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