cubaninsider: Preaching to Cuba

A Cuban-American Pastime
{Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016}

Because of intimidation or political correctness, the mainstream U. S. media shies away from any positives related to Cuba, especially since 1976 when Cuban-American journalist Emilio Milian was car-bombed in Miami after complaining about anti-Cuban terrorism such as the bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane. But there are exceptions and there was one Tuesday -- August 2, 2016. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's medical expert, posted an in-depth six-minute+ report from Cuba entitled: "A Lung Cancer Vaccine Was Created In This Lab." Dr. Gupta was "impressed" not only with the vaccine but with Cuba's renowned biotech center. He was also blown away by Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine and interviewed officials as well as students. Dr. Gupta pointed out that Cuba not only pays for the 6-year course but "in fact" gives "a stipend" to the future doctors. He was shocked to learn that many of the students are from countries like the U. S. and they return to those countries after their training, owing Cuba nothing except a promise to provide medical care in the poor areas from which they came.

This photo is courtesy of CNN. It shows Cuba's dedicated medical researcher Camilo Rodriguez holding vials of the cancer drug that so impressed Dr. Sanjay Gupta. There are many positives related to Cuba and Dr. Gupta's detailed report Tuesday on CNN reveals Cuba spends a hefty amount of its limited resources on medical care and educational needs. The revengeful Cuban-Americans in Congress maintain that the cruel embargo against the island should exist for another half-century because "every dollar that gets to Cuba goes into Fidel Castro's foreign bank accounts." That, of course is a bald-faced lie but one that Americans have been forced to accept since 1959. And by the way, thanks to CNN for daring to report on a positive aspect of normal life in Cuba. If you dial up his report, you'll notice that Gupta even took a joyful ride in a 1950s convertible.

These are some of the happy and appreciative future doctors, including Americans, at Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine. Cuba educates them free of charge and, as Dr. Gupta told his CNN audience yesterday, they also receive an allowance or what Dr. Gupta called "a stipend." Amazing, huh?

Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 chased the leaders of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship off the island, Americans have gotten their information on U.S.-Cuban relations as well as U.S.-Cuban policy almost exclusively from visceral anti-Castro Cuban-Americans. But a superb young Cuban broadcast journalist named Cristina Escobar has some opinions that, as her regional fame increases, is gaining more and more traction. Her three primary contentious but apparently heartfelt points are:

***"I believe Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba. I believe it was in Miami that Cuban-American broadcast journalist Emilio Milian got car-bombed for opposing terrorism against innocent Cubans. As a broadcast journalist in Cuba, I don't worry about such things."

***"Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not right-wing Americans or gluttonous Cubans in Miami and Washington."

***"Since 1959 the United States government has defied world opinion by allowing two generations of the most vicious Cuban-Americans to attack and terrorize Cuba while also making whatever laws in Congress they can come up with to hurt Cuba and enrich and empower themselves."

*** "I am tired, and so is the region and the world, of the United States sanctimoniously preaching to Cuba while also funding regime-change programs. Cuba has free education through college and free healthcare for life. Does the U. S.? Cuba last week was named one of the two safest nations in the world for tourists to visit, but how safe are U. S. cities from street crime and guns? Cuba, like all nations, has problems but ours is for Cubans, not Americans or the Miami Mafia, to correct. After 500 years of trying, Cuba in 1959 became a sovereign nation and our intent is to remain so. We are not an American colony, or Territory like Puerto Rico. We are sovereign and we will strive to remain so, come hurricanes and high water or another Bay of Pigs."

When she was in Washington to cover the 4th and final Vidal-Jacobson diplomatic session, Cristina Escobar gained some notoriety with her calm but fervent defense of Cuba. In the above photo, she is asking White House spokesman Josh Earnest if the U. S. plans to "continue its regime-change programs."

Escobar speaks in Spanish on her Cuban broadcasts.

Escobar speaks in English on her regional program where her opinions on Cuba-U.S.-and-International relations -- relaciones -- are key topics. Her revelations that she is tired of the U. S. preaching to Cuba regularly bubble to the surface: "The U. S. sicced the Mafia on Cuba in 1952 when it could have showered the island with democracy. The revolution corrected that and by doing so shocked the world. For half-a-century we have managed, if barely, to keep the U. S. and the Mafia off our island. Meanwhile, more and more, the U. S. democracy has become a rich man's game at the expense of everyone else. I do not want the United States to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island. The U. S. has enough U. S. problems."

Cristina Escobar also has a presence on YouTube. The image above is taken from an interview Tracey Eaton, a respected American journalist and Cuban expert, got with her in Havana. A 15 minute, 22 second video and a 3 minute, 29 second video of that interview is posted on YouTube and other venues such as the Pulitzer Center. On those videos you can see and hear Cristina make such points as, "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans, not Americans" and "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." It was during her journalistic trip to Washington in which she garnered some headlines with stern comments such as, "I believe journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." Whether she is right or not, she is well educated, awesomely intelligent, and very much in a position to make judgments about U.S.-Cuban relations.

As a high-profile Cuban, Cristina Escobar has the gall, the audacity and the affrontery to describe the U. S. Congress as "dysfunctional" and "bought-and-paid-for." And she even maintains that America's democratic centerpiece -- its presidential election -- is now "rigged and undemocratic." WHAT IS SHE, AN ANTI-AMERICAN COMMUNIST? Uh, no. She's just a Cuban. She loves American culture, especially its movies, and she "loves the way America's democracy used to be, the way it was long before I was born."

And you know what?

Many Americans agree with Cristina!

The ongoing, money-crazed 2016 U. S. presidential campaign has left Americans with two choices -- either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. As this photo indicates, millions of Americans, and not just this angry man, believe they should be allowed to vote for a third, more viable candidate -- even Mickey Mouse!!

More than 9 out of every 10 Americans believe viable candidate Bernie Sanders was honest and trustworthy, which swamps how Americans feel about the two final candidates -- Clinton and Trump.

If young American voters had their way, someone like Bernie Sanders would be elected President of the United States, especially considering that the alternative is either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

Is Trump the lesser of two evils or is Clinton?

Most Americans do not believe that either Clinton or Trump is evil. But most Americans do believe that the uneven scales of the political system has drastically tilted that way, and that a readjustment is in order.

In 2010 many Americans believe the U. S. Supreme Court drove the final nail in the great democracy that the Founding Fathers crafted in 1776. In a very controversial 5-to-4 decision that pitted Citizens United vs. The Federal Election Commission, the citizens and democracy lost. Since then, unlimited political donations have slanted the U. S. democracy to the richest 1% of Americans to the detriment of the 99%.

Protests like this by non-billionaire and democracy-loving Americans rage against that Supreme Court decision but it doesn't matter. That fact is greatly exacerbated by another fact: The mainstream news media in the United States, especially the broadcast industry, is owned by individual or corporate billionaires who have a huge stake in making sure that they, not the everyday citizens, control the U. S. democracy. Thus the media is not about to allow a person like the wildly popular but anti-billionaire Bernie Sanders to reach the White House. The biases of the network anchors and the Talking Head pundits reveal that truism.

A bought-and-paid-for U. S. democracy trickles down from the presidency. The 535 members of the U. S. Congress and the 50 U. S. governors, for example, depend so much on political donations to get elected that those donors are often taken care of at the expense of the non-rich citizens. Once elected, those members of Congress and those governors spend an inordinate amount of their time soliciting/begging for more money so they can stay in office and later live like, uh, billionaires. Thus, doing the people's business is secondary. Virginia's outgoing governor, Bob McDonnell, was tried and sentenced for taking bribes from a rich donor. Rich donors then fought the conviction, which went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court where, reminiscent of the Citizens United decision, the prison sentence was overturned. The U. S. government is trying real hard to prosecute Bob Menendez, the powerful Cuban-American U. S. Senator from New Jersey, for taking bribes from a rich Miami doctor accused of mammoth Medicare fraud. Menendez last week said he will fight those charges all the way to...you guessed it...the Supreme Court.

But overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court.

But likely un-indicted by the U. S. Supreme court.

Another politically correct nuance of the American political system virtually mandates that all presidential and congressional and gubernatorial candidates must promise AIPAC that they will be more pro-Israel than their political opponents, whoever that might be. AIPAC is the ultra-powerful Israeli lobby.

Which reminds me of...Julia E. Sweig.

Julia E. Sweig, like most Americans including me, is very much pro-Israel. She is also tied for first {with Ann Louise Bardach} for being America's two greatest experts on Cuba. For Americans who wonder how in the world a few Cuban-Americans can dictate so many anti-Cuban and pro-Cuban American laws in the U. S. Congress, reading Ms. Sweig's seminal book provides the answer. In "CUBA: What Everyone Needs to Know" she recounts the pivotal moment when the Reagan-Bush administration anointed anti-Castro zealot Jorge Mas Canosa the leader of the Cubans in exile. Mas Canosa, Ms. Sweig explained, was told to study AIPAC and then replicate it. He did. Mas Canosa was soon the most powerful Cuban-American billionaire in Miami...and in Washington. Today most Americans, most Cuban-Americans and most people in the world helplessly disapprove of both anti-Cuban U. S. laws and discriminatory pro-Cuban-exile American laws.

Cristina Escobar ponders such things...even as she prepares, as above, to broadcast the news to the Cuban people. On air and off the air, she has lamented Cuba's undeserved and unwarranted problems, such as, "The United States will never let Cuba be Cuba. We have been a sovereign nation since 1959 and the United States still wants to impose its will on us, and some Americans and Cuban-Americans still want to rob us or just seek revenge on our revolution. Cuba is imperfect but we should be allowed to strive for perfection on our own, without foreign interference. I am so tired of the United States and its rich Cubans preaching to Cuba when the United States should be trying to correct its own imperfections such as runaway street crime as well as legalized crime that permits the rich to prey on the middle class and the poorest Americans. The street crime is appalling and the legal crime results from extremely wealthy Americans being able to purchase the U. S. democracy. When I was in California in 2014 that's all I heard Americans talking about, and I was there as a journalist, not a critic. Americans don't want to be preached to by foreigners, and neither do I. I love Cuba the way it is, the way it has fought to be Cuba. I want it to improve, and it will...if the U. S. shackles are removed."

Cristina Escobar is 28-years-old. The future of Cuba...and the fate of Cuba...should be left up to her generation of Cubans on the island, not to Americans and not to Cuban-Americans. She says, "In the last 500 years, the good things about Cuba have been provided by Cubans on the island, not by foreigners and not by ex-Cubans. We need to be free to succeed or to fail. Outside pressure is just the last thing we need."