"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition…Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda." (Walter Duranty, New York Times, August 23, 1933.)
“This is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist.” (Herbert Matthews, New York Times, July 1959.)
“Why Infants May Be More Likely to Die in America Than Cuba…There’s no doubt that a major strength of the Cuban system is that it assures universal access. Cuba has the Medicare for All that many Americans dream about.” (Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times, Jan. 18, 2019.)
(No point in refuting this hackneyed propaganda/idiocy yet again, amigos. We’ve demolished the “Cuba’s Free and Fabulous Healthcare!” meme often enough here at Townhall.
“Cuba is a tired little country, no threat to anyone, with impressive health care and education…President Barack Obama took the necessary step of re-establishing diplomatic relations and easing the embargo, but President Donald Trump reversed course and tightened things up again out of knee-jerk hostility to anything Cuban and anything Obaman.” (Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times, Jan, 23, 2019.)
In fact, President Trump “tightened things up again” because he’s not an idiot. In fact, President Trump “tightened things up again” ( i.e. upheld the Helms-Burton Act as codified by U.S. law) because—in addition to his fealty to the U.S. Constitution—he’s not a sucker for disinformation swallowed and spread by people who collude (wittingly or useful-idiot-wise) with Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored propaganda ministry. The Castro regime well knows who its friends are in the U.S. To wit:
“New York Times Recognizes Cuba's Health Achievements.” (Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored media organ Prensa Latina, hailing their propaganda subsidiary on Jan. 18, 2019.)
“Jeff Flake stressed his happiness upon arriving in Cuba, which he has visited multiple times. He also stressed that he has never been in favor of the embargo imposed by various U.S. administrations and always in favor of normalizing relations.” (Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored media organ Cubadebate June, 4, 2018.)
Oh, sure, like all of Castro’s U.S.–based agents (on Castro’s payroll and off) Flake (like Nicholas Kristoff) swears up and down that his propagandizing against the (so-called) Cuba embargo is, in fact, an immensely shrewd ploy to undermine Castroism by taking away its “excuse” for impoverishing its subjects and then showering them with U.S. dollars.
“Hah!” Snort Flake, Kristoff and all their anti-embargo cohorts with an eye-roll. “How can you right-wing Cuban-exiles (people with the most knowledge of and experience with Castroism) not comprehend our brilliant plan to end Castroism!”
Well, for starters, Flake along with all his fellow "shrewd underminers of Cuban Communism by a shower of U.S. dollars," all get hero’s treatment in Cuba’s Communist media, limitless visas to visit the Castro’s Communist fiefdom and the red-carpet treatment upon every visit.
Whereas your humble servant is prevented from setting foot in Cuba and denounced as “SCOUNDREL! and TRAITOR!” by the same Communist media which hails Flake and his anti-embargo cohorts as heroes.
I guess those Castros are just too dumb to see through Flake’s, Kristoff’s, etc. devilishly shrewd scheme!
Gosh. I guess those Castros qualify as total nincompoops in the art of maintaining dictatorial power! (Over twice as long as Stalin, four times as long as Hitler and even longer than Kim Il Sung.) Guess those poor deluded Cuban Communist fools have no idea what the brilliantly crafty Jeff Flake, The New York Times, Congressional Black Caucus, etc. are up to!
I apologize for insulting your intelligence with this issue, amigos. But that idiotic “the embargo is the Castros’ best friend” meme pops up often and demands a response. So here it is:
If Castro “secretly favors the embargo,” then why did Castro’s secret agents in the U.S. ALL secretly and obsessively campaign AGAINST the U.S. embargo while working as secret agents?
Castro managed the deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Department of Defense in recent U.S. history. The spy’s name is Ana Belen Montes, known as "Castro’s Queen Jewel" in the intelligence community. In 2002 she was convicted of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and today she serves a 25-year sentence in federal prison. Only a plea bargain spared her from sizzling in the electric chair like the Rosenbergs.
Prior to her visit from the FBI and handcuffing, Ana Belen Montes worked tirelessly to influence U.S. foreign policy against the embargo. The same holds for more recently arrested, convicted and incarcerated Cuban spies Carlos and Elsa Alvarez and Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers. All of these worked tirelessly to influence U.S. policy against the "embargo," (i.e. worked to facilitate further Castroite theft from Americans) while working as secret agents. This has been the Castro regime’s foreign policy priority for decades, and people like John Bolton well know it.
As Obama implemented his Cuba “opening” (to thundering cheers from liberals and libertarians) your humble servant went blue in the face trying to explain the horrible, but eminently predictable, consequences to some libertarians on John Stossel’s show.
Whatever else we may say about Fidel Castro, he was no fool. He had the New York Times’ number from day one: “To our American friend Herbert Matthews with gratitude. Without your help, and without the help of the New York Times, the Revolution in Cuba would never have been.” (a beaming Fidel Castro decorating Herbert Matthews with a medal during a visit to the New York Times offices in April 1959.)