Plus A Key Visit to Cuba Today
Today -- October 27th -- Alejandro Mayorkas will visit Cuba for the first time since 1960 when he left the island with his family at the age of six months. {Photo courtesy: Scott Applewhite/Associated Press}. Alejandro is a very important man in the U. S.; he is the second ranking official at America's Department of Homeland Security. On his three-day visit to Cuba this week, Alejandro will meet with top security people on the island to work on issues mutually beneficial for the citizens of both countries. His dad died in Los Angeles three years ago at age 81 and Alejandro told The Los Angeles Times, "It was always my dream to return to Cuba with my father, so this first visit back on the island without him will be quite emotional."
Democracy lovers in the United States will be embarrassed today when the yearly vote in the United Nations once again registers the world's opinion on the U. S. embargo of Cuba. It was instituted in 1962 after multiple assassination attempts against Fidel Castro in 1959 and 1960 as well as the Bay of Pigs attack in 1961 had failed to recapture Cuba following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. The vile U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship had, by 1962, firmly restructured itself on U. S. soil with Miami as its new capital, a fact that fueled the assassination attempts against Castro, the Bay of Pigs attack, the embargo, the terrorist bombings of Cuban hotels and coastal cabins, and the terrorist bomb that downed the child-laden civilian Cuban airplane Cubana Flight 455 in 1976. Then -- beginning in the 1980s when visceral Cuban-Americans aligned with the Bush dynasty began dictating Cuban policy in the U. S. Congress -- cruel congressional laws such as the Torricelli Bill and the Helms-Burton Act began legally codifying cruelty against Cubans on the island while lushly enriching and empowering Cuban-Americans. The embargo that the UN votes on today was imposed in 1962 for the purpose of starving and depriving Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro, presumably for the purpose of restoring the Batista-Mafia dictatorship on the island. In the last few years the UN vote against the embargo has been 188-to-2 with only Israel joining the U. S. in supporting it, and the Israeli vote is dismissed because it receives billions of dollars in economic and military aid each year from the U. S.
Today's vote in the UN denouncing the U. S. embargo of Cuba is particularly interesting because this year's Herculean and brave efforts by President Barack Obama have loosened as many aspects of the embargo as he can accomplish via his Executive Power. Yet, only the U. S. Congress, dominated by right-wingers and Batistianos, can eliminate it, and that won't happen. Meanwhile, the two graphics directly above resonate worldwide to shame America, democracy, and democracy-lovers such as President Obama. Mr. Obama has called for an end to the embargo. A few weeks ago his administration even indicated he was going to instruct his UN ambassador to abstain from voting on the issue, which would have been unheard of. But the powers that have dictated America's Cuban policy apparently forced him to change his mind, just as the three other Democractic presidents since 1962 -- Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton -- have been viciously thwarted when they attempted to normalize relations with Cuba. Like many other aspects of U.S.-Cuban relations, that is not a healthy or politically correct deduction, but it is a factually correct one.
Sarah Stephens is the Founder and Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. She loves democracy and there is no one on this planet that knows more about U.S.-Cuban relations than Ms. Stephens. Unfortunately, that's precisely why Americans will seldom be exposed to her important and sane viewpoints. The mainstream U. S. media has neither the guts nor the integrity to balance the very slanted and propagandized U.S.-Cuban equation with decent, democracy-loving experts such as Sarah Stephens. Thus, especially on the four cable news outfits, anti-Cuban propagandists reign supreme. But to access Ms. Stephens' expertise on the embargo and other aspects of U.S.-Cuban relations, you should frequent her Center for Democracy in the Americas website. Each Friday she posts a Cuba Central update that is the very best and most precise coverage of U.S.-Cuban developments.
The 2015 World Series starts tonight in Kansas City, Missouri. In the U. S. and especially in baseball-mad Cuba, fans eagerly await the first pitch. All of America's thirty Major League teams now feature Cuban stars. That's because the island, per capita, produces the world's best baseball players; and it's because, unlike in Cuba, baseball superstars can make hundreds of millions of dollars after defecting to America; and it's because talent pipelines from Cuba to the U. S. are now massively greased to {1} hurt Cuba and {2} to enrich, in addition to the players, a long line of traffickers, agents, etc., etc. Not surprisingly, the two best hitters on the two World Series teams -- the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets -- are Cubans.
Kendrys Morales is the best hitter for the American League champion Kansas City Royals. A powerful switch-hitter, Kendrys in the regular season hit .290 with 22 homers and 41 doubles, and he led the Royals with 106 runs-batted-in. He was born in 1983 in Fomento, Cuba. Now he is one of many multi-millionaire U. S. Cubans.
Yoenis Cespedes is the best hitter for the National League champion New York Mets who wouldn't be in the World Series if they had not made a trade to obtain Yoenis this season. In 2015 he hit .291 with 35 homers and had 105 runs-batted-in. He is also a brilliant defensive outfielder with a powerful and accurate throwing arm. He is a free agent after the World Series, which means the Mets and all 29 of the other Major League teams can bid for him. Some are saying Yoenis will receive offers starting at $25 million a year. Yoenis has been slowed recently with a sore shoulder but he'll be in the Mets' starting line-up for tonight's World Series opener. He was born in 1985 in Granma, Cuba, and defected to the U. S. four years ago.
Viva Cuban Baseball players!!
Including those still on the island.
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