It Will Happen, But Just Briefly
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| Barbara Lee; photo courtesy Wikipedia. |
It has been known for months that President Barack Obama hopes to name Barbara Lee as the U. S. Ambassador to Cuba. She is a great lady. She would be a great choice. Ms. Lee was born 68 years ago in El Paso, Texas. Since 1998 she has represented the people of California, not special interest billionaires, in the U. S. House of Representatives. Congresswoman Lee has won her California elections by 84.6%, 85%, 86.4%, 86.1%, 84.27%, and 86.8% of the votes. She deserved every vote because she cares for people, including the people of Cuba. She has visited the island 24 times since the 1970s. She admires Revolutionary Cuba for its emphasis on the educational and health needs of its citizens, in stark contrast -- she believes -- to the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in the 1950s that only emphasized robbing and brutalizing the island. In particular, Ms. Lee admired two unique Cuban programs inspired by Fidel Castro -- Operation Miracle and The Latin American School of Medicine. The former has provided free eye care -- including the restoration of eyesight -- to thousands of poor people in the region who previously had no access to doctors. And the latter is the world's largest medical school that, also at Cuba's expense, provides totally free 6-year scholarships, including room and board, to needy and qualified students. On one of her trips to Cuba Congresswoman Lee personally reminded Fidel Castro of some poor people who needed that eye care. And she also personally asked Fidel Castro if his medical scholarships could include poor but qualified American students. He said "yes" and reminded her that the only repayment to Cuba was the agreement that the students would return to the poor neighborhoods from whence they came and work for "reasonable but modest" salaries for at least five years. With that the only stipulation, Californians and many other Americans to this day are studying free at Cuba's renowned Latin American School of Medicine.
This photo {Courtesy: turnstylenews.com} shows the trip when Barbara Lee asked Fidel Castro, "Would you allow poor but academically qualified Americans to have free medical scholarships at the Latin American School of Medicine?" He took her hand {see above} and replied in English, "Yes, certainly, if you and these other members of the Black American Caucus help us select poor and worthy American students." Americans have benefited ever since from that question and that answer. It also reveals the anomaly, the paradox, and the shame of U.S.-Cuban relations since the 1950s. Extremists Cuban-Americans backed by a few self-serving Americans, including anti-Castro zealots famed for airplane/car/hotel bombings, are as free in the U. S. today as Congresswoman Lee is. Yet, Barbara Lee in the U. S. Congress still bravely advocates a sane Cuban policy even though she often loses out to the incongruity of a rich and powerful Miami minority. Her hopes and President Obama's hopes for a functional U. S. embassy in Havana will also soon fall victim to such insanity. And it will be a continuing insult to democracy and to...Congresswoman Barbara Lee.
This is one of those "poor but worthy" American students. Her name is Lillian Burnett. She is from a poor, crime-ridden section of Oakland, California. She is shown above heading to her classes at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana where she is a prized student. Lillian is about to graduate. She is very appreciative of her impending medical degree and how she has been treated in Cuba for five years. She has Congresswoman Barbara Lee to thank. She has Cuba to thank. But that's about all. Americans and Cuban-Americans who have championed or tolerated a harsh embargo and terrorist hubris against Cuba for going on six decades are Lillian's enemies too. And she will tell that to your face...if you ask her.
In recent years, 200 poor but qualified Americans have received or are receiving totally free 6-year medical degrees at the highly respected Latin American School of Medicine, courtesy of the Cuban government. These 12 U. S. citizens {Photo courtesy: MEDICC} will not owe Cuba a dime when they graduate. Their only repayment to Cuba is the promise to return to the U. S. and serve the poor communities from whence they came. Miami Cubans, who dictate the Cuban narrative in the U. S., easily convince Americans that "every dime we allow to reach Cuba goes into Fidel Castro's pockets or his Swiss bank account." Of course, such hurtful lies are not hurting these twelve American medical students.
There are three Cuban-American U. S. Senators -- Rubio, Menendez, and Cruz. They are all vicious and effective anti-Castro zealots, which constitutes much of their political and economic success. They can go on American television every day or night in the week and bellow the old refrain about why the U. S. embargo against Cuba should be kept enforce for another six decades or so, with that refrain being: "Every dime we allow to reach the island goes into Fidel Castro's pockets or his Swiss bank accounts." Intimidated or ignorant Americans are supposed to believe every word, and for over 50 years -- with the likes of Rubio, Menendez, and Cruz controlling the Cuban narrative in the U. S. -- Americans have meekly acquiesced to such propaganda. In the same manner, Americans for over five decades have meekly acquiesced to...the Bay of Pigs attack; the terrorist bombing of the child-laden Cuban civilian airplane Cubana Flight 455; the car-bombing of the Cuban-American newsman in Miami {Emilio Milian} who complained about such things; the firing of a great Miami Herald journalist {Jim DeFede} when he wrote a scathing column excoriating Miami members of the U. S. Congress for their unconscionable support and protection of the most famed Cuban-American terrorists, etc. In that milieu -- as epitomized today by Senators Rubio, Menendez, and Cruz -- most efforts by decent and brilliant people like Congresswoman Barbara Lee to bring sanity to U.S.-Cuban relations are doomed to failure, and that includes the upcoming U.S.-Cuban embassies. It is exceedingly easy for Cuban-American and right-wing zealots to scuttle such positives by, for example, provoking Cuba into doing something that can be used against it. Sure, pro-democracy Americans like Barbara Lee have managed some positives, such as her securing all those medical scholarships in Cuba for Americans. But Americans are not supposed to applaud such things. Instead, they are supposed to cheer the fate of Cubana Flight 455 as "The biggest blow yet against Castro."
And speaking of Barbara Lee......
.............the teenage Barbara Lee was a superb cheerleader.
As an adult, the self-made Barbara Lee has simply been a superb and courageous leader, cheerleading for people not as fortunate as she is. She is, for example, the only member of the U. S. Congress that has ever proposed and advocated a Department of Peace. Yes, she prefers peace to war and she prefers friendship to hostility. However, in the current money-crazed political environment, she is an anomaly. A bevy of right-wing billionaires are unleashing millions of dollars to support the presidential bids of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, two first-time Cuban-American Senators who got to Congress by latching onto the Bush dynasty in Florida and Texas. They haven't accomplished anything, except for bellowing loudly about "shutting down the government" and "blocking all funds Obama needs to open an embassy in Cuba" and "making sure the Senate does not approve the nomination of an ambassador to Cuba," etc. But, hey! They're presidential candidates. No wonder Peter Kornbluh, the Cuban expert at the U. S. National Security Archive, wrote last month that Cuban-American extremists, as opposed to the majority of Cuban-Americans, make the United States look like "a Banana Republic." Barbara Lee, on the other hand, wants the United States to again look like what the Founding Fathers envisioned -- the world's greatest democracy.
Yes, President Obama would like to have Barbara Lee as his Ambassador to Cuba. She would love that job, but she also loves her position in the U. S. House of Representatives where 84.27% is the lowest vote total she has received in her last six California elections. If she gives up her safe spot in Congress to be the U. S. Ambassador to Cuba, she realizes it would likely be both short-lived and daunting. Any post-Obama Republican president would erase whatever advances President Obama manages to accomplish in the remaining months of his two-term presidency. Also, she fully realizes that, while the majority of even Cuban-Americans desire normal relations with Cuba, only anti-Cuban Cuban-Americans reach the U. S. Congress -- Rubio, Cruz, Menendez, Ros-Lehtinen, Diaz-Balart, etc. -- and they can easily acquire the support of enough right-wing Congressmen to dictate America's Cuban policy. Thus, Barbara Lee has reservations about giving up her safe dream job in the U. S. Congress even for another dream job, the U. S. Ambassadorship to Cuba, which she believes will be brief, filled with hubris, and imperiled. Even while Obama is in the White House for another 17 months, there are currently about 37 lushly funded regime change programs designed to overthrow the Cuban government or wreak havoc on the nearby island.
Amy Goodman was born in 1958 in Bay Shore, New York. She is one of America's most honored broadcast journalists, in addition to being a renowned syndicated columnist and a best-selling author.
Since 2001 Amy Goodman has been the top executive and the top host at DEMOCRACY NOW!, a very influential and expansive pro-democracy network. This week Ms. Goodman featured a long interview with a democracy lover named...BARBARA LEE! It's insightful and readily available on DemocracyNow.org.
Sarah Stephens is the top executive at the Washington-based Center For Democracy In The Americas. She is a democracy lover and many, including President Obama, consider Sarah America's top expert on U.S.-Cuban relations. Sadly, those are two reasons U. S. television stations essentially ban Sarah from appearing on their programs, displaying an acute lack of integrity and an abundance of cowardice by the U. S. media. The photo and caption above was taken from Telesur this week when that Latin American network interviewed Sarah from Washington. Each Friday on the Cuba Central portion of the Center for Democracy In The Americas website, Sarah Stephens pens the best weekly summation of U.S.-Cuban relations. This week -- Friday, July 10th -- her Cuba Central article was entitled: "Rubio, Cuba, And A Tale Of Two Speeches." Each week on U. S. cable news programs, Miami Cubans such as Marco Rubio get to say anything in the world about Cuba that furthers their political, economic or revenge motives. And then each Friday, Sarah Stephens very bravely and very democratically resets the Truth and Democratic buttons. Amy Goodman at DEMOCRACY NOW; Sarah Stephens at THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS. Brilliant women. However, Americans are not supposed to inject Democracy into the U.S.-Cuban equation.
Remember two of the questions Cristina Escobar famously fired at White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest at a crowded news conference in Washington back in May? She was covering the Vidal-Jacobson diplomatic session. Cristina is the young, audacious, and skilled Cuban journalist now with a huge audience in the Caribbean and Latin America. She asked Earnest these two earnest questions: "Will the U. S. diplomats at the new embassy in Havana be respectful to Cuba?" and "Will the regime change programs continue?" She then listened attentively to the answers from Josh Earnest but it is quite obvious that she believes any U. S. embassy in Havana will only be an asset to the "regime change programs" she resents. She is among the influential Cubans against such detente. Back in Cuba at the above anchor desk, she opined: "A U. S. embassy in Havana, I fear, will only help the Miami Cubans hurt Cubans on the island even more and enrich Cubans in Miami even more. We can't be suckers and still maintain our sovereignty."
This AP/Getty Images photo shows the 7-story U. S. Interests Section in Havana. It is strategically located, overlooking the famed Malecon seawall. Interests Sections in Havana and Washington date back to the Jimmy Carter presidency in the 1970s and are till this day compromises resulting from Mr. Carter's failed efforts to normalize relations with the nearby island. The two-term Reagan-Bush presidency anointed Jorge Mas Canosa, the richest and most powerful anti-Castro Cuban-American, as the leader of the Cuban-government-in-exile, advising him to take control of the Cuban narrative in the U. S. Congress by replicating AIPAC, the untra-powerful Israeli lobby. That pivotal advice was heeded. Mas Canosa created the Cuban-American-National-Foundation. After that it was easy for him to align his Cuban goals with the easily acquired and highly questionable goals of controversial members of Congress such as Robert Torricelli and Jesse Helms. They passed the still legendary Torricelli Bill and the even more punitive Helms-Burton Bill. President Barack Obama's ongoing bold efforts to normalize relations with Cuba will result in the monumental opening of a U. S. Embassy in the Interests Section building in Havana as well as a Cuban Embassy in Cuba's Interests Section in Washington. However, the embassies will be short-lived, for three reasons: {1} Torricelli and Helms-Burton still dictate the gist of America's Cuban policy and executive actions by a Democratic president cannot remotely change that in a Republican-dominated Congress; {2} any post-Obama Republican president will quickly erase Obama's executive overtures regarding Cuba; and {3} since Jorge Mas Canosa's Reagan-Bush anointment in the 1980s, the Bush political dynasty's tight alignment with only the most visceral anti-Castro politicians in Miami has both demanded and acquired the ability to dictate Cuban policy to suit their own insatiable revenge, political, and economic appetites.
After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, most of the Cubans who viciously opposed Fidel Castro -- Jorge Mas Canosa, Luis Posada Carriles, Felix Rodriguez, etc. -- quickly ended up on the U. S. government's payroll at the infamous Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. {Note Mas Canosa's Fort Benning photo above}. It was the "school" where the U. S. trained soldiers from U.S.-friendly dictatorships -- Batista's in Cuba, Trujillo's in the Dominican Republic, Somoza's in Nicaragua, etc. -- and sent them back to their countries to help maintain those dictatorships. The Bay of Pigs attackers in April of 1961 -- Brigade 2506 -- were expensively trained at Fort Benning and in Nicaragua. While graduates of the Army School such as Posada Carriles and Felix Rodriguez are more notorious, Mas Canosa remains by far the all-time most powerful anti-Castro Cuban-American. That evolved after the Bush dynasty helped anoint Mas Canosa the Cuban-American leader in the 1980s. Mas Canosa was reportedly a billionaire when he died in Miami on November 23, 1997. His three sons -- Jorge Mas, Jose R. Mas, and Juan Carlos Mas -- remain powers in South Florida. As for Fort Benning's Army School of the Americas, it's true meaning became known during the Clinton administration, after which it was renamed and President Bill Clinton held one news conference to apologize to Latin America because of what it stood for.
To this day the Bush dynasty and the Bush association with Miami Cubans, especially Jorge Mas Canosa, still dominates the U. S. Cuban policy. That's why any hope that someone like Barbara Lee might become a successful and peaceful U. S. Ambassador to Cuba is out of the question. It won't happen.
In other words..............
...................Cuba is still too close to Miami and to the Bush dynasty.
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