Obama's Cuban Brilliance

up, Up, and AWAY...to Cuba!!!!
{Updated: Wednesday, February 17th, 2016}

      Yesterday a bold and brilliant President Obama continued to drastically slice into America's Batistiano-directed and Congress-mandated Cuban policy that the entire democracy-loving world strongly opposes.

       For over half a century, to appease revengeful Cuban exiles and their sycophants in the U. S. Congress, everyday Americans have been the only people in the world deprived of the freedom to visit the nearby island of Cuba. No U. S. President since the 1950s has had the necessary combination of skill, decency, and guts to correct such anti-democratic atrocities. Until Obama! Yesterday he devised a plan to saturate Cuba with commercial airline flights to the island that have been barred for over a half century.

     This photo is courtesy of Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini. It was taken yesterday at the famed Hotel Nacional in Havana. On the right is Cuba's Minister of Transportation Adel Rodriguez. On the left is America's Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. Their handshake sealed an incredible, Obama-orchestra deal. It paves the way for up to 110 daily U. S. airline flights to and from Cuba. The agreement stipulates the flights can be "from any city in the U. S. to any city in Cuba." Ten Cuban cities have acceptable and approved international airports. That includes Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the two largest cities on each end of the island, as well as Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Camaguey, and Santa Clara. USA Today today says all of the major U. S. airlines are excited about the agreement and will file flight plans within the next fifteen days hoping to be operative by the fall. Mr. Rodriguez said: "Cuba and America are closest of neighbors. We should be closest of friends." Mr. Foxx said: "This is an historic day in the relationship between Cuba and the United States. For the first time in more than five decades the United States and Cuba will allow American airline service between our two countries."

         This photo is courtesy of Chip Somodeville/Getty Images. It shows an American Airlines charter flight unloading passengers at Jose Marti Airport in Havana. Prior to Obama, only charter flights have flown from the U. S. to Cuba and only specially approved people could be on them. Obama has already drastically increased...to 12...the reasons Americans can go to Cuba, but tourism is not one of the 12 because the Batistiano-directed U. S. Congress has the power to maintain the embargo, at least the self-serving evils that Mr. Obama can't correct with his own executive powers. American is the largest U. S. airline and, of course, it is excited about having the Obama-blessed freedom to bid on the commercial flights. The new agreement allows ten flights a day to each of ten Cuban airports but it is expected that Jose Marti Airport in Havana will get about 20 flights per day. With that anticipation, Cuba has been spending money to sharply upgrade its already busy airports. The agreement does not include Cuban airplanes flying to the U. S., but, in time, Obama-orchestrated trade agreements are designed to create mutual benefits that even anti-Cuban zealots in Miami and Congress might have trouble crushing, at least with democratic tactics.

      Obama's opening of the Cuban spigot has already created an influx of tourism to the island and Cuba is hustling to not only improve its airports but also it roads and hotels. This is the very appealing hotel in Cienfuegos, one of the ten Cuban cities that yesterday's agreement in Havana will affect with up to ten daily U. S. commercial flights. Cienfuegos is a very gorgeous city Americans might want to check out.

       This map shows that Cienfuegos is located in south-central Cuba, just northwest of the beautiful colonial coastal city of Trinidad. You probably already know the locations of Havana and Santiago de Cuba but in between them are cities such as Holguin, Camaguey, Santa Clara, and Matanzas that are also getting primed for those upcoming commercial flights from the U. S., thanks to an innovator named Obama.

      Cuba is the biggest island in the Caribbean in both size and population with 11.26 million people. The main island is surrounded by thousands of cays, some of which are so popular with tourists that there are nice hotels and international airports on them. That includes the two -- Cayo Coco and Cayo Largo -- that are among the ten airports mentioned in that significant U.S.-Cuban agreement yesterday. As you can see on this map, Cayo Largo is southwest of Cienfuegos and due east of the Cuban island of Isla de Juventud, which was called the Isle of Pines when Fidel Castro was there in a Batista prison. Cayo Coco, as you can see, is just off the north-central coast of the main island. Both Largo and Coco have absolutely great beaches. This map shows the 250 kilometer dimension; 250 kilometers equal 155 miles. Obama is trying to make it easy for you to visit Cuba. Don't say you are a "tourist" but study the 12 reasons Obama will permit you to go and then choose one. Next, await the commerical airplane flights that Obama has just approved.

This is a part of the newly refurbished Hotel Cayo Largo.

       The Associated Press this week {Feb. 15th} used the above photo to illustrate an article that defines, as of this moment in time, how President Barack Obama's ongoing overtures to Cuba might well go down in history as among the bravest and most intelligent acts ever devised by an American President -- rivaling Abe Lincoln's Civil War brilliance that saved the union and ended slavery and Franklin Roosevelt's creation of Social Security in the 1930s and his incredible efforts to get the U. S. into and through World War II to keep vile dictators in the German-Japanese-Italian axis from, perhaps, capturing the world. If that sounds like pro-Obama hyperbole, read the AP article before rendering that judgment. Lincoln was direly threatened by pro-slave elements in the U. S. and Roosevelt was direly threatened by anti-war zealots in the U. S. Congress and elsewhere. But unbiased contemporary journalists and future historians will, I think, agree that every American President since John Kennedy in the 1960s has been direly threatened by the vast Castro Cottage Industry in America and that President Obama has confronted that threat more bravely than any President since the 1960s. Having said that, let me explain the above AP photo. It shows a Cuban farmer on a very old tractor in Pinar del Rio province. Actually, he's very lucky because many Cuban farmers are still using oxen to work their land, one reason Cuba for decades has had to spend billions of dollars each year to purchase food instead of producing it. The U. S. embargo was engineered in 1962 and maintained every year since by Batistiano-exiles from the overthrown Batista dictatorship, along with easily acquired sycophants such as the Bush dynasty and entrenched right-wing members of the U. S. Congress such as Jesse Helms, Dan Burton and Robert Torricelli. {Perhaps you have heard of the Helms-Burton Act and the Torricelli Bill engineered by Miami-based anti-Castro zealots to recapture Cuba and secondarily to make selected Cuban-Americans very, very rich}. BUT THIS WEEK, as the above tractor indicates, PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS CONTINUED TO SLICE DRASTICALLY INTO ANTI-DEMOCRATIC ATROCITIES SUCH AS THE Helms-Burton and Torricelli LAWS.

        Meet Saul Berenthal {on the left} and Horace Clemmons. They own the small Kleber Tractor Factory in Alabama. This week President Obama, via an extremely brave and monumental Executive Decision, gave Saul and Horace permission to build a tractor factory in Cuba and make their superb little tractors available to Cuba's hard-pressed farmers. If you think it was not a brave and monumental decision, I invite you to read the vicious and powerful anti-Castro blog Capital Hill Cubans and study its reaction to Obama's belief that these little tractors that will be built in Cuba will help millions of Cubans as well as Americans. Saul is a Cuban-American who came to the U. S. at age 16 and got rich as an IBM executive, where he met his dear friend Horace. Saul, a brave Cuban-American, this week said: "These two countries for 60 years have been in the worst of terms. Anything I can do to bring the two countries and the two people together is tremendously satisfying." Reread that statement, if you will. Most Cuban-Americans feel that way. However, for 60 years when it comes to Cuba, only anti-Castro zealots and their self-serving right-wing sycophants have been permitted to set U. S. Cuban policy. That is, till President Obama came along. And then, lo 'n behold, Obama defies Congress by removing Cuba from the punitive Sponsors of Terrorism list, opening embassies in Havana and Washington, easing the anti-democratic travel barriers that denied everyday Americans the freedom to visit the nearby island, and...easing trade restrictions -- SUCH AS WITH U. S. TRACTORS!!

        The little but strong Kleber tractors that will now be made and sold in Cuba will do wonders for Cuban farmers, whom extremists in the U. S. have punished for years in the guise of hurting Castro. The tractors will sell for under $10,000 in Cuba and there are many rich Cuban-Americans who will readily finance them.

      The Telemundo TV network used this photo to illustrate how the Kleber tractors made and sold in Cuba will tremendously help Cuban farmers, many of whom in 2016 are still using oxen to till their land. These affordable tractors will be among the brave gifts that President Obama is giving to the Cuban people in stark defiance of America's Cuban policy that has been mandated since 1959 by a handful of Cuban exiles and a few Americans, including Jeb Bush and the still-viable Bush dynasty, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.

       This is Saul Berenthal. The photo is courtesy of Voice of America's voa.news. Saul masterminded this week's decision by President Obama to allow Saul and his Alabama partner Horace Clemmons to build a factory in Cuba that will provide affordable and badly needed tractors to Cuban farmers. Saul is a multi-millionaire Cuban-American. Unlike many others, he has no desire to make money off the hardships of Cubans on the island. He wants to help them. And it is time, I believe, that Americans finally have the courage and insight to support the majority of Cuban-Americans like Saul, as opposed to capitulating to the dastardly, self-serving dictates of a handful of Cuban-Americans who have, for many decades now, eked out revenge against Fidel Castro while also...don't forget...eking out wealth and power for themselves at the expense of both the U. S. democracy and millions of innocent Cubans on the island. Like most Cuban-Americans, Saul Berenthal is a decent, democracy-loving man. President Obama supports people like Saul. Presidential wannabes like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz powerfully support rich and powerful anti-Castro zealots/lobbyists like Mauricio Claver-Carone of Capital Hill Cubans fame. You may check Claver-Carone's highly sophisticated and hugely financed blog and see what he says about Obama's tractor deal this week...but, then again, you may want to stay right here on Cubaninsider. I am the only person who has ever written a word on these Cubaninsider essays, over 500 in four years with about 150 deleted for being out-dated. The rest are left in place because, for example, "The U.S.-Cuba-Mafia Triangle: A Nexus From 1952 Till Today" got 52 hits today although it was posted back on Dec. 10-2015. According to Google and Alexa Rank, Cubaninsider gets far more hits each day than many viciously anti-Cuban blogs, including Capital Hill Cubans. I have never promoted this blog with ads or social media or anything else and never made a single penny off of it, and I never will. I doubt that the rich Claver-Carone can make the same statement.

But:

          I strongly support decent and brave Cuban-Americans like the Jewish Saul Berenthal as well as decent and brave Americans like President Obama who believe little tractors like this one, made and sold in Cuba, will do two important things: {1} Help the Cubans on the island; and {2} help soothe the images of America and democracy that have been so badly bruised for six decades by cruelly hurting innocent Cubans on the island. In 2016 Americans are still being told by rich and powerful lobbying outfits that continuing to deprive Cubans on the island is justified because it hurts the soon-to-be 90-year-old Fidel Castro who, unlike his prime enemies in the U. S., actually lives quite modestly in Havana although he was born very rich. Prior to this generation of genuflecting Americans, the previous generation in 1976 was effectively told via the Miami media that the terrorist bombing of the child-laden civilian Cuban airplane, Cubana Flight 455, was the "biggest blow yet against Castro!" Now along comes a decent and brave President, Mr. Obama, who believes that six decades of such genuflections are six decades too many. 

       A great and courageous U. S. President believes that normalizing relations with Cuba can correct six decades of an American policy that has teamed the U. S. and its democracy with the Mafia to support the vile Batista dictatorship in Cuba and then to support the transplanted Batistianos in the United States. 

       He may yet lose his battle to normalize relations with Cuba. If he does, it will be because the majority of Americans will have been too cowardly and too unpatriotic to support him and America's democracy.

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