The Batistianos Still Rule
 |
| Photo courtesy: Justin Solomon/CNBC.
This photo was used to illustrate a March 6th-2016 CNBC article written by Denise Garcia. It's entitled: "U.S. Cuba Thaw Not Yet A Boon For Business."
The excellent update by NBC's business network explained why, regardless of advances in relations taken by President Obama, a mere handful of the most revengeful Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress still very easily dictate America's Cuban policy -- even if most Americans, most Cuban-Americans, and most people worldwide oppose this long-standing usurpation of the U. S. democracy. In the CNBC article, Denise Garcia pointed out that, in reaction to Obama's Cuban detente, Cuba has recently zoomed from "150,000 to 500,000 start-ups," an effort designed to bring more Cubans into the fast-changing island's economy. Then Ms. Garcia wrote: "Ironically, Cuba migration has reached crisis proportions despite the promise of a new relationship with its decades-long antagonist. According to Pew research, the number of Cubans who entered the U. S. after December 2014 spiked a dramatic 78 percent in a year, with thousands more currently streaming eagerly across Central America and Mexico to enter the United States."
An endless passel of U. S. laws -- such as the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" debacle concocted in the U. S. Congress by a handful of revengeful anti-Castro Cuban-Americans -- are eternal appendages to America's Cuban policy. That's because it is easy for one Cuban-American in, say, Miami to easily get a few right-wingers in the U. S. Congress to pass whatever laws they want. In fact the 535-member Congress is so incredibly dysfunctional that one anti-Castro zealot from Miami, Mario Diaz-Balart, can slip a tiny bill into a must-pass, veto proof large bill that blocks a major plan by President Obama to help Cuba. And, all the while, the easily propagandized and out-of-the-loop U. S. citizens are not told that Diaz-Balart's wealthy father was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship, nor are U. S. citizens allowed to decide for themselves how greedily self-serving such tactics are for a few and how discriminatory and harmful they are to everyone else. Further indicating how conveniently dysfunctional Congress is, anther anti-Castro Zealot from Miami, Sentator Marco Rubio, can all alone demean democracy by blocking Roberta Jacobson's appointment as the perfect and much-needed Ambassador to Mexico only because the petty and revengeful Rubio resents Ms. Jacobson's positive diplomacy related to Cuba. All the while, Diaz-Balart and Rubio never have to be concerned that the gutless, incompetent, and intimidated U. S. media will hold them accountable for besmirching the U. S. democracy to sate their vile Cuban agenda, of which the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" law is merely one of many.
Wet Foot/Dry Foot is a colossal and puerile effrontery to America and democracy. Designed by the Batistiano-fringe of the U. S. Congress, it grossly encourages Cubans on the island to defect to the U. S. and, as indicated above, once their toes touch U. S. soil, they are home free with instant welfare. All other would-be migrants in the entire world are discriminated against by Wet Foot/Dry Foot, which would be comical if it were not so harmful to the worldwide image of democracy and the United States. Gross discrimination very grossly demeans democracy.
The aforementioned CNBC article said that since Dec.-2014, when President Obama announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba, there has been an absolute tsunami of Cubans leaving the island to become instant Wet Foot/Dry Foot legal residents in the U. S. and instant welfare beneficiaries, whether they need welfare dollars or not. Such Cubans mistakenly believe that Obama, before he leaves office in January, just might end Wet Foot/Dry Foot, which only the right-wing Congress can do. And, it appears, most of the defecting Cubans don't deserve special privileges from economic or other standpoints because they reportedly are paying human traffickers up to $15,000 per person to orchestrate the journey, which supposedly starts with an expensive flight from Cuba to either Costa Rica or Panama and then the long land route up through Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize to finally reach Mexico where, unlike every non-Cuban migrant, they are home-free with instant benefits. The three countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are not only destitute but devastated by gangs and unimaginable crime, but migrants from such countries, because they are not Cubans, are immediately detained and almost always deported, including children whose loving mother's have willingly and dangerously pointed them to the U. S. border because of a slightly better chance of surviving the journey than surviving in their crime-infested native countries. Of course, Americans are not supposed to consider the extreme anti-democratic and discriminatory injustices of such Cuban-dictated laws. In fact, Americans for many decades have been programmed to grimace when extremists in the U. S. Congress -- such as Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami -- repeatedly remind the U. S. media about how many Cubans are fleeing the island for the freedoms of America. Naturally, Americans, rendered unable to think for themselves, are not supposed to be smart enough or brave enough to calculate non-Cuban would-be migrants -- from, say, Honduras or from, say, England or Canada -- might also flee their countries for U. S. soil if there were a plethora of U. S. laws enticing them while discriminating against everyone else.
Speaking of the controversial Senator Bob Menendez from New Jersey, the aforementioned CNBC article typically quoted the anti-Castro zealot regarding his anti-Obama rants. He told CNBC: "We've seen multiple steps that have shifted leverage to the Cuban regime: Travel, finance and commerce regulations have been eased, Cuba has been removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and an embassy has opened. However, since these sweeping changes started in December 2014 Cubans have been beaten, arrested and repressed at higher rates than ever before." Of course, the mainstream U. S. media is not about to counter such statements with unbiased observations. If so, people like Menendez might have to back up such rhetoric with some facts and, moreover, might even...WOW!!...have to finally justify all those Congress-funded regime-change programs and the endless Congress-funded schemes designed to boost and, many believe, create dissidents on the island, hopefully with video showing Cuban police mistreating their often-staged anti-government activities. Meanwhile, the Mafia havens of Miami and New Jersey currently have five unchallenged Cuban-Americans fashioning Cuban laws and dominating the Cuban narrative in the U. S., with that being a reminder that, in January of 1959, many top Batistianos fled the Cuban Revolution for the much safer havens of Miami and New Jersey. Senator Bob Menendez, New Jersey's contribution to the Congress, is still being severely investigated for his alleged unsavory connections to controversial individuals in Miami and the Dominican Republic, but pillorying Cuba and supporting Cuban dissidents is how he gets big headlines in the U. S. media.
And speaking of the Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: She has been entrenched in the U. S. Congress from Miami since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her obligatory Campaign Manager. From a Cuban family of anti-Castro zealots, Ros-Lehtinen has viciously assailed Cuba from Day One as the first of a string of Congress-bound Miami Cuban-Americans aligned with the Bush dynasty. At the moment, of course, Ros-Lehtinen's prime focus is on blocking or turning back any and all of President Obama's positive gestures for the Cuban people. She particularly is trying to undermine President Obama's scheduled visit to Cuba set for March 21st and 22nd, and she might well yet block it. John Kerry, Obama's Secretary of State, was scheduled to visit Cuba prior to Obama but Kerry has canceled his plans because of pressure from Ros-Lehtinen, Rubio, Menendez, Curbelo, Cruz and the other anti-Castro zealots. Kerry was lambasted with orders to either stay home or go to Cuba and celebrate only the Cuban dissidents. Kerry decided to stay home. Obama might too, and probably he should. Obama's chief spokesman, Josh Earnest, is now declaring that Obama, on his visit to Cuba this month, will not allow Cuba to decide who he sees. In other words, like Kerry, Obama has been intimidated by Ros-Lehtinen and her Cuban-American cohorts in Congress. They consider Cuba to be a Batistiano-like U. S. colony, not a sovereign nation. And, of course, only a sovereign nation, according to Ros-Lehtinen, should be allowed to influence who visiting heads of state will see when they visit the island.
While the mainstream U. S. media has neither the guts nor the integrity to hold Cuban-American anti-Cuban extremists accountable, that is not the case with America's leading democracy-lovers like Sarah Stephens. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. Each Friday her Cuba Central blog on the CDA website is the best weekly review of U.S.-Cuban relations. This past Friday -- March 4th -- Ms. Stephens called Ros-Lehtinen to task for assailing the now-canceled Kerry visit to Cuba and ridiculing the upcoming still-scheduled Obama visit to the island. Ms. Stephens wrote: "Small wonder that fierce critics like Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen could barely contain their excitement upon hearing that an advance trip by Secretary of State John Kerry was cancelled due to disagreements between the governments on the subject of human rights." The influential Ms. Stephens has often accompanied friendly Congress members and business executives to Cuba, and she has greatly influenced President Obama's attempts to normalize relations with the island. But she is abundantly aware of the wealth and power of a handful of anti-Cubans in Miami, New Jersey, and the U. S. Congress, all who benefit from bellicosity towards Cuba. She is understandably concerned that Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama will continue to cave in to what she euphemistically calls "fierce critics" of anything the United States does to show even a modicum of respect and decency to the long-maligned Cubans on the island, including the Cubans who have no intention to be lured by the discriminatory Cuban laws that any person who respects democracy believes should either be ended or be available to non-Cubans as well as Cubans. However, as long as the U. S. Congress is firmly in the grips of a handful of remnants from the long-ago Batista dictatorship, anyone who remotely advocates Cuban sanity in the U. S. -- from John Kennedy to Barack Obama with brave journalists like Emilio Milian and Jim DeFede in between Kennedy and Obama -- is in dire jeopardy. Sarah Stephens, the greatest Democracy-loving Cuban expert in Washington, believes the majority, not a self-serving few, should impact America's hateful Cuban policy.
Easily malleable Americans have been programmed to believe that all Cubans on the island yearn to risk their lives to take advantage of lush Wet Foot/Dry Foot-type lures to reach U. S. soil and escape dire repression on the island. That is simply a lie perpetrated by Cuban-American extremists and their subservient U. S. media. Cristina Escobar, the island's 28-year-old superstar news anchor and an influential leader of Cuba's young-adult generation, made headlines puncturing such lies when she was in Washington to cover the last Vidal-Jacobson diplomatic session. Beyond the six questions she asked Josh Earnest at a White House news conference, Escobar's most quoted sentence in Washington was: "The lies the U. S. media tells about Cuba hurt everyday Cubans the most." Recently she told American journalist Tracey Eaton, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami or Washington." {Check the Eaton-Escobar videos on YouTube}. Escobar welcomes the scheduled visit of President Obama later this month but she firmly maintains, "If his main purpose is to have photo-ops with the U.S.-created and U.S.-backed dissidents on the island, he should stay home." A fierce advocate for "everyday Cubans," Escobar challenges Americans who believe all Cubans on the island, goaded by unique financial and citizenship lures, yearn to defect to the U. S. If you check her English or Spanish comments on YouTube, or go online to check her Cuban and regional newscasts, you'll notice that she is Cuban to the core and she yearns to stay and defend Cuba. "Many real Cubans like Jose Marti," she remembers, "fought to the death on Cuban soil to attain sovereignty. The Cuban Revolution in 1959 finally attained that precious goal. If there are Cuban defectors or other Americans who doubt my generation on the island will not fight for our sovereignty, they will be surprised. We might lose to the more powerful Americans like Marti lost to the Spanish, but the point is...like real Cubans, we will fight."
As a superb broadcast journalist and as the leader of Cuba's twenty-something generation, Cristina Escobar speaks to and for many Cubans on the island. The mainstream U. S. media routinely uses a patchwork quilt of lies in a relentless cadence to make sure that the anti-Cuban dogma in the U. S. pillories Cubans on the island and misrepresents the views of Cubans like Cristina Escobar. Perhaps that's why Ros-Lehtinen, the Diaz-Balarts, Rubio, etc. so staunchly defend such anti-democratic U. S. laws as...Wet Foot/Dry Foot that endlessly exist atop other such anti-democratic U. S. laws as...the one that makes everyday Americans the only people in the world denied the freedom to visit Cuba. Why? Surely if Americans got to know Cubans like Cristina Escobar, Cuban-Americans like Ros-Lehtinen, the Diaz-Balarts, Rubio, Cruz, etc., might not be able to dictate the Cuban narrative in the U. S. or...maintain all those anti-Cuban laws in the U. S. Congress that resemble a Banana Republic, not a democracy. If Americans are repeatedly fed Ros-Lehtinen rants, perhaps they should also be subject to a few basic beliefs of Cristina Escobar...such as these: "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island, not in Miami and Washington." and "The lies the U. S. media tells about Cuba hurts everyday Cubans the most."
In other words:
There are two sides to the red, white and blue U.S.-Cuban conundrum. Cold War-era Ileana Ros-Lehtinen represents America's side and modern-day Cristina Escobar represents Cuba's side. Americans and Cubans, I believe, have a right and a civic duty to be able to fairly judge which is the more honorable and the most decent side.
And by the way:
This is the greatest political cartoon I noticed this week. It reflects the disintegration of the Republican Party, a major development considering that America's political system is a two-party affair. I myself was a conservative Republican until it was usurped by right-wingers and Batistianos. Having said that, I am still surprised at what is currently transpiring. The leaders of the Republican Party are currently telling the American voters stop voting for Donald Trump and vote for who we tell you to vote for or we will overturn your vote!! I must confess I never thought the American people would allow that to happen to their democracy. This calamity has surely become calamitous!
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment