New Cuba, Old Cuba

Coexisting With America!!
{Saturday, December 17th, 2016}

      This photo reflects the new Cuba as it continues its eternal efforts to try to coexist with its colossal northern neighbor -- the United States. My friend Tracey Eaton took this photo this week -- Dec. 13-2016 -- about 22 minutes before he boarded American Airlines Flight 801 from Charlotte to Havana. Notice that the departure was right on time and took 2 hours and 28 minutes to reach Havana. It was a very historic flight because American Airlines has just begun the first commercial flights from U. S. soil to Havana since 1961 after JetBlue Airlines had earlier begun U. S. flights to other Cuban cities. Now a host of other U. S. airlines are set to make commercial flights to Cuba from major U. S. cities -- four in Florida but also Atlanta, New York, Houston, Los Angeles, etc. It's all a product of President Obama's brave efforts to wrest Batistiano-like dictation of America's Cuban policy from a Batistiano-dictated U. S. Congress. Obama has already paved the way for cruise lines to make regular trips to the island; he has sharply increased the excuses for Americans to legally visit the island; he has made it possible for Cuban-Americans to send in excess of $3 billion a year to Cubans on the island, enabling many of them to become entrepreneurs; and the influx of tourism...well over 3 million in the past year...has veritably overwhelmed the new Cuba that Americans like Tracey Eaton can much easier fly into, easing the Batistiano-directed congressional law that has long made Americans the only people in the world not free to go to Cuba. But now there is a new Cuba, which still has to deal with the old Cuba, which is much too profitable in the U. S. to go away quietly.

      This Cuban-American gentleman represents the old Cuba. His name is Antonio Rodiles and the photo above shows him on CBS TV this week lobbying powerfully against President Obama's sane and decent overtures to Cuba. His fervent hope is that incoming President Donald Trump will erase all of the Obama gains and then, I guess, recapture Cuba on behalf of a handful of rich and powerful, now second-generation Cuban-Americans. That recapturing thing would be somewhat akin, I reckon, to the Batista-Mafia rule from 1952 till 1959 when the victorious Cuban Revolution reconfigured Cuba and America by keeping Havana as the Cuban capital but creating Little Havana in Miami as the Batistiano capital on U. S. soil. In addition to his CBS gig, I also noticed this week that Rodiles took his anti-Castro/pro-Batistiano zealotry to...the Voice of America, the Heritage Foundation, the Miami Herald, etc., etc., etc. And remember, other rich and powerful anti-Castro/pro-Batistiano lobbyists -- Mauricio Claver-Carone, Roger Noriega, Otto Reich, the Diaz-Balart brothers, Ros-Lehtinen, Rubio, Cruz, Curbelo, even John Bolton, etc. -- are also in overdrive preparing for the Obama-to-Trump transition on January 20th. Note that the aforementioned names all seem to have sprung up from the roots of the Bush dynasty and, after the 8-year Obama hiatus, all seem to be lavishly salivating over the impending let's finally recapture Cuba Trump presidency.

     This Roberto Kollum-El Nuevo Herald photo shows Antonio Rodiles making a threatening speech in Miami this week. At least, the Miami Herald's very first sentence in its long article about the speech said Rodiles "warned" President-elect Trump not to go easy on Cuba. The article, which you are welcome to dial up, quoted Rodiles as saying, "The Cuba regime is never going to be a friend of the U. S, never going to be a friend of the democratic world. The main focus needs to be on real change, a regime change in Cuba." If history is any judge, such warnings must be heeded whether the U. S. presidents are Democrats or Republicans. Since the Eisenhower administration in 1959, all Republican presidents have sought to bring about what Rodiles called "a regime change" in Cuba, without success. Let's see...assassination attempts, military attack at the Bay of Pigs, terrorist acts that included hotel and airplane bombings, and Batistiano-directed laws in the U. S. Congress designed to starve and deprive Cubans on the island for the purpose of having them create a regime change. Declassified U. S. documents from 1962 confirm that the starve and deprive motive created the embargo against Cuba that has been in existence since 1962 because only the Batistiano-directed U. S. Congress can eliminate it. Mr. Rodiles, of course, never mentioned that the majority of Cuban-Americans support President Obama's decent and sane Cuban overtures. He also, of course, never mentioned that the entire world -- via a 191-to-0 UN vote -- drastically opposes the cruel and inhumane policies that he advocated in the above Miami speech. So, how can a handful of lobbyists such as Antonio Rodiles maintain, decade after decade, a Cuban policy in the world's greatest democracy that most Americans, most Cuban-Americans and the entire world opposes?? In the eyes of the world...note the UN vote...the U. S. democracy is not strong enough to correct a Cuban policy that so drastically diminishes the images of the U. S. democracy around the world. And the primary culprits, in my opinion, are not benefactors like Mr. Rodiles. The primary culprits are the American people who sit back on their comfortable asses and refuse to defend their great nation and their great democracy against a domestic problem that might be more dangerous to America than all the foreign anti-American entities combined.

      A key antagonist to the Castro Cottage Industry is Ben Rhodes, which also connotes his concern about how America's Cuban policy denigrates the images of the United States and democracy around the world. Mr. Rhodes is a key National Security Advisor for President Obama and he is the prime architect of Obama's brave and historic efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. Considering the ageless hold Cuban hardliners have had on the U. S. Congress and its bevy of anti-Cuban but pro-Cuban exile laws, Mr. Rhodes has crafted many of the Executive Orders that sliced deeply into the congressional dictates of a Cuban policy that has the current 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. He is proud of what has been accomplished, such as the reopening of embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time since 1961; commercial airline flights and sea cruises from the U. S. to Cuba for the first time since 1961; and a drastic easing of the U. S. embargo against Cuba that has shamefully been in effect since 1962. Ten U. S. airlines -- Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Silver, Southwest, Spirit, Sun, and United -- now have regularly scheduled commercial flights to Cuba for the first time since 1961. Three major cruise lines - - Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian -- are now setting sail for Cuba for the first time since 1962. San Francisco-based Airbnb is now assisting over 8,000 Cuban private homes in renting out rooms to help alleviate the Obama-Rhodes influx of tourism. TripAdvisor is now helping paladares {home restaurants} and regular Cuban restaurants with pre-arrival listings. Starwood Hotels and Resorts, owned by Marriott International, has sharply renovated and now manages three key Cuban hotels. Ben Rhodes has had a direct hand in those and many other negotiations, but he knows the clock is ticking on the two-term Obama presidency with President-elect Donald Trump threatening to "reverse" such advances that have already helped millions of Cubans on the island and portend to help millions of U. S. workers and businesses. Mr. Rhodes says, "We'll use the remaining times till January 20th to continue trying to help Cubans on the island and American business interests while also, we think, trying to improve America's regional and international images. We will make our case to the incoming Trump administration and also directly to the public. We've done everything we could to show that our new approach works much better than the old Cold War one."   

      This Reuters photo shows Ben Rhodes holding the White House news conference that announced President Obama's trip to Cuba back in March, a truly historic and courageous visit that marked the first time a sitting American president had visited the island since Herbert Hoover in 1928. Today -- Dec. 17-2016 -- President Obama and Ben Rhodes will host an event in the White House to mark the two-year anniversary of the day when President Obama first announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba.

      President Obama's bold Dec. 17-2014 Cuban announcement.

      This photo will always be an integral part of the Obama-Rhodes legacy in their historically decent and courageous efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. The photo was taken in March aboard Air Force One and it shows President Obama and Ben Rhodes looking out windows as the presidential plane flew low over Havana. With Republicans having control of both chambers of the Batistiano-infringed U. S. Congress and Trump's incoming Republican White House already being laced with extreme anti-Cuban advice from the likes of Claver-Carone, Bolton, Noriega, Reich, and six Cuban-Americans in Congress, it appears likely that the decent and sane Obama-Rhodes efforts will be largely reversed, meaning that the U. S. Cuban policy will revert back to starkly benefiting a roguish few while also starkly harming everyone else, not to mention a return of the extreme harm a Batistiano-type Cuban policy does to America's and democracy's worldwide images. Yet, Mr. Obama and Mr. Rhodes should be saluted for what they have done and for what they tried to do in regards to America's Cuban policy that deservingly gets the 191-to-0 UN denunciation.

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