Raul Castro will remain dictator of Cuba in 2018 whether he is called "president" or "party chief"

New boss will be the old boss.

General Raul Castro and his son Colonel Alejandro Castro of the secret police

Raul Castro is trending in the news because it has been announced that he will remain "president" of Cuba until April 2018. He was supposed to be departing office in February 2018, but regardless will be remaining has head of the Communist Party of Cuba. Cuba is a tyrannical dictatorship and titles matter little. Raul Castro will remain in control.

After Raul Castro's retirement date is set, who will be Cuba's first non-Castro leader in almost 60 years? https://t.co/p20C5IuCdj pic.twitter.com/JXxc5NAzI6

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) December 21, 2017

 The question raised by Newsweek is at best naive. Raul Castro has been grooming his son, Alejandro Castro, a colonel in the secret police as a successor. Cuba is a communist dictatorship where dynastic succession, within the Castro family, is reminiscent of another communist dynastic dictatorship, the Kim family in North Korea.

The only question within the context of the dictatorship will be if the Castro family continues to hold the title or place a puppet, for public relations purposes, and continue to run things in Cuba. Real change must come from outside of the regime responding to the miserable reality on the island.

TR @RosaMariaPaya Moment in which they kidnap and beat the artists Tania Bruguera, Luis Manel Alcantara and Yanelis Nuñez. They remain missing. The police stations say they do not have them. FREEDOM! #CubaDecide pic.twitter.com/vkPJoaW9TY

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) December 21, 2017

Meanwhile as the international focuses on this non-story inside Cuba repression is ramping up against nonviolent dissidents and their is relatively little press coverage. Cuban artists Tania Bruguera, Luis M Alcantara, Adonis Milan, Yanelis Nuñez and Lia Villares were beaten up and arrested last night in Cuba by the regime's secret police as they attempted to attend the staging of the play Psychosis. As of today reports indicate that Lia Villares and Luis Manuel Otero remain detained with some questions about their whereabouts.

#CUBA State Security agents violently arrested the artists: Tania Bruguera @Immigrantmove Luis M Alcantara Adonis Milan Yanelis Nuñez at the door of the gallery of @liavillares, who was previously arrested with Iris Ruiz
Just for exercising their freedom of expression#CubaDecide pic.twitter.com/9MZIsgTyp9

— Rosa María Payá A. (@RosaMariaPaya) December 21, 2017

Cuba is a tropical island but the drab grey Stalinism, usually found in colder climates, that drains the life out of vibrant cultures is present within the Castro regime.

 

Cuba, Iran, Hezbollah, drug trafficking and the list of state sponsors of terrorism

 Explosive report exposes extent of drug trafficking by terrorist group

 
Newsweek reported on December 18, 2017 that the "Islamist militant group Hezbollah exploded into a major cocaine trafficker for the United States over the past decade—and it happened under former President Barack Obama's watch to help score a nuclear deal with Iran, a report revealed Monday."  

There is a Cuban link that the current Administration should pay attention to. On February 13, 2016 Vice News reported that in 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been warned that the Lebanese Islamist militant group Hezbollah was setting up an operational base in Cuba to carry out attacks in Latin America that might also involve attacks on American diplomatic posts or banks there was revealed in an e-mail from September 9, 2011 that stated the following:

The Hezbollah office in Cuba is being established under direct orders from the current General  Secretary Hasan Nasrallah, who replaced Musawi in 1992. According to the information  available to this source, in preparation for establishment of the base, Nasrallah, working from  inside of Lebanon, carried out secret negotiations with representatives of the Cuban Government,  particularly the Cuban Intelligence Service (General Intelligence Directorate — DGI), agreeing to, maintain a very low profile inside of Cuba. Nasrallah also promised to take measures to avoid any trail of evidence that could lead back to Cuba in the event of a Hezbollah attack in Latin  America.

Furthermore the Castro regime also has a long history of involvement in drug trafficking.  There should be Congressional hearings exploring the operational Hezbollah base in Cuba and its possible involvement in drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, and terrorism in the region.

The previous Administration had a poor track record of politicizing reports to pursue political objectives. In the case of Cuba this meant watering down reports on human trafficking, looking the other way on connections to drug trafficking, terrorist groups and downplaying Cuba's role in Venezuela's crisis and attempt to smuggle tons of heavy weapons to North Korea. It now appears that the practice has also been repeated with Iran. Newsweek in the already mentioned December 18, 2017 report reveals the following:

"Project Cassandra, a campaign launched by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008, found that the Iran-backed military and political organization collected $1 billion a year from money laundering, criminal activities, and drug and weapons trade, according to Politico. Over the following eight years, the agency found that Hezbollah was involved in cocaine shipments from Latin America to West Africa, as well as through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States.  The Obama administration halted Project Cassandra as it was approaching the upper echelons of Hezbollah’s conspiracy in order to seal a nuclear deal with Iran, even though Hezbollah was still funneling cocaine into America."

 Boneheaded political calculations are a bipartisan affair. In October of 2008, the Bush Administration took North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism in the hopes that it would “salvage a fragile nuclear deal” with the totalitarian regime. The Reagan Administration designated North Korea a terror sponsor in 1988 after it was implicated in the 1987 bombing of  a South Korean airliner, in which more than 100 died. Nine years after taking Kim Jong Un’s regime off the list of terror sponsors, North Korea has tested nuclear weapons and is now threatening to attack the United States with its new nukes.

On November 20, 2017 the White House announced that North Korea would be returned to the list of state sponsors of terrorism. North Korean dictatorship should have never been taken off the list of state terror sponsors.

The lessons from the Bush Administration’s cozying up to North Korea should have given the next Administration cause to reject pursuing a similar path with Cuba. Unfortunately, that was not the case and on May 29, 2015 the Obama Administration took Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Iran has been on the list of state terror sponsors since 1984 and should remain there.

The U.S. Congress and Tillerson State Department should investigate what is going on in Cuba and its links to Hezbollah and other bad actors. If the regime in Cuba is continuing its pattern of sponsoring terrorism and international criminal enterprises then it should be returned to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Remembering Václav Havel, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and nonviolent action

"A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences." - Jacques Maritain

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and President Václav Havel in Prague (2002)

Fifteen years ago on December 17, 2002 Oswaldo Paya addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg at a ceremony awarding him the the Sakharov Prize where he outlined his nonviolent vision for change in Cuba.

The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’

 Václav Havel passed away six years ago on December 18, 2011 and his nonviolent resistance and dedication to truth in successfully resisting totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia remain powerful legacies and examples that remain relevant today. In 2002, President Vaclav Havel addressed the Cuban people and offered words that should be heeded now:

"Our world, as a whole, is not in the best of shape and the direction it is headed in may well be quite ambivalent. But this does not mean that we are permitted to give up on free and cultivated thinking and to replace it with a set of utopian clichés. That would not make the world a better place, it would only make it worse. On the contrary, it means that we must do more for our own freedom, and that of others."

Nonviolence requires recognizing these extreme injustices and the justifiable anger that it generates but at the same time channeling it into creative and productive means to end the injustices. Some would argue that one must remove their anger, as one takes off a back pack, but that is profoundly mistaken. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a different approach that has proven far more powerful: 

"The supreme task [of a leader] is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force." 

Mohandas Gandhi spoke in 1920 of learning "through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world."
 
This is not hating but harnessing a powerful spiritual energy and channeling it productively. Blowing up and screaming at someone is a waste of that energy that can be channeled into creative solutions to end the injustice.

Nonviolence theoretician Gene Sharp also recognizes that there is a moral dimension that cannot be ignored without dire consequences (as the recent drive to normalize relations with the Castro regime in Cuba demonstrated): "It is unreasonable to aim for a 'win- win' resolution. Brutal dictators and perpetrators of genocide do not deserve to win anything."

"Keep the company of those who seek the truth and run away from those who found it." #VaclavHavel
@VaclavHavel, an essaysist, playwriter, and the first president of the Czech Republic has passed away six years ago. May his legacy live on!

— Forum 2000 (@Forum_2000) December 18, 2017

Nonviolent thought can be divided into two general categories: strategic nonviolence and principled nonviolence but although emphasizing different perspectives they need not be in conflict.
Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence. Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence. Historical studies are cited that demonstrate the higher success rates of nonviolent movements when compared against violent ones:

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Principled nonviolence looks at the spiritual dimension, and the power of an individual to change and in doing so impact the world. Mohandas Gandhi described it as follows on September 8, 1913 in Indian Opinion:

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

The advantage of principled non-violence and taking it up as a daily practice in ones life is that it gives one the strength to resist provocations and builds up the character of the practitioner that assists in carrying out a strategic nonviolent plan.

Critics of nonviolence often argue that nonviolence works well against democracies but not brutal regimes, often citing the Nazis. Nevertheless in 1943 in Germany on Rosenstrasse street German wives married to Jewish men, who had been taken to concentration camps, organized a series of strikes and protests that forced the Nazis to return their Jewish husbands back from the death camps. Those men survived the Holocaust thanks to their wives courageous and nonviolent action.  

The disturbing questions that should arise are: What would have happened if instead of the violent Antifa movement, that fought the Nazis in street battles throughout the 1930s that escalated violence, opponents of the Nazis had followed Gandhi's advice at the time and resisted them nonviolently? What would have happened if the Weimar Republic instead of attempting to silence the Nazis by repeatedly prosecuting them for violating hate speech laws had challenged their evil ideas in the court of public opinion?

Since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 there has existed in overall terms a general strategy of change that can be summed up as: " Carrying out a nonviolent struggle in defense of human rights for the freedom of Cuba."

Looking at another definition of strategy that divides it into three parts gives a better idea of the challenges facing the democratic opposition in Cuba:

1. Diagnostic: A totalitarian dictatorship with dynastic elements with the political will to hang on to power.
2. Guiding policy: nonviolence
3. Action plan: There exist different areas of emphasis by the opposition and civil society that is also something found in nonviolent struggles.

Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence: 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence." 

The reason for the greater success rate of nonviolent resistance is that it is easier to mobilize large numbers of people to take nonviolent action than to engage in violent action. Success is not only defined by overthrowing the existing regime, but having a transition that ends in a democratic regime. The methods used in nonviolent struggle translate better to democratic practices then violent resistance because they involve nonviolent discipline, the mobilization of large numbers and the encouragement of civic virtue.  

Czechs remember and honor Vaclav Havel by wearing short trousers

Furthermore the use of humor is not to be underestimated. Václav Havel in an address to the Central European University on June 24, 1999 at a difficult moment on the international scene made the case for laughter.

"The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world."

Following his death in 2011, every year on the anniversary of his passing admirers of Václav Havel the world over wear short trousers in his memory. Organizers explained its historic significance along with its particular Czech sensibility.

The “Short Trousers for Václav Havel” initiative started in 2012 to honor the memory of Václav Havel with a gesture that was unique, memorable and easily achieved by supporters of this exceptional person in modern Czech and European history.  Short Trousers is a reference to Havel stepping into political life in 1989 and his inauguration to the presidency in visibly short trousers. He explained vainly that rather than a tailor’s mistake it was his habit to pull his pants up at every dramatic situation. To this, one might say global mythology of his short trousers, he added with a smile: "I must say that I am glad of it, more or less. From my point of view it’s a pretty gentle way of mocking myself."  An effort to honor such a respectable person by a gesture that points to this humorous episode might appear, at first sight, as a contradictory act. But the opposite is true. We believe that rolled up trousers on the anniversary of the death of Václav Havel is a gesture which is Czech, slightly satirical and which can be easily joined by anyone who wants to honor the memory of the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president Havel in a cheerful way.

This method of spontaneous remembrance contrasts dramatically with how dictators forcibly demand that they be remembered on penalty of imprisonment for dissenting as has been the case following the 2016 death of Fidel Castro. 

Remembering some of the victims of Cuban communism: Three young black men executed by firing squad in 2003

"Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world." - Mishnah  (1135-1204) 

Lorenzo Enrique Copello, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez

Some psychologists argue that as the number of victims increase into the hundreds, and thousands that compassion collapses out of the human fear of being overwhelmed. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin put it more succinctly: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." In the case of Cuba the communist regime has killed tens of thousands, and many have become numb in the face of this horror. Therefore on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first communist regime in Russia, that caused so much harm around the world, will focus on an infinitesimal sampling of some of the victims of Cuban communism.  

The eleventh entry remembers three young black men executed by firing squad in 2003 for having hijacked a ferry in an effort to reach the United States.

Previous entries in this series were about Cubans trying to change the system nonviolently, Cubans who tried to leave the island, a student shot to death for walking down the wrong sidewalk in Havana, and thetenth entry was a young Ethiopian woman murdered in a red terror in her homeland for unknown reasons in 1978.

Three men, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, were among a group who hijacked a Cuban ferry with passengers on board on April 2, 2003 and tried to force it to the United States. The incident ended without bloodshed, after a standoff with Cuban security forces. They were executed nine days later, following a summary trial, by firing squad.

Eleven individuals attempted to hijack the small ferry “Baraguá” that covered a route between Havana and the neighboring town of Casablanca with the goal of arriving in the United States, but it ran out of gas. Officials were able to retake the vessel without loss of life or injury to the fifty passengers on board. Within a week the three men were condemned to death for committing "acts of terrorism" in a summary trial that lasted less than a day.

They did not have a political agenda. Their only goal was fleeing Cuba to the United States.  Questions were raised at the time that if they had been white and not black they would not have been executed.

ID of defense attorney Jorge R. Betancourt Ortega

 Defense attorney's testimony
In October of 2014 Jorge R. Betancourt Ortega, one of the government appointed defense attorneys of the executed men, spoke of the irregularities surrounding the case including that the three men had been executed before the defense received the result of their appeal to the Supreme Court affirming that "there was no time," in an exclusive interview with El Nuevo Herald.

"The trial was Tuesday, April 8th and the appeal, Wednesday the 9th. I didn't go to work on Thursday and on Friday arrived at the Supreme Tribunal and the secretary told that they had a sentence. I swear to you I never imagined that they would do that. I went quickly to look for the decision and it was the ratification of the death sentence, something strange because death sentences need to be ratified by the Council of State," told Betancourt who was an attorney of the Collective Law firm of Old Havana and assigned to the case "ex officio" to El Nuevo Herald's Nora Gámez Torres in 2014.

Betancourt continued: ""I went crazy, I almost got hit by a car. When I arrived at the office, I told the director 'today is Friday and look what they have given me here. This is a bomb, what am I going to do now? Do I call the relatives? I'm not going to send the relatives to the office because it would generate a conflict here 'and he said' do not worry much, they shot them at dawn.'"

Ramona Copello mourns the execution of her son Lorenzo Enrique in 2003

 Mother of one of the men executed spoke out
On April 12, 2003 the Spanish newspaper El Pais  published an interview with Ramona Copello, the mother of Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, who affirmed that she had not been able to speak to her son before his execution. "I felt tremendous feelings for the Comandante, I even loved him, but I do not love him anymore because he murdered my son," she told several foreign journalists at her home in the Mantilla neighborhood. She added that she had been told that her son was already buried. "They gave me a card with the number of the vault so I know where he is buried," she added. "I was revolutionary and now I'm not," said Ramona, who said she was "willing to do everything for my son that they shot." Lorenzo Enrique was 31 years old and left behind a widow and an 11 year old daughter, who last saw her dad on April 10, 2003. He worked as a caretaker in a health center.

Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla executed in 2003

Disturbances and police mobilized
El Pais also reported in the same article on how another family reacted. "According to eyewitnesses, in the neighborhood of Central Havana, where Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla lived, who was 21 years old, some incidents were recorded when the execution was reported to his family. Sevilla's mother suffered a nervous breakdown upon hearing the news and went out of the house shouting against the government and crying, to which dozens of neighbors joined. The police arrived to control the situation and kept the area cordoned off all day long."

On April 25, 2003 Fidel Castro appears on television to defend the three executions, and show trials against nonviolent dissidents that had taken place in parallel. The official transcript leaves out unscripted comments by the old dictator who referred to the three executed men as the "tres negritos" which translates into English as the "three pickaninnies."

Two nephews of Nicolas Maduro's wife caught and convicted of trying to smuggle 1,700 pounds of cocaine into the USA

Venezuela's first family implicated in cocaine trafficking

Efrain Antonio Campo Flores & Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas with police

Reuters reported "[t]wo nephews of Venezuela’s first lady were sentenced to 18 years in prison on [December 14, 2017] following their convictions in New York on U.S. drug trafficking charges." The New York State attorney reported on the conviction over twitter.

Acting USA Kim: For their brazen cocaine trafficking scheme, and thanks to @DEAHQ, Efrain Antonio Campo Flores & Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas will spend significant time in US prison

— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) December 14, 2017

The two men were arrested in Haiti and yesterday found guilty of trying "to smuggle 1,700 pounds (800kg) of cocaine into the United States."


Providing context
There have been numerous news reports about the Venezuelan regime's links to international drug trafficking, and that U.S. investigations point to high ranking  officials in Venezuela turning the country "into a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering," but little is said about the Castro regime's decades long involvement in it that still continues.  Panamanian police seized more than 400 kilograms of cocaine in a Cuban ship on its way to Belgium in April of 2016. 

Venezuela: Global hub of drug trafficking Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post reported on the Venezuela, FARC, Cuba trafficking axis on May 24, 2015 in the article "A drug cartel’s power in Venezuela":

Ever since Colombian commandos captured the laptop of a leader of the FARC organization eight years ago, it’s been known that Chávez gave the Colombian narcoguerrillas sanctuary and allowed them to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the United States with the help of the Venezuelan army. But not until a former Chávez bodyguard [ Leamsy Salazar] defected to the United States in January did the scale of what is called the “Cartel of the Suns ” start to become publicly known. [...] The day after Salazar’s arrival in Washington, Spain’s ABC newspaper published a detailed account of the emerging case against Cabello, and last month, ABC reporter Emili Blasco followed up with a book laying out the allegations of Salazar and other defectors, who say Cuba’s communist regime and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have been cut in on the trafficking. That was followed by a lengthy report last week in the Wall Street Journal that said Cabello’s cartel had turned Venezuela into “a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering.”