5.11.17

Lying About Cuba No Longer Easy

Anti-Cuba Antics Challenged!!
{Updated for: Monday, November 6th, 2017}
Photo courtesy: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.
     Four days ago -- on Nov. 2nd, 2017 -- Cuba's respected Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez came to Washington and held a major news conference at The National Press Cuba. He strongly suggested that the United States is "deliberately lying" about alleged sonic-attacks in Havana against Americans, specifically 24 unknown Americans working at the U. S. Embassy. Rodriguez said, "It is high time for the United States to tell the truth or otherwise present evidence. The Cuba government has no responsibility whatsoever for these incidents." Rodriguez made a powerful...and so far unchallenged...case that the U. S. is "lying" about the alleged attacks to justify punishing Cuba by reversing positive relations attained during the former Obama presidency. Using the "lies" about the mysterious attacks, the Trump administration has greatly harmed tourism to Cuba by "warning" Americans not to visit the island, which Rodriguez pointed out is considered one of the safest places in the world for vacationers. He said, "If Havana was really an unsafe place, then U. S. authorities would not have requested 212 visas for relatives and friends of diplomats between January and October, nor would they have made more than 250 pleasure trips outside Havana." In addition to already using the phantom attacks to hurt Cuban tourism, the U. S. has hurt many Americans and Cuban-Americans by gutting the embassies in Havana and Washington. The U. S., Rodriguez claims, has become careless and complacent in manufacturing lies about Cuba for over half-a-century, knowing that by controlling the Cuban narrative Counter Revolutionary Cubans and right-wingers could say or brag about anything and it would be unchallenged -- such as bragging in the Miami media about such things as the terrorist bombing of a civilian child-laden airplane -- Cubana Flight 445 -- that the well-known and well-protected terrorists called "the biggest blow yet against Castro." The terrorists also had no problem getting away with deadly bombings of Havana hotels and bragging about how it hurt Cuban tourism. When Cuban-American newsman Emilio Milian complained about such things, he was car-bombed in Miami. When the top columnist at the Miami Herald -- Jim DeFede -- excoriated Miami representatives in the U. S. Congress for helping free four of the most infamous Cuban-American counter-revolutionaries from a Panamanian prison, Jim DeFede was fired. When President Clinton was about to normalize relations with Cuba, airplanes from Miami taunted Cuba to provoke a reaction that would deter Clinton because the Miami taunters knew only their versions of events would count in the American media and in Miami courtrooms.
         But as Bruno Rodriguez's huge news conference at The National Press Club in Washingon on November 2nd indicated, it is now not nearly as easy as it has been for either the United States government or Counter Revolutionaries in the U. S. to tell lies about Cuba or to get away with salacious, dastardly acts against innocent Cubans.
    The top Foreign and National Security expert at the Washington Post is Karen DeYoung whose articles have an international reach and resonance. Her coverage of the Bruno Rodriguez news conference reveals that, if the U. S. government or the Counter Revolutionaries are to continue getting away with lies about Cuba, they need to at least partially or parasitically convince powerful U. S. journalists like Karen DeYoung, and that is finally becoming harder to do. Her article clearly sided with Cuba's points-of-view regarding the sonic-attacks, pending at least a hint of U. S. evidence. Ms. DeYoung agrees, it seems, that the United States warning against visits to "unsafe" Cuba although the island is obviously considered "very safe" by U. S. diplomats who continued to assist a plethora of family-and-friend visitations to Cuba on "pleasure trips." Also, Ms. DeYoung wrote: "The U. S. has said that 24 diplomats assigned to the embassy have suffered 'attacks' that began late last year and continued until late summer. While saying that the victims were receiving comprehensive medical evaluations and care, the State Department has not released the names of the afflicted, any specific information about their health, or results of any investigations." And Ms. DeYoung went on to explain that Cuba, gravely concerned about attacks on its tourism, "has facilitated four visits by the FBI investigation teams to the island and said its own investigations have turned up no apparent cause."
     In other words, times have changed. If the U. S. government or Counter Revolutionaries in Miami and in the U. S. Congress are to continue telling lies about Cuba, they are going to have to convince at least one powerful, unbiased Expert Journalist such as Karen DeYoung at the Washington Post. What happened to journalists such as Emilio Milian, Jim DeFede, etc., in the past may have dictated the Cuban narrative in the U. S. for decades but now, it seems, blatant lies and egregious acts are challenged in high places. That's why Cuba's erudite Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez could come to Washington on Nov. 2nd and express Cuba's opinion that the U. S. is "deliberately lying" so Counter Revolutionary Cubans in the U. S. can dictate America's Cuban policies to the Trump administration. Karen DeYoung wrote, "Rodriguez's comments marked a sky change in Cuba's approach to the sonic-wave charges. The Cuban government...has facilitated four visits by the FBI investigative teams to the island..." No evidence? No names of alleged victims? And she added that Rodriguez made his remarks in Washington after his scathing and well-received speech at the United Nations where, in the eyes of the world, the U. S. "stands alone on its Cuban policy except for Israel and an occasional Pacific island nation." Actually, Palau a few years ago was the last little Pacific island dependent to support the U. S. policy regarding Cuba so now only Israel, mortally dependent on massive U. S. economic and military aid as well as the U. S. veto in the UN, votes along with the U. S. at the UN. All the other nations in the world, 191 of them including all of America's best friends, strongly oppose the U. S. Cuban policy. And now the U. S. government and the Cuban Counter Revolutionary zealots cannot depend on an intimidated or easily-lied-to U. S. media to quietly sanction either lies or terrorist acts against the island of Cuba and its most innocent citizens. If Karen DeYoung just hints that the U. S. is simply lying about its latest Republican attempts to finally destroy Revolutionary Cuba, then PERHAPS they are indeed lies that Americans were supposed to swallow without questioning what they were ingesting.
     On the heels of former President Obama's decent detente with Cuba, President Trump intends to allow Miami's U. S. Senator Marco Rubio to be the prime dictator of America's Cuban policy, as a means of pacifying Rubio and other such Republican rivals in both the presidential primary and now in the behind-the-back Trump impeachment efforts. After the Cuban Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship on Jan. 1, 1959, Counter Revolutionaries on U. S. soil have included the likes of Rafael Diaz-Balart, Jorge Mas Canosa, etc., and now Rubio. The processes have cost America and Democracy tons of international prestige PLUS billions upon billions of tax dollars to support assassination attempts, military and terrorist attacks, and massively unchecked and grossly expensive anti-Cuban propaganda outlets such as the ongoing Radio-TV Marti abomination in Miami. Now Rubio -- whom presidential candidate Trump mocked as Little Marco" -- has been anointed by President Trump as America's new Cuban dictator. That once was a very powerful economic and political sure thing but times may have changed, especially if Rubio can't count on powerful journalists such as Karen DeYoung to at least acquiesce to whatever he unleashes against Cuba. At the moment there are suspicions in both Havana and Washington that Rubio hopes to use the "sonic wave acoustic attacks" to convince the U. S. State Department to return Cuba to its Sponsors of Terrorism list, which would further tighten the noose and sharpen the cross-hairs that Rubio already has aimed at the vulnerable island. But, Senator, is Cuba a sponsor of terrorism or a target of terrorism? Perhaps you should ask an expert...like Karen DeYoung at the Washington Post...instead of just assuming that Miami and Congressional zealots still have total control of America's Cuban narrative.
And by the way:
  One of Cuba's most popular young broadcast journalists, Lazaro Manuel Alonso, recently had a serious operation. When he was fully recovered, Lazaro returned to the hospital to thank his doctors and nurses, including Dr. Milene Vazquez. Health care and university educations in Cuba are totally free. Yet, Rubio and other Counter Revolutionaries in Miami and the U. S. Congress repeatedly tell the American people they must keep the embargo in place and expand it because every dollar that reaches the island goes into the bank accounts of the Castros." Since 1962, many Americans have quite shamefully accepted such cruel, self-serving lies hook, line, and sinker.
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