Remember in November 2009, when thousands of freedom demonstrators in the streets of Tehran, Iran, were chanting “Obama, Obama, you are either with us or you are with them [the Islamic Regime]!”?

It was the moment then-President Barack Obama revealed himself as the hypocrite (with a totalitarian soul) that he was and is.



He, of course, did nothing for the suffering people of Iran then for fear of undermining his nuclear deal with the mullahs that they had no intention of actually adhering to in the first place, and didn’t.

I can’t help but believe Obama must have known that too (most of us did), but went ahead anyway. I leave his motives for you to decide.

Now, Joe Biden is confronted with an oddly similar situation. For the first time in decades, the Cuban people are rising up against their communist masters. Will our president stand up for democracy and freedom or will he crumble (or bow to other interests) like his “former” boss?

Ironically, one of the demonstrators’ chief complaints, other than, of course, desperate pleas for freedom from a wretched dictatorship of decades, is lack of medical care, including COVID vaccines.

Which brings forth another not-too-distant memory (2007)—the debut of that cinematic pack of lies ”Sicko,” in which Michael Moore goes to Havana to assert the superiority of the Cuban medical system to our own on the basis of absolutely ludicrous claims.

In 2016, when the corpulent Moore not surprisingly contracted a serious case of pneumonia and admitted “things didn’t look good,” he, again not surprisingly, didn’t return to Cuba for treatment but checked into an ICU at a New York hospital that got him better in a week.

That’s what Biden has weighing on him in formulating his Cuban policy, or lack thereof—the Michael Moores of the world like The Squad and Bernie Sanders, whose endless hypocrisy about totalitarianism is only topped by the list of the 15 “woke” Hollywood personalities who “hobnobbed, vacationed, promoted movies in communist Cuba” cited by Breitbart.com.

(I thought these “progressives” were so big on gay rights. Didn’t they see the movie—“Before Night Falls”—about Fidel imprisoning gays? El Che wasn’t much for “maricones” either, or for his old comrades, for that matter. When they didn’t adhere to what he thought was the party line, he would line them up against the wall and shoot them.)

I was, I am sad to admit, also an early sucker for the socialist romanticism of the Cuban Revolution. When I was 13, my friends and I raced down to Central Park to hear Fidel speak. It was quite a scene with seemingly every Dominican in the city present, screaming for Castro to do for their country what he had done for Cuba. That was the year he came to New York and roasted a chicken in his room in Harlem’s Hotel Theresa.

Later, I knew people who joined the “Venceremos Brigades” and went down to the island to cut sugar cane, but that was a little too “red,” not to mention arduous-sounding, for me.

I finally got to Cuba myself in 1979. By then, I was, to say the least, skeptical of the revolution but I couldn’t resist an invitation to be a delegate to the First Festival of the New Latin American Cinema.

I flew down illegally on a six-seater out of Miami that almost turned back when the pilot, a Vietnam vet, figured out where we were going. The only one on the plane who spoke any Spanish, I ended up talking the flight down to a suspicious traffic controller at the rural-looking Havana Airport with its sprinkling of military aircraft and one Aeroflot jetliner.

The island was even worse than I had expected, completely locked down at that point, with even the Afro-Cuban music I had grown up with in New York banned. (This was before the advent of the Buena Vista Social Club.)

We delegates spent our time watching a series of mostly boring propaganda movies while some of the local filmmakers whispered in our ears how they wanted to get out.

The highlight of the week was being taken to the Tropicana nightclub, that holdover from Batista times with young ladies in scanty outfits dancing in front of overweight Eastern European apparatchiks apparently having the time of their lives in the tropics. That, in itself, was a lesson in the true nature of communism (that and also that Fidel died a billionaire in such an impoverished country).

Like all communist countries, it felt like being in a big jail and I was happy when it was time to leave. But it wasn’t so easy. Somehow, our plane wasn’t being given permission to land. We waited for a full day at the Havana Airport, getting increasingly nervous—would we ever get home again—until finally, Raul Castro himself gave an order, the plane landed and we were gone.

I think about that moment when I see the intermittent reporting coming in from Cuba, the reluctance of the mainstream media to say much, lest they hurt the administration. As is so often the case in these situations, it doesn’t look good for the demonstrators.

Could we even give support if we wanted to? America, once a bastion of democracy, no longer is one. The State Department and the White House equivocate, making pronouncements that sound OK but are no more than that.

Are they going to give out money, as they so often do, to calm things down and return to the status quo, as horrid as it is? We are left to wonder, as the old song went, “Which Side Are You On?”

Top U.S. officials called out Democrat President Joe Biden on Sunday over his lack of public comment as armed Cuban government forces deployed to stop pro-freedom protesters on the island.

The remarks come as Cubans took to the street in rarely seen demonstrations to protest the impoverished conditions of the communist island, their lack of freedom under the communist regime, and did so while chanting “Liberty” and “Freedom” and waving an American flag.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) called out the administration in a tweet, writing: “Where’s President Biden? Where’s Vice President Kamala Harris? The Cuban people need to know the United States stands firmly on the side of freedom and democracy in #Cuba.”



Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted: “The people of #Cuba bravely take to the streets against 62 years of socialist tyranny 12 hours later President @joebiden @POTUS has yet to say a word about it.”

Rubio tweeted out a video showing “heavily armed socialist shock troops” descending on the area, noting that Cubans do not have weapons to defend themselves....

At the time that this report was filed, Biden had yet to say a word about the situation, did not respond to questions from the press, did not put out a statement, and did not tweet about it. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed during an MSNBC interview on Sunday night that the administration does not have a “beef” with “the Cuban people” and that they should have access to the most basic necessities like water.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wrote on Twitter: “The Biden administration should quickly denounce any detention or violence toward peaceful protestors in Cuba. America & every freedom-loving nation must fully support the brave Cuban people in their calls for liberty & human dignity. The world is watching.”

“The Castro regime has given orders to repress the peaceful protests, but let me be very clear: the United States will not tolerate the Cuban military firing upon its people,” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar wrote on Twitter. “I call on the Biden Administration to stand against the tyranny and oppression of the Castro Regime and to respond with whatever means necessary to protect the brave people of Cuba.” ...

In an effort to quell a historic show of popular dissent against Cuba’s communist dictatorship, the Cuban government throttled internet access across the country on Sunday and Monday.

Cuban internet users began suffering outages late Sunday afternoon, shortly after thousands of Cubans took to the streets to protest the government’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic and an intensifying food shortage. Internet users experienced two “brief total blackouts” and “erratic” coverage for the remainder of the day, according to the network monitoring company Kentik.

On Monday, the internet monitor NetBlocks reported that Cuba’s state-owned telecommunications provider, ETECSA, had begun implementing targeted restrictions against popular social media platforms, including Telegram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. VPN services remain effective at circumventing the restrictions, according to NeBtlocks....

Department of Homeland (DHS) Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said yesterday that the agency is working to support Cuba and Haiti, with the former seeing widespread political protests amid the communist government's failure to provide basic supplies, and the latter in upheaval after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise.

That help will not include asylum—at least, if not sought in the "right" way. "Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States," Mayorkas said in a press conference. Those who do attempt to come to the U.S. by boat will be intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard and sent back, while anyone lucky enough to finagle an asylum interview will be resettled elsewhere.

Mayorkas emphasized the deadly nature of that journey, perhaps hoping to deter a mass influx of people who would not survive it. But the message still strayed far from the spirit of President Joe Biden's campaign, which put immigration front and center as he repeatedly pledged to restore the sort of humanity he said was missing from former President Donald Trump's immigration program.

"If individuals…establish a well-founded fear of persecution or torture, they are referred to third countries for resettlement," said Mayorkas. "They will not enter the United States." As CBS News notes, that's not a change in U.S. policy, which has for decades sent migrants back when they are found at sea. Cuban migrants who attempt to cross at the U.S.-Mexico border have had better luck.

But Biden promised to be a changemaker, not only when it came to Trump's agenda, but also that of his former boss, President Barack Obama, who derisively became known as the "deporter-in-chief" for his mass expulsions. Having Mayorkas deliver the message is perhaps the most ironic aspect of all, as the DHS secretary came to the U.S. from Cuba as a refugee with his family in 1960.

The Biden administration's decision also comports with recent asylum protocol writ large. Migrants coming to the U.S. have a legal right to seek asylum, but those arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are often forced to illegally cross and then find a government agent to file a claim, committing a crime in the process. The state can prosecute that crossing, as Trump did uniformly when he pursued a "zero tolerance" approach. Though Biden symbolically sunset that policy—it had already been put to rest by the Trump administration—it is still in many ways just as difficult to claim asylum.

"Except for a few months under Trump, this is one of the strictest border policies we've ever seen," David Bier told me in April.

Mayorkas's message is likely steeped in political optics, at least to some degree, as immigration continues to serve as a cudgel used by politicians and cable news hosts alike. In April, Biden announced he would keep Trump's low refugee cap in place after campaigning on doing the opposite. An administration official said that pivot came as an increase in unaccompanied migrant children overwhelmed the Office of Refugee Resettlement—which is not the agency that processes those minors. After a swell of pressure, Biden eventually reversed course.

But there are a number of other immigration promises that Biden has broken and not yet rectified. "There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration," he told NPR in August of last year. Of the lawsuits set in motion to seize private property for that wall, Biden promised, "End, end, end, stop, done, over. Not gonna do it. Withdraw the[m]. We're out." Eight months later, a federal judge approved the government's request to take land from the Cavazos family in Hildago County, Texas.

"We are utterly devastated," said Baudilia Cavazos. "We thought President Joe Biden would protect us."

The administration is also defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the agency erected a fake university and deported immigrant students without refunds after they paid tuition. "They're being crushed by that student debt. A lot of them used their families' savings to pay the [University of] Farmington tuition," Anna Nathanson, an attorney representing some of the students, told me in March. "Everyone I've spoken to is unfortunately having really severe mental health consequences still. People are really depressed. People tell me this made them suicidal. It's really, really bad."

It appears Biden has not yet been moved by that plea. Nor has he been moved far enough to grant asylum to the people of Cuba and Haiti, who are respectively fleeing an oppressive regime and a failed state run by murderous gangs. If the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty—"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"—don't apply to people subject to communism and violent authoritarianism, then who do they apply to?