At Christmastime 2018!!
{Updated: Tuesday, December 25th, 2018}
At Christmastime in the Americas in 2018, most citizens are celebrating the end of a fading year and gaily anticipating the New Year of 2019. But the most targeted nation in the Western Hemisphere, very vulnerable Cuba, is primarily dealing with other age-old realities concerning the environment and geography -- namely the island's sometime wicked attacks from the often fierce Caribbean weather and the island's close proximity, unfortunately, to the Counter Revolutionary zealots headquartered in Miami's Little Havana sector. The photo above shows workers at Cuba's main government building, MINREX, dealing this past Holiday weekend with Havana's latest flood that yet again highlighted the capital city's dangerous ocean-front shoreline. A key MINREX official, Johana Tablada, wrote: "Asi esta entorno de nuestro Ministeria a las 12 horas. La Habana y el mar, relacion de amor y peligro." {"This is the environment for our Ministry at 12 o'clock. Havana and the sea, relationship of love and danger."}. Yes, love & danger.
The people this weekend cleaning up the most important office complex in Havana include top MINREX government officials such as Johana Tablada, Ana Teresita, and Marcelino Medina.
This weekend's flood plaguing Havana only troubled the lowest-lying areas near the famed Malecon Seawall, but Cubans such as the frustrated young man shown walking away after he viewed the partially flooded street is newly confronted with more assaults than just those from the often-fickle, sometimes deadly Caribbean weather. The primary attacks for everyday Cubans are coming from Little Havana, the U. S. Congress, and the White House in Washington...a foreign land much stronger and many times richer than Cuba.
The last major hurricane that tormented Havana and the entire island was a reminder that the nearby Superpower United States once again came to the financial and recovery aid of other Hurricane-devastated Caribbean nations, all except Cuba. Instead of helping 11.4 million totally innocent everyday Cubans during such disasters, the United States takes advantage of such Cuban problems by even blocking or scaring off other nations from providing needed material and other assistance to the swamped Cuban people.
Since January of 1959 the Cuban policies of the United States have been largely dictated by what Cubans on the island consider the criminals {and now their rich-and-powerful offspring} from the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship, which quickly resettled in their new headquarters on U. S. soil, namely nearby Miami but also such Mafia-influenced USA cities as Newark. For the world's greatest Democracy to allow that to persist for six decades, while also failing to even recapture Cuba, does two things: {1} It shames the United States far more than it shames Cuba; and {2} it has been allowed to shame both the U. S. and Democracy more than any other topic in the eyes of the entire world. For example, in 2016 -- the final year in which the decent Barack Obama was President of the United States, the entire world voted 191-to-0 at the UN to condemn the USA for its gutless and cruel Cuban policies, and the loud unanimity of that vote was endorsed by the then decent U. S. President Obama. Yet, to appease a handful of yet another generation of Batista-Mafia benefactors, the USA Cuban policies...as universally depicted by the Carlos LaTuff image above, persists. That fact shines the primary spotlight not on the criminal benefactors but on the generations of cowardly and unpatriotic U. S. citizens who have so meekly allowed the LaTuff image to shame America and Democracy every day since January 1, 1959. The quintessential image of America's Cuban policy since the 1950s IS the Latuff image; it embarrasses me as a democracy-loving American and I will forever not understand why it doesn't embarrass more Americans other than the most decent ones, like Obama.
During his two terms as President of the United States {2009-2017} Barack Obama did all he could to bring decency and sanity to America's Cuban policies...including the normalization of everything he could possibly normalize. He even became the first U. S. President since Herbert Hoover {who visited the island on a warship} to visit Cuba since 1928. While in Cuba, the decent President Obama, speaking directly {see above} to the Cuban people on nationwide television, made this sincerely brave, and eminently decent statement: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." Of course, when he made that sincere, decent, and sane promise to the Cuban people, President Obama didn't anticipate that his successor as President would be a Republican named Donald Trump.
From 1952, when the USA sicced the Mafia on Cuba so rich Americans could partake in the fleecing of Cuba, through the year 2018 all six Republican administrations in Washington have been tightly aligned with the Batista-Mafia rape-and-robbery of Cuba, which includes since 1959 the vicious military-terrorist-assassination-embargo attempts to re-capture the vulnerable but pugnacious island. Thus, shortly after being inaugurated on Jan. 20-2017 as America's all-time most unlikely President, Donald Trump made a beeline to Little Havana in Miami to inform the most vicious Cuban-American Counter Revolutionaries that he would not only reverse all of Obama's decency towards Cuba but he would also avenge their, and America's, humiliating military defeat at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. Today, as we prepare to enter the new year of 2019, Little Havana in Miami is awash in tributes to Assault Brigade 2506, the losers along with the United States at the Bay of Pigs. When Trump made those promises in Little Havana he was highlighting the Brigade 2506 banner and, of course, he was doing so in a lavish Little Havana building named for one of the Brigade 2506 attack leaders.
Since his despicable lack of respect for the United States democracy was on display in front of the Brigada Asalto 2506 banner in Little Havana, President Trump has spent two years turning America's Cuban policy back over to the most self-serving Counter Revolutionary zealots on U. S. soil -- such as Marco Rubio, John Bolton, Mauricio Claver-Carone, and Little Havana's Diaz-Balart clan whose father Rafael Diaz-Balart was a key Minister in Cuba's Batista-Mafia dictatorship and, after 1959, one of the all-time richest and most powerful Counter Revolutionary extremists on American soil.
As America approaches the New Year of 2019, since 1959 the Diaz-Balart family and other extreme zealots with extreme ties dating back to Cuba's Batista dictatorship have been allowed to dictate the Cuban policies and the Cuban narratives in the United States to suit their whims, greed, and revenge.
This week the much-maligned but very sophisticated Cuban state media has used the above image to respond to such things as a Batistiano-dictated control of the Cuban narrative in the USA. The above photo and words were spewed to the world on Twitter by Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Little Havana/Counter Revolutionary fame. For the past three decades Ros-Lehtinen has been extremely effective as a vicious anti-Cuban member of the U. S. Congress, a position gifted to her in 1989 by the self-serving Bush dynasty when Jeb Bush was Ros-Lehtinen's Campaign Manager. Using the photo above, Ros-Lehtinen was trying to depict a revolt or anti-government demonstration by Cubans. The U. S. media, of course, accepted the apparent ruse as a typical component of the U. S. Cuban narrative, but the Cuban media also pointed out that the photo was not taken in Cuba...but in Egypt against the Egyptian government, and there was no such anti-Cuban demonstration. Cairo is not Havana, except maybe when a juxtaposition can benefit the USA Cuban narrative.
Regardless of what cruelty is directed at Cubans on their island, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and all the Little Havana politicians have gotten a totally free ride from the U. S. media. After three decades of a Bush dynasty-sponsored tenure in the U. S. Congress from Miami, Ros-Lehtinen is retiring. She expected her hand-picked successor, one of America's most famous Hispanic journalists, would be elected to succeed her.
The Nov.-2018 election to replace Ros-Lehtinen in the U. S. Congress pitted 77-year-old Donna Shalala against Maria Elvira Salazar, Ros-Lehtinen's and Donald Trump's pick.
The new U. S. Congresswoman from Ros-Lehtinen's Florida district, Donna Shalala, indicates that Little Havana's grip on politics in Florida and in the U. S. Congress is showing some cracks. If so, it's about time...considering that most of the 2+ million Cuban-Americans favor decent treatment of Cubans on the island and therefore their voices need to be stronger.
From the first day almost two years ago when Donald Trump was sworn in as America's 45th President, the ultra-powerful and ultra-rich left-wing media in the United States has refused to accept his election and thus, for the past two years, has engaged in an all-out media coup to impeach him without doing the democratic thing, which is waiting for the next presidential election to democratically perform that deed. The anti-democratic/extreme left-wing culprits seeking to impeach/imprison Trump include...the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, and ABC. All those omnipotent and so-called news outlets are far less interested in covering the news than in overturning the Trump presidency. And yet...not any of those left-wing/anti-Trump media sources has the guts to even mention Trump's most diabolical digression, which is his Batistiano/Mafiosi-driven Cuban policies. And this is so even though all of those aforementioned left-wing media culprits assign their propagandists-pundits {masquerading as real journalists} to dig up and exploit anything possible to demean Trump -- anything possible, that is, except Trump's most demeaning action, which is turning America's Cuban policies back over to the Counter Revolutionary extremists.
And so, ironically, the besieged President Trump is actually correct when he accuses the left-wing/Fake News culprits of shaming America's democratic principles by using a media coup to try to overthrow his presidency. And moreover...frankly, my dear...the left-wing media extremists did not do democracy-lovers like me any favors by putting Trump in the White House following Obama...and moreover might further exacerbate the situation by getting Trump re-elected for a second term beginning in 2020.
In other words, while the ultra-powerful left-wing extremists who dominate the pundit/propagandist-driven U. S. media are trying so hard to dethrone President Trump and even put him in JAIL, the white backlash to such anti-democratic stupidity put Trump in the White House for his first term and might give him a second term.
Meanwhile, on the island of Cuba at Christmastime in 2018, this young Cuban man had to check on the latest flood to hit Havana. But the main threat to him and the other 11.4 million Cubans on the island, most Cubans believe, is what they consider another criminal administration, Trump's, in Washington.
And meanwhile, this young Cuban woman, and most of the other 11.4 million Cubans on the island, are busy studying what is the first new Cuban Constitution since the 1970s. Then on February 24th, 2019, she and the other everyday Cubans will actually get to vote on the island's new Constitution. Of course, it is not perfect...BUT it is not nearly as imperfect as self-serving miscreants hiding behind the skirts of a nearby Superpower being allowed to punish this woman because she has chosen not to defect to Miami and not to try to overthrow her revolutionary government, which she hopes the new constitution will improve while the one thing she has no control over or input on is the Trump-Batistiano administration in Washington.
And Through it all, Cuba's sovereign revolutionary flag still waves in those often troubling Caribbean breezes. And while imperfect, it is better than another Batistiano-Mafiosi flag representing the Caribbean's largest, most beautiful, and most coveted island nation. In other words, Cubans on the island should determine Cuba's future, not miscreants hiding decade after decade behind the skirts of a foreign Superpower.
AND BY THE WAY:
Cuba's new President Miguel Diaz-Canel frequently uses Twitter and the Cuban Radio & Television media to connect with the people. His Dec. 23rd-2018 Tweet shown above says: "Much congratulations to Mailen Diaz Almaguer on your birthday. All Cubans celebrate with you. With love and appreciation we wish you a happy day. We are Cuba. We are continuity."
The 19-year-old Mailen Diaz Almaguer is the only survivor from the May 18-2018 plane crash on the edge of Havana that killed the other 112 people on board.
This is Mailen right after the crash.
With massive injuries from the top of her head to her toes, Mailen was provided loving minute-by-minute care at Calixto Garcia Hospital, the island's top trauma facility. Once she was out of danger, Mailen was moved to the renowned Amejeiras Brothers rehabilitation unit where on December 23rd she celebrated her 20th birthday along with the island's President.
This is Mailen's sister Maylen showing a beloved Smart Phone photo of Mailen just before the crash. There were still sad tears in Maylen's eyes, but some happy, grateful tears too.
This photo shows Mailen, on the left, looking strong on her 20th birthday on Dec. 23rd-2018. The selfi was taken by her sister Maylen and posted on Facebook and in the Cuban media.
The horrendous airplane crash occurred exactly one month after Miguel Diaz-Canel had become President of Cuba on April 19th, 2018. Within minutes of the tragedy, President Diaz-Canel was at the site as shown above. Cuba's Triumphs & Tragedies are now Diaz-Canel's.
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