Trump Sends Soldiers to Cuba

A Warning? A Threat? Or NOT?
{Monday, January 1, 2018}

     In the closing hours leading up to News Year Day 2018, Fox 10 in Phoenix reported that 50 Arizona Army National Guard soldiers are being deployed to Guantanamo Bay on CUBAN SOIL for at least the next nine months. The operation is so secretive that Fox 10 was not allowed to identify any of the soldiers. But in a somewhat strange development, Arizona Army National Guard Sergeant Major Fidel Samora gave Fox 10 this exact and ominous statement: "There was some discussion some time back about actually shutting it down. Right now that's not what's going to happen so it's still very important for us service members to be prepared to go and continue our mission." Fidel Samora??? Or is that name just a coincidence in the Era of Trump?

       The comment from Major Sergeant Fidel Samora -- "some discussion some time back about actually shutting it down" -- referenced the fact that former U. S. President Obama wanted to close the U. S. Naval Base and infamous prison on occupied Cuban soil. And Fidel Samora's comment -- "Right now that's not going to happen" -- appears to be a threat to Cuba on the heels of President Trump's statement a few week's ago when he said he intended "to straighten Cuba out." In April of 1961 in the infamous Bay of Pigs attack, the U. S. military tried to quickly "straighten out" Revolutionary Cuba. That failed, crowning Fidel Castro as a revolutionary legend. In the first hours of 2018 Fidel Samora arrives at the head of another U. S. army. Ummmm...I wonder?

      In 1903, shortly after the United States gained dominance over Cuba following the 1898 Spanish-American War, the U. S. occupied Cuba's plush Guantanamo Bay on the southeastern tip of the island. Cuba and the rest of the world considers it one of the last, and certainly the most salient, unwanted occupations of land and waters in a small nation by a powerful nation...echoing bygone imperialist eras when countries like the U.S., Britain, Spain, France, etc., routinely spread their imperialist tentacles around the world. In 1903 the "treaty" usurping Guantanamo Bay stated that it was "in perpetuity" unless both nations agreed to end it. The U. S. agreed to pay Cuba a token of a few measly hundred dollars a year. Revolutionary Cuba since 1959 has refused to cash such yearly checks to express its displeasure with the strong-arm and unwanted occupation of its sovereign-independent land.  

    Any Google search about the U. S. occupation of Guantanamo Bay will focus on the notorious U. S. prison that turned globally infamous in 2002 when the viciously anti-Cuban George W. Bush administration began putting international prisoners there. Soon, photos and other documentations depicting torture of those prisoners flashed all around a newly inflamed world, shaming America's best international friends but, obviously, not shaming enough pro-democracy American citizens. Therefore, the notoriety of the prison survived President Obama's Herculean efforts to close it, leaving it as a prime propaganda tool for American's enemies as well as for President Trump and his newly anointed Cuban garu, Senator Marco Rubio, to use it to PERHAPS, uh, "straighten out Cuba" beginning early in 2018 with Arizona soldiers.

    The U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay has evolved into an anti-Cuban eyesore and embarrassment, making it a jewel for 6-decades of Cuban-American Counter Revolutionaries and right-wing Republicans. The infamous Gitmo prison merely exacerbates those facts. With other massive nearby U. S. military forces on other land, on the seas, and beneath the seas, the U. S. surely does not need a U. S. base in Cuba other than to intimidate, threaten, or to simply embarrass the Revolution that, way back on Jan. 1-1959, chased the leaders of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship to U. S. soil, mostly to the new capital known as Little Havana in the heart of nearby Miami. In that milieu, the U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay is generally considered a plush, Americanized vacation spot for U. S. military personnel and, often, their families.

       So why, in the closing hours of 2017, is the Trump presidency sending a very secretive contingent of U. S. soldiers to Cuba led by Sergeant Major Fidel Samora. And why does a leader of that unit have the ominous name of....Fidel Samora?

    It's quite apparent that President Trump has turned America's Cuban policy over to two vicious Counter Revolultionary members of the U. S. Congress from Miami -- Marco Rubio and Mario Diaz-Balart. All three realize that U. S. citizens probably would not object to whatever they have in mind for Cuba. After all, this generation of Americans replicates the cowardice and lack of patriotism displayed by previous U. S. generations regarding the USA designs on Cuba. In 1952 Americans didn't object to right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration teaming the U. S. with the Mafia to support the thieving-brutal Batista dictatorship in Cuba because it allowed rich American businessmen to partake in the rape and robbery of the island. Then beginning in 1959, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, U. S. citizens didn't object to any CIA-Mafia-Cuban exile attempts to recapture Cuba -- including rampant assassination efforts, terrorists bombings of Havana hotels and even a child-laden civilian Cuban airplane, bombings of Cuban sugar and tobacco operations, the Havana-to-Miami transition of the Mafia's prime crime city, and to this day a Miami that only sends Counter Revolutionary extremists to Congress although the majority of Cuban-Americans even to this day favor Obama-like normal relations with Cuba. So the Trump/Rubio/Diaz-Balart belligerency against Cuba now has -- as of New Year's Day 2018 -- a new contingent of U. S. soldiers on a secretive mission on U.S.-occupied Cuban soil. Trump's choice of two prime Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans from Miami as his prime Cuban experts is something that innocent Cubans and innocent Americans will have to deal with, it seems. Typically concerning the top Miami politicos, Rubio and Diaz-Balart are products of the Bush dynasty. Rubio made it all the way to the U. S. Congress with his bio still very conveniently claiming his parents escaped the tyranny of Castro's Cuba when, in fact, they escaped the Batista-Mafia tyranny in Cuba long before Americans ever heard of Fidel Castro. Now Americans on New Years Day-2018 will be hearing about Fidel Samora at the head of a secretive new U. S. army at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mario Diaz-Balart followed his Havana-born older brother Lincoln Diaz-Balart to the U. S. Congress from Miami. Mario and Lincoln are the sons of Rafael Diaz-Balart who was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship and then, after Jan. 1-1959, the rich and powerful creator of the first anti-Castro paramilitary unit in South Florida. So, Trump has apparently turned over America's Cuban policy to Marco Rubio {Google the respected U. S. journalist Ken Silverstein's amazing article on the "most corrupt" Rubio} and Mario Diaz-Balart {son of a former Batista Minister}. That seems par-for-the-course for a Republican White House as the U. S. and Cuba enter the New Year of 2018. The key point, I believe, is the fact that the majority of Americans in 2018 will not care if Trump turned over America's Cuban policy to reincarnations of Mafia thugs Lucky Luciano,  Meyer Lansky, and Fulgencio Batista.

    The only U. S. President to have had the necessity combination of guts, intelligence, and patriotism to challenge the Batistiano & Mafiosi dictation of America's Cuban policy was, of course, Barack Obama. In the process of normalizing relations with Cuba, President Obama went to Cuba and, in person and on live island-wide television, told the Cuban people: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." With uncommon bravery and sincerity, President Obama meant those historic words. But he didn't anticipate that on Jan. 20-2017 his decency would be replaced by the indency of President Donald Trump.

     A well-educated, healthy generation of bold young Cubans on the island -- like the ones above -- have one enemy in this entire world -- Cuban-American extremists and their U.S. sycophants. In the whole-wide diversified world, the only topic that could attain a 191-to-ZERO condemnation vote in the United Nations is probably America's cruel economic embargo-blockade of Cuba. In 2016 the decent Obama administration did not have the heart to support it at the UN but Obama could not end it because the cowardly 535-member U. S. Congress permits a handful of miscreants to maintain the anti-Democracy cancer that has been in effect since 1962 when it was made "legal" for the exact purpose -- as revealed by declassified U. S. documents -- to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of the Cuban people to induce them to rise up and overthrow their Revolutionary government. But generations of Cubans remember the brutal U.S.-backed and crime-riven Batista-Mafia cruelty. And they have a right to those memories and to that history, the rest of the world as well as the young Cubans shown above truly believe.

       The transition a year ago from Obama to Trump bodes ill-well for 11.2 totally innocent Cubans on the vulnerable nearby island. It also bodes ill-will for America and Democracy, I believe, as Obama-to-Trump takes hold of the American democracy.

     In the New Year of 2018 it is perhaps time for Americans to be concerned by a Cuban policy that gets America condemned by a 191-to-ZERO vote in the UN...a policy so staunchly condemned by America's bravest and most decent recent President, Mr. Obama. When the Trump administration sends a secretive new contingent of soldiers to Guantanamo Bay apparently led by Major Sergeant Fidel Samora, Americans sitting back on their comfortable, cowardly, and un-caring asses is not exactly what the Founding Fathers intended for their brilliant democracy.

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Cuba's True Voice

In Both Spanish & English!!
{Sunday, December 31st, 2017}

     The best broadcast journalist in the Americas, including all of North America, is probably Cuba's Cristina Escobar, and that's true whether she is broadcasting in Spanish or English either as an anchor or expert interviewer. I think she's the absolute best and so, apparently, do many others, including NBC's veteran superstar Andrea Mitchell who made it a point to congratulate Cristina in Washington. Vivid examples of her work are recent, cogent interviews she conducted with two of America's most powerful Miami executives -- Cuban-born Frank del Rio, the CEO of the Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Lines; and Arnold Donald, the CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines. Both interviews are readily available on YouTube where you can hear each man tell Cristina Escobar about their incomparable love of the Cubans on the island and their utter fascination with Cuba's beauty and culture, and both men made it clear they were speaking not as businessmen who often visit Cuba but as human beings who believe the island and its people should be treated with respect and decency.

     Such Cuban and U. S. respect gained Cristina Escobar a Pulitzer Center-sponsored interview conducted by notable U. S. journalist and Cuban expert Tracey Eaton, and versions of the above interview are readily available on the Pulitzer Center website {above} and on YouTube. In that interview you can hear Cristina say: "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami or Washington" and "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." INDEED, as Cuba's top broadcast journalist Cristina is not afraid to criticize her government if her beloved Cuban people are not respected or properly cared for. AND INDEED, in the U. S. it might be said, with a brave degree of accuracy, that the last two well-known journalists who told the truth about Miami-directed terrorism against innocent Cubans were newscaster Emilio Milian and top columnist-journalist Jim DeFede, and Emilio was car-bombed while Jim was fired. In Cuba, Cristina -- with the heart and soul of a true journalist -- has criticized her government without getting car-bombed...or fired.

     And such respect gained Cristina Escobar a spot on the pantheon of American Journalism History. As shown above, she is the only Cuban journalist to ever ask questions at a White House news conference. That video is also on YouTube. In calm, perfect English she dominated that news conference, asking the best questions and getting the best answers, including the first confirmation that President Obama indeed planned to become the first sitting U. S. President to visit Cuba since President Hoover arrived in 1928 on a warship. Not only is the talented and well-educated Cristina Escobar a superb broadcast journalist, she is also an internationally recognized expert on U.S.-Cuban relations, and therefore in demand by foreign networks seeking both sides of the U.S.-Cuban conundrum that has international repercussions and got the United States condemned 191-to-ZERO in 2016 when even the decent President Obama couldn't support the Congress-directed cruel U. S. embargo against innocent Cubans. Cristina, for example, astutely and eerily predicted on her University Thesis the Cuban Effect President Obama would have at least temporarily on U.S.-Cuban relations, smartly realizing that Obama's sanity could be reversed when and if a Republican replaced Obama as President. 

      Mainstream U. S. broadcast outfits...either because of propagandized political correctness, sheer intimidation, or simple incompetence...generally present only the Counter Revolutionary side of the two-sided U.S.-Cuban equation. But unintimidated networks, such as the Washington-based CGTN America, often call on the expert views of Cristina Escobar in Havana with live hook-ups. For example, this week - - Dec. 28th, 2017 -- CGTN America aired a 5 minute, 29 second report entited: "Cristina Escobar Talks About the Effect Millennials Are Having on Cuban Society." You can easily dial-up that interview on YouTube and get concise and honest insights on the emerging input of millennials and young adults in Cuba.

     The montage above depicts a typical CGTN America set. The network was founded in 2012 and is a part of the China Global Television Network. But based in Washington it is more pro-America than pro-China, especially with its business reports. And CGTN America regularly provides international exposure to Cristina Escobar from Havana.

    Another recent example is also readily available on YouTube with this title: "Cristina Escobar and Dan Perkins Discuss Cuba in the Wake of Trump Policy Change." The interview runs 9 minutes and 8 seconds and it's worth every second. Perkins is a right-wing Counter Revolutionary businessman and commentator in Tampa, Florida. Cristina is Cuba's top broadcast journalist and an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations, including President Trump's reversal of President Obama's sane and decent Cuban policies. As you watch the interview, Perkins will espouse the viewpoint that Cuba should be what it was pre-Revolution from 1952 to 1959, which was to be a piggy-bank for the brutal Batista-Mafia dictatorship that was supported by the U. S. because it allowed rich U. S. businessmen, like the modern-day Mr. Perkins, to partake in the rape and robbery of the island. Of course, as I believe you will detect, Cristina Escobar more than holds her own against thuggish, right-wing Counter Revolutionaries like Perkins. When the name "Marco Rubio" comes up, Cristina calls a spade-a-spade, something the mainstream U. S. media is afraid to do. That exchange alone, which airs both sides of the equation, would be worth viewing.

   The brilliant Cuban broadcast journalist Cristina Escobar has paid journalistic visits to Washington on the East Coast and to California on the West Coast, and made speeches at U. S. universities in between. There are reports that she has been offered huge sums of money, with a mansion tossed in as a bonus, if she would defect to Miami or New York City. For sure, in Spanish or English, she could instantly be a star broadcast journalist in America...and a very rich one. But most of all, her defection would be a gigantic propaganda coup for the USA's well-heeled Counter Revolutionary extremists. But it won't happen. There is not enough Little Havana money in Miami to induce Cristina Escobar to turn her back on the island she loves and the Cubans she loves. As a broadcaster, her integrity matches her talent.

     The photo above shows Cristina Escobar on the island of Cuba with the people she loves and identifies with. That's Cristina second from the right. She is a highly respected Cuban jewel, not rich but very, very proud. She fervently and righteously defends everything beautiful and good about Cuba, and there is a lot to defend despite what Americans are told by Trump & Rubio, two Counter Revolutionaries.

Cuba's journalistic Superstar.

 A Cuban-Cuban, Cristina Escobar.

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Will Cuba Survive Rubio?

Uhhh...PROBABLY!!
{Thursday, December 28th, 2017}

Photo courtesy of: Charleston Post Courier.

     The photo above, if you study it carefully, will perhaps explain why Senator Marco Rubio, America's latest Trump-anointed U. S. Dictator of Cuba, will not succeed in destroying the pugnacious, revolutionary-fueled island. The two American students shown sitting on Havana's famed Malecon seawall reveal that every time some Miami-based or Congress-based Counter Revolutionary, like Rubio, targets Cuba using the economic and even military clout of the USA, there is a counter-reaction...either in Cuba or the USA or both. For example, the photo above highlights a USA article about the College of Charleston being the latest American institution to counter the new Rubio-directed acrimony targeting innocent Cubans on the island.

  Since 1770 the College of Charleston -- on its beautiful campus in Charleston, South Carolina -- has been an outstanding symbol of America's Higher Educational gems. On its website today the College of Charleston leads with an article and an accompanying video entitled: "College of Charleston in Havana, Cuba." The College of Charleston's outreach to Cuba now includes the launching of a new education project on the island that Senator Rubio and his ilk apparently believe they will recapture in the Trump era {ala the Batista-Mafia rule from 1952 till 1959?}. Beginning in the U. S. in 1959, even richer and more powerful Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans than Rubio...such as Jorge Mas Canosa and Rafael Diaz-Balart...have also had the support of the U. S. government and the apathy of the U. S. citizens but not even Canosa and Diaz-Balart were able to recapture Cuba.

The Rubio "Cuba Policy Shift."

   The "Rubio On Cuba Policy Shift" referenced above relates to the American "shift" from the very decent Obama presidency to the very indecent...as far as Cuba is concerned...Trump presidency. With extreme cowardice and lack of patriotism, President Trump anointed Rubio, Trump's once-bitter presidential rival, as America's latest Cuban dictator...similar, for example, to the 1980s when the Bush dynasty anointed Canosa to the same position. Canosa became a Miami billionaire and was the architect of such assaults on Cuba as the Helms-Burton ACT, the plush tax-draining Radio-TV Marti propaganda boondoggle, etc.; in such areas, and others, Rubio will likely replicate Canosa. But like Canosa, Rubio might fail despite holding all four aces in what for many decades has been a stacked deck that shames the USA far more than it shames or condemns feisty little Cuba.

The anti-Rubio Cuba Shift.

     If Marco Rubio is to recapture Cuba, he must prevent little nuances such as two American college students sitting peacefully on Havana's famed Malecon seawall. Just having a billion-to-one economic and military advantage doesn't seem to be quite enough to destroy the Cuban Revolution, perhaps because the vile memories of what preceded it and spawned it have never faded away...nor should they EVER!!!

And by the way:

      The tragic fireworks malfunctions on Christmas Eve in Remedios injured at least 39 Cubans and the state media now says several of the burns remain life-threatening. Three miles from the coast in north-central Cuba, Remedios has about 50,000 citizens and each year during this Holiday Season two neighborhoods compete to see which one can out-do the other with their fireworks. The wildly celebratory events have become very popular with both Cubans and tourists each Christmas season. 

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Cuba, Israel and FIREWORKS

All Make Holiday Headlines!!

      A normally quiet, mid-sized Cuban city, Remedios, is located on the north-central coast well southeast of Havana but usually from Christmas till New Year's day it makes more headlines than the capital city. For the holiday week each year, two Cuban companies compete in Remedios to see which one can pull off the most spectacular fireworks display. It always makes headlines on the island and also attracts foreign tourists. Only this year the headlines were bigger than normal.

   On Christmas Eve the gigantic fireworks in Remedios malfunctioned and injured dozens of people with burns, creating unwanted news headlines and startling videos that international news agencies and television networks showed worldwide.

     Shown on the above map in red in the yellow-shaded Villa Clara province, Remedios is a city of about 50,000 3 miles from the north-central coast.

        Meanwhile, all of the leading Israeli news outlets were engaged in Christmas Day-2017 "Breaking News" headlines, one of which unwittingly involved Cuba.

     In the United States President Donald Trump is closing out 2017, the first year of his 4-year presidential term, with an approval rating of 30% and with all of the mainstream United States media, except Fox News, engaged in a conspiracy to impeach him. BUT one basic fact remains: They are not the President; Trump is the President. And, like an old Godfather protecting, empowering, and enriching his children, President Trump's stepchild, Israel, was the focus of most of the international headlines on Christmas Day-2017. The worldwide reverberations of Trump's decision to move the U. S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is shaking up the world's pros and cons and is something that not even the three Bush administrations dared to do. While all previous U. S. administrations since 1948 have lavished Israel with massive economic and military aid, and in the United Nations routinely used the U. S. veto to protect Israel from international condemnations, only Trump's USA has dared to slice drastically into America's 22% funding of the UN. Trump, however, has now done all of those things and the repercussions are worldwide, including in Cuba, the island that garnered one of those headlines.

     On Christmas Day-2017 major Israeli news outlets used the photo above of Nikki Haley, Trump's Ambassador to the UN. Two of those Israeli news organizations used virtually the same sentence to salute their #2 USA hero, after #1 Trump. The sentence was: "Ambassador Haley Christmas Day revealed herself as a lioness standing up for the state of Israel." As she threatened in a UN speech before and after Trump's Jerusalem decision was voted down, Ambassador Haley on Christmas Day announced that the U. S. was drastically cutting its funding of the UN. Haley also had famously said she was "taking names" of countries that opposed the U. S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem. All the UN nations except 9, Israel and 8 other small countries, opposed the move. And, yes, Haley Christmas Day lived up to her threat by cutting U. S. aid to the UN and by rewarding the 8 little nations that supported the U.S. & Israel. For example, one of the 8, Guatemala, the 4th biggest recipient of U. S. aid, now expects even more U. S. dollars after it announced on Christmas Day that it is joining the United States and moving its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

     After her well-publicized Mafia-like threats against any nation that dared to defy either the USA or Israel, Ambassador Haley was officially called Trump's "Mob Boss" by MSNBC, one of the powerful left-wing news outlets conspiring to impeach Trump and presumably defeat, defame, and defang his "Mob Boss," Nikki Haley.

     However, many within President Donald Trump's inner-circle, including the First Lady Melania, don't trust Nikki Haley as far as they could throw her. They believe Haley's allegiance and fealty is to Senator Marco Rubio, not President Trump. Haley, then the Governor of South Carolina, and Rubio mocked and demeaned Trump during the Republican presidential primary as Haley massively campaigned for Rubio's fervent presidential bid in 2016. It is well-known Rubio is lining up tons of money from multi-billionaire Jewish donors, such as Sheldon Edelson, to fund Rubio's 2020 presidential campaign. Meanwhile, it is believed that Melania and other family members have warned President Trump that Haley & Rubio will align with his left-wing enemies to grease his precipitous fall off the cliff the moment they deem it is propitious for them to take over the reins of the Republican Party. That's important in a two-party political system in which the left-wing Democratic Party seems too extreme for most of the U. S. voters who, in 2016, were left to choose between the lesser-of-two-evils, the non-establishment Trump or yet-another Clinton. Also, the Haley & Rubio alliance is 100% pro-Israel and 100% anti-Cuba, meaning the targeted Caribbean island will be particularly impacted by any further political advancement by the Haley-Rubio tandem. In other words, President Trump's anointment of Rubio as America's new Cuban dictator coincides with Trump's appointment of Nikki Haley as America's Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations.

       AND YES, while it is well-known that President Trump has tried to appease Rubio for the time-being by anointing him as the USA's new Cuban dictator, it is well-known...as the above photo-graphic indicates, that Nikki Haley is more "ISRAEL'S AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS" than America's Ambassador to the United Nations. That presumably is in keeping with Haley's fealty to Marco Rubio whom Haley apparently believes can win the United States presidency in 2020 because of the anticipated avalanche of Jewish money that will support Rubio, especially with Haley essentially serving as "ISRAEL'S AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS. In any case, the unholy Haley-Rubio-Trump triangle is bad news for Cuba because it is apparent that Trump, even pending his impending demise, will support the Haley-Rubio attempt to utterly destroy Revolutionary Cuba, an ongoing American effort that has persisted, with massively un-positive results, since 1959.

         But the Christmas Day-2017 inclusion of tiny but nuclear-powered & super-powerful Israel into the dark Haley-Rubio plans for Cuba should not be under-stated. For example, one of the Christmas Day-2017 Israeli headlines directly concerned Cuba.

        One of the major Christmas Day-2017 articles by the Israeli media featured the above photo of the Cuban flag. That's because the article revealed this news:

               "Israel held secret talks with Cuba in recent years with the aim of establishing relations. After the Obama administration reached out to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014, Israel tried to establish close ties with the Caribbean island. Israel's Foreign Minster Director Dore Gold led that effort, which was ongoing until Republican Donald Trump replaced Democrat Barack Obama as the President of the United States. Israel officials said the Cuban talks were positive right up until November-2016 when Trump was surprisingly elected the new President of the United States."

   So that takes us back around to Trump's...or is it Rubio's or Israel's?...Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. In essence, because of her indelible ties to Rubio, Haley is also known as "Israel's Ambassador to the UN." Thus, as 2017 fades away, the Haley-Rubio-Israel alliance in the New Year of 2018 might constitute the biggest threat to Revolutionary Cuba since 1959. Remember that it was first MSNBC that called Nikki Haley the "Mob Boss" but the newly named President of NBC News, the very Jewish Noah Oppenheim, is not the President of the United States. Trump is. Therefore on Christmas Day-2017 two little but powerful nations -- Denmark and Norway -- followed the "Mob Boss's" warning against opposing the USA or Israel, and both those nations vowed to stop funding any businesses that were boycotting Israel because of its controversial dominance of the Palestinians. If more nations, including larger ones, also show they are afraid of the "Mob Boss," that would increasingly NOT BODE WELL for Cuba.   And thus, the fireworks in the Cuban city of Remedios that generated headlines on Christmas Day-2017 COULD BE miniscule to the fireworks that might entail all of Cuba in 2018. As long as Marco Rubio and his "Mob Boss" can hide behind the incomparable economic and military might of the United States, no nation that opposes them is totally safe, especially Cuba.

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Christmas in Cuba, 2017

Yes, It's A Big Deal!!!
{Christmas, December 25, 2017}

     In the USA, where the Cuban narrative since 1959 has almost exclusively been dictated by vile transplanted remnants of the vile and overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship, the above image might come as a surprise. Yes, carved into the coastal sands of Cuba are the words "Merry Christmas" with an actual Santa Claus hat used as an exclamation point. The "surprise" for Americans relates to the fact that, for the most part, remnants from the Batista-Mafia dictatorship on the island have also mostly dictated U.S.-Cuban history, which means most of it is self-serving lies. Regarding "Christmas in Cuba, 2017", I believe Americans deserve a touch of real, authentic Cuban history.

    The actual bit of history depicted above reminds me that children on the island of Cuba are every bit as precious as the children in the USA at Christmastime in 2017 -- and that includes my own beloved children and grandchildren. So, on Christmas Eve in the year of 2017 I'll tell you about a personal Christmas story that concerned both Cuba and the USA this very week.

       One of my best friends happens to be a Cuban-Cuban, meaning she has family that lives in Miami but her heart is, and always will be, in Revolutionary Cuba...along with her high-profile physical presence. Her name is Rosy Amaro Perez. Highly educated, extremely intelligent, vivacious, and marvelously talented, Rosy is unknown in the USA but well-known in Cuba as an outstanding broadcast journalist and television news anchor. I know her well and can attest to the fact that she is fervently devoted to Cuba and fiercely supportive of the Cubans on the island. She is also a young mother and it is her motherhood that inspired the 2017 Christmas story that I will now share with you for what it's worth and it's actually worth a lot.

     Four years ago on October 10th Rosy Amaro Perez gave birth to a beautiful and very precious daughter, Mariana. I'm a rather poor American but, as usual, I've been rather generous regarding Christmas gifts for my children and grandchildren. I asked Rosy if she could go online and select a $200 gift for Mariana that I could pay for with my debit card. Rosy quickly replied, reminding me that, having family in the U. S., she well knew how "difficult" if not impossible that would be because of the embargo. Furthermore, she said, even if it was possible the mere transaction would balloon the $200 into an unrealistic economic stratosphere, apparently...as I then surmised...to enrich and appease the unconscionable criminal element that has benefited from the embargo since 1962. Rosy in Cuba is quite aware that I have a granddaughter in the USA who is almost the same age as her Mariana.  And so, after Rosy patiently informed me how impractical or impossible it would be for me to pay for a $200 Christmas gift for Mariana, she added these two sentences: "Your sincerity in caring for Mariana and me makes us both very happy. So I want you to buy another Christmas gift for your granddaughter and pretend that it is for Mariana."

   Every time I interact with the beautiful Rosy Amaro Perez...the mother of the beautiful Mariana...reminds me that she is a far more intelligent and a far more decent person than the handful of persons in the United States whom the American people have allowed since 1962 to unmercifully target little girls like Rosy, when she was a child, and now Mariana, Rosy's child. "So I want you to buy another Christmas gift for your granddaughter and pretend it is for Mariana." I am abundantly aware...at Christmastime-2017 in the United States of America...that sentence means nothing to 320 million propagandized Americans. But rest assured that...it means a lot to me."

      But please understand that I do not feel sorry for Cuban children on the island like Rosy's Mariana and her huggable friend Diego. I've been to Cuba as a grandfather and I know Mariana's grandfather Rodolfo as well as her mother Rosy. So, I know that Mariana and children like her are massively loved, protected, and cared for on the island. The people I actually feel sorry for are the Americans who callously allow, decade after decade, a handful of Cuban-Americans and Americans to punish Cuban children on the island like Mariana and Diego who do not hate America and who had nothing to do with chasing the very brutal Batistianos to Miami way back in 1959.

    This week...Christmas week, 2017...Rosy Amaro Perez took the photo above of her daughter Mariana, on the right, confidently posing with her dear friend, another precious little Cuban child. "So buy another Christmas gift for your granddaughter and pretend it is for Mariana." It is, of course, that very appropriate world "pretend" that makes me feel sorry not for Rosy or for Rosy's Mariana on the island of Cuba but for my America, which unfortunately today is Marco Rubio's anti-Mariana America.

A greeting in the sands of Cuba.

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