Posted on 04/02/2016 9:30:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
What? You missed the headline? Instead, you probably read about the item-- but under a different headline last week-end.
You probably read about a “Historic!”-- even an “Epochal!”-- Rolling Stones concert in Havana Friday night! The hyperventilating “reporters” probably followed up by mentioning “historic changes!” and “reforms!” in Cuba, as proven by the very concert!
In fact, the only “historic changes!” in Cuba—as recognized by the tiny number of people who actually study this issue—involve the source of the cash-flow into the Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate (euphemized as “Cuba” by the media and U.S. State Dept.)
When that cash flowed from the Soviet Union rock music was a potentially-disruptive foreign influence that required no tolerance from the Stalinist authorities. In fact, these authorities felt obliged to round up and jail Cuban rock fans en-masse. Last week-for the first time in history--this fascinating datum was widely reported by the mainstream media. In fact, Castro’s police traditionally treated Rolling Stones fans about like the Hells Angels treated them at another famous “free” Rolling Stones concert—Altamont California Dec. 1969.
But actually, this datum was not widely known until the publication and international distribution of a certain book that highlighted the datum to dramatize the tragic disconnect between the hipsters who wear Che Guevara-T-shirts and the hipsters cursed by fate to live under the regime co-founded by Che Guevara.
Prior to last week, this tragic disconnect was not something Cuba’s Stalinist authorities were very keen to publicize. After all, it exposed Che T-shirt wearers as blithering and useful idiots. For some reason, all the “reporters” who (after thorough vetting by Castro’s secret police) were granted “journalist” visas by the Castro regime were likewise unenthusiastic –and for several decades--about exposing this fascinating datum.
But things have changed. “Why and how,” you ask? Well…..
Take a millennial Bernie Sanders supporter who lives in his divorced mother’s basement room. Say this mother finally tired of his sloth and stupidity, cut off his allowance and booted him from her basement. So he moved in with his father, who provided the new room, board and allowance.
Chances are that the Bernie Sanders supporter would suddenly find ways to extol the virtues of his father and forget all the horrible things he said about him while eagerly agreeing with his mother when he encountered her while raiding the refrigerator or asking for her car keys. Alas, the son’s sloth and stupidity would probably remain unchanged.
Well, think of the Castro regime as that Bernie Sanders supporter. Back in the early 1990’s his mother (Russia) finally tired of the arrangement and booted him into the “street,” so to speak.
So now Cuba lives with his father (tourism,) while retaining essentially all of his disgusting habits. Living with this new provider requires that Cuba slightly change his “tune” –and slightly modify his behavior--but really nothing major, nothing of substance. “What’s a little lip-service,” the Sanders supporter snickers, “in exchange for room, board and my uninterrupted Wi-Fi?”
In brief, the Castro regime briefly “hooked-up” with the Rolling Stones for the simple expedient of filling its coffers with millions more in tourist money. In the meantime, Castro’s subjects –while allowed to boogie a bit—essentially remain the impoverished and oppressed subjects of a totalitarian regime.
Indeed, repression against Cubans has actually cranked-up steadily in direct proportion to the Stalinist regime’s enrichment via tourism, especially owing to president Obama’s policies that have recently swamped Cuba with over half a million visitors last year from the U.S. and contributed an estimated $5.6 billion in remittances and travel expenditures to the Castro regime’s coffers. As a direct result, desperate Cubans are risking their lives to flee Cuba at a rate unseen in decades.
Almost exactly a year ago, your humble servant went on John Stossell’s show to debate TWO libertarians (with half my brain tied behind my back) who giddily support Obama’s Cuba “opening.” While I bombarded them with thoroughly-documented facts and figures they gently shut their eyes, assumed the lotus position and predicted wonderful things for Cubans. In (tragic) contrast I predicted this very outcome.
During Easter week-end, for instance, while the mainstream media dutifully promoted the Rolling Stones concert (i.e. Castro-regime/ Rolling Stones business partnership) Cuban dissidents suffered a wave of arrests and beatings. Needless to add, this repression was dutifully ignored by the mainstream media. But if you’re somehow interested in a news story that somehow omits mention of both Donald Trump and the Rolling Stones, here it is.
But don’t take all this stuff from me. After all, I don’t live in Cuba. Take it from 25 year-old Cuban dissident Rosa Maria Paya, whose father was murdered by the Stalinist regime’s KGB-trained secret police three years ago: “They (the Rolling Stones) should be aware that their performance is being used by a totalitarian regime as a symbol of an opening that isn’t really taking place.”
You see, amigos: Cuba’s entire economic infrastructure is owned almost lock stock and barrel—not only by the Stalinist regime’s military and secret police sectors (the only people in Cuba with guns, in case you’d forgotten) —but more specifically by the Castro family itself. In Congressional testimony a few years ago, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Simmons, a recently retired Defense Intelligence Agency Cuba specialist, explained the issue in detail. He showed how through a corporation named GAESA, Raul Castro's military owns virtually every corporation involved in Cuba's tourism industry, among the Stalinist regime's top money-makers lately.
And as GAESA’s chief executive officer we find none other than Raul Castro’s very son in law Maj. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas.
The AP, by the way, estimated that half the fans in the front rows of the Rolling Stones concert were foreigners (i.e. tourists.)
So when it comes to news from Cuba, amigos--please keep your eye on the ball: In a nutshell that ball is: income and power for the Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate–which means CASH!–from whatever source. Submit everything you read and hear from the media about Cuba to that test (will it further enrich and empower the Castro-Family-Crime -Syndicate, while keeping the bulk of the Cuban people poor, stupid, powerless and distracted?) Do this and everything in Cuba will make perfect sense.
I can’t get no satisfaction out of this!
Never cared for these guys. The commies too.
I would not blame the band
Historically bands go to give the people something they’ve never seen
Like Metallica in Soviet Union in the mid 80s
Cuba will fall now at some point
These guys are going to die off
And plenty ex Cubans nearby just aching to exploit it
Might not be peaceful even now
Nothing says Rock and Roll as Seventy old olds.
I didn’t either, and still don’t
I will NEVER VOLUNTARILY listen to Stones music again.
This tells me that the Stones are Commie Sympathizers.
Sympathy for the Devil
It’s sad, but those seventy year olds still rock harder than most of the stars in the under-30 crowd nowadays!
“Yup, Sympathy for the Devil truly crystallizes this Leftist adoration for totalitarians.”
You never caught the sarcasm in that song?!?
I was just using their title, not their sarcasm.
Not the first time the Stones played in a Communist country
Rolling Stones in Warsaw 1967
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qesnBkpUkjg
No reason we couldn't have made that happen earlier rather then later.
Think of the people who would have lived had we done that.
In 1850, the African slave population in Cuba was about 50% of the total population.
In 2016, Wikipedia states that just 9% of the total population is Black, which is actually smaller than the 13% Black population in the USA.
Is that 9% number accurate?
Does anyone here have better numbers on this issue, or an explanation for the collapse in the Black Cuban population?
The reason I ask is that no Left wing Americans ever criticize the fact that two European white boys - the Castro brothers - have been the dictators of Cuba for 56 years, and they have almost no Black people at all in their “government.”
Communists are really capitalists whose organize their corporation around the government. They are just as greedy but much more ruthless but than the globalists.
A warm climate feels better for aching old bones, especially for lifelong substance abusers -- and the Castros are druglords.
They joined the street fightin’ men in 1968 when western commies waged wars against police, academia, and the military.
They went out for their share of abuse at the demonstration.
Maybe Mick is going to get Castro to print up a bunch of red t-shirts with his picture on them, done in the style of Roman Cieslewicz, the artist who designed the iconic "CHE" poster which later morphed into a t-shirt image.
They'd sell like hotcakes.
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