Cuba's New Dawn

It's Happening!!
{Updated: Saturday, May 21st, 2016}

      Key representatives of Spain and Cuba are spending this week shaking hands on important new trade relations between the two nations. The Cuban contingent is led by Orlando Hernandez, the President of the island's Chamber of Commerce. Spain's mission is headed by Jaime Garcia-Legaz, his country's Secretary of Commerce. Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo had earlier visited Cuba to set up this week's discussions. Mr. Garcia-Margallo applauded U. S. President Barack Obama's "brave new approach to Cuba." Spain is currently Cuba's second leading trade partner, behind only China and now ahead of troubled Venezuela. The Obama-orchestrated openings offer Cuba its long-awaited new dawn.

       A bright and exciting new dawn has arrived on the island of Cuba for these teenage schoolgirls, a testament to President Obama's historic efforts in drastically altering...not reversing yet but sharply altering...America's half-century of severely hurting innocent Cubans on the island in the guise of "hurting Castro." The New Dawn is startling and there are 11 million Cubans who are deserving of it.

       Starting this week, another major Hollywood movie began shooting in Cuba, taking advantage of long-closed doors that President Obama has opened. "Transformers: The Last Knight" is a franchise that has already earned a whopping $3.7 billion before the fifth huge production began this week in Cuba. 

      Michael Bay, one of Hollywood's most powerful directors, took his massive crew to Cuba to flim "Transformers: The Last Knight." His superstar actors include Mark Wahlberg and Josh Duhamel.

        This is the celebrated cast of the "Fast & Furious 8" movie on location in Cuba just before the arrival of this week's huge "Transformers" production. "Fast & Furious" is also a mammoth multi-billion-dollar franchise with a huge cast led by the two superstars on the left in the above photo -- Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez. Prior to Obama, such gigantic American movies would never have been shot in Cuba.

       Beyonce {above} is among a long, long list of  world-famed American and British entertainers who have recently visited Cuba. And an influx of everyday Americans has sold out some Cuban hotels into 2017.

       With unmatched courage, intelligence and decency, President Obama has been the first American president since the 1950s with the guts and skill to stand up to the viscerally powerful Cuban-American hardliners and their right-wing sycophants in the U. S. Congress who have heretofore been unchallenged in their self-serving dictation of America's Cuban policy. The Obama quote above reveals something he has created, legalizing business openings, that no other American president was able to accomplish.

       President Obama himself became the first sitting U. S. president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928 to have the guts to visit Cuba. Coolidge had visited on a U. S. warship to emphasize America's pre-revolutionary dominance of the island. Obama thrilled Cubans by visiting the island on his gigantic Air Force One airplane and offering sincere friendship to the Cuban people whom he is trying to help, not hurt.

        In Cuba in April of 2016 President Obama assured Cuba and the world that "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." He made that exact quotation because he well knew that, prior to his presidency, Cuba had every reason to fear threats from the U. S., mainly Miami and the U. S. Congress. Moreover, President Obama is abundantly aware that, as his two-term presidency winds down, A Republican successor in the White House aligned with a Republican-dominated Congress would, once again, give Cuba ample reason to "fear threats from the United States" if his detente is rolled back. 

            But rest assured, President Obama has opened some massive doors to Cuba that even a Republican president and a Republican-dominated Congress will have trouble closing. The reopening of embassies in Washington and Havana for the first time since 1961 are among the many Obama-opened doors that most people in the world, including most Cuban-Americans, want to remain forever open. 

       For over five shameful decades prior to Obama, everyday Americans were the only people in the world denied the freedom to travel to Cuba. That abomination was based on the fact that since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 the cowardice of Americans as a whole has permitted a handful of the most vicious Cuban exiles, aligned with a handful of the most vicious right-wingers in Congress, to dictate America's Cuban policy to suit their revengeful, economic and political whims -- and easily make the abominations legal via laws routinely handed down by a few people within the hallowed halls of a dysfunctional, bought-and-paid-for, right-wing tilted Congress. Congress still has those "laws" intact but President Obama has skillfully and bravely sliced wickedly into many of them, such as by greatly easing the "legal travel to Cuba for U. S. citizens." Prior to President Obama, as the majority of Americans sat on their collective rear ends, America's Cuban policy -- ridiculed by the entire world -- had been purely to hurt Cuba while also greatly enriching and empowering a select group of Cuban-Americans, especially in Miami.

       Thanks to President Obama, Cubans this year have had the pleasure of watching the magnificent Adonia Cruise Ship arrive in Havana harbor from Miami. During its week-long stay, it also docked in the Cuban ports at Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba with its 704 well-heeled and excited passengers. Such cruises had been banned for five decades. Cardinal Cruise Lines will now make twice-monthly cruises to Cuba as other cruise lines and many other American companies are also trying to engage with Cuba.

           Thanks to President Obama, Cubans in the historic year of 2016 also got to see Air Force One, with Mr. Obama aboard, flying low over Havana on its way to landing at Jose Marti International Airport.

         And thanks to President Obama, starting this fall, for the first time since 1962, commercial airplane flights -- and not just cumbersome charter flights -- will be allowed to fly from the United States to Cuba.

         One Cuban basking in the glory of President Obama's new dawn for Cuba is Cristina Escobar, the island's talented newscaster. "Since the Cuban Revolution gave us sovereignty in 1959," she says, "my generation and my mother's generation of Cubans on the island have longed for the day the United States would accept us as an independent nation. Before Mr. Obama that was not the case and maybe after Mr. Obama it will not be the case. But, at least, he has shown respect for Cuba that, even if it is only of an evanescent nature, has been refreshing and hopeful. We are neighbors. We should also be friends." 

And by the way: 

           This political cartoon gem is courtesy of the great Patrick Chappatte and the New York Times. He expertly expresses the firm opinion that the current status of the Democratic presidential sweepstakes has pugnacious Bernie with tight grips around Hillary's ankles, which is preventing her from officially going to war against her surprisingly huge Republican challenger Trump. I do my best to avoid, with a quick-trigger TV remote, the obnoxiously biased pundits. But I go to great lengths to consult excellent political cartoonists to get a pulse on the political landscape. Mr. Chappatte says a lot with just two words.

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Media Coverage of Cuba

  Highlights An American Problem 

        This photo is courtesy of the U. S. House of Representatives. It was taken yesterday, Tuesday. The man in the forefront is Congressman John Katko from New York. He has only been in Congress since January 3rd, 2016, but he helps explain why the right-wing Republican dominated Congress has an approval rating in the single digits and why many longtime Republicans exited the party long ago. Although New York and America have a lot of things that need congressional attention, Katko is shown above unleashing a vicious attack on President Obama. Katko is outraged that Mr. Obama is trying to bring a degree of sanity and decency to America's Cuban policy. In particular, Katko yesterday assailed Obama for allowing commercial airplane flights from the U. S. to Cuba for the first time in half-a-century, with the flights due to start this fall. The lady looking incredulously and scornfully at Katko is Congresswoman Kathleen Rice, also from New York. Miss Rice accused Katko of "playing politics with Cuba" instead of doing "the people's business." 

       Representative Katko has only been in Congress a few months but his tirade yesterday seems to clearly indicate he has joined the fraternity that is willing to hurt the mighty United States in order to hurt little Cuba.

       Kathleen Rice has been in the U. S. Congress little more than a year. Her courageous rebuke of Katko's anti-Obama and anti-Cuban rants yesterday indicates she actually cares about helping everyday Americans and has no interest in hurting everyday Cubans. But as long as the likes of Katko keep getting elected and joining a dysfunctional majority in Congress, the U. S. democracy itself has a problem...especially considering the fact that 315 million Americans have never heard of Katko and can't vote him out of office. 

       Sarah Marsh covers Latin America for Reuters, the world's top news agency. Reuters is headquartered in London, which means Sarah is free to write unbiased articles about Cuba. This week she is covering the important U.S.-Cuban bilateral meetings taking place in Havana. U. S. journalists and news outlets are obligated to distort and slant news related to Cuba, either out of intimidation or political correctness. Thus, the best sources for updates on U.S.-Cuban developments, such as the ongoing bilateral sessions, are the London-based giants, Reuters and the BBC, both of whom are easily accessible in this digital age.

       The Sarah Marsh article is entitled: "Cuba and U. S. Draw Up Roadmap for Talks to Deepen Detente." 

        The Reuters article by Sarah Marsh quoted Josefina Vidal with this summation of the bilateral discussions taking place in Havana: "Cuba and the U. S. aim to reach new agreements on cooperation in law enforcement, health, and agriculture over the coming months. The agenda is quite ambitious." While praising the earlier positive advancements in U.S.-Cuban relations and expressing hope for this week's discussions on crime, health and agriculture, Vidal was not so naive as to expect eminent accommodations on ticklish topics such as the embargo, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and the funding of Cuban dissidents.

        In addition to Reuters, the London-based BBC is an excellent source for fair-minded news related to Cuba. While the U. S. media is not capable of providing unbiased Cuban news, the BBC is. For example, check the BBC's article and video report entitled "How Obama's Olive Branch Caused A Cuban Exodus." While Americans are not supposed to be told about incredibly discriminatory U. S. laws regarding such things as Cuban migration and special financial incentives for Cubans, the BBC explains how America's grossly undemocratic Wet Foot/Dry Foot law is currently creating vast problems for many Latin American nations and windfalls for Cubans and human traffickers as rumors spread that Obama's approach to Cuba might...WOW!!...end some of the wildly discriminatory U.S. laws that favor would-be Cuban defectors and a selected few Cuban-Americans. Reuters and the BBC can fairly discuss such things; the U. S. media cannot. And that's why...the Cuban Revolution says a lot more about the United States than it says about Cuba. In fact, the Cuban Revolution has changed the United States as much as it has changed Cuba. That change commenced in 1959 when the Batista-Mafia dictatorship was booted out of Cuba...all the way to Miami.

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Cuba's Detente Assessment

Tough and Frank

       Josefina Vidal, Cuba's no-nonsense Minister of North American Affairs, spent a long day yesterday -- Monday, May 16th -- interacting with a U. S. delegation in Havana and then updating U.S.-Cuban relations at the insightful news conference depicted above. {The photos are courtesy of Ismael Francisco}. Cuba was hosting the 3rd round of the U.S.-Cuba Bilateral Commission that is designed to assess the efforts of the two nations to normalize relations that have been severely strained since the 1950s but remarkably softened by President Obama's peaceful overtures. Vidal summarized the sometimes heated session with the U. S. State Department's Kristie Kenney as, "A productive meeting." She praised the advances in travel, telecommunications and "other economic spheres" but was quick to add sternly: "The blockade remains in force; there is still no normal banking between the U. S. and Cuba; and U. S. taxpayers, unwittingly I reckon, are still paying dearly to fund special financial incentives for Cubans to defect and special financial incentives that continue to make millionaires and billionaires out of selected Cubans while ignoring, maybe, much better uses of all that money on worthy U. S. projects. If Americans don't understand the fallacy of Wet Foot/Dry Foot, financing useless propaganda schemes like Radio-TV Marti in Miami just to make Cuban-Americans rich, and other such things, I think it might be because their democracy needs a little more, uh, uh, transparency."

        But Vidal, shown here listening to a question that didn't particularly please her, made it plain that "We have a long way to go towards normalizing relations." She reminded the questioner that "In the last six months two U. S. and one French company have been fined for doing minor business with Cuba. That reminds me of the original intent of the blockade dating back to 1962, which was to starve Cuba into capitulating to foreign dictation, even while it also punishes America's best allies and smears the United States' image."

        Vidal yesterday applauded "President Obama's fair-minded decency that has replaced so much animosity towards Cuba," but she stressed that "The minority in Miami and in Congress that still dictate so much of the U. S. policy regarding Cuba must be checked by the majority views in Miami, Congress and the world. After all, the U. S. is a democracy that also should view Cuba with democratic principles too." In that regard, Vidal said, "We want and need normal relations with the United States and most Americans and Cuban-Americans want it too. But, despite the progress during the decent Obama administration, there is more the U. S. must do, like ending the blockade and returning Guantanamo Bay to us, and more the U. S. must stop doing, like funding dissidents on the island. If the U. S. is willing to discuss those things sincerely, we will discuss any U. S. grievances just as sincerely. But sacrificing Cuban sovereignty is one thing I will never, ever discuss!"

         Yesterday's Vidal news conference in Havana was well attended by U. S. and Cuban journalists. It reminded Vidal that, "If the American people are told the truth and provided the details of U.S.-Cuban relations, I trust they will engage more than they have in the past. It is important to them although Cuba is an island, just one nearby nation. Cubans have suffered from the hostility but so have many Americans, plus America's scarred image. Americans need to, I believe, respond to the near unanimity of world opinion regarding the U. S. policy towards Cuba. The U. S. should respond to world and, especially, regional opinion and eliminate its grossly unfair migration policies for Cubans known derisively as Wet Foot/Dry Foot. How does the U. S. have the gall to criticize discrimination in other nations when it so flagrantly discriminates with its own policies."

       Before she exited yesterday's news conference in Havana, a very tired Josefina Vidal had summed up the current status of U.S.-Cuban relations with these words: "We have made significant steps toward greater cooperation in environment protection, civil aviation, direct mail, maritime and port security, health, agriculture, and educational and cultural exchanges. More, of course, needs to be done in those areas and much more needs to be done concerning the embargo, Guantanamo Bay, and a foreign nation supporting and creating dissidents in another country. As you can see, there is a long list of topics. But I think the important thing, with Obama in Washington, is that we have now put these issues on the table for discussion. I reiterate my appreciation for President Obama's concern for the Cuban people and I hope he and his team understand that our major concern is also what is best for the Cuban people as a whole, not just for a selected few."

Josefina Vidal. 

       Jose Ramon Cabanas, Cuba's Ambassador at the newly opened Cuban Embassy in Washington, also held a news conference in Havana yesterday to assess the progress of U.S.-Cuban relations. He said, "There has been, I believe, substantial progress and I hope we can continue on that very honorable path." 

And by the way:

       Alejandro Mayorkas is a Cuban-born American lawyer who was born in Havana in 1959, the year the Cuban Revolution defeated the Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Mr. Mayorkas will be back in Havana today -- Tuesday, May 17, 2016 -- as America's important Deputy Homeland Security Secretary. He will hold meetings with Cuban counterparts regarding cooperation "to continue fighting drug trafficking, illegal migration, and transnational crime." It's interesting he included "illegal migration" but he's certainly not at liberty to discuss the U. S. Wet Foot/Dry Foot law that relates to extremely discriminatory "legal migration" incentives that pertain to Cubans at the gross expense of every non-Cuban would-be immigrant in the entire world.

And, oh, yes:

      This AP/Fernando Medina photo shows Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez motoring past the famed Malecon seawall in a 1950s convertible as Cuban children race on foot to keep up. Vin and Michelle are the superstars of the "Fast & Furious" movie franchise that has earned billions of dollars worldwide, and "Fast & Furious 8" spent several weeks shooting in Cuba. The huge production, and especially the superstars who were atop the star-studded cast, brought excitement and money to Cuba. One of the cargo ships that dropped off tons of movie equipment in Havana had three Cuban Wet Foot, Dry Foot stowaways on its journey back to Port Everglades, Florida. Oh, well. Cuba is Cuba.

Michelle Rodriguez & Vin Diesel in Cuba.

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U.S.-Cuba Tangle Today

Huge Meeting in Havana!

       If indeed there is to be "a new era" in U.S.-Cuba relations, a diplomatic session in Havana today might go a long way to determine whether or not such a monumental epoch actually occurs. Bilateral commissions of top diplomats from Cuba and the U. S. will huddle in Havana today to access the progress of President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, which he and Cuban President Raul Castro announced in simultaneous telecasts on December 17th, 2014. Much progress has been made, including the opening of embassies in Washington and Havana for the first time since 1961 as well as remarkable openings in U. S. tourism and commerce with the nearby island. But Obama has only a few months left in his two-term presidency and he has been the only one of the last eleven U. S. presidents with both the courage and intelligence to make inroads into the right-wing Batistiano dominance of U. S. relations with the nearby Caribbean island since 1959 when the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship was overthrown but quickly reconstituted on U. S. soil with a new capital -- Miami, commonly referred to as Little Havana. Despite vast commercial and social ties already in place thanks to Obama, there are eight Cuban-Americans in a mostly bought-and-paid-for U. S. Congress determined to turn-back all of Obama's overtures to Cuba. And that will be accomplished if Obama is succeeded by a Republican president.

           Cuba's brilliant Minister of North American Affairs, Josefina Vidal, will, of course, be the island's top diplomat for today's dialectic and iconoclastic discussions in Havana. This is the third of the so-called Bilateral Commission sessions that were arranged when Vidal and her U. S. counterpart Roberta Jacobson held four diplomatic meetings -- two in Havana and two in Washington -- following President Obama's decision to sanely engage with Cuba for the first time in many decades. Two preliminary bilateral sessions were held back in November, 2015 -- one in Havana and one in Washington. Now at the more important one today in Havana, Vidal says, "The agreements and assessments reached in the first two meetings will be reviewed and the results since then will be analyzed to determine where we are and where we are going." 

         The American delegation in Havana today will be led by Kristi Kenney. Like Vidal in Cuba, Kenney is a brilliant and dedicated veteran diplomat for the United States. She was born 60 years ago in Washington and got her Masters at Tulane and her Bachelor's at Clemson. She has been America's first female Ambassador to both Thailand and the Philippines. She is married to career diplomat William Brownfield who is now the U. S. State Department's chief in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. 

Kristi Kenney, top U. S. diplomat in Havana today.

       Roberta Jacobson and Josefina Vidal skillfully represented their countries in the four historic diplomatic sessions that made gigantic strides in normalizing relations between America and Cuba.

           The above photo should be studied by any American with even a slight patriotic concern for the United States. It shows Marco Rubio -- the first-term Cuban-American U. S. Senator from Miami -- displaying brazen disrespect for a great American patriot, Roberta Jacobson. When she represented the U. S. in the four historic diplomatic sessions with Cuba's Josefina Vidal, Ms. Jacobson was America's Minister of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and a brilliant one. Then President Obama appointed her to the vital position of U. S. Ambassador to Mexico. No decent and patriotic American could be expected to oppose that appointment, but in the dysfunctional U. S. Congress Rubio put a hold on it out of sheer childish, spiteful, unpatriotic and cowardly resentment of her superb representation of the U. S. in the Cuban diplomatic sessions. Rubio, of course, is well aware that Cuban-American anti-Castro zealots from Miami can get away with any punishment of innocent Cubans or innocent Americans who don't readily abide by cruel Batistiano dominance of America's Cuban policy -- with the airplane bombing of Cubana Flight 455, the car-bombing of the caring Miami newsman Emilio Milian, the cruelest and longest embargo in history, and a resounding and alarmist 191-to-2 yearly UN vote being mere microcosms of how Cuban-American extremists since 1959 have been allowed to reshape the image of democracy and the United States. Many decent members of the U. S. Congress railed against Rubio's blockage of Jacobson's appointment because she was surely the most qualified and because topical events on America's southern border demanded that the U. S. have an ambassador in Mexico City...especially to combat drugs, etc., and the thousands of Cubans currently bedeviling all South American nations as they flock to the U. S. border with Mexico to touch U. S. soil as greedy human traffickers tell them Obama is about to end the special Wet Foot/Dry Foot privileges available only to Cubans. After many months of being blocked by Rubio, Jacobson was finally appointed U. S. Ambassador to Mexico. But do study the above photo. It shows that Rubio and the other seven Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress...moderate Cuban-Americans are not eligible, you know...never have to worry that the American people or the U. S. media will hold them accountable regardless of what they do to sate their Cuban agendas, which most Cuban-Americans oppose but such opposition has no input.

         Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the two first-term Cuban-American U. S. Senators -- were serious Republican presidential candidates until they were wiped out by non-politician Donald Trump, reflecting a fact that Americans may finally be tired of bought-and-paid-for politicians. Rubio and Cruz arrived in the Senate running for President without remotely accomplishing anything meaningful in Congress -- except for threatening to shut down the government and vowing to reverse every positive Obama accomplishment regarding Cuba starting their "first day" in the White House. While the Rubio-Cruz extremism and other fatal money-and-power-hungry flaws eliminated them in the 2016 presidential race, they are already massively campaigning for the 2020 election and beyond. They have just one identical qualification: They will sell-out to any conservative, right-wing or Jewish billionaire on the planet. And that's why, though briefly portrayed as victims of the Trump phenomenon, they are already making media-exploitative speeches and resuming their lavish courting of billionaires with their White House sights firmly set on 2020. While there are literally scores of highly qualified Cuban-Americans, Rubio and Cruz are the last things Americans, Cuban-Americans, and citizens of the world need in America's White House.

Meanwhile:

       A cacophony of early results of President Obama's New Cuban Policy can continue to move forward if today's bilateral meeting featuring Cuba's Josefina Vidal and America's Kristi Kenney is successful.

       The unparalleled Obama-led process of Restoring Diplomatic Relations with Cuba is just as vital to the U. S. as it is to Cuba. After all, America's luminescent Cuban policy since the 1898 Spanish-American War and especially since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 has shamed the United States and democracy in the eyes of the world while also paradoxically garnering huge international support for Cuba.

       President Obama's easing Legal Travel to Cuba for U. S. Citizens has already been monumental and that's even before commercial airplane flights from the U. S. to Cuba, banned since 1962, begin this fall with up to 110 daily flights. Prior to Obama, everyday Americans for over half-a-century had been the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. Minus hyperbolic exaggeration, that alone established a glowing and symbiotic legacy as a touchstone for President Obama's unique guts and patriotism.

Yes, Obama's U.S.-Cuba New Era has arrived.

The entire world wants the Cuba Embargo to end.

    A few crooked nosed, cross-eyed, and greedy Americans aligned with a few greedy and revengeful Cuban-Americans have self-servingly dictated The Blockade of Cuba for more than a half-century.

          This is the Image of America -- jaundiced with greed and beady-eyed with desire -- that the rest of the world has of the U. S. as it gazes southward at its island neighbor, little helpless but lush Cuba. No other American policy has ever for such a sustained period shed as gruesome an image of the U. S. as its Cuban policy, which the American people have gutlessly and guilelessly allowed to persist decade after decade.

       Today in Havana at a crucial bilateral meeting, America's unjustifiable Cuban policy comes up against the diplomatic astuteness of Josefina Vidal. She saved Cuba as a sovereign nation in 2002 when the George W. Bush administration had turned its Latin American policy over to anti-Castro zealots and it appeared that coups against first Venezuela and then Cuba were very much in play. A decade-and-a-half later, taking advantage of the far more decent Obama administration, Vidal is trying to save Cuba again.

        The sheer genius of Vidal, working with reasonable elements within the Obama administration, has already achieved far more than the miscreants in the U. S. Congress said was possible. Her first line in the sand was the pernicious Batistiano-directed designation of Cuba as a Sponsor of Terrorism, which she got erased. She then got embassies reopened in Havana and Washington for the first time since 1961, plus openings for trade, tourism, and commerce between the two nations that had been verboten since before Vidal was born. But let it be known that today in Havana America's top diplomat Kristi Kenney will learn that Vidal "will never agree to full normalization of relations" unless three more of her demands are met: {1} The embargo, in place since 1962, must end; {2} the U. S. must enter into serious discussions about the return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba; and {3} the U. S. must cease funding and creating dissidents on the island. The Cuban-American hardliners in Congress laugh at those three Vidal demands, just as they laughed when she demanded that Cuba be removed from the Terrorism list. Also, Cuban-Americans regularly and stealthily attach anti-Cuban bills onto massive so-called "must pass" multi-billion-dollar defense, transportation, etc., bills and they then become legal U. S. laws that greatly harm Cubans, Americans and everyone else...while recent "slippers" like Mario Diaz-Balart and Ron DeSantis grin & smirk. So, in addition to battling the strongest nation in the world, Vidal must deal with a dysfunctional U. S. Congress that is at the beck & call of Cuban-American hardliners. Thus, she's a billion-to-one underdog but both her and Cuba have been similarly underestimated for decades. That, in fact, is a key part of the Cuban mystique.

      The mammoth United States and the island of Cuba have confronted each other in Cold and Hot wars since the 1950s. Each day Cuba has been a billion-to-one underdog. It still is. But....it's still there.

       America's gutsy two-term President, Mr. Obama, has officially proclaimed: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." BUT, unchecked Cuban extremists have proven they can obtain enough Jesse Helms, Dan Burtons, Robert Toricellies, etc., in Congress to craft whatever anti-Cuban and pro-Cuban American laws they desire, with the Congress-approved pipelines of tax dollars steadily flowing from Washington-to-Miami to back-up those laws. And, of course, a Republican might succeed Obama in the White House within a few months. Yes, Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States as long as Mr. Obama is President. BUT after he leaves office, there will be "a threat."  And Vidal knows it.

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