Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

By

The Cuba diet is like the Maduro diet is like the NoKo diet

The image is a screen cap since Cosmo apparently decided to hide the article.

The “Cuban diet” is like the Maduro diet:

Nearly three-quarters of Venezuelans lost an average of 8.7kg (19 pounds) on the “Maduro diet” over the past year; in 2016 more than half of children monitored between October and December in four regions, including the capital, suffered from malnutrition or were at risk of it.

And let’s forget that North Korea has “a handle on obesity,” through “behavioral change,”

Behavioral change, Stalinist-style, or as the brain-dead would call it, the Holodomor diet.

UPDATE,

Share

By

Cuba: Russia, North Korea, tax havens in Panama

All in the week’s news,

First, the tax havens:
The Miami Herald reports,
Panama Papers show Cuba used offshore firms to thwart embargo

Highlights:
At least 25 companies in tax havens had Cuban links

A brother of Raul Castro’s son-in-law appears in the leaked documents

Cuba was at the heart of a deal to export Russian oil that involves a Lebanese company

But wait, there’s more! Russia-Lebanon-Havana connection

One of the more intriguing schemes mentioned in the documents puts Cuba at the heart of a deal to sell Russian oil to Latin America through a company registered in Panama by the Bassatne family. The family controls BB Energy, a conglomerate founded in Lebanon in 1937 that buys and sells 16 million metric tons of crude and derivatives each year. One Bloomberg report showed BB Energy had $10 billion in revenues in 2012.

Read the whole thing.

—————————————

Rep. Joe Pitts writes about Russian ports and NATO:

. . . Russia’s best option was, and has been, to borrow from other countries and use their warm water ports to extend its global reach.

Cuba is one of the most obvious examples. Even though it’s not on the Mediterranean, it demonstrates how enlarged Russia’s scope is with the gain of Cuba’s friendly warm water ports. Russian vessels have utilized Cuba’s installations, along with Nicaragua and Venezuela’s, to reach west across the North Atlantic. As a result, Russia announced in 2014 that it would be reopening an “eavesdropping base” 150 miles away from U.S. soil: In Cuba. Through the access to these strategic ports, Russia’s reach handily extended across the Atlantic.

I had posted about the port.

—————————————

Via Capitol Hill Cubans, The North Korea-Cuba Connection. Havana’s continued cooperation with Pyongyang is an alarming blow to the normalization process.

How Illegal Trade Persists Between Cuba and North Korea

Despite the immense international controversy resulting from Cuba’s 2013 arms sales to North Korea, sporadic trade linkages between the two countries have continued largely unhindered. In January 2016, Cuba and North Korea developed a barter trade system, which officially involved transactions of sugar and railway equipment.

According to Curtis Melvin, an expert at the Washington D.C.-based U.S. Korea Institute, barter trade is an effective way for Cuba and North Korea to evade international sanctions without depleting their hard currency reserves. Cuba’s use of sugar as a medium of bilateral trade has close parallels with Myanmar’s historical use of rice in exchange for North Korean military technology assistance. This form of trade has been vital for the North Korean regime’s survival in wake of the Soviet collapse and more inconsistent patronage from China.

Bottom line:

While the Obama administration has removed Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list and taken a big stride toward lifting the Kennedy-era embargo on Cuba, Havana’s continued cooperation with Pyongyang is an alarming blow to the normalization process.

Smart diplomacy!

Share

By

Cuba: Visitor from North Korea

The distraction: Cuba Moves to Legalize Small- and Medium-Size Businesses

North Korea’s Clandestine Operations Chief Visits Cuba

Yesterday, General Raul Castro welcomed General Kim Yong-chol, Vice-Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee and Director of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (equivalent to the U.S. Director of Central Intelligence).

According to the Pentagon, “North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) is responsible for clandestine operations. The RGB includes six bureaus charged with operations, reconnaissance, technology and cyber, overseas intelligence, inter-Korean talks, and service support.”

The RGB also oversees Bureau 121, North Korea’s nefarious cyber-warfare agency.

Isn’t that comforting?

Last week, the French investigative journal, Intelligence Online,reported that North Korea’s regime has sent a special forces contingent to Venezuela to help its embattled quasi-dictator, Nicolas Maduro.

Furthermore, how this arrangement stems from a confidential military cooperation and intelligence-sharing agreement that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un with Cuba’s Castro regime in March (at the same time President Obama was wining-and-dining in Havana).

H/t Carlos Eire, who adds,

This is what it must have been like for Romans in the early fifth century, as they watched their world crumble.

Go to Carlos’s post to find out how the song relates to it all,

Share

By

Cuba: What became of the Hellfire missile

When I first posted about the Hellfire missile the Obama administration shipped to Cuba (which the White House doesn’t deny it sold), I said that I’ll leave it to the military analysts to clarify the importance and magnitude of such security breach. Here’s Mary O’Grady’s WSJ column,
North Korea’s Cuban Friends. The Castro boys now have a U.S. Hellfire missile to share with Kim Jong Un.

On Friday Wall Street Journal reporters Devlin Barrett and Gordon Lubold broke the story that the State Department became aware in June 2014 that a Hellfire missile had gone missing and that it was “likely in Cuba.”

Let’s face it: That was no shipping error, as some have speculated. Stealing weapons technology is what spies do for a living, and getting hold of a sophisticated piece of U.S. equipment is a major coup for Havana.

It is not a stretch to think that the regime will share, for a price, everything there is to know about the laser-guided, air-to-surface Hellfire—which can be launched from a helicopter or drone as well as from a plane—with its good friends Iran, Russia and North Korea, and even with other terrorist organizations.

President Obama seems to think that the Castros have abandoned their revolutionary obsession with harming the U.S. The theft of the Hellfire would have disabused even Chauncey Gardiner of such naiveté.

If it was theft, that is.

But not Mr. Obama. He was already engaged in a rapprochement with the regime when the State Department learned that Havana had the missile. If he issued an ultimatum that it be returned, his talks might have collapsed.

So six months later he went ahead with his plan to throw a lifeline to the economically struggling Castros by restoring diplomatic relations and liberalizing American travel to the island. In May Cuba was removed from the State Department’s list of state-sponsors of terrorism.

The missile is only the latest example of the no good that Cuba is still up to. In July 2013 Panama Canal authorities discovered 240 metric tons of weapons—including jet fighters and missiles—hidden under a sugar shipment aboard a North Korean ship that had sailed from Cuba and was bound for North Korea.

Read the whole thing.

Share

By

Mexico: North Korea wants its rust bucket back

Remember the Mu Du Bong? It ran aground last year nine miles off Veracruz after stopping in Havana.

Oh! That rustbucket!

Now North Korea wants it back, claiming that it’s “a revolutionary historic site”

because it had been visited by members of regime leader Kim Jong Un’s family.

You can’t make this up if you try.

Nothing in the report shows whether the ship is seaworthy enough for the long trip to North Korea, but you can bet the new crew will do their darnedest:

“If the crew cannot bring home the ship, the relevant officials are sure to be punished.”

Usually that means the summary execution of the men, and most likely the death/life imprisonment of their relatives.

The Mu Du Bong and the Chon Chong Gang have the same commercial agent, Ocean Maritime Management Company.

Share

By

Is North Korea Selling (Cuban) Arms to Hamas?

Interesting question from Capitol Hill Cubans:

Is North Korea Selling (Cuban) Arms to Hamas?

 According to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, Hamas militants are attempting to negotiate an arms deal with North Korea for missiles and communications equipment that will allow them to maintain their offensive against Israel.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, a U.S. federal court ruled that North Korea provided rocket and missile components for Hezbollah to use in its 2006 attacks against Israel.
. . .

Last year, the Cuban regime was caught red-handed smuggling 240 tons of weapons to North Korea. This constituted the largest amount of arms and related materiel interdicted to or from North Korea since the adoption of resolution 1718 (2006).

The interdicted shipment, aboard the Chong Chon Gang, includedsurface-to-air missile systems (that can take down planes), missile components, ammunition, radars and other miscellaneous arms-related materiel.

What if these missile systems had ended up in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah?

Other Cuban weaponry may have, as there were at least seven otherNorth Korean vessels that made similarly elusive trips (as the Chong Chon Gang) to Cuban in the last few years.

Most recently, the Mu Du Bong

Share