A FESTIVAL OF REPRESSION: Cuban dissident leader Antonio Rodiles spoke to Mike Gonzalez about President Obama’s trip to Castro’s socialist paradise.

Even if Obama’s speech galvanizes some brave Cubans to demand their rights, the Castro Pretorian guard will crush them with impunity. We know this because that happened while Obama was in Cuba. Sources on the island said some Cubans gathered spontaneously after the speech to demand the rights enumerated in it, only to be brutally repressed by the Castro security forces. Yet the president not only did not leave in protest, but he failed to voice any objections or even mention it, at least publicly.

Indeed, during the three days of the Obama visit, dissidents were beaten, arrested, dragged through streets, stripped naked, and threatened with the rape of their daughters. Dissident leader Antonio Rodiles, himself beaten and detained on Monday along with his wife, told me the Obama visit had occasioned “a festival of repression.”

As he prefers to do, Obama gave a nice speech and then attended to other, more pressing matters.