Looking At Cuba

Through Democratic Eyes

     A recent editorial in the Toronto Star illustrated why Canadians, and all non-Americans, are able to view Cuba with far more of a democratic perspective than Americans. The Toronto Star is Canada's best and largest newspaper. The Canadian people have not been propagandized since the 1950s and they have never been denied the freedom to visit the island and judge it for themselves. On the other hand, Americans since the 1950s have been proselytized about Cuba by the remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that fled the Cuban Revolution in the early morning of January 1, 1959...quickly setting up shop, their U.S.-backed dictatorship, with Miami's Little Havana becoming its new capital. In all the decades since, the transplanted Batistiano-Mafiosi rulers have been lavishly supported by the CIA, the U. S. treasury, the U. S. Congress, and the U. S. military. Yet despite all that, plus the longest and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak one, the island of Cuba has doggedly remained a sovereign nation, albeit a poor but proud one. Because the Cuban narrative in the U. S. as well as Cuban-related laws passed by Congress have been dictated by visceral Batistiano-types aligned with equally vicious right-wing politicians, two generations of Americans since 1959 have lacked the guts, intelligence or patriotism to protect, not the island, but their own democracy. But that is simply not the case in all other nations, especially Canada on our northern border, and any right-wing thug or propagandized idiot who disagrees with that must also deny such things as: {1} the murderous terrorist bomb that killed 73 innocent people on a CHILD-LADEN Cuban civilian airplane in 1976 with Americans being quickly persuaded that "it's the biggest blow yet against Castro," AND THUS IT AND THE CUBAN-AMERICAN TERRORISTS WERE FINE AS LONG AS THOSE VICTIMS WERE CUBANS; and {2} the yearly 191-to-2 vote in the United Nations emphatically opposing the U. S. Cuban policy is SUCCESSFULLY PRESENTED TO THE PUSILLANIMOUS AND PROPAGANDIZED AMERICAN PEOPLE AS A VICTORY FOR THE 2 AGAINST THE 191...because the 2, I guess, are nuclear superpowers who benefit from punishing innocent people on a nearby island because...HEY!!...IT MIGHT INDUCE THEM TO OVERTHROW FIDEL CASTRO, something THAT HASN'T HAPPENED TO FIDEL, WHO IS NOW 89. BUT...hey!!...WHY DON'T WE PUNISH NON-CASTROS ON THE ISLAND FOR ANOTHER HALF-CENTURY OR SO. Americans accept such undemocratic cruelty and ignorance, but not non-Americans...including Canadians.

     And that brings me back around to that recent editorial in the Toronto Star. It concerned the upcoming historic visit by U. S. President Barack Obama to Cuba on March 21st and 22nd. It's the type editorial that American newspapers simply cannot write because they too have been propagandized and/or intimidated since the 1950s by self-serving Batistiano-types who control the Cuban narrative and congressional laws related to Cuba. Even the bravest and most liberal U. S. journalists are primarily too politically correct, meaning they tell Americans what they expect to hear about Cuba, which is, in a word, lies. Here are some of the points in the Toronto Star that the U. S. media wouldn't dare express to propagandized Americans regarding President Obama's historic and meaningful upcoming visit to Cuba:

            "This historic gesture is intended to normalize relations between the Cold War adversaries after more than half-a-century of enmity and embargo. It can only buoy Havana's democratic reform movement and offer hope for a better life."

            "Public sentiment has shifted dramatically in favor of normalizing. Today polls suggest that 70 percent of Americans, including a majority of conservative Republicans, support Obama's moves to resume diplomatic ties and ease the embargo. So...does a majority of Cuban Americans born in the U. S. favor closer ties. So does half the older generation, who fled the island."

       "Republican hopefuls Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both Cuban-Americans, reflexively chastise Obama...but their criticism has resonance with fewer voters than before. A majority of Americans have a favorable view of Cuba and see the cruelty of punishing its people in a futile bid to bring down the regime."

             "Efforts by 10 successive U. S. Presidents to unseat the regime in Cuba have demeaned a superpower. With every passing year the embargo became more pointlessly vindictive as the U. S. traded briskly with Communist China, with communist regimes in Vietnam and Laos, even to a limited extent with North Korea."

            But, of course, the U. S. never supported a vile Batista/Mafia-like dictatorship in China, Vietnam, Laos, or North Korea...and then exacerbated that undemocratic blight by permitting such an overthrown dictatorship to quickly and permanently set up shop on U. S. soil. And that's why Cuba says much more about the United States than it says about Cuba, something we cannot say about China or any other nation.

       And that's why the Toronto Star, unlike American newspapers, can actually tell the truth about the revengeful and vicious attitudes of Cuban-Americans Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, something U. S. newspapers wouldn't dare do. So convinced that the American people are incapable of opposing their views concerning the continued punishment of innocent Cubans on the island, Cruz and Rubio are well aware that such acute gutlessness will not harm their bids to attain the Republican nomination as President of the United States. And if indeed they become Commander-in-Chief, they will also be convinced that there is nothing they can do to Cuba that intimidated and ignorant Americans will object to. And once again, they can base that assumption on such things as the endless embargo...and a remembrance that Americans readily accept the mantra that the terrorist bombing of Cubana Flight 455 was "the biggest blow yet against Castro" and when a decent Cuban-American newsman in Miami, Emilio Milian, voiced opposition to such terrorism against innocent Cubans he was car-bombed and again Americans readily accepted that terror too. Therefore, the Toronto Star, being on Canadian soil, has the freedom to tell the truth about Cuba, Rubio, Cruz, etc., and Canadians and all other people in the world except Americans have the everyday freedom to visit Cuba. Rubio and Cruz, unlike most Cuban-Americans and most people around the world, want to prolong the punishing of innocent Cubans to sate their revenge motives and their political careers. The Toronto Star editorial called them out on that "cruelty" but American journalists do not have the guts to do so. And that's precisely where America's democracy stands on the eve of what the U. S. media calls Super Tuesday's crucial presidential primary elections in America.

Meanwhile:

      Ashley Guindon was 28-years-old. On the very first day she went to work as a policewoman in Woodbridge, a Virginia suburb of Washington, she was shot dead when she responded to a disturbance at the home of a 32-year-old Army Sgt. who worked at the nearby Pentagon. She was a skilled and dedicated public servant who had served six years as a Marine Corps reservist and then attained a Masters Degree in forensic science. The gun violence that took Ms. Guindon's life on her first day as a policewoman is endemic in the United States. Politicians who shower time and tax-dollars on regime-change programs aimed at Cuba might be better advised to devote their efforts on U. S. problems such as gun violence.

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