" The move has raised hopes in many quarters – not only in the United States but around the world – that the embargo itself is now destined to disappear.

This does not detract from the fact that Cuba is still a dictatorship. The Cuban government restricts basic freedoms like the freedoms of speech and assembly, and it owns the media.

Elections, as in most old-school Communist countries, offer limited options and, during periodic crackdowns, the Cuban government fills Cuban jails with political prisoners.

However, there are real tyrants in the world with whom the United States has become a close ally and many governments with much worse human rights records than Cuba – Azerbaijan, for example, whose president Ilham Aliyev boils his opponents in oil, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, China, Bahrain, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and many others where torture, enforced disappearances, religious intolerance, suppression of speech and assembly, mediaeval oppression of women, sham elections and non-judicial executions are all government practices.

Despite its poverty, Cuba has managed some impressive accomplishments. Cuba’s government boasts the highest literacy rates for its population of any nation in the hemisphere. Cuba claims its citizens enjoy universal access to health care and more doctors per capita than any other nation in the Americas. Cuba’s doctors, reportedly, have high quality medical training.

Unlike other Caribbean islands where poverty means starvation, all Cubans receive a monthly food ration book that provides for their basic necessities.

Even Cuban government officials admit that the economy is smothered by the inefficiencies of Marxism, although they also argue that the principal cause of the island’s economic woes is the strangling impact of the 60-year-old trade embargo – and it is clear to everyone that the embargo first implemented during the Eisenhower administration in October 1960 unfairly punishes ordinary Cubans.

The embargo impedes economic development by making virtually every commodity and every species of equipment both astronomically expensive and difficult to obtain.

Worst of all, instead of punishing the regime for its human rights restrictions, the embargo has fortified the dictatorship by justifying oppression. It provides every Cuban with visible evidence of the bogeyman that every dictator requires – an outside enemy to justify an authoritarian national security state.

The embargo has also given Cuban leaders a plausible monster on which to blame Cuba’s poverty by lending credence to their argument that the United States, not Marxism, has caused the island’s economic distress.

The embargo has almost certainly helped keep the Castro brothers [Fidel and Raul] in power for the last five decades.

It has justified the Cuban government’s oppressive measures against political dissent in the same way that U.S. national security concerns have been used by some U.S. politicians to justify incursions against our bill of rights, including the constitutional rights to jury trial, habeas corpus, effective counsel and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, eavesdropping, cruel and unusual punishment, torturing of prisoners, extraordinary renditions and the freedom to travel, to name just a few."

http://en.mercopress.com/2015/01/03/we-h...learn-from-cuba

That's right. Every problem Cuba has is due to the embargo imposed by the United States. We are at fault, not Communism, which is a miserable failure wherever it is tried, or the lack of freedom on the island. In fact just look at how well the Communist have done despite our best efforts: adequate food for all, an extraordinarily high literacy rate, unlimited free quality health care from supremely qualified medical professionals. Well at least that's how the Cuban government tells it and they wouldn't lie, would they? Just why thousands have risked life and limb trying to escape such a paradise on everything from inner tubes to leaky, unsafe boats is a total mystery to me and to the writer of this paean of praise to the Castro Bros.

Oh, I did forget to tell you his name? It's Robert F Kennedy Jr., son of St Bobby the Pure, environmentalist extraordinaire, and offensively self-righteous ninny.

Didn't I hear Josh Earnest say today that they couldn't confirm that any prisoners had or would be released?

"Didn't I hear Josh Earnest say today that they couldn't confirm that any prisoners had or would be released?"

Uh huh.

"The status of 53 political prisoners in Cuba remains in limbo despite an agreement with the United States to release them, according to reports.

President Barack Obama announced last month that he was easing travel and commercial restrictions on Cuba to seek a rapprochement with the regime of Raul Castro. The president said his administration would continue to push for the protection of civil and political rights on the island, where Raul and his brother Fidel have imprisoned dissidents for a half-century.

However, at least some of the 53 Cuban political prisoners set to be freed as part of the U.S. deal remain in detention, and it is not clear when they will be released. Dissidents on the island told Reuters at the end of December that they have not been informed about who is on the list, and whether it includes common criminals in addition to political prisoners.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday that not all of the prisoners have been released yet, adding that the “the Cuban government decided to undertake this on their own and it would take place in stages.”

“There’s no reason to think they are walking back any part of the agreement,” he said.

After questions from multiple reporters on Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to publicly confirm whether any of the political prisoners have been released.

“Our view was never that the changes would take place and be implemented in a matter of weeks,” she said, adding that “it’s going to take a long time to change it.”

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/...spite-u-s-deal/

Some observations here:

(1) In his announcement Obama implied the prisoners were to be released immediately or in a very short time. In reality we have no idea who is to be released, nor when, nor if.

(2) At the same time Obama claimed the release of the prisoners was due to his efforts as part of the new relationship with Cuba that he was developing. But note that Earnest states, "the Cuban government decided to undertake this on their own..." So which was it?

(3) You cannot believe a word of what this administration tells you. However we can believe this: "Cuban President Raul Castro sent a blunt message to Washington Saturday as the White House works to reverse a half-century of hostility between the U.S. and Cuba: Don't expect detente to do away with the communist system."