cubaninsider: Cuba Beyond May Day, 2017

It Will Survive!!
But Faces Rubio-like Attacks!!
{Updated: Thursday, May 4th, 2017}

Wednesday -- May 3rd -- USA Today reported on yet another major Obama-orchestrated engagement with Cuba that took place this week. USA Today informed us: "The growth of cruising to Cuba hit another milestone on Tuesday as a Norwegian Cruise Line ship visited the country for the first time." It was the 2004-passenger Norwegian Sky that pulled into Havana just after dawn on May 2nd, 2017 after sailing overnight from nearby Miami.

Cuban-born Frank Del Rio is the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line. Like the vast majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami, Mr. Del Rio longs for normal relations with Cuba. That sentiment, of course, flies against the fact that for over half-a-century a mere handful of viscerally self-serving Cuban-Americans in Miami and in Congress have been allowed to make America's dreadful Cuban policy, the policy that currently has a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. But former President Obama's decent legacy regarding Cuba is still benefiting the vast majority of Americans and Cuban-Americans, like Mr. Del Rio.

As head of the giant Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line, Cuban-American Frank Del Rio was ecstatic Tuesday when his prized ship sailed into Havana Harbor, and he let all of those around him know how proud he is to have helped achieve it. USA Today today quoted the beaming executive as saying, "You guys are going to love Havana! Cubans are friendly people. They want Americans to come. They want to engage us."

This is a typical bedroom on Frank Del Rio's magnificent Norwegian Sky cruise ship that this week was in Havana Harbor...thanks to Former U. S. President Barack Obama who so bravely defied the animosity of ALL the Cuban-Americans who get elected to the U. S. Congress from Miami, such as Marco Rubio who was singled out {for his self-serving animosity} in a major New York Times editorial this first week in May.

Study, if you will, the above very brilliant graphic by Nicolas Ortega. It was used this first week of May-2017 to illustrate a major article written by the entire Editorial Board of the New York Times. The Editorial is entitled: "Push and Pull on Cuba." First off, it explained that, YES, America's relations with Cuba are vitally important to America and its worldwide image and, YES, leaving that policy in the hands of a few Cuban-American extremists, such as Marco Rubio, has drastically harmed the United States for over half-a-century...and counting. The Editorial began with these words: "In recent weeks as the White House has been consumed by loud debates over health care, taxes and trade, there has been another, quieter debate occurring beneath the surface. Government agencies and lawmakers have been pulling the {Trump} administration in two directions on whether to continue the Obama administration's path on {normal} relations with Cuba. A small but vocal group of lawmakers, including Senator Marco Rubio, have pressed the White House to roll back the process of normalization President Barack Obama set in motion in 2014." {A much needed Rubio rebuke}.

A joke, a trickster and a fraud as he starts his second six-year term in the U. S. Senate, Marco Rubio's cruel assaults on innocent Cubans in Cuba is purely based on pleasing a handful of Miami-area Batistiano extremists as well as tag-along Batistiano entities such as the Bush dynasty and the Tea Party. Without accomplishing anything for the vast majority of Americans and Cuban-Americans, Rubio's trail from Miami to Washington has been littered with enough controversial debris to render his first and second terms in the U. S. Senate comical enterprises, with his current second term by 2020 soon to replicate his first one in 2016 with a highly funded presidential bid, highly funded because the conservative and right-wing billionaires anxious to purchase the U. S. government consider Senator Rubio to be "for sale."

While the mainstream American media -- both print and electronic -- have neither the integrity nor the courage to tell the truth about Rubio, great United States investigative journalists do. The above graphic by Dale Stephanos, for example, illustrated a major update on Rubio compiled by highly respected journalist Ken Silverstein. From Miami to Washington, Ken Silverstein named the controversial people who have participated in Rubio's checkered but otherwise conveniently arcane political and personal shenanigans, and I don't think any of them have sued Silverstein claiming false accusations. The above Ken Silverstein research is revealed in an easily Googled article entitled: "Poor Little Rich Boy Runs Into Real Estate Trouble." The article begins with these exact words: "When it comes to sheer brazen corruption, chicanery and dishonesty there is one candidate who stands head and shoulders above everyone else and that is the right-wing Cuban-American and Tea Party darling Senator Marco Rubio of -- naturally -- the great state of Florida. Mr. Rubio's public image...is less tethered to reality than The Wizard of Ox. For example..." The plethora of examples provided by Silverstein are, shall we say, startling and numerous.

A Washington-savvy journalist, Ken Silverstein has worked for Harper's Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, etc. The mainstream U. S. media postures Senator Rubio as a choirboy in sharp contrast to Silverstein's biographic article. Americans, whether or not they care a whit about cruel imperialist acts against innocent Cubans, should care enough about their democracy to decide whether Ken Silverstein or the mainstream U. S. media shines truthful spotlights on Rubio, the fake choirboy.

Meanwhile, with the cowardly complicity of the mainstream United States media, Senator Marco Rubio and his ilk can use the media and the United States Congress to assail totally innocent Cubans on the island to please his highly controversial supporters. Therefore, the United States currently endures a resounding 191-to-0 international condemnation in the Union Nations for its Rubio-like Cuban policy while millions of propagandized or intimidated Americans are too unpatriotic or too afraid to voice opinions.

Now, back to this week's editorial in the New York Times.

It pointed out how "small" the number of Cuban-Americans allowed to make U. S. Cuban policy is. Then the editorial stated: "Meanwhile, a large pro-engagement coalition that includes lawmakers from both parties, businesses and young Cuban-Americans is calling on the Trump White House to build on the foundation of engagement it inherited. The Obama administration enabled the free flow of people, goods and information. Among the fruits of this approach..." The editorial then laid out a litany of "fruits" or good things that have resulted for most Americans, Cuban-Americans and Cubans because of Obama's courageous decency. But the editorial stated that "a small but vocal group of lawmakers" is pressuring Trump to erase those gains and the editorial concluded: "If he were to take those sorts of steps, Mr. Trump would make the small pro-embargo coalition happy but doing so would mean reversing a policy change that is widely popular among Americans and nearly universally supported by Cubans. He would also be putting American farmers and businesses at a disadvantage...and subject Cubans to greater repression and privation." Extremely well said.

In March of 2016 President Obama went to Cuba and told the Cuban people: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." But when he spoke those words, Mr. Obama did not anticipate that Mr. Trump would succeed him as President and he didn't anticipate that the American people would continue to allow the likes of Rubio to dictate America's Cuban policy in defiance of most Americans, most Cuban-Americans and the unanimity of that 191-to-0 vote in the UN that condemns America's treatment of Cuba.

Meanwhile:

May 1, 2017 is now behind us and most of Cuba's 11.3 million people were enthusiastically involved in the May Day celebrations across the island Monday. Rosy Amaro Perez, one of the most dynamic and influential leaders among Cuba's young-adult generation, is shown above at one of those spots.

The above AP photo was used to illustrate much of the United States coverage of Cuba's May Day celebrations. But the AP caption with this photo indicated that just a single protester, the one shown above, marred the celebrations. The AP caption said: "A security officer yells 'Long Live Fidel's Dream/Long Life Raul' as he and others carry away a protester." The AP article beneath the photo, written by its top Havana correspondent Michael Weissenstein, also referred only to "a protester" -- meaning one out of 11.3 million non-protesters. Per capita or otherwise that is not much, surely not compared to other May Day protests in places like Portland, Oregon; Berlin, Germany; Paris, France; etc. But in the U. S. ABC-TV News was typical on-air and online by blaring this headline with the above photo: "A PROTESTER BRIEFLY DISRUPTS THE START OF CUBA'S..." Wow! One protester! The ABC headline seems hopeful of at least two.

The 2017 May Day celebrations in Cuba were the first since the Nov. 25-2016 death of 90-year-old Fidel Castro, who will forever remain the primary symbol of the island's 1959 Revolutionary victory. So, the prime viewing stand Monday, as depicted above, is interesting to contemplate. The man on the left in the white shirt is 56-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel who is due to become Cuba's next President no later than February of 2018. The two men on the right in the traditional white Cuban shirts -- Raul Castro and Jose Ramon Machado -- represent the two remaining and most powerful revolutionary icons. The man in the middle in the red shirt is Ulises Guilarte, a power in his own right as the head of the Federation of Cuban Workers.

After praising Cubans for supporting the May Day rallies, Ulises Guilarte took exception to its portrayal in the U. S. media, which emphasized one Cuban protester. He said, "The offensive by the U. S. government and its biased media following the Obama advances has increased challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean, especially Cuba, of course. Except for a few second-generation loudmouths in the United States, the rest of the entire region no longer favors imperialistic dominance of a small nation by a big nation. The Cuban Revolution in 1959 started that trend towards sovereignty and independence in the Caribbean and Latin America, but Batista figures resurrected their beliefs on U. S. soil, and America hasn't been the same since."

Indeed, frequent protests in the U. S. are a lot more violent than apparently one May Day protester shouting, waving a U. S. flag, and running in Cuba. For example, on the University of California-Berkeley campus, as shown above, masked participants violently protested conservative journalist Ann Coulter merely being invited to speak at Berkeley. "Freedom of Speech?" What happened to that very sacred American principle that the majority of Americans seem unable to protect from gangs of masked hooligans.

Such scenes as this on the Berkeley campus should, perhaps, garner headlines in the U. S. media much larger than headlines related to one non-fiery protester in a nation-wide celebratory event in Cuba.

May Day -- May 1st -- is celebrated around the world to honor the working classes, including capitalist countries that often face protests far more violent than occurs in Cuba...for a plethora of reasons, including the vast disparity in wealth. The scene above on May Day-2017 was in Paris, not Havana.