Anti-Democracy Billionaires

Meet the Poster Man

         Jeff Bezos is the Poster Man for the precipitous decline of the bought-and-paid-for U. S. media and the bought-and-paid-for U. S. democracy, both of which the proud Founding Fathers considered as key pillars of their seminal achievement -- the creation of the world's greatest form of government. All that is unraveling, with Bezos a prime example. He was born 52-years-ago in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1994 he founded Amazon. In January of 2015 Forbes listed his worth at $46.7 billion, more than the net worth of many countries. In January of 2016 Forbes listed his worth at $53.2 billion. With such incredible...actually obscene...wealth, Bezos could do wonders in the United States where we are repeatedly told via television ads and billboards that one in five children in the U. S. "have hunger problems;" where a cost-saving scheme in the mostly black city of Flint, Michigan has resulted in children being poisoned by unfit water; etc. Instead of helping alleviate such things, Bezos -- like about fifty of America's other anti-democracy billionaires -- is busy buying up and tearing down the fabrics of the world's greatest democracy.

        In 2013 Jeff Bezos bought the venerable Washington Post, which for many decades had been one of America's greatest newspapers and a keen watchdog when its democracy was threatened, such as when it exposed President Richard Nixon's right-wing Watergate shenanigans. But since 2013 the Post has become a cancerous scourge as far as democracy is concerned. Recently, a blistering series of right-wing Post editorials have unfairly and cowardly assailed President Obama's brave and decent efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, which reflects a brave and smart President's desperate attempt to correct an atrocious Cuban policy that dates back to 1952 when a few greedy right-wingers aligned the U. S. government with the Mafia to support the vile Batista dictatorship in Cuba. The Cuban Revolution overturned those brutal dictators in 1959 but the right-wingers in Washington made sure the Batistianos got reconstituted on U. S. soil, mainly nearby Miami. The Bezos-owned Post is obviously a great admirer of the Batistianos and imperialism but apparently totally unconcerned about the negative connotations America's Cuban policy has on the worldwide image of the U. S., as reflected by the 191-to-2 yearly vote in the United Nations. The recent Washington Post right-wing editorials have been entitled: "Failure in Cuba;" "Obama's Olive Branches Are Lifelines For Authoritarian Regimes;" "The One-Sided Relationship With Cuba;" "One Year After Rapprochement, Cuba Is Not Free;" and "Despite Mr. Obama's Engagement, Cuba Continues Its Repression."

     Jeff Bezos and far too many multi-billionaires like him don't seem to care about the one-in-five American children who have "hunger problems," but they appear to be determined to maintain an American Cuban policy, dating back to 1962, that strives to cause enough hunger problems for innocent Cubans that they will be induced to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. USA Today last week, in an article written by its anti-Castro, Miami-based Cuban-American journalist Alan Gomez, at least was honest enough to point out the U. S. embargo against Cuba was begun in 1962 to "cause hunger" in Cuba after the Bay of Pigs attack in 1961 had failed to recapture the island. Instead of having his Washington Post repeatedly firing off editorials advocating an endless continuation of the pro-hunger embargo of Cuba, perhaps Bezos could encourage his editorial writers to fight hunger in Cuba and the U. S.

      This is the Cuba that, it seems, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wants President Obama to maintain. The fact that the rest of the world is shamed by this image, as yearly indicated by the UN vote, hasn't bothered self-serving right-wingers for the past six decades and also won't bother them for the next six decades either.

       Barack Obama, in the final year of his two-term presidency, is doing all he can to bring at least a modicum of decency and sanity to America's Cuban policy. He has done far more already than the previous ten U. S. presidents combined, and he has more to do in his final eleven months in office. But a Republican-dominated U. S. Congress  and a bevy of right-wing Batistiano-loving billionaires and editorial writers have, and will, battle him all the way...and a Republican-successor in the White House beginning in 2017 would seal the deal in reversing Obama's democracy-loving gains.

      President Obama has been decent enough, informed enough, and brave enough to cry in front of the entire world as his sincere emotions pour out when his America, the richest and strongest nation in the history of the world, fails in its obligations to care for its children. The right-wing billionaires who are his enemies seem far more concerned with buying up the U. S. media and the U. S. government to further their greedy agendas, which include purchasing U. S. politicians.

        This billboard brings tears to the eyes of President Obama as he tries his best to end the U. S. embargo of Cuba that began in 1962 for the stated purpose of causing hunger problems in Cuba for the purpose of inducing the people on the island to rise up against Fidel Castro. It should, I believe, bring tears to the eyes of America's self-serving billionaires and bought-and-paid-for politicians who spend tons of money designed to keep the embargo in place...for another six decades or so...as America's friends around the world grimace in shame. Such money could possibly be better spent on making sure little American girls, like the one on the above poster, do not go hungry. 

       The little American girl in this photo got fed when she got to school but she also should not suffer hunger pains at home. American billionaires who readily make millionaires out of politicians they purchase should, perhaps, help alleviate childhood hunger in the U. S. before they spend so much money trying to support an embargo designed to create childhood hunger in Cuba.

       President Obama is aware that the U. S. embargo, from 1962 till today, has existed to create hunger and deprivation on the island of Cuba, even as the proponents of the Cuban embargo ignore the childhood hunger problems in the United States -- not, of course, with their own children but with millions of other people's children. A nation overrun with billionaire executives and bought-and-paid-for millionaire politicians should not also be overrun with childhood hunger problems after decades of funding regime-change schemes in Cuba, with the most everlasting scheme, ironically, being to bring about hunger problems in Cuba. At least, that's the thinking of a special young Cuban woman who rather strenuously opposes foreign interference on her island.

    At age 28, Cristina Escobar is Cuba's top broadcast journalist and she is a major influence on the island's young-adult generation that aims to determine its post-Castro future. {Later this year Fidel turns 90 and Raul turns 85}. Escobar's brilliance as a journalist and as a staunch defender of Cuba's sovereignty is well known on the island and throughout the region, and became known in the U. S. when her journalism took her to California in 2014 and Washington in 2015. The Bezos-owned Washington Post wouldn't be interested in Escobar's opinions but those concerned about fair-and-honest appraisals of Cuba are very interested in what she has to say. Last month, as you can see and hear on YouTube, Escobar told respected journalist Tracey Eaton, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy." What she least wants is for a foreign power, namely the U. S, to dictate Cuba's future, as it did from 1952 till 1959 when it teamed with the most vicious/thieving Mafia kingpins to support and prop-up the vicious/thieving Batista dictatorship, all the while claiming it was America's way of bringing democracy to the island. Very astutely, Escobar says: "From 1898, after the Spanish-American War, till 1959 the United States had every chance in the world to make Cuba a paragon of democracy. But it chose to make Cuba an oppressed and occupied colony to be used as a piggy-bank and a money spigot. Yet, today the very same types in Miami and in Washington try to convince yet another generation of Americans that now 'we really need democracy in Cuba and we'll starve or destroy the people there to make it happen.' This is after assassination attempts, military assaults, multiple terrorist acts against innocent Cubans, and the embargo failed to return Cuba to the U. S., which to me means returning it to the Batistianos and the Mafiosi. Perhaps Americans don't but the rest of the world seems to understand our pugnacious nature. I want a sovereign Cuba ruled by Cubans on the island, not foreign Cubans or foreign Mafia types. I don't want a Cuba that is once more an occupied piggy-bank for criminals that they will conveniently call a 'democracy.'" 

      Obviously, Cristina Escobar is well aware of the above photo while Americans then and now are supposed to pretend it didn't relate to the U.S.-backed rape and robbery of Cuba from 1952 till 1958. This photo was published in February of 1958 by American's top magazine at the time -- Life Magazine. It's caption said: "America's Jewish Mafia kingpin Meyer Lansky leaving Riviera Hotel-Casino with $200,000 cash in the satchel." It so happens that, by February of 1958, Fidel Castro and the Cuban rebels had already begun their march to Havana from the Sierra Maestra foothills on the eastern end of the island. Ten months later the ultra-rich Lansky and other Mafia kingpins had been chased to their tax-free and jail-free safe havens, such as Lansky's mansion in South Florida. Remnants of the Lansky-directed terror in Cuba still control the Cuban narrative in the U. S., not to mention the unending congressionally funded regime-change schemes designed to return Lansky-types to the island against the stern wishes of...the very determined Cristina Escobar.  

      Either Cristina Escobar will remain the new face of Cuba or Jeff Bezos {or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz} will become the new face of Cuba. That means she is a huge underdog, but not one to be underestimated. Bezos alone has, according to Forbes, 53.2 billion dollars plus the editorial pages of the Washington Post to make his case. Rubio and Cruz are supported by a vast and unseemly array of right-wing billionaires, plus a propagandized U. S. media and citizenry that has never and will never react to atrocities against the nearby island. Escobar wants democracy for Cuba if that is what Cubans on the island want. And she wishes the U. S. democracy wasn't so susceptible to being bought by anti-Cuban, right-wing billionaires. It is well known that, on her recent journalistic visit to Washington, she was offered $3 million plus a Miami mansion if she would defect. But she has a far different agenda -- Cuban sovereignty. She doesn't have billions of right-wing dollars but, as Cuba's top broadcaster, she does have the attention of the twenty-something generation of Cubans on the island to make her case. Apparently she is familiar with the Post editorials just as she keeps abreast of other foreign threats to her very vulnerable island. Therefore, while most Americans are uninterested in the politics of a Jeff Bezos or a Marco Rubio or a Ted Cruz, Cristina Escobar is very interested. Earlier this week she said, "I envy the Cuban patriots who fought and died for Cuban sovereignty...like Marti and Maceo...more than I'll ever envy the rich Cuban exiles and their supporters in the United States." She laughed and added, "I'm old-fashioned, but I sleep well."

       In February, 2016, the island of Cuba belongs more to Cristina Escobar than to Jeff Bezos or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. That might change by this time next year, but don't hold your breath while you wait. As long as there are Cubans on the island like Cristina Escobar, Cuba might remain an island country and not an occupied piggy-bank.

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