Cuba

The efforts of the Obama administration to ’normalize’ relations with Cuba have been mocked this past week. The U.S. Southern Command holds an annual regional security conference. For decades one of its main purposes was to protect the region against Cuba, but this time the Obama administration made sure that Cuba was invited to attend. The conference was held at the very end of January. What did the Cubans do? They sent as their representative a man who spied against the United States and was thrown out of our country. He is Gustavo Machin Gomez, a Cuban spy declared persona non grata in 2002. Now this man was accepted by us to sit with American military officers as a fit person with whom to discuss regional security. There’s one other thing to consider as one thinks about this invitation. Cuba still holds the Hellfire missile that somehow was sent there, and the regime will not give it back to the United States. The Wall Street Journal has reported that "for more than a year, amid a historic thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, American authorities have tried to get the Cuban government to return the missile...." Presumably, Cuba is happily sharing what the Journal called  "this sensitive military technology" with Russia and other regime allies. The return of the missile was, amazingly enough, not made a condition of ’normalization’ by the Obama administration in its negotiations with Cuba. And now we see that its return was not even made a condition of inviting Cuba to participate in a regional security conference. They keep the missile, they send a man thrown out of the United States for spying to our regional security conference, and the Obama administration appears to think all is just swell with the new opening to Cuba. Castro must be wondering if he’s dreaming. But here’s the nightmare. It seems clear that President Obama wants to cap off his years in office with a visit to Cuba, where he can meet the great Fidel Castro and do some wonderful photo ops. So throughout 2016, we can expect this kowtowing to the Castro regime to continue, and we can expect to see more and more displays of regime contempt for the United States. And meanwhile, the arrests and the beatings of Cubans struggling for democracy and human rights continue, and increase- and they have increased since Mr. Obama signed his deal with the Castro brothers. The price for Mr. Obama’s photo ops would be paid by Cubans struggling for freedom. And that would be an immoral bargain.

In previous posts I’ve argued that President Obama’s "opening to Cuba" gave the Castro brothers everything they wanted and got nothing for the United States--or for Cubans struggling peacefully for human rights and democracy. But I didn’t know the half of it. Today The Wall Street Journal reports as follows: An inert U.S. Hellfire missile sent to Europe for training purposes was wrongly shipped from there to Cuba in 2014.... For more than a year, amid a historic thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, American authorities have tried to get the Cuban government to return the missile.... Hellfires are air-to-ground missiles, often fired from helicopters. They were first designed as antitank weapons decades ago, but have been modernized to become an important part of the U.S. government’s antiterrorism arsenal, often fired from Predator drones to carry out lethal attacks on targets in countries including Yemen and Pakistan.... U.S. officials worry that Cuba could share the sensors and targeting technology inside it with nations like China, North Korea or Russia.... So let’s review the bidding. A Hellfire missile that could be of great value to Russia, China, North Korea gets to Cuba. We ask for it back. The Cuban regime says, in effect, drop dead. All the while we are negotiating with Cuba over an end to the embargo, much increased travel and investment and trade, and an opening of diplomatic relations. Do we say "hold on, we are ready to go but will not take those steps until we get the missile back?" Of course not. Not in the Obama years, when the ideological goal of warming up to the Communist regime in Cuba takes precedence. This is a  legacy item, after all, like the Iran nuclear deal. So now Fidel and Raul have the trade and the investment and the tourists and the U.S. embassy--and the missile. One can only imagine the conversations inside the Cuban regime, when some fools argued that to get the Obama deal done they would have to give back the missile. Raul and Fidel knew better: nothing would stop Obama from going forward if only the American prisoner, Alan Gross, were freed. And so it was. And what are the chances that the Castros have not shared the Hellfire with Moscow? Zero.  

Here’s the news out of Chicago: Mayor Rahm Emanuel is cutting short his family vacation in Cuba and will return to Chicago on Tuesday to deal with the latest crisis involving the city’s Police Department. While the press is paying attention to the shootings, I’d like to ask another question: what is he doing taking a "family vacation" in a viciously repressive communist country? Think of it: the liberal Democrat ignores suppression of freedom of the press and speech and religion. The elected mayor frolics in a place where there has not been one free election since Fidel Castro took over in 1959, nor will there be while he and his brother Raul live. The island’s prisons are full of political prisoners, but Emanuel ignores this. There are plenty of human rights activists and former political prisoners who would be happy to talk with him about Cuba’s future, but that won’t happen: he’s on a "family vacation," you see. Can you imagine a "family vacation" on South Africa’s beautiful beaches while Nelson Mandela sat in prison on Robben Island? A fun time in Russia while Sharansky was in the Gulag? No. So why is Cuba different? Emanuel’s visit to Cuba is an expression of indifference to human freedom. Cuba is surrounded by democracies whose people do not live in a police state and do not go to jail for asking to vote or trying to publish a newspaper--and their beaches are equally beautiful. Chicago’s mayor chose to hand some badly needed cash to the Castro regime, and there is simply no excuse for it. But there is a considerable irony here: just as Amnesty International is pounding Emanuel over protection of human rights in Chicago, he’s off sunning himself on an island that is famous precisely for the violation of human rights.    

This past week marked the anniversary of President Obama’s new Cuba policy. That policy is failing to produce any human rights improvements in Cuba. So this week, 126 Cuban former political prisoners--who together have served 1,945 years in Castro’s prisons, wrote a letter to Mr. Obama about his policy. It was delivered to the White House by Ernesto Diaz Rodriguez, a former political prisoner and poet who spent more than 22 years in Cuba’s prisons. These former political prisoners call the Obama policy a "regrettable mistake" that "will prolong the life of the dictatorship, is worsening the human rights situation there, marginalizing the democratic opposition and compromising U.S. national security." It’s a powerful message that the people who have suffered most from Castro’s vicious dictatorship find no benefit in the new U.S. policy and indeed feel abandoned by it. The full text follows. Mr. President: Based on our history and experience as political prisoners under Castro’s totalitarian regime, the new Cuba policy established by your Administration has been a regrettable mistake. This will prolong the life of the dictatorship, is worsening the human rights situation there, marginalizing the democratic opposition and compromising U.S. national security. The normalization of relations is creating false expectations and granting benefits to the tyrannical regime in Cuba; it is also allowing the Paris Club to forgive billions in debt providing the regime hard currency which it funnels into its most repressive institutions: the military and intelligence services giving new life to what we’re dying institutions. Human rights violations in Cuba have a terrible history, but the current policy has taken a bad situation and made it worse. Violent beatings against activists peacefully assembling have escalated and worsened over 2015. Politically motivated arbitrary detentions in Cuba as of the end of November 2015 are a documented total of 7,686 and are on track to break the previous record set in 2014 with 8,899 arrests. Over the course of this year the number of detentions have escalated: 178 in January; 492 in February; 610 in March; 338 in April; 641 in May; 563 in June; 674 in July; 768 in August; 882 in September; 1,093 in October; and 1,447 in November. Political prisoners continue to be a reality in Cuba. Despite the claim that there would be continued support for improved human rights and democratic reforms in Cuba the past year has demonstrated otherwise. Inviting the Castro regime to the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama in April of 2015, violated the democratic ideals of the summit. The dictatorship’s anti-democratic and violent nature was made evident during the Summit with Cuban nationals and U.S. citizens beaten up by state security and requiring hospitalization and summit events interrupted by acts of repudiation organized by the Castro regime. The U.S. government responses were low level pro-forma protests while President Obama met with Raul Castro as an equal. The Administration’s new Cuba policy over the past year has compromised U.S. national security. First, commuting Gerardo Hernandez’s two life sentences; he was convicted for among other things conspiracy to murder three U.S. citizens and one resident of the U.S., and returning him to Cuba where he received a hero’s welcome in what was an immense propaganda victory for the Castro regime, sending a dangerous signal to those who would harm Americans. Secondly, removing Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list on May 29, 2015 despite: 1) the Castro regime being caught smuggling heavy weapons and ammunition through Colombia on February 28, 2015. 2) Being linked to international drug trafficking along with its client state Venezuela as reported on January 27, 2015. 3) Being in violation of UN international sanctions to North Korea on July 15, 2013 when caught smuggling tons of weapons and ammunition including ballistic missile technology. Ignoring this will get more Americans killed and undermine U.S. interests. Finally, having the US Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas meet with the Castro regime’s Interior Minister Major General Carlos Fernandez Gondin in what was officially described as a visit of collaboration and engagement sends worrisome signals that should concern those who care about national security. Gondin has a history of engaging in the mistreatment of opposition activists and has an agenda to undermine U.S. interests, legitimizing him with an official visit sends a terrible message. We the undersigned are political prisoners who collectively have served 1,945 years in prison for resisting the Castro dictatorship and fighting for democracy in our homeland of Cuba. We are writing this letter out of a deep conviction that this new U.S. Cuba policy will not only harm Cuban aspirations for a free and democratic Cuba while worsening human rights there but also endanger American lives. The letter is followed by the 126 names, and after each comes a number: the number of year’s they served in Castro’s gulag.

In a new interview with Yahoo, President Obama goes further than ever with his new Cuba policy—in essence giving an early announcement that he will visit Cuba next year. The inducement of sitting down with Fidel Castro is apparently too much to resist. Final year travel to see bloody dictators has been a problem before, and Bill Clinton almost went to North Korea in 2000. He finally did visit in 2009—but not as president. In this interview, Obama says “If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody.” This presumably means dissidents, the people whom his Secretary of State ignored during his own visit to Cuba. But there are many ways of parsing what “everybody” means, and I would bet heavily against Obama demanding, much less getting, the right to sit down with all of Cuba’s leading, courageous, anti-regime dissidents. A tamer crowd can easily be assembled in some sort of compromise with the regime. The president’s desire to get down there is clear, and ot leads him to misrepresent what’s actually happened in Cuba since his new opening to the regime was announced last year. Consider this line in the Yahoo story: The president hopes that “sometime next year” he and his top aides will see enough progress in Cuba that they can say that “now would be a good time to shine a light on progress that’s been made, but also maybe (go) there to nudge the Cuban government in a new direction.” Shine a light? What progress has been made, exactly? On freedom of speech or of the press, zero. On holding a free election, and breaking the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, zero. Here’s the Washington Post’s assessment months after the new Obama policy was announced: In announcing the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana, President Obama said “nobody expects Cuba to be transformed overnight” by his policy of “engagement.” That’s just as well because in the first six months of Mr. Obama’s normalization of relations with the Communist regime, most indicators of human rights on the island have moved in the wrong direction. Since December [2014], there have been more than 3,000 political detentions in Cuba, including 641 in May and 220 on Sunday alone, according to dissident sources. Most were accompanied by beatings; at least 20 detainees required medical treatment in May. After Cuba was invited for the first time to the Summit of the Americas in Panama, regime thugs attacked the civil society activists who also showed up. In fact, the president announced his new policy a year ago this week. But last week on December 10th, Human Rights Day, the regime arrested more than 150 dissidents. In the past year there have been a historically high number of political arrests, more than 8,000. The president explained his thinking, or part of it, to Yahoo: “Our original theory on this was not that we were going to see immediate changes or loosening of the control of the Castro regime, but rather that over time you’d lay the predicates for substantial transformation,” he said. “The more that they see the benefits of U.S. investment, the more that U.S. tourist dollars become woven into their economy, the more that telecommunications is opened up so that Cubans are getting information, unfettered by censorship, the more you’re laying the foundation for the bigger changes that are going to be coming over time,” he added. This theory is utterly without bases in theory or fact. First, he assumes his deal with Castro is actually going to bring all those reforms, especially an end to censorship. So far the regime has actually cracked down, not opened up. Moreover, the president’s theory that more tourism will bring political reform is bizarre. Has it done so in China? In fact, Cuba has long traded freely with every single country in the world except the US, and has had tens of thousands of tourists from Europe and Canada. Is there something magical about American tourists that will force Fidel and Raul to give up communism? But the president appears to believe Raul may not really be a communist anyway. “I do see in him a big streak of pragmatism. In that sense, I don’t think he is an ideologue,” Obama told Yahoo. Raul Castro joined the “Socialist Youth,” a pro-Soviet communist group, as a teenager. He was absolutely faithful to the Soviet Union while it existed, and remains absolutely faithful to the Leninist view of politics: dictatorship, repression, prisons, never an election, never free speech or press. This man is “not an ideologue” because he decides to accept American tourist dollars and investments, with all of the money put through regime channels? It’s laughable, but not to the Cubans who continue to struggle for freedom. Consider this comparison. Natan Sharansky was imprisoned in the Soviet gulag when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire. Sharansky has said that It was the great brilliant moment when we learned that Ronald Reagan had proclaimed the Soviet Union an Evil Empire before the entire world. There was a long list of all the Western leaders who had lined up to condemn the evil Reagan for daring to call the great Soviet Union an evil empire right next to the front-page story about this dangerous, terrible man who wanted to take the world back to the dark days of the Cold War. "This was the moment. It was the brightest, most glorious day. Finally a spade had been called a spade. Finally, Orwell’s Newspeak was dead. President Reagan had from that moment made it impossible for anyone in the West to continue closing their eyes to the real nature of the Soviet Union. "It was one of the most important, freedom-affirming declarations, and we all instantly knew it. For us, that was the moment that really marked the end for them, and the beginning for us. The lie had been exposed and could never, ever be untold now. This was the end of Lenin’s ’Great October Bolshevik Revolution’ and the beginning of a new revolution, a freedom revolution--Reagan’s Revolution. "We were all in and out of punishment cells so often -- me more than most -- that we developed our own tapping language to communicate with each other between the walls. A secret code. We had to develop new communication methods to pass on this great, impossible news. That was the message Reagan sent to prisoners in the gulag. Obama’s message to Cuba’s political prisoners: Raul Castro is “not an ideologue.” The Reagan-Obama contrast speaks for itself. An Obama visit to Castro’s communist regime in Cuba will only make this contrast worse.

The Pope’s visit to Cuba is of course a test of the regime: how much of a crackdown will it undertake to prevent him from seeing a single demonstrator or dissident? But it is also a test of Pope Francis. He is visiting a vicious and brutal dictatorship that has largely eviscerated the Cuban church--closing its schools, for example, including those attended by Fidel Castro as a child. There have been plenty of news reports in the last week of round-ups of dissidents throughout the island. Today there are more. Jon Watts reported for The Guardian in London as follows: I just spoke to Angel Moya, a prominent activist who said at least 31 people were detained this morning to prevent them from attending the pope’s mass. “They are the ones we know of, but we are still counting,” he said. Moya was among them. After being held in a police station from 5am to 11:30, he said he was picked up along with his wife, Berta Soler – the leader of the Damas do Blanco (Ladies in White) group that campaigns for prisoner releases. With more than 20 other activists from the group who were gathered ahead of their planned journey to Revolution Square, when the police moved in with what he described as a “repressive, aggressive operation that was specifically targeted to prevent us from attending the public mass.” His said his wife had also been detained the previous evening on her way to the Vatican embassy, where the pope is lodging during his stay in Havana. He said she had been invited by the church authorities. Moya – who was imprisoned for eight years – expressed disappointment that pope Francis has ignored the state’s actions, unlike his predecessor John Paul II who visited in 1998. “John Paul spoke out clearly, but the current pope is too soft with regards to human rights. Cubans have a harsh life, but he has not been categorical enough when talking about civil liberties. He must have known what happened to us, but he didn’t address the issue.” Today CBS reported on the Pope’s words in Havana: "Today we renew the bonds of cooperation and friendship, so that the Church can continue to support and encourage the Cuban people in its hopes and concerns, with the freedom, the means and the space needed to bring he proclamation of the Kingdom to the existential peripheries of society," he said. The Pope said he would pray to Mary "for all her Cuban children and for this beloved nation, that it may travel the paths of justice, peace, liberty and reconciliation," another subtle call for human rights reform in the island nation. Given that his own visit is the cause of the additional arrests and detentions, with the usual regime brutality, His Holiness should speak far more clearly. Today, I’ve been told, he invited several dissidents to the Nunciatura, but they were grabbed by the police and never arrived. That calls for an explicit denunciation; either he is in charge of his own visit and whom he sees, or the Castros are. There are other reports that some dissidents reached him and he blessed them, but they were later arrested by police. No doubt the exact facts will come out in the next hours or days. But subtlety isn’t the way to deal with the Castro regime. Pope Francis should be a powerful voice for religious and political freedom, and in this period when the rule of the Castro brothers is being brought to an end by the process of aging, his voice can truly matter just as did that of Pope John Paul II in Poland. Instead of focusing solely on reconciliation, it is time to speak about human rights, civil and political liberty, and full religious freedom.

Secretary of State Kerry traveled to Havana to raise the flag at the U.S. Embassy there last week. As has been noted here in this blog and in many news articles and columns, no dissidents or human rights activists were invited to the ceremony. It’s fair to ask if that sends any kind of signal to the regime. The fear would be that it expresses a lack of interest in, or at least a refusal to give much priority to, how the Castro regime treats those struggling peacefully for democracy and human rights in Cuba. How might we judge the answer? Here’s how: Less than 48 hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shunned Cuban dissidents from the U.S. Embassy in Havana, over 200 dissidents have been arrested. In Havana, 60 members of The Ladies in White, the renowned pro-democracy group composed of the wives, mothers and daughters of Cuban political prisoners, were arrested -- along with nearly 20 other activists. Among those arrested were Berta Soler, leader of The Ladies in White; Antonio Rodiles, of Estado de Sats; and Jorge Luis Garcia Perez "Antunez" of the National Resistance Front. Some of The Ladies in White, such as Yaqueline Boni, were brutally beaten in custody. Others severely beaten include Ciro Alexis Casanova, Jose Diaz Silva and Mario Alberto Hernandez. Those facts come from a report by Capitol Hill Cubans, found here. The only real defense of Kerry might be that the regime arrests and beats people all the time anyway, so it’s impossible to say this would not have happened even if some of these people had been invited to the flag-raising at the new U.S. Embassy. Some defense. Experience with communist and other dictatorships has long been that American support for and interaction with dissidents helps them and protects them. Naming them individually does as well, in their common view. In his 1975 Nobel lecture, accepting the Peace Prize, Andrei Sakharov ended his speech by naming--one by one--about one hundred political prisoners. His wife Elena Bonner, who actually read that speech for Sakharov because he was forbidden from leaving the Soviet Union, later said “the listing of names brought joy to the prisoners of conscience, and to their relatives. More important, it somewhat protected them from the camp administration." So Kerry missed his chance, and his actions in Havana arguably worsened the situation of dissidents there by suggesting a lack of interest in them and their plight. There were many things he could have done while there, ranging from the daring and heroic to the marginally useful. He did say, during the ceremony, that "We remain convinced the people of Cuba would be best served by a genuine democracy, where people are free to choose their leaders," and those words like the entire ceremony were broadcast in Cuba. He did meet with human rights activists at a separate reception, as well. Then he did a walking tour of Old Havana, and "After Kerry visited a shop in a boutique hotel, an aide was seen carrying out bags of what appeared to be three bottles of rum, cigar boxes and a humidor." Bottom line: Mr. Kerry did the minimum he could really get away with. Think what the impact might have been had he insisted that at least some of the human rights and democracy activists must be present at the official ceremony, or had he in his remarks specifically mentioned the Ladies in White or some of the political prisoners. The reaction of the Castro regime to the Kerry visit is clearly visible already--in those arrests. He had an opportunity to do the minimum he needed to do on human rights in Cuba, or to do something bold and historic and memorable. He made the wrong choice.

Secretary of State Kerry will visit Cuba soon--on August 14. Since the opening of diplomatic relations and of the Cuban embassy in Washington, what’s been going on in Cuba? More repression. There were 630 political arrests in June, according to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights. Jorge Ramirez Calderon, one of the political prisoners released as part of President Obama’s rapprochement with the Castro regime, was notified this week that he is facing a 4-year sentence for "public disorder." His crime was joining a demonstration for human rights in March. So, while Kerry was celebrating the opening of Castro’s embassy in Washington, the Cuban regime was cracking down harder on the Cuban people. This raises two important questions about that Kerry visit to Cuba. What will he say while in Cuba about human rights, and whom will he meet? As to the speeches, these are critical. Will he call for freeing all political prisoners, for freedom of speech and press? Will he say the Cuban people must govern themselves through free, multi-party elections? Or will he be silent about the brutal repression Cubans face every day? And will he meet with Cuban dissidents, or only with regime officials? The flag will be raised at the U.S. Embassy on September 14, and the Cuban foreign minister will be there. Will the Ladies in White, whose peaceful protests have for years kept the cause of freedom alive, be invited? Ironically, because so many leading Cuban dissidents are barred from leaving the island, they will be there and could come to the Embassy. What wonderful show of American support for freedom it would be for them to be invited. What’s the worst thing that could happen? That the foreign minister or all Cuban officials would avoid the ceremony? That would be just fine, because our Embassy in Cuba should above all reach out to the Cuban people, not the regime. Let it be clear that we view the regime as a relic of the past; let the regime’s officials choose not to come if they cannot be in the same hall or on the same lawn as those who peacefully struggle for freedom in Cuba. Is this impossible? Not at all; Secretary of State Shultz did something like this in Moscow in 1987. Here’s the New York Times account: Sixty Soviet Jews who have been denied their most passionate dream, emigration, joined Monday night to celebrate a festival recalling the liberation centuries ago from a hostile land. For the Passover meal, they had ritual matzoh to eat, kosher wine to drink--and George Shultz as their guest. The secretary of state, in an unprecedented demonstration of solidarity with Soviet Jews, joined the ``refuseniks`` in an emotional observance of the Passover ceremony, known as a seder. Between day-and-night arms-control talks, Shultz used the break to demand that the Kremlin honor human rights. After spending several moments with each of the Soviet Jews at the seder, Shultz said: "You are on our minds. You are in our hearts. We think about you, we pray for you, we are with you." Think of the impact if Kerry were to meet with dissidents in Havana and say to them what his great predecessor said to dissidents in Moscow in 1987: "You are on our minds. You are in our hearts. We think about you, we pray for you, we are with you." And that was in the capital of a superpower, not that of a tiny and bankrupt Cuba. The ball is in Kerry’s court. Will he live up to the Shultz record and model, or cave to Castro regime pressure to stay away from dissidents and from the subject of human rights?

Travel to Cuba is a new fad, helped by the changes the Obama administration has made in U.S. policy. It’s easy now for almost any group to go there, under the guise of some educational program or purpose. But travel to Cuba has long been a practice for American leftists, who have seen the Castro regime not as a brutal oppressor of human rights but as a beacon of light in the Hemisphere. No democracy, free expression, freedom of the press, free trade unions? Who cares, after all? The thrill of visiting the communist island has been too much to resist. Still, there was usually a pretense that the visitors were not there to celebrate the regime. But not in the coming visit organized by The Nation, the old leftist magazine. Its September trip includes many of the staples, according to The Nation’s invitation letters. The trip will feature: museum tours with eminent art and cultural historians; seminars and lectures featuring renowned Cuban economists, government officials, community activists, physicians, and urban planners; exclusive concerts with popular jazz artists, troubadours, and folk musicians; performances by students of Cuba’s internationally acclaimed ballet institutes; visits to artist’s colonies and studios; guided tours of Old Havana, the Latin American Medical School, and the University of Havana; and visits to many other inspiring locales and events. No surprises there. But actually I left out a key clause in that paragraph. The trip will also include: a meeting and discussion with the Cuban Five, the intelligence agents considered national heroes after spending many years imprisoned in US jails. This is pretty remarkable. The Nation describes the tour as “a particularly inspiring and extraordinary time to experience the people, politics, culture, and history of Cuba in a way few ever have before.” In a way few Americans ever have before? Now, that’s true enough: how many American get to meet with and celebrate people who spied against our country and were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder? How many Americans want to?  Due to their actions four Americans died, in a Brothers to the Rescue plane shot down in international airspace. But the frisson of meeting people who actually—the Cuban government has admitted this—were intelligence agents and were convicted of spying on the United States is so wonderful that it is worth the $5,550 per person fees for the tour. The Nation says the trip is organized "under The Nation’s license issued by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control to promote people-to-people contact." Perhaps it fits, although I didn’t think the new federal regulations actually included people-to-spies contacts. In any event, let’s applaud the folks at The Nation. No nonsense about going to the beach, and no dissimulation about who they want to see. The visitors will meet no former political prisoners, no members of the Ladies in White opposition activists, no opposition journalists, no one trying to organize a free trade union. Just the regime’s mouthpieces...and the spies. Bon Voyage.