Despite Hurricanes, Embargo, etc.!!
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| Photo courtesy of Sven Greulzmann/Mambo Photos/Getty Images.
The outstanding photo above was used to illustrate a major article this week in the Americas Quarterly written by Collin Lavery, one of America's greatest experts on U.S.-Cuban relations. The article is entitled: "After Irma, Cubans Are Ready to Get Back to Business." The two young Cuban girls above are getting back to enjoying life after the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Irma and after they, as well as their parents, have been punished all their lives by the U. S. embargo of their island.
When a true Cuban expert like Collin Lavery writes an honest, updated and insightful article about what's happening in Cuba, Americans should read it because, for the most part, the Cuban narrative in the U. S. is saturated by a pack of lies and distortions purposely crafted only by counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans.
 In his aforementioned article Collin Lavery wrote: "Hurricane Irma was expected to largely skirt Cuba, sweeping over the eastern tip of the island before barreling toward Florida. Instead, the monstrous storm practically ran the length of the nation, leaving a path of destruction along the northern coast. This was the first time the eye of a category five storm reached the island since 1932, and the traumatic consequences were dire. The Malecon, Havana's famed seawall, was no match for the 20-foot swells that hurled against it. Irma did not, however, take the resilience, resolve and spirit of the Cuban people. It did not leave Cuba uninhabitable and it didn't destroy the beauty the country has to offer. But you wouldn't know that from the news. Media coverage focused on..." It was then that Collin Lavery correctly criticized the mainstream American media that has, even when a devastating hurricane constitutes the big Cuban news, neither the competence nor the guts to tell the truth about Cuba but the United States media is a lapdog conduit for counter-revolutionary lies and distortions. 
The London Daily News is an online superstar. It's major article this week is entitled: "Damning Evidence Cuba Launched A Si-Fi Sonic Weapon At America."
The Daily News used the above graphic to illustrate its "damning" article accusing Cuba of purposely using some sort of "sonic weapon" to harm about two dozen Americans attached to the Obama-reopened U. S. embassy in Havana.
The "Sonic Wave" mystery is being used by counter-revolutionary Cubans and some proselytized Americans to insist that, among other things, President Trump's U. S. government close its embassy in Havana and Cuba's embassy in Washington that the brave U. S. President Obama had reopened for the first time since 1961.
But since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959, Revolutionary Cuba and its capital city have been targeted by counter-revolutionary bombings, terrorist acts, military attacks, and self-serving lies that include lavishly calculated and well-funded actions designed as pretexts to justify continuous attempts at overthrowing Cuba's revolutionary government. In 1996 when President Clinton was considering normalizing relations with Cuba, Brothers to the Rescue planes from Miami, led by a notable counter-revolutionary, began overflying Cuban territory, even Havana, and even after Cuba begged both the U. S. State Department and the United Nations to stop the overflights. Cuba ended up shooting down two of the planes, not only changing President Clinton's mind but forcing him to sign the ultra-punitive Helms-Burton Act into law and, as a financial offshoot, hundreds of millions of dollars were awarded to relatives of the four shoot-down victims. Now many observers believe the current "Sonic Mystery" may be a similar perpetration...either by counter-revolutionaries in the U. S. OR by hardliners in Cuba who oppose the Obama-orchestrated peaceful overtures between the two nations. Meanwhile, the U. S. embassy as well as U. S. homes in Havana have been swept for evidence as have rooms in the Spanish-run Capri Hotel where Americans stay.
Even insiders like Michael Parmly, considered by Cuba to be a staunch Bush-connected U. S. counter-revolutionary, believe that counter-revolutionaries may be behind the sonic assaults on Americans in Havana attached to the U. S. embassy. And even some Trump appointees believe that Cuban President Raul Castro is as flummoxed and alarmed about the situation as anyone. He has requested that the FBI and CIA send top agents to Havana to investigate. He also has welcomed the Canadian Royal Mounties to investigate in Havana because at least one person at the Canadian embassy has been victimized by the sonic or electronic vibes. Cuba surely would not purposely harm its close relationship with Canada, especially now that Cuba-loving Justin Trudeau, the son of former Cuba-loving Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, is now Canada's Prime Minister and is a needed North American friend.
During the fiercely anti-Cuban George W. Bush presidency, Michael Parmly was the head of the U. S. Interests Section in Havana from 2005 till 2008, and he was noted for mocking and harassing the Cuban government. So he knows something about nuances in U.S.-Cuban relations. He believes counter-revolutionaries in Miami or hardliners in Cuba might be using the sonic attacks to undermine President Raul Castro's peaceful agreements with the Obama administration in the United States. Parmly said, "There is a struggle going on for the soul of the Cuban Revolution. It's entirely possible there are rogue elements." The Washington Post -- in a major article entitled "Cuba Mystery. Even Castro Baffled by Harm to U. S. Diplomats" seemed to agree with Parmly that rouge elements in both the United States and Cuba strongly oppose rapprochement between the two neighbors. Parmly now lives in Switzerland and apparently is no longer an anti-Cuban hardliner; in 2013 he began arguing that the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay should be returned to Cuba.
While America's President Trump was lambasting Cuba in his first UN address this week, Cuba's top expert on the U. S., Josefina Vidal, was back in Washington. She was representing Cuba at the 6th U.S.-Cuba Commission, which has alternated between Havana and Washington since it was started by the Obama administration. This marked the first time it was held during the Trump presidency and it took place on the heels of his UN address Tuesday. The Miami Herald, in a major article written by Mimi Whitefield, said that Vidal "wasn't very cordial in her reactions to Trump's UN accusations." At the U. S. Commission session in Washington Vidal said: "Cuba strongly protests and resents the disrespectful, unacceptable and meddling statements made by President Donald Trump in his address to the UN General Assembly. This Commission designed for harmony meets in the backdrop of a reversal of U.S.-Cuba relations from that of the previous 2-term Obama presidency."
During the Obama presidency, Josefina Vidal negotiated on friendly terms with two Americans she deeply respects -- Jeffrey de Laurentis and Roberta Jacobson, who were Obama's two prime diplomats related to Cuba. Roberta is now the U. S. Ambassador to Mexico and Obama appointed Jeffrey the U. S. Ambassador to Cuba. But counter-revolutionary U. S. Senator Marco Rubio from Miami held up Roberta's badly needed posting in Mexico City for months and Rubio to this day has blocked the U. S. from having an Ambassador at the new U. S. embassy in Havana. Allowing Rubio or a handful of self-serving zealots like him to dictate America's Cuban policy mocks both America and democracy, but that's the way it's been since 1959 except for Obama's two terms as President. Thus, decent Cubans like Josefina Vidal and decent Americans like Jeffrey de Laurentis and Roberta Jacobson are routinely victimized by unchecked miscreants such as Marco Rubio.
The above photo shows Josefina Vidal on Dec. 7-2016 when she hosted the 5th U.S.-Cuba Commission in Havana. This week Mimi Whitefield in the Miami Herald summed up the 6th Commission session in Washington with this paragraph: "By contrast, the previous meeting last Dec. 7th in Havana was a comparative love fest with the sides noting achievements in U.S.-Cuban relations, including signing 11 non-binding agreements on health, the environment, counter-narcotics, and other areas of agreement." But there was no "love fest" this week.
The Mimi Whitefield article in the Miami Herald also reported that Josefina Vidal spoke out strongly regarding the ongoing mystery about the sonic attacks on Americans in Havana after the issue was brought up by United States representative John Creamer in Washington this week. Vidal sternly said, "Cuba has never perpetrated nor will it every perpetrate action of this nature, and Cuba has never permitted nor will it ever permit any third-party use of its territory for that purpose. Cuba has a keen interest in clarifying what happened to the diplomats." As the long-time top Cuban Minister regarding U. S. affairs, Vidal believed "perhaps my prime task is being on the alert for elements in Miami and Washington trying to goad Cuba into a reaction they could use to justify a regime change in our sovereign country, meaning a U. S. puppet as in America's Caribbean and Latin American past."
Vidal is also outspoken on Twitter Q & As. There are indications that she is becoming more convinced that negotiating with the U. S. is useless when "any Republican White House and a couple of Miami Cubans can reverse anything achieved by respectable people operating in the best interests of most Cubans, Americans, and Cuban-Americans." It is also apparent in Cuba that the all-important young-adult generation agrees with Vidal during a transitional period on the island after the Nov. 25-2016 death of 90-year-old Fidel Castro and the impending Feb.-2018 retirement of 86-year-old Raul Castro. At one point in time Fidel told Vidal he would support her if she "wanted one day to be Cuba's leader." She recovered in time to let him know that she preferred being "a revolutionary diplomat for you and for Cuban sovereignty."
But being Cuba's top diplomat related to the United States, Vidal seems tormented by the realization that "reversals" by current U. S. President Donald Trump negates "many months, years" of the "positive accomplishments" she negotiated with the decent and courageous Obama presidency. Trump's UN speech this week, as chronicled above, re-convinced Vidal that Trump has neither the courage or the decency to oppose Cuban extremists in Miami and in the United States Congress.
Obama was the first American President since 1962 to have both the courage and the decency to simply say: "Recognize that the Cold War is over. Lift the embargo."
Barack Obama was the first American President since Herbert Hoover in 1928 to visit Cuba. And once there, on live television in both Cuba and the U. S., President Obama told the Cuban people, "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." He spoke those words sincerely in March of 2016, not knowing that by September of 2017 a President named Trump would revert America's Cuban policies back to a Miami U. S. Senator named Rubio, to the detriment of the American democracy and everyone other than a handful of counter-revolutionary extremists.
And that brings us back around to the photo above that Cuban expert Collin Lavery used to illustrate his insightful article this week entitled "After Irma, Cuba Is Ready to Get Back to Business." Collin Lavery knows the two happy Cuban girls survived Hurricane Irma and he seems to believe they will survive Trump and Rubio. Decent people like Collin Lavery and Josefina Vidal are convinced that rich people in a powerful country should not prey on poorer people in a weaker country.
And by the way:
This week The Voice of America used the above photo-graphic to highlight this pertinent question: "Is the U. S. really ready, willing and able to 'totally destroy' North Korea, as President Trump asserted during his speech at the UN General Assembly? An analyst tells VOA the U. S. 'better be ready to go all in and be ready to finish it.'"
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