After Obama Handshake, Raul Castro Cracks Down on Dissidents in Cuba

In commemoration of the International Human Rights Day, security forces in Cuba conducted widespread arrests and detained more than 150 dissidents.

The crackdown began on Tuesday morning and carried over into Wednesday. From activists to musicians, no one was safe from the regime’s iron-fisted oppression. In addition to the detentions, the government also shut down the cellular and home phone services of many, preventing them from sounding the alarm.

The Ladies in White, famous for their peaceful marches while carrying white flowers, had 20 members violently shoved into waiting cars. Throughout the island, government-sponsored mobs in plain clothes also injured and robbed the democratic opposition.
It’s no coincidence that these events occurred less than two hours after Obama shook hands with Castro. The symbolic nature of this gesture gave the Cuban dictator the green light to continue his oppression against those who fight for the same values America stands for.

He was clearly sending the international community a message by arresting so many dissidents during Nelson Mandela’s memorial service on International Human Rights Day.

As the leader of the free world, Obama should realize that his actions have consequences. By continuing his appeasement of bowing to dictators and shaking the bloody hands of ruthless tyrants, he’s granting them the legitimacy they desperately crave.

Sadly, the Obama Administration’s foreign policy does not include taking a stand against tyranny. Obama needs follow up his handshake by publicly denouncing this crackdown and extending his support for the brave democratic opposition. On International Human Rights Day, and every other day, the Castro regime should be sent the message that human rights abuses will not be tolerated by the U.S.

they made it abundantly clear after Obama announced the Thaw,that they weren't going to change their System one Iota!
Good Show,Obama and Lurch,good Show!

North Korea is next!

or maybe...................

Senator Marco Rubio
March 19 at 6:37pm

On Sunday, President Obama will touch down in Cuba for what promises to be one of the most disgraceful trips ever taken by a U.S. president anywhere in the world. This is an Obama presidential trip whose ultimate results will be giving away legitimacy and money to an anti-American regime that actively undermines our national security interests and acts against our values every single day. President Obama’s entourage will sleep in hotels controlled by the Cuban military that were confiscated by the regime and are among the $7 billion in unpaid legal claims owed to American property owners. When President Obama arrives in Havana on Sunday, he will visit Catholic Church sights and church officials, yet he’s inexplicably expected to skip St. Rita Church, where the Ladies In White have shed much blood and received routine beatings at the hands of the Castro regime for simply demanding their loved ones’ freedom.

On Monday, President Obama will showcase the most damaging part of his Cuba policy: the lawless, one-sided weakening of the LIBERTAD Act that seeks to enrich American businesses and the Castro regime’s police state, without any concessions from Cuba that lead to greater freedoms for the Cuban people. The Obama-Castro state dinner promises to be another low point of this visit, one that I fully expect will be attended by some of the Castro regime’s biggest low-lifes who will seek to exploit this opportunity to mock this president, his administration and the American people.

On Tuesday, the irony should not be lost on anyone that President Obama will be giving a speech at yet another property confiscated by the Castro regime. President Obama’s decision to end his trip at a baseball game is a fitting symbol of this trip and of his entire Cuba policy: he thinks this is a game. What’s not a game is the repression, intimidation and exploitation Cuba’s baseball players face and that has led to many of them defecting the first chance they get, and that would probably lead some of them, should they be able to meet and speak freely with President Obama, to ask him directly for asylum and a flight to freedom on Air Force One.

As a whole, President Obama’s trip to Cuba and his policy of one-sided concessions to this regime are as naïve as his world view and as misguided as his foreign policy affecting other parts of the world. America should be standing with our allies and democracy advocates around the world, not embracing, enriching and empowering our enemies, the way President Obama is about to do in Cuba.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I8XBWMBxFs

THE SANDPIPERS CUANDO SALI DE CUBA

If one just knew what the words in Spanish say, one can fully understand the beauty and sentiment of the song. There's nothing more heartbreaking, than to know some were kept away from Cuba for years, separated from their families, friends and homeland., never to again see any of them. This is my hope and prayer for my Cuban family in exile-Some day, somehow we will return, and we shall walk in the places where we used to run, sun kissing our faces, wind singing in our ears, and our eyes beholding the awesome beauty of a land kissed by the beauty of the handiwork of God! Cuando sali de Cuba, deje me vida, deje mi amor. Cuando sali de Cuba, deje enterado mi corazon!

he is a communist, liberals use the communist tricks to benefit themselves and hurt the conservatives (the ones of faith )...

Birds of a Feather!

Smiley's true colors are showing. What an idiot.

With the embargo recently lifted,
Castro is already trying to turn Cuba
into Obonzo's America.

well,ain't that special!

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/raul-castro-s-demands-for-gitmo-plus-reparations-show-cuba-still-a-prime-enemy-1.10936313

Raul Castro's demands for Gitmo plus reparations show Cuba still a prime enemy

Updated October 8, 2015 3:11 PM
By ANA QUINTANA, Tribune News Service

Late last month, Cuban President Raul Castro stood before the U.N. General Assembly to berate the U.S. and demand a host of concessions from Washington.

Topping his list of demands was America returning Guantanamo Bay to Cuban control and paying reparations for its decades-long trade embargo against the regime.


Neither demand is reasonable, much less in America's national interests.


Guantanamo rightfully belongs to the U.S. Legally, the terms of America's lease are indisputable.

At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Congress passed the Platt Amendment. The legislation required the U.S. to ensure Cuba's freedom and stipulated that, in exchange, Cuba must "sell or lease to the United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations." The benefits of this arrangement were not lost on the Cuban government. A 1902 amendment to their constitution reflected as much, and one year later, the U.S. leased the current location of the naval base.

In 1934, the U.S. and Cuba further solidified the agreement with an updated treaty. It explicitly states, "So long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station of Guantanamo or the two governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits, the station shall continue to have the territorial area that it has now." Arguments for returning the naval base are grounded more in feel-good optics than considerations of national security. Opponents of the naval base claim it's a vestige of U.S. "imperialism" and that normalized relations between the U.S. and Cuba are impossible until this "blot" is erased. Both points are factually inaccurate.

A few short years after the Spanish-American War, Cuba emerged not as a colony of Spain but an independent and sovereign republic - a change in status made possible only thanks to U.S. military assistance.

Granted, Washington didn't fight the Spanish for purely altruistic purposes. At the time, America's grand strategy, the Monroe Doctrine, was predicated on keeping foreign powers from overtaking the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere.

The strategic value of having a neighbor free from Spanish rule and agreeable to facilitating the regional operations of the U.S. Navy was undeniable. And it remains undeniable today.
.

Arguments supporting reparations for the Cuban government are ill-founded as well. The trade embargo was imposed in response to Fidel Castro's illegal nationalization of American assets then worth $1.8 billion. Decades later, the almost 6,000 claims certified by the U.S. Department of Justice are valued at over $7 billion.

This figure does not include the property confiscated from hundreds of thousands of Cubans before and after they were forced to leave Cuba by the Castro regime.

The embargo cannot legally be lifted until the claims issue is resolved. Havana's counterclaim for damages suffered as a result of their initial malfeasance is asinine.

Unfortunately the Obama administration has chosen to unilaterally "normalize" relations with this regime, the last vestige of Cold War communism.


In the last nine months, the White House has drastically eased sanctions, lobbied Congress to lift the embargo and prematurely removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism - all without placing so much as one precondition on Havana.

The regime remains free to practice its systematic abuse of human rights to punish critics and discourage dissent.

Yet even with that, Castro insists that "normal" relations are impossible without Guantanamo and reparations. But these issues are red herrings.

The real reason that normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba are impossible - beyond Havana's ongoing human rights violations - is the Cuban government's unshakable commitment to undermining the U.S.

The Castro regime continues to forge relationships with our adversaries and support anti-U.S. authoritarians in Latin America at every opportunity. It has no intention of being our friend.
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Ana Quintana is a policy analyst specializing in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere at The Heritage Foundation's Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy. She holds a master's degree in global security studies from Florida International University.

Ran across another version that rather cleverly uses that Che Guevara mural in the background....