19.3.15

U.S.-Cuba Detente: No Chance!!

Americans Need to Know Why
Monday,  March 23rd,  2015
      This photo was used by Fox News Latino to illustrate a major article this week written by Andrew O'Reilly. It shows American tourists on the beach at the luxurious Casa de Campo resort in the Dominican Republic. Located 70 miles east of the capital of Santo Domingo, Casa de Campo has long been one of the favorite destination for the very richest Americans, such as the billionaire Cuban-American Fanjul family that had a very rich sugar monopoly in pre-revolutionary Cuba and then a far richer sugar monopoly in the U. S. and the Dominican Republic after the revolutionary triumph in January of 1959. O'Reilly's article stressed the fact that many in the Dominican tourist industry are now worried that much of their business will go to the Pearl of the Antilles, Cuba, now that it appears the U. S. is easing its decades-old embargo against the island. O'Reilly quoted an executive who indicated he is already feeling the pinch from some of the regular Dominican tourists "who want to go to Cuba." Since the demise of Batista and Trujillo, Cuba has had far better relations with the Dominican Republic, and all other Caribbean nations, than with the U. S.
       Beyond doubt, any thawing of U.S.-Cuban relations will have a profound effect on the entire Caribbean -- especially the Bahamas, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic shares the big island of Hispaniola with Haiti just off the southeastern coast of Cuba. At 3:00 A. M. on the morning of January 1, 1959, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the charging rebels and flew his get-away airplane to Santo Domingo where Rafael Trujillo, the brutal U.S.-backed and anti-Castro dictator of the Dominican Republic, waited with open arms. Batista and his Mafia allies had invested most of their Cuban loot in the banks and properties of South Florida and the Dominican Republic. From that day to this day, that money has drastically affected both those areas -- South Florida and the Dominican Republic -- at Cuba's expense. 
      This photo shows Cuban Coast Guard troops commanding a drug stash that had washed up on their shores. This week -- Wednesday, March 18th -- the United States released its 2015 report on drug trafficking. It was entitled "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report." IN ALL THE WORLD, GUESS WHICH COUNTRY RECEIVED THE MOST LAVISH PRAISE FOR FIGHTING THE VILE SCOURGE OF DRUG TRAFFICKING? If you guessed "Cuba" you would be correct! While excoriating the usual suspects, the U. S. conclusions regarding Cuba contained only lavish positives, such as: "Cuba concentrates supply reduction efforts by preventing smuggling through its territorial waters, rapidly collecting wash-up, and conducting airport searches. The Cuban Border Guard continues to patrol Cuban waters and TGF notifications to U. S. authorities of maritime smuggling incidents are timely and detailed." In fact, the U. S. report on drug trafficking lauded Cuba more than the U. S., noting that drug smugglers try to avoid Cuba while the U. S. is the prime destination point where excess use of drugs fuels the profit motive that, in turn, devastates many countries, including Mexico along the U. S. southern border. Of course, the mainstream U. S. media will ignore this report because it is a positive related to Cuba. However, if the report had criticized Cuba, propaganda machines fueled by media-savvy anti-Cuban zealots such as the Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress and their well-heeled sycophants -- such as Mauricio Claver-Carone, Ana Navarro, and Fox News -- would have endlessly saturated America's television screens with their politically correct anti-Cuban salivating. Vilifying Cuba sates vengeful, economic, and political motives in America. Cuban positives are verboten. It's been that way since 1959. And thus, it's not about to end. The status-quo is too beneficial to a select few, similar to what perpetrates drug trafficking.
Isabel Saint Malo DE Alvarado is the very impressive Vice President of Panana.
        Born 46 years ago in Panama City, Isabel Malo is married and the mother of three children. As the Vice President of Panama, she will serve as the main hostess and has already been the prime orchestrator of the Summit of the Americas her country will host starting April 10th. Yesterday, March 19th, she was featured in a 6-minute interview on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports. Mrs. Malo said her theme for the Summit is "prosperity with equity" for all the people of the 34 nations in the Americas. She will stress that theme throughout but she is well aware that the two prime topics will center around U. S. relations with Cuba and Venezuela. She said, "It is great news what is happening between the United States and Cuba. It is great for the region." She indicated that she has arranged a table setting in which President Barack Obama and Raul Castro will meet and have dialogue. She said, "The last time the Presidents of those two nations met for a working meeting was in 1956 in Panama." {Dwight Eisenhower and Fulgencio Batista were the Presidents she referenced}. Mrs. Malo seemed to relish the opportunity for Panama next month to try to bridge the gap in the most contentious issues facing the Americas -- namely, the wide chasms separating the United States from Cuba and Venezuela. She said that harmony and cooperation are important "in dealing with the issues of security, immigration, energy, prosperity, jobs, and equity." {Note: Isabel Saint Malo DE Alvarado is an example of why women, as opposed to men, should be the Presidents of all 34 nations in the Americas. Women like her tend to care more about people and less about money and power}.
Yes, the U. S. direly needs Elizabeth Warren to be President in 2016     
     This Joshua Gunter photo shows President Obama getting off Air Force One in Cleveland Wednesday, March 18th. He made a speech at the Cleveland Convention Center. Cuba was one of the main topics.
      Cleveland's NBC television station, WKYC-3, provided live coverage {aboveof that important speech. President Obama got his loudest ovation when he stated: "I hoped on Day One of my presidency to close Guantanamo Bay." The majority of people in Cleveland and the vast majority of people around the world were hoping then and are hoping now that he could accomplish that goal. But more than six years into his two-term presidency, Mr. Obama has not come close to closing the infamous U. S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, the lush port that the world understands, even if Americans don't, the U. S. stole from Cuba way back in 1903, shortly after the U. S. gained dominance over the island with the easy 1898 victory in the Spanish-American War. The Gitmo prison at Guantanamo has been labeled "the Gulag of our time" by Amnesty International, a viewpoint shared by most of the world. After his comment about Gitmo in Cleveland this week, President Obama explained why he has failed to close the prison that remains one of the many Cuban-related products of the Bush dynasty's alignment with a handful of revengeful Cuban-American zealots. The President told the Cleveland audience that Gitmo needs to be closed because it so badly "hurts the image of America around the world and harms the security of the United States." But then, the President explained that his failure to close Gitmo is because a few anti-Cuban extremists have far more control of Cuban-related issues in the United States Congress than he, the twice-elected President of the United States, has. Americans are not supposed to understand that sad fact but the President does, and so does the rest of the world as reflected year-after-year by a vote in the United Nations. Meanwhile, as Mr. Obama related in Cleveland, the U. S. image around the world and the security of the United States are not nearly as important as capitulating to a few Cuban-American extremists when it comes to crafting or changing a longstanding Cuban policy that remains a blight on America's image and on America's security in a world in which anti-American terrorists have evolved into powerful and relentless armies.
       This week Luis Almagro, Uruguay's former Foreign Minister, was elected Secretary General of the Organization of American States. The 34-member nations include the United States and Cuba although Cuba has been left out in the cold for decades because of the U. S. influence. Mr. Almagro and all the other non-U.S. forces at the OAS have finally mustered enough courage to resist the U. S. treatment of Cuba.
          Jose Miguel Insulza, a respected Chilean statesman, is the current Secretary General of the Organization of American States and he won't be replaced by Luis Almagro until May 25th. So, Miguel will be in charge of the Summit of the Americas that begins on April 10th in Panama. Jose Miguel, like his successor Luis Almagro and all other non-U.S. officials at the OAS, urgently desire Cuba's full membership.
        In the last six years, U. S. President Barack Obama has grown very, very tired of attending international gatherings and being repeatedly embarrassed when even the leaders of America's most friendly countries -- England, Australia, Canada, etc. -- criticize America's Cuban policy. The last straw for President Obama was his embarrassment at the Nelson Mandela Memorial in South Africa in 2013.
        At the Nelson Mandela Memorial Ceremony, U. S. President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro. The gesture pleased the world but outraged rich and powerful Cuban-Americans. 
         Before he died on December 5th, 2013, Nelson Mandela was the world's most-beloved Civil Rights icon. In all the years after his 27-year imprisonment in South Africa, Mr. Mandela let the world know that his "favorite world leader" was...Cuba's Fidel Castro. At the Mandela Memorial Ceremony President Obama was reminded of Mandela's everlasting affection for Castro's Cuban Revolution, an affection that Mr. Obama has learned is shared by many other democratically elected leaders, especially throughout Latin America.  
      President Obama returned from South Africa determined to change the U. S. policy regarding Cuba that a handful of Cuban-Americans have dictated since 1959 and which the entire world in 2015 opposes. Obama very bravely announced on Dec. 17-2014 that he intended to "normalize" relations with Cuba!!! 
     Since President Obama's startling December 17th announcement, America's Roberta Jacobson and Cuba's Josefina Vidal have had three mostly productive face-to-face diplomatic meetings -- two in Havana and one in Washington -- aimed at normalizing relations between the two longtime adversaries.
        These two U. S. Senators -- one from Union City and the other from Miami -- have loudly bragged that they can "block" President Obama's ongoing attempts to normalize relations with Cuba. The sad reality for the U. S. democracy is this: They can. This photo shows Senator Bob Menendez of Union City dourly staring outwardly in the chambers of the U. S. Senate as he listens to Senator Marco Rubio of Miami shamelessly assail President Obama's sane overtures regarding Cuba. It is no coincidence that Union City -- Menendez's path to the U. S. Senate -- and Miami -- Rubio's path to the U. S. Senate -- were the two Mafia havens that sent many of the leaders of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship to Cuba in 1952 and then, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the same two U. S. cities became the primary destinations for the fleeing Batistiano-Mafiosi leadership. From 1959 into the 1980s the most ardent anti-Castro exiles dominated the feverish attempts to have the U. S. military and the U. S. treasury recapture the island for them. When that stratagem failed, the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s anointed anti-Castro zealot Jorge Mas Canosa as the leader of the Cuban exiles, and advised Mas Canosa to study and replicate the omnipotent Israeli lobby AIPAC. Mas Canosa took that advice and created the Cuban lobby CANF. From that day to this day, a handful of Cuban-Americans from Miami and Union City, aligned with self-serving sycophants, have quite easily controlled the U. S. Congress and its dictation of America's Cuban policy.
       In March of 2015 both U. S. Senator Marco Rubio from Miami and U. S. Senator Bob Menendez have been back in the headlines regarding fresh scandals -- Rubio because of a real estate deal with a disgraced former Cuban-American in Congress and Menendez because of alleged favors he extended to a controversial Miami doctor who is the nation's top recipient of Medicare dollars, among other things. But no one in the U. S. Congress from Miami or Union City needs to ever worry about such things; if they want it, their entrenchment in the U. S. Congress and in control of America's Cuban policy is fully ensured.
       In 2015 Josefina Vidal has emerged as the new face of Cuba. She is not only representing Cuba in the futile but ongoing efforts to normalize relations with the United States, but she is the prime decision-maker on the island regarding all things American, which are, without a doubt, Cuba's most important "things."
          In 2015 Luis Posada Carriles remains the face of America when it comes to Cuba. This photo shows the 86-year-old Posada -- on December 18th, 2014 -- leading an anti-Obama demonstration on the streets of Miami the day after President Obama announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba. Americans to this day are not supposed to comprehend why every Caribbean and every Latin American nation considers Posada to be the most notable terrorist on the North American continent. And therein lies the precise reason why neither President Obama nor anyone else can measurably alter America's Cuban policy.
        In 2015 Kathy Castor is the face of the un-afraid and un-purchased members of the U. S. Congress who strive, in vain, for a sane and decent U.S.-Cuban policy. The Miami-born Ms. Castor bravely and decently represents Florida's Tampa-St. Petersburg area in the U. S. Congress. Her views regarding Cuba, of course, are supposed to be kept from the American people and, for sure, the mainstream U. S. media -- and not just Fox News -- makes sure that is so. Congresswoman Kathy Castor is the antipathy of Bush-Rubio-Menendez-Posada when it comes to Cuba. That's why most Americans have never heard of Kathy Castor. And that helps explain why Cuba says a lot more about the United States than it says about Cuba.
         This AP/news.yahoo.com photo was taken yesterday -- Thursday, March 19th -- in Havana. A woman is jogging on the famed Malecon seawall as the huge cruise ship Thompson Dream enters Havana Harbor.
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