And Here's Why!!
This AP/Ramon Espinosa photo shows Cuba's 85-year-old President Raul Castro instructing guests in Santiago de Cuba Saturday night -- Nov. 3-2016 -- after a laborious caravan had taken the ashes of his 90-year-old, more-famous brother Fidel Castro from Havana back to their home area in eastern Cuba.
Then last night Raul took to the rostrum to praise his brother Fidel, and shed some tears. The big headline from the speech was that Fidel's wishes will be granted to make sure that a cult of personality surrounding the legendary rebel will not evolve. Raul said, as ordered by Fidel, there will be no statues of Fidel and no streets, buildings or any such other edifices named for him.
The 4-day journey from Havana to Santiago ended late Saturday and returned Fidel Castro's remains to the area where he was born in 1926 and where he launched his Cuban Revolution in 1953. This Sunday morning -- Dec. 4th, 2016 -- his ashes were buried in a quiet ceremony at a private family plot.
The reason I believe the vulnerable but pugnacious island of Cuba has no chance as 2016 is about to turn into 2017 is not because revolutionary icon Fidel Castro died at age 90 on November 25th, 2016.
And the reason Cuba has no chance on the eve of 2017 is not because the incoming President of the anti-Cuban colossal to the north, Donald Trump, went to Little Havana in Miami prior to his election and promised the aging members of Brigade 2506 {which infamously attacked Revolutionary Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961} that he would "recapture" the island for them before the last of them died of old age.
But this photo, which speaks a thousand silent words, is the reason after all these decades that Revolutionary Cuba has no chance. This photo was taken this week for USA Today, America's largest newspaper. Like the rest of the mainstream U. S. media, USA Today has neither the guts nor the integrity to tell the truth about Cuba. To cover Cuba's monumental and historic event this week -- the death of Fidel Castro -- USA Today typically sent Alan Gomez, it's Cuban writer, to the island to report on Castro's demise at age 90. Gomez is a Miami-based Cuban-American with a massive family bias against Castro and his Revolution because he booted the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders off the island two generations ago, way back in January of 1959. For the most part, he only booted them to nearby Miami, the famed U. S. city that since then has been known as Little Havana, the capital of the first and only Banana Republic on U. S. soil. Alan Gomez is the only type U. S. journalist allowed to regularly report on Cuba and Cuba regularly allows him to fly back and forth to the island from Miami, knowing his articles in USA Today will be vehemently biased against Cuba. That was, of course, the precise case this week when Gomez's two heralded articles about the death of Fidel Castro featured and highlighted {above} the malicious comments of Berta Soler, the most dangerous Cuban dissident and, according to many everyday Cubans, surely one of the best-funded.
This USA Today photo of Berta Soler was featured in the first of Alan Gomez's two extremely biased articles this week in America's largest newspaper. Both articles highlighted vicious quotes from Berta Soler explaining why she was euphoric over the death of Fidel Castro, with Alan Gomez and USA Today trying to convey the lie that all the Cubans on the island felt exactly the way Berta Soler does. The sheer fact that such "journalism" is a blatant distortion of reality doesn't faze Alan Gomez, USA Today, and the rest of the mainstream U. S. media. My lament over that depravity is not in defense of Fidel Castro or Cuba but, instead, it is in defense of my two higher priorities -- America and democracy. You see, unlike many propagandized Americans, I regret such things as the recent 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations that, in astounding international unanimity, denounced America's anti-democratic Cuban policy that either cowardly or unpatriotic Americans, for two generations now, have allowed to persist unchallenged.
This photo also says a thousand words about why Cuba now has no chance. It shows Berta Soler brandishing her biggest anti-Cuba weapon -- a passport. As with Cuba's other two most famed dissidents -- Yoani Sanchez and Guillermo Farinas -- Berta Soler can now fly back-and-forth from Havana to Miami and to the U. S. Congress in Washington or to other Western capitals around the world. When they return to Cuba each time, they are armed with far more celebrity and, many say, far more funds to conduct their overthrow-the-Cuban-government enterprises.
This photo shows Berta Soler in Europe smiling as her earphone explains in Spanish why she has received a major award from right-wing European sources for her anti-Castro activities on the island.
This photo shows Berta Soler being heralded at a ceremony in the United States Congress hosted by vicious and now very rich anti-Castro U. S. Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez. The other lady in the photo is anti-Castro zealot Yolanda Huergas. Unmentioned, of course, at that news conference was and is the billions of tax dollars that, since 1959, have flowed out of Congress to support an unending barrage of anti-Castro schemes as well as to fund an unending torrent of programs that also enrich and empower anti-Castro zealots via the vast and lucrative Castro Cottage Industry that will continue to flourish in the U. S. even after the death from old age of the 90-year-old Fidel Castro, who has a page in the Guinness Book of World Records for having survived some 627 or so assassination attempts, which is interesting because he always fought from the front-lines while the Batistianos fled to the U. S. to hurl their bricks back at him, always missing him but always hurting everyday Cubans on the island with such things as hotel bombings, a civilian airplane bombing, and an economic embargo that is the longest and cruelest, since 1962, ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation. For those reasons, the rest of the nations in the world oppose -- by a UN vote of 191-to-0 -- the Batistiano-dictation of America's asine, cruel Cuban policy.
But that anti-American Cuban policy will continue despite its zero international support. The above photo explains why that is so. That's Senator Menendez escorting the apparently well-heeled Berta Soler through the halls of Congress. Like the other six most-vicious Cuban-American members of Congress, anti-Castro zealots and beneficiaries like Menendez can't be voted out of Congress although, amazingly, all polls show the majority of Cuban-Americans -- even in Miami and New Jersey -- favor President Obama's decent efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, not their cruelty. However, the chances of such moderate Cuban-Americans getting elected to Congress are slim & none and, quite frankly, probably dangerous.
Back on Cuban soil with more fame and supposedly more resources after visits to Europe, Miami or Congress, Berta Soler is better able to direct her Ladies in White in massive anti-Castro demonstrations. Most everyday Cubans resent the disruptions and often taken actions against them. But apparently the primary aim of Ladies is to provoke photos such as the one above in which Cuban soldiers react. A photo like this generally gets far more coverage in the U. S. media than far more anti-government demonstrations in the United States...such as the one taking place now by Sioux Indians on the Standing Rock Reservation that straddles the North and South Dakota borders. In mostly crime-free Cuba, police shootings of civilians don't seem to occur for eager photographers or Smart-Phone videographers, so provocative demonstrations are designed as primary tools in which to help stir anti-Cuban passions -- especially in the United States but actually not in Cuba among more enlightened everyday Cubans.
A photo like this, Berta Soler well knows, will greatly increase her support in the U. S. Congress and other rich spots. But London-based international media giants such as Reuters are free to also report that the demonstrations that provoke them are mostly "nuisances" for everyday Cubans and "major headaches" for female Cuban soldiers, like the ones shown above, who primarily have to end up dealing with them.
This is not to say that anti-Castro dissidents on the island -- such as famed blogger Yoani Sanchez -- should be silenced, jailed or mauled. But I am saying that no foreign nation should be the prime impetus or the prime funder of such dissidence. The Cuban Revolution way back in 1953 was, in fact, spawned by the incredibly wicked United States and Mafia support of the thieving, brutal, and murderous Batista dictatorship. Thus, Revolutionary Cuba should not be constantly criticized in the U. S. for being sensitive to the well known and well funded and unending U. S. efforts to overthrow the Cuban government, efforts spear-headed by rich, powerful and unchecked Cuban exiles and their easily acquired sycophants such as the Bush dynasty. QUESTION: Would the United States be sensitive if China or Russia or Iran openly financed and legislated well-known efforts in those countries and in the U. S. to overthrow the U. S. government? I believe the answer is "Yes" and that is also the answer that little Cuba is earnestly trying to convey.
Like with Berta Soler, the most famed and supposedly the richest anti-Castro dissident on the island, Yoani Sanchez, is now allowed by Cuba to fly back-and-for to Miami and the U. S. Congress. She is flanked above in the U. S. Congress by two prime Cuban-American dissidents -- Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, who seem to believe that recapturing Cuba is their primary duty as opposed to working on saner and more decent projects that concern the American people. Prior to getting Cuban passports to fly around the world, Yoani's anti-Castro blog had already made her the most famous Cuban dissident. AND THEN, guess what? After visits to Miami and Congress she returned to Cuba and announced she had enough funds...money...to also add a well-funded and multi-staffed DIGITAL NEWSPAPER, which she did.
Thus, it doesn't take much imagination to know why the "Made in USA" label is often attacked to anti-Castro dissidents in Cuba like Yoani Sanchez. As far as I know, Cuba doesn't fund United States dissidents on United States soil, and if it did it probably couldn't afford to fund free healthcare and free educations through college for all its citizens or to fund scientists who have invented vaccines and medicines for cancer and diabetes that doctors and clinics in the United States are desperately trying to get access to if the greedy Batistianos will relax the embargo long enough for Americans to acquire such medical help from a little revolutionary government that both the World Health Organization and the Pan Am Health Organization say "should be health and educational models for the rest of the world," considering what Cuba has been able to accomplish despite the embargo...and other criminal assaults...imposed by miscreants hiding behind the skirts of the world's superpower, the superpower that was surely the most respected nation in the world till it began getting 191-to-0 denunciations in the United Nations related to CUBA!
The antithesis to Berta Soler and Yoani Sanchez in Cuba is Cristina Escobar, a passionate, extremely talented Cuban who will passionately defend her island. Americans are not supposed to know it, but there are more Cristinas on the island than Bertas or Yoanis. The image above is taken from an interview respected Florida journalist Tracey Eaton videotaped in Cuba for the Pulitzer Center. Two versions of that interview are posted on YouTube in case you want Cuban information not dictated by the Batistianos who insist on controlling both the Cuban narrative and Cuban policy in America. The bilingual, well-educated Cristina Escobar on this video says, "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami or Washington." Also, as the headline in the above graphic alludes to, Cristina said, "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than journalists in the U. S. have to tell the truth about Cuba."
At age 28, the happily married Cristina Escobar is a truly brilliant broadcast journalist, in either Spanish or English. She proves that each day on Cuban television and she proved it when she made headlines in Washington when she covered the last diplomatic session between Josefina Vidal and Roberta Jacobson. Cuba will be a better place if its future is determined by young adults on the island like her as opposed to self-serving rogues off the island in Miami, New Jersey and Washington. A 77-year-old Cuban told a Reuters reporter this week, "As old as I am, I would again take up arms to follow someone like her." The old man, teary eyed, pointed back at his television screen at an image of Cristina Escobar. He called her, "A mi nina." -- "My little girl." Many Cubans think of her that way but young adults consider her "a leader."
This photo of Cristina Escobar was taken since the death of Fidel Castro. That's why she looks so sad. And no matter what the rich and powerful Batistianos say in the U. S. -- or the well-funded Berta Soler and Yoani Sanchez say in Cuba -- Cristina Escobar HAS A RIGHT TO FEEL SADNESS and not jubilation over the death of a fellow Cuban, a Cuban who fought and didn't run, an inspiration he may have left behind.
And despite what self-serving anti-Castro zealots so cowardly and piously dictate, a sad Cristina Escobar does not hide her grief or sell her soul to conform to more powerful but much more insidious forces both in Cuba and in the United States. Study her face as she studies an image on her Smart Phone, an image from a street in Cuba where other Cubans are also reacting to the death of Fidel Castro. Hers is a face that will have a say-so in the future pertaining to Cuba's fate, and that will be so regardless of what President Trump or the Batistianos concoct for her island in the turbulent months that lie ahead.
The previous three photos of Cristina Escobar were taken by Roberto Garaycoa Martinez on November 29th, 2016 in Cuba. Her talent and her passion for her island remind me of Celia Sanchez.
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Kirk Douglas turned 100 on Dec. 9, 2016.
He has long been a veritable Hollywood giant.
