Cuba's NO-WIN Situations

Tied to Foreign Interventions?
{Updated: Saturday, October 22nd, 2016}  

       If you carefully study and then comprehend this photo, you will begin to understand why the island of Cuba is in a no-win situation, sort of like a little guppie encased in a bowl with hungry, fish-eating sharks. The photo shows dedicated members of Cuba's Civil Defense Team rescuing citizens in the city of Baracoa in Guantanamo Province. This was earlier this month when Hurricane Matthew slammed into eastern Cuba with the same ferocity that had killed hundreds of people elsewhere in the Caribbean, especially the nearby island of Hispaniola. Revolutionary Cuba is renowned for its preparations and actions in defending its people with counter-measures against natural and man-made hurricanes, such as Hurricane Matthew this month of October-2016 and the Bay of Pigs military attack in April-1961. INCREDIBLY, despite the ferocious devastation of Hurricane Matthew on five eastern provinces of Cuba, not a single Cuban died thanks to the efforts of Cuba's well-trained and well-prepared Civil Defense Team. YET, that wasn't the top headline across the Caribbean, in nearby Miami or even in Cuba. It seems that the Cuban government "detained" a couple of dissident self-proclaimed "journalists" that the government felt were "interfering" with the work of the Civil Defense Team during its delicate rescue efforts. Thanks to what Cuba says are the highly sophisticated and well-funded counter-revolutionary forces, the "detained journalists in Guantanamo" was the top headline on the heels of Hurricane Matthew's devastation of eastern Cuba. Such staged and coordinated provocations are routinely successful because of receptive mainstream media and blogs anxious to exploit perceived or distorted anti-Cuban reactions. Thus, a provocation that can distract from positive actions by Cuba's government is considered a success by the island's enemies.

       The Letters from Cuba blog by Fernando Ravsberg has long been considered one of the most respected sources for unbiased journalism from inside Cuba, with international giants like the BBC utilizing his insights. But things have a way of changing...from osmosis, incentives, nudging or whatever. This week -- Oct. 20-2016 -- Fernando Ravsberg's article "The Cuban Government's Communication 'Strategies'" unfairly downplayed Cuba's emphasis on keeping Hurricane Matthew from killing Cubans to excoriating the government for "detaining several" dissident journalists in the devastated area. He wrote: "The detention of several journalists is the latest of the slip-ups. The price of the clumsy action was to put the persecution of journalists 'on the front-page' while the Civil Defense troops' huge success to prevent Cuban deaths during the time that Hurricane Matthew struck has been put aside in the background." Fernando Ravsberg didn't mention why the detention of the journalists and not the Civil Defense heroics made the front-pages of what he called "alternative media platforms" that he said "are steaming ahead." Fernando said, "New blogs are created everyday that inform Cuba, from Cuba, about a country that doesn't appear in government media." He doesn't mention that many of those "new blogs" and "alternative media platforms" are promoted and financed by foreign enterprises that Cuba and independent sources claim include U. S. government-backed "democracy" programs and other visceral Cuban-exile regime-change programs. 

      While Fernando Ravsberg and others were railing about several detained journalists that Cuba claimed were interfering with helping Cubans like these coping with rubble left behind by Hurricane Matthew in the city of Baracoa, the Cuban government apparently was doing all it could to deal earnestly with the situation. But provoking Cuba to "detain" them garnered the "headlines," as Fernando Ravsberg admitted. 

     Cuba's most out-spoken and highest-profile news anchor, Cristina Escobar, reacted differently than Fernando Ravsberg and the counter-revolutionary journalists regarding Hurricane Matthew's visit to eastern Cuba. The talented 28-year-old Escobar said, "The Cuban government is not above criticism but that does not mean that foreign-backed distortions should be permitted to run amok across this sovereign island or that foreign-backed agents should not be monitored closely. As a broadcast journalist with the state media, if I believed the detainment of two anti-government provocateurs in Baracoa was the big story, I would have reported it. But I believed the big story was trying to protect those Cuban citizens from the ravages of a powerful storm and then help them recover. That's the simple, plain truth but too often it competes with staged provocations designed to distort the truth and shine a well-funded and well-scripted bad light on Cuba." 

And speaking of no-win situations: 

        Meet notable anti-Cuban dissident Tania Bruguera. Tania is a well-known U.S.-based artist, mostly well-known for getting arrested or detained in Cuba. The photo is courtesy of Tim Knox/The Guardian. It was taken when Tania announced that she is running for President of Cuba when Raul Castro steps down, which he says will be in early 2018. She says she will use the election to "build a different Cuba where we are in charge and not just the few." She admitted her bid for the presidency is Utopian but she aims "to change the culture of fear." Tania has succeeded in being arrested and detained in Cuba, with even her passport briefly taken. She has described to the media how Cuba's secret police surrounded her Havana residence "like I was Osama bin Laden." Cuba never mistook her for bin Laden but it does consider her "a CIA operative, and a well-funded one seeking to get arrested and publicized by it to hurt Cuba and help her."    

       This photo of Tania Bruguera, with an image of Fidel Castro as an ominous backdrop, is courtesy of TEDGlobal/James Duncan Davidson. Her efforts in Cuba haven't started a revolution yet or touched off a coup and her bid to be elected President of Cuba in 2018 will probably fail too. But it will be well-publicized, just as the "detainment" of the dissident journalists who supposedly hindered the Cuban effort to deal with the powerful Hurricane Matthew in Guantanamo Province was well-publicized, apparently to offset coverage of the miraculously successful rescue operations. Fernando Ravsberg's lavish promotion of dissident journalists this week and Tania Bruguera's ongoing bid to be elected President of Cuba in 2018 are just two examples of the many no-win situations facing an island nation that will always be susceptible to foreign interventions -- uh, always for nice and sweet democratic and humanitarian reasons, of course!!

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