Democrats Introduce Legislation Opening Up Travel To Cuba

Via anonymous emailer comes word that Democrats in the House have introduced a bill to allow travel from the US to Cuba.

The Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act introduced in the U.S. House on Wednesday would allow American citizens unrestricted travel to Cuba for the first time since 1963. The bill by Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., and eight cosponsors also would lift limits on travel by Cuban exiles living in the United States. The president would not be able to regulate travel to the island unless an armed conflict arose.

Bay of Pigs veteran Miguel Reyes, founder of the Cuban American Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., thinks that the bill doesn't matter much. He has no plans to travel to Cuba and doesn't care if other people do.

"As an American, I think I have the right to go wherever I want to without anyone stopping me," said Reyes, whose views are independent from the club.

"It's a betrayal, and it's not going to resolve anything," said Jose Lopez, president of the Broward County Latin Chamber of Commerce. Lopez left Cuba in 1961.

Tourism dollars spent in Cuba will inject more oxygen into the dying Castro regime, he said. Lopez also thinks Cuban exiles who want to return to the island whenever they please are abusing their refugee privilege.

If passed, it would be the first time that travel between the US and Cuba was allowed since before Fidel Castro rose to power.

Cuba used to be a beautiful country with lovely beaches and it used to have a vibrant travel and tourist industry. Now, it is a shell of its former self, largely because of the collapse of Soviet Union and the lack of capital to support the industry.

While I wouldn't mind a vacation to Cuba at some point in the distant future when the Castros are no longer in any position of power, I think any such travel now would still benefit the privileged classes - those connected to the Castro clan, rather than the people of Cuba who are still oppressed under the harsh restrictions of the Cuban economic and political system.

Then again, unrestricted travel to Cuba would show just how blighted the socialist "paradise" truly is. It would reveal that the vaunted medical care system in Cuba is nothing more than wishful thinking and that medical tourism provides two-tiers of service - one that brings income to Cuba for the privileged (the part that Michael Moore highlights in his agitprop movie Sicko), and the rest of the country gets substandard care that borders on the criminal.

Cuba continues to hold political prisoners and maintains restrictions on speech and conduct of business is strictly regulated. In fact, Cuba's elites are little more than a criminal gang.

Unusually, organized crime in Cuba is run by the state. This is a result of the decision to bolster the Cuban military and intelligence apparatus by granting its top generals control over the lucrative tourism and hospitality industry. The island nation’s security and intelligence apparatus, estimated at 20,000 strong, is part of Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior. This means the Cuban security and intelligence community is also a major business operator on the island, overseeing the country’s booming tourist industry, cigar production and distribution of illicit goods.

Don't expect any of that to change anytime soon.

Yet, the Democrats are looking to change the policy even though the Castro regime has shown that it is unwilling to hold free and fair elections or release political prisoners. It is still a dictatorship.

Window Dressing

That's what Raul Castro is doing - playing with the window dressings - while his supporters point to these tweaks as the sign that Cuba is moving away from the Communist system that has decimated the country since Fidel took power with an iron fist in 1959.

The media made a big deal of Castro's pronouncements that he'll allow average Cubans access to the hotels meant for foreigners, plus giving them the right to own cellphones and DVD players.

Big deal.

The average Cuban, who works for the government and is paid an average of $19.50 a month, can't afford to buy a cellphone, let alone a DVD player. They don't make enough, and often rely on relatives living in the states to supplement their incomes to make ends meet. What would take an American making minimum wage several hours to buy a low end DVD player, would take a Cuban five months. It would take two years for a Cuban to afford a microwave oven.

In other words, Raul's given Cubans the freedom to buy basic items that they could never afford.

Raul Castro is simply making a show of changes, but the real change will come when Cuba's political prisoners are freed from jail for doing nothing more than criticizing the Communist regime in Havana.

Cubans To Rubber Stamp New Leader

The Cuban legislature, for the past 49 years, has been there to rubber stamp every decision made by Fidel Castro. That was its sole purpose.

Yet, the media treats the latest gathering to determine a successor to Fidel Castro as though they're given the opportunity to actually choose who will take over for Fidel.

Like they have a choice?

His 76-year-old younger brother Raul Castro, as first vice president and constitutionally designated successor, is widely expected to be picked as president of the ruling Council of State.

The younger Castro, also Cuba's defense minister, has headed a caretaker government for 19 months since Fidel announced he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding his powers.

The 614-member National Assembly, whose members were elected Jan. 20, is selecting a 31-member Council of State led by a president, who is the nation's head of state and government.

Fidel Castro has held the position since the current government structure was created in 1976. For 18 years before that, he was prime minister — a post that no longer exists.

He evidently retains his position as a member of the National Assembly, to which he was re-elected to last month, and he remains the head of the Communist Party as first secretary.

In an article published Saturday, Castro scoffed at suggestions in news reports that his retirement would lead to political changes on the island aided by Cuban exiles in the U.S.

"The reality is otherwise," Castro wrote in the front page of the Communist Party newspaper Granma — his final published comments as the nation's leader. He quoted approvingly from other articles that said his retirement showed the failure of U.S. officials to affect Cuba's political transition.

Raul Castro will be the next leader. As it is, he's been the leader since 2006.

The joke really is on the media that reports Cuban press releases as news (and the readers who believe this tripe), and treats totalitarian dictatorships as something else because there is a group of people who rubber stamp the decisions of the dictator.

UPDATE:
Well, knock me off my chair. The next leader of Cuba is *drum roll* Raul Castro. What a surprise. You could have fooled me given that Raul has been in charge since 2006 and this was never an issue in doubt. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Yet, the media treats this as though it is a new day for Cuba and that the Cubans actually had a choice in the matter. Figures.

UPDATE:
The AP runs with this as though it is real news and proclaims that Raul Castro Becomes Cuba's Leader

Hey AP. Raul has been in charge since 2006 when big brother couldn't afford Cuba's vaunted health care system and had to go to outside sources for help. This was a rubber stamping of what everyone knew - that Raul was running the show. Don't try passing this off for anything more than that. Yet, that's precisely what AP and other media outlets are doing.

Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss

So, word has come out of Cuba that Fidel Castro is stepping down as el Presidente for life. After all, since he took over Cuba 49 years ago, he never one relinquished his firm grip on the reins of power. His brother, Raul, is going to take over.

Well, considering that Fidel has been in poor health (and often speculated that he's already well and truly dead for some time now), this just confirms that Fidel isn't running the show. Since 2006, there have been signs that Fidel is no longer in charge of Cuba and that day to day administration of Cuba was left to others - Raul in particular.

Hot Air raises one of the more interesting questions of the day. Now that Fidel has exited stage left, should the US now consider opening the floodgates on trade, tourism and lift the embargo. It would be a real eye opener for the leftists who think that Cuba is some kind of paradise and be disabused of that notion with the sad reality that Cuba is one of the worst kind of hellholes on the planet because Castro and his cronies ran the place into the ground.

Babalu Blog has Castro's letter of "resignation."

Let's just remember that Castro's cronies are still in charge and Raul has been in de facto charge of Cuba since late 2006.

We may just have to wait a little bit longer for this photo to come to fruition (warning - this is a hoaxed photo and therefore is only wishful thinking that Cuba's long national nightmare can soon come to an end - though the death watch is once again on):




Michelle Malkin and Fausta have a great roundup of reaction, and notes the fawning reaction of some of the press worldwide to Castro's ability to survive as one of the world's oldest dictators.

Lest anyone think that the situation is going to improve overnight, Raul is little different from his brother and while some think that he's going to take on the mantle of reformer, Cuba doesn't need reform - it needs to scrap its totalitarian and socialist policies that have left its people wanting for everything.

UPDATE:
Jammie has more on the leftist drivel praising one of the world's worst dictators. Ed Driscoll also weighs in.

UPDATE:
Folks down in South Florida were approaching this latest news with cautious optimism, and many were making the point I did above:

'In a year or so, I think, we will see some change,'' Luis Garcia, 75, said as he stood in front of the Versailles Restaurant, a landmark in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. ``Fidel no longer has the ability to run a country. He's very ill.''

Regina Botello, another customer at the restaurant, said: ``It's the best thing that could have happened on this 19th of February. It's the first step toward real change.''

Others were more skeptical.

''The only sign of change will come when he dies,'' Roberto Perez, who left the island nearly 40 years ago, said of Castro. ``That's the only thing that matters.''

Several prominent members of the exile community urged Cuban Americans to dismiss the announcement as largely meaningless.

''This is nothing but a show the Havana governnent has put on to move the media and confuse the people of Cuba,'' said Miguel Saavedra, head of the anti-Castro group Vigilia Mambisa. ``The only change would be an overthrow of the system, a complete uprooting of the regime.''

UPDATE:
Death by 1000 papercuts has 15 selected quotes from Castro.

UPDATE:
Newsbusters catches the Times fawning. Sweetness and Light notes that the AP entertains a caveat on calling Castro a dictator. Others weighing in on what this all means for the US, for Cubans, and Latin America include: Don Surber, Jules Crittenden, Gateway Pundit, Sister Toldjah.

UPDATE:
For a change I find myself largely in agreement with NJ Senator Bob Menendez (D):

"To just embrace Raul would be a huge mistake. All we'd be doing is embracing another dictator," said Menendez, a Democrat who was born to parents who emigrated from Cuba.

"This Castro is the same as the other in terms of philosophy, having been part of a dictatorship," said Menendez, who was mayor of Union City, part of a northern New Jersey area that has the nation's largest concentration of Cuban-Americans after Miami.

"Raul does not have the same relationship with the Cuban people as Fidel had," he said. "He has more blood on his hands than Fidel has. In that respect, it is not a change we would love to see. It's an opportunity for the U.S. and the world to challenge Raul, an opportunity to move in a different way."

Fidel's got plenty of blood on his hands, but Raul has been doing a most capable job of running the Cuban gulag. Meanwhile, another Cuban-born New Jersey politician weighs in with the following:

A Cuban-born New Jersey congressman, Rep. Albio Sires, said he hoped the departure of Fidel Castro will lead to democratic reform in Cuba.

"The Cuban people will be disappointed if change doesn't come out of this," said Sires, who was mayor of West New York, part of the Cuban-American enclave. "I don't think this will change life for Cubans very much, unless some reforms are taken."

Sires thinks that reform will get the job done. He's seriously underestimating how rotten to the core the Cuban political system truly is.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rosemary's Thoughts, third world county, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and , thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

UPDATE:
Still more evidence that the media is going out of its way to put lipstick on the pig known as Castro. So, apparently universal health care and free education is sufficient to make you ignore human rights abuses up the ying yang. Stay classy CNN. We know how you got your access in places like Saddam's Iraq, which included cozying up to dictators and thugs by ignoring the real abuses and sugarcoating dictatorships and thugocracies.