Socialist Birds of a Feather [with a new postscript]

 

BLM supports cop killerThe people’s protests against the socialist regime running Cuba prompted American socialists to flock to the defense of the Cuban Commies. Among these were the Black Lives Matter Foundation, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), DSA’s superstar AOC, and Bernie Sanders. In so doing, they carried on the disgraceful precedent of the Congressional Black [except for Republicans] Caucus.

Go back to 2009, early in President Obama’s first term. The Congressional Black Caucus took a fact-finding junket to Cuba, where they not only fawned on Fidel but also ignored, covered up by their silence, the plight of black Afro-Cuban prisoners, jailed and abused by the much lighter-skinned regime leaders of European ancestry. The Congressional Black Caucus helped the racist Castro regime with their positive video appearances and quotes.

[T]he Stalinist regime that jailed and tortured the longest suffering black political prisoner in modern history (Eusebio Penalver) rolled out the red carpet for six gullible  members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus. All of these U.S. legislators met with “President” Raul Castro while a lucky three secured back-stage passes to meet Fidel himself.

Not since Ann Margaret’s reaction to Conrad Birdie’s kiss has anything been recorded to match these U.S. legislators’ reaction to these meetings.

“He looked directly into my eyes!” gasped Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) “and then he asked: how can we help President Obama? Fidel Castro really wants President Obama to succeed.”

“It was quite a moment to behold!” hyperventilated Rep. Barbara Lee. (D-Calif.) “Fidel Castro was very engaging and very energetic.”

“He’s one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever met!” gushed Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.)

“Raul Castro was a very engaging, down-to-earth and kind man,” according to Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) “someone who I would favor as a neighbor. It was almost like visiting an old friend,” (A Freudian slip, perhaps? Bobby Rush, after all, was a card-carrying Black Panther who did prison time.)

Lest we forget: these black U.S. legislators were raving about a regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s and executed more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler’s executed (out of a population of 70 million) in its first six.

Racism is one of the cornerstones of the Castro regime.  As Fidel’s close friend and ally, the murderous Ernesto “Che” Guevara, once said, “The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent… We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban revolution. By which I mean: nothing!”

By the left’s rules, are we to believe all women? Are we to listen respectfully to the lived experience of women of color? How about this Afro-Cuban dissident, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, in 2014, during the second term of Barack Obama?

This white gerontocracy oppresses black dissidents with fury. “Around 75 percent of the people in prison are black,” said Perez. “Black Cubans have no rights.”

Perez would like to meet with members of the CBC while she’s here in Washington to explain to them Cuba’s realities. She’s not holding her breath, however. Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.,, Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., and Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., all CBC members, were in Cuba in May, but refused to meet Perez.

“While I was languishing in prison, they paraded around Havana. My sister tried to deliver a petition asking them to come and visit me. They didn’t even accept it,” said Perez, who’s married to Cuba’s best known dissident, Jorge Luís García Perez, known as Antúnez and also as Cuba’s Nelson Mandela. Jorge Perez also constantly suffers imprisonment and beatings at the hands of the regime.

Perez would also like to have an audience with Michelle Obama while here, but she told me that she would not meet with her husband, President Barack Obama. “If it were up to him the embargo would already have been lifted,” she said.

On this Perez is very clear: the moves Obama has made since he took office to have a rapprochement with Cuba’s dictators will end as well as the Russian “reset.” “Lifting the embargo would be dreadful for the Cuban people,” as it would legitimize Cuba’s lawless government, warns Perez. Rather than try to lift the embargo, Obama should “be concerned with the plight of the Cuban people, with the opposition. He’s blinded by the regime!”

As Perez described how Cuba’s political police constantly break into her house, beat her, manacle her, “feel all my private parts,” and then throw her into prison for days, I told her that I had recently debated Salem State professor Aviva Chomsky on television and that she had declared that there is no repression in Cuba. She made a face of revulsion:“Tell her to come to the deepest parts of Cuba, so she can see how dissidents are beaten up.”

Fast forward to July 2021 and the massive popular unrest against the Cuban commie white gerontocracy. We should hardly be surprised that the same organizations, that have never shed a tear for young black girls and boys gunned down on our city streets, would take the side of the thugs, at least allies of convenience. See Chicago, where politicians court gang leaders for election support:

But in the end, as with most things political in Chicago, it all came down to one question, says Davis, the community activist who helped Baskin with some of the meetings. He recalls that the gang representatives asked, “What can you give me?” The politicians, most eager to please, replied, “What do you want?”

Street gangs have been a part of Chicago politics at least since the days of the notorious First Ward bosses “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, who a century ago ran their vice-ridden Levee district using gangs of toughs armed with bats and pistols to bully voters and stuff ballot boxes. “Gangs and politics have always gone together in this city,” says John Hagedorn, a gang expert and professor of criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It’s a shadowy alliance, he adds, that is deeply ingrained in Chicago’s political culture: “You take care of them; they’ll take care of us.”

[ . . . ]

The paradox is that Chicago’s struggle to combat street gangs is being undermined by its own elected officials. And the alliances between lawmakers and lawbreakers raise a troubling question: Who actually rules the neighborhoods—our public servants or the gangs?

So it is that the Miami Herald reported “Miami Democrats, progressives and Black Lives Matter torn on Cuba protests response.”

The divide between Democrats on Cuba in the last week cuts three ways. South Florida Democrats in elected office have urged President Joe Biden to do more and use the protests to show Cubans the United States’ commitment to human rights and democracy. Progressives have called for an end to the embargo and criticized longtime U.S. opposition to Havana — while largely ignoring the protests on the streets and violent crackdowns in response. And the White House occupies a middle ground, condemning violence against protesters but continuing to say that policy changes are under review.

“It’s a missed opportunity by this group of Democrats to convey that while they oppose the U.S. embargo against Cuba that they also condemn the abhorrent treatment of Cuba’s communist leadership against the multiracial coalition of Cubans, young and old, who have never done this before,” said Mike Hernandez, a Democratic strategist and analyst at Miami’s Spanish-language Telemundo 51 TV station.

The self-styled Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, with a socialist Cuban-American frontman, completely ignored Cuban police brutality, and Cuban communists’ black Afro-Cuban victims, instead spouting the regime-approved line.

The Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida calls on the Biden Administration for the complete and immediate repeal of the United States embargo against Cuba. The Cuban embargo, initially instituted some sixty years ago, is inarguably one of the greatest failures of American foreign policy in modern history. As thousands of Cubans take to the streets of Havana and Miami, we must recognize that the conditions pushing them past their breaking points are in no small part exacerbated by the United States’ embargo against Cuba.

[ . . . ]

No matter your side of the aisle or wing of the party, no rational argument can be made that the Cuban embargo has been anything other than an abject failure, having made the United States a foil for the Cuban government to remain in power. The only true victims are the Cubans on the island who suffer and starve and die under the weight of their superpower neighbor’s decades old blockade, and the families forced to watch it happen, day after agonizing day, from a short 90 miles across the Straits of Florida.

If the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida actually disapproved of their Cuban comrades, they would have condemned the Cuban police and demanded racial justice. The line about “making the United States a foil for the Cuban government” is a standard deception on the American left.

The Democratic Socialists of America went further, completely obscuring the oppression while pretending the Cuban people were on the side of the regime, still supporting the sick joke of the “Revolution.”

Democratic Socialists America“DSA stands with the Cuban people and their Revolution in this moment of unrest. End the blockade.”

DSA is not a fringe group anymore. It proudly claims a U.S. congresswoman, AOC, as one of their own. She is happy to be counted among them as part of the Democratic left:

Talking Socialism, Catching up with AOC

Bronx Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, best known as AOC, is DSA’s foremost socialist superstar. Her June 2018 primary win—a 29-year-old taqueria bartender defeating the third most powerful Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives—inspired up to 10,000 people to join DSA.

[ .  . . ]

What was your path to joining DSA?

I love this question because I think that my path in DSA very much shaped my organizing strategy.

[ . . . ]

Also, in the history of New York City and in communities of color, when you have the Young Lords and you have this organizing heritage, there has historically been tension between DSA and these organizing collectives of color, whether it was Latino and Puerto Rican collectives, Chicano collectives, black collectives…. It was like, “Oh, it’s these white folks. [LAUGHS.] There was this historical fissure. But it really felt like a moment where we were coming together. And so when I would see DSA showing up providing real structural support at BLM rallies, or support for abolishing ICE, where we felt like there wasn’t this class essentialism, but that this really was a multiracial class struggle that didn’t de-prioritize human rights, frankly, I was really impressed. And I felt like it was something worth being part of.

It should be no surprise, then, that AOC, blamed US for the Cuban people’s protests. Yes, she mouthed pro forma condemnation of the current Cuban leader. She did not condemn the communist regime, or assign any blame on anyone except Americans for Cubans’ suffering.

“We see Cubans rise up and protest for their rights like never before. We stand in solidarity with them and condemn the anti-democratic actions led by President Díaz-Canel,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement released in Spanish late Thursday night. “The suppression of the media, speech and protests are serious violations of the Basic Civil Rights.”

“We must also name the contribution of the United States to Cuban suffering: our embargo of almost sixty years,” the statement continues. “Last month, once again, the U.N. voted overwhelmingly to call on the United States to lift its embargo on Cuba. The embargo is absurdly cruel and, like too many other U.S. policies targeting Latin Americans, the cruelty is the point.”

“I outright reject the Biden administration’s defense of the embargo,” AOC concludes. “It is never acceptable for us to use cruelty as a point of leverage against everyday people.”

Bernie Sanders could not even be bothered to generate a fog of words, pretending concern about the Cuban regime. He issued a bare minimum non-condemnation of his Cuban commie pals, reserving his only direct condemnation for America.

Bernie Sanders

@SenSanders

All people have the right to protest and to live in a democratic society. I call on the Cuban government to respect opposition rights and refrain from violence. It’s also long past time to end the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba, which has only hurt, not helped, the Cuban people.

8:13 PM · Jul 12, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

This followed the Black Lives Matter Foundation’s Instagram posting completely supporting the Cuban communist regime, especially praising them for protecting a cop killer, while devoting not a word to the Cuban government’s oppression of Afro-Cubans. Read the whole thing for yourself:

BLM supports Cuban commies

BLM leads with condemnation of the U.S. government, assigns all blame to the U.S., and spouts the standard Marxist lie about Cuba’s “strong medical care and history of lending doctors and nurses to disasters around the world.” BLM lies that the embargo includes food and medicine, specially exempted food and medicine, provided it was not given to the corrupt Cuban regime. So long as it went to non-governmental organizations or individual Cubans, food could flow without U.S. government penalty, according to the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, signed into law by President Bill Clinton.* Medicine could even be given to the Cuban regime, if it was certified not to be used for torture or sold off the island, turned into cash for the regime leaders’ benefit. BLM and every other leftist knows and intends that they actually support their birds of a feather in Cuba.

Contrary to the claim of BLM and their birds of a feather, current U.S. administration officials confirm the long term U.S. position that we are not the cause of Cuba’s troubles:

Havana wants the world to believe that Cuban hardship in healthcare is caused by the U.S. embargo. But food and medicine are exempt from the embargo. As Julie Chung, now acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, tweeted in April 2020 that the U.S. “routinely authorizes the export of humanitarian goods, agricultural products, medicine, and medical equipment to support the Cuban people.” Ms. Chung further noted that in 2019 the U.S. exported millions of dollars of medical goods to Cuba.

Cuba’s real problem is that it’s broke. And while all poor countries in the region have struggled to serve the public during Covid-19, only Cuba has made things worse by trying to use the pandemic as a way to earn hard currency for the ruling elite and boost its legitimacy around the world.

Shortages of medications for treatable illnesses in Cuba are routine. The contagious mite infestation of the skin known as scabies, for example, can be remedied with antibiotics and topical medicines like permethrin. Yet Cuban public-health officials have been helpless to stop it from spreading across the island.

BLM supports Cuban communists

Notice the standard international communist lie in the first paragraph of the second screen.

United States leaders have tried to crush this Revolution for decades. . . . [T]he U.S. government has only instigated suffering for the country’s 11 million people – of which 4 million are Black and Brown.”

The second paragraph praised the Cuban regime for harboring a cop killer and for Cuban communists’ part in hot wars on the African continent during the Cold War. This is not new for BLM, which holds JoAnne Chesimard AKA Assata Shakur up as a Black revolutionary hero.

Shakur, also known as JoAnne Chesimard, was convicted of being an accomplice in the 1973 slaying of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, who left behind a wife and 3-year-old son. Shakur later escaped prison and fled to Cuba, where former Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro granted her asylum.

She was a member of the Black Liberation Army, which the FBI describes as “the most violent militant organizations of the 1970s.”

[ . . . ]

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors has repeatedly praised Shakur.

“Assata Shakur we love you. Fight for you and because of you. On this day and everyday [sic],” Cullors wrote in a 2016 Facebook post.

In another post from 2015, Cullors wrote: “Over the past year we have seen the movement and people at large elevating Assata worldwide chanting the excerpt from her letter and proudly wearing Assata Taught Me sweatshirts. Today…we ask that people take a moment to uplift our sister Assata Shakur by posting on social media how Assata has inspired them and why she is important to the current Black Lives Matter movement.”

BLM supports Cuban Communist regime

We can thank BLM for pointing out that Barack Obama supported helping the Cuban commies stay in power, just like he took the side of the Khomeinist gerontocracy against the Iranian people when they attempted to rise up in massive street protests. Birds of a feather flock together, and we see what Obama and the current Democrat ruling regime want for us in their supportive association with a particular set of foreign despots against the people. Contrast this with the far more morally informed response of a Florida BLM local chapter:

“I think it missed the mark of seeking the full perspective of everything that’s happening in Cuba,” said Jasmen Rogers with BLM Alliance of Broward.

“The voices on the ground are talking about the direct impacts of their government, police force, and military that is acting violently right here and right now,” Rogers said.

More of such voices, please, both regarding Cuba and concerning the real threats to Black lives in American cities. JoAnne Deborah Chesimard remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list to this day.

Postscript:

I am shocked, shocked to find Nikole Hannah-Smith flocked to the Cuban communist regime’s side at least twice on the record, serving up standard international communist propaganda about education, racial equality, and medical care. The National Pulse unearthed the September 19, 2019 Vox Conversations Nikole Hanna-Jones interview by Ezra Klein.

Cuba has the least inequality between black and white people of any place really in the hemisphere. I mean the Caribbean – most of the Caribbean it’s hard to count because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small, they’re countries run by black folks, but in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality, and that’s largely due to socialism, which I’m sure no one wants to hear.

Ezra Klein has been exposed as a “journalist” who took Chinese Communist Party money for a junket to China in return for generating favorable media content. Nikole Hanna-Jones traveled to Cuba in 2008 and wrote for the Oregonian “The Cuba we don’t know.”

We know the story well: Cuba is poor. Cuba is communist. Cuba violates human rights and represses dissent.

This summer I traveled to Cuba with six journalists, documenting the experiences of the African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere for the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies in North Carolina.

While there, I found a Cuba you may not know. A Cuba with a 99.8 percent literacy rate, the lowest HIV infection rate in the Western Hemisphere, free college and health care.

[ . . . ]

Talks with Cubans — both officials and common folks — reveal a scrappy pride forged by a half-century of this tiny, Third World nation fending off the will of its superpower neighbor.

[ . . . ]

It manifests in what Cuba has accomplished, through socialism and despite poverty, that the United States hasn’t.

[ . . . ]

A crushing U.S. embargo has ensured Cuba’s low per capita income and crumbling infrastructure. Yet, Cuba boasts one of the highest literacy rates in the world.

[ . . . ]

Black Cubans especially are wary of outsiders wishing to overthrow the Castro regime. They admit the revolution has been imperfect, but it also led to the end of codified racism and brought universal education and access to jobs to black Cubans. Without the revolution, they wonder, where would they be?

We journalists had a great deal of freedom to travel through Havana — no handlers, no monitors. We could see that Cuba is not the great evil we are led to believe. Still, life is difficult for many Cubans.

Did she seriously believe that there were no government agents, no informants? She certainly was happy to accept the communist government’s word on both health and literacy statistics. No founded in racism talk here. Nikole Hannah-Jones took no notice of Afro-Cubans being grossly underrepresented in the governing elite and overrepresented in the prisons. 

 


* Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, 22 USC Ch. 69 [emphasis added]

22 USC Ch. 69: CUBAN DEMOCRACY

§6001. Findings
The Congress makes the following findings:

(1) The government of Fidel Castro has demonstrated consistent disregard for internationally accepted standards of human rights and for democratic values. It restricts the Cuban people’s exercise of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and other rights recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948. It has refused to admit into Cuba the representative of the United Nations Human Rights Commission appointed to investigate human rights violations on the island.

(2) The Cuban people have demonstrated their yearning for freedom and their increasing opposition to the Castro government by risking their lives in organizing independent, democratic activities on the island and by undertaking hazardous flights for freedom to the United States and other countries.

(3) The Castro government maintains a military-dominated economy that has decreased the well-being of the Cuban people in order to enable the government to engage in military interventions and subversive activities throughout the world and, especially, in the Western Hemisphere. These have included involvement in narcotics trafficking and support for the FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador.

(4) There is no sign that the Castro regime is prepared to make any significant concessions to democracy or to undertake any form of democratic opening. Efforts to suppress dissent through intimidation, imprisonment, and exile have accelerated since the political changes that have occurred in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

(5) Events in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have dramatically reduced Cuba’s external support and threaten Cuba’s food and oil supplies.

(6) The fall of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the now universal recognition in Latin America and the Caribbean that Cuba provides a failed model of government and development, and the evident inability of Cuba’s economy to survive current trends, provide the United States and the international democratic community with an unprecedented opportunity to promote a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba.

(7) However, Castro’s intransigence increases the likelihood that there could be a collapse of the Cuban economy, social upheaval, or widespread suffering. The recently concluded Cuban Communist Party Congress has underscored Castro’s unwillingness to respond positively to increasing pressures for reform either from within the party or without.

(8) The United States cooperated with its European and other allies to assist the difficult transitions from Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Therefore, it is appropriate for those allies to cooperate with United States policy to promote a peaceful transition in Cuba.

§6002. Statement of policy
It should be the policy of the United States—

(1) to seek a peaceful transition to democracy and a resumption of economic growth in Cuba through the careful application of sanctions directed at the Castro government and support for the Cuban people;

(2) to seek the cooperation of other democratic countries in this policy;

(3) to make clear to other countries that, in determining its relations with them, the United States will take into account their willingness to cooperate in such a policy;

(4) to seek the speedy termination of any remaining military or technical assistance, subsidies, or other forms of assistance to the Government of Cuba from any of the independent states of the former Soviet Union;

(5) to continue vigorously to oppose the human rights violations of the Castro regime;

(6) to maintain sanctions on the Castro regime so long as it continues to refuse to move toward democratization and greater respect for human rights;

(7) to be prepared to reduce the sanctions in carefully calibrated ways in response to positive developments in Cuba;

(8) to encourage free and fair elections to determine Cuba’s political future;

(9) to request the speedy termination of any military or technical assistance, subsidies, or other forms of assistance to the Government of Cuba from the government of any other country; and

(10) to initiate immediately the development of a comprehensive United States policy toward Cuba in a post-Castro era.

§6003. International cooperation
(a) Cuban trading partners
The President should encourage the governments of countries that conduct trade with Cuba to restrict their trade and credit relations with Cuba in a manner consistent with the purposes of this chapter.

(b) Sanctions against countries assisting Cuba
(1) Sanctions
The President may apply the following sanctions to any country that provides assistance to Cuba:

(A) The government of such country shall not be eligible for assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 [22 U.S.C. 2151 et seq.] or assistance or sales under the Arms Export Control Act [22 U.S.C. 2751 et seq.].

(B) Such country shall not be eligible, under any program, for forgiveness or reduction of debt owed to the United States Government.

(2) “Assistance to Cuba” defined
For purposes of paragraph (1), the term “assistance to Cuba”

(A) means assistance to or for the benefit of the Government of Cuba that is provided by grant, concessional sale, guaranty, or insurance, or by any other means on terms more favorable than that generally available in the applicable market, whether in the form of a loan, lease, credit, or otherwise, and such term includes subsidies for exports to Cuba and favorable tariff treatment of articles that are the growth, product, or manufacture of Cuba;

(B) includes an exchange, reduction, or forgiveness of Cuban debt owed to a foreign country in return for a grant of an equity interest in a property, investment, or operation of the Government of Cuba (including the government of any political subdivision of Cuba, and any agency or instrumentality of the Government of Cuba) or of a Cuban national; and

(C) does not include—

(i) donations of food to nongovernmental organizations or individuals in Cuba, or

(ii) exports of medicines or medical supplies, instruments, or equipment that would be permitted under section 6004(c) of this title.

§6004. Support for Cuban people
(a) Provisions of law affected
The provisions of this section apply notwithstanding any other provision of law, including section 2370(a) of this title, and notwithstanding the exercise of authorities, before October 23, 1992, under section 5(b) of the Trading With the Enemy Act [50 U.S.C. 4305(b)], the International Emergency Economic Powers Act [50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.], or the Export Administration Act of 1979.

(b) Donations of food
Nothing in this or any other Act shall prohibit donations of food to nongovernmental organizations or individuals in Cuba.

(c) Exports of medicines and medical supplies
Exports of medicines or medical supplies, instruments, or equipment to Cuba shall not be restricted—

(1) except to the extent such restrictions would be permitted under section 5(m) 1 of the Export Administration Act of 1979 or section 203(b)(2) of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act [50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)];

(2) except in a case in which there is a reasonable likelihood that the item to be exported will be used for purposes of torture or other human rights abuses;

(3) except in a case in which there is a reasonable likelihood that the item to be exported will be reexported; and

(4) except in a case in which the item to be exported could be used in the production of any biotechnological product.

(d) Requirements for certain exports
(1) Onsite verifications
(A) Subject to subparagraph (B), an export may be made under subsection (c) only if the President determines that the United States Government is able to verify, by onsite inspections and other appropriate means, that the exported item is to be used for the purposes for which it was intended and only for the use and benefit of the Cuban people.

(B) Subparagraph (A) does not apply to donations to nongovernmental organizations in Cuba of medicines for humanitarian purposes.

(2) Licenses
Exports permitted under subsection (c) shall be made pursuant to specific licenses issued by the United States Government.

(e) Telecommunications services and facilities
(1) Telecommunications services
Telecommunications services between the United States and Cuba shall be permitted.

(2) Telecommunications facilities
Telecommunications facilities are authorized in such quantity and of such quality as may be necessary to provide efficient and adequate telecommunications services between the United States and Cuba.

(3) Licensing of payments to Cuba
(A) The President may provide for the issuance of licenses for the full or partial payment to Cuba of amounts due Cuba as a result of the provision of telecommunications services authorized by this subsection, in a manner that is consistent with the public interest and the purposes of this chapter, except that this paragraph shall not require any withdrawal from any account blocked pursuant to regulations issued under section 5(b) of the Trading With the Enemy Act [50 U.S.C. 4305(b)].

(B) If only partial payments are made to Cuba under subparagraph (A), the amounts withheld from Cuba shall be deposited in an account in a banking institution in the United States. Such account shall be blocked in the same manner as any other account containing funds in which Cuba has any interest, pursuant to regulations issued under section 5(b) of the Trading With the Enemy Act.

(4) Authority of Federal Communications Commission
Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to supersede the authority of the Federal Communications Commission.

(5) Prohibition on investment in domestic telecommunications services
Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to authorize the investment by any United States person in the domestic telecommunications network within Cuba. For purposes of this paragraph, an “investment” in the domestic telecommunications network within Cuba includes the contribution (including by donation) of funds or anything of value to or for, and the making of loans to or for, such network.

(6) Reports to Congress
The President shall submit to the Congress on a semiannual basis a report detailing payments made to Cuba by any United States person as a result of the provision of telecommunications services authorized by this subsection.

(f) Direct mail delivery to Cuba
The United States Postal Service shall take such actions as are necessary to provide direct mail service to and from Cuba, including, in the absence of common carrier service between the 2 countries, the use of charter service providers.

(g) Assistance to support democracy in Cuba
The United States Government may provide assistance, through appropriate nongovernmental organizations, for the support of individuals and organizations to promote nonviolent democratic change in Cuba.

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  1. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    After listening to the latest “Flagship” podcast, I’m reminded, doesn’t Cuba also have an embargo against imports from the US?  So even if the US embargo was lifted, nothing really changes unless Cuba removes their embargo too.  Which they likely wouldn’t do, because then it would be revealed how much unnecessary suffering the Cuban people have endured for decades.

    I suppose that lifting the US embargo would give permission for other countries to start doing more, but it seems like most of them already do, by back doors or whatever.

    • #1
  2. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    kedavis (View Comment):

    After listening to the latest “Flagship” podcast, I’m reminded, doesn’t Cuba also have an embargo against imports from the US? So even if the US embargo was lifted, nothing really changes unless Cuba removes their embargo too. Which they likely wouldn’t do, because then it would be revealed how much unnecessary suffering the Cuban people have endured for decades.

    I suppose that lifting the US embargo would give permission for other countries to start doing more, but it seems like most of them already do, by back doors or whatever.

    The embargo excuse is cover for the decrepitude in food production and medical care caused by communism, not any embargo.

    • #2
  3. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    What are you going to believe? My (Democratic) propaganda or your lying eyes? Sickening. 

    • #3
  4. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    Excellent post Clifford.  Trying to reason with groups such as BLM, DSA, and The Congressional Black Caucus (which is only for blacks that toe the Leftist line) is truly the equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle.

    IMHO the failure of the above groups to acknowledge the brutality of Castro and his minions is even worse than the American intelligentsia’s failure to grasp the barbarity of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s.

    • #4
  5. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Excellent post Clifford. Trying to reason with groups such as BLM, DSA, and The Congressional Black Caucus (which is only for blacks that toe the Leftist line) is truly the equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle.

    IMHO the failure of the above groups to acknowledge the brutality of Castro and his minions is even worse than the American intelligentsia’s failure to grasp the barbarity of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s.

    And of course, Walter Duranty, and the New York Times (surprise, surprise!).

    • #5
  6. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    kedavis (View Comment):

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Excellent post Clifford. Trying to reason with groups such as BLM, DSA, and The Congressional Black Caucus (which is only for blacks that toe the Leftist line) is truly the equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle.

    IMHO the failure of the above groups to acknowledge the brutality of Castro and his minions is even worse than the American intelligentsia’s failure to grasp the barbarity of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s.

    And of course, Walter Duranty, and the New York Times (surprise, surprise!).

    And his Pulitzer “Prize” is still proudly on the NYT wall right beside that of Nikole Hannah-Jones (1619 Project).  So appropriate.

    • #6
  7. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    CACrabtree (View Comment):
    IMHO the failure of the above groups to acknowledge the brutality of Castro and his minions is even worse than the American intelligentsia’s failure to grasp the barbarity of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s.

    Arguably yes, since we have much more access to information about an island nation 90 miles from Key West than we did to the vast reaches of Stalinist Russia. 

    • #7
  8. DJ EJ Member
    DJ EJ
    @DJEJ

    Took me a while to read the whole thing, but thanks for this excellent and educational post, Clifford. When I was reading up on the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Liberation Army, and other domestic terror organizations for a post I wrote last year, one aspect that kept bubbling up was that so many of SDS members and other radicals who later became terrorists/criminals began their “journey” with a trip to Cuba through the Venceremos Brigade organization,  founded by Carl Oglesby and Bernadine Dohrn. They claim it’s to help with the sugarcane harvest, but there’s no doubt opportunities for Marxist indoctrination and training in violent revolutionary tactics are made available as well. From wikipedia:

    According to debriefing statements made to the FBI by a Cuban Intelligence officer who defected in 1983, the Venceremos Brigade was controlled by Cuban Intelligence officer Alfredo Garcia Almeida, chief of the North American Section of the Americas Department and former political counselor at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

    They went to Cuba to learn how to build a Communist utopia:

    In Venceremos Brigade, Sandra Levinson and Carol Brightman describe the participants, brigadistas, as “American radicals.” They were attracted to Cuba by the socialist revolution taking place, the anti-imperialist movement, as well as Cuban culture. The Venceremos Brigade included a diverse group participants from the beginning. White, Black, Chicano, Native American, and Puerto Rican Americans, as well as activists and feminists participated. In part, the Venceremos Brigade went to Cuba to study revolutionary culture, Che Guevara, and Che’s new socialist man. New Left philosophy permeated the movement. The brigadistas also invoked Cuba’s history of antiracist and anticolonial movements, and referred to the Black Power and feminist movements in the USA, with the goal of creating a revolutionary political culture within the group.

    But that utopia remains elusive:

    However, despite the leftist nature of the Brigades and the Cuban government, conflict emerged between Brigade organizers and gay members of the Brigade and their allies. To Cuban officials, the gay liberation movement represented American imperialism, and was a challenge to Fidel Castro and Cuba. The organizers of the Venceremos Brigades settled on a Don’t ask, don’t tell policy, requiring queer brigadistas to refrain from discussing or performing their sexuality. Queer brigadistas were subject to homophobic slurs and questions, and homophobia was the overall policy. There were also race and gender-based tensions in the early brigades.

    If they actually knew the truth about Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, instead of sparkly-eyed hagiography, the Cuban communist regime’s racism against Afro-Cubans and their practice of putting Cuban homosexuals into re-education camps wouldn’t have surprised them (never mind the joy Che took in executing blacks and homosexuals).

    The Venceremos Brigades organization still sends young people to Cuba for the harvest indoctrination. When Congresswoman Karen Bass was floated as a possible Biden VP pick, her VB alumni status made her too openly radical.

    • #8
  9. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    DJ EJ (View Comment):

    Took me a while to read the whole thing, but thanks for this excellent and educational post, Clifford. When I was reading up on the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Liberation Army, and other domestic terror organizations for a post I wrote last year, one aspect that kept bubbling up was that so many of SDS members and other radicals who later became terrorists/criminals began their “journey” with a trip to Cuba through the Venceremos Brigade organization, founded by Carl Oglesby and Bernadine Dohrn. They claim it’s to help with the sugarcane harvest, but there’s no doubt opportunities for Marxist indoctrination and training in violent revolutionary tactics are made available as well. From wikipedia:

    According to debriefing statements made to the FBI by a Cuban Intelligence officer who defected in 1983, the Venceremos Brigade was controlled by Cuban Intelligence officer Alfredo Garcia Almeida, chief of the North American Section of the Americas Department and former political counselor at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

    They went to Cuba to learn how to build a Communist utopia:

    In Venceremos Brigade, Sandra Levinson and Carol Brightman describe the participants, brigadistas, as “American radicals.” They were attracted to Cuba by the socialist revolution taking place, the anti-imperialist movement, as well as Cuban culture. The Venceremos Brigade included a diverse group participants from the beginning. White, Black, Chicano, Native American, and Puerto Rican Americans, as well as activists and feminists participated. In part, the Venceremos Brigade went to Cuba to study revolutionary culture, Che Guevara, and Che’s new socialist man. New Left philosophy permeated the movement. The brigadistas also invoked Cuba’s history of antiracist and anticolonial movements, and referred to the Black Power and feminist movements in the USA, with the goal of creating a revolutionary political culture within the group.

    But that utopia remains elusive:

    However, despite the leftist nature of the Brigades and the Cuban government, conflict emerged between Brigade organizers and gay members of the Brigade and their allies. To Cuban officials, the gay liberation movement represented American imperialism, and was a challenge to Fidel Castro and Cuba. The organizers of the Venceremos Brigades settled on a Don’t ask, don’t tell policy, requiring queer brigadistas to refrain from discussing or performing their sexuality. Queer brigadistas were subject to homophobic slurs and questions, and homophobia was the overall policy. There were also race and gender-based tensions in the early brigades.

    If they actually knew the truth about Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, instead of sparkly-eyed hagiography, the Cuban communist regime’s racism against Afro-Cubans and their practice of putting Cuban homosexuals into re-education camps wouldn’t have surprised them (never mind the joy Che took in executing blacks and homosexuals).

    The Venceremos Brigades organization still sends young people to Cuba for the harvest indoctrination. When Congresswoman Karen Bass was floated as a possible Biden VP pick, her VB alumni status made her too openly radical.

    This is important additional background information on the Cuban regime actively influencing the American left.

    • #9
  10. DJ EJ Member
    DJ EJ
    @DJEJ

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):

    DJ EJ (View Comment):

    Took me a while to read the whole thing, but thanks for this excellent and educational post, Clifford. When I was reading up on the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Liberation Army, and other domestic terror organizations for a post I wrote last year, one aspect that kept bubbling up was that so many of SDS members and other radicals who later became terrorists/criminals began their “journey” with a trip to Cuba through the Venceremos Brigade organization, founded by Carl Oglesby and Bernadine Dohrn. They claim it’s to help with the sugarcane harvest, but there’s no doubt opportunities for Marxist indoctrination and training in violent revolutionary tactics are made available as well. From wikipedia:

    According to debriefing statements made to the FBI by a Cuban Intelligence officer who defected in 1983, the Venceremos Brigade was controlled by Cuban Intelligence officer Alfredo Garcia Almeida, chief of the North American Section of the Americas Department and former political counselor at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

    The Venceremos Brigades organization still sends young people to Cuba for the harvest indoctrination. When Congresswoman Karen Bass was floated as a possible Biden VP pick, her VB alumni status made her too openly radical.

    This is important additional background information on the Cuban regime actively influencing the American left.

    For many on the American left, they’re not only influenced by the Cuban regime, they are in contact with, have personal relationships with, and idolize the Cubans’ abilities to enact the Socialist policies they (so far) can only dream of imposing. Your description of the fawning over the Castros by the Congressional Black Caucus was chilling, but also very revealing at the same time.

     

    • #10
  11. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    DJ EJ (View Comment):

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):

    DJ EJ (View Comment):

    Took me a while to read the whole thing, but thanks for this excellent and educational post, Clifford. When I was reading up on the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Liberation Army, and other domestic terror organizations for a post I wrote last year, one aspect that kept bubbling up was that so many of SDS members and other radicals who later became terrorists/criminals began their “journey” with a trip to Cuba through the Venceremos Brigade organization, founded by Carl Oglesby and Bernadine Dohrn. They claim it’s to help with the sugarcane harvest, but there’s no doubt opportunities for Marxist indoctrination and training in violent revolutionary tactics are made available as well. From wikipedia:

    According to debriefing statements made to the FBI by a Cuban Intelligence officer who defected in 1983, the Venceremos Brigade was controlled by Cuban Intelligence officer Alfredo Garcia Almeida, chief of the North American Section of the Americas Department and former political counselor at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

    The Venceremos Brigades organization still sends young people to Cuba for the harvest indoctrination. When Congresswoman Karen Bass was floated as a possible Biden VP pick, her VB alumni status made her too openly radical.

    This is important additional background information on the Cuban regime actively influencing the American left.

    For many on the American left, they’re not only influenced by the Cuban regime, they are in contact with, have personal relationships with, and idolize the Cubans’ abilities to enact the Socialist policies they (so far) can only dream of imposing. Your description of the fawning over the Castros by the Congressional Black Caucus was chilling, but also very revealing at the same time.

     

    Yes, the same holds for the approval and admiration of Chinese communists’ power to command policy the American left supports. 

    • #11
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