Cuban Good Deeds Reported

Even in the U. S. Media!
{Saturday, March 18th, 2017}

      These two photos are courtesy of AFP and the World Health Organization. This week -- Thursday, March 16, 2017 -- even some in the mainstream U. S. media -- including the Associated Press and the Washington Post -- reported on another nice gesture made by Cuba to Colombia. Cuba is awarding Colombians an additional 1,000 medical scholarships to attend its famed Latin American School of Medicine totally free of charge. It is in honor of the rebel Group FARC and the Colombian government finally ending 52 years of its bloody Civil War that killed 260,000 Colombians and displaced over 7 million more. The scholarships will be evenly divided between former FARC guerrilla fighters, like the ones shown above, who have laid down their weapons and government soldiers who once fought them. All of Latin America hailed the ceasefire.

       Cuba's Ambassador to Colombia, Jose Luis Ponce, said, "These scholarships will begin in September and they are in appreciation for both sides in the Civil War living up to the peace treaty negotiated in Havana. Both the government of Colombia and the FARC leaders have warmly thanked Cuba for this latest gesture." 

      Cuba, of course, was the catalyst that finally ended the bloody Colombian Civil War after 52 years of relentless fighting. For four long years, from 2012 till 2016, Cuba hosted the warring factions in Havana until a peace treaty was, at last, signed. The photo above shows Cuban President Raul Castro smiling proudly as Colombia's president Juan Manuel Santos shook hands with FARC rebel leader Evan Marquez who is much better known by his guerrilla nickname Timochenk. The Colombian President and the FARC leader are shown holding the newly signed peace agreements on that historic day in Havana.

       Meanwhile this week, much of the anti-Cuban mainstream media in the United States is gloating over the fact that two U. S. airlines -- Frontier and Silver -- have decided to halt flights to Cuba. The historic photo above was taken on August 31, 2016, and it shows airline workers joyfully waving goodbye to JetBlue Flight 387 as it began to take off from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Santa Clara, Cuba. The flight made history because it was the first commercial flight from the United States to Cuba since 1961 and, of course, was a product of former President Barack Obama's magnanimous efforts to normalize relations with Cuba.

       After JetBlue's Fort Lauderdale-to-Santa Clara flight on August 31, 2016, a total of nine major airlines quickly lined up a staggering total of 120 daily flights from the U. S. to ten Cuban cities. It is no wonder this week that the anti-Cuban zealots in the U. S. are gloating that Frontier and Silver are curtailing their flights to Cuba but it is also no wonder that these are business decisions, not anti-Cuban tactics. Cuba simply was not capable of absorbing so much sudden air traffic from the United States. The island's Obama-orchestrated tourist additions in 2016 enabled Cuba to pass 4 million visitors for the first time and already 2017 is on schedule to exceed that total. Cuba does not have nearly enough hotel rooms and other accommodations to deal with such an influx. Also, the airlines -- like so many other U. S. businesses -- are hurt by the Batistiano-driven Cuban laws easily enacted and mandated in the U. S. Congress, such as the economic embargo against Cuba that has existed since 1962. Such laws were beyond President Obama's prerogatives to end and thus remain in the purview of a dysfunctional or bought-and-paid-for segment of the U. S. Congress controlled by a few Cuban-American hardliners and benefactors. Although some 60,000 non Cuban-American Americans visited Cuba in 2016 and many more would like to do so in 2017, the embargo still dictates that everyday Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba, a staunchly maintained Congressional law that apparently has been in effect for decades so that propagandized, misinformed Americans can't make their own personal judgments about Cuba.

      Even with everyday Americans still grossly restricted from having the freedom to fly to Cuba, and with Cuba not quite ready to handle the Obama-induced increase in tourism anyway, there are still seven major U. S. airlines making regular commercial flights to Cuba from Florida's two biggest airports -- Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Also, other flights are being made from cities like Atlanta, New York, Houston, LA, etc. In addition, there are nine cruise ship lines currently taking or planning to take cruises from the U. S. to Cuba for the first time since 1961. The photo above shows American Airlines workers touting a Cuban flag in their jubilation over the Obama-induced commerce with Cuba, an engagement that stands to bring joy to many thousands of hard-working people in America and in Cuba. Of course, a handful of hardliners in Miami and in Congress plan to squelch such jubilation and, with Obama's two-term presidency now over, they might well do so as they ease back into their total dictation of America's Cuban policy...you know, the one that currently gets a 191-to-0 denunciation in the United Nations. Democracy, which the airline workers shown above were celebrating, had never -- prior to Obama -- been applied to U. S. relations with Cuba.

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