And Who Will It Hurt?
Joe Henderson is a highly respected journalist at the Tampa Tribune, a great newspaper in Florida that, unlike the Miami Herald, is not scared to death of Cuban-exile hardliners. On Aug. 20-2016 Mr. Henderson's column was entitled: "Rubio's Anti-Normalization Plan With Cuba Could Backfire." His first sentence, referencing President Obama's upcoming trip to Cuba that infuriates Cuban hardliners, was: "President Barack Obama just stuck a sharp stick in Marco Rubio's eye." Then Mr. Henderson pointed out that polls in Florida support Obama's "thaw in relations" with Cuba and that includes "in a Miami district considered a stronghold for opposition to normalization." Then Mr. Henderson pointed out that Rubio says he, on his first day as President, will roll back all of Obama's Cuban overtures. And that's when Mr. Henderson got to the crux of his column, writing these exact, extremely sane, and very decent words:
"The United States is fighting this battle of isolation against Cuba by itself, to the detriment of both nations. Would Rubio close newly opened embassies? Would he put Cuba back on a terrorist watch list? If he did, who would be hurt by those moves? The Cuban people, that's who."
It doesn't require an extremely smart person or a particularly brave one to agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Henderson. But the result of over a half-century of the world's greatest democracy allowing a handful of the most vicious anti-Castro hardliners in Miami to dictate to the U. S. both the Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policy has made otherwise sane and brave Americans resemble idiots and cowards when it comes to Cuba. That fact is pointed out yearly with the 191-to-2 vote in the UN and by everyday Americans being the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. In 1976 when Cuban hardliners with CIA attachments downed a Cuban civilian airplane killing all 73 on board with a terrorist bomb, the successful celebration in the Miami media called it "The biggest blow yet against Castro!" When a brave Cuban-American newsman in Miami, Emilio Milian, harshly condemned such terrorism against innocent Cubans, he was car-bombed. Americans insouciantly and meekly accepted such things on their soil in their name financed by their tax dollars. Thus, the Cuban hardliners in Miami, with considerable assistance from the Bush dynasty and a few right-wing congressional stalwarts, have -- from 1959 till today -- maintained their control of both the U. S. media and America's Cuban policy, a policy that Rubio wants to extend until the Batistianos and Mafiosi regain control of Cuba. However, there are today some journalists, such as Joe Henderson, and some politicians, such as Kathy Castor, brave enough and decent enough to disagree.
Kathy Castor was born 49 years ago in Miami. Since 2007 she has bravely and brilliantly represented the Tampa area in the U. S. Congress. The Joe Henderson article in the Tampa Tribune Aug. 20-2016 pointed out that she is "ready to aggressive push through Congress a bill ending the U. S. embargo against Cuba." Mr. Henderson quoted Ms. Castor as saying: "Naysayers like Rubio and Cruz are wrong. They are shackled to the status quo and a Cold War policy that has hurt the Cuban people and infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans." The unquestionable decency of that quotation is contested by the unconscionable cruelty of Rubio and Cruz, both of whom are convinced that the American people are neither smart enough nor patriotic enough to hold such undemocratic attacks on innocent Cubans against them. Sadly, they are probably correct, especially when the gutless national U. S. media wouldn't dare contrast their views with Ms. Castor's or the 191-to-2 United Nations vote that, of course, agrees with her in loudly denouncing America's Cuban policy that the Amercan people simply do not have the courage or intelligence to correct.
Congresswoman Kathy Castor of Tampa has fought long and hard for normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba. She is appalled at how decades of punishing innocent Cubans by Cuban exiles and other benefactors in the U. S. have so severely harmed the image of the United States and democracy around the world. However, she is not surprised that Rubio and Cruz could care less about such things. Multiple times Ms. Castor has led business leaders from Tampa to Cuba in efforts to help her constituents and Cubans on the island mutually benefit from sane commercial ties. So, if Kathy Castor is a brave, decent, and brilliant Congresswoman, why doesn't she get some traction in the national media and why isn't she, or someone like her, a serious candidate to be President of the United States?
The answer:
Cruel and unsuccessful first-term Senators Rubio and Cruz -- unlike decent, people-loving politicians like Kathy Castor -- benefit greatly from a money-crazed and media-deprived U. S. political system. Rubio and Cruz -- original products of the Bush dynasty aligned with right-wing Tea Party zealots -- hit the Senate begging every right-wing, Jewish, and evangelical billionaire on the planet for money to fund their presidential bids. After a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allows unlimited donations from billionaires, Rubio and Cruz had no trouble locating rich, greedy souls who desire their own bought-and-paid-for President, and the "For Sale" invitations from Rubio and Cruz are being heeded. That undemocratic financial farce is coupled with a mainstream U. S. media owned by billionaires who are only interested in making more billions, certainly not in reporting unbiased news that would help Americans make democratic choices. But it is more profitable for the mainstream media to become propaganda machines that promulgate endless months of campaigning complete with millions of unlimited dollars in profits from political ads.
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Hugo Cancio is a Cuban-American who has lived the past 35 years in Miami where he is a very successful businessman. He is also a very decent, democracy-loving man. He travels frequently to Cuba for the sole purpose of helping Cubans on the island, the ones that Rubio, Cruz and other Cuban-American hardliners want to hurt, in the guise of hurting Castro and enriching themselves. Hugo, in an interview with Cuban broadcaster Cristina Escobar that is posted on YouTube, stated a fact of life, namely that Cuban-Americans like him "are not represented" by the hardline politicians who, he says, are the only ones who can get elected to local or national offices in Miami. Therefore, Hugo believes that the system, on U. S. soil, more resembles a Banana Republic than a democracy. The U. S. media showers Americans with the views of congressional hard-liners from Miami but doesn't have the guts or integrity to report what most Cuban-Americans, like Hugo Cancio, think.
Joe Henderson {on the left above}, the superb journalist for the The Tampa Tribune, had the correct answer as to who a President Rubio would hurt the most. Mr. Henderson said, "The Cuban people." They are the ones who have been hurt the most by a right-wing U. S. policy that supported the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba from 1952 till 1959 and the ousted Batistiano-Mafiosi hardliners in the U. S. from 1959 till today. Sure, a Rubio or Cruz presidency might well finalize America, and not just Miami, becoming a Banana Republic but, if it happens, the American people will be getting what they deserve for not caring about their democracy or about innocent people on a nearby island. Yes, the prime victims, as Mr. Henderson opined, will be the Cuban people who do not deserve such treatment from self-serving bullies supported by the world's superpower and by American people who have never heard of Joe Henderson, Hugo Cancio, Emilio Milian, Cubana Flight 455 or...Kathy Castor.
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