By Armando Valladares in Time:
Former Cuban Prisoner: Human-Rights Violations Remain
Many of the Damas de Blanco—Cuba’s infamous wives, mothers and daughters of jailed political dissidents—were recently detained on their way to Sunday Mass with their families. But you likely didn’t read about these arrests in the American news media. You were much more likely to have read about the first Carnival cruise ship to sail from the U.S. to Cuba. Coverage of the “historic voyage” featured photos of Carnival executives clinking champagne and waiving miniature American and Cuban flags and images of happy Cubans lining the shores of Havana alongside gleaming antique cars. Never mind that Cuba initially refused passage to Cuban-born Americans.
From Cuba Archive:
Cuba's Export Blood Business: An Unprecedented Case of State-Trafficking
Part I: Export Sales, Blood Collection, and Rights of Donors.
For decades, the Cuban state has run a multi-million dollar business with blood, collected from unknowing and non-remunerated citizens.
From The Washington Post's Editorial Board:
On U.S.-Cuba military cooperation, proceed with caution
Idael Fumero Valdés is not someone you’d expect to see as an honored guest of the U.S. military. As chief of investigations for Cuba’s National Revolutionary Police, a part of the military-controlled Ministry of the Interior, he plays a key law enforcement role in a state where beating and arresting human rights activists is considered law enforcement. Yet there he was at a U.S. naval air base in Key West, Fla., on April 21, touring the facilities at the invitation of the U.S. military command for Latin America.
Yesterday, the AP's Havana bureau reported that the Castro regime was going to legalize "private business" in Cuba.
As we posted yesterday, it was a recognition that there is currently no "private business" in Cuba -- despite the Obama Administration's narrative over the last few years.
But reports that Castro is now going to legalize "private business" were also grossly exaggerated.
While the Castro regime distracts the foreign media with inexistent "private businesses," a senior North Korean general in charge of intelligence and clandestine operations visited Cuba.
Yesterday, General Raul Castro welcomed General Kim Yong-chol, Vice-Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee and Director of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (equivalent to the U.S. Director of Central Intelligence).
The Castro regime informed the leader of Cuba's Ladies in White, Berta Soler, that it has filed charges of "resistance" against her and will be tried.
Soler has been notified that she can no longer leave the country.
This ordeal tragically sums up the Obama-Castro deal.
Mario Alberto Hernandez Leyva is a Cuban political prisoner -- one of the 53 released in December 2014, as part of the Obama-Castro deal.
Hernandez Leyva was re-arrested in November 2015 for organizing a pot-banging protest ("cacerolazo"). He was handed a new three-year prison sentence for disobedience.
In other words, Raul Castro reneged on his deal with President Obama.
Earlier this week, the head of Venezuela's National Assembly, Henry Ramos Allup, denounced that 60 Cuban military officials are embedded among operational forces at the Fuerte Tiuna military complex -- home of Venezuela's Ministry of Defense -- under the command of Cuban General Raul Acosta Gregorich.
This morning, the French investigative journal, Intelligence Online, reported that North Korea's regime has sent a special forces contingent to Venezuela to help its embattled quasi-dictator, Nicolas Maduro.
This week, the House Committee on Homeland Security chaired a hearing on the security risks stemming from the Obama Administration's proposed commercial flights to Cuba.
The hearing revealed some troubling issues.
The Obama Administration is leading a full-scale lobbying effort in the U.S. Congress to lift the so-called “travel ban” to Cuba. If this sounds disingenuous, particularly as Carnival cruises and the Kardashians descend upon Havana -- well, that's because it is.
