With Gazes to Friendlier Nations!
Back in October-2016, two weeks before he incredibly was elected President of the United States, Donald Trump in the photo above was in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood making a speech with a huge Brigade Assault 2506 banner as the backdrop between smaller U. S. and Cuban flags. Brigade 2506 in mid-April of 1961 led the ground assault in the air-sea-land attack on Cuba known to history as the Bay of Pigs. Brigade 2506, created by the CIA and trained at great expense to U. S. taxpayers, was composed of Cuban exiles from the Batista-Mafia dictatorship overthrown on Jan. 1-1959 by the Cuban Revolution. After numerous assassination attempts against Fidel Castro failed, and after numerous terrorist attacks against Cuba's coastal areas, the highly funded Bay of Pigs attack was expected to recapture Cuba but was emphatically defeated by Cuba rebels long-tired of the centuries-old dominance of the island by imperialist Spain and, starting in 1898, America. Trump's message during the above session was to promise the elderly Miami survivors of the Bay of Pigs attack that he, essentially, would finally avenge their April-1961 defeat if they would help him get elected. Today -- June 16-2017 -- he's back in Miami as President.
To be properly prepared for the Trump visit to Miami today, Americans should have access to Will Grant's reports from Havana for BBC World News, the incomparable broadcast network based in London. It's Channel 346 on USA Direct Cable. In the hours leading up to Trump's gutless capitulation in Miami, the BBC featured several unbiased and incisive reports from Havana and Miami with titles such as "U.S.-Cuba Rollback" and "Trump and Cuba." Will Grant pointed out that Trump is claiming Cuba's "dismal human rights record" is cause to roll back Obama's positive overtures to the island. But, even dealing with foreign-funded and encouraged dissidents, Cuba has few such encounters and even then prideful regular citizens are often the interveners. Also, the U. S. itself has many well-publicized encounters with often innocent civilians, some fatal resulting in HUGE financial settlements. And Will Grant this morning pointed out that the U. S. readily accepts vast human rights violations in U.S.-friendly countries today and, of course, in U.S.-friendly dictatorships in the distant and recent past. Also, Will Grant named names of such countries and the BBC this morning even had a report of Western nations selling extremely sophisticated surveillance equipment to extremely repressive nations, one of which was named, and the equipment could be "classified as weapons" because they spied on "all the people all the time, even in the bedrooms." But, of course, none of those nations had a successful revolution that chased vile leaders to United States soil.
The difference between the BBC's Will Grant reporting on Cuban issues as opposed to necessarily biased and intimidated American journalists is like the difference between daylight and dark. By sunrise in Cuba and the United States today, June 16th, Will Grant had repeatedly informed BBC viewers that Trump's rollback of key aspects of former President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba will defy the wishes of all segments of North American and international populations, including the vast majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami. And Grant debunked the absurd claims by the counter-revolutionary zealots in Miami and in Congress and now in the White House that reversing Obama's policies related to Cuba will bring about a LONG-AWAITED "REGIME-CHANGE" ON THE ISLAND. It was duly reported that instead Trump would just force Cuba, as it prepares for post-Castro leadership, to once again gaze almost exclusively in the directions of friendlier countries, especially mighty Russia and prolific China, both of whom are very eager to fill the U. S. void -- with Chinese financial investments and Russia's vast oil and military "persuaders." The U. S. economy can intimidate all nations, except China; and the U. S. military can intimidate all nations, except Russia. The BBC thus believes the U. S. is "unwise" to push "nearby" Cuba into the arms of its two big competitors -- China and Russia. In fact, a letter this past week signed by 55 of the 100 U. S. Senators pleaded with Trump to consider precisely that point -- to no avail, of course. Trump, like other Republican presidents, is far more concerned with recapturing Cuba for the counter-revolutionary zealots than considering how harmful it would be to the vast majority of Americans, Cubans and Cuban-Americans. Will Grant and the BBC have both the guts and the integrity to air such reality.
The other London-based media giant, REUTERS, regularly features fair, insightful and unbiased reports directly from Cuba by its superb journalists such as Sarah Marsh, Marc Frank, etc. They teamed for a very informative and unbiased article today about "Trump To Limit Cuba Travel, Restrict Business."
There are multiple nefarious reasons that a handful of counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans in Miami and in Congress want to curb or stop the Obama-orchestrated influx of tourists, like the one above, from visiting Cuba. First off, the anti-Cuban zealots want to continue to dictate the Cuban narrative in the U. S. and that's why, since 1962, everyday Americans have been the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba, lest they might form opinions of the island that differ from the Miami-directed propaganda. Also, from 1962 to today, the U. S. embargo against Cuba has existed for the purpose of starving and depriving Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their government. It hasn't worked, like most U. S. hostile action against Cuba hasn't, but it has greatly harmed everyday Cubans, again like most U. S. hostile action against Cuba has. We know about the purpose of the embargo...starve and deprive...because of de-classified documents. Classified documents, of course, are often designed not to protect the nation but to protect individual crooks, as the great Peter Kornbluh at the U. S. National Archives has often pointed out regarding Cuba. So Trump's further tightening the Obama-loosened Congressional "laws" against tourism to Cuba suits only a handful of extremists at the expense of everyone else, similar to the U. S. Cuban policy that so correctly now has a 191-to-0 UN condemnation.
This Cuban is watching the final touches being put on one of four luxury 5-star hotels opening in Cuba, two managed by the giant U.S.-based Starwood Hotels and Resorts and two by a giant Swiss company. The hotels are created for rich tourists but they also provide work for Cubans like this man. Such step-forwards for Cuba infuriate the powerful handful of counter-revolutionary zealots in Miami and Congress, the vicious minority in this post-Obama era that is determined to regain TOTAL CONTROL of America's Cuban policy, the starve and deprive policy that provokes the embarrassing 191-to-0 denunciation of America in the UN, embarrassing to everyone except, of course, the counter-revolutionary zealots.
The bedroom at a Starwood luxury hotel in Havana.
This ribbon-cutting ceremony depicts American Airlines opening a plush office in Havana, and this was followed by other major U. S. companies, even including Google, doing the same thing. Such ventures created jobs for Cubans and Americans, but counter-revolutionary zealots couldn't care less about that.
There are now 12 U. S. airlines and cruise lines taking U. S. tourists to Cuba and, thanks to Obama, this started even before Cuba had the capacity, such as with hotel space, to handle such an influx. Many of these airlines-cruise lines as well the airports and seaports they depart from are owned by or controlled by Cuban-Americans who are among the vast majority of Cuban-Americans who desire normal commerce and social relations with Cuba. The commercial airline and cruise-line trips to Cuba from the U. S. had been barred SINCE 1961, PRIOR TO OBAMA, but all those decades of trying to starve and deprive Cuba didn't work, and so today with gutless stupidity Trump wants to reinstate such insanity to appease zealots.
Despite being starved & deprived for over half-a-century by its nearby superpower, Revolutionary Cuba -- SOMEHOW -- has managed to provide all its people with totally free and excellent educations and health care. In fact, in open defiance of the U. S. embargo, Americans have been traveling to Cuba to get highly publicized and successful treatment of advanced lung cancers that cancer experts, including those at the famed Roswell Park Institute in Buffalo, NY, say is superior to any known U. S. treatment. Also, Cuba has the world's largest medical school and, SOMEHOW, has provided thousands of totally free scholarships, including room and board, to poor foreign students, including MANY from the U. S. Cuba, even after Trump's Batistiano stance in Miami, is not likely to deny free medical educations for poor Americans nor deny treatment Cuba is currently providing to Americans suffering from ills such as lung cancer.
While Batistiano-pressured Trump today further tightens restrictions against Americans having the freedom to visit the nearby island, Cuba -- as indicated above -- provides visas to allow even its most famed counter-revolutionary dissident -- ubiquitous blogger Yoani Sanchez -- to fly around the world.
Of course, on her well-funded 80-day world tour, Yoani Sanchez took time to broadcast her anti-Cuban vitriol over Radio-TV Marti, the colossal anti-Cuban propaganda machine in Miami that has sucked up hundreds of millions of extremely biased U. S. tax dollars for decades, including right up till today.
*&***********************&*
And, of course, on her worldwide tour, Yoani Sanchez's most important stop was the U. S. Congress where rich and powerful Cuban-American counter-revolutionaries were loving hosts as well as prime architects of America's Cuban policies. When she arrived back in Havana as Cuba's most famed dissident blogger, she announced she also had enough funds to hire the necessary staff to start her own powerful dissident-digital-dandy newspaper, which she has surely done. While dissidents like Yoani Sanchez in Cuba are wildly heralded and promoted in the U. S...and, many believe, wildly funded...they are a decided minority on the island. And if they weren't, the very omnipotent and unchecked counter-revolutionaries backed by the superpower United States would have been back in control of the island decades ago.
My friend Rosy Amaro Perez, her husband Gilberto, and their daughter are, I believe, typical Cubans on the island -- non-rich but healthy, well educated and absolutely decent people. AND...THEY LOVE CUBA.
Rosy is a superb Cuban broadcast journalist.
All of her life, Rosy has been punished by a handful of unscrupulous counter-revolutionary miscreants hiding behind the skirts of the world's superpower. If she doesn't show it here, it's only because she is a very strong woman. All of her much-younger life Rosy's daughter has been punished by the same miscreants, despite the renowned resilience by generations of Cubans to cope and to survive. I believe that dissidents in a foreign superpower who punish Cubans like this mother and daughter year-after-year are wrong, and so are the people who callously and cowardly allow them to do it...YEAR AFTER YEAR!!!
I have been to Cuba and I remain a patriotic, democracy-loving American. I believe America's asinine Cuban policy is the only topic in this extremely diverse world that could possibly garner a unanimous 191-to-0 condemnation in the UN. I believe the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba say a helluva lot more about the superpower United States they they say about the island of Cuba. And knowing Rosy Amaro Perez, I believe she is a far more decent and honorable person than the foreign miscreants who bask in the glory of being her enemies as they dictate Cuban policy to a now apathetic and uncaring America.
No comments:
Post a Comment