The 75th anniversary of D-Day was very well covered by the media. How would you feel if there had been absolutely zero coverage of that great invasion? No words, no pictures, just business as usual with no word about the greatest invasion in history? Believe it or not, something disturbingly similar did indeed take place.
For half a century, American politicians seeking the Cuban-American vote in South Florida have been promising, "We're gonna lay the hammer down on Castro! Put us in office again and watch what we do with those disgusting Commies!" And yet nobody and nothing ever changed.
During the media blitz of the D-Day commemoration, the fondest dream of the anti-Communist Cubans lucky enough to escape with their lives came true. The United States, under President Donald Trump (and aided in no small part by National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has condemned President Obama's Cuba policies and has promised to "finally end the glamorization of socialism and Communism"), chose that moment to invoke the long-forgotten Helms-Burton Act.
That's a 1996 federal law that strengthened the Cuban embargo put in place by the John F. Kennedy administration in 1962 – way back when Democrats were not in thrall to Communist dictatorships in Latin America. And the Helms-Burton Act resounded like the force of every hammer in freedom's tool case, pounding in just the right places. What has taken the most visible pounding is, of all things, the itinerary of cruise ships!
Don't be surprised if this is the first you've heard about this stunning blow for freedom. The major networks and other purveyors of what passes for "news" evidently felt you didn't have a compelling need to know about it.
Here's a disclaimer. You may notice that what follows echoes the work of a freedom writer (and a dear friend and frequent guest on my radio program), Humberto Fontova. Humberto is one of the most prolific providers of the truth about life in Uncle Fidel's Island Paradise.
For decades the Castro thugocracy has relied on Soviet sugar-daddies willing to advance the cause of Soviet Communism in the Western Hemisphere. When the Soviet Union collapsed, along came Venezuela, with hardcore Communists bobbing up and down atop the world's biggest reservoir of petroleum. Venezuela became a Communist Cuban colony. It's estimated that up to 35,000 members of Castro's secret police run Venezuela like a Coney Island concession.
But America now, after many years of anti-Communist pleading, sees the Castro regime start to get its comeuppance. Every member of the Venezuelan-Cuban enterprise is scared stiff. The party's over.
Lucrative cruise ships which until now have brought billions of dollars into the Venezuelan and Cuban coffers will do so no more. Enforcement of the Helms-Burton Act puts an immediate end to all those water-borne cash cows that served as an even more generous sugar-daddy than the Soviet Union or American permissiveness brought to Communist Cuba.
There was a report earlier in the week that Russia is moving its sizable delegation in Venezuela back to Russia, for financial reasons.
At last, now, we'll see what the Communist paradise people can do without the financial help of goodhearted, well-meaning, naive liberals. Communist Cuba may be left to sink or swim on its own.
My own view (and hope!) for its future is probably best expressed in one of my favorite jokes, which I first heard years ago in Moscow. It asks what would happen if Communists took over the Sahara Desert. The answer? "For three years, nothing. Then they'd have to start importing sand!"