Welcome to Cuba, Mr. Obama! We've thrown some more dissidents in jail just for you.
Posted on 03/20/2016 1:24:55 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
A leading Cuban dissident invited to meet President Barack Obama on his visit to the island this week has said the US president should not be visiting while human rights violations continue.
Berta Soler, leader of the ‘Ladies in White’ protest group, said she wanted Obama to call for an amnesty for Cuba's political prisoners and wait to hear the US president deliver his landmark speech before deciding if she would accept his invite to meet him at the US embassy in Havana on Tuesday.
Her non-attendance would be an embarrassment for Mr Obama, whose landmark trip to Cuba begins on Sunday. Mr Obama sees the detente with the Castro regime as one of his foreign policy achievements.
Ms Soler’s complaint was echoed by Armando Valladares, a former political prisoner now based in Miami. “This visit is an enormous slap in the face to us, and a backing for tyranny,” he said.
Mr Valladares, 78 – who spent 22 years of his life in a Cuban prison – also ridiculed the notion that an increase in tourism would enhance Cuban democracy.
“It’s incredibly pretentious of the US to think that when the tourists invade the streets, suddenly Cubans’ eyes will be opened and with a magic wand they will be awakened,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The trip, which marks the end of more than half a century of Cold War between the US and Cuba, is the first by a US president since Calvin Coolidge’s brief visit in 1928.
President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, their two daughters Malia and Sasha and the first lady’s mother Marian Robinson are scheduled to stay at the US ambassadorial residence during the first visit by a U.S. president to Cuba in 88 years.
It will include Mr Obama spending an afternoon watching a baseball match between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national side alongside the Cuban president, Raul Castro - an event unthinkable even two years ago.
Ms Soler, who also refused to meet John Kerry when the embassy in Havana was reopened in August after he failed to invite dissidents to the official opening ceremony, said she believed Mr Obama’s whole trip was misguided.
“It’s not the moment,” she said. “He would be very welcome if things were getting better. But it’s not. Nothing has changed.”
The Obama administration disagrees, pointing out that last week four Cuban dissidents were released from prison – the latest to be freed from a group of 53 who were promised to be allowed out in December 2014. The men left Havana and boarded planes for the US.
But dissidents insist that it is not enough. Wilberto Parada, who was among the dissidents released last year as part of the rapprochement with the US, said that permitting the four to leave was beneficial mainly for the Cuban government. “Change in Cuba has to come from within,” he said, “and it’s convenient for the government to take dissidents out of Cuba.”
International observers have, generally, welcomed Mr Obama’s new strategy of détente with Havana, but say that he nonetheless faces a very delicate balancing act while in Cuba.
“Our view is that Obama is doing the right thing in terms of moving away from the old policies, which didn’t work and gave the Cuban government a pretext for clamping down, painting itself as a victim,” said Daniel Wilkinson, Cuba analyst for Human Rights Watch.
“He is also making it easier to rally international pressure on Cuba. But the idea of Obama sitting through a baseball game with Raúl Castro – that undermines any message on human rights,” he said.
On Saturday Elizardo Sanchez, Cuba’s most famous human rights activist, was arrested at Havana airport, on arriving from Miami, and detained for three and a half hours.
He too is due to meet Mr Obama on Tuesday. Last week he warned Human Rights Watch that dissidents were being visited by the police and told to stay indoors until after Mr Obama had left the country.
Mr Obama’s staff have repeatedly stressed that the three-day visit will cement the progress made in bringing Cuba in from the cold, and give new momentum to his drive to advance human rights, trade and the economy on the island.
Ben Rhodes, a senior assistant to the president on foreign policy, said the trip reflected the new dynamic in US-Cuban relations, following Mr Obama’s decision to re-start diplomatic relations last year.
“He will address human rights. I think the difference here is that in the past, because of certain US policies, the message that was delivered was that the US was essentially trying to overturn the government in Cuba, or change the direction of Cuba.
“The United States is not a hostile state seeking regime change. The nature of the conversation has changed.”
Even if Ms Soler decides to attend the meeting with Mr Obama, she fears she may be arrested to stop her from going anyway, in a repeat of her treatment when Pope Francis invited her to a similar gathering in September.
The women in her group were regularly arrested, beaten up during protests and harassed by police, she said.
She accused the government of beginning a new policy of taking money from their bank accounts, justifying the “robbery” by saying the money had been sent from the US to encourage revolt.
“At this very moment, outside our offices, there are three groups of police stationed there,” she said.
Ms Soler, 52, who began her activism when her husband was sentenced to 20 years in prison for founding an alternative political party, insisted the human rights situation in Cuba was actually getting worse.
“The difference here is that in the past...the message was...that the US was essentially trying to overturn the government in Cuba, or change the direction of Cuba. The United States is not a hostile state seeking regime change. The nature of the conversation has changed.”
She said there were currently 80 political prisoners being held, and that Mr Obama should use his visit to call for an amnesty.
“He must demand their release,” she said. “It needs to be about more than smiling and shaking hands.”
Cuba’s Communist government has said it has no political prisoners, and that opponents mistakenly consider armed counter-revolutionaries and common criminals as political cases.
"I think it's fine. I think it's fine, but we should have made a better deal," Trump added. " The concept of opening with Cuba is fine."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/08/politics/donald-trump-cuba-diplomatic-opening/index.html
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
________________________________________
"I think that I would probably get along with him [Putin] very well."
--Donald Trump, CBS' Face The Nation, Oct 2015
________________________________________
Joe Scarborough: Again, he [Putin] kills journalists that don't agree with him
Trump: Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so, you know. There's a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. Lot of killing going on, a lot of stupidity, and that's the way it is.
BY: Bill Gertz
February 20, 2015
Russia agreed to provide military training for three leftist regimes in Latin America and increase military visits and exercises following a visit last week to the region by Moscow's Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Pentagon officials said.
Shoygu met with defense and military leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and signed several agreements on warship visits and military training during the visit, which ran from Feb. 11 to 14. It is not clear whether any new arms deals were completed during the visit.
Defense officials said the Russian leader is seeking bases in the region for strategic bomber flights that Shoygu recently promised would include flights over the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-boosts-arms-training-for-leftist-latin-militaries/
___________________________________________________
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Russia's push into Ukraine has put many on edge. But less known is that Russia is also strengthening its military links south of the Rio Grande and re-establishing itself as a power in the region.
Vladimir Putin has been strengthening military links here, and Russia is now the largest arms dealer to governments in Latin America, surpassing the United States.
Russia has even floated the possibility of building new military bases in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and putting its warships permanently in the Caribbean.
In the midst of the Ukraine crisis, Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov recently visited Cuba, Peru, Chile, and Nicaragua, where he announced that Russia would also pour money into the new Central American canal project. ..."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140508/russian-arms-military-trade-latin-america
___________________________________________________
Russia has stepped up its military maneuvers to a level unseen since the height of the Cold War, according to a new report released by NATO Thursday.
Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance's secretary general and author of the report, noted that Moscow has conducted at least 18 large-scale exercises over the past three years, "some of which have involved more than 100,000 troops."
Those exercises included several simulated nuclear attacks against NATO allies and partner nations ..."
Mullah Obama is now coming down the steps of AF1 - - in the pouring rain. This is an omen that bast*ard Obama should not have gone to Cuba.
Yep.
I also watched the Marxist Moslem step on Cuban soil.
Of course, he only doing it for historic reasons and his legacy.
You must have a very high IQ.
If the Cubans shot down the plane, it would have to be listed as friendly fire losses.
The bias panel at cnn is commenting how statesmanlike Obama looked while coming down the steps of AF1. And that this is "a moment in history."
Sure, a moment in history, hahaha.
Some great "achievement." Capitulation to commies so is hardly something to crow about. Any POTUS with good morals or sense of pride in the United States would hang his head in shame. He's really grasping at straws now to cement his "legacy."
What a despicable show
Was there any word on the crease in his pants?
This is another anti-American set-up similar to the Iran deal. soebarkah is screwing us again. Cuba will end up getting virtually everything it wants while the US gets a whole lot of nothin’.
Where are the cigars?
Who would enter into an agreement where the other side gets everything it wants
and your side gets nothing?
ANSWER: A Traitor.
The history-making trip is designed to cement the administration's diplomatic outreach to Cuba, making it hard for any future president to return to the half-century old policy of isolation that Obama and his team consider a failure.
Real estate agents are excited. Can’t wait to see the hacienda filled with servants OBama gets at a Cuban beach front.
“The history-making trip is designed to cement the administration’s diplomatic outreach to Cuba, making it hard for any future president to return to the half-century old policy of isolation that Obama and his team consider a failure”
That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s bringing a bunch of CEO’s of Hotels & business on Air Force One to make deals down there, so that it’s harder to break relations in the future. The same as what’s happening in Iran.
Welcome to Cuba, Mr. Obama! We've thrown some more dissidents in jail just for you.
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