Cuba Flips the Script on Obama -- Again By Capitol Hill Cubans March 31, 2015
As the great Russian chess-master Garry Kasparov tweeted today, "it's easy to make deal if you concede."
That's why the world's most ruthless dictators all want to cut a deal with the Obama Administration -- Burma's junta got a deal, Castro got a deal, the Mullahs are about to get a deal, Assad now wants a deal, as does Maduro, Kim Jong-un, et al.
These Obama deals are all similarly structured -- the United States eases sanctions and pressure, while the dictators offer lots of talk and no action.
This week's "human rights" talks between the United States and Cuba are case and point.
Since Obama's December 17th deal with Castro, repression has continued to rise dramatically in Cuba -- there have been well over 1,200 political arrests; the long-term imprisonment of artist Danilo Maldonado "El Sexto" and rapper Maikel Oksobo "El Dkano"; the re-arrest of over a dozen of the 53 political prisoners released as part of the deal; members of The Ladies in White pelted with tar and forced to abort through blows to the stomach; and the intensified violations in Venezuela, signed, sealed and sponsored by the Castro brothers.
Not to mention every Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that continues to be systematically denied to all Cubans.
Yet, rather than pressing one of the world's most systemic violators of human rights and taking the moral high-ground, the Obama Administration is getting outmaneuvered (again).
Instead, it will be meeting with the Castro regime Washington, D.C. today (at their request) to be lectured on Cuba's human rights "achievements" and how its totalitarian "dictatorship" is indeed a democracy.
In other words, for more talk and distractions.
While back in Cuba -- it's business as usual.
Castro has essentially flipped the script on Obama.
Similarly, last week a U.S. delegation went to Havana to discuss telecommunications (more talk).
The big takeaway?
A State Department official tells Reuters that the Castro regime is "committed" to getting the web to 50% of households and up to 60% mobile phone access (through their tightly-controlled and highly-monitored state monopoly) -- by 2020!
"I believe they are extremely eager to do so," said the ingenuous (or naive) State Department official.
You mean -- like the "glass of milk" Raul promised every Cuban in 2007?
But wait, isn't Raul supposedly not "running for re-election" in 2018?
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