Oh my, what a momentous occasion. Marking the end of 54 years of diplomatic hostilities, the Cuban flag was raised this morning at the new embassy (previously the Cuban consulate building) in Washington D.C. – Woo-hoo!
 
 

Wait – what? Has Cuba finally been liberated from its communist dictatorship?! Are the Castro brothers dead and buried? Have all political prisoners been freed?
 

Well, no. In fact, according to most unbiased accounts, liberation is the last thing that’s taking place in República de Cuba…

In Cuba, leading dissidents say the regime has sharply increased its repression and detained a growing number of its opponents since the December announcement that the two countries would work to re-establish diplomatic relations.

Source: Wall Street Journal via Marketwatch

 
Must be Obama’s magic touch. (Everything he touches turns to crap!)
 
Earlier this month (in an article that unfortunately has since been “archived” and is no longer available) Tom Shattuck at the Boston Herald asked the question all freedom-loving Americans want to know ~ Why are we rewarding murderous dictators? ~

For decades the American left has done its best to convince us that Cuba is a benign, progressive paradise that just needs to be unshackled from our tyranny. But the record is clear: The Castros are running a murderous dictatorship 90 miles south of Key West that has exported violence around the world […]
 
Raul Castro has made no meaningful concessions. In fact, the Castro regime wants the U.S. to “return to Cuba the territory illegally occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base” and “compensate the Cuban people for all the human and economic damages caused by the United States policies.”
 
And what do we, and more importantly the Cuban people, get? Zilch.

 
On the contrary, as this Washington Post editorial related ~

(I)n the first six months of Mr. Obama’s normalization of relations with the Communist regime, most indicators of human rights on the island have moved in the wrong direction.
 
Since December, there have been more than 3,000 political detentions in Cuba, including 641 in May and 220 on Sunday alone, according to dissident sources.
 
Most were accompanied by beatings; at least 20 detainees required medical treatment in May. After Cuba was invited for the first time to the Summit of the Americas in Panama, regime thugs attacked the civil society activists who also showed up.

 
As recently as last Thursday the PanAm Post reported ~

Just days away from the historic reopening of the US embassy in Havana, the Cuban regime shows no sign of slowing down on the number of human-rights activists they arrest. On Sunday, July 12, Cuban police detained at least 120 dissidents, including 40 members of the Ladies in White, while a protest in solidarity took place in Miami.

 
For 13 consecutive Sundays, Cuban authorities have arrested members of the Ladies in White dissident group either before or after traditional mass at the Santa Rita church in Havana.

The Ladies in White are a group of wives and relatives of human rights defenders, librarians, independent journalists and others who have been imprisoned for political dissent. The women regularly hold peaceful protests. And, as the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba explains ~

They have sent letters to foreign governments as well as Cuban officials, appealing on behalf of their loved ones unfairly sentenced to prison. The Cuban Ladies in White ask for the release of all political prisoners. Though threatened daily, these women have stood strong against the Cuban government and opposition. They remain committed to peaceful advocacy but refuse to back down or give in.

Tragically, in this island “paradise,” even the Catholic Church is communist. This story from Breitbart reports that one church in the central Cuban city of Cienfuegos has actually banned the Ladies in White from attending mass! ~

Despite overt targeting on the part of Cuban authorities, Catholic officials have insisted on defending the Cuban government against their congregants. In an interview on Spanish radio this month, Archbishop of Havana Jaime Ortega made the perplexing claim that Cuba no longer houses political prisoners. 😯 “When Pope Benedict came [to Cuba], there was a pardon of the common prisoners, because there are no political prisoners left in Cuba anymore,” he alleged.
 
Cuban activists have reacted with horror to Ortega’s remarks, particularly in light of a scheduled visit to the island by Pope Francis himself in September. The visit, said 17-year political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez, will be “a very dangerous visit, because it will serve to legitimize the regime like never before.”
 
 
Berta Soler, head of the Ladies in White group, responded with similar outrage, given that Ortega’s remarks render the families of the women in her group nonexistent. “We find it deplorable that Cardinal [Ortega] uses the same rhetoric as the Cuban government. The Catholic Church should not be biased; it should protect and shelter every suffering, defenseless person,” she said in a statement.

Not that Obama or his merry band of leftists – including the mainstream media – will notice or care, but there are a couple voices of strong dissent speaking out against our government’s reckless encouragement of dictators. Cuban-American lawmakers denounced the embassy reopening ~

“Allowing the opening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington is nothing but another indefensible capitulation by the Obama administration to an avowed enemy of the U.S.,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), with Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.) and Carlos Curbelo (R., Fla.).

 
And, from the son of a Cuban refugee, and the guy who should be our next president…

“President Obama announced today he is continuing his policy of unconditional surrender to Fidel and Raul Castro by rewarding one of the most violently anti-American regimes on the planet with an embassy and an official representative of our government. I, for one, want the Cuban people to know that there are still those who stand with them, and who know the Castros for what they are.
 
I will hold any nominee President Obama sends to the Senate to be ambassador to Cuba, and I will work to disapprove any new funds for embassy construction in Havana, unless and until the President can demonstrate that he has made some progress in alleviating the misery of our friends, the people of Cuba.”
~ Senator Ted Cruz

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Related:

‘A Victory for Our People’: Communist Icons Take over D.C. for Cuban Flag Raising ~

Granma, the official propaganda outlet for the Cuban government, is treating the ceremony as a victory for the communist revolution. In an article quoting the various members of the delegation to D.C., a number of them described the flag-raising ceremony as analogous to a military victory against America […]
 
(Raúl) Castro has vowed to offer the United States “nothing in return” for diplomacy, least of all the release of prisoners of conscience or an end to the oppressive policies that ban any political activity not controlled by the Communist Party.

Cuba: Catholic Church Bans Relatives of Political Prisoners from Mass
Dictators of a feather – Obama cozies up to Communist Cuba

Last week, during Pope Francis’ visit to Bolivia, President Evo Morales presented the pontiff with a curious memento: a crucifix fashioned from a hammer and sickle. A classic communist symbol, as the AP reported, it is patterned after one created by Luis Espinal, a leftist Jesuit priest slain in 1980.
 
Now those of us with a discerning view of human history are understandably troubled by the jarring incongruity of the two worldviews represented on the icon. The cross is a blessed reminder of the ultimate sacrifice, saving grace, and the eternal hope of all mankind. In sharp contrast, the hammer & sickle symbolizes the most murderous ideology the world has seen thus far.
 
Not to be too alarmist here, but the worldwide (considering the influence of the Catholic Church) implications of Pope Francis’ acceptance of this affront to true Christianity are staggering.

 
As usual Dennis Prager has an astute assessment ~

Why Pope Francis Is Keeping His Hammer-and-Sickle Crucifix ~

 

The pope’s acceptance of Morales’s gift — along with his attacks on capitalism during his Latin American tour — further confirms one of the most troubling moral developments of our time: The Roman Catholic Church is currently led by a man whose social, political, and economic views have been shaped by leftism more than by any other religious or moral system.[…]
 
In terms of evil committed, what is the difference between the hammer and sickle and the swastika? Would the pope receive, let alone keep, a Fascist, racist, or Nazi sculpture with a crucified Christ on it? Of course not. Yet the hammer and sickle represents more human suffering than all of them combined. The number of people enslaved and murdered under the hammer and sickle dwarfs the number of people enslaved and murdered by any other doctrine in history.
 
 
To make things worse, Pope Francis received this gift from a man (Morales) wearing a picture of Che Guevara on his jacket. Is that, too, not worthy of condemnation by the Vatican? Che Guevara devoted his life to undermining human liberty, and to killing innocents in the name of Communism.[…]
 
There could not have been a gift that more accurately represents this pope’s value system than Christ crucified on a hammer and sickle. First, in a literal sense, that is exactly what Communists have done wherever they have assumed power — crucified Christ by working to violently destroy Christianity and murder Christians. Second, in a figurative sense, the gift represents the mélange of Christianity and Marxism, precisely what much of the Church — again, especially in Latin America, and especially in the person of this pope — stands for.[…]
 
My heart breaks for the millions of Catholics who feel that their beloved Church is being led over a moral and religious cliff by a leftist pope and innumerable other leftists among cardinals, bishops, and parish priests.
Though I am not a Catholic, my heart breaks too. The only institutions that can resist the left-wing takeover of contemporary life are religious ones. When they fail, upon which institutions can we depend?

 
And so, now what? Prager continues ~

Tragically, we cannot turn to the contemporary Catholic Church. When the pope keeps a hammer-and-sickle crucifix; when the pope declares free-market capitalism, the one economic system that has lifted masses of people out of poverty, to be largely evil (“the dung of the devil”); when Cuba’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega declares that there are no political prisoners in Cuba; and when the pope issues an encyclical on global warming while the oldest Christian communities in the world are exterminated, it is clear that while one can still turn to individual Catholic priests and lay leaders for moral guidance, one cannot turn to the Church and its pope for moral guidance. On the contrary. One must fight back.

 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related:
Ann Barnhardt, who is Catholic, is a bit more direct than Prager ~It Is Now Appropriate To Begin Serious Discussions as to Whether Pope Francis is, in fact, The Antichrist 😯

 
Why Did Catholic Media Get the Commie-Crucifix Story Wrong? ~ Illuminating article by Pat Archbold reveals just which sources can and can’t be trusted to report the truth about this pope and his antics

 
The President & the Pope share a twisted worldview