A Cuban Slap on the Wrist: The Alan Gross Case

The Obama Administration has in recent months made efforts to improve relations with Cuba contingent upon the release of Alan P. Gross. A subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Gross was arrested in December 2009 for making the Internet available to members of Cuba’s minuscule Jewish community. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in March 2011. A couple of weeks ago, Cuba’s highest tribunal listened to an appeal of his conviction and a plea for release.

In Cuba, free circulation of ideas is forbidden. The State defines truth, not the individual. Free exchanges of information are viewed as subversive and undermining the authority of the State. A combination of siege mentality and decades-old thought control keep the island locked in the grip of the regime’s repressive informational stranglehold.

A window for potential clemency in the Gross case opened when Cuba’s highest court took up the Gross case. The court could have voided Gross’s 15-year sentence. Expectations were not high. Cuba is a country where justice is always political, and the judiciary looks over its shoulder for cues from the political hierarchy.

Fidel and Raul Castro could have used the moment to signal a modest change of heart. Or, as The Washington Post notes, they could have demonstrated that Cuba is “remotely interested in better relations with Washington.” They did not. Cuban paranoia prevailed. The court rejected Gross’ appeal. The Castro brothers opted to continue to punish Gross—now America’s most prominent political prisoner—throwing it in the face of the Obama Administration and the United States.

Cuba’s aging dictatorship, slumping economy, scattershot economic reforms and resort to acts of repression constitute a desperate spectacle. Cuba has put out the welcome mat for cancer-stricken Hugo Chávez. His health crisis looms large as Venezuela provides an indispensable lifeline of support to the regime. The role U.S. travel and remittances play in propping up the economy is taken as a given.

In the twilight of its tyranny, the Castro regime is determined to show it can still play hardball with the life and liberty of a single American citizen and show that the Obama Administration is unable to do little more than bluster.

Former diplomat and democracy expert Elliott Abrams is right: The next step for the Administration to take is to use diplomatic channels to inform the Castro brothers that unless their “clemency” is exercised, the relaxation of travel restrictions will be reversed and greater pressure will be brought on the government of Cuba.

Ray Walser

Source: The Foundry 

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Jimmy Carter travels to Cuba, kisses up to “old friend” Fidel Castro

…because even mass-murdering thugs need a hug every now and then.

All I can say is somebody's gotta make a movie about this guy's life — except who could they ever get to play Carter now that Charlton Heston is dead?

Heston would have been perfect for the role. You know, just like in The Ten Commandments when he stepped over the enslaved Israelites to sup with Pharaoh, pose for photos, fawn over his "beautiful" palace, and then beat it on home to report on Pharaoh's "health" and brag about how they "welcomed each other as old friends" — building of course, to a soul-stirring climax where he raises his staff and bellows, "Let the Cuban 5 go!"

It kind of makes me feel sorry for President Reagan, serving as he did in the long shadow of such a great man. It's not that he didn't try, but he just didn't get it. I mean, who can forget that cringe-inducing moment when he stood at the Brandenburg Gate and commanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I'm sure that gruel-spraying hoots rang out in political prison cells all over the Eastern Bloc after that – especially from the families of those shot trying to escape through that very same wall.

So, yeah, it's a cinch nobody's going to make a movie about that.

Whew. I feel better. Sometimes you just need to get the snark out. I apologize, but it's Jimmy Carter, and I'm only human. Being as nobody's figured out how to pull his passport yet, our elder Useful Idiot set out once again this week to service his tyrant fetish and convince his "old friends," the Castro brothers, to release Alan Gross, an American sentenced to 15 years for bringing Internet equipment and satellite phones to Cuban citizens.

And by all accounts, it was a lovely visit, except for the part where Carter went home alone because his "old friends" were unconvinced by his pledge that Gross was "innocent of any serious threat" to the "Cuban people."

For the best commentary on that remarkable statement, I defer to Real Cuba. (Hat tip to Gateway Pundit)

"No, socotroco, he [Gross] is not in jail for being a threat to the Cuban people, he is in jail for being a threat to the brutal dictator in Cuba, who is scared to death of the Internet and is trying to prevent the Cuban people from having access to news of what is happening in their own country and around the world.

The only threat to the Cuban people comes from the Castro brothers, and the useful idiots like Jimmy Carter who are always finding excuses for the Castros' genocide against the Cuban people.

Carter also met with Cuba's walking corpse and "retired" dictator, who he called an "old friend."
It is hard to comprehend that this idiot was at one time president of this great country."

Carter also assured his "old friends" that he didn't support the U.S. trade restrictions and the continued incarceration of five Cuban spies in the U.S. because, I presume, we all have sins to atone for.

For example the Castro dictators might imprison 11 million of their own countryman and an American who threatened the Cuban people — but not "seriously" — with satellite phones, but we're not exactly pure as the wind-driven snow either. That's because we're holding the Cuban 5: Castro operatives — or "Cuban patriots" according to Carter — who infiltrated the Miami-based Cuban humanitarian group, Brothers to the Rescue, making it possible for Castro shoot down one of their mercy missions to those dehydrated, sunburned, half-drowned Cuban families that tend to bob about on inner tubes in the Caribbean. (Why do they do that, anyway?) And that constitutes moral equivalence in Carter's view.

Honestly, Carter's usefulness is anybody's call, but… what an idiot.

by Elena


From: Thinklets

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