He Arrives Today!!!!
President Barack Obama's Air Force One will arrive in Havana today -- Sunday, April 20th, 2016. It is an historic 3-day visit, the first by a sitting U. S. President since Calvin Coolidge arrived on a battleship in 1928, 30 years after the U. S. had taken control of Cuba following its easy victory in the 1898 Spanish-American War. Exercising its dominance over Cuba, in 1903 the U. S. stole the plush Guantanamo Bay on the island's southeastern tip and made it a powerful military base complete with a Bush-era prison that Amnesty International calls the "gulag of our time." But the biggest imperialist mistake the U. S. made came in 1952 when it backed the Batista-Mafia dictatorship so rich Americans could also partake of the rape and robbery of the island. Obama's arrival in Cuba today is fitting because, since 1898, he has been the only American president with the necessary combination of guts and intelligence to treat the Cuban people decently. The extreme brutality of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship ended on the first day of 1959 when the Cuban Revolution chased the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders to their U. S. havens, mainly nearby Miami. Beginning in January of 1959, cruel efforts by the transplanted Batistianos to recapture Cuba, with the support of the U. S. government and the cowardly concurrence of the American people, has included repeated assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs military attack, and even multiple terrorist acts such as the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 in 1976. When Emilio Milian, a top Cuban-American newsman in Miami, complained about such terrorism against innocent Cubans, he was car-bombed. From that day in 1976 till this day in 2016, the mainstream U. S. media has not had the courage to question anything the U.S.-backed Batistianos or the Batistiano-controlled U. S. Congress has done to the Cuban people, including the still-in-effect embargo of Cuba that was begun in 1962 for the stated purpose of starving and depriving the Cuban people to induce them to rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro. As he nears his 90th birthday, Fidel Castro has yet to be overthrown but the ongoing effort for six decades has indeed starved and deprived Cubans as a part of a U. S. Cuban policy that also enriches and empowers a select group of Cuban-Americans.
This photo was taken in 1958 at a rally supporting the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. In the middle with the holstered pistol is Rafael Diaz-Balart, a key Batista minister. He is flanked by the infamous Masferrer brothers, known to history as the most brutal enforcers of the Batista regime. A few months after this photo was taken, they fled to and retrenched in Florida, essentially restructuring the Batista dictatorship on U. S. soil. And from that day to this day, neither Cuba nor the United States of America has recovered.
The Batista-Mafia leaders did not hang around in Havana on January 1, 1959 to fight the charging Cuban rebels. Their getaway planes and ships hastily {as pre-planned} took off for safer havens, mainly nearby Miami where much of their wealth already awaited them and where, in the decades to come, extreme mayhem and extreme wealth would multiply, reshaping the Miami skyline and the U. S. government. The photo above reflects two generations of what the Cuban Revolution chased out of Cuba and, even more emphatically, forged in the United States. In the center above is Rafael Diaz-Balart flanked by his four sons, two born in Cuba and two in Florida. Rafael's first major move on U. S. soil was to create an anti-Castro organization he named The White Rose after a Jose Marti poem. His oldest Havana-born son, Lincoln, to this day conducts The White Rose. That's Lincoln on his father's right side. Rafael quickly became one of the richest and most powerful Cuban exiles, but their political dominance of America's Cuban policy didn't fully evolve until the leaders of the transplanted Miami Cubans aligned with the Bush dynasty during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s. That's when anti-Castro zealot Jorge Mas Canosa, who emerged even richer and more powerful in Miami and Washington than Rafael Diaz-Balart, was advised to study and then replicate AIPAC, the Israeli lobby that dictates Israel policy in the U. S. Congress. Canosa did as advised, creating the ultra-powerful Cuban lobby CANF. From that day to this day, Congressional laws related to Cuba are dictated by Miami Cubans, although Americans are supposed to be too intimidated or too ashamed to admit it. In 1989 Jeb Bush, as a means of ingratiating himself to the rich and powerful Cubans in Miami, became the Campaign Manager for anti-Castro zealot Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who has been entrenched in the U. S. Congress from 1989 to today, with many more Bush-aligned anti-Castro zealots in Miami to follow. That includes two Diaz-Balart brothers elected to Congress from Miami -- Lincoln first and then Mario. You've met Lincoln, standing just to the right of his father Rafael. Mario is on the far right in the above photo. On the far left is the lesser-known brother Rafael Jr. who is a very rich banker. The photo above depicts -- from left to right -- Rafael Jr., Lincoln, Rafael Sr., Jose, and Mario. This photo, coupled with the one depicting three key Batista associates in 1958, defines U.S.-Cuban relations from the 1950s until today, the day President Obama makes a very, very brave and historic trip to Cuba.
Jose Diaz-Balart, one of Rafael's four Miami-based sons, is one of America's highest profile television news anchors. He is an NBC Universal star and, as such, anchors major newscasts on MSNBC, NBC, and the Spanish-speaking Telemundo. That's significant for this reason: In the United States of America, only anti-Castro zealots are generally allowed to present Cuba-related "news" to the easily propagandized American people. NBC's Nightly News program, which airs nightly at 6:30 P. M., is America's most viewed daily news update. Saturday night, March 19th, Jose Diaz-Balart anchored that most-watched news program on the night prior to President Obama's flight to Cuba. Predictably, Jose introduced a segment about the historic presidential trip that, of course, the Diaz-Balarts viciously oppose. But, primarily, Jose Diaz-Balart represents the fact that NBC and the rest of the mainstream news media in the United States consider Americans too stupid or too intimidated to object to decades of biased reporting on Cuban-related topics.
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The above photo defines U.S.-Cuban relations from the 1980s till today. Jeb Bush in 1989 was Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's Campaign Manager. The Bush Dynasty-Miami Cuban alliance put Ros-Lehtinen in the U. S. Congress, where she remains to this day. The Bush connection to the Miami Cubans had helped put Jeb's father, George H. W. Bush, and his brother, George W. Bush, in the White House, which was Jeb's plan.
Being Ros-Lehtinen's successful Campaign Manager worked perfectly in Miami, paving the way for young Jeb's two-terms as Governor of Florida, which was to be his springboard to the White House.
But all of Jeb Bush's Miami connections had higher goals than the mere governorship of Florida. Their grandiose plan was for ultra-powerful Miami Cubans like Al Cardenas to put him in the White House where his dad and brother had earlier reached with the help of rich and powerful anti-Castro Cuban-Americans.
This montage explains why all the political pundits predicted that Jeb Bush would easily capture the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. On the left is Cuban-American billionaire {with a very large B} Miguel Fernandez, a long-time prime financier of the Bush dynasty. With the exorbitant money and power of Cuban-Americans like Al Cardenas and Miguel Fernandez, Jeb Bush was considered a shoo-in to become the next Bush President. But a strange thing happened in 2016. It seems the American people have finally tired of bought-and-paid-for Presidents and political dynasties. Amazingly, Jeb Bush never even scratched the surface as a presidential candidate in 2016 despite having unlimited funds and the backing of the Republican establishment. His demise, even if it's only temporary, helps the Cuban people.
But, lo 'n behold, along came Miami billionaire {again with a big B} Norman Braman, a long-time supporter of Miami Cubans like Marco Rubio and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Braman once owned the NFL Philadelphia Eagles and now owns dozens of car dealerships in the Miami area. He vowed to spend whatever it took to put first-term U. S. Senator Marco Rubio in the White House, and Braman was joined by a long-line of other right-wing, conservative and Jewish billionaires. But, like with Jeb, that strange twist in American politics -- with Americans apparently tired of bought-and-paid-for politicians -- doomed Marco, who ended his presidential bid last week after being wiped out by Donald Trump in Marco's home state of Florida despite millions of ad dollars and all the national television networks lavishly supporting him.
As this NBC graphic illustrates, the television networks have shamefully promoted the two extremists Cuban-Americans as their prime presidential favorites. The promotions, supposedly subtle, are nevertheless obvious, for this reason: All the U. S. television networks are owned by individual or corporate billionaires who benefit from having their bought-and-paid-for stooges in the U. S. Congress or the White House. And it was not hard for such anti-democracy billionaires to detect that Cruz and Rubio -- two first-term and very undistinguished U. S. Senators -- had by far the biggest "FOR SALE" signs on their backs.
As you watch news coverage of President Obama's trip to Cuba, you should, I believe, also comprehend the meaning of the above photo. President Obama, most Americans, most Cuban-Americans, most residents of Miami, and most citizens of the world want the U. S. embargo to be ended as a gesture of decency and friendship for the Cubans on the island. But, as this photo illustrates, that won't happen. There are enough Cuban-American anti-Castro zealots from Miami in the U. S. Congress to make sure it doesn't happen. That's true even though most of the 2 million Cuban-Americans in the United States want it to happen. Yet, when it comes to Cuba, the U. S. democracy -- despite having a great and decent man, Mr. Obama, as President -- is not strong enough to make it happen. And with that being so, Americans are not supposed to be patriotic enough to ask this question: "If most of the two million Cuban-Americans favor normalizing relations with Cuba, why can't just one such Cuban-American get elected to national office?"
For the next three days -- March 20-22, 2016 -- President Barack Obama will make American history merely by being on Cuban soil. His respect and sympathy for the Cuban people is refreshing and should be applauded. But back on U. S. soil, the gutless U. S. media and a bought-and-paid-for U. S. Congress will be busy thwarting most of Mr. Obama's pro-democracy plans for the long-maligned Cubans on their vulnerable island, an island that unfortunately is simply much too close to Florida.
9 thousand miles would be much better!!
