Obama - Kerry Foreign Policy Legacy: Chickens coming home to roost in Venezuela

The downward spiral continues in Venezuela

Dictator Maduro with his puppet court in Venezuela

  Venezuela has been a dictatorship for sometime under the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan judiciary has not been an independent body for years meaning that the rule of law has long been absent.

Therefore the decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court to strip the powers of the Venezuelan National Assembly and repeal the immunity of its members while further expanding the powers of the executive should come as no surprise. Venezuelan democrats have been under fire for years. Many, like Leopoldo Lopez, have been unjustly imprisoned.

 Nor is the continuing downward spiral into greater misery for Venezuelans a surprise because it is the natural outcome of "21st Century Socialism" which bears a striking resemblance to 20th Century Communism.

Dictator Nicolas Maduro and Secretary of State John Kerry

We are witnessing in the tragic developments in Venezuela the fruits of Secretary of State John Kerry's diplomatic strategy in that South American country.  It was Secretary Kerry who said on August 20, 2015 that "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis." This implied that the U.S. was on board with Maduro continuing in power in Venezuela while trying to find ways to stabilize the country.

Embracing Chavez in 2009 and Castro in 2014 did not help Demoracy in Venezuela

President Obama early on in his presidency began his outreach to the Venezuelan regime of Hugo Chavez and the Cuban regime of the Castro brothers.

Hopefully this approach will change with the new administration in the White House and there is reason for hope as democracies in the Americas have finally spoken up to express their alarm with the course of action take by the Maduro regime. Let us pray that this will not be another case of too little, too late.

Christophobia, ISIS and Christian Genocide in the Middle East

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me." - Matthew 5:11

Ethiopian Christians purportedly executed by ISIS in Ethiopia

On March 17, 2016 John Kerry recognized that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians in Iraq and Syria.  ISIS marked Christian houses with the Arabic equivalent of the letter "N" for Nazarene and targeted Christians. There has been a reduction in the number of Christians in Iraq and Syria. For example, in 2006 35,000 Christians lived in Mosul and now only 20 to 30 remain.

Nine years earlier then Senator Barack Obama wrote Secretary of State  Condoleezza  Rice on September 11, 2007 concerned "for Iraq's Christian and other non-Muslim religious minorities who appear to be targeted by Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish militants." The then Senator from Illinois and future President continued writing: "The severe violations of religious freedom faced by members of these indigenous communities, and their potential  extinction from their ancient homeland, is deeply alarming in light of our mission to bring freedom to the Iraqi people."

Things did not improve for Iraqi or Syrian Christians during the Obama Presidency and with the rise of ISIS worsened.

According to Pew Research in 2016 globally 38,901 Muslim refugees entered the United States as opposed to 37,521 Christian refugees but this is a misleading number because it does not reflect the disparity in the Middle East and that Christians there have been targeted for genocide. In fiscal year 2016 when the Secretary of State recognized that Christians in Iraq and Syria were targeted for genocide the United States admitted 12,587 Syrian Refugees out of which 12,486 were Muslims, 68 Christians, and 24 Yazidis. This is troubling since Syria had a population of 22.85 million according 2013 statistics with 10% Syrian Christians which translates to 2.2 million.  Only 0.5% of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States are Christian or 68 if the refugee flow were proportional the number of Christian Syrian refugees would be approximately 1,000.

Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations and now being considered for a top post at the State Department concluded in September 2016 that in a de facto manner the United States was barring Christians, not Muslims from the United States and went on to explain how to solve this problem with some common sense reforms that the Obama Administration failed to implement.

James Zogby of the Arab American Institute disputed Abrams line of argument and argued that Christians were being "used" citing the silence of the Bush Administration during the first three years of the Iraq war when they were being devastated in Iraq and made the argument that not as many Christians have fled as claimed by Mr. Abrams. Mr. Zogby is a critic of the Iraq war and in 2014 in an essay "A Precarious Christmas" wrote the following that seems to contradict his argument:

Caught in the middle, as one Syrian has termed it “between the anvil of the regime and the hammer of violent extremists,” the country’s Christians have paid a dear price. Scores of churches have been destroyed and two bishops have been kidnapped by shadowy extremist groups. The famed ancient Aramaic-speaking town of Maaloula has been over-run by an al Qaida affiliated group that is holding captive the nuns from that community’s monastery. In the face of this violence and destruction, almost half of Syria’s Christians have joined their Muslim compatriots as refugees. Those who remain in the country live in fear for their future.

As a human rights activist I don't agree with a religious test for refugees but am concerned Christians targeted for genocide are being underreported for political reasons. I'm also uncomfortable that when raising the issue of Christian persecution there is a hostile reaction not seen when discussing other religious minorities such as Yazidis or Shia Muslims. Has Christophobia,  the hatred, prejudice, and bigotry against Christians, become so entrenched in elite circles that with a Christian genocide underway in Iraq and Syria only 68 Christian Syrian refugees arrived in fiscal year 2016 and questioning how to save more is considered a controversial proposition. 

Republican Congressman Chris Smith is calling on the Trump Administration to provide relief for Christian genocide survivors fleeing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In December 2016 Congressman Smith visited the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil in Iraq. This is an excerpt of the report on what the Congressman found.

  The Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Mosul, Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, who had to flee ISIS and seek refuge in Erbil, told Smith, “So often concern for Christians is minimized. I am so happy, because you are the first American who has come to just ask about the Christians. We pray that President Trump will help us. We are the last people to speak the Aramaic language. Without help, we are finished.”       

“I also saw how the Obama Administration has shortchanged organizations conducting criminal investigations and collecting, preserving and preparing evidence usable in criminal trials. Perpetrators will dodge punishment unless there is specific evidence linking them to specific atrocity crimes. My Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act legislation is a blueprint for how to assist Christians and other genocide survivors and hold perpetrators accountable. I will be working tirelessly to get this bill on the new President’s desk when we reconvene in January,” added Smith.

Throwing Israel under the bus: Secretary John Kerry's speech an exercise in anti-Israel spin

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Spin Team: President Obama, Secretary John Kerry, Ambassador Power, Ben Rhodes

With less than three weeks left in office Secretary of State John Kerry made a speech to “address" what a senior State Department official described as "some of the misleading critiques” directed at the Obama administration by the Israeli Prime Minister. What took place today was predictable because it was a continuation of the last eight years. 

Foreign policy in the Obama Administration is an exercise in spin divorced from reality that has been manufactured by a sycophantic press repeating White House talking points. Sound extreme? “We created an echo chamber,” said President Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes in The New York Times on May 5, 2016 describing the national media as follows: “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.” Rhodes explained in the same interview that policy is not determined by rational discussion and that “[i]n the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this." They did it in Cuba, in Iran and now with Israel developing messages and tactics that could drive public opinion whether or not they were backed up by the facts. 

This is not the path to preserving and defending the American Republic but to subverting and turning it into an Orwellian dystopia. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, understood the importance of facts and truth in a public debate and suffered greatly for his truth telling but he was and remains an American statesmen to be emulated. Secretary of State John Kerry who disgraced himself today in a speech criticizing Israel's democracy as having "extreme elements" while months earlier legitimizing General Raul Castro, calling the communist dictator "President" in Cuba is sadly the antithesis of Senator Moynihan.

Forty one years ago Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan addressed the United Nations General Assembly and defended Israel in 1975. Contrast Moynihan's speech with Secretary Kerry's today
and one understands the depths of the Secretary of State's failure. The Obama Administration's foreign policy has been a failure that oversaw the rise of ISIS, greater instability across North Africa and blood baths in Syria and Iran as instability increased in the Middle East. Now the White House wants to scapegoat Israel and blame this mess on the only democracy in the Middle East.

Venezuela 2016: Democracy's downward spiral and humanitarian crisis

The Obama administration's Rotten Foreign Policy

Obama with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro  (April 2009)

Nearly a year ago on August 20, 2015 Secretary of State John Kerry in an interview with journalist Andres Oppenheimer made it known that "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis."

In a blog post at the time I made the following comparison: "Secretary John Kerry asking the Castro regime in Cuba to help in Venezuela today is like asking Jack the Ripper to help stop knife violence in London in 1888."

Nearly a year later the results of this approach can be seen and it is a failure. Not only has Venezuela descended into dictatorship but it is a failed state. The press is already asking: "What went wrong in Venezuela?" Consider for a moment the following:

Today, August 3, 2016 Judge María Lourdes Afiuni is still being subjected to a legal process that began in 2009 on the arbitrary whims of the late caudillo Hugo Chavez. She was jailed on December 10, 2009 for following both Venezuelan and international law in a case that ran afoul of then President Hugo Chavez who called for her arrest in a television program.

Seven years later Judge María Lourdes Afiuni still persecuted

The judge spent over a year in prison where she was raped, beaten, and threatened repeatedly with death. Judge Afiuni was kept under house arrest until 2013 but when she was diagnosed with cancer, it was lifted. Seven years later the harassment and continued threat of imprisonment continues. It is a message for the entire judiciary which Afiuni clearly stated in 2009:

"There is no judicial independence. I'm here as the president's prisoner. I'm an example to other judges of what happens if you step out of line."

There is no rule of law in Venezuela. The judiciary is controlled by the executive branch which is led with an iron fist by Nicolas Maduro and his Cuban advisers.

Political prisoners in Venezuela

The Penal Forum has a current list of 84 political prisoners in Venezuela with their names, profession, place of detention, and their photos. These are prisoners of conscience who are being kept in terrible conditions.

Extrajudicial killings committed by security forces are rampant in Venezuela. Fifty two members of the student movement have been killed by regime forces over the past three years with many shot in the head.

In June of 2015 Thomas Shannon, counselor to Secretary of State John Kerry met with Diosdado Cabello. Cabello, was then the head of Venezuela's National Assembly and suspected by U.S. prosecutors of being in charge of the infamous drug-trafficking organization, "Cartel de los Soles." Meeting with him may have sent a signal to the Maduro regime and not a good one. 

Cause and effect? Did State's meeting with Cabello lead to Gen. Reverol's appointment

Venezuelan strong man Nicolas Maduro named General Nestor Reverol, his new interior and justice minister one day after Gen Reverol was indicted by a US court on charges of abetting cocaine trafficking. Maduro dismissed the charges against Gen Reverol as a "US conspiracy". The fact that U.S. government officials have been willing to engage in formal diplomatic discussions with suspected drug traffickers may have played a role in the calculation to name the indicted General.

There is one independent institution remaining in Venezuela and that is the National Assembly and President Nicolas Maduro has threatened to cut off its funding.

The lack of the rule of law, the widespread infiltration of drug traffickers and corruption in the regime plays a role in the economic implosion of the country. Free markets need a regulatory environment bound by the rule of law which is non-existent in Venezuela. The slow motion imposition of a socialist economic model ruled by the military has compounded the disaster. It has gone beyond just a human rights crisis into full blown humanitarian crisis.

The most basic life saving medical supplies are unavailable in Venezuela  The Venezuelan National Assembly declared a "humanitarian health crisis" that includes the lack of 872 essential medications.  

Their are hunger riots in Venezuela and foot shortages. Venezuela is selling oil to Jamaica in exchange for food and medicine and seeking to resolve its food shortage using forced labor.

Inflation rates in Venezuela are reaching the levels of Zimbabwe with flour, pasta and milk consuming a month's pay according to a August 2, 2016 CNN report and the International Monetary Fund is predicting a 1,600% inflation rate in 2017.

Reuters in Caracas reported on August 3, 2016 that "growing numbers of young women are opting for sterilizations rather than face the hardship of pregnancy and child-rearing. Traditional contraceptives such as condoms or birth control pills have virtually vanished from store shelves in Venezuela, pushing women towards the hard-to-reverse surgery."

Where the Obama administration has had an active approach in the region the result is a mess. For example between January 2014 and February 24, 2016 U.S. Customs and Border protection documented 93,237 visa less Cubans had entered the United States and the numbers are increasing.

The  presidential state visit to Cuba earlier this year legitimizing the Castro regime assisted in the ongoing dynastic succession of the Castro family that if successful will insure another generation of dictatorial rule in Cuba.

The U.S. policy of engaging with the Castro dictatorship, has coincided with deteriorating human rights in Cuba that is leading many Cubans to flee.

This also means another thirty years of a regime seeking to undermine democracy in the region as it has done in Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

Some of the Venezuelan youth shot in the head in 2014 during protests

One year after changing U.S. - Cuba Policy course to the wrong direction: Marginalizing democrats; embracing dictatorship

Changing course to go in the wrong direction is not progress.

From meeting with opposition leaders (2003) to shunning them (2015)

Today the White House tweeted "One year ago, we changed course in Cuba" and claimed to have achieved "progress." Over the past year human rights have worsened in Cuba and overall situation has deteriorated. Unfortunately, the Obama administration's passivity before regime demands is partly to blame.

One year ago today the Cuban Interests Section in Washington D.C. was formally re-designated the Cuba Embassy with Secretary of State John Kerry in attendance.  Later on that same day the significance of this new relationship with the Castro regime was made evident in the treatment accorded to Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo.

On  July 20, 2015 at the State Department, Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo attended a press conference with Secretary of State John Kerry and Castro's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez. Rosa Maria had proper accreditation as a member of the press. She has had articles published in news publications such as The PanAm Post and her own blog. This did not stop Rear Admiral John Kirby, who was transferred from the Pentagon and in May of 2015 became the new State Department spokesman, from taking Rosa Maria aside and warning her that she would be physically removed if she asked any questions or caused any kind of disturbance.

Cecilia Bradley of NBC6 captured a blurry image of when Rosa Maria Payá was taken aside. The young activist tweeted a photo of Rear Admiral Kirby with the following text: "John Kirby kindly told me if I caused disturbances during the conference security would remove me." In a later tweet Rosa Maria reported that "Mr. Kirby asks me not to ask questions at John Kerry's press briefing or they would use force to expel me."

The United States Department of State in the space of  twelve years has gone from Secretary of State Colin Powell receiving Cuban democratic opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas to threatening his daughter with force if she dared to ask a question at a press conference in which Secretary of State John Kerry took questions with the Cuban dictatorship's Foreign Minister. The same dictatorship that martyred her father three years earlier.

Is this what is now celebrated as progress by the Obama administration?

A day later when  Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo attempted to present a letter to the Cuban embassy requesting her father's autopsy report she was not allowed to turn in the letter and a patrol car was called. Since 2012 the Payá family has been requesting Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas's autopsy report from the dictatorship and has yet to be given a copy as they are entitled by law. This is not how the embassy of a country behaves, but it is how a totalitarian dictatorship does. This is why South Florida residents protested placing a Cuban Consulate here earlier this year.

President Obama changed course on Cuba from Secretary of State Powell receiving a Cuban democratic opposition member in 2003 following a petition drive signed by more than 20,000 Cuban nationals demanding democratic reforms to the Secretary of State's spokesman threatening an accredited reporter with physical removal from the State Department because her father was martyred by the dictatorship (this administration normalized relations with) to prevent her asking a question at a press conference to the foreign minister of that regime.

Diminishing the moral stature of the United States government is the opposite of progress. Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo in a tweet summed up this new reality perfectly:  "I didn't think I would receive in the State Dept the same kind of coercive warning security at the Panama airport gave me."

Neither did I.

Last Chance for Freedom? Venezuela's dictatorship is cracking down on Venezuelan democrats

"Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." - George Orwell, 1984

MariaCorina in #Aragua, Venezuela with demonstrators tonight

The democratic opposition is using constitutional means and nonviolence to seek an outcome from the current political crisis, but unfortunately according to Secretary of State John Kerry "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis." This implies that the U.S. is on board with Maduro continuing in power in Venezuela while trying to find ways to stabilize the country by improving the government's behavior. At the same time, despite the Venezuelan regime's rhetoric, remains a major U.S. oil supplier.

Protesters gassed today in Venezuela by the Maduro regime

The Maduro regime has declared a state of emergency as a pretext to crackdown on nonviolent demonstrators exercising their constitutional rights. Today the military and national guard beat up, and tear gassed opposition demonstrators. Maduro has threatened to disappear the National Assembly.

Students repressed and hurt in Merida, Venezuela by regime

 At least 30 were arbitrarily detained today according to Alfredo Romero of the Penal Forum. At the same time armed collectives backed by the police set out to terrorize Venezuelan democrats. Some of these colectivos shot at demonstrators and burned installations at a medical school in Merida to terrorize university students. Meanwhile the regime brought in their own supporters to give the appearance of still have some measure of popular support.

Venezuelan opposition blocked by Bolivarian National Guard

Naturally the Maduro regime resorts to these same old tactics perfected by their Cuban handlers. Meanwhile the same old worn out attacks are made to any who criticize its dictatorial turn. This ignores an unpleasant fact that many would prefer to leave unmentioned. What is taking place today not only in Venezuela, but also in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin America is the cost of tolerating injustice in Cuba when a concerted hemispheric response in the early 1990s supporting the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people would have made all the difference.

The head of the National Assembly of Venezuela is complaining of the leadership role played by Cuban officers over the Venezuelan military over social media.

Indignación fan: Gral cubano Gregorich dentro Fuerte Tiuna emite órdenes militares cubanos y también a oficiales venezolanos clan Cabello.

— Henry Ramos Allup (@hramosallup) May 15, 2016

Núcleo 60 oficiales cubanos vive Fuerte Tiuna área Villa Alba infiltrados unidades operativas clave comanda gral cubano apellido Gregorich.

— Henry Ramos Allup (@hramosallup) May 15, 2016

The two tweets above from Henry Ramos Allup are translated as follows:

Outrage FANB: Cuban General Gregorich in Fuerte Tiuna issues orders to Cuban military and Venezuelan officers clan Cabello. Core of 60 Cuban officials live in Fuerte Tiuna infiltrated key operating units commanded by Cuban Gen last name Gregorich.

Maria Adela Castellanos of the CEA University of the Andes tweeted today that "University students protesting peacefully, and the Bolivarian National Guard and collectives lashing out and kidnapping us in the medical school."

Los universitarios protestando pacíficamente, y la GBN y colectivos arremetiendo y secuestrandonos en medicina pic.twitter.com/bKxPapXTze

— Ma Adela Castellanos (@Ade_castellanos) May 18, 2016

The Obama administration's detente policy with Cuba means that Venezuelan democrats on their own. If they are to succeed then understanding this is key to the grand strategy being plotted out and they should also understand that the military has been deeply infiltrated by and controlled by Castro regime agents and officials. The likelihood of a military coup are minimal. The best, and perhaps,  only option is nonviolent civil resistance that recognizing these realities can plot out a path to a democratic transition and the end of the Maduro regime.

Otherwise the Venezuelan government will complete its metamorphosis into a fully totalitarian communist regime and client state of the Castro regime. The difficulty in ridding oneself of that regime will be exponentially more difficult as the ongoing tragedy in Cuba demonstrates.

Obama administration used Castro regime to censor independent Cuban journalists

As time passes and new details emerge on the cost of the Obama administration's Cuba policy in action does not match up with the rhetoric of putting human rights first. Snubbing dissidents from attending the official opening of the embassy set a terrible precedent, but now independent journalist Iván García is reporting how the U.S. government blocked independent Cuban journalists from covering the visit of the Secretary of State. It now appears that the treatment meted out to Rosa María Payá on July 20 at the State Department was not an error but the new policy in action: dissidents not welcome.

Kerry in Havana, Cuba: Independent Cuban journalists persona non grata

Iván García, Havana, 10 August 2015 — The Embassy of the United States in Havana, the State Department, and the administration of Barack Obama, have intentionally mapped out a strategy to prevent independent Cuban journalists from covering the visit of John Kerry and the official reopening of the diplomatic headquarters on Friday, August 14.

Four-days before the historic event, no independent journalist, dissident, or human rights activist has been invited to participate in the ceremony, or Kerry's press conference.

Since July 22nd I have made a dozen calls to the U.S. Public Affairs Office in Havana to request a press credential that would allow me to cover the event for Diario las Americas, El Periodico de Catalunya, and Webstringers LCC, a Washington-based media communications company, and I have not received a response from any official.

According to a diplomatic source, after July 20th, the process changed for obtaining a credential to cover events or press conferences of politicians, business, or American organizations visiting the island.

Before that date, when Lynn W. Roche was head of the Section of Press and Culture, I could get credentials in record time. I was able to cover the visit of Roberta Jacobson, congressmen, senators, businessmen, and officials from the State Department, among others.

Now, according to this source, accreditation must be obtained at the International Press Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located at 23rd and O, in Havana's Vedado. A rather crude strategy designed to get rid of independent journalists.

The worst part is not the disrespect or indifference. The government of the United States has the sovereign right to invite to its events those people it deems convenient.

But out of respect, at least have the courtesy to speak face-to-face with independent journalists and inform them of the new policy. Don’t beat around the bush.

The government of the United States, which is not stupid, knows that for 54 years Cuba has been ruled by a military autocracy that prohibits political opposition and independent journalism.

Leaving press accreditation to the regime for events that the United States puts on in Cuba is like putting a child molester in charge of a Boy Scout camp.

With a letter from Maria Gomez Torres, director of content for Webstringers, I personally went to the International Press Center. The official who vetted me, after reading the letter, looked through her papers and said with mock surprise, “Mr. García, you do not appear as an accredited journalist in Cuba.”

“And how can I be accredited?” I asked her. “You must have an operating license and a permit from the Center,” she replied. “Fine. Can you handle that for me?” “No, because you do not qualify,” she replied with a tone of mystery.

“Why don’t I qualify, since I’ve collaborated with newspapers in Spain and the United States since 2009?” I inquired. “Our Center reserves the right to give permission to reporters as we see fit,” snapped the bureaucrat. 

After the unsuccessful attempt, I again called on the Embassy of the United States to request an appointment with an official who could tell me why an independent journalist cannot be accredited to the August 14 event.

But no one would take my call. December 17th marked a new era between Cuba and the United States. That day at noon, Barack Obama promised to empower the Cuban people and to promote respect for human rights on the island.

Pure demagoguery. The government that claims to promote democratic values, shamelessly tramples the spirit and letter of its Constitution, where the right to inform is sacred.

The government of the United States is trying not to tarnish its August 14th gala, knowing that if it accredits independent journalists and invites dissidents, then officials of the regime will not attend.

The olive-green autocracy has a rule that it will not take part in any event with Cuban dissidents, whom it considers “mercenaries and employees of the U.S. government.”

This time, the Obama administration is going to pander to them.

To Secretary Kerry, Venezuela is already a failed state thanks in part to the Castro regime in Cuba

American diplomat meets with head of  national assembly who allegedly moonlights as a drug dealer.

State Department's Thomas Shannon (far left) & Diosdado Cabello (far right)

Secretary of State John Kerry in an interview with journalist Andres Oppenheimer made it known that "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis." Despite the decision of Venezuela's leadership to adopt the Cuban model contributing to the failure of Venezuela the United States is reaching out to the Castro regime in the belief that it can make a positive contribution. According to Secretary Kerry if the current Maduro regime fails Venezuela will become a refuge for terrorists and drug traffickers. 

This approach ignores some inconvenient facts.

First the Castro regime has been involved in drug trafficking for decades in the service of its ideological mission to undermine the United States with drugs and use the profits to fund guerrilla and terrorist movements. Raul Castro faced a federal indictment for drug trafficking in the 1990s but the Clinton administration quashed it. Despite ample evidence of continued bad acts the Obama administration took Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Second Venezuela under both Chavez and Maduro has become a refuge for terrorists and drug traffickers with the aid of Cuban state security agents. A high profile example is Diosdado Cabello, the head of Venezuela's National Assembly and suspected by U.S. prosecutors of being in charge of the infamous drug-trafficking organization, "Cartel de los Soles". In spite of this Thomas Shannon, counselor to Secretary of State John Kerry met with Diosdado Cabello.

Taking the above into consideration leads to an unpleasant conclusion. Secretary John Kerry asking the Castro regime in Cuba to help in Venezuela today is like asking Jack the Ripper to help stop knife violence in London in 1888.


 

Normalizing relations with the Castro regime: Green light for more repression in Cuba?

"200 nonviolent opposition activists arrested today in Cuba only 48 hours after US Embassy was inaugurated in Havana." -  Yusnaby Pérez, August 16, 2015 over twitter

48 hours after Secretary Kerry delivered his remarks 200 Cubans arrested

 Forty eight hours after the flag was raised at the US Embassy in Havana on Sunday, August 17, 2015 two hundred activists were violently arrested in Cuba. Friday's message to the Castro regime was received loud and clear: lobbyists and business interests have the priority in this new relationship and human rights defenders aren't even welcome when it can negatively effect relations with the dictatorship. Unfortunately, this is the continuation of a policy that began in 2009 and has already claimed too many lives. Video below of some of the detentions this past Sunday.

U.S. Cuba Policy: Pay attention to what they do not what they say

Secretary Kerry gives the Castro regime a pass on human rights violations

Secretary of State John Kerry said that human rights was at the top of the Cuba agenda, and that they would not give Cuba a pass on human rights but proceeded to not invite Cuban human rights defenders to the flag raising ceremony at the Embassy. The State Department argued that it was a government to government affair and that there was not enough space to accommodate the dissidents. In an interview with Andres Oppenheimer, the Secretary of State offered an expanded explanation:

“Rather than have people sitting in a chair, at a ceremony that is fundamentally government to government, with very limited space, I will meet with them...and exchange views.”

However, the State Department did accommodate "entrepreneurs and Cuban American activists" to fly down with Kerry and his official delegation with a planeload of them. The "activists" support the Obama administration's Cuba policy and are advocates of lifting sanctions on the dictatorship and some like former Congressman Joe Garcia had received financial contributions from supporters of the Castro regime in his previous campaigns that became a source of controversy and contributed to the one term congressman not being re-elected.

Furthermore, Secretary Kerry did not object to celebrating the embassy opening with Cuban spies who had been expelled from the United States under previous Administrations due to their espionage activities against the United States of America.  

Despite the plane load of lobbyists and businessmen and the Cuban spies CNN anchor Jake Tapper in a tweet observed that there was plenty of space to have invited Cuban dissidents. This indicates that it was not space considerations but bending over backwards to accommodate the Castro dictatorship that led to the decision not to invite human rights defenders. This combined with the shabby treatment of Rosa María Payá last month by State Department spokesman John Kirby and the message is clear and journalist Andres Oppenheimer laid it out:

Kerry’s trip to Havana didn’t break new ground on human rights even symbolically, and in effect hurt Cuba’s fledgling internal opposition by making it look irrelevant in the eyes of many Cubans.  Could it be that Obama is so eager to visit Cuba before he finishes his term — to go down in history as the U.S. president who “opened” Cuba, much as Nixon “opened” China — that he is willing to sacrifice the human rights cause? Could it be that he is so eager for a foreign policy victory that he is willing to abandon a long-standing U.S. policy of moral support to pro-democracy activists? 

 The Obama administration's Cuba policy did not begin on December 17, 2014  but first enunciated in his 2009 inaugural address when the President spoke of extending a hand to old adversaries. This went beyond rhetoric in 2009 and again in 2011 with the loosening of sanctions against the Castro regime. During the past six years of the Obama administration the Castro regime has seized the opportunity to do away with opposition leaders that could have been alternatives of national leadership to the current regime while projecting itself further into Latin America.  The dictatorship understands, as did the Chinese before, that while the United States will pay lip service to human rights concerns when it comes to concrete actions this administration holds economic engagement with the dictatorship as a higher priority then human rights.

If you doubt this then just asked yourself then why there was room to fly down a plane load of business men and lobbyists for doing business with the dictatorship but no room for human rights defenders at the flag raising ceremony?  The answer is brutally simple. Business and engagement with the dictatorship in Cuba is the priority not human rights or the freedom of the Cuban people.

The lesson is clear when dealing with the Obama administration: Pay attention to what they do and not what they say.

Correcting the historical record: The Clintons and The Castro brothers

Why friends of a free Cuba should be protesting against the Clintons.

Clinton and Kerry: No friends of Cuban democracy activists

 Hillary Clinton is going to Florida International University tomorrow to make a foreign policy speech in which she will apparently call for the end of the embargo on the Castro dictatorship. What is surprising is that this is news because back in June 2014 in her book Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton wrote that she had been urging President Obama to end the embargo on Cuba. Unfortunately, when advocates of normalized relations in 2015 claim that the sanctions policy has been in place for 55 years and that diplomatic relations have been nonexistent they overlook some key facts that get in the way of their narrative.

First, Jimmy Carter in 1977 negotiated with the Castro regime the opening of Interests Sections in their respective countries that for all intents and purposes have functioned as embassies until April 20, 2015.

Secondly, Bill Clinton in 1994 initiated regular contacts between the U.S. and Cuban military that included joint military exercises at the Guantanamo Naval base. ( Despite his rhetoric George W. Bush continued the practice during his presidency.) Despite this improvement of relations the 1990s saw some of those brutal massacres of Cubans that are rightly remembered such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. The shoot down involved two planes blown to bits over international airspace by Cuban MiGs killing three American citizens and a Cuban resident who were engaged in the search and rescue of Cuban rafters. Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban spies freed by Obama on December 17, 2014, was serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder for his role in these killings.  Jose Basulto, one of the survivors, who escaped in a third plane accuses the Clinton administration of complicity in the killings. Listen to what he has to say here:

Thirdly, since 1996 was an election year and the destruction of civilian airplanes in international airspace could at a minimum be considered an act of state terrorism and at maximum an act of war the Clinton administration had to do something. They had two options a military strike on Cuba or toughening economic sanctions. This is how the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 became law that toughened sanctions.

Almost immediately after being re-elected Bill Clinton sought to undermine sanctions and normalize relations with the Castro dictatorship. The first sitting president to shake hands with Fidel Castro on September 6, 2000 was Bill Clinton. One month later he signed  Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TEFRA) that opened trade between the Castro regime and U.S. companies. Opposition in congress led to that trade not being subsidized by U.S. taxpayers by not providing government backed credits ensuring that business would be cash and carry.

Thankfully the future of Cuba depends on what Cubans do and not the vageries of U.S. Cuba policy because as the above history would indicate the Clinton administration sided with the dictatorship not the Cuban people. Prior to Bill Clinton, Cubans fleeing the Castro regime were received into the United States. It was on his watch in 1995 that Cuban refugees were declared migrants and began to be seized on the high seas and deported to communist Cuba.

Unfortunately, among past presidential candidates who ended up in key positions in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton is not the worse on Cuba policy, that prize would go to John Kerry. Secretary of State Kerry while running for President in 2004 when asked by a reporter what he thought of the Varela Project, an initiative in which tens of thousands of Cubans called for democratic reforms, his response was that it was "counterproductive." Eleven years later the daughter of the man who initiated the Varela Project now martyred was treated shabbily by the Kerry's State Department spokesman. Let me also be fair and report that this is a bipartisan affair and individuals such as Henry Kissinger are equally horrible on human rights in Cuba.

Tomorrow at 9:45am I will be at Florida International University with my poster not only protesting Hillary Clinton's position on Cuba but also her husband's horrible record. It seems that every twenty years when the Castro regime is in a moment of crisis an American president comes in to bail out the dictatorship in the name of stability only making things worse and extending the life of the dictatorship.