Republican-Led Congress Oversees Large-Scale Importation of Somali Migrants

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The Somali refugee responsible for attacking young Americans at Ohio State University was deliberately imported into the country by the nation’s federal immigration policy–yet the scale and impact of immigration from undeveloped, foreign cultures is still a surprise to some politicians.

Since 2001, the United States has permanently resettled nearly 100,000 migrants from Somalia–a nation where the prevalence rate of Female Genital Mutilation for women and girls ages 15 to 49 is 98 percent, and where homosexuality can be punishable by death. In a single year, a Republican-led Congress funded visas for nearly 300,000 (temporary and permanent) Muslim migrants, which is a population that is nearly twice the size of the entire population of Dayton, Ohio.

The federal government invited Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, into the United States as a refugee, according to reports. Artan reportedly came to the U.S. in 2014, and his refugee status allowed him to fill a coveted slot at Ohio State University. It also allowed him to obtain federal benefits, and eventually would have given him quick access to citizenship, the voting booth, and the ability to bring over foreign relatives through chain migration.

Yet some Republican lawmakers seem unaware of the social and cultural impact that large-scale Muslim migration has had in their own backyards. (Read more from “Republican-Led Congress Oversees Large-Scale Importation of Somali Migrants” HERE)

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After Castro’s Death, Trump Seeks ‘Concessions’ From Cuba

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Under the Castro regime in Cuba, Sebastian Arcos spent a year of his life in prison for trying to escape the grip of communism.

But the death of Fidel Castro on Friday did not give Arcos immediate relief, because the regime that altered the course of his life remains in power.

“I have become old and cynical, so I was not particularly happy when he died—I was not sad either,” said Arcos, who spent the first 30 years of his life in Cuba before coming to Miami, where he is now the associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

“Unquestionably, the world is a better place today without Fidel Castro,” Arcos added in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“More importantly, even if I don’t have any hope the regime will change in the short term, as a friend said to me yesterday, nothing changes and everything changes. Nothing changes because in the short term, Raul Castro [Fidel’s brother and Cuba’s president] remains firmly in control. But everything changes because the paramount leader of the Cuban Revolution has died, and when they bury him, they will bury the Cuban Revolution with him.”

Arcos, like many Cuban-Americans and others with a stake in Cuba’s future, views Fidel Castro’s death as an inflection point in how the U.S. engages with the Communist-ruled island.

Supporters of President Barack Obama’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba hope that Fidel Castro’s death will hasten the rapprochement of the two countries. But skeptics like Arcos say Fidel Castro’s death, and the attention it is drawing, will expose the human rights abuses and oppression that he says has continued under Raul Castro’s leadership, providing an opportunity for the next U.S. administration to press harder for change.

“President-elect Donald Trump made a campaign promise here in Miami, and he has to find a way to fulfill that campaign promise,” Arcos said.

Trump has sent mixed signals on his potential Cuba policy.

During a campaign event in Miami in September, Trump accused the Obama administration of making “concessions” to Cuba and he said he would reverse the president’s actions, many made by executive authority, unless “the Castro regime meets our demands.”

Monday, Trump took to Twitter to clarify his policy, writing: “If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people, and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal.”

But Trump also spoke positively of Obama’s policy early in his campaign, saying restarting diplomatic relations with Cuba was “fine.”

Obama’s Dramatic Change

In December of 2014, Obama announced a renewal of diplomatic ties with Cuba that included a loosening of decades-old restrictions on travel, trade, investment, and remittances.

Within a year, the countries reopened their embassies.

It is now easier for Americans to visit Cuba and send money and goods there, and also for American businesses to establish a presence on the island. Obama recently used executive action to expand the legal importation of Cuban cigars and rum by Americans who visit the island.

Hundreds of commercial flights go to and from the island weekly, with U.S. airlines scheduled to join this week.

Obama could not end the trade embargo against Cuba. Only Congress can do that.

Ricardo Herrero, the executive director of #CubaNow, an advocacy group that supports Obama’s policy change, said that the opening to Cuba has encouraged private industry and promoted free expression from reform-minded citizens.

“It would be a grave mistake to pull back now,” Herrero told The Daily Signal in an interview. “By demanding concessions, all you are doing is empowering the regime and enabling them to go to reformers on the island and say, ‘See, they [the U.S.] are trying to govern us already.’ That’s why we need to remain strong. Let’s not give more oxygen to those who want to continue fighting the Cold War forever.”

‘Important Opportunity’

If Trump moves forward with changing Obama’s Cuba policy, he will find influential allies in the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal that he and other Cuban-American Republicans in Congress are “so encouraged” by Trump’s public statements regarding Cuba.

He said he would push for Trump to “eliminate” all of Obama’s actions unless Cuba meets certain conditions, including freeing all political prisoners “without exception,” allowing for “basic freedoms,” and starting the process “toward multiparty elections.”

“Let’s help the internal opposition,” Diaz-Balart said. “Let’s stand with them, and encourage and legitimize them, as opposed to what Obama has done to legitimize the dictatorship that oppresses those folks. This is a very important opportunity for the president-elect to do an awful lot of good for the prospects of a free Cuba.”

Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., who supports Obama’s policy change, is more circumspect about radically shifting course.

“I am hopeful he [Trump] will come out on the side of his earlier statements that were pro-engagement and question the validity of a 50-year policy that has not brought about change,” Sanford told The Daily Signal in an interview. “I have no problem with the idea of asking for more. If one can come up with a better deal, we should. What I would hope not to see is the perfect being the enemy of the good. Wherever you are in the debate, people are foreseeing change in Cuba. The question is how do we get there.”

Eric Hershberg, the director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said Trump has the authority to walk back much of Obama’s Cuba policy.

He argues that in this uncertain period after Fidel Castro’s death, and the election of Trump as U.S. president, Raul Castro and his communist regime may be more tempted to act out in the short term.

“Fidel leaving the scene may accentuate the regime’s message to the Americans that we are still here and will act in our interests, not yours,” Hershberg said. “The Cubans aren’t going to give any concessions at all. The Cubans have never gave concessions since the revolution and they won’t start now.” (For more from the author of “After Castro’s Death, Trump Seeks ‘Concessions’ From Cuba” please click HERE)

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Castro May Be Dead, but Religious Freedom in Cuba Still Suffers

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Fidel Castro is dead, but even with the passing of the tyrannical persecutor religious freedom in Cuba still has a long way to go.

Late Friday night, Fidel’s little brother Raul, who took over the country due to Fidel’s health problems in 2006, confirmed the death of the dictator on Cuban state television.

Unfortunately, communism in the island nation will not die with him, thanks to his brother Raul and the callous actions of western governments in recognizing the regime.

The New York Times’ obituary hailed the Marxist dictator as a “revolutionary,” Liberal Party Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened” by the passing of “Cuba’s longest serving president” who “made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.” U.S. president Barack Obama also chimed in with a sterilized recognition of “the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation.”

Meanwhile, U.S. President-elect Donald responded (correctly) to the news as the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his citizens for the greater part of the 20th century:

Well, at least one world leader is willing to speak to the regime’s true nature.
As a result of the reign of terror and persecution wrought by the Castro brothers, the state of religious freedom and other vital human rights in the tiny communist country just 90 miles from America’s shores, is still dismal despite the meager, nominal improvements that Raul has sought since taking power in 2006.

The Castro regime, first through Fidel, then through his brother Raul, has engaged in a decades-long campaign against the religious liberty of its citizens. This has included the jailing of religious and political dissidents in prisons and concentration camps, the demolition of places of worship, and the systematic regulation of religious groups through the state.

In just one of the most recent and egregious examples of this systematic persecution, the nonpartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2016 report on the country noted that in 2015 “the government designated 2,000 Assemblies of God churches as illegal and ordered their closure, confiscation, or demolition.”

When the Obama administration visited Cuba after symbolically opening up diplomatic relations with the country earlier this year, president Obama said, while standing next to Fidel had the audacity to claim that the two could hopefully learn from each other on human rights.

Meanwhile, just a few days before, scores the Ladies in White – pro-democracy protestors, many of which are the relatives of jailed dissidents – were arbitrarily rounded up by the truckload and were imprisoned so that their demonstrations wouldn’t interfere with the proceedings.

The irony was, and is still, incredible in the worst sense of the word.

As long as Raul remains in place and communism reigns across the Caribbean island, religious freedom is a dream for many not yet realized, and will remain a distant memory so long as governments continue to deem themselves governors of the human soul and the final arbiters of human worth.

If the United States has anything to learn about human rights from the Castro brothers on human rights, that lesson is a case study in what never to do if you believe in fundamental human rights in the first place.

Fidel Castro is dead, and may God have mercy on his soul; he’s going to need it. (For more from the author of “Castro May Be Dead, but Religious Freedom in Cuba Still Suffers” please click HERE)

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Mexican Cement Maker Ready to Help Trump Build Border Wall

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A Mexican cement maker is ready to lend its services to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to build the wall he wants to erect on the southern border of the United States to curb immigration.

“We can’t be choosy,” Enrique Escalante, Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) said in an interview. “We’re an important producer in that area and we have to respect our clients on both sides of the border.”

Republican Trump campaigned vowing to build a “big, beautiful, powerful” wall across the 2,000 mile (3,200 km) frontier in order to stop illegal immigrants from Mexico, which he accused of sending rapists and drug traffickers north.

The campaign of the New York businessman who has never previously held public office was widely reviled in Mexico.

Parts of the border are already divided by high fences, and a huge part of the boundary runs along the Rio Grande river. (Read more from “Mexican Cement Maker Ready to Help Trump Build Border Wall” HERE)

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Among World Religions, Christianity Provides a Middle Way Between Jihad and Pacifism

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Every heresy starts with at least a tiny mustard seed of truth. However great a distortion it is to say that Christianity preaches pacifism, non-violence, and passive surrender to the aggressions of other cultures, faiths, and ideologies, that notion begins with something real. There is a stark difference between Christianity and the religions that have surrounded it for most of its history. To put it another way: would we need a long article of to refute the idea that Islam is a pacifist religion?

Hardly. It won’t take that long. In fact, let’s go ahead and do it. The self-styled prophet Muhammad began by preaching his distinctive religion, which many scholars see as cobbled-together bits of Judaism and extreme Arian Christianity (which denies Jesus’ divinity), two creeds that were common in the region of Arabia where he grew up, all filtered through an intense tribal nationalism. The Arabs had been disorganized, dispossessed, and frequently governed by foreign rulers for many centuries, practicing either fractured and primitive forms of paganism, or faiths that came to them from other nations — such as Christianity and Judaism.

Islam: A Warrior’s Religion

Muhammad’s creed, by contrast, told them that Arabs were in fact the people of God, that God’s own Word had been written in their own language before all eternity and dwelt alongside Him in heaven. No translation of the Koran from Arabic into any other language is even considered authentic by true believers, merely a paraphrase. The holy place where all must come to pray would be in Mecca, not Jerusalem, and the whole Arab peninsula must be purged of every other religion. After a decade or so of preaching this message with little success in Mecca itself, Muhammad fled to Medina, where warring clans turned to him as a peacemaker — and a political savior. He began to reign over Medina as a theocratic king.

Suddenly, the constant stream of messages that Muhammad claimed to be hearing from the Angel Gabriel took on a quite different tenor. While he had been weak and almost friendless, God had told him to preach tolerance and peaceful coexistence with other religions. Once he had at his disposal significant wealth and an army keen for commerce raids and conquest, Muhammad began hearing messages of quite another sort. These later messages, he would explain to his followers, “abrogated” the first set of teachings: the God in whom he believed was perfectly free to change his mind. (Indeed, the Islamic concept of Allah leaves Him quite unbound by reason, logic, self-consistency, or even the duty to keep His promises — only His Will is sovereign, and it’s quite free to prove capricious.)

It was at this point that the Islamic faith we have come to know and love took the shape it has kept ever since: it’s a creed of conquest that claims the whole non-Muslim world consists of sinful rebels against Allah who deserve to be subjugated by force and either converted or killed — though reluctant exceptions are offered in principle (quite often ignored in practice) for other monotheists such as Jews and Christians. Those peoples are damned to hell in the next life, but in this one they may be left to live in peace, provided they accept absolute subjugation to the authority of Muslims, defer to them in every sphere of life, refrain from making converts or advertising their faith, and pay a special, heavy tax.

Muhammad put this creed into practice, leading armies into battle, raiding caravans to raise money, and after massacring unbelievers who resisted his offer of faith or subjugation, taking women and girls as sex slaves. To this day, Muslim men are restricted to “only” four permanent wives, but are free to keep as many captured concubines as they can kidnap in wars fought for Islam. This doctrine is used today by ISIS in Iraq and Syria to justify the sex slavery of hundreds of non-Muslim women and girls. Unfortunately, Muslims consider Muhammad as the “perfect example” of human behavior, which means that virtually everything he did is worthy of imitation. Since he married a nine-year-old, that means that strict Muslim countries make it legal for their men to do the same — as Iran did in 1979 after its Islamic Revolution.

Christianity: A Middle Way Between Jihad and Servile Passivity

The example set by Jesus is … different, to put it mildly. Jesus responded to religious authorities who challenged His authority by engaging them in debate. He preached that we must go beyond the Old Testament’s call for proportional justice (“an eye for an eye”), and that when insulted with a slap we should “turn the other cheek.” He ordered us to “love your enemy” and “pray for those who persecute you.” He told His disciples that when they preached His message and were rejected, they should just quietly leave town. When gendarmes of the corrupt Temple establishment had Him arrested, He forbade His disciples to fight them, even healing the single Temple guard an apostle had rashly wounded. Insulted and beaten by guards, He spoke not a word of rebuke. From the Cross He did not denounce His persecutors, but called on His Father to forgive them, because they knew not what they were doing.

Jesus issued a powerful challenge to our natural (but fallen) instinct to avenge every slight, humiliate our enemies, treasure grievances, and wait for a chance for vengeance — in other words, to follow the advice of Niccolo Machiavelli, whose politics manual The Prince was essentially a self-help book from the anti-Christ. But the contrast between Jesus and Muhammad can be taken much too far, particularly if we pluck Christ’s statements out of their proper context and misunderstand His mission in a way that turns out to be perversely self-aggrandizing.

Don’t Try to Compete with Jesus

Because here’s the thing: Jesus is not meant to serve as our example in every single way. We are not called on to overturn the existing interpretation of sacred scriptures, for one thing. (Imagine if every Christian showed up at church and preached, “The Bible says unto you X, but I tell you Y!”) Nor is each of us a prophet preaching a brand new covenant between God and man. Few of us miraculously heal the sick, give sight to the blind, or dispense forgiveness to sinners on our own authority. As bad as some liberal Catholic parish Masses can be, we don’t have the right to rampage through the sanctuary, overturning the altar and scattering the liturgical dancers. (Resist the temptation, okay?)

Most of us are not even called to poverty, chastity, and obedience — as many of the apostles were, on whom monks and nuns model their very special and rare vocations.

Most important of all, not one of us is called to be a pure sacrificial victim, going willingly to our deaths at the hands of unjust authorities so that our suffering can make reparation to the Father for the sins of all mankind. Really. No matter how righteous and altruistic you’re feeling at the moment, Jesus has been there, and done that.

While Jesus called on us to carry our daily crosses, He did not threaten to nail us all up to them. The infinitesimally small percentage of Christians who face the stark choice between renouncing Jesus or dying as martyrs are in some ways emulating Jesus, but even they fall far short: their deaths do not forgive sins, though they can offer their sufferings in union with Christ’s for the sake of other sinners.

We are not sacrificial lambs going peacefully to the slaughter out of obedience to the Father for the sake of man’s redemption. And martyrdom isn’t God’s plan for the human race — or else He would have told us so. A few Christians in the early Church, during the Roman persecution, got it into their heads that it was virtuous to seek out martyrdom and turned themselves in to the pagan procurators to claim a glorious Christ-like death. The Church Father St. Gregory of Nazianzus condemned them for their rashness.

Our Duty to Defend the Innocent, on Pain of Sin

The Catholic Church at least does not teach that we are to simply surrender our lives to anyone who attacks us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, relying on St. Thomas Aquinas, defends the lethal use of force for the “legitimate defense of persons and societies”:

Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow: ‘If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.’” (2263-4)

Nor are we expected — or even permitted — to leave innocent third parties defenseless at the hands of violent aggressors. As St. Thomas points out in another passage quoted in the Catechism: “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.” (2265)

We are called to use force, if need be at the risk of our own lives, to protect others. That responsibility has motivated Christian policemen, soldiers, and spies over the centuries. (For more from the author of “Among World Religions, Christianity Provides a Middle Way Between Jihad and Pacifism” please click HERE)

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The Left’s Appalling Whitewashing of Castro’s Legacy

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You will hear some people today excuse Fidel Castro’s crimes by begging that he accomplished social goals. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have already beclowned themselves on that front. They were merely the first.

Our own President Barack Obama opted for washing his hands, choosing to neither praise Castro after his death Friday, nor to condemn the tragedy his communist dictatorship has inflicted on the Cuban people for 57 years.

“History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him,” said Obama, playing Pilate.

No social accomplishment, to be sure, could justify keeping an entire people hostage, denying them the right to elect their own leaders or exercise any human rights for half a century. But there weren’t any accomplishments.

On the contrary, Castro destroyed a thriving society and imposed penury, either out of Marxist dogma or out of resentment that his out-of-wedlock birth had left him with a stigma among Cuba’s middle classes.

Cuba had problems in 1958, as many societies do. But on a number of fronts, it was the lead country in Latin America, or among the very top. Its social indicators were not just ahead of Asia and Africa, but also ahead of many European countries.

Many Europeans, including half of all my great-grandparents, immigrated to Cuba in the 20th century—barely a century ago—seeking to improve their lives economically. They did, and their granddaughter, my mother, went to law school.

After 57 years of communism it is risible to think of a single European immigrating to Cuba to improve his fortunes. Risible in a dark, macabre way.

That’s anecdotal, but the numbers back up what 2 million Cuban-Americans today (i.e., Cuban-born people who can speak freely) know to be true.

A study by the State Department’s Hugo Llorens and Kirby Smith shows, for example, that in infant mortality, literacy rates, per capita food consumption, passenger cars per capita, number of telephones, radios, televisions, and many other indicators, Cuba led when Castro took over on New Year’s Eve 1958.

The United Nations statistics leave no doubt. In infant mortality, Cuba’s 32 deaths per 1,000 live births was well ahead of Japan, West Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain (40, 36, 39, 33, 34, 50, and 53 respectively), and many others.

In food consumption, in terms of calories per day, Cuba was ahead of all of Latin America except cattle-rich Argentina and Uruguay. In automobiles per 1,000 inhabitants, Cuba’s 24 was ahead over everyone in Latin America expect oil-producing Venezuela (27).

As for literacy rates, Cuba’s 76 percent in the late 1950s put it closely behind only Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica. Giant Brazil’s percentage, by comparison, was 49 percent.

And Cuba’s gross domestic product per capita in 1959 was higher than those of Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, most of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, again according to U.N. statistics.

In most vital statistics, therefore, Cuba was on a par with Mediterranean countries and southern U.S. states.

And today? Castro’s communism has not just left Cubans economically pauperized, but politically bereft, a situation that Obama’s unilateral concessions to Castro’s little brother, the 85-year-old Raul, Cuba’s present leader, has only made worse.

According to the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which is recognized by Amnesty International and Freedom House, so far this year there have already been over 8,505 political arrests during the first eight months. This represents the highest rate of political arrests in decades.

Meanwhile, we are in the midst of a new Cuban migration crisis. The United States is faced with the largest migration of Cuban nationals since the rafters of 1994. The number of Cubans fleeing to the United States in 2015 was nearly twice that of 2014.

Some 51,000 Cubans last year entered the United States, and this year’s figures will easily surpass that. The numbers of Cuban nationals fleeing Cuba have now quintupled since Obama took office, when it was less than 7,000 annually.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised he will reverse Obama’s opening unless Raul Castro opens up Cuba politically. This Castro won’t do and there were reports today that dissidents are being rounded up and carted off.

And so far, Trump’s statement on the “brutal dictator” Castro has been the moral one and the one closest to the mark: “Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

Today, therefore, will be a day for clarity. What world leaders say about the departed tyrant will reveal whether they have an inner moral compass or not. (For more from the author of “The Left’s Appalling Whitewashing of Castro’s Legacy” please click HERE)

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Fidel Castro’s Death Is an Opportunity to End Cuba’s Communist Dynasty

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You might hear some voices chiding Cuban exiles for rejoicing publicly over the death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, forgetting, willfully or not, their lives of suffering over the country he destroyed.

It’s important to remember, however, that whether done in exultation, in anger, or in sober reflection, the job right now is to constantly remind the world of the damage this one man and his communist ideology wreaked on an entire country and its millions.

This must be done to prevent his family from remaining in power. That should be front and center of any comments that are made or actions that are taken following the death on Friday of a 90-year-old dictator who was, on this earth, a very, very bad man.

Fidel’s younger brother Raul is leader now, but at 85, the actuarial tables don’t look good for him. More ominously, Raul’s son Alejandro is waiting in the wings to take the reins of political power. Economically, the son-in-law Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez Calleja is in charge of around 90 percent of the economy.

The policy that President Barack Obama and his young deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, have doggedly pursued, despite all the evidence to the contrary, has led only to a greater concentration of power in the hands of the new generation of Castros.

A new communist dynasty, a la North Korea, is taking hold 90 miles away because of Obama’s policies. This is something President-elect Donald Trump must prevent by rolling back, as he has promised, the unilateral concessions that Obama has made.

The military monopolies run by Rodriguez are displacing “self-employed” workers, the so-called cuentapropistas. There are fewer of these licensed “self-employed” workers in Cuba today than in 2014. One of the military-run tourist monopolies, Gaviota S.A., has announced that revenue had grown 12 percent in 2015 and expects to double its hotel business this year.

As for the dissidents, the Obama administration has abandoned them. Many have told me they feel betrayed by our president, and by extension, by the United States. Guillermo Fariñas, especially, has a reason to feel betrayed, as Obama promised him personally at a meeting in 2013 that he would take no step toward re-establishing relations with Cuba without prior consultations with the opposition. This did not happen.

And dissidents have suffered the consequences. Political arrests have intensified since December of 2014. Throughout 2015, there were more than 8,616 documented political arrests in Cuba.

And in 2016? There already had been over 8,505 political arrests during the first eight months, and they are expected to top 10,000. This represents the highest rate of political arrests in decades and nearly quadruples the tally of political arrests throughout all of 2010 (2,074), early in Obama’s presidency.

These figures come from the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which is recognized by Amnesty International, Freedom House, and other major human rights groups.

And because Cuba’s communist leaders cannot allow Cubans to be in free contact with the outside world, internet connectivity has dropped. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has something called the Measuring the Information Society Report, which is the world’s most reliable source of data and analysis on global access to information and communication.

Last year, the International Telecommunication Union dropped Cuba’s ranking to 129 from 119. This means that Cuba actually has lower internet connectivity than some of the world’s most infamous suppressors of the internet, including Zimbabwe (which is 127), Syria (which is 117), Iran (91), China (82), and Venezuela (72).

The Castros, in other words, cannot let go of communism unless they’re pushed to do so. They have been in power for 57 years, more than 10 percent of Cuba’s history since Columbus’ discovery.

In that half-century, Cubans have been thrown into fetid and rat-infested underground dungeons, when not killed, for speaking their minds, organizing, and selling their own belongings—or attempting to flee their country to exercise these basic rights abroad.

Cuba’s gross domestic product per capita in 1959 was higher than those of Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, most of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, according to the United Nations’ statistics. Today, it is a pauperized state.

If Trump wants to drain the swamp in foreign policy, Castro’s death affords him a wonderful opportunity.

If there’s one person of whom it can truly be said that he leaves a better world behind for his departure, it is the Cuban dictator who died Friday. Whatever fate he’s dealt in the afterlife, we can safely say that Fidel Castro was no good on this earth. (For more from the author of “Fidel Castro’s Death Is an Opportunity to End Cuba’s Communist Dynasty” please click HERE)

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Retail Chain Removes Christmas Decorations From Shelves: ‘We’re a Muslim Business Now’

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The pastime of shopping for Christmas decorations ended early this year for the residents of Dortmund, Germany.

The town’s local Woolworths, a popular department store, announced it was now catering to Muslims, and that Christmas decorations were to only be on display for a few days.

A member of the store’s staff reportedly claimed, “We are a Muslim business now. We do not want to sell Christmas articles.”

A local shopper reported all of the shelves featuring Christmas decorations were full on a Friday in mid-November, but when she visited again a day later, everything had been removed. According to the managers of Woolworths — which has 300 stores in Germany — the demand for Christmas related items was too low to justify keeping them on the shelves.

“The Christmas articles are hardly in demand here. Already last year, everything remained unsold,” Seda Capakcur, the branch’s manager, said.

Diana Preisert, a spokesman for Woolworths, tried to reassure the public that it is not a Muslim company, and that Christmas-themed items could be purchased as early as September.

“Woolworths is, of course, not a Muslim company. Christmas merchandise is available from September onwards and should be sold out by the end of December,” Preisert said.

“In this branch, however, demand was too low. Therefore the goods were distributed to other branches,” she added.

Preisert mentioned that not many people in the area celebrate Christmas because of “local conditions.” The local conditions she’s referring to are recent immigration policies, which resulted in a huge influx of Muslim migrants and have drastically changed the area’s demographics.

According to city officials, the share of Christians in the total population of Northern Dortmund where the store is located is less than 30 percent.

The Sun reported that local internet users were outraged when they heard about the store’s decision, posting things like “makes me puke” and “the company has themselves to blame if their sales will not go up.”

Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, one of the individuals largely responsible for Germany’s immigration policies, tried to comfort people last month by suggesting Germans play Christmas Carols to stop the Islamisation of their culture.

While speaking at a Christian Democratic Union party in Wittenburg, Merkel claimed Germany was going to lose a piece of it’s homeland if citizens didn’t participate in passing on Christianity.

“How many Christmas carols do we still know? And how many of them are we passing on to our children and grandchildren?” she said.

Tensions over immigration issues have flared up throughout the year. One incident concerning a German primary school left parents furious when they found out their children were being forced to chant “Allahu Akbar” in Muslim prayer.

That incident came just weeks after parents complained their children’s nursery was refusing to acknowledge “Christmas rituals” in order to accommodate diverse cultures. (For more from the author of “Retail Chain Removes Christmas Decorations From Shelves: ‘We’re a Muslim Business Now'” please click HERE)

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A Million Syrian Christians Can Thank Hindu Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard

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This week, Donald Trump surprised the world — and frightened entrenched interests in the GOP ranging from hair-trigger interventionists to military contractors — by meeting with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. You might not have heard of her, but this Hawaii Democrat has been one of the loudest voices in Congress speaking for the protection of Middle Eastern Christians and other religious minorities. Here is part of Rep. Gabbard’s statement:

President-elect Trump asked me to meet with him about our current policies regarding Syria, our fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria], as well as other foreign policy challenges we face. …

I felt it important to take the opportunity to meet with the President-elect now before the drumbeats of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government — a war which has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of refugees to flee their homes in search of safety for themselves and their families.
As The Hill reported: “Gabbard told Trump she opposes a no-fly or safe zone in Syria, calling it ‘disastrous’ for the Syrian people and the U.S.”

Indeed it would be, since such a U.S. intervention — beyond risking war with nuclear-armed Russia — would allow radical Sunni Muslims aligned with al Qaeda to take over Syria and commit genocide against religious minorities numbering in the millions, including Syria’s Christians. You know, the way they did in Iraq. That is why Syria’s Christian leaders have been begging Western Christians since 2013 to avert such a reckless intervention.

Should We Shatter Syria as We Did Iraq?

During the GOP primary campaign this crucial issue got too little play in media. The question, to be blunt, was: Would the U.S. do to the Christians in Syria what the Bush administration did to the ancient Christian communities of Iraq? That is, would they topple the secular dictator who wasn’t singling them out for persecution, with no plausible plan for protecting them afterward from the firestorm of unleashed Islamist hatred?

Several of the Republican candidates repeated the shopworn talking points of the neoconservative wing of the party, and promised to do just that: to confront Putin’s Russia using military force, to stop Russia aiding the secular Assad regime — and offer direct military aid to the “Syrian rebels,” who by that point had been almost completely taken over by radical Islamists funded from nasty Muslim theocracies like Saudi Arabia, and directly connected to al Qaeda.

That was the plan of GOP globalists, who never offered a plan for protecting Syria’s Christians, Alawites, Shi’ites, or other religious minorities, should their “moderate” rebels turn over their guns to al Qaeda (as they did), lose out in the power struggle with radical Islamists (as they did), or fade into irrelevance (as they have). Protecting Christians from ISIS-style persecution wasn’t a priority for these people, as it wasn’t in 2003. Since we have friends who are Middle Eastern Christian refugees from the last careless and catastrophically expensive failed intervention in the region, we took this issue personally — and called out the candidates who endorsed this reckless policy. We did so again after the election, urging Sen. Marco Rubio not to let himself be used as a megaphone for the GOP’s bumbling war party.

On this issue, the election of Donald Trump is unabashedly good news, since he owes nothing to that wing of the Republican party, and is under no illusions that al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias are in any way U.S. allies. They are cats’ paws for Saudi Arabia and Turkey, two countries involved right now in the mass colonization of Europe by Muslim immigrants repackaged as “refugees.” If they take power, they will wield it not much differently from ISIS — though doubtless in a more organized and bureaucratic fashion. In Saudi Arabia, those who “insult” Islam by professing Christianity are only executed after formal trials. That makes all the difference, doesn’t it?

God bless Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump, and keep them strong in their rejection of another poorly-conceived and callous U.S. intervention in a region we barely understand and should stop pretending we are able somehow to bomb and occupy until it magically turns into Switzerland. (For more from the author of “A Million Syrian Christians Can Thank Hindu Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard” please click HERE)

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Funding the Cult of Terror: Are American Taxpayer Dollars Paying for the Arafat Museum in Ramallah?

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Last week, a new, $7 million museum opened in poverty-stricken Ramallah. Given the serial complaints by the Palestinian Authority and its backers about the hardships the Palestinian people endure due to oppression by the Israeli government (a weekly report can be found here), it seems a curious project on which to spend millions. Certainly, given the water crisis the PA has likened to a “crime against humanity,” there must be more pressing needs for these funds.

Until you learn that the museum is dedicated to the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization —Yasser Arafat. In other words, it is a shrine to the cult of terror that is the PA’s stock in trade. And directly or indirectly it’s being paid for with American taxpayer dollars.

Indignation about the way the PA spends the relief funds lavished on it generally focuses on the outrageous and abhorrent practice of rewarding the waves of terrorists (and their families) that the PA has unleashed on Israel. This overt sponsorship of terrorism should and must stop, and donor governments are beginning to investigate ways to designate how their aid can be spent.

The PA’s first attempted dodge was to claim that the payments actually came from the PLO, over which it has no formal control. But even PA President Mahmoud Abbas couldn’t maintain this farce with a straight face, leading to increased scrutiny. American aid, for example, is now largely confined to cultural and construction projects — such as a museum — on the grounds that an actual museum containing local antiquities might spur tourism and improve civic life.

The Arafat museum project, however, reveals the PA’s determination to continue using even these funds to sponsor terrorism, as this institution is carefully crafted to incite hatred of Israel. For example, Arafat’s birthplace is proclaimed to be Jerusalem, suggesting an ancestral claim to the city. He was in fact born in Cairo.

The walls are festooned with a rogues’ gallery of his terrorism-sponsoring associates, from Fidel Castro to Muammar Qaddafi. Mr. Arafat’s widow, whose interactions with the PA turned ugly, is missing altogether. Unsavory episodes such as the bombing of Swissair Flight 330 in 1970 to the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985 are glossed over. The tour ends with the unsubstantiated allegation that Arafat was poisoned by the Israelis, a claim dutifully echoed in the Palestinian media.

Sympathetic critics, notably The New York Times, have tried to explain these inaccuracies and omissions by proposing the museum “avoids conclusions” or poses “unanswered questions” in a willful denial of the clear and purposeful — if factually spurious — narrative it weaves.

The ongoing challenge the PA faces is that most humans do not get out of bed in the morning eager to carry out terrorist attacks on their neighbors that will leave them dead or in jail, even if there is a cash reward.

The Palestinian leadership has learned that a systematic program of incitement — extending from schools to media to cultural institutions — is also required. The mission of the Arafat museum, therefore, is to transform the squalid tale of a corrupt and violent terrorist into the heroic myth of a martyr to the Palestinian cause designed to inspire future generations to follow in his footsteps.

The Arafat museum thus presents a necessary if unpleasant reality check that even the best-intentioned aid to the PA will be used to fuel its grim determination to destroy the Jewish state. It is unconscionable that American taxpayer dollars are directly or indirectly funding this crusade. One of the first tasks of the new Congress should be to end this insidious practice until the Palestinian leadership can credibly demonstrate its goal is to make peace with its neighbors, not to annihilate them. (For more from the author of “Funding the Cult of Terror: Are American Taxpayer Dollars Paying for the Arafat Museum in Ramallah?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.