And Not Just Miami Cubans!!
Today and tomorrow -- December 20th and 21st, 2019 -- the 605-member Cuban National Assembly is holding sessions to discuss issues relating to what most members believe is the USA's Trump regime conducting genocide on everyday Cubans. Another item that will be decided is the naming of a Prime Minister to assist President Miguel Diaz-Canel's governing of the island. The last time Cuba had a Prime Minister was forty years ago when overall leader Fidel Castro was transitioned, among other things, to President to replace Osvaldo Dorticos. The new Prime Minister will serve for five years and must come from the full National Assembly, be at least 35 and be a citizen of Cuba by birth.
Powerful Cubans such the three above are among the major candidates to be the island's new Prime Minister by tomorrow, Dec. 21-2019.
Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel not only approves the position of Prime Minister but he suggested it.
If he wants the job as Cuba's new Prime Minister, Alejandro Castro Espin will likely be named to the position tomorrow. He is the son of two revolutionary icons, his still-living dad Raul Castro and his late mother Vilma Espin.
Raul and Alejandro.
Of all {13} of the children of Raul and Fidel, Alejandro Castro Espin is easily the most powerful. It is now known that Alejandro represented Cuba in all the major decisions that finalized the historic normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations during the administration of President Barack Obama.
And now we know that Ben Rhodes represented Obama and the United States during the massive discussions that brought detente that drastically normalized six decades of fierce animosity between the two neighboring nations that followed the Jan. 1-1959 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship that robbed and brutalized Cuba throughout most of the 1950s. In his insightful book "THE WORLD AS IT IS," Ben Rhodes revealed his exhaustive and delicate discussions with Alejandro Castro Espin during secretive meetings the two men had first in Canada and then later in a neutral Caribbean country. In his book, Rhodes detailed that Alejandro powerfully and expertly laid out what Cuba wanted and didn't want from Obama and the USA. For example, Alejandro adamantly wanted the Cuban 5 -- the Cubans who had been sent up-to-lifetime jail terms in the U. S. to please vicious Counter Revolutionary Cubans in Miami. Amazingly, Alejandro insisted that the imprisoned Cubans were returned to Cuba as national heroes for their work trying to prevent terrorism against innocent Cubans by Cuban exiles in Miami. Amazingly, Rhodes on behalf of Obama agreed to freeing the Cuban 5 who remain superb national heroes on the island today. Also in his book, Rhodes said that Alejandro insisted that the U. S. return Guantanamo Bay to Cuba because Alejandro maintained that the U. S. had stole the plush land and port in 1903 when occupied Cuba was dominated by the U. S. after the 1898 Spanish-American War. Rhodes was sympathetic to Alejandro's plea about Guantanamo Bay but the persistent Cuban negotiator finally understood that Obama could not deliver that jewel back to Cuba because the U. S. Congress, which abides with Miami extremists on Cuban issues, dictates that the congressional Helms-Burton Law, a Batistiano goldmine, controls things such as the infamous but "legal" theft of Guantanamo Bay. After reluctantly accepting the situation that governs Guantanamo Bay, Alejandro basically won all of his other demands, making the normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations an historic fact -- at least till the Republican Trump replaced the Democrat Obama as President of the United States in January of 2017.
This photo shows President Obama and Ben Rhodes looking out the windows of Air Force One on its historic flight over Havana in March of 2016. Because of help from Rhodes, Obama became the first U. S. President with the guts and decency to visit Cuba since President Herbert Hoover visited the occupied island on a warship in 1928.
Not only did Ben Rhodes represent President Obama in all the delicate negotiations with Alejandro Castro Aspin that normalized U.S.-Cuban relations, Ben Rhodes was the speech-writer who wrote all of Obama's speeches related to Cuba. That included the speech above in which, while in Cuba, Obama spoke on state-wide Cuban television and radio the above words: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." They were sincere words delivered by Obama and written by Ben Rhodes alhought that promise was later turned upside-down, unfortunately, by the less decent and less intelligent Trump administration that followed the Obama presidency.
But the Ben Rhodes' book "THE WORLD AS IT IS" remains the best documentations about how Cuba and the United States finalized the historic detente during the Obama presidency. One fact that Rhodes documents in his book is the fact that Alejandro Castro Espin is one of the three most powerful people in Cuba today.
And tomorrow -- Dec. 21st, 2019 -- Alejandro Castro Espin will be named Cuba's Prime Minister unless he has already decided that he doesn't want the position. Alejandro was born 54-years-ago in Havana.
Earlier in Havana this week an amazing thing happened: A decent Cuban, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, and a decent American, Benjamin Chavis, held discussions about how the two neighboring countries can possibly have decent interactions even as another Republican administration, Trump's, is determined to finally recapture the island to appease a handful of Little Havana-headquartered Cubans in Miami and in the U. S. Congress. Carlos de Cossio is Cuba's top Minister related to U. S. relations and Ben Chavis is the President and Executive Director of the National Association of Newspaper Publishers. This session in the latter days of December-2019 is actually a part of Edition XVIII of the Series of Conversations About Cuba in the Foreign Policy of the United States. This session is ultra-important but mostly unreported because the Trump-authorized genocide of innocent Cubans on the island is being gruesomely carried out by a few unchecked Cuban Counter Revolutionaries even as Trump's impeachment is continuing to dominate both the mainstream U. S. media and the United States Congress.
In the above news conference, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio summarized his discussions with Ben Chavis with these words: "Cuba negotiated with Obama's people and had great results and benefits for Cubans and Americans. But Trump's people will not speak with us and all they do is impose more-and-more genocidal assaults on the Cuban people. And that's where we are now, as we stand ready to discuss with the United States relations to help both nations. We need to act like friends, not enemies, because we are neighbors."
And then, as de Cossio listened, America's Ben Chavis said, "I represent Americans who are working with Cubans like Mr. de Cossio now because we are not waiting for November of 2020 till President Trump, who is surrounded with bad people, is voted out of office. The vast majority of Cubans as well as Americans and Cuban-Americans want us to succeed, and America is still a democracy. And our democracy must respond to the will of its people, EVEN concerning CUBA."
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