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Humberto Fontova: Heads Roll in Havana, Baffling 'Cuba Experts'

[Humberto Fontova is the author of 4 books including Fidel;Hollywoods' Favorite Tyrant and Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him.]

The very week Obama proposed cozying up to Castro by dropping some economic and travel sanctions, the biggest political shake-up in twenty years rattled Cuba's regime. Last week Raul Castro purged almost twenty regime officials. The most prominent among the purged were the youngest and most reform-minded (as these things are measured within a Stalinist regime), and they've all been replaced by diehard Stalinist septuagenarians with military and secret police backgrounds.

The provisions of Obama's olive branch to Castro are tucked inside his $410 billion spending bill awaiting a vote this very week. They issue largely from recommendations in a recent "Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations," titled "Changing Cuba Policy" and heartily endorsed by the ranking Republican on that Committee, Senator Richard Lugar.

"Positive developments are occurring in Cuba," says the Lugar report, composed after some in his staff visited with Cuban Stalinist officials last month. "It is clear that the recent (Cuban) leadership changes have created an opportunity for the United States to reevaluate a complex relationship marked by misunderstanding, suspicion, and open hostility," further states the Committee report Senator Lugar released on Feb 24th.

Senator Lugar, as showcased by last week's purge, has it exactly back-asswards.

In perfect keeping with the Stalinist nature of the Cuban regime -- and especially in keeping with Raul Castro's rule, (Raul worked with a KGB handler as early as 1953) -- the more prominent among the purged (Carlos Lage, 56, VP of the Council of State, Felipe Roque, 45, Foreign Minister) have signed confessions seemingly lifted from the very template used by Zinoviev, Kanev and Bukharin in 1936.

Trotsky's murderer, Ramon Mercader, by the way, served as Cuba's "inspector of prisons" in the 1960's, was favorite companion of both Raul Castro and Che Guevara, and was buried with honors in a Havana cemetery in 1978. This grave, however, doesn't seem to feature among the more popular sites for the 2.4 million Canadian and European tourists who visit Cuba annually and whose estimated $2.5 billion in expenditures annually for the past 15 years provide the very lifeblood of the Castro regime....
Read entire article at American Thinker