It's Very Often Not Easy!!
This week both the Miami Herald and the London-based Reuters news agency had interesting revelations about the above airplane. Gulfstream Air Charter is legally contracted in conjunction with Wow Air to fly planes like this one from Miami to Cuba. The popular and coveted flights, however, have been curtailed...not because of the U. S. embargo against Cuba but by Cuba because Cuba is denying permission for the planes to land. Gulfstream spokesman Ever Chang said, "Every day 300 people arrive who were going to travel to Cuba, and the only explanation we have to give to each client is that Cuba has not given authorization to land. About 1,000 passengers are left grounded." These are passengers the U. S. will allow to fly to Cuba, but Cuba won't. Cuba's reasoning is not clear because the island depends mightily on tourism and well knows that Americans are the biggest spenders on the island, once both nations allow them to visit.
Back when U. S. President Obama was trying desperately to normalize relations between the USA and Cuba, JetBlue Airlines on August 31, 2016, made the first commercial {non-charter} flight from the U. S. to Cuba in over 50 years. That historic flight was from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Santa Clara in Cuba. Since then, although the Cuba-friendly Obama presidency has been replaced by the Cuba-hating Trump administration, many of America's top airlines have continued service from many American cities to Cuban cities.
And at any given time Cubans can stand on Cuban docks and welcome huge cruise ships bringing tourists to the island from the USA.
Cubans, like the young girl above shown welcoming a cruise ship into Havana Harbor, are friends and admirers of Americans and the American flag. Despite the transition from the friendly Obama presidency to the unfriendly Trump presidency, Cuba is close to having five million tourists in 2018 and expects to far exceed that in 2019. And those figures don't includ the 500,000-or-so Cuban-Americans who regularly fly back-and-forth to the island, often bringing very nice gifts to their friends or relatives. Of course, both America and Cuba need more citizens like the friendly Cuban girl depicted above...and like the 2+ million Cuban-Americans who send about $5 billion each year to the island to help Cubans. By contrast, abiding by the shameful dictates of a few revengeful Cuban-Americans, American taxpayers each year spend billions of dollars trying to starve, deprive, and make miserable {according to de-classified U. S. documents} Cubans on the island to induced them to overthrow their government, which is NOT going to happen because of remembrances of the United States-backed Batista-Mafia regime that preceded it.
What both Cuba and America needs less of is generation-after-generation of fiercely Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans dictating a cruel, revengeful, and failed Cuban policy while hiding behind the skirts of the world's economic and military Superpower.
The U. S. embargo against Cuba has been in effect since 1962 to starve-deprive-make miserable Cubans on the island. And that explains why in 2016 during the decent Obama presidency the embargo was condemned by a worldwide unanimous 191-to-0 vote. Yet, to appease a few Cuban hardliners in Miami, Newark and the U. S. Congress, the embargo is allowed to shame America and Democracy generation after generation. Such cruelty is insane.
And through it all:
This Cuban girl demonstrates the right path.
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