UN ESTRIKE, DOS ESTRIKES, TRES ESTRIKES....TA'PONCHAO!!!!

Diplomatic Ties with US May Strike Out Baseball in Cuba

Cuba has “the largest pool of untapped baseball talent in the world, and Major League Baseball may tap and leave Cuba dry.          By: JTA     Published: December 29th, 2014

To the dismay of baseball fan Kit Krieger, future travels to Cuba will no longer include get-togethers with ex-Washington Senators pitcher Connie Marrero.

Marrero, who played for Washington from 1950 to 1954, died in Havana last April at age 102, a few months after Krieger’s last visit and three years after Krieger helped arrange for Marrero a $10,000 annual pension from Major League Baseball.

Theirs was a special friendship, one of many forged by Krieger, a Vancouver resident who will return to Cuba in late February — his 30th visit there beginning with a 1997 trip related to his job with the British Columbia teachers federation. That trip spawned a love affair with the country and its baseball scene.

Krieger, 65, would go on to found Cuba Ball, a company bringing baseball-mad tourists to the island nation — a venture begun really to enable himself to visit affordably with groups.

With President Obama’s Dec. 17 announcement on renewing diplomatic relations broken off by the United States in 1961, Krieger sees a double-edged sword: Cuba will emerge from U.S.-imposed isolation, but the country’s professional baseball scene could ultimately disappear, like America’s Negro Leagues following the integration of Major League Baseball.

In the near term, he figures, Cuban baseball will remain unchanged, since the country can hardly be expected to allow foreign teams to poach its premier talent — at least not without hefty payments, as in Japan. Individual players, Krieger adds, are unlikely to risk defecting while knowing that renewed diplomacy could prompt Washington’s lifting of an economic blockade, enabling them to legally sign lucrative contracts abroad.

Following Obama’s announcement, MLB released a statement saying that it will monitor whether the policy shift affects “the manner in which [teams] conduct business on issues related to Cuba.”

Krieger says he sees Cuba as “the largest pool of untapped baseball talent in the world, and no one knows if [the news] will open this pool.” But he fears “the beginning of the end” of a Cuban baseball reality caught in a sweet time warp evoking America of the 1890s. Eventually, Krieger says, Cuban baseball “will become integrated into the international baseball community, which it isn’t now.”

His love for Cuban baseball led him more than a decade ago to join the Society for American Baseball Research, where he recruited like-minded fans for the trips. He’s similarly passionate about family history, frequently conducting research on Jewish genealogy websites. Thanks largely to meticulous records kept by his ancestors, Krieger (his given first name is Ernest) can trace several branches in Poland and Germany back to 1700.

“I can even tell you the name of my grandfather’s mohel,” he quips.

Krieger’s baseball and genealogy interests at times have coincided: His late mother, Ann Kohlberg, grew up in an apartment building at 320 Riverside Drive in Manhattan, across the hall from New York Giants star Mel Ott. Kohlberg’s cousin, Don Taussig, went on to play outfield with the franchise after its move to San Francisco.

While Krieger doesn’t usually seek out Jewish residents or sites while in Cuba, another Jewish traveler, retired professor Oscar Soule, does.

Soule, of Olympia, Wash., who will be traveling with Krieger to Cuba in February, has been to the Caribbean nation five times and makes a point of going to a Havana synagogue on each visit. The draws for him are the baseball games and meetings with government officials, as well as such diamond legends as Omar Linares and Victor Mesa that wouldn’t happen without Krieger.

Marrero, a 5-foot-5 right-hander who posted a 39-40 record in the majors and made the American League’s All-Star team in 1951 at age 40, benefited from Krieger’s attention in his final years as he lost his eyesight and hearing. Krieger solicited notes of appreciation from the aging pitcher’s American contemporaries, all of whom Marrero fondly remembered. More than 90 letters arrived, and scores more for Marrero’s 100th birthday, including from Hall of Famers Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Tommy Lasorda, George Kell and Harmon Killebrew.

“Kit is a darned nice guy who’s helpful and doesn’t expect anything in return,” says Eddie Robinson, a former official with the MLB Players Alumni Association and a Senators teammate of Marrero who played a key role in securing the pension, to which Marrero had not been entitled previously because he wasn’t vested.

Two or three of the four pension payments were delivered by former major leaguer Stan Javier, a resident of the nearby Dominican Republic, Krieger says.

Of Krieger, ex-pitcher Steve Rogers, who works for the Major League Baseball Players Association, says he “was always available to do everything he could to help” in the Marrero case.

With Marrero gone, Krieger is seeking to raise $69,000 for new plaques honoring the members of Cuba’s Hall of Fame. Upon hearing Obama’s announcement last week, Krieger asked Cuba Ball clients to make a Marrero plaque the first priority. During the February visit, Krieger plans to begin working to identify a proper building for the Hall, which is now housed in Havana’s Estadio Latinoamericano.

There will be games to attend, too. Cuban baseball games have far more character than the typical corporate stadium American game. Scorecards and souvenirs are not sold, but makeshift bands entertain the fans.

“I went to a game in San Cristobal, in western Cuba,” Krieger recalls. “A guy hits a homer to win the game, gets on his bike to go home and gets stopped by a fan who gives him a live chicken.

“They’d played on a chain-link-fence field. The seats were concrete slabs, and everyone else watched from the beds of pickup trucks. It was not even a sandlot — it was a farm game.

“For the baseball purists,” he says, “those who love to go to Cuba, it’s a unique baseball culture.”

DICIEMBRE 28.....DIA DE LAS INOCENTADAS....

WHICH CASTRO....FIDEL?  RAUL?  MARIELA?  

TODOS INVITADOS POR EL PRES. HUSSEIN OBAMA 

A LA CASA BLANCA...

CUNA DEL IMPERIALISMO VIOLENTO Y BRUTAL....

INOCENTE MARIPOSA!!!!

The only Cuba I've ever known

THE ONLY CUBA I HAVE EVER KNOWN

Editor's note: First Person is a series of personal essays exploring identity and personal points of view that shape who we are. Katia Hetter is a writer/producer for CNN Digital.

(CNN) -- This holiday season, I am heading to the only Cuba I've ever known. To Nochebuena dinner with my cousin's roast pork, her mother-in-law's flan, platanos maduros, yucca and a salad.

Nochebuena is a Latino celebration of Christmas Eve, and it's a big night for us. There will be quick-fire Spanish, varying degrees of English and jokes in the way I've only ever heard my Cuban relatives parry back and forth. Many presents will be opened, and everyone will act like we all got each other the perfect gift.

I'm flying not to Havana but to Miami, where my grandparents and other relatives came years after Fidel Castro took over Cuba, when it became clear there would be no free speech for anyone but him.

The stadiums were filling with "trials" against the enemies of the state, friends were disappearing and my mother, despite her government job, knew her unwillingness to stay quiet while people suffered would get her in trouble. So she went into exile in 1961, and she's never been back.

Years later my grandparents followed their grown children -- my mother and uncle -- to the United States. When they applied to leave the country, Cuban government officials did an inventory of the contents of their home. Both their home and all of their things would be confiscated by the government on the day they departed.

The morning she left, my abuelita was washing the dishes in their apartment before she and my grandfather left for the airport. Suddenly she stopped. "Let Fidel do the dishes," she said. I have never seen that apartment.

Family traditions

When we land Tuesday in Miami, my mother and uncle will meet us at the airport and rush us to Havana Harry's or some coffee stand where I can get a real Cuban coffee -- none of this Starbucks silliness. There's a hint of Cuba in the taste. And Cuban and U.S. flags will be everywhere.

I don't care about South Beach or Art Basel or Coconut Grove. Every bit of Cuba I get is gleaned from pictures, music, stories people tell me and these trips to see Miami family, where I get hints of my ancestry in the food and jokes and presents. I soak it up on every visit.

I've never seen the sleepy, agricultural town of Pinar del Rio where my mother was born and lived until her teenage years. I've never seen where she went to high school after they moved to Havana or the beaches where she swam in the summertime and where one friend dangling his foot over a pier lost it to a shark.

I don't know where she had her first piano recital. When she plays my favorite Cuban music on the piano, all too rarely, for some reason the notes make me cry. Maybe it's the hints of her life before me.

The Christmas heat in Miami must be similar to what they feel in Cuba, only a short flight to the south. I will pack my summer clothes and a bathing suit for my daughter.

Around midday on Christmas Eve some of us will head to El Palacio de Los Jugos for lunch and Cuban sandwiches. I will get my favorite Materva soda, too sweet for me now but still worth the memory. My cousin, whose Nochebuena pork would make Martha Stewart cry, likes to tease us to not to fill up at lunch.

But we will be fine. Dinner won't be until much later -- our family is always late -- and we all want her cooking.

Filling in the gaps

My definition of beauty isn't blond hair or blue eyes or any classic American stereotype. It's my black-haired Cuban cousins, who look so refined and elegant. They hug me, the baby of my generation and the half-American with the brown hair, so hard.

They remind me to come back. To Miami, not to Cuba.

I've only seen pictures of the tobacco trucks. My mother was taught to drive by the drivers at the tobacco trucking company where my grandfather worked, and it's why she still drives a car like she means business. Another hint of Cuba on those long road trips.

I welcome the news of thawing American relations with Cuba and easing of travel restrictions. But I am tired of the ads for religious charity trips to Cuba and all-inclusive beach resorts where tourists get pampered while my people, once removed, depend on charity for the most basic medical supplies.

I am tired of the reasons for the sadness in my older relatives' eyes.

I don't want to hear any more stereotypes about who my people are or tourists talking about going to visit Cuba "before it changes." As Miriam Zoila Perez has written, I don't want to hear about your Cuban vacation.

I simply want to buy a plane ticket and go there myself. I want to go to my mother's hometown and see where she was born without crying the entire trip. I want to put those hints together, fill in the gaps and see for the first time, where I am from.

                                    ********************************************
INCIDENTLY....

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama is taking some heat from Republicans on Capitol Hill for reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, but a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday shows he has the public's backing.

About six in 10 Americans favor diplomatic relations with Cuba and two-thirds want the travel restrictions to the island lifted, according to the poll of 1,011 Americans conducted after Obama announced a landmark deal with Cuba to relax sanctions and ease some travel restrictions.

Regardless, Americans continue to have an unfavorable view of Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro, with 81% holding a negative opinion of the former leader and brother of the country's current president.

Saving Comrade Castro

Saving Comrade Castro



CASTRO....3

YANKEES....0



Y EL PUEBLO DE CUBA QUE???  SE IRAN A BENEFICIAR DE ESTE ACONTECIMIENTO???

FIRST....SECOND....AND THIRD!!!!

First, let us at least rejoice that Alan Gross has been released.  We can be glad for his sake that he is back home with his family.

The rest of the news is not so good.  Obama traded three Cuban spies for Gross and a U.S. intelligence agent, and will open up financial and banking relations to Cuba, besides authorizing travel and reopening a U.S. embassy in Havana:

American officials said the Cuban spies were swapped for a United States intelligence agent who had been in a Cuban prison for nearly 20 years, and said Mr. Gross was not technically part of the swap, but was released separately on “humanitarian grounds.”

In addition, the United States will ease restrictions on remittances, travel and banking relations, and Cuba will release 53 Cuban prisoners identified as political prisoners by the United States government. Although the decades-old American embargo on Cuba will remain in place for now, the president called for an “honest and serious debate about lifting” it.

The concern here is only partly the specific measures taken, however.  The context in which they are being taken is of even greater concern.

Russian officials made two major announcements in the last six months: that Moscow would reopen the sprawling Cold War-era listening post near Havana, at Lourdes; and that Russian forces, now including strategic bombers (an unprecedented feature), would resume operating from Cuba to conduct patrols targeting the United States.  Russia has, in fact, been operating intelligence collection ships from Cuba and sending them on patrols off the southeastern U.S. coast.  Meanwhile, Cuba continues to engage in an illicit arms trade with North Korea, which facilitates the proliferation of arms to terrorist groups and bad regimes round the world.  (See here and here as well.)  Cuba also continues to be deeply involved in the repressions inflicted by Central America’s socialist caudillos on the people of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.  For more than half a century, Cuba has been one of the chief security problems of Latin America.  In the last five years, the nexus between the Castroites and the chavistas (Chavez, his successor Maduro, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega) has expanded to include – increasingly overtly – Iran.  Cuba’s trade relations with Iran – always, for such nations, largely a cover for arms and intelligence cooperation – have been growing rapidly in the last several years.  (The more warehouses and heavy machinery are ostensibly involved in the commercial trade, the more military-strategic import it typically has.  The transportation sector is one of the best covers for military cooperation.)

China, moreover, has been cultivating increased military as well as trade ties with Cuba in the last few years (see here and here as well), and is reported to have intelligence operatives manning a Cuban listening post in Bejucal.

These are some of the big, important things that have been going on with Cuba in the time period that ought to affect our decisions about Cuba.  If we’re going to go down the path of normalizing relations with Cuba, each and every one of these things should be on the table.   The payoff from pursuing this course should be – explicitly, and up front – a set of verifiable commitments from Cuba to not continue in these activities which are prejudicial to the United States and the security of the Western hemisphere.

Obama has obtained no such promises, nor has he outlined any program of pursuing them.  Given all that he should have been concerned about, he has simply caved and made a unilateral gesture that will benefit Cuba, but not the U.S.

In fact, Obama’s opening of travel and financial relations to Cuba will actively harm the U.S.  The first people on the plane to the U.S. from Cuba will be spies – and spies not just for Cuba but for Russia, China, and Iran.  The difference now will be the casual ease with which they can gain access to the United States by posing as mere Cuban businessmen, tourists, and workers on visas.

Opening financial relations with Cuba will create an even bigger vulnerability.  Cuba will have her feet in both worlds:  the global financial network in which the U.S. and our allies set the rules, and – beyond doubt – the alternative network which Russia is currently laboring to assemble.  (See more about how this fits in with Russia’s strategic intentions here, from an interview given by Russian Defense Minister Dmitry Rogozin.)

Cuba is too dependent on Russia to avoid participating in the alternative financial network, and presumably, as long as the Castroites are in power, they will want to.

Members of the “BRICS” bloc might or might not be interested in joining Russia’s network; if some do so, the U.S. and allies like Japan and the EU will be faced with a serious, high-profile security policy dilemma.  When North Korea joins Russia’s network, on the other hand, we can rejoice that our banking system is not connected to Pyongyang to begin with.

But it would be easy to minimize the concern Western observers would feel about little Cuba being a nexus between the two networks.  The New York Times editorial posture, for example, would no doubt dismiss the obvious concerns as “conspiracy theory,” at least until some American politician’s family member got caught with taxpayer-assisted commercial interests that were financing arms shipments to Hezbollah, ISIS, or Boko Haram through the Cuban financial-network nexus.

It’s going to be tough enough navigating a world in which Russia operates a separate international financial network, to which some nations will have an interest in belonging.  Everywhere there exists a nexus between the networks – a nexus that by definition is outside the control of the Western allies – the SWIFT participants will have to worry about vulnerabilities to shenanigans and skullduggery.  (Indeed, the very survivability of the Russian network is likely to depend at times on exploiting the opportunities in such a nexus.)

But we already know what the Castros’ Cuba is.  We know that the vulnerabilities created by this nexus in Cuba are inevitable.  Now is the dumbest possible time to fling the door open to networked financial transactions with Cuba.

What can Congress do about this?  Can it rein Obama in, at least on the matter of opening the banking system to Cuba?  That’s a good question.  Congress might be able to pass veto-proof legislation, but forcing Obama to implement it is another matter.  I don’t see the courts settling this one; foreign-policy powers are one of the least conclusive realms of constitutional law.

Obama has laid an egg, on several levels, and we’re going to see it hatch.  The Pandora’s Box his policies are opening looks minor and unserious only to the complacent eye: the eye that knows no history, and thinks the halcyon summer of the last 25 years is the normal state of mankind.  It’s not.

DESDE MIAMI...SIN PATRIA PERO SIN AMO
LOS GUSANOS VE HICIERON MARIPOSAS QUE VUELAN LIBRES

DE LA PLUMA DE YOANI...

prueba de que la pluma vale mas que la espada....

A pesar de la ausencia de compromisos públicos de la parte cubana, lo de hoy fue una derrota política para el régimen cubano.  Bajo el mandato de Fidel Castro nunca se hubiera llegado siquiera a perfilar un acuerdo de esta naturaleza. Porque el sistema cubano se apoya -como un de sus principales pilares- en la existencia de un contrincante permanente. David no puede vivir sin Goliat y el aparato ideológico ha descansado demasiado tiempo en ese diferendo.

Despues de la transmisión de los discursos oficiales,  en Cuba a media tarde casi todo el mundo estaba enterado y el sentimiento compartido era de alegría, alivio, esperanza. Pero, todavía falta un cronograma público con el que se logre comprometer al Gobierno cubano a seguir una secuencia de gestos a favor de la democratización y del respeto a las diferencias

Sin embargo, esto apenas comienza. Falta un cronograma público con el que se logre comprometer al Gobierno cubano a seguir una secuencia de gestos a favor de la democratización y del respeto a las diferencias. Hay que aprovechar esta sinergia que han provocado ambos anuncios para arrancarle una promesa pública, que debería incluir al menos  los cuatro puntos de consenso que la sociedad civil ha ido madurando en los últimos meses: 

1) La liberación de todos los presos políticos y de conciencia; 

2) el fin de la represión política; 

3) la ratificación de los pactos Derechos Civiles, Políticos, Económicos, Sociales y Culturales, con su consiguiente adecuación de la legalidad interna y 

4) el reconocimiento de la sociedad civil cubana dentro y fuera de la Isla. 

Arrancarle esos compromisos sería comenzar a desmontar el totalitarismo. Mientras no se den pasos de esa envergadura, muchos seguiremos pensando que la fecha esperada no está cerca. Así que a guardar las banderitas, no se pueden descorchar la botellas todavía y lo mejor es seguir presionando para que finalmente llegue el día “D.”

LOS GUSANOS SE VOLVIERON MARIPOSAS QUE VUELAN LIBRES
EN MIAMI...SIN PATRIA PERO SIN AMOS

CUBA....3 y YANKEES....0 | HUSSEIN DOES IT AGAIN

U.S. President Barack Obama negotiated with Cuba to restore diplomatic relations “behind everyone’s back,” lawmakers charged Wednesday night after he announced the restoration of full diplomatic ties with the island nation.

News agencies in the United States buzzed on Thursday with the details of how Obama accomplished that task in a personal 45-minute telephone call on Tuesday with President Raul Castro. The call followed 18 months of secret talks between the White House and Cuban officials that also involved the highest levels of the Vatican – and Pope Francis himself.  As part of the deal, USAID worker Alan Gross returned from Cuba on a U.S. government 757 aircraft after five years in custody, along with a U.S. intelligence agent who had spent the last 20 years of a life term in prison.

The move, which was carried out without any knowledge of Congressional lawmakers on either side of the aisle, inflamed already hot tempers about Obama’s penchant for doing things on his own. Media commentators and some legislators on Thursday referred to the president as “King Obama.”  Democratic lawmakers also expressed shock and disappointment that the president had spent 18 months negotiating with an “enemy, Communist regime” without even consulting with any other legislator from his own party.

Members of the Cuban immigrant community were incensed that Obama had cut through more than half a century of sanctions and provided a “shot in the arm” to the repressive regime they fled for its brutality.

Castro said the 52-year embargo had caused enormous human and economic damage. He added there was still disagreement on many issues, including that of foreign policy.

Following the announcement, however, the Dow Jones Industrial Average leaped, possibly in response. Media commentators began discussing what the economic implications would be if Congress could not control corporate financial and production flow in and out of Cuba.


MY PS.-
A LAS ESPALDAS DE TODO EL MUNDO, EL QUE-SE-CREE-CZAR PRES. HUSSEIN OBAMA HA LLAMADO A LOS CASTRO PARA HACERSE AMIGUITO DE ELLOS.  COMO ES QUE EL PRESIDENTE-ELECTO-DEMOCRATICAMENTE DE LOS EEUU VA A NEGOCIAR CON USURPADORES DE PODER, COMUNISTAS QUE HASTA AYER LE PEDIAN LA CABEZA AL "IMPERIALISMO YANKEE."

LOS CASTROS SE HAN SALIDO CON LA SUYA Y HAN TRAPEADO CON LOS EEUU LOS PISOS SUCIOS DE SUS PALACIOS EN CUBA. HAN PUESTO A LOS EEUU EN LAS SUELAS DE SUS ZAPATOS, COMO UN CHICLET INOPORTUNO...HAN UTILIZADO A LOS EEUU DE PAPEL DE BAñO...DE KLEENEX PARA SOPLARSE LA NARIZ.

A LO MEJOR OBAMA VA A LA HABANA....Y DE AHI A VENEZUELA A VER A MADURO Y TAL VEZ OTRO VIAJECITO A TEHERAN A VER A SUS MENTORES RELIGIOSOS, LOS AYATOLLAH.  Y PORQUE NO A KOREA DEL NORTE...ASI ACABARA SUS DIAS EN LA CASA BLANCA TERMINANDO DE HACER DE ESTE, EN OTRORA UN GRAN PAIS, EL HAZME-REIR DE TODOS LOS SERES HUMANOS QUE AMAMOS LA LIBERTAD Y LA DEMOCRACIA.

NUESTROS MARTIRES, HOY SE REVUELVEN EN SUS TUMBAS.  TANTOS Y TANTOS MUERTOS, SUFRIMIENTOS, SANGRE-SUDOR-LAGRIMAS...COMO DIRIA UNA AMIGA: "TANTO NADAR, PARA MORIR EN LA ORILLA."

PERO A MI QUE NO ME DIGAN NADA...YO SIEMPRE VOTO REPUBLICANO...Y TODAVIA CONSERVO EN MIS BUMPERS, LOS STICKERS DE McCAIN Y ROMNEY...YO NO SOY RESPONSABLE POR ESTA VERGUENZA DE PRESIDENTE QUE CON SU MENTALIDAD DE EX-ESCLAVO-UNCLE-TOM TIENE QUE HACERNOS PASAR VENGUENZA A PESAR DE LA MARAVILLA DE NACION QUE SE GASTABA...PERO QUE AHORA, CON EL, VA EN FRANCO DETRIMENTO...

Establishing ties with Cuba has been on President Obama’s bucket list for some time. Health care -- done. Amnesty for illegal immigrants -- done. Cuba -- next. This last one also has the added bonus point that it puts him right with the international left, which lionizes Castro.  And the president will go on picking off the next items on the bucket list for the next two years of his term unless Congress decides to stop him. Should they work up the gumption, lawmakers will find they can do many things to stand up for the prerogatives of the legislative branch.

Obviously, the release of the 65-year-old American hostage Alan Gross should be welcome. His “crime” was to bring computers to Jews on the island. For the last five years, he has been a victim of Cuba’s state terrorism, just as 11 million Cubans have been held hostage by their government for the past five decades.

Not only does President Obama’s action fail to advance freedom in Cuba, it throws a lifeline to Cuba’s dictators.

Exchanging three hardened Cuban spies for Gross, however, establishes an insulting moral and legal equivalency. The spies actions led to the death of an American in the 1990s, and they were duly convicted. Their release in exchange for Gross creates an incentive for rogue regimes and individual actors to kidnap Americans all over the world.  Not only does President Obama’s action fail to advance freedom in Cuba, it throws a lifeline to Cuba’s dictators, whose current supplier of funds, Venezuela, is on the ropes because of plunging oil prices. It surrenders to the demands for normalization that the Castros have been making for decades. 

So what can Congress do?

Right off the bat, Congress must make it crystal clear to President Obama that he lacks the authority to lift the embargo on Cuba, allow trade to take place between the two nations, let tourists to go to Cuba to bail out the regime or give Cuba have access to capital markets. U.S. law—the Helms-Burton Act of 1996—gives the Congress power to override any action taken by the executive to lift the embargo.  In order to lift the embargo, the Cuban government would have to give the Cuban people a number of rights—of association, speech, political activity, etc.—that President Obama obviously failed to secure in his 45-minute conversation with Cuban dictator Raul Castro Tuesday. 

Congress can also make clear to the president that there are statutory criteria that must be met before his administration can take Cuba off the State Department list of terrorism sponsors. The president must inform Congress that there has been a change of leadership and policies of the Cuban government and that Castro has given assurances that it will no longer support terrorist acts. Can President Obama do any of that?

Senators should also make clear that they will put a hold on any ambassador that Mr. Obama nominates to serve in Cuba unless he can guarantee that the Cuban government is no longer a threat to the United States and has decided to grant freedom to people in Cuba. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has already said he plans to do that.  Additionally, Congress can look into the possibility of using policy riders in the upcoming DHS appropriations debate in February and the Fiscal Year 2016 appropriations process to deny the president funds for setting up relations.

Congress must act because President Obama has been completely feckless in his entire approach to Cuba. He received nothing in exchange for many substantial concessions made to the Communist regime. After five years of “negotiations” President Obama ended exactly where  Raul Castro’s demands began five years ago. As Senator Marco Rubio said, President “Obama is the worst negotiator since Carter.”

Mr. Obama's statement was filled with Havana’s communist talking points, such as affirming that Cubans are poor and unfree because of the embargo, or that Cuba was a U.S. colony. None of that is true, and yet Mr. Obama said it.

Congress must act to limit the damage inherent in this Havana Giveaway. Left unchecked, Obama will simply move on to the next misguided item on his bucket list.

A native of Cuba, Mike Gonzalez escaped the Castro regime at age 12.  He is a senior fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for International Studies and the author of “A Race for the Future” How Conservatives Can Break the Liberal Monopoly on Hispanic Americans.”

MY PS.-

BO AND SUNNY ARE STILL THE ONLY ONES I LIKE IN THE WHITE HOUSE...I THINK THAT PRES. HUSSEIN OBAMA SHOULD GO TO CUBA AND HUG AND KISS OLD FIDEL AND ASK HIM FORGIVENESS FOR ALL THE BAD THINGS THE USA HAD DONE TO CUBA...KISS FIDEL'S HAND LIKE HE [OBAMA] DID IN SAUDI ARABIA AND ALSO KISS RAUL'S HAND AND ASK ALSO HIS FORGIVENESS FOR ALL THE BAD DEEDS THE US DID IN CUBA...SO WHAT...IT IS THE THIRD TIME THAT WE ARE BETRAYED BY THE USA LEADERSHIP...

1) THE BAY OF PIGS'FIASCO, IN WHICH DUE TO BAD PLANNING AND BAD LEADERSHIP BY JFK CAUSED THE INVASION TO GO BAD.

2) THE OCTOBER MISSILE CRISIS, WHEN RAUL CASTRO GOT THE RUSSIANS TO INSTALL MISSILES IN CUBA AND JFK (AGAIN) TRADED CUBA FOR BERLIN AND THE MISSILES IN CUBA FOR THE MISSILES IN TURKEY.  NIKITA DID THE USA IN WITH A BEAUTIFUL STRATEGY...

3) THE "ACERCAMIENTO" RECENTLY BETWEEN HUSSEIN OBAMA AND RAULITO CASTRO...BROKERED BY THE "CHE" PAPA FRANCISQUITO...WOW!!! WHAT A TRIO...THAT IS THE THIRD ONE...

NEXT HUSSEIN OBAMA WILL TRAVEL TO HAVANA, THERE WILL BE ALL KINDS OF CELEBRATIONS...BUT DURING ALL OF THESE EVENTS, THE PEOPLE OF CUBA IS STILL OPPRESSED, STEPPED-ON BY CASTRO'S HOODS, HUNGRY, THIRSTY, POORLY CLOTHED, POORLY FED...AND ALL BECAUSE OF THE STUPID BLOCKADE...GUILTY OF BAD THINGS...KISSING OBAMA AND THE CASTROS...WHAT A SIGHT TO SEE...STRAIGHT TO MY TOILET TO VOMIT!!!!!

EL NEGRO SI NO TE LA HACE A LA ENTRADA...TE LA HACE A LA SALIDA...I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT MOTTO BEFORE AND ALWAYS CONSIDERED RACIST...BUT TODAY...I CHANGED MY MIND AND, AT LEAST IN OBAMA'S CASE...I STILL PREFER BO AND SUNNY...

LA TERCERA TRAICION...CUBA 3 vs YANKEES 0

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced plans to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba and ease economic restrictions on the nation, an historic shift he called the end of an "outdated approach" to U.S.-Cuban relations.  Obama said he's instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to immediately begin discussions with Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations, and that the U.S. will re-open an embassy in Havana. The administration will also allow some travel and trade that had been banned under a decades-long embargo instated during the Kennedy administration.  "Neither the American nor Cuban people are well-served by a rigid policy that's rooted in events that took place before most of us were born," Obama said.  He later added: "I believe we can do more to support the Cuban people, and promote our values, through engagements. After all, these 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked. It's time for a new approach."

Speaking at the same time as Obama from his own country, Cuban President Raul Castro lauded the move.  "This expression by President Barack Obama deserves the respect and recognition by all the people and I want to thank and recognize support from the Vatican and especially from Pope Francis for the improvement of relations between Cuba and the United States," he said.

Obama's announcement comes as both nations have released political prisoners in a show of goodwill, with American Alan Gross headed home on "humanitarian" grounds from Cuba early Wednesday morning. In a separate swap, a U.S. intelligence source held for 20 years was released in exchange for three jailed Cuban spies.  Obama said he and Castro spoke Tuesday in a phone call that lasted about an hour and reflected the first communication at the presidential level with Cuba since the Cuban revolution.

But some Republicans are warning the move will only strengthen the Castro regime in Cuba, which has long been accused of human rights abuses and is listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.  Obama said Wednesday he has instructed Kerry, however, to review Cuba's place on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

Wednesday's announcement that the U.S. will move toward restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba will also make it easier for Americans to travel to Cuba and do business with the Cuban people by extending general licenses, officials said. While the more liberal travel restrictions won't allow for tourism, they will permit greater American travel to the island.  While only Congress can formally overturn the five decades-long embargo, the White House has some authorities to liberalize trade and travel to the island. And Obama said he plans to "engage Congress in an honest and serious conversation" on lifting it.

In an effort to boost the nascent Cuban private sector, the President will also allow expanded commercial sales and exports of goods and services to Cuba, particularly building materials for entrepreneurs and private residences, and allow greater business training, as well as permit greater communications hardware and services to go to the island.  Other announced changes permit U.S. and Cuban banks to build relationships and travelers to use credit and debit cards. U.S. travelers will be allowed to import up to $400 worth of goods from Cuba, including $100 in alcohol and tobacco -- even Cuban cigars. Remittances by Americans to their families back in Cuba will also be increased to approximately $2,000 per quarter.  Senior administration officials and Cuba observers have said recent reforms on the island and changing attitudes in the United States have created an opening for improved relations. U.S. and Cuban officials say Washington and Havana in recent months have increased official technical-level contacts on a variety of issues.

While the release of Gross drew widespread bipartisan praise, Republican lawmakers on Wednesday criticized the overall move to thaw relations as ill-advised.  Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer he would do everything in his power to block any potential U.S. ambassador to Cuba even receive a vote.  He also called the easing of economic restrictions "inexplicable" in a statement.  "Appeasing the Castro brothers will only cause other tyrants from Caracas to Tehran to Pyongyang to see that they can take advantage of President Obama's naiveté during his final two years in office. As a result, America will be less safe as a result of the President's change in policy," he said.

Rubio promised that as incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Western Hemisphere subcommittee he'll "make every effort to block this dangerous and desperate attempt by the President to burnish his legacy at the Cuban people's [sic] expense."  Both Obama and Castro in their Wednesday remarks acknowledged the nations' differences remain.  "I do not expect the changes I am announcing today to bring about a transformation of Cuban society overnight," Obama said.

But he argued that "through a policy of engagement, we can more effectively stand up for our values, and help the Cuban people help themselves as they move into the 21st century."  Castro said that even as the two nations "recognize having profound differences — especially in national sovereignty, democracy, human rights and foreign relations policies — we reaffirm our willingness to dialogue in all of these area."

To that end, Cuba has agreed to release 53 political prisoners from a list of names provided by the United States. At least one of the prisoners has already been released. Havana has also agreed to permit significant access by its citizens to the Internet and allow the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations human rights officials back on the island for the first time in years.  Talks between the U.S. and Cuba have been ongoing since June of 2013 and were facilitated by the Canadians and the Vatican in brokering the deal. Pope Francis — the first pope from Latin America — encouraged Obama in a letter and in their meeting this year to renew talks with Cuba on pursuing a closer relationship.

Gross' release was seen as one of the first clear benefits of those talks.  Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Gross' Maryland congressman, left 4 a.m. Wednesday from Washington for Cuba, and returned with Gross and his wife, Judy, according to government officials.  Gross, speaking at a press conference Wednesday, said he's "very happy" with Obama's moves, and heaped praise on the people of Cuba, "or at least most of them."  "It pains me to see them treated so unjustly as a consequence of two governments' mutually belligerent policies," he said. "Five-and-a-half decades of history shows us that such belligerence inhibits better judgment. Two wrongs don't make a right."

Gross was arrested after traveling under a program under the U.S. Agency for International Development to deliver satellite phones and other communications equipment to the island's small Jewish population.

Cuban officials charged he was trying to foment a "Cuban Spring." In 2011, he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to set up an Internet network for Cuban dissidents "to promote destabilizing activities and subvert constitutional order."  Gross' lawyer, Scott Gilbert, told CNN last month the years of confinement have taken their toll on his client. Gross has lost more than 100 pounds and is losing his teeth. His hips are so weak that he can barely walk and he has lost vision in one eye. He has also undertaken hunger strikes and threatened to take his own life.

With Gross' health in decline, a bipartisan group of 66 senators wrote Obama a letter in November 2013 urging him to "act expeditiously to take whatever steps are in the national interest to obtain [Gross's] release."  The three Cubans released as a part of the deal belonged the so-called Cuban Five, a quintet of Cuban intelligence officers convicted in 2001 for espionage. They were part of what was called the Wasp Network, which collected intelligence on prominent Cuban-American exile leaders and U.S. military bases.  The leader of the five, Gerardo Hernandez, was linked to the February 1996 downing of the two civilian planes operated by the U.S.-based dissident group Brothers to the Rescue, in which four men died. He is serving a two life sentences. Luis Medina, also known as Ramon Labanino; and Antonio Guerrero have just a few years left on their sentences.  The remaining two — Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez — were released after serving most of their 15-year sentences and have already returned to Cuba, where they were hailed as heroes.

CUBA "TRES" Y YANKEES "O"

ESTA ROSA Y ESTA VELITA SON A LA MEMORIA DE TODOS LOS MUERTOS POR LA LIBERTAD DE CUBA!!!

CUBA - 3(*) / YANKEES - 0

(*) 

CUBA - 3

1)DERROTA INVASION A BAHIA DE COCHINOS - ALZAMIENTOS ESCAMBRAY

2) LA CRISIS DE LOS MISILES

3) LA INICIATIVA DE HUSSEIN OBAMA PARA CON LOS CASTROS

The Savage Lands of Islam

The Savage Lands of Islam



AS USUAL MR. DANIEL GREENFIELD HITS IT ON THE SPOT...IT IS WORTH READING AND HEEDING YOUR ATTENTION TO IT....AMEN

EL EXILIO VIEJO...recuerdos del Parque de las Palomas

Ahora que está de moda criticar a los viejos cubanos, vale la pena abrir el álbum familiar. Ahí están bajando del avión, en los años 60, con sus ropas de domingo y una sonrisa nerviosa, todavía mojada por las lágrimas de la partida. A muchos, sobre todo a los 'recien llegados', les cuesta entender que en la década de 1950, incluso con la dictadura batistiana, Cuba era un mejor lugar para vivir que Estados Unidos. En lo social. En lo económico.  En lo humano. 

Acostumbrados a una cultura mediterránea en todo su esplendor y tolerancia, con una creciente permeabilidad entre clases, razas y credos, no es difícil imaginar el desgarramiento, el temor y la amargura de aquellos exiliados que al buscar apartamento tropezaban con un letrero de ‘No Cubans’.  “ No pets. “ La más pujante clase media de América Latina recogiendo tomates y aguacates en Kendall y Homestead.  Miami, que hoy es un campo de contradicciones, era un campo a secas.

Lo que cero debió constituir una descomunal prueba para un pueblo que ya casi tenía en sus manos un porvenir envidiable.  Basta mirar las ruinas para comprobar lo que estaba en pie. Pasamos la página del álbum y vemos a nuestros héroes con carro del año, casa propia y los hijos a punto de entrar a la universidad.  La bonanza de un lento sacrificio.  Y las arrugas prematuras.  Y la consternación de las ilusiones que se fueron en sobrevivir con dos trabajos.  En morderse la lengua en inglés y español.  En poner las dos mejillas muchas veces.  Ya perdida la esperanza de volver a un suelo natal libre.  Es natural, pues, que odien a Fidel y al comunismo con saña inmisericorde y fanática.  Y que ese odio con frecuencia paralice su razón.  Porque la razón que les piden que comprendan es salvajemente injusta y miope. 

Sobre esos hombros encorvados se levanta una callada y preservadora lección.  Del pastel de guayaba a la devoción constitucional, del taburete a la guayabera, esas canas coronan una larga batalla por nuestra identidad y por la prosperidad en un suelo que les acogio cuando la tirania les llamó 'gusanos' y 'escoria.' 

Académicos, campesinos, comerciantes, artistas, médicos, pícaros y mártires, soñadores y pragmáticos, ricos y pobres, restituyeron a la nación el patrimonio dilapidado por Fidel.  A ratos, el país de sus sueños es más concreto que el país real.  Ellos guardaron la receta y recordaron la canción.  

En la última página del álbum, con el cuello almidonado y el pelo fragante a agua de colonia, tienen el candor de las piedras lavadas por la tormenta.  Los viejos cubanos: clave y aliento.  Ellos horadaron en la roca, con uñas y dientes, abriendo las puertas que los que vinieron despues ya encontraron abiertas. Ellos protagonizaron a noventa millas toda una real epopeya de reafirmación nacional.  Déjalos quejarse. Si analizas verás que tienen razón. 

Déjalos refugiarse en sus pesares.  La taza de café se les enfría en las manos mientras leen las noticias de la isla . Y vuelven a oler los jazmines de sus patios en Cuba. Y en el frío cristal de la tarde vuelven a tocar el rostro de sus muertos.  Los viejos cubanos, curtidos a la intemperie. Sin ellos nada de lo que hay hubiera sido posible.  

Déjalos que sean como son.  ¡Porque son la sal de nuestra tierra!

MALALA AND KAILASH WIN A WELL-DESERVE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

                   9 months after being shot in the head by Taliban                   terrorists, Malala Yousafzai, speaks at the UN

In a reversal from the previous two years, individuals, and not international bodies, have won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The young girl who was savagely shot aboard a school bus by Islamist fanatics for promoting education for girls, Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, was one recipient of the Peace Prize. The other recipient is an Indian man, Kailash Satyarthi, who also helped promote universal schooling and protecting children from abuse and exploitation.

The announcement was made this morning in Oslo, Sweden, by the Nobel committee chair, Thorbjorn Jagland.

The world was captured by the brutality of the attack on the girl referred to universally as “Malala.” The Taliban thugs boarded her school bus on Oct. 9, 2012, specifically to murder her. They shot her in the head and left her to die because she championed the cause of education for girls. But she didn’t die, instead she became an enduring symbol of her cause. Last year, a little over a year after her attempted murder, Malala spoke at the United Nations. She spoke on July 12, her 16th birthday.

“The extremists were, and they are, afraid of books and pens,” Yousafzai said to her audience at the U.N. “The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women.” The day of her speech was declared Malala Day by the U.N  But Malala said it was “not my day,” but a day for every woman, boy and girl struggling for their rights.

“Thousands of people have been killed by the terrorists and millions have been injured,” she said. “I am just one of them. So here I stand, one girl among many.”

“I speak not for myself but for those without voice … those who have fought for their rights — their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with dignity, their right to equality of opportunity, their right to be educated.” And from just over the border in India comes

the other recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Kailash Satyarthi has been in the human rights world for longer than Malala has been alive. He has been crusading against child slavery and also for the right to education. Because of his many successful efforts to free enslaved children, Satyarthi has also been the victim of assassination attempts.  In 2011, Satyarthi was attacked while rescuing child slaves from clothing sweatshops in Delhi. In 2004 he and his colleagues were attacked while rescuing children from a local circus mafia in India. It is estimated that Satyarthi has freed over 75,000 bonded and child slaves in India, and developed a model for educating and rehabilitating the children following their emancipation. A CREDIT TO HIS NATION'S LEGACY OF MOHANDAS K. GHANDI!!!

MY PS.-  SHE REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER YOUNG AND COURAGEOUS GIRL...ALSO ABUSED BY TERRORISTS...HER NAME WAS (YOU GUESSED IT!) ANNE FRANK...AND AS THE SONG GOES:  "OH, WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN!!!"

MY PS.-  WHAT A DIFFERENCE A FEW YEARS MAKE...I STILL REMEMBER (WITH SHAME FOR ALBERT NOBEL) HOW OUR BELOVED GOLFER-IN-CHIEF "WON" HIS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE...