The World Laughs At America's Cuban Policy

And Americans Accept It

        Beyond doubt, the best sentence ever written to describe the U. S. Cuban policy was penned by Penelope Purdy {above}, the editorial writer and Latin American expert at the Denver Post: "The U. S. Cuban policy has been conducted all these decades with the IQ of a salamander." No sane, unbiased person on the planet can deny the veracity of that sentence, yet the policy that Ms. Purdy depicted has existed decade after decade. It, of course, reflects grave ignorance and cowardice on the part of the American people as well as a lack of patriotism for democracy from the last two generations of Americans. It also is a reminder that there will always be enough self-serving U. S. politicians in the U. S. Congress and the White House -- Torricelli, Helms, Burton, the Bush dynasty, etc. -- to join the Salamander Clan that enables the most vicious and revengeful Cuban exiles to dictate the U. S. Cuban policy that Ms. Purdy describes and that the rest of the world, including America's best friends, take turns either being embarrassed by it or mocking it. In the article crowned by the above sentence Ms. Purdy in gory details explained how the United States of America created the Cuban Revolution by supporting and/or installing a long litany of lascivious dictatorships from Batista in Cuba to Trujillo, Somoza, Pinochet, etc., all over the Latin American and Caribbean landscape, a situation that today explains why the U. S., the world economic and political superpower, has amazingly little influence in its own backyard, stupidly relinquishing that role to Brazil, the Latin American superpower now led, as are some other very key nations in the region, by a democratically elected president who was once imprisoned and tortured by a U. S. - backed dictatorship that she tried feverishly to overthrow when she was a brave, young woman.

The right-wing Salamander Clan in the U. S. put Dilma Rousseff in a dictator's prison.

     The right-wing Salamander Clan in the U. S. also helped make Dilma Rousseff the democratically elected President of Brazil, by far the most powerful Latin American nation. A consequence of all that is the fact that Cuba was awarded with another dear friend, President Rousseff of Brazil. For Americans not to comprehend how Dilma Rousseff survived a dictator's prison to become the democratically elected President of Brazil speaks to two topical facts of life: (1) The American people since the 1950s have been the most flagrant salamanders for allowing this to happen; and (2) the U. S. democracy, the world's greatest government from 1776 till just after World War II, has not been the same democracy since the 1950s when powerful and greedy right-wingers discovered the U. S. government could help them exploit smaller, weaker nations -- first in the Caribbean (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, etc.), then in Latin America (Chili, Nicaragua, etc.), and later around the world (in Iran, the Congo, etc.) for the purpose of raping and robbing those nations of their natural resources.

Cuba's Jose Marti {Tumblr image} and other renowned patriots died fighting against foreign imperialists.

Jose Marti died on Cuban soil fighting Spanish domination in 1995. 

 Jose Marti said: "If you do not fight, at least respect the decency of those who do."

       Inspired by the likes of Jose Marti, the Cuban Revolution fought and eventually overthrew the U. S. - backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship in the first week of January, 1959.

    It was not the wholesale robbery of Cuba that inspired the Cuban Revolution. It was the routine murders of Cuban children that induced brave Cuban women {Like those above} to take to the streets and protest the Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Thus was created the first revolution in history that: (1) Overthrew a U. S. - backed dictatorship; (2) created as an offshoot a reconstitution of that dictatorship on U. S. soil, mainly in South Florida; and (3) for the decades since 1959 confounded the world by resisting a foreign re-capture of the island! {The sign above decries the murders of children in Batista's Cuba}

      Celia Sanchez -- the angelic, 99-pound doctor's daughter -- dearly loved a ten-year-old peasant girl named Maria Ochoa in Batista's Cuba. When Maria's ravaged body turned up under a canvas in the basement of a Mafia-run casino-hotel, Celia blamed it on the Batista-era practice of kidnapping Cuban girls like little Maria Ochoa to use them as lures to attract rich pedophiles to their casinos.

       Celia Sanchez, while Fidel Castro was in a Batista prison and before Che Guevara had ever set foot in Cuba, went to the Sierra Maestra Mountains to begin the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship, on her way to becoming history's all-time greatest female guerrilla fighter and revolutionary leader.

To this day in Cuba, admirers of Celia place beautiful flowers at the crypt of their beloved heroine.

      Tete Puebla today is a General in the Cuba army. By the time she was 15, Tete had earned a reputation as the fiercest guerrilla fighter in the Sierra Maestra. Her inspiration: Batista's infamous Masferrer Tigers had come to her village and burned some of Tete's relatives alive in locked, gas-soaked sheds and gunny sacks as a warning to her village not to resist what was happening in Cuba. A few months ago England's BBC, the world's most respected news organization, produced a documentary on Celia Sanchez and interviewed General Tete Puebla because of her keen insight. The U. S. media, on the other hand, has neither the integrity nor the courage to ask Tete: "General Puebla, can you tell us why you became a guerrilla fighter against Batista as a teenage girl and why today you remain a General in the Cuban army?"     

    The Tumblr photo above shows the base of the Jose Marti statue in Baltimore, Maryland. Instead of being Contented Salamanders, perhaps Americans should study why that Jose Marti statue in Baltimore contains soil from all those diverse locations. If they knew, perhaps better informed Americans would be mocked less by, for example, Europe's greatest newspaper.

     England's The Guardian is probably the world's best newspaper. Generally it's top articles, as above, provide the best insight into international, U. K. or U. S. breaking or topical news. But this past Sunday The Guardian's main article poked fun, quite appropriately, at America's Cuban policy.

   This past Sunday The Guardian used the above photo to illustrate an exceedingly long article written by its New York City-based journalist Ed Pitkington on the visit by America's superstar couple Beyonce and Jay-Z to the nearby island of Cuba. Of course, The Guardian didn't make a big deal out of where the famed entertainers chose to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary with Beyonce's mother Tina and Jay-Z's mother Gloria Carter.

      But The Guardian wisely and appropriately used the long article to make fun of America's renowned democracy that continues to dictate absurdities to 315 million Americans to appease the dictates of a tiny anti-Castro faction of exiles still smarting from the 1959 overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba. Here are some exact quotes from the article:

         "Shawn Carter could have been any American visitor strolling through the streets of a Caribbean town, dressed in standard-issue tourist fare of blue T-shirt and shorts, fedora on head and fat cigar in mouth. His wife, Mrs. Carter, as she likes to be addressed, did that other classic tourist thing: she slung a large and ostentatiously expensive camera around her neck. To add to the heat, the anti-Castro lobby group Cuba Democracy Advocates, based in Washington, accused the couple of being 'extremely insensitive.' 'There are women getting beaten on a daily basis, people are fighting for their freedom,' the group's director Mauricio Claver-Carone told celebrity news website TMZ." The Guardian then reported on how the Carters and their parents loved their meal at "the renowned paladar, La Guarida. You don't get that quality of island cooking every day in Brooklyn, the couple's more familiar stomping ground. All in all, bearing in mind the Rottweiler-like tenacity of the Cuban exile community, this wrangle has the potential to run for some time. It is unlikely, though, to be causing Mr. and Mrs. Carter much loss of sleep." The Guardian then laughed out loud at "the U. S. Congress and White House continuing to pay lip service to the embargo largely out of fear of the electoral repercussions were either party (Republicans or Democrats) to displease the Cuban exiles who continue to wield significant influence in the key swing state of Florida." 

      Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was the first in a long line of Bush-anointed politicians in South Florida to become entrenched in the U. S. Congress. Jeb Bush, in establishing his political base in Florida, was Ros-Lehtinen's Campaign Manager when she was first elected to the U. S. Congress from Miami in 1989, a combination of events that later helped Jeb's older brother, George W. Bush, win a very controversial Presidential race by winning Florida's electoral votes to overcome the fact Al Gore won the most nation-wide votes for President that year. Her longevity in Congress has elevated her to, among other things, the head of the Foreign Relations Committee. Unfortunately, Cuba is a foreign country and Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen, who was born in Havana on July 15, 1952, leads a visceral anti-Castro lobby that essentially dictates America's Cuban policy. Yes, politicians elected in Miami and sent to Washington affect and effect laws that concern the entire nation.

       Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen this week went ballistic on CNN and other venues in denouncing the visit of famed Americans Beyonce and Jay-Z to Cuba where they joyously celebrated, with their mothers, their 5th wedding anniversary. The congresswoman co-wrote {with Mario Diaz-Balart, another Miami addition to the U. S. Congress} a blistering letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U. S. Treasury Department, berating the type of license Beyonce and Jay-Z received before traveling to Cuba. The letter said, "As you know, US law expressly prohibits the licensing of financial transactions for 'tourist activities' in Cuba." Of course, Adam Szubin and others are well aware of all the anti-Cuban laws put into effect by the Cuban-exile extremists. The letter also reminded Szubin that Cuba is listed {thanks to the Cuban-exile lobby) by the U. S. State Department as one of four state sponsors of terrorism as "one of the world's most egregious" human rights violators. Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart (whose father Rafael was a key minister in the Batista dictatorship) wrote: "US dollars spent on Cuban tourism directly fund the machinery of oppression that brutally represses the Cuban people." The long letter added: "The restrictions on tourism travel are common-sense measures meant to prevent US dollars from supporting a murderous regime that opposes US security interests at every turn and which ruthlessly suppresses the most basic liberties of speech, assembly, and belief." Of course, most tourists {I visited Cuba in 2004 on an extensive research mission}, probably including Beyonce and Jay-Z, don't believe that nor do they observe such things once they are in Cuba. And, of course, many believe that is why the Cuban-exile extremists lobby so hard to prevent tourists in Cuba...and Luis Posada-Carriles, still Miami's most infamous anti-Castro zealot, openly admitted that he bombed Cuban hotels to deter tourism.

      In this year of 2013 Uncle Sam {as depicted above} remains a vivid symbol of the U. S. government. And, although one would not know it if you listen to the powerful anti-Castro Cuban lobby, Uncle Sam has some major problems, none of which remotely concern Cuba. In recent days, for example, my USA Today has told me that the U. S., although overrun with millionaires and billionaires, is so broke it must lay off so many air controllers that it jeopardizes airline passengers; and that the U. S. is so overrun with military-style guns that even school children are potential victims each day they venture out their front door.

        Americans were told this week that 16 million children in the U. S. -- 1 out of every 5 -- are faced with hunger issues in a nation overrun with millionaires and billionaires but also over-governed by bought-and-paid-for politicians. The UN and other organizations acknowledge that in Cuba all of its people are guaranteed free food, free shelter, free educations through college, and free health care for life. 

      Americans were told this week that the two current interminable wars have produced so many dead U. S. soldiers that some typical graveyards are now simply filled to capacity. And with that salient reminder, Americans are now confronted by more potential wars in the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula where, this time, the enemies have nuclear missiles. Such majestic problems, of course, are not related to Cuba.

        Americans were told again this week that so many wounded U. S. soldiers -- many without arms, legs, eyes, etc. -- have returned and are returning from the current two wars that the United States, the richest nation in the history of the world by far, does not have the capacity to adequately care for them nor will future generations of Americans have the capacity to adequately deal with them."

      Yet, if you listen to the anti-Castro extremist lobby -- and most Americans are forced to -- you're told to believe that Uncle Sam's biggest problem in this second week of April in the year 2013 is the wonderful visit by Beyonce and Jay-Z to forbidden Cuba. AND YOU STILL WONDER WHY EUROPE'S GREATEST NEWSPAPER, THE GUARDIAN, LAUGHS AT US WHILE AMERICA'S BEST FRIENDS AROUND THE WORLD ARE EMBARRASSED FOR US? {That's a rhetorical question so you need not answer it}

    But this is not to say that all members of the U. S. Congress are self-serving, bought-and-paid-for, Bush-anointed, Mafia-connected, anti-Castro zealots. Take, for example, Kathy Castor who has represented Tampa, Florida -- of all places -- in the U. S. Congress since 2007.

     Kathy Castor has just returned from a 4-day visit to Cuba, albeit a visit not nearly as famed as Beyonce's and Jay-Z's. Ms. Castor was in Cuba fulfilling her job to line up potential business and goodwill for her Tampa constituents. My, my! A member of the U. S. Congress actually doing her job. Never a salamander, Ms. Castor has long advocated a sensible U. S. policy regarding Cuba and she decries such Cuban-exile-inspired laws as the U. S. embargo of Cuba and Cuba's inclusion on the terrorist list.

      Kathy Castor's superb representation of Tampa in today's U. S. Congress contrasts markedly with the situation that existed in Tampa for five decades prior to Santo Trafficante Jr.'s death in 1987. Santo and his father were the undisputed and unchallenged Mafia kingpins of Tampa for those five decades.

     Back in the 1950s when Mafia kingpin Meyer Lansky was Batista's co-dictator in Cuba, Lansky put his pal Santo Trafficante jr. in charge of some of the Mob's hotel/casino gambling joints as well as some of the Mob's equally lucrative drug and prostitution enterprises. When Batista, Lansky, Trafficante Jr., etc., were booted out of Cuba by the Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1-1959, Lansky, Trafficante Jr., etc., returned to their mansions and enterprises in South Florida, believing the U. S. would recapture Cuba for them. 

{But, hush. You're supposed to believe Mother Teresa was the one booted out of Cuba in 1959!}

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