people break free of communist tyranny, this policy change will have the opposite effect, and they know it. It’s been the plan all along.
Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park, CaliforniaHong Kong Court Convicts 14 Pro-Democracy Activists in Major National Security Case
https://x.com/AFP/status/1796109293080420859
Excerpt:
Major Points
A Hong Kong court convicted 14 pro-democracy activists on charges of conspiracy to commit subversion under a national security law imposed by Beijing, which has greatly restricted public dissent.
The accused include former lawmakers such as Leung Kwok-hung and Lam Cheuk-ting, who now potentially face life in prison. Two former district councilors were acquitted.
These activists were charged for their participation in an unofficial primary election aimed at obtaining a legislative majority to veto government budgets, which the court claimed could paralyze the government and lead to a constitutional crisis.
The court’s verdict emphasized that “unlawful means” used in the conspiracy did not have to be criminal acts and that the accused did not need to be aware of the unlawfulness.
The case is seen as an example of how the national security law is being used to suppress political opposition and erode civil liberties in Hong Kong, despite promises of maintaining Western-style freedoms after the 1997 handover from Britain to China.
As this legal saga continues, international and local observers remain deeply concerned about the implications for Hong Kong’s political landscape and its promises of maintaining Western-style civil liberties post-handover from Britain in 1997.
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The ‘concern’ by observers is laughable given what is happening in the US and EU to civil liberties. This case has many similarities to what the deep state is doing to innocent citizens here in the US.