Human Rights and Rising Repression in Cuba

"The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the US government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages". - Rosa María Payá, addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on February 3, 2015

Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet arrested this morning in Havana

This morning at 10:15am received the following e-mail from Marcell Felipe of the Inspire America Foundation:

Cuban State Security has just taken Dr Oscar  Elías Biscet into custody. Dr Biscet is the a Nobel Prize Candidate and was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush. A contingent of 6 men including 4 police operatives and 2 state security agents took Dr Biscet into custody in patrol car 228, about an hour ago just outside of his home, and would not say where he was being taken. His whereabouts are unknown. We are monitoring the situation and will place updates during the day at inspireamerica.org. Thanks for sharing this news it may well save a life.

The publication Diario de Cuba reported an escalation in repression in  Havana, Pinar del Río and Santiago de Cuba today and The Miami Herald reported on the arrest of dissidents and the home of an independent journalist searched by State Security for "nearly four hours." This past Sunday Diario de Cuba reported that more than 50 Ladies in White were detained in Cuba while trying to attend Mass and peacefully march afterwards.

This is a continuation of the deteriorating human rights situation in Cuba over the past eight years of the Obama Administration. Tragically the Obama Administration's marginalization of dissidents that began in 2009 was deadly. Rosa María Payá, who was forced into exile following her father's extrajudicial killing on July 22, 2012 and death threats directed at her afterwards, addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on February 3, 2015:

 "On 22 July 2012, Cuban State Security detained the car in which my father, Oswaldo Payá, and my friend Harold Cepero, along with two young European politicians, were traveling. All of them survived, but my father disappeared for hours only to reappear dead, in the hospital in which Harold would die without medical attention.  The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the US government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come. While you sleep, a second generation of dictators is planning with impunity their next crimes."

The claim made by William LeoGrande in Huffington Post on January 9, 2017 that the "human rights situation in Cuba has not improved for dissidents, but it has improved for everyone else" is absurd. First the situation for dissidents has worsened with increasing violence against activists and secondly Cubans, who are not dissidents, have been shot and killed trying to leave Cuba as recently as 2015.  

Diosbel Díaz Bioto and Yuriniesky Martínez Reina both killed trying to leave

The December 17, 2014 announcement of normalized relations was also surrounded by violence and death against Cubans by the Castro regime. Just a day earlier on December 16 the Cuban coast guard rammed and sank a boat with 32 refugees. One of them, Diosbel Díaz Bioto, went missing and is presumed dead. The rest were repatriated and jailed. Less than four months later Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at by state security. 

If the human rights situation for everyone else in Cuba was improving there would not be a new exodus of tens of thousands of young Cubans fleeing the island. The claim by Professor LeoGrande that Cubans can start their own businesses does not track with what happened to Saul Berenthal, a Cuban American who had planned to open a factory to manufacture tractors in Cuba. President Obama had highlighted the proposal in 2016. However Mr. Berenthal made a mistake when he regained his Cuban nationality that sunk his deal with the Castro regime.  According to The Miami Herald, Cuban law restricts Cubans living on the island from starting their own companies:

Private sector workers in Cuba, known as cuentapropistas (self-employed), are licensed only to work for themselves and cannot legally establish companies to expand their work beyond a small scale. Larger enterprises are allowed only for the government and foreigners. According to a report on the foreign investment law produced by the National Organization of Cuban Law Firms, “Cuban citizens residing in the country cannot participate as partners in a joint venture.” The report added: “This law is designed to favor 'foreign investors' or Cubans living outside the country.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article125450659.html#storylink=cpy

Professor LeoGrande tried to tie the freedom to own computers and cellphones to the December 2014 policy change, but that is untrue. It is true that the Castro regime had a strategy in the past of restricting internet access using extreme measures including outlawing the ownership of personal computers from 2002 until 2008, but the re-legalization of computer ownership took place in the last year of the Bush Administration. Furthermore, it was the Bush White House that began promoting the shipping of cell phones to the island. Finally, Yoani Sánchez started up her independent blogging anonymously in 2004 and began to sign her posts in 2008 ending her anonymity. Prior to December 2014 the proliferation of independent blogs and digital media sites critical of the Castro regime had already taken place with the launch of 14 y Medio on May 21, 2014. Even the loosening of travel restrictions, that can be rescinded at any moment, was announced in 2012 and began in 2013.

Sirley Ávila León lost her left hand, knees slashed, right arm nearly severed in 2015 attack

The claim that human rights have improved for most Cubans since December 2014 rings hollow on all fronts. The escalation of politically orchestrated violence by state security and the brutality visited on nonviolent dissidents such as Sirley Ávila León, the victim of a brutal machete attack in May of 2015 that left her crippled or the murder of Yunisledy Lopez Rodriguez in May of 2014.  

Thanks to a rapid mobilization over social media and in the press by the end of the day there was some good news. Marcell Felipe sent me another e-mail at 4:10pm announcing that Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet had been freed:

Doctor Biscet has been released. Thank you to everyone who moved quickly through the appropriate channels and the media who took interest in his story. I spoke with Doctor Biscet a few minutes ago at his home. While in custody he was told to give up his work and that he was getting old and that he was being watched and would go to prison if he continued. Dr Biscet had recently renewed and increased efforts to promote his trademark Emilia Project and many of his colleagues have said 2017 is a definitive year, making the already failing regime all the more concerned; proof of how a man of peace can threaten one of the world's fiercest totalitarian state.

However prisoners of conscience remain behind bars in Cuba today. Danilo Maldonado, an artist has been imprisoned since tagging a wall with the phrase "Se fue" [he left] referring to the death of Fidel Castro on November 26, 2016 and Amnesty International has recognized him as a prisoner of conscience and has an urgent action campaign for his release. Prison officials would not allow the young artist a sweater or a blanket in El Combinado prison despite a cold front. 

Also arrested in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's death was Eduardo Cardet, the spokesperson of the Christian Liberation Movement. Cardet who is also a beloved medical doctor and family man respected in his community. While traveling abroad his wife was detained and warned that upon his return they would lock him up for 15 years in prison for having met the wrong people during his travels. Despite the threat Eduardo Cardet returned home on November 30, 2016 to a brutal beating, incarceration and trumped up charges. Relatives report that Dr. Cardet  has been told that he can go home if he abandons his democratic convictions. More disturbingly prison officials have spread the rumor that Eduardo Cardet is making calls to denounce the criminal rackets of the inmates making him the target of physical assaults from other prisoners. 

Additionally, Carlos Alberto González Rodríguez, age 48, who painted "Down with Castro" graffiti in Las Tunas was sentenced to two years in prison under the charge of "Peligrosidad Social Pre-Delictiva” (Pre-Crime Social Dangerousness). Likewise a show trial was scheduled to be held yesterday (January 11, 2017) for a family that had been the victim of an act of repudiation for their dissent on November 27, 2016. The accused are Maydolis Leyva Portelles and her children Adairis, Anairis Miranda Leyva, and Fidel Batista Leyva.

One need not be a political dissident to get into trouble in totalitarian Cuba. Darío Pérez Rodríguez, age 49, resident in the Eastern city of Holguín who on January 4, 2017 was sentenced by the municipal tribunal to a year prison for "defaming the martyrs of the Homeland", a crime found in Article 204 of the Penal Code. What did he do? He refused the order issued at his workplace to watch Fidel Castro's funeral on television.

Cuba remains a totalitarian regime where human rights are systematically violated and repression is on the rise after 58 years of dictatorship.

Obama's Cuba Legacy: Legitimizing tyranny, marginalizing dissidents & deteriorating human rights

An old, discredited policy repackaged as new delivers same failed results

President Obama leaves office while General Raul Castro stays on in power

The White House claimed in a tweet on December 16, 2016 that they had "opened up a new chapter with the people of Cuba." There is nothing new in what the Obama administration has done in Cuba because it is a retread off the old, discredited approach of embracing dictators while focusing on narrow economic interests. Google is now partnering with ETECSA, the Castro regime's telecommunications monopoly that engages in systematic censorship. Other companies have engaged in discrimination based on national origin in the United States in order to satisfy regime demands.

Meanwhile Cubans continue to be jailed for what they think and the press has picked up on three high profile cases of a medical doctor, a lawyer and an artist. The two year anniversary of the new Cuba policy also coincided with the arrest of a U.S. citizen, Kimberley Motley, an international attorney who wanted to hold a press conference to discuss the case of Danilo Maldonado, the jailed Cuban artist.

Ben Rhodes published a blog entry claiming "two years of progress" citing progress in the private sector in Cuba but failed to mention that the Cuban military has expanded its control of the economy in the island since 2014. The White House has also been shy about mentioning the collapse in trade between U.S. companies and Cuba over the past two years. Nor does anyone want to mention that the peak year of trade was 2008, the last year of the Bush Administration. Instead the focus is on the latest celebrity visiting the island for a photo opportunity.

Cuba may have become a celebrity magnet over the past two years but Cubans began to flee the island in huge numbers that had not been seen since the Clinton Administration. The reason for the exodus can be seen in the dramatic increase in politically motivated arbitrary detentions in Cuba during the Obama Administration that has coincided with the Castro regime's heightened violence against Cubans who dissent.

Human rights have worsened in Cuba as the dictatorship has been legitimized internationally by the Obama Administration's new Cuba policy. The consequences have gone beyond the symbolic moment of silence for Fidel Castro at the United Nations Human Rights Council but to the European Union's delinkage of human rights from its common position on Cuba to engage with the Castro regime. This was a policy that had been in place for 20 years.

This deteriorating human rights situation, evaporating international solidarity with Cuban democrats along with the legitimization of the dictatorship is consolidating the dictatorship and prolonging its rule. Ben Rhodes claims that the "goal" of the new Cuba policy "was clear: to help the Cuban people live a better life", but the reality is that things have gotten worse on all fronts in Cuba. By this measure Obama Administration's Cuba policy is a failure.

U.S. Treasury Cuba Announcement in brief: "U.S. taxpayers get ready to pick up the tab for the Castro regime."

"They’re normally like chupacabras.  The only thing they’re looking for is someone to give them money for free." - Vicente Fox, Former Mexican President, in 2015 on the Castro regime

 
Today's press release from the Treasury Department appears innocuous titled: "Treasury and Commerce Announce Further Amendments to the Cuba Sanctions Regulations"  as does the "subheading Amendments Further Implement President Obama’s Policy Related to Easing of Sanctions on Cuba."  However the devil is in the details reproduced below from paragraph six:

Financing–

Removing financing restrictions for most types of authorized exports.

• Restrictions on payment and financing terms for authorized exports and reexports, except for agricultural commodities and agricultural items, will be removed, and U.S. depository institutions will be authorized to provide financing, including, for example, issuing a letter of credit for such exports and reexports.  Currently, payment and financing terms for all authorized exports are restricted to cash-in-advance or third-country financing.  Effective January 27, 2016, examples of permissible payment and financing terms for authorized non-agricultural exports and reexports will include: payment of cash in advance; sales on an open account; and financing by third-country financial institutions or U.S. financial institutions.  OFAC is required by statute to maintain the existing limitations on payment and financing terms for the export and reexport of agricultural commodities and agricultural items. 

The United States is the only country in the world that since 2000 has had a cash and carry arrangement with the purchase of agricultural and pharmaceutical products.Under this arrangement American companies sold over $5.2 billion to the Castro regime. This arrangement protected U.S. taxpayers from having to subsidize the dictatorship when it defaulted on its financial obligations.

How did the Castro regime raise the money to purchase U.S. goods?

James Prevor, President and Editor in Chief of the publication Produce Business in October of 2002 in the article, Cuba Caution, reported on how Cuba "had exhausted all its credit lines and, at best, was simply rotating the accounts. When the opportunity came to buy from the United States, Cuba simply abandoned all those suppliers who supported the country for 40 years and began buying from us."  The suppliers were not the ones impacted by Cuba's failure to pay its debts, the taxpayers of the suppliers' home countries were the one's left holding the tab.  

For example in December 2015 it was announced that Spain would forgive $1.88 billion that the Castro regime owes it. In December of 2013, Russia and Cuba quietly signed an agreement to write off 90 percent of Cuba's $32 billion debt to the defunct Soviet Union, a deal that ends a 20-year squabble. Canadians have had to pursue Cuban maritime debts seizing Cuban vessels and negotiating payment through Canadian courts. On November 1, 2013 the government of Mexico announced that it was ready to waive 70 percent of a debt worth nearly $500 million that Cuba owes it. The former president of Mexico Vicente Fox protested the move stating: “Let the Cubans get to work and generate their own money…They’re normally like chupacabras.  The only thing they’re looking for is someone to give them money for free.”

Trade with the Castro regime peaked under the Bush administration and has crashed under the Obama administration. The Treasury Department's announcement today means that the United States will join the rest of the world in financing the Castro regime.

While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce touts the virtues of free trade, free markets and free enterprise in its advocacy for lifting economic sanctions on Cuba what it is actually pursuing is trade with the Cuban government that passes the risk of not getting paid on to taxpayers.  Darío Fernández-Morera an associate professor at North Western University in the May 1, 2014 issue of Chronicles in the article The Cost of Normalization reports that the Small Business Exporters Association announced 

"since March 2009, a select group of commercial banks now will be able to offer terms of 180 days to five years on federally-guaranteed loans to the foreign buyers of U.S. exports without having to obtain prior federal approval.  ... Because of the foreign risks involved  in export lending, most commercial banks through-out the world do not make these loans without government guarantees. In the U.S., the guarantees are provided by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), a federal agency.

This will mean that the Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture lobby will sell to the Cuban dictatorship and have the taxpayers pick up the tab if anything goes wrong.  The record with other countries over the past half century indicates that the Castro regime will default on what it owes. On April 23, 2014 Moody's Investor Service downgraded Cuba's already poor credit rating to Caa2 from Caa1which Nasdaq defines as follows: "Obligations rated Caa2 are judged to be of poor standing and are subject to very high credit risk."  

World War III, Syrian Refugees and Prudence

"Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all." - Edmund Burke

Christians are being targeted for genocide but U.S. State Department silent

Pope Francis on September 13, 2014 declared that World War III was already underway and that it was "one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction." His Holiness also declared the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris a part of this war.

The United States is already engaged in this war with troops on the ground in Syria that predate the November 13th attacks and that will now be intensified. Patrick J. Buchanan in an important column outlines what has been going on in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS):

The President’s strategy is to contain, degrade and defeat ISIS. While no one has provided the troops to defeat ISIS, the U.S. is using Kurdish and Yazidi forces, backed by U.S. air power, to degrade it. And recent months have seen measured success. The Kurds have run ISIS out of Kobani, captured much of the Turkish-Syrian border, and moved to within 30 miles of Raqqa, the ISIS capital. Yazidis and Kurds last week recaptured Sinjar in Iraq and cut the highway between Mosul and Raqqa. The terrorist attacks in Paris, the downing of the Russian airliner in Sinai, the ISIS bomb that exploded in the Shiite sector of Beirut, are ISIS’s payback. But they could also be signs that the ISIS caliphate, imperiled in its base, is growing desperate and lashing out.

Now there is a debate raging in the United States concerning what to do about Syrian refugees fleeing from the Islamic State. This requires both courage, prudence and a recognition of the realities on the ground over there and over here.

First, the United States does not have its borders under control and terrorist cells are probably already in the United States. At the same time American intelligence services have, following the September 11, 2001 debacle, had a decent record in stopping terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Secondly, ISIS has been engaged in all out genocide against religious minorities in the territory it occupies targeting Yazidis, Christians, and Turkmen. Christians in the Middle East, especially with the start of the second Iraq war have been victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide, but this has been ignored by both the Bush and Obama administrations. This could be the end of Christianity in the Middle East and the U.S. State Department refuses to recognize this ongoing situation.

Back in April 2015, I met with the president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, Juliana Taimoorazy, and blogged about this issue which predates the Iraq war with the Armenian genocide that began a hundred years ago in 1915 that ended in 1923 targeting Christians.
 
In the 1930s the failure of Western Democracies to take in Jewish refugees highlighted in the disgraceful episode of the SS St. Louis Voyage of the Damned in 1939 sent a signal to the Nazis that they could do what they wanted with the Jewish population in Europe without any consequences.

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen are being targeted for extermination and need to be given refuge. This should be done in a prudent manner, taking safeguards, but remembering that the lesson of the Good Samaritan in the Bible calls out to us to protect and assist refugees. Father Longenecker offers the following counsel, although his scope is narrower than mine:

..."Christian charity demands that we welcome the stranger and give solace to the homeless where we are able. We are the richest and most prosperous and bountiful country in history. We can, and should make room for the homeless and those displaced by war–especially as our own involvement in the Middle East has contributed to the mess. We have meddled in the countries of the Middle East–in their politics, their economics, their wars and their military coups. We’ve propped and then toppled their dictators. We’ve invaded their countries and bombed their people. Of course we should take in their homeless refugees. On the other hand, when you see the hordes of fit young men streaming across the European borders you can’t help but suspect that these are not refugees but an invading army. Should we open the borders to just anyone? Of course not. Why can’t anyone use common sense? ... Furthermore, why not be even more selective and take only family groups with husband, wife and children or one parent and their children or family groups with extended family members like grandparents? Are there single people who need help? Accept women and their children. Accept old people. Accept the disabled, the poor and blind. In that way we offer loving Christian charity to those in need while excluding those who might be a risk."

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen should be provided refuge and measures set up to avoid taking in terrorists disguised as refugees. Senator Cruz's call to give a priority to Christian refugees entering the United States should be rooted in the recognition that they are the largest group in the area targeted for genocide. Shiite Muslims have Iran as a nearby sanctuary. At the same time it is imperative to get the borders and ports of the United States under greater control to prevent the incursion of more terrorists.

It is also important to remember that not all Christians and Yazidis are leaving, some have stayed to fight and take their last stand against ISIS. A friend of mine Jordan Allot, who made a documentary on Cuban prisoner of conscience Oscar Elías Bicet in 2010, traveled to Iraq and Syria with an Assyrian-American school teacher from New York to raise awareness about the plight of the Christian communities there and made the documentary Our Last Stand.

The threat of terrorism remains and we are in the midst of a terrible global conflict but we should not lose our humanity in confronting it or showing solidarity with its victims, but we must do so prudently in order not to compound the present evils.

What the Associated Press left out of its story on Cuba Trade and the US Embargo

What Agribusiness and the Castro regime prefer you did not know: 1. How American agri-business and members of Congress signed "advocacy contracts" in exchange for the purchase of exports and became lobbyists for the dictatorship. 2. How Castro dictatorship stopped making payments to trading partners of what they owed in order to buy billions in U.S. exports during the Bush years.

Associated Press coverage of Cuba over the past few years has been a source of controversy with well founded claims of bias. On January 5, 2014 a new episode unfolded with the article by Michael Weissenstein "Figures show US-Cuba trade hit decade low last year." The first paragraph blames "long standing barriers to trade" but the second paragraph states:

The statistics from the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council show that U.S. farmers sold slightly more than $253 million worth of food and agricultural products to Cuba in the first 10 months of 2014. If the last two months of the year reflect similar sales levels, 2014 could be the worst year for U.S. exports to Cuba since 2004.

What is not mentioned in the article is that the peak years of the Castro regime purchasing U.S. food and agricultural products was during the Bush Administration. In August of 2008 the Cuban dictatorship said that the United States was its fifth leading trade partner. With the entrance of the Obama Administration in 2009 and its policy of loosening Bush era restrictions trade between the two countries has been consistently lower.

Furthermore it should come as know surprise that the collapse in trade coincided with the secret negotiations between the Obama Administration and the Castro dictatorship because it no longer needed to buy influence.  For the regime in Cuba trade is a political instrument that answers to the interests of the dictatorship and this also applies to the companies doing business with it.

The Castro regime used openings in trade from the Clinton era (medical products in 1992 and agricultural products in 2000)  to build up a pro-Castro lobby and to target congressional districts in agricultural states to advance its interests. The dictatorship accomplished this by purchasing American exports and requiring U.S. corporations and members of Congress to sign "advocacy contracts" that turned them into lobbyists for the dictatorship as a condition of the Castro regime buying their goods. News of this practice broke a decade ago in USA Today and in The Miami Herald but goes unmentioned in the Associated Press article. The Miami Herald in a October 5, 2004 editorial described this practice as "peddling influence for a communist state" and said that those engaged in the practice "should be required to register as agents of a foreign government."

John Kavulich, who was the head of the above mentioned U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council until 2005 explained in 2003 the significance of these "advocacy agreements" stating: ''These agreements are a corruption of the commercial process,'' ... ``Once you include an advocacy clause, they're no longer commercial agreements; they're political documents.''

In the current Associated Press piece Paul Johnson, vice-chairman of the newly formed U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba is quoted saying: "Our products can't compete with Brazil, Argentina, the EU and China because of the credit issue."

However at the same time the Associated Press makes no mention of Argentina seeking repayment in the past of 1.3 billion dollars it is owned by the Castro regime or the dictatorship's call for 75% of its debt with Argentina to be written off. No mention that in 2013 Mexico waived 70% of the 487 million dollar debt it is owed by the Castro regime. No mention that Russia, Venezuela, China, Japan, Spain, France, Romania, Brazil, and Italy are owed billions of dollars. No mention that Russia is forgiving $29 billion dollars of debt that the Castro regime owed it. No mention that Canadians have had to pursue Cuban maritime debts seizing Cuban vessels and negotiating payment through Canadian courts. No mention that on April 23, 2014 Moody's Investor Service downgraded Cuba's already poor credit rating to Caa2 from Caa1 which Nasdaq defines as follows: "Obligations rated Caa2 are judged to be of poor standing and are subject to very high credit risk." 

How is it that all these countries have "normal" commercial relations  with Cuba and extended the Castro regime credit are owed billions while the United States over this period has been paid in cash five billion dollars? The answer is simple and one that should caution American taxpayers: it was a political consideration by the Castro regime.

James Prevor, President and Editor in Chief of the publication Produce Business in October of 2002 in the article, Cuba Caution, reported on how Cuba "had exhausted all its credit lines and, at best, was simply rotating the accounts. When the opportunity came to buy from the United States, Cuba simply abandoned all those suppliers who supported the country for 40 years and began buying from us."  The suppliers were not the ones impacted by Cuba's failure to pay its debts, the taxpayers of the suppliers' home countries were the one's left holding the tab. The reason $5 billion dollars entered the coffers of American agribusiness while costing other countries billions is the existence of the US embargo.

Darío Fernández-Morera an associate professor at North Western University in the May 1, 2014 issue of Chronicles in the article The Cost of Normalization reports that the Small Business Exporters Association announced 

"since March 2009, a select group of commercial banks now will be able to offer terms of 180 days to five years on federally-guaranteed loans to the foreign buyers of U.S. exports without having to obtain prior federal approval.  ... Because of the foreign risks involved  in export lending, most commercial banks through-out the world do not make these loans without government guarantees. In the U.S., the guarantees are provided by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), a federal agency.

Twelve years ago Prevor predicted where things have now arrived in the Cuba policy debate as far as Agro-business is concerned:

But what the really big grain traders want is to sell to Cuba on credit - and get those credits provided or guaranteed by various federal loan programs. In effect, these agribusiness behemoths want to sell to Cuba and have the U.S. tax- payer pick up the tab. And their bet is that once produce shippers have gotten a taste of the business, they will become a kind of Amen corner for the Cuban lobby, pushing Congress to approve whatever laws will be to the liking of the Cuban government. This really brings to the forefront why trade with a communist country poses unique dangers to a democratic society.

The decline in the Castro regime's purchase of American exports during the Obama Administration is a sign of what is to come if agribusiness gets its way and the US government lifts sanctions and provides credits for trading with the Castro dictatorship. The United States will be just like everyone else subsidizing the Castro regime through its export import bank and trying to figure how to recover what it is owed. It is easy to understand why so many countries are upset about the U.S. embargo on Cuba. It has protected U.S. taxpayers while leading the Castro regime to ignore its obligations with other countries while buying up US agricultural exports in an effort to influence US politics.