JVLV: OBAMA-KERRY’S PITIABLE EMBASSY OPENING IN HAVANA; CASTRO’S INCREDIBLE CHUTSPAH, By Leni Friedman Valenta, 8-14-15

 The U.S.   Owes Cubans “Many Millions of Dollars.” Fidel Castro’s arrogance is Brobdingnagian (remember Gulliver?) But that’s mainly because he’s dealing with political Lilliputians.  He states the United States owes Cuba “millions" based on the 50-year U.S.  trade embargo.  In return for burnishing Barack’s legacy with the opening to Cuba, and while sacrificing virtually nothing, the bloody dictator now even expects to be paid!   The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, a U.S. government agency, has certified these claims, the largest ever made on us by any foreign government in the history of our republic!  With interest they come to an estimated 7 billion dollars – not one cent of which should be paid.  For those who don’t know, like sympathetic Bernie Sanders, our trade embargo, initiated in 1960, was in fact a reaction to the dictator’s illegal expropriations of 1.8 billion dollars’ worth of U.S. properties.   

None of this surprises Jiri, who recalls the arrogance of his late colleague, Dean Enrique Baloyra, at the University of Miami when he returned from his 1988 visit to Cuba with a delegation of leading scholars.  Bayloyra, on the board of a Castro-funded journal, Arieto, was apoplectic a “right winger,” had been invited among all the left wing academicians to the Castro ball.  He screamed at Jiri that one day Fidel would get back millions in reparations from the U.S.! 

Castro’s preposterous claim is based on his hope that our Divider-in-Chief, President Barack Obama, our inept deal maker Kerry, and classified e-mail expert , Hillary, if elected, will sooner or later yield to  the demands of Yankee tourists  and business moguls, eager for investment,  trade, and mulatto call girls,  that Congress lift the embargo.

All of this is painful not just to many Cuban exiles in America, but to Jiri, who helped the cause of glasnost in Moscow and Prague, but failed in Havana.  From 1989-93 Jiri and his Russian counterpart, Dr. Andrey Kortunov, helped to organize a program of Moscow Miami Dialogues, at Jiri’s former Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at the University of Miami. It was sponsored largely with the help of the late Jorge Mas Canosa, then chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), Feliciano Foyo, a friend of Jeb Bush,  and leaders of the Miami Jewish community like Abel Holtz and Sandy Ziff.  Their mission was to educate Soviet, reform-minded Russians that Gorbachev’s glasnost was not happening in Cuba.  Reporter Andreas Oppenheimer wrote in his book, Castro’s Final Hour, how Jiri personally briefed an amazed Boris Yeltsin. 

During these dialogues,   Yeltsin and other Russian glasnost leaders, advisers and scholars like Georgi Arbatov and Andrey Kortunov, and numerous Russian opinion-makers met with key U.S. legislators and university students.  Also upheld at these dialogues, besides glasnost, was the cause of Renaldo Ochua, the popular, glasnost-friendly Cuban general and Castro rival, who was executed for “treason” after a Stalinist-type show trial.  The anti-Castro campaign that followed in the Soviet press, organized with the aid of Mas Canosa and Jiri, brought about dozens of glasnost articles read by the Russian people. 

For the first time there was a frank, honest look at the brutal, totalitarian regime of macho-Leninist regime, and the six billion dollars in Soviet subsidies being paid to it yearly while Russian food stores, amidst a deep economic crisis, were virtually empty.  In 1990, Jiri also led a CANF delegation to President Yeltsin at his Russian White House and their lobbying helped Yeltsin’s decision to cut Russian subsidies to Cuba.  Even Vladimir Putin, who renewed some ties with Cuba, never reinstated those subsidies. In a  Moscow-Prague Dialogue supported by the late Vaclav Havel, and late Czech foreign minister Jiri Dienstbier, (Jiri was his appointed advisor)  the Czechs acted upon the recommendation of Mas and Jiri to cease Cuban representation  in Washington.

The hope arose that eventually the Cuban regime would change as did its East European counterparts.  It would open its system and release its dissidents through largely peaceful revolutionary change.  But after so much hope and effort, It was not to be. Today’s opening of our embassy in Havana is confirmation of what Donald Trump would call Obama-Kerry’s pitiable deal-making.    As in the case of the Iran nuke deal, the opening to Cuba has occurred accompanied with little in return. 

Disgracefully, no dissidents were freed and invited to the opening of our embassy in Havana.  No pledges were made to open the system and hold free elections.  No discussion was held about any Castro claims for reparations.  This is not only bad deal-making, but a betrayal of Jack Kennedy’s promise to the Bay of Pigs veterans that their flag, together with the U.S. flag would someday be raised in a free Havana.  Castro, a man who pathologically hates America, and who has promoted other dictatorships in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Angola and Ethiopia, must be laughing up the sleeve of his biadero. 

A genuine opening to Cuba our terms, must now await the results of the 2016 presidential elections when hopefully, Obama and Kerry will be joined by Hillary to write their memoirs in retirement and Marco Rubio might be our Secretary of State.