Cuba's Raul Castro crushes dissent like his communist tyrant brother, Fidel...

Cuba's current communist dictator Raul Castro has kept the system his brother Fidel used to repress critics, refusing to free scores of people imprisoned years ago and jailing others for "dangerousness," Human Rights Watch said in a report issued on Wednesday.

The assessment came as President Barack Obama says he wants to "recast" ties with Cuba and Congress is considering lifting a ban on U.S. travel to the Communist-run island 90 miles from Florida.

Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his younger brother Raul in July, 2006 and formally stepped aside as president last year because of illness.

Raul Castro has relied in particular on a Cuban law that lets the state imprison people even before they commit a crime, Human Rights Watch said.

The group documented more than 40 cases under Raul Castro in which Cuba has imprisoned individuals for "dangerousness" because they sought to do things such as stage peaceful marches or organize independent labor unions.

In addition, 53 prisoners who were sentenced in a 2003 crackdown on dissidents under Fidel Castro are still in jail, the report by the global human rights monitor said.
Systematic repression has created a climate of fear among Cuban dissidents, and prison conditions are inhumane, said Human Rights Watch, whose researchers traveled to the island for two weeks during the summer for their report.

Jail is only one of the tactics used, it said. "Dissidents who try to express their views are often beaten, arbitrarily arrested, and subjected to public acts of repudiation."

In one recent well-publicized example, Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez said she was beaten this month by men she thinks were state security agents.

The independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights estimated this year that Cuba has 200 political prisoners. It says the government now favors brief detentions over long sentences because they intimidate without hurting Cuba's image abroad.

U.S. TRAVEL BAN QUESTIONED

In Congress, a key Democrat said the report showed the need to lift the U.S. travel ban on Cuba. That would be "the best anti-Castro-policy," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman told Reuters.

Americans visiting Cuba would be ambassadors of democratic values, thus undermining the Castro government, he said.

"I think the Castro regime likes our current policy. They are very nervous about us opening up travel to Cuba," Berman said. He is holding a hearing on the travel ban on Thursday.

But Florida Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American who was born in Havana, said it was important to retain the travel ban. U.S. tourists flooding to Cuba could mean "billions of dollars for the (Castro) regime," he said.

Human Rights Watch urged a multilateral approach to press the Cuban government to improve its rights record, focusing on the release of political prisoners, instead of seeking to change Cuba's one-party system through a unilateral embargo.

The United States has restricted trade and travel with Cuba since the 1960s in what started as a Cold War policy to isolate Fidel Castro after his 1959 revolution. But the U.S. embargo has lost international support, with only Israel and Palau backing the U.S. policy at the United Nations this year.

Since taking office in January, Obama has taken steps to ease the embargo as well as reopen dialogue with Havana. But he also has called on its government to reciprocate by freeing detained dissidents and improving human rights.

Human Rights Watch favors an end to the U.S. travel ban. It says Washington should also end its "failed embargo policy" that has won sympathy for the Castro government abroad.

But before lifting the embargo the United States should agree with allies in Europe and Latin America to jointly demand the immediate release of Cuban political prisoners, it said.

If Havana does not respond in six months, countries should impose joint punitive measures on Cuba, the report said.

The 50-year old Castro dinasty in Cuba is a desgrace for all of the Americas and no one should assist these crminals in any way whatsoever. Although his death is rumored on the Internet, Fidel is looking more and more like the cadaver we are all hoping for. The freedom loving people of the world need to keep the pressure on this evil regime. Let's show our solidarity with the humilliated Cuban people.

Revisionists attempting to omit and keep God out of America the beautiful...

MUST WE THE PEOPLE HIRE A MONUMENT ENGRAVER TO GO TO ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY AND ADD THE MISSING WORDS?

Today I went to visit the new World War II Memorial in Washington , DC. I got an unexpected history lesson. Because I'm a baby boomer, I was one of the youngest in the crowd. Most were the age of my parents, Veterans of 'the greatest war,' with their families. It was a beautiful day, and people were smiling and happy to be there. Hundreds of us milled around the memorial, reading the inspiring words of Eisenhower and Truman that are engraved there.

On the Pacific side of the memorial, a group of us gathered to read the words President Roosevelt used to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941-- a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.

One elderly woman read the words aloud: 'With confidence in our armed forces, with the abounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.'

But as she read, she was suddenly turned angry. 'Wait a minute,' she said, 'they left out the end of the quote. They left out the most important part. Roosevelt ended the message with 'so help us God.'

Her husband said, 'You are probably right. We're not supposed to say things like that now.'

'I know I'm right,' she insisted. 'I remember the speech.' The two looked dismayed,
shook their heads sadly and walked away.

Listening to their conversation, I thought to myself, 'Well, it has been over 50 years; she's probably forgotten.'

But she had not forgotten. She was right.

I went home and pulled out the book my book club is reading --- 'Flags of Our Fathers' by James Bradley. It's all about the battle at Iwo Jima.

I haven't gotten too far in the book. It's tough to read because it's a graphic description of the WWII battles in the Pacific.

But right there it was on page 58. Roosevelt's speech to the nation ends with, 'so help us God.'

The people who edited out that part of the speech when they engraved it on the memorial could have fooled me. I was born after the war! But they couldn't fool the people who were there. Roosevelt 's words are engraved on their hearts.

WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO EDIT AND CHANGE THE WORDS OF HISTORY?

There appears to be a group of slack jawed, limp wristed socialist politically correct cretins today who are trying to change the history of our beautiful America by leaving God out of i; but the truth is and remains, God has been a part of this nation since its beginning. He still wants to be... and He always will be because we the people want him to be!

Ousted Honduran socialist president blames US for his non reinstatement…

Ousted Honduran leftist turncoat President Manuel Zelaya accused the U.S. government Thursday of weakening and changing course in the conflict over the June 28 coup that saw soldiers hustle him out of the country on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court..

Washington has said it supports Zelaya's reinstatement, but a U.S.-brokered pact signed by Zelaya and the government in place since the coup sets no deadline for his return to office and hopes of reinstating the deposed leader before Nov. 29 presidential elections appeared to be dimming. Albeit, the US owns nothing to this chavista/castrista socialist.

U.S. officials "have suddenly declared they are going to wait for the elections because they changed their position midstream," Zelaya told Radio Globo. Zelaya has demanded he be reinstated before the vote.

"The United States weakened in the face of the dictator," Zelaya said, referring to interim President Roberto Micheletti. It is clear that the (leftist leaning) nations of the world, including the current US administration itself, advocated for Zelaya’s reinstatement and they condemned the so-called coup, but Honduras has help firm and not yielded to interventionist pressures and threats.

This week, the United States sent Craig Kelly, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, to Honduras to try to move along the U.S.-brokered pact, which calls for a unity government and for Congress to vote on whether to restore Zelaya.

Congressional leaders say they are waiting for an opinion from prosecutors and Honduras' Supreme Court, which ordered Zelaya's arrest for refusing to drop plans for a referendum on constitutional change that the court had ruled illegal. Key lawmakers have indicated there might not be a vote until after the elections. According to Honduras constitutional law, Zelaya should be tried for his crimes and abuse of power.

"There is an accord and we want it to advance because we think it is important for the country and the region. It's urgent and we have to advance," Kelly said Tuesday.

On Thursday, U.S. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, said during a visit that "the (Honduran) congress needs to move forward quickly ... to reinstall Zelaya as president, and the democratic order needs to be restored."

Zelaya declared the agreement a failure last week when Micheletti announced the creation of a national unity government even though Zelaya had not proposed any candidates.

Micheletti on Thursday repeated a similar offer to resign if Zelaya agrees to seek asylum abroad and stop his political activity. Zelaya has been holed up at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa since sneaking back into Honduras despite the government's threat to arrest him.

Micheletti also said the government is investigating purported plans by unspecified Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to disrupt the elections. He did not give details.

Zelaya is urging the international leftist community not to recognize the outcome of the November election (the will of the people). Washington initially joined other Western Hemisphere countries in warning that they would not recognize the vote if Zelaya is not reinstated first.

But after brokering the pact, U.S. diplomats indicated Washington would support the elections, which had been scheduled before the coup, as long the deal was implemented.

Hondurans have continually insisted on, “Our country, our decision,” and reject any and all international meddling and intervention in the internal affair of their country and their national sovereignty.

Never again...

Eisenhower warned us...

It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.'

This week, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. We need to keep alive the memory of the millions upon millions of individuals who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beat, experimented on and humiliated' while the German people and the world looked the other way!

Now, with many voices claiming that the Holocaust was 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets mans inhumanity toward man.

The Fall of Mexico - Corruption and drugs

Poor Mexico. So far from God and so close to the United States.
—Porfirio Díaz, dictator of Mexico from 1876 to 1880 and 1884 to 1911

Those famous words came to mind when another man named Díaz offered me an equally concise observation about the realities of life in the country today: “In Mexico it is dangerous to speak the truth. It is even dangerous to know the truth.”

In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time—the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution—and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from the (U.S.-supported) war on drugs? Nobody knows: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear.

The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real.

His pockets bulging with petro dollars, Chavez's next target could very well be El Salvador's fledging new democracy...

Fidel Castro and Latin American communists learned a lot from Chilean President Salvador Allende's failed power grab in 1973.

And he used the lessons of that bitter defeat to coach Venezuela's Hugo Chávez to dictatorship under the guise of democracy more than 25 years later.

Now Latin America's revolutionaries may be experiencing another setback and this time they can't claim that a military coup removed their would-be dictator. Instead, former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was arrested by order of the Supreme Court and deposed by Congress. And despite enormous international pressure, the Honduran democracy has so far defended its rule of law.

Yet far from giving up, Castro protégés are already using what they learned in Tegucigalpa in El Salvador. Central America's most promising free-market democracy is now fighting for its life.

Allende got the boot from his military because he had been trampling the constitution. The Supreme Court, the Bar Association and the Medical Association all denounced his disregard for the rule of law. According to James R. Whelan, author of a history of Chile titled "Out of the Ashes," the lower house of its Congress passed a resolution on Aug. 22, 1973, that "said bluntly that it was the responsibility of the military . . . 'to put an immediate end' to lawlessness and 'channel government action along legal paths . . . .'"

Less than a month later, the military complied. The lesson from Chile for the hard left was that success depended on first getting control of the institutions with the power to check an aspiring tyrant.

Now the leadership of El Salvador's FMLN party, composed of many former terrorists and guerrillas, is attempting just that. It took some 20 years for the political party of the FMLN to get to the presidency and many Salvadorans distrust it because of its violent history. But FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes ran as a moderate, and the economy had suffered under former President Tony Saca of the center-right Arena Party. Disillusioned Salvadorans sought change in Funes…

Without Mauricio Funes, the FMLN had little to no chance of gained political power because of the people’s distrust of their violent and terrorist past. This group of recalcitrant and frustrated communists went so far as to threaten that if they did not win these elections, that they would burn the country.

It should be noted that a widening rift has developed in the ranks of the militant left due to the fact they thought Funes would be easily manipulated, but so far Mauricio Funes seems to be his own man and has chosen to remain the president of all Salvadorans.

Albeit, the people must remain alert and on guard during these fragile period in their fledging democracy, because at present only Mauricio Funes stands between the militant terrorist left and their life long dream of reaching power…

Conditions have gone from bad to worse, to overwhelming in tiny Central American republic...

Murders up 40 percent in El Salvador and the extreme left can no longer sit back, criticize and point their finger at the ARENA goverment

The number of murders in El Salvador between Jan 1 and Nov 1 stands at 3,673, which is 40 percent more than during the same period last year, media reports said, citing official statistics.
La Prensa Grafica a local newspaper in that country based the figure on data from the National Police, the Attorney General's Office and the medical examiner's office.

The number of murders, which average 13.9 per day, is 40.2 percent higher than the 2,620 homicides that were tallied during the same period in 2008. The National Police added that during last month alone there were 431 murders, 158 more than in October 2008.

Leftist government authorities are clearly overwhelmed and warn that nearly two-thirds of the 3,184 men killed this year were between the ages of 18 and 30. The San Salvador metropolitan area, which contains 14 municipalities, has had 419 more murders this year than during the same period last year. Seventy-six percent of the killings were carried out with firearms.

In the face of the increase in violence, 94 percent of the residents of Greater San Salvador supported the possibility of increasing the use of army troops for security tasks, according to a survey by the firm JBS Opinion released Tuesday by the Diario de Hoy newspaper. The poll was made public at a time when the government of President Mauricio Funes is evaluating the possibility of adding 6,500 soldiers to the effort to fight the lack of security.

The Salvadoran armed forces (FAES) had among its other constitutional duties, the mission to guarantee and maintain public order, until this was passed to the newly created National Civilian Police force that was organized as part the Peace Accords that ended the country's civil war in 1992. This apparently has turned out to be a big mistake as can be seen by the crime wave that has overwhelmed civilian police the government autorities.

It's becoming more and more apparent why the Army was made resonsible for maintaining public order in the cities and the rural areas. The Guardia Nacional was established in 1912 and fashioned along the lines of the Spanish Civil Guard and had maintained public order until it was decommissioned in 1992. The Salvadoran people, now victimized and feeling the sting of crime and mayham are living in terror and they cry out for the reinstatement of the Guardia Nacional of El Salvador.

One more example of why, "It's better to be right than politically correct"....