America's Embargo Lies

As Cuba's Coping Continues!!
{Updated: Saturday, December 10th, 2016}

       This photo was taken a few days ago by Mauricio Lima for the New York Times. It shows Cubans working in a lettuce field at a farm in Alamar on the edge of Havana. The photo was used to illustrate a major article in the NY Times this week -- Dec. 8, 2016 -- entitled: "Cuba's Surge in Tourism Keeps Food off Residents' Plates." The article began by quoting 42-year-old Lisset Felipe, who works for the Cuban government. She said: "It's a disaster. We never lived luxuriously but the comfort we once had doesn't exist anymore." She went on to explain that she now has trouble getting Cuban staples such as onions, green peppers, garlic, avocadoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, pineapples, cilantro, arugula, Zucchini, etc. Since President Obama began trying to normalize relations, the island has experienced record tourism -- 3.5 million tourists in 2015. The article stressed that the Cuban government's reaction has been to direct its meager food supply to the tourists while making it unavailable to its 11.2 million everyday citizens.

         One of the writers of this week's New York Times article was anti-Castro zealot Frances Robles of Miami. That's a tip-off that the article was extremely biased against Cuba and extremely favorable to the vast and lucrative Castro Cottage Industry in the United States, an industry that has been in propaganda-crazed overdrive since the death of 90-year-old Fidel Castro on November 25th. That is not to say that the article was wrong to criticize Cuba for failing to adequately "plan" for the Obama-driven influx of tourists. But it is to say that, typically, the New York Times article didn't have the guts or the integrity to even mention the primary cause of deprivations in Cuba, including food. Frances Robles...her best friends call her "Frenchie"...got a John S. Knight Foundation scholarship to Stanford University. After a decade at the Miami Herald, she was hired by the New York Times in 2012. Ms. Robles has won many major journalism accolades. But the fact that she is extremely biased regarding Cuba is par for the course in the mainstream U. S. media that has become a primary propaganda vehicle for self-serving political views, massively harming millions of totally innocent Cubans in the name of the nearby superpower. Ms. Robles' contribution to this week's New York Times article that solely blamed Cuba for food shortages and other deprivations on the island perpetuates a blatant lie by conveniently failing to mention or even hint that the U. S. embargo of Cuba, in place since 1962 to sate the revenge and financial motives of a handful of two generations of egregious Batistianos, has...for all these decades...caused incredible deprivations in Cuba since a Revolution chased the Batista-Mafia dictatorship to the U. S. in 1959. 

        The world, but not millions of propagandized-&-scared Americans, recognizes that the U. S. embargo of Cuba is the longest and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a powerful country against a weak country. That dire opinion is just about the only topic that attains unanimity worldwide, as reflected by the recent 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations. Yet, propagandized and intimidated Americans -- IN THE WORLD'S GREATEST DEMOCRACY -- are not supposed to react to either the perpetuity of the abomination in their name or to the incredible international negative effects it still has on America's reputation.

      As his decent two-term presidency nears its end, Barack Obama has done all he can to assuage the negative ramifications of an embargo that continues, decade after decade, to do more harm to America's image than any other issue...all because of the obscene bullying of an island nation that would like to just chart its own course and not eternally be dictated to by Batistianos and Mafiosi hiding behind the skirts of the world superpower while cowardly hurling self-serving grenades back at a nation they once ruled, prior to running scared to the U. S., as their brutally enforced personal piggy-bank and easy punching-bag.

         This is the precise image the world has of the U. S. embargo against Cuba: A mere handful of revengeful anti-Castro zealots dictating America's Cuban policy while it also benefits such miscreants economically and politically but greatly punishes...in America's name...everyone else. A handful of thuggish members of Congress, plus Republican White Houses, self-servingly perpetuate the atrocity -- atrocious for Cuba and even more atrocious for the United States of America and its democracy.

Prime Miami/Cuban-American {wall} embargo supporters.

        The sheer fact that poor little Cuba, since the 1950s, has managed to defy the wicked imperialism dictated by a few rogues in a superpower government next door has shamed America but also gained feisty little Cuba international recognition and support -- even if pusillanimous Americans don't admit it. 

And by the way: 

Kirk Douglas turned 100 on Dec. 9, 2016.

   He has long been a veritable Hollywood giant.

        My all-time favorite Kirk Douglas movie was/is the 1962 western "The Last Sunset" that included the scene above with Carol Lynley. His movies still grace cable television venues.

      Kirk Douglas has said that his favorite movie was the 1962 western "Lonely are the Brave." He played an outlaw trying desperately to evade capture as he and his beloved horse "Whiskey" battled mountainous terrain and hot pursuit to reach the Mexican border, a truly Herculean saga that tested the real-life endurance as well as the brilliant acting skills of a true superstar.

      This happy photo shows Kirk Douglas and his co-star Gena Rowlands enjoying a break during the filming in 1962 of "Lonely are the Brave." Ms. Rowlands, by the way, is now 86 and she is among many millions of Americans wishing Kirk Douglas, an American treasure, a HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY.

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