cubaninsider: Unraveling Cuba-U.S. Detente

A Process Easily Foretold!

On this October 3rd, 2017, the Voice of America is leading its daily international summary of America with the photo-graphic depicted above. It is a poignant lament regarding the massacre in Las Vegas when one-shooter armed with a military-style arsenal of a reported 23 automatic rifles equipped with silencers murdered at least 59 people attending a concert and injured well over 500 more. In the days to come, as always, there will be loud clamorings for the United States to at long last enact sane gun laws that would benefit innocent people instead of current laws that benefit mass murderers. But the United States is a nation whose laws are largely determined by lobbyists with unlimited special-interests money that can easily dictate to politicians. Except for the AIPAC Israeli lobby and possibly the CANF Cuban lobby, the most powerful lobby in Washington is reported to be the National Rifle Association. In other words, the Voice of America lament depicted above with the haunting reminder "Again," will only resonate like softballs in Washington and not produce meaningful gun laws. In other democracies, such decisions would be made not by politicians but by popular votes via referendums, as would such decisions as America's Cuban policies that currently garner a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations but those policies are in effect decade-after-decade in THE NAME OF AMERICA, policies advocated by a handful of self-serving counter-revolutionary Miami politicians -- Rubio/Ros-Lehtinen/Curbelo and Diaz-Balart {whose father was a powerful Minister in the Batista Dictatorship}. A referendum vote of the citizens would reflect what polls show -- that most Americans and most Cuban-Americans favor normalizing relations with Cuba. And the Voice of America seems to be saying via the photo-graphic depicted above that a referendum vote of the citizens would show that most Americans want something done about America's archaic gun laws.

U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met at the White House yesterday -- Oct. 2, 2017 -- with U. S. President Donald Trump. They had a lot on their plate, such as: Whether to go to war with North Korea; how to save 3.4 million U. S. citizens in the hurricane-ravaged U. S. Territory of Puerto Rico; whether to send more troops to Afghanistan to fight the longest war in America's history, now at 16+ years; how to react to the latest gun-massacre in Las Vegas, etc., etc.?But Tillerson and Trump yesterday also spent considerable time discussing Cuba. They thus decided that today -- Tuesday, Oct. 3rd -- they will announce they have told Cuba to withdraw most of its diplomats at the U. S. embassy in Washington, which was opened in 2015 for the first time since 1961 by President Barack Obama. Earlier the U. S. had removed most of its diplomats -- presumably including spies -- from its Obama-orchestrated embassy in Havana. The new Tillerson-Trump Cuban decisions are convenient reaction to the 21+ U. S. "diplomats" who suffered injuries from mysterious sonic-wave attacks in Havana although later it has been revealed that most of the victims were actually U. S. "spies" working at the embassy under the cover of being "diplomats." The minimization of the two embassies, of course, is just a start to unraveling Obama's policies that most Cuban-Americans supported.

So now yellow "DO NOT CROSS" tape aligns the steps in front of the U. S. embassy in Havana. All of Rubio's Cuban schemes are supposedly designed to hurt "the Castros" but, of course, they mostly hurt everyday Cubans while getting America condemned for its cruelty worldwide. But reshaping the United States democracy to fit the Batistiano agenda has been par-for-the-course since 1959.

It has been reported that one of the victims of the mysterious sonic-wave attacks in Havana was staying at the Capri Hotel. Thus, the U. S. has warned Americans not to visit Cuba. The counter-revolutionary hardliners in Miami since 1959 and in the U. S. Congress since the 1980s have relentlessly tried to discourage tourist visits to Cuba, knowing tourism was/is vital to the Cuban economy. Luis Posada Carriles is the most famed Cuban American-CIA connected anti-Cuban terrorist. He admits proudly to the bombing of a Cuban hotel in which a young Italian tourist was killed, and Posada has said and never recanted the purpose of such bombings -- to discourage tourism to Cuba. To this day Posada is a totally free and influential counter-revolutionary Cuban-American in Miami. And Miami's second generation of counter-revolutionary hardliners are not adverse to discouraging tourism to Cuba and they, in fact, have used the lapdog U. S. Congress for decades to make sure everyday Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. President Obama couldn't end that anti-democratic law but he did ease it as much as he possibly could. Of course, Miami hardliners led by Senator Marco Rubio are intent on reversing all of Obama's decent overtures to Cuba, and discouraging or ending tourism to Cuba is uppermost among Rubio's self-serving, devious plans. Rubio, the catalyst behind the Tillerson-Trump targeting of Cuba, is very fortunate indeed that reportedly at least one of the sonic-wave attacks occurred at the Capri Hotel. So, the Rubio clan can warn would-be American tourists to avoid Cuba because the Havana hotels are dangerus. The U. S. media is not brave enough to question Rubio on any aspects of his Cuban policies, but other knowledgeable elements are not so afraid...such as the BBC in London; Michael Palmly, President Bush's anti-Cuban head of the U. S. Interests Section in Cuba from 2005 till 2008; and Harold Cardenas, one of the top Cuba-U.S. insiders. They all seem to agree that the attacks wouldn't be stupidly perpetrated by the Cuban government but could be executed by "rogue" elements, in Cuba or in the U. S., determined to scuttle any improvement in U.S.-Cuban relations. In fact, the Cuban government has, everyone agrees, begged top investigators from both the United States and Canada to come and help Cuba solve the sonic-wave mysteries.

The transition from the Democratic Obama administration to the Republican Trump administration has clearly put America's Cuban policies back in the hands of Miami's dangerously ambitious and ever-revengeful U. S. Senator Marco Rubio. His two primary advantages, other than Trump, are the cowardice and unpatriotic traits of the U. S. media and the U. S. citizens. Thus, for Rubio to assault Cuba, including 11.2 totally innocent Cubans, it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Cuba's U. S. expert, Josefina Vidal, has said, "Cuba didn't deserve Batista and the Mafia long ago and doesn't deserve Rubio and his ilk in its future. But...maybe the U. S. deserves them."

Since 1952 when right-wing rogues in the Eisenhower administration sicced the Mafia on Cuba, the only U. S. President with the guts and patriotism to deal fairly with Cuba was Obama. He used those truly admirable qualities to go on U. S. television and tell the American people: "It is long past time to reinstate relations with Cuba."

To normalize relations with Cuba, President Obama became the first U. S. President to visit the island since 1928 when Herbert Hoover arrived on a warship.

While in Cuba, President Obama went on live television all across the island to tell the Cuban people: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." It stands today as the kindest statement any American leader has ever made to the Cuban people since Columbus discovered the island in 1492. He sincerely made that promise with the backing of the world...a 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations later confirmed his decent Cuban policies and condemned the policies Obama also condemned. But neither the Batistiano-lapdog U. S. Congress nor the intimidated or undemocratic American people had/have the guts to support Obama's saneness.

For the last two decades, Cuba's most brilliant diplomat, Josefina Vidal, fervently defended Cuba against Miami and Congress. And, as shown above, she superbly negotiated Cuban relations with Obama's representative Roberta Jacobson. The major successes included re-opening the two embassies that had been closed since 1961.

But Vidal developed "an acute disappointment in the U. S. democracy" when she observed that Rubio, in the 535-member U. S. Congress, could block without even a vote President Obama's "perfect pick" Jeffrey DeLaurentis, as the U. S. ambassador to Cuba. Moreover, Rubio blocked for months Obama's badly needed Ambassador to Mexico, Roberta Jacobson, because Rubio wanted to punish her for negotiating with Vidal. She was well aware that the Batistiano-written Helms-Burton Law left the U. S. embargo and other punitive measures against innocent Cubans in the hands of the Batistiano-lapdog Congress. So Vidal realized that with singular miscreants like Rubio still able to dictate America's Cuban policy, she was wasting her time trying to defend the advances that Cuba and Obama had wrought. A few days ago she was widely quoted as saying the U. S. was acting too "hasty" regarding the sonic-wave attacks. But in private, it is believed that Vidal has given up on trying to deal with Miami, Trump and the lapdog Congress. And if Vidal gives up, so, in all likelihood, will Cuba. Vidal believes that concentrating fully on dealing with Cuba's friends as opposed to wasting time with the island's "lone" enemy is now in order, especially with a gargantuan transition on the horizon after the Nov. 25-2016 death of 90-year-old Fidel Castro and prior to the Feb.-2018 retirement of 86-year-old Raul Castro.

In the above photo, wearing an anti-embargo/blockade T-shirt, Josefina Vidal addressed a huge, outdoor crowd of Cubans, reminding them that, "Neither you, nor your parents and grandparents before you, deserve being punished by foreign imperialist thugs to sate their political and financial whims." Backed by self-serving sycophants and apathetic Americans, Rubio can beat Vidal in the post-Obama United States. But beating Vidal on her own Cuban soil will be something else altogether.