After Obama's Detente
President Barack Obama made history in December of 2014 when he bravely and astutely announced that he wanted his United States to "normalize" relations with Cuba. Then, after boldly defying the Miami hardliners and the U. S. Congress, he followed up historically on that vow. The photo above shows President Obama holding a 2016 news conference in Cuba, the first U. S. president to visit the island since 1928 when President Coolidge pulled into Havana Harbor aboard a warship. In Cuba, as noted above, Mr. Obama saliently told the Cuban people: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." Since the Spanish-American War in 1898, when the U. S. finally gained dominance of Cuba from Spain, no American president prior to Obama had either the guts or the integrity to make such a statement. That especially has been true since 1959 when the Cuban Revolution overthrew the brutal U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Since 1959, two generations of Cuban-exile hardliners from Miami have dictated America's Cuban policy with the considerable help of a pusillanimous and conniving U. S. Congress. Miami and Congress buttressed their Cuban policy during every Republican presidential administration -- Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush #1 and Bush #2. But even Democratic administrations -- Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton -- all tried and miserably failed to alter a Cuban policy that the rest of the world has watched play out in disapproved amazement for over half-a-century, and that's a half-century too long.
Of all the U. S. presidents since the 1950s, only Obama has had the guts, intelligence and patriotism to assuage an American Cuban policy that the rest of the world abhors, including America's best friends. Obama's gutsy assurance to Cuba that it will not have "to fear" the much stronger United States provides Revolutionary Cuba a window in which it can not only breathe easier but also make positive changes.
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The Castro brothers have ruled Cuba since 1959.
Fidel turns 90 on August 12th; Raul is 85.
From the U. S. standpoint, even in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the mainstream U. S. media has never been brave enough or free enough to tell the truth about U.S.-Cuban relations. That's why, during this critical Obama-orchestrated juncture, a free and brave journalist named Fernando Ravsberg is America's best source to get insightful and unbiased information regarding Cuba. His website -- Cartas Desde Cuba/Letters From Cuba -- is one of the many places where you can garner Ravsberg's journalism, which is widely republished by many venues. His article flashing around the world this second week in July-2016 is entitled "The Collimated Journalists" and it's a must-read for anyone interested in judging Cuba's reaction to Obama's sane and decent overtures. The word collimate is a verb that Merriam-Webster defines as "to make {as light rays} parallel." So, Ravsberg's title references the similarities, the parallels, of Cuban and U. S. journalism. And, yes, when it comes to Cuba, there are many.
The caption to the above journalistic photo reads: "Funnily enough, the Cuban press now seems to be in sync with the Miami press." As a democracy-loving American, I don't think that is very "funny" but I understand the relevance as, I believe, Fernando Ravsberg would. The U. S. democracy changed dramatically in 1952 when right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration -- VP Nixon, the Dulles brothers, etc. -- aligned the U. S. government with the Mafia to support the thieving and brutal Batista dictatorship in Cuba. When it was overthrown on January 1, 1959, the Batistianos and the Mafiosi merely restructured their dictatorship on U. S. soil, mostly in South Florida with Miami, called "Little Havana," as their new capital. Continually backed by the U. S. government, the U. S. Congress, and billions of U. S. tax dollars, the Cuban Mafia, based in Miami but with branches in New Jersey and Washington, have dictated America's Cuban policy from 1959 till...well...till Obama. The Bay of Pigs attack in 1961, an economic embargo since 1962, numerous assassination attempts against Castro, etc., have amazingly failed to recapture Cuba. In 1976 well-known Cuban-exile terrorists blew up a civilian Cuban airplane, killing all 73 on board. When Miami's top Cuban newsman-journalist, Emilio Milian, complained about such things, he was car-bombed. Later when Jim DeFede was the top columnist at the Miami Herald, he wrote a blistering column excoriating Miami members of Congress for using the U. S. government to get a female President of Panama, who had close Miami ties, to free four famed anti-Castro zealots -- including the legendary Luis Posada Carriles who will forever be tied to the Cubana Flight 445 bombing -- from a Panamanian prison where they were ensconced because of an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro on Panama soil. DeFede didn't last long at the Miami Herald after that column and today Carriles is a heralded free man in Miami and anti-Castro zealots control the editorial processes of the Miami Herald. Yes, since 1959 the Cuban press has been controlled by the dictates of the Castro brothers; and since 1959 the U. S. media in regards to Cuba has been largely controlled by anti-Castro zealotry. That's why the caption above resonates when it equates Cuban journalism to U. S. journalism. To deny that is to deny the historic existence of, say, Cubana Flight 455, Luis Posada Carriles, Emilio Milian, Jim DeFede, etc. And, of course, since the invention of the ubiquitous and easily accessed Google search engine, denying such historic and topical events is impossible unless one is simply lazy or uninterested, which also means unpatriotic.
And that circuitous route takes us back around to the internationally respected Cuban journalist Fernando Ravsberg. The photo above shows him being scolded face-to-face by...Fidel Castro. Yes, Fernando is brave enough and fair enough to criticize Fidel. But, distinguishing Fernando from the mainstream Miami and U. S. media, Fernando also has the guts and integrity to praise Castro, especially in contrast to the Batista-Mafia dictatorship and in such areas as Revolutionary Cuba's free and excellent educational system, its free and excellent health care, its largest medical school in the world that provides free educations to poor foreign students including Americans, its Operation Miracle program that has provided totally free eye operations that have restored or improved eyesight for thousands of poor people in the region, etc. While Ravsberg has sharply criticized Revolutionary Cuba, he has also sharply contrasted it with the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that preceded it, and that's something that, with few exceptions, had not been permitted in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave prior to Obama.
While as a journalist Fernando Ravsberg has reported directly on and freely about Castro's Cuba, the good and the bad, he also has repeatedly aired the views of everyday Cubans and anti-Castro Cubans on the island, as in the above photo. On the other hand, unlike the mainstream U. S. media, Fernando is not afraid to challenge the lucrative, vast, one-sided and self-serving Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S.
In his aforementioned article this week, Fernando Ravsberg used the above photo of young Cuban journalists and journalism students during an important session taking place in Santa Clara, Cuba. These young, well-educated Cubans campaigned bravely and righteously to improve journalism, an improvement that would be beneficial to their chosen profession as well as to the lives of all Cubans on the island.
And Fernando Ravsberg used this graphic to point out that journalists should not be restricted from doing their jobs, which are vital functions for any free society -- in Cuba, the U. S., and around the world.
The photos Fernando Ravsberg used this week to illustrate his journalism-themed article were taken by Raquel Perez Diaz. This one simply shows journalists covering an event and trying to do their jobs.
Fernando Ravsberg used the unambiguous editorial cartoon above to illustrate his article entitled "The Collimated Journalists" that cogently drew parallels between Cuban and U. S. journalism when it comes to reporting on Cuba. The Spanish word "basta" used here means "enough" and conveys the message that censorship of journalists is evil and has existed long enough. The little girl reading the billboard...she could be Cuban or American...wants to be told the truth about U.S.-Cuban relations. As a Cuban or as an American, she deserves that. And that's the message that Fernando Ravsberg was conveying this week.
A new era in U.S.-Cuba relations is upon us, thanks to President Obama's brave and historic efforts to curb and normalize America's long-standing covetous, bullying and undemocratic involvement with the nearby, very important island nation. Thus, I believe we all should join great journalists such as Fernando Ravsberg in insisting that journalism in both Cuba and the United States should be afforded the freedom to tell the truth about Cuba, the United States and the interactions between the neighboring countries.
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