U.S.-Cuba War Heats Up

What? You thought it was over?

{Friday, June 3rd, 2016} 

       Jose Daniel Ferrer is a prime example of how the U.S.-Cuba War has heated up on the heels of President Obama's historic efforts to normalize relations with the island for the first time in decades. Jose is Cuba's most powerful anti-Castro dissident. He is 45-years-old and has spent 22 of those years in Cuban prisons. This first week of June, 2016, Jose is in Washington on an international anti-Castro tour that has taken him to Miami already and soon to New York City, Silicon Valley in California, and Madrid, Spain. 

        President Obama's historic 2016 trip to Cuba this spring opened a lot of long-closed doors, including doors that indeed had long secured the congressionally mandated embargo of Cuba. Opening those doors, in many areas, normalized relations between the two neighboring nations but other offshoots include the creation of new battlefields. While Obama was in Cuba, he met with anti-Castro dissidents.

       This photo shows Obama in Cuba meeting with the most notable dissidents on the island, including Jose Daniel Ferrer. On his current trip to Miami, Washington, California, Madrid, etc., Jose has a two-way ticket. That means he will be returning to Cuba, supposedly with more support and more notoriety.

      The prime support for Jose Daniel Ferrer in Cuba has been on the eastern tip of the island around Santiago de Cuba. That's where he founded the dissident organization "The Patriotic Union of Cuba." His Obama-inspired and refurbished impact will be greatly enhanced by the time he arrives back in Cuba later this month from his whirlwind international anti-Castro tour. Therefore, Jose's upcoming anti-Castro battles will mesh with an Obama-style U.S.-Cuba War that is just beginning to heat up. It's not a hot war like the revolution or the Bay of Pigs attack or the terrorist bombing of the Cuban civilian plane Cubana Flight 455. Instead, at least for now, it's strictly an economic war that hopefully won't spiral into a hot or terrorist war.

      The 40-year-old Yoani Sanchez is not as powerful as Jose Daniel Ferrer in Cuba but internationally she is easily the most famous anti-Castro dissident because of her ubiquitous blog. Like Jose, Cuba has given Yoani two-way tickets to fly around the world and then return to Cuba more powerful than ever before.

        On her international tour, Yoani Sanchez...for sure...stopped off at Radio-TV Marti in Miami. It's the anti-Castro propaganda machine that has been lushly funded by U. S. taxpayers since the 1980s. It's broadcasts are supposedly aimed only at Cuba but are routinely and rather easily blocked by Cuba. Marti's legions of critics universally agree that its primary purpose is merely to provide yet another pipeline of tax dollars from the U. S. Congress to Miami. Regardless, Yoani used her time in the U. S. to take advantage of Marti's state-of-the-art broadcast facilities and blast additional vitriol at Fidel from Little Havana in Miami. 

       On her international tour, of course, Yoani Sanchez was wined, dined and fawned over in the U. S. Congress. The above photo shows Yoani being hosted and toasted by two viciously anti-Castro Cuban-American Senators, Marco Rubio from Miami and Robert Menendez from New Jersey, the two anti-revolutionary bastions. When she arrived back in Cuba, Yoani let it be known that she had the financial wherewithal to start her anti-Castro digital newspaper, which, like her blog, is a giant international warehouse for anti-revolutionary stalwarts. In decades past, Cuba has eased much of its dissident problems by, from time to time, making it easy for them to go to the U. S. as long as they stay. Several times, such as the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, Cuba has arranged for boatloads of legitimate dissidents, criminals and mentally ill to relocate to the U. S. for two purposes -- to lessen problems on the island and increase the problems on hostile soil, such as that depicted graphically in the famed "Scarface" movie. But that strategizing was pre-Obama. This is current-Obama, and the stratagems are now quite different from everything that has gone before. Now, the two most famed dissidents on the island -- Jose and Yoani -- can make international anti-Castro tours raking in massive acclaim and, supposedly, massive support...and then return to the island as much stronger dissidents!! Thus, the hot wars and the cold wars have evolved into economic wars, and that includes one that is about to play out in the U. S. District Court in Washington. 

       If you think the U.S.-Cuban wars ended with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, or the failed U. S. Bay of Pigs attack in 1961, or the ongoing efforts by President Obama to normalize relations with Cuba, you would be wrong. All the U.S.-Cuban wars...the hot ones and the cold ones...have been fueled by economics, namely by how much money American companies or Mafia leaders could rake off the nearby island. Cuban millionaires who owned companies such as rum-maker Bacardi and sugar-maker Fanjul were initially distraught when they lost their lucrative island corporations to the upstart Revolution that shocked them in January of 1959. Even though the Batista-Mafia dictatorship had been backed by the U. S. government, a somewhat sordid arrangement that enabled U. S. businessmen to partake in the rape and robbery of the island, none of the fleeing Batista-Mafia leaders nor their business associates had any inkling that, on U. S. soil, they would still have massive support from government enterprises that included the Eisenhower-Nixon White House, the U. S. Congress, the CIA, and a myriad of state and federal courts, especially those in Florida. Therefore, Cubans who were merely millionaires in Batista's Cuba in the 1950s soon become billionaires. Surely in Cuba, the Bacardi and Fanjul families were worth millions but in the U. S. those millions soon became billions. Having the U. S. Congress and federal courtrooms on your side, they discovered, was a lot better than having the support of Fulgencio Batista or Lucky Luciano in Cuba. That bit of U.S.-Cuban realism is playing out again today in the U. S. District Court in Washington, D. C.

       If, by chance, you disagree with anything in the first paragraph above, I suggest you use a modern tool known as Google and search the "Fanjul sugar monopoly." You will discover, I believe, why the Fanjul brothers have billions of reasons to smile and congratulate each other. In pre-revolutionary Cuba their family owned a lucrative sugar operation. In post-revolutionary America the Fanjuls own a sugar enterprise...also called a monopoly...that makes the Cuban company resemble a speck of sugar compared to millions of tons. From the Florida Everglades to the Dominican Republic, the extended Fanjul family owns some of the world's most luxurious real estate and the toys to go with it. One brother famously lobbies the Democrats and the other handles the Republicans, meaning in a two-party political system they are covered. It also means that Americans pay the highest prices in the world for sugar. Your Google search, if you care to pursue it, will also reveal that the Fanjul sugar monopoly in the U. S. is not only controversial but also shocking, yet as an American you are not supposed to Google it or question it. And the same goes for other post-revolutionary gold mines in the U. S., such as Bacardi that is again fighting Cuba in court.

        The Bacardi name is synonymous with rum, which was a million-dollar enterprise in pre-revolutionary Cuba and is a multi-billion-dollar gold mine in the United States after the revolution. So, in essence, Fidel Castro unwittingly did the Bacardi family...as well as the Fanjul family, etc...some gigantic favors when he booted them off the island to a much safer and much richer sanctuary, the United States of America.

        For decades, the mighty United States and the island of Cuba have waged vigorous post-revolutionary battles for ownership of famed Cuban brand names...such as Havana Club, the lucrative rum. To say the least, an island doing battle against the world's economic and military superpower is not exactly a level playing field. Yet, little Cuba shocked the world by surviving the revolutionary war, the Bay of Pigs attack, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, and even the U. S. embargo against Cuba from 1962 till today. And Cuba has, to a degree, held its own in the tug-of-war with Bacardi regarding who owns the Havana Club trademark. Of course, Bacardi has plenty of money to lobby Congress, which means it has the Havana Club market in the U. S. sewed up tightly. But little Cuba, a resilient innovator if there ever has been one, teamed with the French alcohol giant, Penard Ricard, to market its own Havana Club rum. And guess what? Cuba's Havana Club is considered superior to Bacardi's version, which is distilled in the U. S. Territory of Puerto Rico and bottled in Jacksonville, Florida. Bacardi, by the way, is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda...which I guess is, uh, for tax purposes. And also guess what? Back in January, on the heels of Obama's detente with Cuba, the U. S. Office of Foreign Assets Control {OFAC} AWARDED THE HAVANA CLUB TRADEMARK TO CUBA!!  

        But be assured, Bacardi can afford the best lawyers and the best lobbyists in Washington and therefore it is about a 500-to-1 favorite to defeat Cuba in that U. S. District Court battle, whereby it hopes to wrest the Havana Club trademark from Cuba...once and for all, OFAC's ruling be-damned! Even with OFAC's decision favoring Cuba in January, the U. S. embargo prevents even one bottle of Cuba's Havana Club from being sold legally in the United States, and the U. S. Congress supposedly has codified the embargo for eternity, which will plague the U. S. and democracy for generations to come. Yet, President Obama's astute use of Executive Powers has sliced into the abominable embargo to such an extent that Americans today can purchase up to $100 worth of Havana Club in Havana and bring it to the U. S. That Obama slice of sanity has resulted in New York bar owners maintaining anew that Americans prefer Cuba's Havana Club. 

       The marketing guru for Bacardi is Fabio Di Giammarco. His photo is courtesy of Bacardi's global headquarters in Hamilton, Bermuda. He has launched a massive advertising campaign designed to proselytize Americans into accepting the premise that anything Bacardi does is right and anything Cuba does is wrong. He expects to win. I wonder why? This week Mr. Giammarco told the Miami Herald: "It's an exciting time for us and the Havana Club franchise in the United States." As reported by the Miami Herald this week, one of the slickly produced Bacardi ads highlights this point: "Even A Revolution Couldn't Topple The Rum." I reckon what Mr. Giammarco means is...the Cuban Revolution couldn't topple the rum-makers after they fled to the United States but history records that they did in Cuba, although that too is still debatable.  

    Indeed, the Cuban Revolution toppled the rum-makers but, after regrouping in the U. S., tons of Bacardi rum money have been used to support efforts to topple the Revolution, just as tons of Fanjul sugar money have done the same. But, incredibly, the Cuban Revolution is still standing. In fact, Fidel Castro himself is still standing as he approaches his 90th birthday on August 13. Meanwhile, in June of 2016 Bacardi is spending millions of dollars on a marketing campaign and on a fight in the U. S. District Court in D. C.

      To summarize, this graphic depicting the island of Cuba shows perhaps the two most appropriate or symbolic flags -- a money flag and a Cuban flag. What's missing, of course, is a...United States flag.

       But once the gritty President Obama leaves the White House in a few months -- January of 2017, to be exact -- Cuba might "need to fear a threat" from the powerful, highly financed forces that only he has managed to blunt, if only momentarily, since the 1950s. Whether it's rum, sugar, cigars or any other iconic and vulnerable Cuban products, there will always be foreign entities ready to pounce. Regardless of who is in the White House, as long as a handful of Cuban-Americans can dictate Cuban policy in the U. S. Congress and to the U. S. media, the island of Cuba will have every right "to fear a threat" from the U. S.

       Little Havana USA refers to the anti-Castro section of Miami. If Cuba is represented in that new U. S. District Court battle, its lawyer should point out that Cuba and Bacardi are fighting over the "Havana Club" trademark, not the "Little Havana Club" trademark. But Bacardi has the home-court advantage.

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Cuba-U.S. Military Ties

And, hopefully, Rice Too!!

      This photo, courtesy of Agustin Borrego, shows Colonel Idael Fumero Valdes, the top enforcement police officer on the island of Cuba. He represents a seldom publicized fact: Routine police and military cooperation between Cuba and the United States. Recently Colonel Fumero led a delegation of Cuban officials on a tour of the U. S. Military Command for Latin America at Key West, Florida. It reflected the U. S. desire to continue and expand ties with Cuba designed to make both nations and the Caribbean safer by mutually policing their contiguous waters against illegal drug and human trafficking. The United States obviously respects the cooperation Colonel Fumero has consistently provided, which includes capturing drug dealers wanted by the United States and quickly alerting American authorities to come get them.

      Lt. Adisleidys Despaigne {a Borrego photo} is also typical of Cuban officers who are trained to assist U. S. military and police officials. "Cuban mothers like me," she says, "have the same concerns and worries as American mothers. That includes drug dealers and human traffickers who try to prey on all our children."

      This week -- Monday, May 30th, 2016 -- Martin Rice Company of Missouri delivered a 20-ton shipment of high-quality, long-grain rice as a totally free gift to the Cuban people. It was off-loaded from a ship at Cuba's plush Mariel Port 28 miles southwest of Havana as a gesture of friendship from Missouri to Cuba.

      Missouri Governor Jay Nixon is spending several days in Cuba this week on a very ambitious trade mission. His large delegation includes top government, agriculture, business, and education officials from Missouri. Governor Nixon said, "Missouri farmers and workers produce the highest quality products in the world and we are here to expand opportunities to get Missouri goods to Cuban consumers." Missouri's mammoth gift of 20 tons of rice is designed to prove to Cuba that Missouri's rice is superior to the rice grown in Vietnam and that nearby United States ports are much closer and more convenient for transporting it to the Mariel Port, which recently received a billion-dollar upgrade. Missouri is #4 among the 50 U. S. states in the production of rice. Cuba is a major purchaser of rice, most from faraway Vietnam because of the U. S. embargo. Cuba has not purchased any rice from the U. S. since 2008 and Governor Nixon wants that to change drastically, along with the sale to Cuba of a myriad of other Missouri products.

   The plaque dated "May 2016" depicted above reflects increasing recognition of the herculean work Cuban diplomat Josefina Vidal has performed during extremely delicate negotiations to normalize relations with the United States. Some now consider her "the U.S.-Cuban angel of peace."

        Since the 1950s, of all the Cuban and American diplomats who have strived to ease the hostilities between the two neighboring nations, none have matched the sheer brilliance of Cuba's Josefina Vidal.

       James Williams is President of the Washington-based Engage Cuba Coalition. Mr. Williams is among the democracy-loving Americans leading the plaudits honoring Josefina Vidal's "truly brilliant diplomacy." 

       James Williams, as the leader of the Engage Cuba Coalition, also deserves much credit for standing up to implacable foes while brilliantly and bravely supporting U. S. efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. Being fiercely pro-American and pro-democracy, Mr. Williams believes Americans deserve the freedom to "freely trade with and travel to" the nearby sovereign island of Cuba. WOW!! What a democratic concept!! 

      The Adonia, the magnificent Carnival Cruise Lines ship, has again this week left Miami bound for Cuba. It is the second historic trip to highlight a key aspect of President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. The first of the 7-day cruises two weeks ago stopped off in Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. This week the Cienfuegos stopover has been cancelled to allow for longer stays in Cuba's two largest cities -- the capital of Havana on the northwestern tip of the alligator-shaped island and the old capital of Santiago on the southeastern tip. The Adonia is currently making twice-monthly visits to Cuba.

The alligator-shaped island -- Havana to Santiago de Cuba.

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Getting To Know Cuba

By Knowing Cubans

        Cristina Escobar, Cuba's young superstar news anchor, is racking up some frequent flyer miles from the island to the U. S. and back. That's because, fueled by President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, many U. S. entities that want to know more about what's happening on the island and what's likely to happen realize that the two best ways to find out is: {1} Go to Cuba and talk to Cubans; or {2} invite Cubans to come talk to you. Cristina is getting more invitations than she can handle to tell Americans about Cuba and about why she turns down lucrative offers to stay in the U. S. to live and work on the island she loves with a passion. Each of the last three years, Cristina has made insightful visits to the U. S., making indelible impressions each time. In the last few days she has accepted invitations from the United States Chamber of Commerce and the NPR network to come to America and tell them about Cuba, where it is and where she thinks it is going. Cristina's visits to America are important because, for sure, the mainstream U. S. media is incapable or unwilling to portray U.S.-Cuban relations except from the perspectives of viciously anti-Castro Cuban-Americans. That situation, since 1959, has been even more injurious to the image of the U. S. democracy than to Cuba, which actually has garnered worldwide sympathy and support because of America's undemocratic targeting of the nearby island. Cristina, a passionate supporter of Cubans on the island and an astute critic of an American policy dictated only by a handful of "anti-Cuban Cuban-Americans," is anathema to the mainstream U. S. media but increasingly more-and-more fair-minded Americans who want to know about Cuba are soliciting Cristina's views.

       In December of 2014 Cristina Escobar spent a week in California. That's Cristina in the black dress listening attentively to a journalism professor at Cal State-Fullerton. She also toured Hollywood and Universal Studios. Being a fan of Hollywood movies, she says, "helped me learn English." Her passions for broadcast journalism, movies, and "to feel America's pulse" spawned her visit to California in 2014.

       In 2015 Cristina was back on U. S. soil, this time as Cuba's superstar journalist covering the fourth and final Vidal-Jacobson diplomatic session in Washington. The photo above shows Cristina making history, as documented by CNN. It shows her at a White House news conference asking six...yes, six...pertinent questions of President Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest. She was the star of the event and a CNN report that is still available online is aptly entitled: "Cuban Reporter Makes History at White House Briefing."  

"When Cuba questioned in the White House."  
Cristina's slice of White House history.

        This image is taken from a video-taped interview American journalist Tracey Eaton got with Cristina Escobar in Cuba. The video is still available on many worldly venues, including YouTube. The interview produced a myriad of published quotes from Cristina, including "I do not want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." But probably the most ubiquitous quotation from this particular interview was: "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans, not Americans." If you Google that sentence, it will readily be credited to her. The Spanish newspaper, El Pais, described it as "worthy of the great Cuban poet and independence fighter Jose Marti." High praise indeed!  

       In 2016...this last week of May, 2016...Cristina Escobar was back in America to, for one thing, tell the U. S. Chamber of Commerce her views on the current state of U.S.-Cuban relations. The above photo shows Cristina in the Washington studio of NPR, which is an excellent media source in the U. S. because it is the one broadcast outlet that will actually pursue both sides of two-sided stories, such as the Cuban conundrum. In this photo NPR reporter Eyder Peralta is shown conducting in English a very insightful 30-minute interview of Cristina. The entire interview is still on such outlets as NPR, YouTube, and the Center for Democracy in the Americas website. Peralta fired 20+ questions at Cristina, none of which fazed her.

         To understand Cuba in 2016 as President Obama is trying to embrace it, Americans need to know Cristina Escobar, a 28-year-old Cuban on the island. Otherwise, because of an extremely weak U. S. media, Americans are force-fed views of Cuba only from the self-serving prism of a handful of revengeful Cuban-Americans who resent the 1959 demise of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship, which unfortunately was allowed to immediately and eternally reconstitute itself on U. S. soil. As an inquisitive broadcast journalist in Cuba, Cristina has taken it upon herself to become an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations. She has family in Miami, and a brother in New York. But she is Cuban, and will remain so. From her perspective as a highly respected broadcast journalist and an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations, Cristina believes that both America and Cuba are hurt..."perhaps fatally"...by the omnipotence of the U. S. broadcast media that she feels is a giant propaganda machine serving the economic and political desires of an elite, unsavory few. As her fame extends from Cuba and the region to America, the three most notable Cristina quotes are: "The lies the U. S. media tells about Cuba hurts everyday Cubans the most." "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." Self-proclaimed American patriots, of course, are programmed to dismiss the viewpoints of Cristina Escobar. But braver and more realistic American patriots, perhaps many of the millions choosing Trump and Sanders over "established" politicians, seem to agree with Cristina Escobar about how harmful a weak U. S. media can be even in a powerful democracy.

      Since March 31st, CNN has repeatedly aired an excellent documentary about the decade of the 1980s entitled "The Eighties." It has been repeated several times in this last week of May, 2016. The inquisitive Cristina Escobar has watched it more than once because she's concerned about Cuba. Americans concerned about America should do the same. The must-see documentary explains how, in the 1980s, the U. S. media evolved into an extraordinarily powerful propaganda machine as opposed to the news outlet considered vital to the viability of a democracy. In the 1950s television news was becoming the dominant news source for millions of Americans. From then throughout the 1970s, the three over-the-air networks {CBS, NBC, and ABC} did yeoman work in providing Americans ubiquitous as well as fair-and-balanced news coverage. The broadcast media -- radio and TV -- was considered so omnipotent and so vital to the U. S. democracy that the airways were depicted as "publicly owner essentials." But in the 1980s the most greedy elements of capitalism took over as a few wealthy Americans, by buying up necessary politicians, also purchased the airways. Thus, as the aforementioned CNN documentary explained, individual and corporate billionaires began to buy the three over-the-air networks, soon making the news divisions self-serving propaganda machines instead of news outlets. A decent billionaire who respected news and was a visionary -- Ted Turner -- began the 1980s by inventing CNN as a 24-hour cable news outlet that actually covered news fairly. But then CNN too was bought by greedy capitalists who cared only about money and self-serving propaganda. The same is true for cable television's other CNN wannabees -- Fox, MSNBC, etc. Like the three over-the-air networks, all cable news outlets in the United States are owned today by greedy individual/corporate billionaires who care a lot about money and propaganda but very little, if anything, about the integrity of either the U. S. democracy or the broadcast industry. That evolution -- from actual broadcast news outlets to propaganda machines -- was solidified in the 1980s, as bravely and expertly explained by CNN's oft-repeated documentary "The Eighties." It is a basic fact that Cristina Escobar seems to comprehend, but one that eludes less concerned and easily propagandized Americans.

The CNN documentary points out, until the news divisions of America's broadcast industry were purchased by greedy billionaires, top broadcast journalist like Walter Cronkite were among America's most respected and influential people. Mr. Cronkite, for example, ended both the Lyndon Johnson presidency and the seemingly endless Vietnam War with his reporting and commentary on his CBS News program. There are no Walter Cronkites today; they have been replaced by broadcast propagandists spewing distortions that serve the purposes of their greedy billionaire owners. Thus, the first nail in democracy's U. S. coffin was pounded home by the purchase of the broadcast industry by unsavory billionaires back in the 1980s. Then the second and perhaps last nail was pounded home in 2010 when the U. S. Supreme Court legalized unlimited political donations by billionaires. A bought-and-paid-for media coupled with a bought-and-paid-for political system has produced a life-threatening cancer for the United States democracy.

As a broadcast journalist in Cuba, Cristina Escobar is no Walter Cronkite. At least not yet. But she is already respected and influential in Cuba and, it seems, becoming more so in the U. S. as Americans get to know her. Americans who do know her now better understand her as a talented broadcast journalist who cares deeply about U.S.-Cuban relations and, moreover, comprehends its significance. She is smart enough and insightful enough to say: "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." "The lies the U. S. media tell about Cuba hurts everyday Cubans the most." "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." Democracy-loving Americans do not have to faithfully believe everything Cristina Escobar says. I, for one, do not. But democracy-loving Americans should respect her sincerity and her expertise in assessing her Cuba and its relationship with the United States. For America's sake, and not just Cuba's, we need to wonder why she does not want the U. S. to bring her democracy; we need to wonder why she is so concerned about the lies the U. S. media tell about Cuba. And we need to wonder if...alas!!...Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba. Such democracy-loving concerns by Americans, I believe, will be good for America...and Cuba.

Meanwhile, now that neither Walter Cronkite nor anyone resembling him adorns the U. S. media, why has the island of Cuba produced what appears to be the best journalist reporting on the U.S.-Cuban conundrum? Or...is that a pertinent question?

Cristina Escobar: Being interviewed on CCTV America.

Cristina Escobar: Reviewing data for her newscast. 

Cristina Escobar: Not fond of the U. S. media.

Cristina Escobar: Delivering the news in Cuba.

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Still Courting Cuba

Superpowers Compete

        For the past quarter century, Carol J. Williams has been America's most astute journalist in analyzing international issues. As the star reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, she has worked in 80 nations and recently, staying closer to home, she concentrates now on being an International Affairs writer, analyst and consultant. She is fluent in English, Spanish, Russian, German and French. Included in her unique observations have been the best conclusions regarding the intricate and often misunderstood relations between the Caribbean island of Cuba and its superpower northern neighbor, the United States. The Cuban media is state-controlled and the U. S. media, when it comes to Cuba, is too intimidated, too politically correct or too biased to do justice to its democracy. So Ms. Williams, to my reckoning, has been the best source for both reporting and analyzing U.S.-Cuban developments.

      The best article regarding President Obama's attempt to "normalize" relations with Cuba has been, not surprisingly, penned by Carol J. Williams. It was entitled: "U. S.-Cuba Thaw Could Erode Russian Influence With Havana Allies." That's important because Cuba, while it has strong international support in its everlasting rivalry with the U. S., has historically looked to Moscow in do-or-die conflicts with America, and that is true today because the island's most powerful regional support is receding markedly as Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Nicaragua, etc., all have internal problems of their own, lessening their devotion to Cuba. So, this critique by Carol J. Williams is your best up-to-date summary: "Cubans fearful of hostile U. S. actions have long counted on the Kremlin to ride to their rescue with military backing and economic influence, even in the lean years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But if Havana and Washington could patch up their relationship after 55 years of bitter division..." Ms. Williams is aware that Cuba would be much better served by having the nearby backing of the U. S. as opposed to the faraway support of Russia. In the aforementioned article, she concluded: "The ideology that tethered Cubans to Moscow has morphed in both countries." By that, she was referencing Russian sanctions following its Ukraine aggression and Cuba's increasing dependence financially on several billion dollars of remittances each year from Cuban-Americans in South Florida. The morphing of those and other nuances has Cuba susceptible to President Obama's rapprochement but, with ample reason, Cuba remains wary and reluctant of Miami and Congress.

       While cognizant of Obama's historically positive overtures, Cuba is even more aware that a handful of anti-Castro Cuban-American zealots from Miami -- such as Rubio, the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen -- still easily dictate America's Cuban policy in the U. S. Congress. For example, this week's "Cuba Central" posting by Sarah Stephens on her Center for Democracy in the Americas website reveals that Marco Rubio and Mario Diaz-Balart...that's Mario standing between Rubio and Ros-Lehtinen in the above photo...are both using their time in Congress this week to continue to concentrate on anti-Cuban bills as opposed to, say, working on items they might help Americans and Cuban-Americans. It has been that way for decades and Cuba doesn't think that will change even though most of the world's people, including most Cuban-Americans, support President Obama, not the Miami extremists, when it comes to Cuba.

      Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reminded Cuban President Raul Castro that Miami and the U. S. Congress will override any friendly gestures Obama makes toward Cuba, "based on logic and history."

      Russian President Vladimir Putin this week {above} is hosting Cuba's First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Moscow. As the above photo indicates, Mr. Putin is seriously courting Mr. Diaz-Canel, knowing that the 56-year-old Cuban has already been designated as the next leader of Cuba no later than August 24th, 2018, meaning he figures to be Cuba's first non-Castro leader since 1959. Russia is not the economic powerhouse the U. S. is, but its nuclear arsenal attests to its superpower status. Newly plagued by sanctions and low oil prices, Russia hopes the U. S. detente with Cuba fizzles out, which it well might. In other words, the wily Putin is not a fan of Obama's efforts to normalize relations with the Caribbean's biggest and most influential island. Another Cold War-type standoff would be more to Putin's liking, pitting Cuba back in the middle of the tug-a-war that, way back in 1962, brought the world the closest its ever been to a nuclear holocaust. It appears that Putin, knowing Russia cannot compete economically with the U. S., is concerned that Obama-initiated commercial ties will erode the island's historic links to Moscow.

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