RUTHFULLY YOURS

The American Left has loathed the embargo and overlooked all of Castro’s repressive actions since the 1960s. They have blamed the U.S.–Cuba deadlock entirely on the United States and have sought the end of the embargo whenever a Democrat was in the White House. Under Johnson, Carter, and Clinton they did not get their way; that had to await Obama.

When the Soviet Union fell, the Castro regime was in dire straits. It survived through sheer repression — until it was sustained by Venezuelan oil money sent by Hugo Chávez. Today Chávez is dead, oil is under $60 a barrel, and Venezuela is reeling. Who will bail Castro out this time? Now we have the answer: Barack Obama.

Put aside the prisoner exchange, which one can be for or against and still decry the rest of Obama’s moves today. It’s clear that Obama told the Cubans they had to let Alan Gross out before he could make the rest of his changes — and told them he would undertake those changes immediately. So the Castros not only get diplomatic recognition and a big financial lift — more trade, more tourism, more remittances to Cubans from family members in the U.S., and from which the regime can take a big cut — but they get it all for nothing. That is, the prisoner trade (whether smart or dumb) was a bargained-for exchange. They got three, we got two. All the rest in the Obama policy changes is simply a gift to the regime. The Castros made no promises at all to reduce oppression, allow freedom of speech or assembly, or make any political reforms or foreign-policy adjustments.

The Obama White House conducted these negotiations itself, with no meddling from the State Department. The centralization of all activity in the White House continues, and in this case the American negotiator was Ben Rhodes. Rhodes is a speechwriter with a graduate degree (M.F.A.) in creative writing, so one might wonder if he struck the hardest bargain possible. But of course those would not have been his instructions anyway: The president didn’t want a hard bargain. He wanted to destroy 50 years of American policy toward the Castro regime.

These European parliaments are also turning a blind eye to the fact that, under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there is no respect for the rule of law, free speech, transparency or accountability.

These Western parliamentarians are in fact acting against the interests of the Palestinians, who are clearly not hoping for another corrupt dictatorship in the Arab world.

“The situation in Palestine does not conform at all with democracy or the rule of law… Wake up and see the loss of rights, law and security.” — Freih Abu Medein, former Palestinian Authority Justice Minister.

“Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] wants to concentrate all authorities in his hands and the hand of his loyalists. He’s acting in a dictatorial way and wants to be in control of everything, especially the finances.” — Yasser Abed Rabbo, Secretary General of the PLO.

By turning a blind eye to human rights violations, as well as assaults on freedom of expression, the judiciary and the parliamentary system in the Palestinian territories, Western parliaments are paving the way for a creation of a rogue state called Palestine.

European parliaments that are rushing to recognize a Palestinian state are ignoring the fact that the Palestinians have been without a functioning parliament for the past seven years.

The Palestinian parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council [PLC], has been paralyzed since 2007, when Hamas violently seized control over the Gaza Strip and expelled the Palestinian Authority [PA].

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said President Obama has “vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government” by swapping for the release of longtime U.S. hostage Alan Gross.

USAID subcontractor Alan Gross recently marked the fifth anniversary of his arrest in Cuba.

Gross had wrapped up work on a project to increase Internet access and connectivity at Cuban synagogues when he was seized the night before he was to return home. He spent 14 months behind bars before any charges were filed, then in March 2011 was quickly tried and convicted of “acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state” for distributing cell phones and other communications equipment as part of the USAID project.

He was sentenced to 15 years behind bars. Earlier this year he completed a nine-day hunger strike, telling his attorney in May that his 65th birthday would be the last he spends in prison, one way or another.

In June, his wife Judy Gross pleaded with President Obama “to do everything in his power to end this nightmare and bring Alan home from Cuba now.”

The three remaining members of the Cuban five were negotiated for what senior administration officials said was a U.S. intelligence asset who had been held by Cuba for 20 years; they said they asset will not be identified. They said Gross was separately release on “humanitarian grounds.”

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who has warned of Obama’s unilateral action to loosen restrictions on Cuba, isn’t buying it.

“Let’s be clear, this was not a ‘humanitarian’ act by the Castro regime,” Menendez said. “It was a swap of convicted spies for an innocent American.”

This is the first in a series of articles we are preparing on “Left-wing Monsters” and that will include Che Guevara, Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Lenin etc. The entire series will be permanently posted on DiscoverTheNetworks.org — The Editors.
Fidel Castro entered Havana on January 8, 1959, to wild acclaim from all quarters. Most Cubans were jubilant; Castro was promising an end to the corrupt governments that had plagued Cuba since independence. Far from any Communism, Castro was promising a revolution “as green as Cuba’s palm trees!” with national elections in three months. Private property would be secure, a free press guaranteed, friendly relations with the U.S. were essential.

“Fidel esta es tu casa!” read impromptu signs that were springing up across the front of thousands of Cuban homes, including mansions, humble country shacks and everything in between.

The New York Times had been singing Castro’s praises since the first interview with him as a rebel in February 1957. By now most of the international press had joined the cheerleading. Jack Paar never treated a guest on his Tonight Show as deferentially as he treated honored guest Fidel Castro. Ed Sullivan hailed Castro as “Cuba’s George Washington.” Retired president Harry Truman called Castro a “good young man trying to do what’s best for Cuba. We should extend him a hand.” The U.S. actually accorded diplomatic recognition to Castro’s government more quickly than it had recognized Batista’s in 1952. In fact, the promptness of this U.S. recognition set a record for recognition of a Latin American government. Usually the process took weeks; for Castro, it took mere days.

Yet within three months of his entry into Havana, Castro’s firing squads had murdered an estimated 600-1,100 men and boys, and Cuba’s jails held ten times the number of political prisoners as under Fulgencio Batista, who Castro overthrew with claims to “liberating” Cuba.

Barely a year in power, Castro was referring to the U.S. as “a vulture preying on humanity!” And most of Cuba’s newspapers and TV stations (Cuba had more TVs per capita at the time than Germany, Canada or France) were under government control, to better serve “the people.” Six months later he confiscated all U.S. properties on the Island, 5,911 businesses worth $2 billion worth, along with most property and businesses owned by Cubans.

On January 3, 1961, outgoing President Eisenhower finally declared, “there’s a limit to what the United States in self-respect can endure. That limit has been reached.” He broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. During the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, Castro finally declared his revolution “Socialist,” and in December of that year he declared himself “a lifelong Marxist-Leninist!” Cuba was now officially Communist.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/obamas-revolution-in-america-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Michael Finch, the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He was joined by Morgan Brittany, Conservative TV and Movie Star, Nonie Darwish, author of “The Devil We Don’t Know” and Mell Flynn, the president of Hollywood Congress of Republicans.

The Gang gathered to discuss Obama’s Revolution in America, analyzing how the Radical-in-Chief is tearing the foundations of the country down from every angle (starts at the 9:30 mark). The episode also focused on Feinstein’s Destructive Torture Charade, Ferguson and an Arsonist-in-Chief, and much, much more:

Usually you have to get at least two sentences into an Obama speech to find a whopper so big that McDonald’s wouldn’t be able to figure out what to charge for it. Not this time. Instead the worst lie in Obama’s Cuba speech was in his very first sentence.

“Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba,” Obama said.

No, nope. Still no.

Cuban is run by the Castro thugs. There is no democratically elected government. Obama did not make a deal with the elected representatives of the Cuban people.

He made a deal with the Castro crime family.

The people of Cuba have no say in how they live. They have no say in how they are governed. They have no say in their relationship with the United States except to flee by boat. Which many of them have done.

That opening sentence is the slimiest lie in Obama’s series of lies about his dirty deal with the Castros. It’s the slimiest lie because with it Obama makes the explicitly false claim that Raul Castro represents the Cuban people.

It’s an endorsement of the Communist dictatorship.

The Soviet Union did not have to fall. If Carter had won a second term and Mondale had succeeded him, the Communist dictatorship might have received the outside help it needed to survive.

And we would still be living under the shadow of the Cold War.

Carter couldn’t save the Soviet Union, but he did his best to save Castro, visiting Fidel and Raul in Cuba where the second worst president in American history described his meeting with Castro as a greeting among “old friends”.

Raul Castro called Carter “the best of all U.S. presidents.”

Obama’s dirty deal with Raul will make the worst president in American history, Castro’s new best friend.

Carter couldn’t save Castro, but Obama did. This was not a prisoner exchange. This was a Communist bailout.

Obama boasted that he would increase the flow of money to Cuba from businesses, from bank accounts and from trade. When he said, “We’re significantly increasing the amount of money that can be sent to Cuba”, that was his real mission statement.

The Castro regime is on its last legs. Its sponsors in Moscow and Caracas are going bankrupt due to failing energy prices. The last hope of the Butcher of Havana was a bailout from Washington D.C.

And that’s exactly what Obama gave him.

The New Stupid Party
Democrats call Republicans the stupid party. But now, there’s dumb, and dumber.

A constant of political life has been that there is only one “stupid party” in America—the Republican Party. Then one day you get out of bed, look out the window and what do you see? Democrats. The Democrats are turning themselves into the new stupid party of American politics.

In the liberal pundits’ telling, Republicans are the party of the Yahoo heartland, the anti-abortion religious right and the anti-government tea party. The stupid party.

Of course this is a caricature. Besides, none of this bad-mouthing matters unless too many average voters conclude that a weird political fringe now represents the party’s core.

Which brings us to the Draft Elizabeth Warren movement.

Last week more than 300 former Obama staffers signed an open letter urging the famous Harvard Law School professor to run in 2016. Days earlier, two big progressive groups, MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, also pressed the first-term Massachusetts senator to seek the party’s presidential nomination.

The implicit logic of the Draft Warren movement is that after eight years of the Obama presidency, the American people want to move . . . further left.

However intriguing that proposition, the real problem for the political pros behind Draft Warren or even the Ready for Hillary super PAC is that the Democratic left’s high-publicity wing insists on doing stupid things in public that turn off more voters than they turn on.

Hamas is no longer a terrorist organization. This is the astonishing verdict of the European Court of Justice, delivered only a few months after Hamas indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets against civilian targets in Israel.

The ECJ’s ruling on Wednesday in Hamas v. Council concluded that the Palestinian group’s terror-designation is “based not on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities but on factual imputations derived from the press and the Internet.”

In an ostensibly procedural ruling, the court objected that Brussels didn’t conduct its own original research when it first put the terrorist label on Hamas in 2001. It did, however, allow that Brussels may still maintain its asset freeze on Hamas—a group that openly avows responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings over many years.

This judicial incursion into foreign policy is particularly troubling since courts should defer to law enforcers and political leaders when it comes to national security. By second-guessing European officials at a terror group’s behest, the ECJ has jeopardized the ability of those officials to set security policy. Don’t be surprised if other terror groups line up in Luxembourg to litigate their way out of asset freezes and other sanctions.

Governor Faces Long-Term Political Consequences for His Prohibition

The decision to prohibit hydraulic fracturing in New York state Wednesday exposed the deep divisions over the issue and highlighted the political tightrope Gov. Andrew Cuomo had to tiptoe across.

On one side were liberal environmental activists who were cheered by the Democratic governor’s move to prohibit the natural-gas extraction technique known as fracking.

“This is the best example of bold, visionary and courageous leadership by him in at least a decade,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , a friend and former brother-in-law of Mr. Cuomo who sat on a state fracking advisory committee but said he hadn’t counseled him on the matter in about six months.

On the other were landowners and local officials along a stretch of New York bordering Pennsylvania known as the Southern Tier, an economically depressed region where some saw fracking as a lifeline.

When Conklin, N.Y., town supervisor Jim Finch heard the news, he began drawing up plans to secede from the state. “I’m serious,” said Mr. Finch, who oversees a town of some 5,000 people on the Susquehanna River just a few minutes’ drive from the Pennsylvania border. “New York City determines policy in the Southern Tier? That’s baloney.”

The decision to ban fracking in New York, pitting environmental and health concerns versus economic growth, will have long-term political consequences for Mr. Cuomo, political observers said,