“Cuba is "prepared" for the possibility of Donald Trump's reelection and the continuation of crushing US sanctions against the island, according to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel….The Cuban president's challenge to the Trump administration came during a tour of central Cuba last week, where CNN was given rare access to the Cuban head of state…CNN was one of three international outlets invited to accompany Diaz-Canel on parts of his trip.” (CNN, Havana, Jan. 29.)
Gosh! I wonder why a “journalist” for the “press agency” CNN should be honored in such a manner by a totalitarian Stalinist regime that has jailed, tortured and exiled the most (genuine) journalists in the history of the Western Hemisphere?
Perhaps a (genuine) journalist named Vicente Botin can provide a clue:
“The Castro regime assigns 20 security agents to follow and monitor every foreign journalist. You play the regime’s game and practice self–censorship or you’re gone.” (Vicente Botin, reporter for Madrid’s El Pais who was promptly booted from Cuba for refusing to play the same sniveling, cowardly game as CNN’s “reporters” play every time they file a “story” from Cuba.)
Perhaps a retired U.S. counter-intelligence officer responsible for helping nab over 80 enemy agents and who specialized in investigating Cuban agents, also provides a clue:
“The vetting procedure starts the minute the (Cuban) regime receives a visa application,” says the man long-regarded as America’s top Cuba spy catcher. “When those smiling Cuban “guides” greet you at the airport they know plenty about you, and from several angles." (Chris Simmons, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s top Cuban spy catcher, now retired.)
In brief, you’re not getting and keeping a Cuban journalist visa (much less a Havana Bureau) unless you shamelessly (and genuinely) collude with Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored ministry of propaganda. This isn’t rocket science, amigos.
From day one of his presidency, CNN has been all over President Trump for his “conflict of interest” in attempting to “turn back the clock” on U.S. relations with Cuba—in other words, for upholding U.S. law as codified by Congress.
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Rather than the upholding of any U.S. law (The Helms-Burton Act.), CNN hinted that Trump’s Cuba policy was a simple ploy by the hotel mogul Donald Trump to sandbag other hotel companies–so that Trump’s company can later fill Cuba with Trump hotels.
“…the decision to prohibit business with GAESA (Cuba’s military-controlled business empire) ….is an example of Trump's ability to impact his business' competitors while in the White House. Trump's prohibition, in effect, puts other hotel companies on equal footing with his personal company -- not allowed to pursue future business in Cuba.”
In brief, according to CNN, Trump’s Cuba policy constitutes a blatant “conflict of interest.”
OH!—and while we’re on that topic! How many of y’all knew that CNN’s Cuba reporter Patrick Oppmann—the very one given “rare access” this week, and who constantly rails against Trump’s Cuba policy of restricting tourism to Cuba—this very CNN “reporter” has an American wife who until recently owned a shop in Havana that catered primarily to tourists?
Needless to add, permission to open a shop in Havana isn’t doled out randomly by the Stalinist regime—especially to a foreigner. In fact, many Cubans who open up small businesses in Havana get regularly arrested and have their restaurants confiscated by Stalinist authorities. Apparently, especially if they aren’t sufficiently greasing the right regime palms.
Apparently no such “irregularities” hampered the operation of the shop owned by the CNN reporter’s American wife.
But it gets even “better.” CNN’s Cuba reporter Patrick Oppmann also specializes in denouncing Trump’s policy (again, as codified by Congress years ago) of preventing American businessmen from partnering with the Castro regime. You’ll be amazed to learn that until recently CNN’s Cuba reporter Patrick Oppmann’s wife was also a high-rolling consultant for a firm that specialized in helping foreign businessmen partner with the Castro regime.
When “reporting” on Stalinist Cuba’s medical marvels, CNN often features a “medical expert” named Gail Reed. Here’s a few items on Gail Reed that CNN serially “forgets” to mention:
For the past 40 years, Havana resident Gail Reed has been married to an officer of Cuba’s Directorio General de Intelligencia (spy service) named Julian Torres Rizo. This KGB-trained apparatchik recruited Reed back in 1969 when she visited Cuba as a member of the (DGI-created) Venceremos Brigades of “starry-eyed” U.S. college kids. Obama’s future “neighbors” Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, by the way, served as recruiters for these Venceremos Brigades. This was an important function as leaders of the terrorist group Weather Underground.
“Your society must be destroyed!” the KGB-trained Rizo coached his eager hippie recruits in Cuba. “It is now your duty to help destroy your society!” Reed was so enchanted with Stalinist, terror-sponsoring Cuba that she moved there and became a top writer for Cuba’s Communist party press.
Not that any American viewers imbibing her reports on the marvels of Cuba’s healthcare and the wickedness of the U.S. “Blockade” of her adopted country in those “mainstream” media organs might have guessed any of Gail Reed’s background.
Castro’s DGI had further goals in mind with their Venceremos Brigades. “The ultimate objective of the DGI’s participation in the setting up of the Venceremos Brigades,” reveals 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 Government with access to political, economic and military intelligence.”
Everything above meticulously and thoroughly documented here.
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