From The Havana Times…How Obama Threw fuel on the Fire of Corruption

Corruption in Cuba, a Multi-Tiered Problem

June 9, 2018

Osmel Ramirez Alvarez

A butcher’s shop in Havana. Photo: Juan Suarez

HAVANA TIMES — We don’t really know the exact scale of the corruption in Cuba. Figures on corruption aren’t published and most cases punishable by law aren’t published by pro-government media. We only know about the ones which are in the government’s political or strategic interest, which circulate on cell phones or by well-known “gossip”.

Nevertheless, we can deduce how deeply this evil has rooted itself in our country. If a leader or official earns less than 1500 Cuban pesos (60 CUC) and doesn’t have any other source of income, how can they keep up a lifestyle as if they were earning 500 or 1000 CUC?; how do female leaders and workers’ pay for their beauty treatments if they cost more per month than their wages?

It’s incredible but true. Very few wages can afford to buy the most regular pair of shoes. Technically-speaking, if someone who works for the State is dressing well and wearing decent shoes, and is eating after the 10th of the month, then they are involved in crime or receives family remittances from abroad.

There are more “big shots” in the capital than in the provinces which is why we can see more corruption and there are more stories about the bourgeois lifestyle of Party leaders and their offspring. Employees at good restaurants and hotels witness their large expenses (as a family or with friends a lot of the time) billed to the State or with their wads of hard currency and they talk about it on the street. We also know about private businesses and their successful ventures who are immune to being harassed by inspectors and government officials of course, who normally suck the rest dry or stop them in their tracks.

On the other hand, the vast majority of Cuban workers (maybe 99.9%) steal something from their workplace to make up their wages, which isn’t enough even in the best of cases. When there isn’t anything tangible and valuable to take, then time is stolen and that time is used to resolve something that money can’t, like in an alternative business for example. And to top off the list, there’s also “favoritism” and influence peddling, which come in the form of benefits.

The Cuban system is dysfunctional and that’s why it survives on the foundations of illegal activity and corruption. Marxism-Leninism is the official ideology, but it’s really “hypocrisy”. The need to steal and be corrupt was made evident with Fidel’s idea (when he completely failed to recognize the country’s reality) of placing “Party duos” to check and watch over how things are run. It was chaos: nothing worked, people suffered great shortages and the country came to a standstill. A few months later, they had to remove them and they have never done this again.

For this political, economic and social anomaly to work, at least basically, we have to let managers live off of influence peddling because otherwise, nobody would be a manager because the wages aren’t encouraging. And if workers can’t “struggle”, nobody would work at state-run companies. When you’re offered a job, people don’t ask how much you earn but how much can you “struggle” there?

The private sector isn’t exempt from these structural atrocities. It is being reborn with many legal and bureaucratic struggles, like a necessary evil with regulations so it can’t grow. You have to be involved in crime just to work a little bit even. And in order to grow and become a thriving business: it’s legally impossible! (even though it seems legal from afar).

Una bodega de la esquina. Foto: Juan Suárez

The vast majority of private, large and small businesses commit illegal activities in order to operate and the same thing happens in state-controlled companies. Not to mention corruption which rears its ugly head and seduces when these practices become commonplace.

For example: every private pizza place in Cuba and sweet and cake maker works using flour stolen from warehouses and bakeries: they don’t have any other stable or viable supplier because of prices. And every private transport vehicle, “almendrones” (the old US cars) taxis and trucks, run using stolen diesel: because buying it legally would double the price, which is already high as it is. And this happens in every business.

The government knows what’s really going on but it also knows that the solution will most certainly lead to dangerous decisions about their own power, which is just as illegitimate. That’s why they live with corruption while things appear to be working, but as soon as they want to get rid of a bothersome leader, they pull out his file with these alleged faults, which are the barbaric things he had to do in order to work or the little bit extra they skivvied which they had always tolerated in the past. And they bury them!

And when they want to screw over a private business owner, someone who is becoming more powerful, too rich for their taste, after having lived with him for years and using him in their production or income plans, they destroy him without any problem. It’s so easy to prove illegal activities and bad practices when they feel like opening their eyes. There’s no escape.

In short, there isn’t any real or serious law against corruption because that would be detrimental to the system itself, which has to work hand-in-hand with it. What might seem like a new anti-corruption law is just a few selective blows to prevent private wealth accumulation or to recycle bothersome Party members. If only I were wrong…

Implement Title III of the Helms-Burton Act: Stop the Obama Sponsored Politically Sanctioned Organized Crime

Title III of the Helms-Burton Act is the essential component of United States Cuba policy.  It allows Americans, including Cuban-Americans, whose property was confiscated in Cuba to sue traffickers in US court.  This right has been suspended for 23 years until recently, when it became effective only against Cuban entities.  However, since 2015 American companies trafficking in stolen Cuban properties have been protected by the suspension, a completely unintended consequence that is entirely unjustifiable and hypocritical.  This must stop.

The actual embargo of Cuba originates from a singular crime: the theft of all private property in Cuba by the military dictatorship despite requirements in the confiscatory fiats, Cuba’s constitution and international law to compensate the owners.  Every nation placed an embargo against Cuba until their property claims were settled.  Cuba, however, has failed to meet its obligations to settle the claims of Americans and refuses to settle those of Cuban nationals. 

Title III, which actually has been in effect since 1996, establishes steep liability aimed to prevent and severely punish traffickers.  That is, damages are accruing and are non-extinguishable.

The suspension provision placed by President Clinton was intended as a grace period for foreign companies to divest or receive permission from the legitimate owners for using their properties.  However, perpetual suspensions by feckless or ideologically perverted Administrations became the legal underpinning for “doing business” with Cuba’s dictatorship and, because virtually everything in Cuba is stolen, trafficking in stolen property.

In 2014 the Obama Administration- both feckless and perverted- launched an unprincipled and thoughtless engagement of Cuba’s dictatorship that exacerbated matters.  American companies joined as traffickers.  Most egregiously, the cruise lines began knowingly and intentionally trafficking in our stolen properties, the ports in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.  Like many American companies in Cuba, they violate US law to profit from our stolen properties and exploit (Afro-Cuban) slave labor with the permission and protection of the US government.  Like spoiled children, they continue to do so because they can, regardless of the consequences.  Like bad parents, the government ignores their obligations.

Such immoral alliances have significantly bolstered the coffers of Cuba’s military-controlled tourist sector, the second largest source of hard currency for the dictatorship (after human trafficking).  This notwithstanding that American tourism, which occurs under the ruse of “licensed travel”, is expressly prohibited under US law.  Innocently and ignorantly the American public in their zeal to “see Cuba before it changes”, lacking the insight to realize they are the villainous vector for change, is succeeding the former Soviet Union and Venezuela as the dictatorship’s primary patron and lifeblood.

Foreign countries criticize Title III as extra-territorial in nature, which is a completely disingenuous, self-serving and hypocritical claim.  Title III is no more extraterritorial than claims by these foreigners that their business activity trafficking in stolen American property in Cuba is legitimate.  Furthermore, extraterritoriality is no defense for American companies. 

The fact is that Title III faithfully reflects the intent of international law prohibiting expropriation without prompt and sufficient compensation.  International venues to settle property disputes are very weak, inefficient and ineffective.  The United States has every right to open its courts to punish traffickers, certainly American traffickers.  Criticisms to the contrary are an affront to U.S. sovereignty.  

Yet, the legal requirement for the suspension that it be “necessary to the national interests of the United States and will expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba“.  How is it in our national interest to allow trafficking in stolen American properties, particularly by other Americans?  This only encourages rogue governments to confiscate such properties with impunity, making American investment abroad less secure.

Moreover, it is patently obvious that 23 years of suspensions have not expedited a transition to democracy in Cuba.  Doing so has entrenched the white, male military dictatorship.  It’s the definition of insanity.

The Trump Administration ended the policy of six month suspensions, shortening them to 45, 30 and now 14 days.  Secretary Pompeo should immediately end the suspension for American entities, which was never intended to provide legal cover for unscrupulous American opportunists to traffic in stolen Cuban property.  Title III is US law and there is no justification to immunize any American from the consequences of violating American law.  Giving them a pass relinquishes the necessary moral authority to hold anyone accountable.  It is the height of hypocrisy.

In fact, all these American companies in Cuba insist they’re not traffic and that their activities are legal.  Why should they worry or need cover in the form of the waiver?  The implementation of Title III should be a non-event.

Indeed, such corruption and cronyism are what damn capitalism.  It should be no mystery why socialism is on the rise amongst millennials.  They see the exploitation of people, resources and institutions in the name of capitalism and are repulsed.  They see the exploiters, the connected and captains of industry, not held accountable and logically conclude the system is rigged.  This is why many distrust capitalism, dislike Americans and in the extreme some fly planes into our buildings to kill us.

Justice, however, won’t be served solely by making these corporations pay damages.  Their executives must be held accountable for their serial violations of Federal law, including those prohibiting financing transactions involving confiscated Cuban properties.  They must pay stiff fines and go to jail.  This is the only way to re-establish faith and credibility in our system.

Some consider the embargo to be “failed policy”.  If so, look no further than the suspension of Title III as the reason.  The reality is the embargo has never seriously been implemented.  As a consequence, the Cuban dictatorship has survived and has for decades destabilized the hemisphere sowing poverty, narco-trafficking, violence and migration crises that threaten our border and national security.

While the partial suspension on March 4, 2019 ultimately ensures the full implementation of Title III so as to guarantee due process and equal protection to all claimants, it is time to enforce the law and stop the flow of dollars from the American public to the Cuban dictatorship.  It’s long past time to stop the politically sanctioned organized crime.  

Javier Garcia-Bengochea, M.D., Port of Santiago de Cuba

Mickael Sosthenes Behn, President, Havana Docks Corp.

Below: The late Mr. William S. Behn, owner of Havana Docks, Corp., the day rebels came to inform him his property would be confiscated, the last American property to be stolen by the Castro dictatorship (11/22/60).

 

The Truth About Cuba Series- The Big Ag Lobby Scam

In the next few posts we’ll reprint noteworthy public statements by various defenders of freedom for Cuba expressed over the past several years that we believe are “must reads”. In this post, probably the most informed and active of these people, Mauricio Claver-Carone, formerly the Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, gives a brilliant and incisive exposé to House Committee on Agriculture during their September 14th, 2016  “American Agricultural Trade With Cuba” hearing on the agricultural lobby’s deceit to sell products to deadbeat Cuba that leaves American taxpayers guaranteeing payment.   Mr. Claver-Carone pulls the curtain on these opportunists and their cheerleaders in the Obama Administration to reveal them all as pure scammers.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member and Members of the Committee.
It’s truly a privilege to join you here today to discuss important and consequential issues surrounding U.S. agricultural trade with Cuba. I commend you for including a dissenting voice on this panel.
My name is Mauricio Claver-Carone and I’m the Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Cuba.
My testimony will be divided into two parts. First, I would like to present key facts regarding agricultural trade with Cuba and highlight the counter-productive trends we are seeing since President Obama announced a new policy of unconditional engagement with the Castro regime on December 17th, 2014. Second, I would like to focus on the issue of financing agricultural sales to Cuba, which I understand is a priority for my fellow panelists, with the good faith and disposition to find common ground.
The Reality of Trade With Cuba
As you are surely aware, pursuant to the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (‘TSREEA’), the sale of agricultural commodities, medicine and medical devices to the Castro regime in Cuba was authorized by Congress, with one important caveat – these sales must be for “cash-in-advance.” Prior to that, the export of food, medicine and medical devices to the Cuban people had already been authorized under the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (‘CDA’).
This is an important distinction that needs to be made, for in order to have a productive discussion about agricultural trade with Cuba, one should understand how the island’s totalitarian regime conducts business.
In most of the world, trade means dealing with privately-owned or operated corporations. That’s not the case in Cuba. In Cuba, foreign trade and investment is the exclusive domain of the state, namely the Castro regime. There are no “exceptions.”
Here’s a noteworthy fact: In the last five decades, every single “foreign trade” transaction with Cuba has been with a state entity, or individual acting on behalf of the state. The state’s exclusivity regarding trade and investment remains enshrined in Article 18 of Castro’s 1976 Constitution.
Since the passage of TSREEA in 2000, over $5 billion in U.S. agricultural products have been sold to Cuba. It is an unpleasant fact, however, that all of those sales by more than 250 privately-owned U.S. companies were made to only one Cuban buyer – the Castro regime.  As the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (‘USDA’) own report on Cuba notes, “The key difference in exporting to Cuba, compared to other countries in the region, is that all U.S. agricultural exports must be channeled through one Cuban government agency, ALIMPORT.”
ALIMPORT is an acronym for Empresa Cubana Importadora de Alimentos, S.A. It is a subsidiary of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and serves as the sole procurement agency for U.S. agricultural products. Throughout the years, the Castro regime has ensured the Ministry of Foreign Trade is run by senior officials from Cuba’s intelligence services (known as Directorio General de Inteligencia, or ‘DGI’). The current Minister of Foreign Trade is a DGI official, Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, who is the son of Isidoro Malmierca Peoli, a historic Castro family confidant and founder of Cuba’s counter- intelligence and state-security services.
Hence another unpleasant fact: All business decisions in Cuba are based on the political and control-based calculations of the Castro regime — not on market forces. If the Cuban people enjoyed property rights to establish their businesses and were allowed to freely partake in foreign trade and investment – my testimony today would be very different.
ALIMPORT primarily supplies government institutions, and the Cuban military’s hard currency retail stores (known as Tiendas de Recuperacion de Divisas, ‘TRDs’), hotels and other facilities that cater to tourists and other foreigners.
So let’s immediately debunk a myth: Financing agricultural transactions with Cuba is not about assisting small and midsize farmers on the island, but about financing a monopoly of the Castro regime.
Again, as the USDA itself recognizes: “U.S. food products will be sold and delivered to Alimport, which will take control of the imports at the Cuban point of entry, manage distribution throughout Cuba and coordinate payments. Consequently, U.S. agricultural firms planning on doing business with Cuba need to learn to negotiate and transact business with the Cuban government through Alimport.”
As a result, we already know what any further lifting sanctions towards Cuba would look like. TSREEA sales from the U.S. and business ventures with other nations exhibit the model: A mercantilist system whereby commerce is simply a tool to benefit and strengthen its totalitarian regime.
President Obama’s Policy Changes Have Proven Counter-Productive
President Obama’s policy of unilaterally easing sanctions has proven to be counter- productive for agricultural sales to Cuba. But before focusing on those figures, it’s important to note how President Obama’s new policy has broadly proven to yield counter-productive results.  For example, since December 17th, 2014:
• Political arrests have intensified. Throughout 2015, there were more than 8,616 documented political arrests in Cuba. Thus far, there have already been over 7,935 political arrests during the first eight months of 2016. This represents the highest rate of political arrests in decades and nearly quadruples the tally of political arrests throughout all of 2010 (2,074), early in Obama’s presidency.
• A new Cuban migration crisis has unfolded. The United States is faced with the largest migration of Cuban nationals since the rafters of 1994. The number of Cubans fleeing to the United States in 2015 was nearly twice that of 2014. Some 51,000 Cubans last year entered the United States and this year’s figures will easily surpass that. The numbers of Cuban nationals fleeing the island have
now quintupled since President Obama took office, when it was less than 7,000 annually.
• Castro’s military monopolies are displacing “self-employed” workers. There are fewer licensed “self-employed” workers in Cuba today than in 2014. In contrast, Castro’s military monopolies are expanding at record pace. The Cuban military-owned tourism company, Gaviota S.A., announced 12% growth in 2015 and expects to double its hotel business this year. Even the limited spaces in which “self-employed” workers previously operated are being squeezed as the Cuban military expands its control of the island’s travel, retail and financial sectors of the economy.
• Internet “connectivity ranking” has dropped. The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Measuring the Information Society Report for 2015, the world’s most reliable source of data and analysis on global access to information and communication. ITU has dropped Cuba’s ranking to 129 from 119. The island fares much worse than some of the world’s most infamous suppressors of the Internet suppressors, including Zimbabwe (127), Syria (117), Iran (91), China (82) and Venezuela (72).
• Religious freedom violations have increased tenfold. According to the London- based NGO, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (‘CSW’), last year 2,000 churches were declared illegal and 100 were designated for demolition by the Castro regime. Altogether, CSW documented 2,300 separate violations of religious freedom in 2015 compared to 220 in 2014. In the first half of 2016, there have already been 1,606 separate violations of religious freedom.
• Democracy’s regional foes have been emboldened. President Obama’s unconditional recognition and engagement of the sole remaining dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere has sent a message to Castro’s allies in the region that there are no consequences for rogue and undemocratic behavior. Hence the recent militarization (with Cuba’s support) of Venezuela’s regime and the parliamentary coup in Nicaragua.
Agricultural sales have not escaped this downward trend.
Over the years, in this same Committee room, I have heard testimony professing that an easing of sanctions; re-defining of “cash-in advance”; improving U.S.-Cuba relations; and an increase in travel to the island, would benefit U.S. farmers. And, as we all know, since December 17th, 2014, the Obama Administration has engaged the Castro regime and extended a litany of unilateral concessions.
As part of these concessions, the Obama Administration has redefined “cash-in- advance”; eased payment terms for agricultural sales; American travel to Cuba has increased by over 50%; Cuba’s GDP grew last year by over 4%; diplomatic relations were established; and endless U.S. business and trade delegations have visited Havana.
Yet, U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba plummeted by nearly 40% in 2015. During the first quarter of 2016, the slide continued, as ALIMPORT purchased only $63 million in U.S. agricultural products. That is an additional 21% percent drop from the same period in 2015. These are the lowest numbers since the United States authorized agricultural exports to the Castro regime in 2000.
Of course, those who understand how the Castro regime operates are not surprised — for it has long used agricultural sales as a tool of political influence.
As a 2007 report of the U.S. International Trade Commission (‘ITC’) confirmed: “Alimport reportedly initiated a policy in 2003 that limited or ceased purchases from U.S. companies that did not actively lobby the U.S. government for changes to laws and regulations regarding trade with Cuba. Purchases are also allegedly geared to particular U.S. States or Congressional districts in an effort to heighten local interests in pressing the Administration to normalize trade with Cuba.”
Today is no different. The Castro regime wants the U.S. Congress to lift tourism, financing and investment sanctions that would overwhelmingly benefit its military monopolies, so it is putting on the squeeze.
Financing Agricultural Sales to Cuba
We will surely hear testimony today about Cuba being one of the U.S.’s largest export markets pre-1959 and how we need to “recapture” it. Politics aside, I would caution that Cuba’s economy is nowhere near the same today as it was throughout its pre-1959 history, when it was free-market oriented, with a dynamic private sector, property rights, and among the largest middle class and highest per capita income in Latin America at the time. Today, Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship, with a centralized control economy and the lowest per capita income in Latin America.
We will also surely hear testimony about Cuba purchasing rice from Brazil and Vietnam, instead of from the United States, as a result of the prohibition on U.S. financing for agricultural sales. But I would caution that B5razil and Vietnam’s rice sales to the Castro
regime are heavily state-subsidized and made pursuant to political arrangements. They are not based on competitive terms and rates. I would further argue that the recent downfall of the socialist government in Brazil — and its shady financing deals with the Castro regime that are currently under investigation by the Brazilian authorities — may lead to a bigger increase in U.S. rice sales to Cuba than anything the U.S. Congress could do.
Finally, we will surely hear many theories and estimates about how much more money one commodity sector or another — or one state or another — can make from exports to the Cuba, if U.S. sanctions were further eased or lifted. However, as we’ve learned from the dramatic decline in agricultural sales figures over the last year — despite the Obama Administration easing of sanctions and establishing diplomatic relations with the Castro regime — that is hardly guaranteed.
Let me be absolutely clear. Those of us who support sanctions and oppose the financing of transactions with the Castro regime do not do so with the intent of harming American farmers. Conversely, I know that American farmers do not seek to sell their products with the intent of supporting or subsidizing the Castro regime.
American farmers are the best in the world and we all share their desire to establish and expand markets. As a matter of fact, I’m sure Cuban-Americans in Florida consume more rice than any amount ever sold to Cuba pre- or post-1959. However, the agricultural groups represented here today remain steadfast in their desire for the financing of agricultural sales to Cuba and there is even legislation before this Committee to that end.
But any such proposition must be weighed by serious factual considerations regarding the troubling structure of Cuba’s business entities (military-run monopolies), its beneficiaries (the Castro family and regime cronies), the rights of its victims (both Cubans and Americans), and whether such practices are in the U.S.’s security interests.
Thus, the question comes down to: How to authorize private financing for U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba without subsidizing its derelict regime and in a manner consistent with U.S. security interests and the rights of victims?
We are obviously not going to resolve this challenge today. But hopefully, this discussion can be helpful in understanding each other’s concerns and in highlighting important safeguards that could address broader policy implications.
These safeguards fall into three categories:

1. Protect American Taxpayers.
Cuba ranks among the world’s worst credit-risks and debtor nations. Moody’s Investors Service gives Cuba’s sovereign debt a Caa2 rating, which translates into “very high credit risk.”
Despite highly publicized (and politicized) debt forgiveness concessions from Russia and the Paris Club, Cuba still owes upward of $75 billion to a long international list of creditors. As recently as 2010, Reuters reported how Cuba “failed to make some debt payments on schedule beginning in 2008, and then froze up to $1 billion in the accounts of foreign suppliers by the start of 2009.” That should make anyone unwise enough to leave money sitting in a Cuban bank account reconsider.
And just a few months ago, on July 8th, 2016, General Raul Castro stated, in his own words: “I should recognize that there have been some delays in current payments to creditors.”
I am confident we all agree that American taxpayers must not be exposed to any direct bailout of the Castro regime. It is for this reason that TSREEA includes a prohibition (Sec. 7207(a)) on United States assistance, which reads:
“No United States Government assistance, including United States foreign assistance, United States export assistance, and any United States credit or guarantees shall be available for exports to Cuba.”
But American taxpayers should also not be exposed to any indirect bailout of the Castro regime. Thus, TSREEA should further be supplemented by a prohibition in the Internal Revenue Code that would prevent any losses stemming from commercial transactions with Cuba’s regime — pursuant to Obama’s policy changes — from being deducted when calculating business taxes.
2. Protect American Victims of Stolen Property.
According to the Inter-American Law Review, the Castro regime’s confiscation of U.S. assets was the “largest uncompensated taking of American property by a foreign government in history.” Unfortunately, President Obama’s policy of expanding business transactions with the Castro regime is already encouraging American companies to traffic and exploit properties stolen from other fellow Americans. Any expansion of such transactions by the U.S. Congress would further expose American victims.
There are nearly 6,000 unpaid, certified claims, worth nearly $7 billion arising from the Castro regime’s confiscation of American-owned business and properties. They include many of the ports and other infrastructure used for agricultural exports to Cuba.
American farmers understand the importance of property rights. Property is the very core of farming. As such, it is easy for farmers to appreciate the injustice of having your property stolen, and then coopted, exploited and marketed to someone else to the benefit of the thief. This injustice must be corrected and resolved for the victims. Part of that solution will involve restitution from those collaborators who have knowingly benefited from the theft. The injustices occurring today in Cuba regarding confiscated property must be resolved; U.S. law promises that it will, and it is not just the Castro regime that is on the hook.
It is for this reason that Section 103 of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (‘Libertad Act’) contains a prohibition on the indirect financing of Cuba, which states:
“No loan, credit, or other financing may be extended knowingly by a United States national, a permanent resident alien, or a United States agency to any person for the purpose of financing transactions involving any confiscated property the claim to which is owned by a United States national.”
The American victims of stolen property in Cuba must not only remain protected from any financing involving their property, but they should be provided recourse.
Unfortunately, President Obama is denying any recourse — through his waiver of Title III of the Libertad Act — to Americans who are now seeing their property rights trampled upon by other fellow Americans. That used to be unimaginable. If the Obama Administration is unwilling to protect the rights of grieved Americans, then a private right of action should allow for the victims to do so directly through the rule of law.
As such, the U.S. Congress should pass legislation to end the President’s waiver authority over Title III of the Libertad Act and grant Americans the legal standing to pursue justice.
3. Prevent Support for Cuban Military Entities.
Today, the Cuban military owns and operates one of the largest conglomerates in Latin America, known as the Grupo de Administración Empresarial, S.A., or GAESA. Its portfolio includes companies that dominate ports, trade zones, tourist attractions, restaurants, hotels, real estate, retail stores, currency exchanges, gas stations, airlines, and other transportation services. Its head, Gen. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, is Raul’s son-in-law.
Far from empowering Cuba’s small sector of “self-employed” residents, the Castro regime is taking full advantage of President Obama’s new policy to accelerate the military’s holdings of every entity poised to benefit from current U.S.-Cuba relations.
As an Associated Press report this weekend confirmed: “the [Cuban] military’s long- standing business wing, GAESA, assumed a higher profile after Gen. Raul Castro became president in 2008, positioning the armed forces as perhaps the prime beneficiary of a post-detente boom in tourism. Gaviota, the military’s tourism arm, is in the midst of a hotel building spree that outpaces projects under control of nominally civilian agencies like the Ministry of Tourism. The military-run Mariel port west of Havana has seen double-digit growth fueled largely by demand in the tourism sector. The armed forces this year took over the bank that does business with foreign companies, assuming control of most of Cuba’s day-to-day international financial transactions, according to a bank official.”

Let there be no doubt, the Cuban military is already encroaching into the U.S. agricultural trade sphere, which is currently under the direction of the nominally-civilian Ministry of Foreign Trade. However, if Congress were to authorize any financing for agricultural sales to Cuba, I guarantee that GAESA would absorb ALIMPORT as swiftly — with no legal process and lack of transparency — as it recently did Habaguanex, S.A. and Banco Financiero Internacional. (Both were the focus of the AP story referenced in the prior paragraph).
With great foresight, just a few months after President Obama announced his new Cuba policy, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (Cal.), and the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry (Tex.), anticipated this trend and introduced the Cuban Military Transparency Act (H.R. 2937), which seeks to ensure that any increase in resources to Cuba — pursuant the Obama Administration’s recent policy changes — truly reach the Cuban people and are not funneled through the Castro regime’s armed forces.
After all, these are the same Cuban armed forces that recently held a stolen U.S. Hellfire missile for nearly two years; that have been caught twice internationally-smuggling heavy weaponry, including the worst sanctions violations ever to North Korea; that oversee the most egregious abuses of human rights in the Western Hemisphere; that are subverting democracy in Venezuela and exporting surveillance systems and technology to other countries in the region; that welcome Russian military intelligence ships to dock in their ports; that share intelligence with the world’s most dangerous anti-American regimes; and of which three senior Cuban military officers remain indicted in the United States for the murder of four Americans.
As such, I would urge that this important piece of legislation, introduced by your national security counterparts, remain the priority of any Cuba policy consideration by the U.S. Congress.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. Again, I thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to continuing this important discussion and working in furtherance of our common interests.

Licensed Travel to Cuba May be Legal, but It’s Wrong, Often Done In Violation of the law- and Racist

Recall the criticism of the Cuban vacation taken by Beyonce and Jay-Z in 2013 as a foreshadowing for Barack Obama’s unprincipled capitulation with the white male military dictatorship in Cuba.  Celebrities doing as they please, regardless of the circumstances, above the letter or intent of the law and unconstrained to consider the consequences. However, those were the low hanging mangos. Consider the more disturbing aspects of that trip, which are more evident today.

Unlike most Americans, the Knowles-Carter’s wealth and the Obama’s status afforded them the resources to be enlightened about the evolving situation in Cuba (or anywhere). Should they have known of the severe racism and human rights abuses in Cuba and that overwhelmingly Afro-Cubans are the victims? Yes. In fact, detention and repression in Cuba were at all-time highs during the Obama presidency and like the Jim Crow South, they were arbitrary, unjustified and targeted towards blacks.  They substantially increased after Obama’s opening. 

Applying the minimum of intellectual honesty and critical thinking, since December of 2014 when Obama caved to the dictatorship, the millions of Americans who have flocked to Cuba since for some forbidden fruit, to “see Cuba before it changes” or simply just to enjoy stolen rum and cigar brands, dance salsa, traffic in stolen property or exploit Afro-Cuban slave labor should have realized a basic truth: Cuba is the plantation of the 21st century.  Everything in Cuba is stolen.

What has become of the Cuban revolution from a racial perspective? Blacks remain second class Cubans, worse than before. As Che Guevara said early on, “we’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing.” He was not promoting egalitarianism when he said, “the negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.” Does it matter that he was referring to the Congolese?

More recently in 2003, Mark Sawyer, a political scientist at UCLA (and Obama/Castro apologist) confronted a Cuban Interior Ministry official on page 119 of his book, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba, on why racism was so prevalent in supposedly egalitarian Cuba.  The minister’s answer?  “It is simply a sociological fact that blacks are more violent and criminal than whites. They also do not work as hard and cannot be trusted”. This, mind you, was from a government official. Any wonder if Jay-Z was asked to empty his pockets before he left Cuba?

These reflect the unspoken and unintended consequence of Marxism in the Caribbean: the consideration of blacks as equals, which Fidel Castro, et al, despite popular belief (propaganda) never fully accepted or dealt with over almost 60 years. His fiat mandating the end of racial discrimination to avoid this critical issue had the opposite and pernicious effect of exponentially increasing culturally and institutionally inherent racism there; it was, to be charitable, a cop out.

Yet, when confronted with reality, the incredible poverty in Cuba, race has been a convenient excuse for failure. When asked after a few years why the revolution was struggling, Fidel Castro contemporaneously replied, referring to the mass exodus of professional whites, “you expect me to build a communist utopia with these people (blacks)?”

Amazingly, this has been lost on the regime’s apologists, particularly among African-Americans, some of the regime’s strongest supporters, as well as the media, who exist in Cuba to placate the totalitarians. Being anti-embargo or sympathetic to the Castro regime has become more than political fashion; it is a form of anti-establishmentarianism. They delight in the Castros habitually kicking Uncle Sam in the shins largely because they perceive Cuban socialism to be pro-black (or anti-white and anti-establishment).

All this despite a ruling class in Cuba that remains predominantly white and that Afro-Cubans, who comprise the majority of Cubans, are paid in a worthless second currency.  This is abject slavery.  Yet, so-called “progressives” can’t see this reality.  Cuba’s 2 currency system is the shackles of the 21st century.  Where’s the outrage from these same people who decry the vestiges of slavery in the United States, then exploit slavery when they take a jaunt to Cuba for salsa, (stolen) rum and cigars?

 

Afro-Cubans are discriminated against for jobs and access to resources, overwhelmingly populate Cuban prisons and endure relentless racial harassment. These factors alone should have repulsed the Knowles-Carters in 2013, the Obama’s in 2016 and the millions of Americans who’ve been to Cuba since.  Political ideology- anti-establishmentarianism- blinded them.

African-Americans and Caucasian Americans hold on to their largely uninformed and empirically racist views that the Cuban revolution represents black empowerment akin to our civil rights movement. This cognitive dissonance stems from their ignorance of the above and the simple, misguided predicate that if predominantly white, right-wing, Cuban-American exiles are against Fidel, then they are for him.

What is indisputable is that the pro-democracy movement in Cuba over the past 25 years has been embraced and championed by Afro-Cubans, who comprise its most prominent leaders and activists. Their’s is a model for racial unity in the struggle for a higher ideal: human rights and equality.  The Obama’s, Beyonce and Jay-Z, shamelessly cavorting with and being used by Cuba’s oligarchs, dissed them.

The Obama as well as the Knowles-Carter vacation is no different than any recreational travel to Cuba: it funds the elites in Cuba and strengthens the internal embargo between these elites and Cuba’s people. Such travel to Cuba by Americans, trafficking in stolen property and supporting this abhorrent apartheid further separates Cubans from their very basic freedoms that icons like Rosa Parks and MLK risked and gave their lives to secure. Cuba has dozens of these heroes marginalized by this activity.

So in this context Barack, Michelle, Beyonce and Jay-Z’s escape to Cuba for a fairy tale trip, the forbidden fruit of a vacation enabled by the promiscuity that has infected licensed travel there, to a place that has become a metaphor for the plantation. Yes, they are elites, much like their Cuban hosts, who leveraged their celebrity with their counterparts in our government for pure pleasure without considering this disgraceful reality. While such narcissism may simply be entitlement run amok, they simply should have known better, particularly the President of the United States who is the leader of the free world.

How ironic that America’s first black president would validate the hemisphere’s only dictatorship and slave state. This is the disturbing hypocrisy of their trips, the Obama Presidency and what it stood for, if anything at all.

The Cruise Lines Traffic in Stolen Property: The Criminalty of Obama’s Cuba Policy and Why it Must be Changed

Among the most outrageous consequences of former President Obama’s embrace of Cuba’s white male military dictatorship has been the trafficking by Americans in confiscated- stolen- properties in Cuba. This occurs in clear violation of US law and is, disgracefully, permitted by the US government. The time has come to enforce the law, hold traffickers accountable and end the politically sanctioned organized crime.

The most egregious example has been the cruise lines trafficking in our stolen properties. We are the legitimate owners of the ports of Havana and Santiago de Cuba. Our properties were confiscated in late 1960 without compensation in violation of Cuban and international law.

Shortly after Obama’s capitulation with the dictatorship in Cuba, the cruise lines received licenses from the US Treasury to cruise Cuba. Notwithstanding that a cruise doesn’t remotely qualify as “people to people” travel, The US Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a shill organization for American companies eager to “do business” in Cuba, estimates that the cruise lines will rake in almost $850 million in ticket sales through 2019, while Cuban military owned stores will get almost $90 million. Port fees could exceed $23 million. The cruise lines are enriching themselves propping up the dictatorship.

US law, The Helms-Burton Act, however, is very clear. Trafficking in confiscated properties is expressly prohibited as is any direct or indirect financing of any transaction involving a confiscated property.

Trafficking occurs when one “enters into a commercial arrangement using or otherwise benefiting from confiscated property”. The only applicable exception is if the use of the property is “necessary” for the purpose of the travel. Norwegian Cruise Lines’ CEO has boasted publicly that using “ports are not necessary”. The cruise lines are trafficking.

Moreover, the law clearly states that financial damages for trafficking are accruing and cannot be reversed or extinguished. They are treble since the cruise lines have known the ports in Havana and Santiago are confiscated properties.

Why haven’t we sued?

Unfortunately, there is also a provision in Title III of the law that allows for the President to waive the private right to action to seek damages- our right to sue. When the law originated in 1996 American traffickers were not contemplated. The traffickers were foreigners who threatened retaliation if Title III went into full effect.

The legal justification for the waiver in the law explicitly states that waiving “is in the national interests of the United States and will expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba”. After 21 years of waivers the latter is demonstrably and inarguably false. Cuba remains a totalitarian, family-run, military dictatorship, like North Korea.

How is it in the “national interests of the United States” to permit American entities to traffic in the stolen property of another American? This is ludicrous. It favors one American group at the expense of another. It also undermines the foreign policy of the United States by validating the confiscation of property and making American investment less secure.

Ultimately, the waiver cannot be applied before Helms-Burton is lifted, since damages are non-extinguishable. New legislation would be required to do so, resulting in a fifth amendment claim against the US government, thereby passing the tab to the taxpayer. This is an unacceptable form of corporate welfare.

So Let’s be intellectually honest and apply some critical thinking about Cuba.

Everything there is stolen, from land, buildings, brands, trademarks, cigars and rum to the old American jalopies sputtering about. Even work product is stolen, the two currency system in Cuba is unadulterated, institutionalized slavery. That alone justifies isolating and sanctioning Cuba.

How can one reconcile removing the statue of General Lee from the town square while simultaneously condoning Cuba cruises that traffic in stolen property and exploit Cuban slave labor?

Nonetheless, in an uncharacteristic genuflection to American exceptionalism Mr. Obama reasoned that American capitalism and tourism would build a middle class to transform the dictatorship and usher in political reform, democracy. This despite the engagement of Cuba by more than 200 countries worldwide over twenty five years that had failed to bring change. It was a shameless scam.

How can capitalism work, much less be transformative where everything is stolen and there is no clear title to property? There can’t be credit without collateral.

How can capitalism work without property rights or their protections? In Cuba there is no contract sanctity, no independent judiciary and no transparency in the enforcement and regulatory agencies.

The fact is American companies aren’t in Cuba to create change. They’re in Cuba to make money. They have consciously partnered with the Cuban military, who owns the tourist industry and controls most of the economy, not the government. The latter is simply an enormous bureaucracy that insulates the military oligarchy from any accountability to the Cuban people.

The dictatorship underwrites the operations of American companies and their use of stolen properties in Cuba. They also protect them from competition. These companies love the cronyism.

Ignorantly spewing platitudes about failed policies, Obama implored Americans not to be trapped by history. Would he make that argument about slavery or the Holocaust? Or more pertinently about Tianenmen Square where thousands were slaughtered for demanding political freedoms while the business community remained silent? The latter were partnered with the Chinese dictatorship and wouldn’t bite the hand feeding them. Ignorance is how history repeats itself.

If democracy were to miraculously come as a consequence of Obama’s opening, a democratic government would likely return property to the lawful owners and allow claimants access to Cuban courts to sue for damages. Any investment by American companies would be lost. Why would companies like Carnival want change? Investment seeks certainty.

The question remains, should US companies be allowed to traffic in the stolen properties claimed by fellow Americans in Cuba (or in any country)? Should the President deny access to the courts by American claimants against US entities that traffic in their stolen property, since there would be no territorial overreach? Is there one good reason to justify trafficking?

Obviously, NO to all three.

Like every American company in Cuba, the cruise lines insist they comply with all regulations and are not breaking the law. What objection, then, would they have if President Trump did not apply the waiver if they are not trafficking? This would be a non-event and they would have nothing to fear.

The reality is the cruise lines object because they are trafficking; they’re lying, like many in the political class who cover for them.

Recall that in the period Carnival, the first cruise line to cruise Cuba, was negotiating with their Castro regime partners, they learned that allowing Cuban-Americans as passengers would violate Cuban law, which forbids Cubans (including exiles) to enter or leave Cuba by boat.

They also knew that in adhering to Cuban law they would violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination by country of origin. The US State and Treasury Departments understood this as well. Did Carnival, State or Treasury choose to do the right thing, follow US law and require the dictatorship waive this provision before initiating cruises?

Of course not. Blinded by greed and ideology they chose to appease the dictatorship. Carnival was only repentant when they were sued and paid a settlement. Individuals at State and Treasury have never been held accountable.

This begs another question, why should these Americans (Cuban-Americans) who sued get access to US courts and due process while we are denied the same? Isn’t that discrimination? Where’s our due process?

Licenses to travel to Cuba are not permits to violate the law, nor do they provide immunity from doing so. Carnival’s immoral and illegal behavior regarding Cuban-American passengers clearly demonstrate that fact. American companies in Cuba do so only with protection from the dictatorship and a corrupt US administration. It is politically sanctioned organized crime.

Assuming Obama and his minions were just stupid and not criminal, they failed to realize the currency of American engagement is not our money or customs; it is that we are a society of laws, not men and women.

They also failed to appreciate that by enforcing US law in engaging Cuba they were strengthening and arguably legitimizing their policy. It was more proof of the naïveté of the former community organizer grossly unqualified to be President.

Finally, in reaction to President Trump’s new Cuba regulations last November, rather than meet with Trump Administration officials, the cruise lines immediately convened in Havana to collude with their Cuban partners and craft a strategy. It was a vulgar show of disrespect towards President Trump and his Administration and a reflection of where their loyalties stood.

President Trump must understand the enforcement provisions like Titles III and IV in Helms-Burton are the will of Congress and, therefore, the will of the American people. Like Mr. Obama, he has a pen and phone. However, unlike Obama he can use these to enforce the law, rather than to subvert it.

We strongly urge President Trump to do so and protect American property. Property rights as much as guile and acumen made him a real estate tycoon. They are the cornerstone of American society and our prosperity. They are why America is that “shining city on a hill” to every immigrant.

President Trump must enforce existing law and allow Title III to go into effect against any American that traffics in stolen Cuban property. It is the rule of law and our equal protections under that law that make America great.

Javier Garcia-Bengochea, MD
Owner, The Port of Santiago de Cuba
Mickael Behn
Owner, The Havana Docks Corporation

Pictured below are the ports of Havana and Santiago before they were confiscated and in 2016 with Carnival’s Adonia docked at each.  The late Mr. William Behn, owner of Havana Docks Corp., at his desk when Castro thugs came to steal his property.

Obama’s Politically Sanctioned Organized Crime

THE FOLLOWING WAS SUBMITTED BY AN AMERICAN CITIZEN AND CUBAN EXILE WHO OWNS THE PORT OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA WHICH HAS A US CERTIFIED CLAIM.  YOU WON’T FIND THIS TRUTH OR INSIGHT IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND OTHER HYPOCRITICAL OUTLETS…

October 14 marks the 56-year anniversary of the confiscation of almost four hundred Cuban businesses with American shareholders by Fidel Castro, the event that triggered the US embargo. Meanwhile, Carnival Corporation will embark on another cruise to Cuba. In Santiago de Cuba, Carnival will dock at one of those confiscated properties with an American claim where they are not only breaking US law, but also trafficking in property, the port, stolen from my family that fateful day in 1960.

Carnival’s cruise embodies all that is wrong with unprincipled engagement of Cuba’s white, male military dictatorship and why President Obama’s policy will fail to bring desirable change.

The essential, but inconvenient truth about Cuba is that everything is stolen, from busineses, homes and cars to trademarks, brands and intellectual property. Any American venture in Cuba, no matter how innocent, will involve stolen property. This includes renting from Airbnb, sipping rum, smoking cigars and cruising in old American jalopies.

Even labor is stolen- Cuba’s two-currency system is pure slavery, a repugnant fact that, like apartheid South Africa, should preclude “doing business” in Cuba. Yet, few Americans seem offended, most remarkably Obama and Carnival’s African-American CEO.

Indeed, neither could care less. Carnival is thrilled to be the first to cruise Cuba in four decades, irrespective of the trafficking. The government asserts Carnival is immunized through their license. The law clearly states otherwise. Using confiscated property is trafficking unless such use is necessary to the purpose of the license.

It is not necessary that Carnival use my Santiago property. There are at least three other places to dock. They could also anchor and transfer passengers to shore.

Carnival could simply skip Santiago altogether and avoid the cholera and Zika that await unsuspecting Americans.

Furthermore, it is illegal to market American property stolen in Cuba in the US.

Regardless, the fact remains that Americans are now trafficking in the stolen property of other Americans. This is completely illegitimate.

Carnival is a pawn in President Obama’s unlawful policy shift towards Cuba, the underpinning being that American engagement beginning with tourism (an industry owned by the Cuban military) will bring dollars to ordinary Cubans who build a middle class and compel the dictatorship to liberalize politically.

Capitalism, necessarily with Americans, will create prosperity and be the catalyst for change. Despite twenty-five years of commerce between Cuba and the rest of the world having failed to bring political or economic reform (things are actually worse), this is a winning argument in most faculty lounges.

Yet, the very foundation of capitalism, clear title to property, doesn’t exist in Cuba. Without clear title there is not legitimate and orderly transfer of goods and services. There is no basis for collateral and, thus, no credit.

Nor are there property rights, which define many human rights and promote competition through lawful and non-violent means, or their protections: contract sanctity, an independent judiciary or transparency in the regulatory and enforcement agencies.

How, then, will capitalism function without these, much less be transformative?

Clearly, it can’t.

Since American ventures must be with the dictatorship, these Americans will not want regime change and risk having their contracts terminated by a new democratic government (see South Africa) who would also return property they’ve improved to the lawful owners. Carnival and other American enterprises in Cuba will rely on the dictatorship to protect the business environment. Investment seeks certainty.

Consider China, which liberalized economically. Prosperity is almost entirely “trickle down” from communist party elites. It’s history’s wealthiest dictatorship with the highest income inequality. A prosperous China is no less authoritarian as it represses and censors its citizens today. It has not liberalized politically.

In Tiananmen Square the regime slaughtered protesters wanting political reforms. The emerging business community was silent. The same occurred recently in Hong Kong. Why expect a different result in Cuba?

Already Carnival has capitulated with Cuba’s discriminatory policy against Cuban-Americans and reformed only once they were caught. American Airlines is doing the same.

Such behavior is not new. During the last two Democrat administrations we’ve flouted our laws and values to sneak off to Cuba, not to help Cubans, but for pleasure (Beyoncé) and profit (Donald Trump). Carnival and other corporate special interests now pushing Obama were all doing like Trump in the nineties, illegal “reconnaissance”.

Free markets also require free people.

Ominously, we are signaling that no law is too sacred and no civil or human rights violation too objectionable if there is a buck to be made by Americans. Likewise, that confiscating American property is permitted. None of this is lost on Latin America’s would-be despots, all Castro acolytes.

Raul may now pass with impunity the leadership in Cuba like the family cow to his son with the imprimatur of the US President.

And the cynical Castro dictatorship will remain accountable to no one. They’ve confiscated billions in foreign assets in the last decade alone. When the partnership with an American is no longer convenient, they’ll do so again. What then, another embargo?

It’s more insanity, capitulating with another dictatorship and allowing Americans to traffic in stolen, now “distressed” properties. Precisely this sort of unscrupulous American opportunism and neocolonialism a century ago gave us the Castro brothers.

We have abandoned all critical thinking regarding Cuba. Cuba does not have a human rights problem; it has a property rights problem. The human and civil rights atrocities for which the Castro regime is infamous have been the necessary measures to defend the unjustifiable and illegal: the theft of private property.

Trafficking in stolen property will not bring law and order, democracy, prosperity or improve the lives of Cubans. It will institutionalize theft, fraud and corruption and prolong the dictatorship.

The ultimate irony is that a robust settlement of these claims benefits Cubans in Cuba most and underwrites the entrepreneurialism Obama seeks to promote change. It restores the rule of law.

Until then American “business” in Cuba will have the legitimacy of a drug deal. Like Carnival’s cruises, this is nothing more than politically sanctioned organized crime.

Barack Obama’s Dixie

Who said, “we will improve the lives of slaves by ending the isolation of their masters and increasing trade and exchange with the South”(1), Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass?

Obviously, none of them. Devoted to repudiating slavery, they would have never been so immoral or stupid. Yet, this is Barack Obama’s plan for the hemisphere’s only dictatorship and apartheid state, Cuba. How disgraceful.

Barack Obama’s Cuba policy since 2009, increasing so-called “people to people” travel, has paradoxically blinded us to the obvious: Cuba is an apartheid where racism is institutionalized and codified into law and has been for decades. It is a plantation where Cubans and Afro-Cubans in particular, Cuba’s post-revolutionary majority, are literally slaves.

How can this be in 2015? Disturbingly easy- Cuba is a kleptocracy where the serial theft of property, human rights and work product have been ongoing since 1959.  Slaves are captured, traded, transported and exploited all on the same island without middle men.

Cuba is “owned” by the families of the white octagenarian military oligarchs from the revolution’s early days. This is reflected at the highest levels of government where only 9% are black. Not surprisingly, Cuba’s last census indicates only 9% percent of Cubans are black.  They would like you to believe this is a perfect representative government. If you’ve been to or seen Cuba in a magazine, you know this is an outrageous lie.

Skeptical this is right wing, Cuban exile hyperbole? Ask the white ruling elites, who are unapologetic. Mark Sawyer, a UCLA political scientist and Castro/Obama apologist, quotes a Cuban Interior Ministry official on page 119 of his 2004 book, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba explaining why there is no racial problem on the island, “it is simply a sociological fact that blacks are more violent and criminal than whites. They also do not work as hard and cannot be trusted”.  There you have it, egalitarianism in 21st century Cuba.

Thus, the Cuban crime of “social dangerousness”, a euphemism for being black and, therefore, looking criminal. It allows for capricious and arbitrary harassment and incarceration of Afro-Cubans, who also overwhelmingly populate Cuba’s prisons. Black really lives don’t matter- if you’re a Cuban in Cuba.

Yet, the most damning measure is monetary. After the collapse of the USSR and the end of Soviet colonialism, Cuba created two currencies, the only such country in the world. All foreign transactions- the money spent on licensed travel junkets- are in a high value convertible peso (CUC), roughly worth a dollar.

The legal tender for Cubans, however, is the national peso (PUP). All foreign commerce is in CUCs with one entity, the Cuban state, who pays the Cuban worker in PUPs as if they were equal.

Unfortunately, the PUP is worth about about $0.03, which explains how wages average about $20 per month. For those Americans who missed this while salsa dancing, sipping stolen rum and smoking stolen cigars, the PUP represents the modern-day whips and chains of the slave state.

Tourist dollars “trickle down” from these white military oligarchs to loyalists. Not one penny reaches “the people” or funds healthcare and education, the illusory “gains” of the revolution. They fund repression necessary to defend the unjustifiable.

Most Cubans are happy to see more American tourists, who they can at least hustle on the margins, but are pessimistic about significant change as over 60% indicate they would leave (if they could) despite our policy pivot- and virtually everyone under forty. They don’t share Obama’s optimism. Record numbers have escaped Cuba since December. They realize America’s partnership is with the regime, not them.

And Cuba’s largest source of revenue? Human trafficking, naturally. Cuba has an abundance of unemployed doctors, teachers and other professionals they “lease” to countries without sufficient social services for huge profit. They rent a doctor for $10,000 per month and pay him $300, while holding his family- and most of his $300- hostage in Cuba.

The Cuban state, of course, profits from the confiscation all private property and property rights going back to 1959, the perfunctory step in the enslavement of Cubans. Any American enterprise in Cuba, especially tourism, will necessarily traffic in these stolen Cuban properties and will, therefore, have the legitimacy of a drug deal.

Does this bother Obama and hustlers like GOP Senators Jeff Flake, the so-called  libertarian? No. Rather than defend the 5,913 Americans and millions of Cubans robbed of their property, Flake clings to a narcissistic delusion that our government can’t limit his so-called right to travel, even to stolen property and slave states. He is oblivious that this “right” ends at someone else’s right to property or when another’s human and civil rights are violated.

Ignoring the foundational role of property rights in our society and in establishing commerce with Cuba is deeply disturbing. Property rights promote competition through non-violent and lawful means. They define our human rights. Without them we do not have a civilized society, much less a prosperous one.

This begs the question, how does trafficking in stolen property promote democracy, free enterprise or the rule of law? It doesn’t- it can’t. This is politically sanctioned organized crime- a promiscuous bow to criminality and greed courtesy of President Obama and cronies like Flake, Patrick Leahy and the powerful agriculture lobby.  That the Congressional Black Caucus supports Obama’s embrace of Cuba’s white male military dictatorship and institutionalized slavery exposes their intellectual dishonesty.

Yet Obama and his moonies say economic engagement will bring democracy.  Really?  Like in China or Vietnam?  Clearly, they’ve forgotten or failed to learn the lesson of Tiananmen Square.

If they’re correct, the second order of business by a democratic regime after the totalitarians are brought to justice will be to cancel contracts between foreign entities and the Castro regime. Property will be returned to the rightful owners.

Why, then, would unscrupulous American businesses making a buck or invested in Cuba support change? Investment seeks certainty. Mr. Obama has (incredibly) tied the success of any American enterprise in Cuba to the survival of the regime.

In a chilling blast from the past and in contrast to the Obama sophistry, Raul Castro was unequivocal this past December when he vowed that Cuba remains committed to essentially “socialism or death”. Apparently, Raul’s not for change, either.

So the leader of the free world’s Cuba position is to capitulate with and validate a dictatorship and its crimes while exploiting (mostly Afro-) Cuban labor at the behest of greedy US business interests and his own personal pleasure. He’s no progressive- he’s a gangster and unprincipled opportunist who is promoting slavery.

Obama’s Cuba policy completely undermines our national interests and violates our values.  It validates the notion that property can be confiscated without consequences and that Americans will condone slavery and exploitation of labor if there is a buck to be made.  This is why people hate us and want to kill us.

Isolating Cuba or any slave state’s leadership is a perfectly appropriate policy  unfortunately, since the Cold War ended we have failed to do so by not enforcing existing sanctions coupled with serial violations of existing law intended to punish the dictatorship in Cuba.  The only benefit has been to protect American businesses from exposure to theft, fraud, corruption and losses in Cuba- like every other country has experienced since 1960.

Obama needs to be called out, something Cubans are not free to do, for his back-the-future on re-invigorating the slave state. No one wants to be one of his n-words.

(1) Armando Ibarra tweet August 2015

Mr. Obama’s Confederacy of Dunces

“We don’t have to be imprisoned by the past” was President Obama’s utterance featured in the 7/20/15 edition of Time as he announced the normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of embassies in both countries- in explicit contravention of US law, it should be noted.

No matter to this President, who’s often as indifferent to the law as to the hypocrisy of his words and deeds.  As one symbol of hate, divisiveness and imprisonment of the past, the Confederate flag, was lowered in South Carolina, he permits another, the Cuban flag, to be raised in Washington.  Mr. Obama’s pivot embraces a categorically failed system that symbolizes an abhorrent past for western civilization and a too real present for Cubans.

Cuba is an apartheid state.  Cubans and Afro-Cubans in particular, Cuba’s post-revolutionary majority, are slaves.  Cuba’s two currencies, a high value one for foreigners and communist party elites and a worthless one that is the legal tender for Cubans, are the modern-day whips and chains.

Skeptical this is right wing, Cuban exile hyperbole?  Ask Cuba’s ruling elites, who are almost exclusively white and unapologetic.  Mark Sawyer, a political scientist at UCLA quotes a Cuban Interior Ministry official on page 119 of his 2004 book, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba,  “it is simply a sociological fact that blacks are more violent and criminal than whites.  They also do not work as hard and cannot be trusted”.  Talk about waving the Confederate flag.

As any slave-owning society, Cuba is a kleptocracy.  Everything is stolen and there are no property rights.  Any American enterprise in Cuba, especially tourism, will necessarily traffic in the stolen property of millions of Cubans on or off the island as well as thousands of Americans.  One’s “right” to travel ends at another’s claim to property.  These enterprises will have the legitimacy of a drug deal.

Fittingly, Cuba travel junkets are disingenuously or fraudulently billed as cultural or educational (see Time’s shameless promo for its Cuba travel guide).  These revenues go directly to Cuba’s white military oligarchs who own the tourist industry and “trickle down” dollars to loyalists.  Not one penny reaches “the people” or fund healthcare and education, the illusory “gains” of the revolution.  It funds the repression necessary to defend what’s unjustifiable.

Like the President, some Americans seem indifferent to this, which begs the question, how does trafficking in stolen property promote democracy or the rule of law?  This promiscuous bow to criminality and greed doesn’t.  Mr. Obama clearly has a twisted concept of American exceptionalism.  He was more authentic when he disavowed such thinking.

Mr. Obama says engagement will bring change, democracy to Cuba.  If he’s correct, every contract between an American entity and the Castro regime will be cancelled and property returned to the rightful owners- a great outcome.

However, it is unlikely these unscrupulous businesses making a buck or invested in Cuba will support change.  Investment seeks stability, not uncertainty.  He has tied the success of any American enterprise in Cuba to the survival of the Castro regime.

In a chilling blast from the past and in contrast to the rhetorical sophistry and elegance of the American President, Raul Castro was unequivocal in December when he vowed that Cuba remains committed essentially to “socialism or death”.  Apparently, Raul’s not for change, either.

Mr. Obama’s Cuba initiative strains the credulity of progressivism as a force for good versus simply “change” for the sake of change.  By capitulating with and validating a dictatorship and its crimes, with Time cheering him on, he fortifies, not shutters the prison of the past.

Trafficking in Stolen Cuba Property is new U.S. policy

It is unconscionable that Americans and their so-called law-makers, civic officials and corporate leaders seek to “do business” with the Cuban regime while hundreds of thousands of property claims by U.S. citizens remain outstanding in Cuba.  The 5,913 U.S. certified claimants are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Doing so is clearly insult to injury, further damaging these American claimants by trafficking in their confiscated properties and their former business opportunities (which Cuba disingenuously claims are damages from the embargo).

The Castro-led oligarchy in Cuba confiscated all property by fiat and in doing so destroyed the economy and civil society over 56 years.  Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands were murdered and tortured to defend these acts.  Even more died escaping Cuba and millions have fled the island.

Then in desperation the regime redistributes some of these properties to a select few and partners with certain foreign entities in the most reprehensible form of cronyism and “trickle down” economics, and fools here gush over “reform”.

This rape of Cuba and the rule of law is then dismissed unilaterally and unconditionally by Mr. Obama, who after subverting and refusing to modernize the U.S. law he has sworn to protect, the embargo, is then cheered by many Americans.

This very same throng is now frothing to sanction North Korea for doing to Sony exactly what Fidel Castro did to these claimants.  It is an utterly surreal and dystopian scene.  It is disgraceful.

Get over the claims, you say, it’s been over 5 decades?  Sure, when holocaust victims and the descendants of African slaves must do the same.  Or when Israel reverts back to Palestine, as any “sensible” statute of limitations had clearly passed on that property claim.  Moral relativism on theft and murder in a modern world is just more rape.

The tremendous lobbying by the Castros for Mr. Obama’s Cuba initiative reflects another certainty beyond the outright theft of property in Cuba: that Jonathan Gruber was spot on with his assessment of many Americans.  In that spirit it appears Raul has smoked the POTUS like a cheap Cuban cigar.

Canadian businessman Cy Tokmakjian finally gets it: Raul Castro and his oligarch cronies are criminals. Unfortunately, it’s too late for Cy. Read what this certified property claimant has to say. History repeats itself only because human nature is immutable and humans ignore history.

The arrest, sham trail and imprisonment in Cuba of Canadian businessman Cy Tokmakjian is, indeed, a sad saga. The outrage in Canada is justified. Once Mr. Tokmakjian’s business was, as the Cuban saying goes, “no longer convenient” to Raul Castro, he robbed and incarcerated him.

Should anyone be surprised? No. This was entirely avoidable.

I am a Cuban exile who fled Cuba with my family days after the “expropriation”, the theft, of our business on October 14, 1960. This confiscatory fiat, which called for indemnification, targeted four hundred of Cuba’s largest businesses, some of which, like ours, were the early financial supporters of the revolution before anyone knew of Fidel Castro.

Like Mr. Tokmakjian, we were “partners” with these people. Of course, we never received a dime for our loss and on the heels of more than 3000 summary executions of Cubans, had no choice except to flee or risk arrest on bogus charges of corruption and tax evasion. Sound familiar?

Yet, Mr. Tokmakjian did have a choice. He completely disregarded our well-documented nightmare and that by doing business in Cuba he would likely be trafficking in stolen property- including mine- whose owners were exiled, possibly living in Canada, or were in a Cuban prison, and that he would be associating with thieves and murderers. That is fact, not right wing, Cuban exile hyperbole.

Mr. Tokmakjian acted as an opportunist in Cuba to fill the void created by the collapse of the former Soviet Union. He associated himself with a regime that disregards the rule of law, something he only now appreciates.

For picking the low hanging mangoes under the protection of and in spite of the US embargo. Mr. Tokmakjian will pay dearly. Only a greedy, morally bankrupt imbecile would take such a risk. So it would be understandable for me to say with some satisfaction that Mr. Tokmakjian received precisely what he deserved, but I won’t.

I have great sympathy for this man who will likely die in a filthy Cuban prison.

Yet, the facts will live on. Since 1960 the Castros have unremorsefully confiscated all private property in Cuba, without compensating any Cubans or American citizens and without much international protest. Except for the United States, most nations simply accepted their losses.

Others like Canada took pennies on the dollar. These countries would open their markets to Cuba, pragmatically assuming normal relations would ensue with their claims “settled”.

They were seriously wrong. Forgiving Cuba her trespasses has been a terrible mistake. Cuba remains unreformed and unrepentant- they have confiscated billions in foreign assets as recently as 2008. They have no sense of accountability. Theft has become their modus operandi and even a cultural trait.

They have habitually “borrowed” tens of billions of dollars from various entities with no intention of repayment, including the Paris Club. They do as they please when they want without regard to their obligations or the rule of law. Their sense of exceptionalism is totally perverted.

So-called progressives in the international community, who refuse to take a principled stand against Cuba, enable this. They turn a blind eye to Cuba, allowing bad behavior and promiscuously dealing with Cuba as an emerging market despite the abolition of property rights in Cuba. They go so far as to criticize economic sanctions against Cuba.

Similarly, Mr. Tokmakjian overlooked that what Cuba has foremost is a property rights problem, not a human or civil rights problem.  The former is the origin of the latter, for which Cuba is famously known.

Human and civil rights abuses in Cuba have been necessary to defend the unjustifiable: the theft of property, including work product, wages and ideas. This is ongoing. Mr. Tokmakjian completely misunderstood this dynamic; or didn’t care.

There is no debate that prosperous societies recognize the sanctity of property rights, which promote competition through non-violent and lawful means. These societies have an independent judiciary, transparent enforcement and regulatory agencies and contracts are enforced.   Not coincidentally, democratic institutions best protect these elements. Cuba, of course, has none of these.

Mr. Tokmakjian is one of more than fifty foreign businessmen who are currently in Cuban prisons, some without charges, who’ve also had their assets confiscated. They are hostages, like American Alan Gross; collateral for some other purpose that serves the Castro brothers. That is how Cuba does business: like the mafia.

What has occurred is the creation of, and through economic associations with first world countries like Canada who have betrayed property owners and the Cuban people, the acceptance of a rogue regime.

Cuba’s military dictatorship will continue to confiscate property, particularly from Cuba’s new so-called “self-employed” class, and incarcerate businessmen given the status quo.

Holding Fidel and Raul Castro accountable for theft decades ago would have been the foundation of legitimate business opportunities in Cuba. It would have obviated embargoes and human rights abuses. And Cy Tokmakjian would also be free.

Canada should take the opportunity to press now for what the world, including the United States and their toothless embargo, have failed to do: hold Cuba accountable.

Until then, who will be the next Cy Tokmakjian? Given the promiscuity of the United States, maybe it will be an American. Does Ian Delaney still visit Cuba?

Shakespeare put it best, “what is past is prologue”. Oh, Canada…