Prepare for a chorus of wailing from Castro’s (unregistered, hence lawbreaking) U.S. agent/lobbyists about President Trump “turning back the clock!” on Cuba relations.
Brace for an outcry from Castro’s agents-of-influence accusing President Trump of “pandering to powerful Cuban-American right-wingers!”
According to several reports this week, President Trump will soon be “rolling back” some of Obama’s most pathetic, egregious (and probably illegal) capitulations to the Castro-Family- Crime- and-Terror-Sponsoring Syndicate (habitually mislabeled as “Cuba” by that family’s U.S.- based agents-of-influence.)
From folks in the know, your humble servant has learned that the “rollback” will be mostly in tightening the travel rules which have become a pathetic joke under Obama and are pumping money into Castro regime coffers at a rate that rivals what the Soviets used to send their Caribbean satrapy.
Along with the travel-tightening, the law which prohibits U.S. investors from investing with Cuban businesses owned outright by Castro’s military will also be enforced. Considering that virtually ALL businesses in the Castro fiefdom have a majority ownership by the Cuban military it will be interesting to see how this plays out—probably like “building” the Mexican wall and “tearing up “ the Iran Nuclear deal played out.
I guess there’s only so much even a “reformist” president can do, after all. So some of us are resigned to celebrate victories like our exit from the Paris Climate deal and take a breather from looking a gift-president in the mouth.
“A,B,C--easy as one, two, three,” goes the famous song. And just as easily predicted by all “Right-Wing-Cuban-American-Crackpot-McCarthyites!” (i.e. people who thoroughly understand Castroism from firsthand experience)—just like the song: A.) Obama’s executive orders further enriched the Stalinist regime B.) who is thus fat and happy C.) unleashed a wave of terror on their subjects unlike anything seen in decades.
This (eminently predictable) Castroite wave of terror has been verified even by leftist watchdog groups like Amnesty International.
As Obama implemented his Cuba “opening” (to cheers from libertarians) your humble servant went blue in the face trying to explain the horrible--but eminently predictable--consequence to some libertarians on John Stossell’s show.
For all the good it did. Despite their historic preening to the contrary, on some issues, libertarians are actually among the most obtuse dogmatists on earth.
Well, whaddaya know? Now these very libertarians (who applauded Obama’s Cuba policy and denounced the predictions of “Cuban-American hard-liners”) are wailing to high heavens because their very libertarians affiliates in Cuba were recently brutalized and arrested by the fat and happy (thanks to U.S. dollars) regime! “Funny” how that works.
Also as predicted by “Cuban-American right-wingers” the Cuban Communist Party—despite the flood of U.S. dollars and U.S. visitors to Cuba-- just doubled-down on its commitment to batten-down- the hatches and lock in place every facet of Cuban Stalinism for the foreseeable future. Whoops! I wrote “despite.” I actually meant “because of.”
In fact, contrary to all the media blather about Raul Castro’s recent “reforms,” Cuba hasn’t budged a millimeter from its spot in the Heritage Economic Freedom list. It still maintains its proud historic ranking of almost dead last, next to its partner in Stalinism North Korea.
In brief, far from “pandering to Cuban-Americans,” by rolling back (unfortunately only) some of Obama’s executive orders on Cuba, President Trump will simply be protecting the rights of (mostly ) native born U.S. citizens and upholding U.S. law, as codified by the U.S. Congress.
Regarding this enforcement, I will now quote a facet of U.S. law from the U.S. State Department:
“Tourist travel to Cuba IS PROHIBITED UNDER U.S. LAW for U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and others subject to U.S. jurisdiction.”
But last year Cuba received 614,433 visitors from the U.S.
Now back in 1957—as we all know from Hollywood, the mainstream media, etc. -- Cuba was a “U.S. tourist playground!” Right?
Well, in 1957 about 210,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S.
And that’s not the half of what has the (increasingly richer thanks to Obama) Castro family snickering at U.S. law “enforcement.” You’d never know it from the mainstream media, Obama State Dept. or multinational elites, but the reason for the Cuba embargo in the first place was Castro’s mass theft, at Soviet gunpoint, of almost 6000 businesses in Cuba worth $8 billion (in current dollars) from U.S. citizens. A few American business owners who resisted were tortured and murdered.
One of these was Howard Anderson who owned filling stations and a 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 among the few promises the Castros have ever kept. 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, hence Obama’s frantic circumventions of this law with his flurry of executive orders.
All of the groveling by the Obama administration to the Castro regime over the past few years has not budged these kleptocratic mass-murdering Stalinists one inch on this issue. When they dared mention the delicate matter of settling-up (as required by U.S. law) the matter of U.S. citizens robbed and murdered by them, all Obama’s groveling “negotiators” heard from Castro’s apparatchiks was an abrupt: “off the table!”
Naturally this shut Obama’s crackerjack negotiators right up, and set them back to their proper role of smiling, bowing, curtsying and giving away more foreign aid—courtesy of the ever-pliant golden goose: the American taxpayer.
The cocky Raul Castro even turned the table on Obama’s trembling and bowing “negotiators”–pulling a Moe Green and snickering that we owe him billions upon billions of dollars!
Let’s see if President Trump can knock that snicker off Raul Castro’s face.