Cuba's Survival Plan

  It Remains A Priority 
{Monday, June 13th, 2016 -- Up- dated}

       While the U. S. media is totally obsessed with making sure that upstart Donald Trump doesn't win the presidential sweepstakes, there are actually a vast litany of other important news items that are being ignored. The photo above courtesy of South Korea's YONHAP News Agency is a prime example this week. On the left is Yun Byung, South Korea's Foreign Minister. On the right is Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. The two men, at the behest of South Korea, held vitally important talks this week in Havana, marking the first time in history such a high-level South Korean has been to Cuba. As warlike tensions mount in the South China Sea, South Korea is a vital military and economic ally of the United States. For all these reasons, the photo depicted above is a major news item that deeply concerns South Korea, Cuba, the United States and the world. Yun Byung said, "For an exceptionally long time, our talks were very friendly, serious and candid. We had a broad exchange of views on bilateral, regional, and global issues." Yun Byung's mission to Cuba reflects the desire of South Korea and the U. S. to loosen Cuba's ties with North Korea, a dangerously unpredictable nuclear power who is a player in the China-dominated South China Sea skirmishes. But Bruno Rodriguez, speaking for Cuba, frankly replied to Yun Byung with these stoic and vidal Cuban positions: "I respect South Korea's concern and appreciate the offer to help Cuba with economic and other considerations. But understand that we are not for sale. In 1959, after our revolution ended America's imperialist control of Cuba, our revolutionary leaders, Fidel Castro himself, went immediately to the U. S. to propose friendship and democracy. Nixon told Castro that the Cuban exiles and the U. S. would recapture Cuba soon. Cuba turned to the Soviet Union and other avenues that respected and supported our sovereignty. When the Soviet Union faded, we sought other friends...along with vowing to defend our independence with a do-or-die fervor. It's been that way since the 1950s. Cuba will be America's friend if our sovereignty is respected. Cuba will be South Korea's friend if our sovereignty is respected. We are not criminals and we are not stupid. We well know we would be much better off if America was our friend and if South Korea was our friend. Having said that, our sovereignty is not for sale. To understand us, please know that you must understand that."

       This photo shows Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, second from the left in the white shirt, hosting South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung, in the black suit, in Havana this week. It was big news, and very topical. Non-American international news agencies -- such as Yonhap News -- treated it as big, topical news...especially considering the possibility that World War III might be evolving in the South China Sea disputes. Of course, the U. S. media...in its role as an anti-Cuban propaganda machine...is not about to impartially inform Americans about Cuban issues, even if it might have a bearing on World War III, which, if possible, should be avoided in this nuclear-age.

        Ben Rhodes, a 39-year-old New Yorker, is America's Deputy National Security Advisor. He has been a key advisor and negotiator during President Obama's historic efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. This week Mr. Rhodes told Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post that the openings to Cuba "are irreversible." He also said, "The trade embargo and the removal of travel limits to Cuba will be lifted sooner than people think. The fact of the matter is that the American people and the Cuban people overwhelmingly want this to happen." He believes that the commercial and cultural ties wrought by his boss, President Obama, will prevent the Republican-Miami-Congress zealots from reversing most of Mr. Obama's sanity and decency.

          Ben Rhodes is also a major speechwriter for Mr. Obama. This Wikipedia photo shows Rhodes and Barack Obama on Air Force One as the President reviews the text of a key speech that Ben wrote.

        After Air Force One landed in Cuba in April, a palpable sentence written by Ben Rhodes and then approved and famously delivered by President Obama was: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." At least, of course, Cuba does not have to fear a threat from the United States as long as a Republican does not succeed him in the White House in January, 2017. The world understands that logic.

         With President Obama now openly and powerfully campaigning for Democrat Hillary Clinton, it appears his popularity and speaking prowess will indeed keep the Republicans out of the White House. Amazingly, in the closing months of his two-term presidency Mr. Obama's approval rating exceeds 50% while the norm would be in the 20-to-40 percent range, at best. He inherited from the Bush dynasty a financial depression, a warmongering foreign policy, a decades-old Cuban strategy designed to recapture the island that shamed America's best friends all around the world, and other right-wing disasters. President Obama has corrected much of those evils and, in the process, turned many lifelong conservative Republicans, like me, into staunch Democrats. No matter what the Miami and Congressional zealots do next, Cuba will loom in the decades to come as a catalyst in varnishing Obama's pro-democracy legacy to create a bright, shiny glow. In the pantheon of Great American Presidents, I now rank him #1, which drops FDR to #2 and Abe to #3. 

Up, up and awayyyy...to Cuba!!

       In 1962 the U. S. embargo was created for the stated purpose, according to declassified U. S. documents, to starve and deprive Cubans on the island to induce them to overthrow their revolutionary government. That cruel policy has existed ever since but President Obama has sliced remarkably into it despite the Batistiano-directed mandates to enforce it. The embargo for all those decades has, for example, prevented cruise ships from leaving the U. S. for Cuba. But Obama has boldly arranged for Cardinal Cruise Lines to make regular jaunts from Miami to Cuba with other cruise lines continuing this week to arrange their Cuban cruises. Also since 1962 everyday Americans have been the only people in the world denied the freedom to travel to Cuba, but Obama has carved up that congressional absurdity too and now there are 12 rather easy excuses for Americans to visit the island. Just this week American and five other major airlines were given permission to begin commercial flights to Cuba from Miami, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. Since 1962 only charter flights have been allowed.

  Up, up and awayyyy...indeed!!!

      President Obama hasn't erased all of the inequities of U.S.-Cuban relations but, more than any person since 1492, he has corrected many of the imperialist and militaristic stains against America related to its Cuba policy. From 1492, when Columbus discovered Cuba and the U. S., foreign powers coveted and fought over the island, with Spain being Top Dog for 400 years prior to the 1898 Spanish-American War when the U. S. gained control. Cubans could do nothing till 1952 when right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration -- Vice President Nixon, the Dulles brothers, etc. -- teamed the U. S. democracy with the Mafia to support the brutal-thieving Batista dictatorship in Cuba. That outrage inspired the historic Cuban Revolution, which shocked the world by finally gaining independence. But by daylight on January 1, 1959, the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders used their getaway planes, ships and boats to escape to safer havens -- namely South Florida. In the ensuing six decades, two generations of Batistianos-Mafiosi have used Congress and Republican presidential administrations to dictate whatever they want to dictate regarding Cuba and yet they have not been able to recapture the island. Hiding behind the skirts of the world's superpower, and benefiting drastically from the propagandized apathy of U. S. citizens, two Batistiano-Mafiosi generations dictated America's Cuban policy, at least till President Obama bravely challenged it.

        This REUTERS photo, I believe, emphasizes just how much President Obama has defied the Batistiano-Mafiosi dictation of America's Cuban policy. In April he arrived in Cuba aboard Air Force One, the first sitting U. S. President to visit Cuba since 1928 when President Coolidge appropriately arrived on a warship. While in Cuba, President Obama even persuaded Cuban President Raul Castro to join him at a news conference, which involved taking questions from the media. Obama was used to that; Castro wasn't. In the above photo Castro was pretending he didn't understand a question regarding dissidents. Obama was amused, at least considering the Q & A session something Cuba needs to start getting used to.

       These Cubans never expected to see Air Force One flying low over Havana with the President of the United States aboard. But this iconic ABC-TV photo was taken in April of 2016. It indeed happened!!!!!!

President Obama about to peacefully land in Havana.

      In stark contrast to Obama's peaceful flight to Cuba in April of 2016, back in 1960 the U. S. airplane flights to Cuba were by warplanes based in nearby Florida {study the above photo-caption} to mercilessly bomb Cuban farms. Of course, to this day Americans are supposed to deny the AP photo and caption above. That's because, beginning on January 1 of 1959 the overturned Batista-Mafia dictatorship fled to South Florida and, from that day to this day, the Cuban narrative in the U. S. has been mostly controlled by the transplanted Batistianos and Mafiosi. If you still deny that, re-study the above photo and caption.  

        On April 15, 1961, a squadron of B-26 bombers like this one took off from Nicaragua to bomb Cuba into oblivion. The pilots and Cuban exiles, at great expense to taxpayers, had trained in Nicaragua where the U.S.-friendly Somoza dictatorship ruled supreme. The B-26 bombers were to soften up Cuba for the Bay of Pigs ground attack which commenced two days later. The cowardly attack even had disguised the B-26 warplanes as Cuban planes so the U. S. could claim the attack was strictly by Cuban forces. The neophyte President Kennedy had inherited the attack plans devised by right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration. The CIA, led by Allen Dulles, had assured Kennedy that {1} Fidel Castro would run for his getaway airplane the moment he heard the bombs dropping on Camp Colombia at the edge of Havana; and {2} the Cuban people would turn against Fidel when they realized the attack had begun. Of course, unlike the Batistianos, Fidel didn't have a "getaway airplane" and he raced to the front-lines to defend Cuba. And no Cubans turned against him. But as far as Americans know, the attackers and not the defenders were the righteous heroes. The Bay of Pigs losers have dictated the Bay of Pigs narratives.

 Fidel Castro on the front-lines at the Bay of Pigs. 

      This AP photo was taken on April 15, 1961. It shows Cubans bravely holding their ground and firing back at a U. S. warplane flying very low on a strafing and bombing run. It was a quick and easy defense for Cuba, shaming the U. S. once the facts were quickly exposed, starting at the United Nations in New York where Adlai Stevenson, the respected U. S. ambassador, had been famously caught in cover-up lies. Later, the duped President Kennedy screamed: "If I could, I would blow the CIA to smithereens!!" History also registers the fact that, in the week prior to his Nov.22-1963 assassination in Dallas, Kennedy had told Pierre Salinger and his other close aides that his "top priority" was to normalize relations with Cuba. Kennedy and all of his successors in the White House since 1963 never came close to reining in the Cuban exile/right-wing control of America's Cuban policy...at least till Obama. That attests to Obama's presidential greatness.

      This week President Obama was a superstar guest on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show on NBC-TV. They talked and did some skits. At one point, Obama mentioned Cuba as one of his great successes. Obama's skills as an orator and communicator are unequaled by his vast array of political opponents. So, of course, are his guts, intelligence and decency. And that's why I rate him #1 with FDR sliding to #2 and Abe to #3.

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Attacking Cuba's Friends

The Purges Are Mounting

        These three women are, left to right, Dilma Rousseff, Michelle Bachelet and Cristina Fernandez. Each of them has been democratically elected and re-elected as Presidents of important Latin American countries -- Rousseff in Brazil, Bachelet in Chile, and Fernandez in Argentina. And all three have been staunch and very important supporters of Cuba. But a third significant thing they have in common is this: All three of them have come under massive assaults from what they believe are U.S.-friendly right-wing elements.

        As this montage indicates, the three Latin American female stalwarts till recently were among the most powerful women in the world...along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, lower-left, and America's Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, lower-right. Cristina Fernandez, upper-left, has finished her two-terms as Argentine President and was stopped by term-limits. She has been succeeded by the anti-Cuban and U.S.-friendly Mauricio Macri. Fernandez's last term in office was harassed by what she called two "parasitic U. S. factors, right-wingers and hedge fund creeps." Michelle Bachelet, lower-middle, is also under duress in her second term as Chili's President and also, "at least in part," she blames right-wing U. S. elements. That's extremely interesting and pertinent because Ms. Bachelet's father was one of the murder victims of the blood-thirsty Pinochet dictatorship. Pinochet ruled for 17 bloody years after U. S. right-wingers put him in power via the infamous coup in 1973 that resulted in the death of the very decent and democratically elected President Salvador Allende. There are even today trials in Chile, Argentina, and other Latin American nations to seek justice concerning such past atrocities. The historic background and topicality of Ms. Bachelet personifies past Nixon-Dulles-Kissinger-Bush imperialism in Latin America although Americans are supposed to ignore the everlasting effects. Dilma Rousseff, upper-right, is the most important of the much-maligned, Cuban-loving and harassed Latin American female Presidents.

       Assaults on Cristina Fernandez, Michelle Bachelet and, especially, on Dilma Rousseff are also, to a significant degree, assaults on Cuba, possibly originating or at least enhanced to combat President Obama's ongoing efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. While the three historic Latin American female Presidents are being attacked from the far-right, so are the Cuba-friendly male Presidents in the region -- Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Ollanta Humala in Peru, etc. But the assaults on Dilma Rousseff are the most significant, the most gutless and the most egregious.

      Dilma Rousseff has been suspended as President of Brazil as impeachment proceedings shame Latin America's most powerful nation just weeks before it plays host to the Rio Olympics. She correctly calls it "a coup." Most observers agree with Norm Chomsky who says, "She is being impeached by a gang of thieves." In fact, most of those in the Brazilian Congress who have led the impeachment against her are themselves charged with crimes. Dilma is not; she is basically being charged with spending too much of Brazil's economy on the poorest Brazilians, the people she fought so doggedly for as a guerrilla fighter in her youth and during her two-terms as President. Indeed, during this first full week of June-2016, two recorded phone calls from impeachment advocates prove that their assaults on Dilma were designed to protect them from criminal corruption charges by preventing President Rousseff from pursuing them.

         For many years Lucia Newman was the top broadcast journalist on Latin American issues for CNN and she is now the highly respected Latin American Editor for Aljazeera English. Ms. Newman yesterday conducted a 26-minute interview with Dilma Rousseff at Palacio da Alvorada, Brazil's official presidential palace where Dilma is confined while she mounts her impeachment defense. The entire interview is easily accessible online and, yes, you do need to access it to hear Dilma's words. She told Ms. Newman, "I am a victim of injustice. I believe that by defending democracy I will win back the trust of the Brazilian people."

        As she fights for her political life, Dilma Rousseff is supported by a determined team of lawyers, politicians, and many millions of poor people who believe...who know...she is indeed the victim of an injustice, a coup.

      Dilma Rousseff is now 68-years-old. She's been a fighter all her life against injustice and for poor, disenfranchised people. But the rich and powerful right-wingers she fought against as a youth are similar to the ones she is fighting against now. She's remains a warrior and vows to defend herself against impeachment. But the odds are stacked against her in what many consider a corrupt Congress.

President Rousseff's Vice President was Michel Temer.

       When her Vice President, Michel Temer, double-crossed her, Dilma Rousseff's days as the twice democratically elected President of Brazil were numbered. Temer, like many of the Congressmen opposing her, has been charged with corruption. But today Michel Temer sits in her presidential chair in Brazil.

Yes, President Dilma Rousseff...will be...impeached.

Brazil's poor people still love Dilma very much.

Dilma supporters at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

These Cannes movie stars know what a "coup" is.

       Pro-Dilma protesters in Brazil believe that U. S. billionaires -- like the Koch Brothers -- are trying to purchase the U. S. democracy and they are also trying to re-shape Brazil's democracy. In other words, Dilma is accused of "going overboard" in trying to help poor people, and greedy rich billionaires don't like that.

       This Wikipedia photo shows Dilma Rousseff with her well-to-do family. That's Dilma standing up in the middle. She, the future President of Brazil, was born on December 14, 1947 in Belo Horizonde, Brazil.

Dilma as a precious, precocious toddler in Brazil.

      As a very beautiful young girl, Dilma Rousseff was appalled at how a U.S.-backed military dictatorship was treating Brazilian peasants. Inspired by the success in 1959 of the Cuban Revolution against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, Dilma became a guerrilla fighter against that Brazilian dictatorship.

Dilma was captured, becoming prisoner #3023.

        This photo shows Dilma being sentenced to a brutal military prison where, for over two years, she was unmercifully tortured. Even today several Latin American nations are still holding investigations and trials of suspected perpetrators of those military dictatorships. The U. S. recently has reluctantly provided some information. And as the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff was asked to testify at the United Nations.

        This heart-wrenching Washington Post photo shows Dilma Rousseff fighting back tears in a speech at the United Nations when she was asked, as Brazil's President and as a victim, to testify before the UN Truth Commission about the unspeakable torture she endured during her imprisonment at the hands of the brutal military dictatorship. She complied, in detail. Later, more composed, she said "Such dark days of foreign imperialism and military dictatorships must not afflict modern generations in Latin America and the Caribbean. But those who know about such things are duty-bound, I believe, to tell that history, as painful as it is for me to do so here today. Victims or their families deserve justice, however belated. And the perpetrators still living deserve punishment and even the perpetrators now dead deserve to be scorned." If you ignore the other Dilma photos, please study this one as, at the United Nations, she was re-living being tortured.

Dilma when she scared corrupt right-wingers.

           Dilma is still powerful. Time Magazine in big red letters highlighted this quote from her: "I will struggle all my might until the coupmongers are defeated." Her struggle is both brave and honorable.

        This Reuters photo is modern, just days old. It shows Dilma wiping away a tear when she found out she was being suspended as the two-term democratically elected President of Brazil. The coup that will codify her impeachment awaits her. Just like when she was brutally imprisoned as a young woman, the rich and corrupt son-of-a-bitches have won. Dilma has lost. So have the poor people. And so has democracy.

Dilma Rousseff: Cuba's troubled friend.

Dilma Rousseff: Brazil's great lady.

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Pundits-Propagandists-Publicists

 A Nonsensical Trilogy 

       In this torturous and rapturous presidential election year, the most interesting and also the most beautiful player is Hope Hicks. Donald Trump has captured and enraptured the Republican nomination, partly because of her. If he captures the White House, it will also be partly because of her. As his spokesperson, you might call her a publicist but she is neither a pundit nor a propagandist, which is good. She is 27-years-old and so shy she seldom does interviews. From Greenwich, Connecticut, she starred for four years as a lacrosse player at SMU in Dallas, Texas. A stunning brunette, she is a Ralph Lauren model. In August of 2014, Donald Trump was enthralled with her, perhaps after one look in her direction or probably after hearing her speak. She told New Yorker Magazine, "Mr. Trump told me, 'I'm thinking of running for president, and you're going to be my press secretary,' and I haven't been home since Thanksgiving." 

          Hope Hicks presents a dauntingly emphatic presence merely by getting off Donald Trump's airplane. Every news anchor and newspaper columnist in America would love to interview her, but those chances are slim or none. She also refrains from social media, except for helping Trump with his prolific tweets.

        Standing next to Hope Hicks, as key Trump aide Daniel Scavino is uncomfortably doing in the above photo, is akin to being anonymous. All eyes and all ears always seem to naturally gravitate to Hope Hicks. 

         Damon White of the New York Times took this penetrating photo of Hope Hicks, Donald Trump's shy but photogenic and all-business Press Secretary. She routinely and keenly spots notable Trump-bashers.

A Washington Post photo of Hope Hicks.

Hope Hicks orchestrating a Trump venue.

        Hope Hicks is a brilliant and relentless publicist, but not infallible. She inadvertently made headlines herself when she typed a very private text message about Hillary Clinton that she intended for a Trump aide but mistakenly sent it to a Politico reporter who had almost exactly the same name and was a renowned anti-Trump basher. The media is still trying, without success, to pigeon-hole her about that. 

Donald Trump depends mightily on Hope Hicks. 

If he makes it to the White House, so will Hope Hicks.

      Hope Hicks, I believe, would be a welcome addition to the White House. She is a skilled publicist but she despises pundits, which she very correctly believes are a disgrace to both broadcast journalism and the political process. A publicist with such a comprehensive insight might put Trump in the White House and, considering the lesser-of-two-evils scenario, that might not be a bad thing for America's democracy.

       Interestingly enough, anti-Trump zealots like Maria Cardona might help Hope Hicks make Donald Trump President of the United States. Ms. Cardona was born 49 years ago in Bogota, Colombia, and graduated from Duke University. As a ubiquitous and typically obnoxious television pundit, Ms. Cardona is extremely biased against Trump and an extreme and exceedingly rich propagandist for his opponent, Hillary Clinton. She is, I believe, the personification of the two best words -- the noun nescience and the adjective truculent -- that define television pundits. But those two definitive words get her a lot of airtime as a pundit because networks pretend, despite polls that reveal the media's approval rating is incredibly dismal, that their propaganda will influence voters instead of, actually, mostly turning them off or, more probably, sending them frantically into an opposite direction. Because of that, Trump is a serious presidential contender and even Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders is strongly preferred, at least by the more enlightened and smarter young-adult voters, over established bought-and-paid-for candidates.

        The reason a proliferation and saturation of pundits like Maria Cardona may put Trump in the White House is that many Americans will go in the opposite directions that professional propagandists like her espouse and, posing as condescending savants, point them to go. If Trump becomes President, it will be because a vast majority of white males will be able to offset Clinton's dramatic edge with Hispanic, Black and women voters. And, yes, it could happen because the networks -- incompetent news sources but also ubiquitously strong -- continue to employ biased pundits as opposed to broadcast journalists who could actually cover the news. This week on CNN's prime time, Cardona's incessant anti-Trump rants, as usual, made the point that only white males, like Trump, are racists and that Hispanics, African-Americans and women are always 100% purists when it comes to being absolutely and eternally non-racists. That is a lie...and it's a lie that might, unfortunately, put an unqualified person, like Mr. Trump, in the White House. 

       Regardless of the continuous self-proclaimed racism and holier-than-thou vitriol from television pundits that will surely persist right up until the November presidential election, "Donald Trump's impact on the GOP {and the impact of Bernie Sanders} will not suddenly disappear and might well spill more bloodshed along the way as the greatest weakness of the U. S. democracy is unveiled for all the world to see. A great democracy...and America's democracy was indeed the greatest...needs a thriving, impartial news media, as the Founding Fathers stated repeatedly back in 1776. But, in their infinite wisdom, they did not envision television, the most powerful medium. With all network news operations in the U. S. now owned by greedy, self-serving billionaire individuals or corporations, "broadcast news" is strictly a giant propaganda machine that, with the use of pundits, repeatedly remind Americans how stupid they are if they don't support the punditry-beloved bought-and-paid-for candidates. Thus, as a reaction to such anti-democracy punditry, millions of Americans, in desperation, are seeking alternatives...such as Trump and Sanders. Of course, monied pundits like Ms. Cardona might yet win but, at least, their excesses have spawned an indelible resistance that might someday restore democratic principles to America's politics.

And, uh, speaking of politics:  

         This graphic is courtesy of Cosmopolitan Magazine and it depicts one of Chelsea Clinton's abodes in New York City. She is the daughter of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. It is a reminder that only the rich need apply in our money-crazed political system that shamefully mocks the non-rich.

       This Cosmopolitan Magazine graphic depicts one of Ivanka Trump's abodes in New York City. She is the daughter of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. It's another reminder to voters that contenders for national office in the U. S. need to be billionaires or need to have sold their souls to billionaires.  In other words, democracy was a blessing and a priceless jewel until it was put up for sale.

And speaking of obnoxious pundits:

          Study this Harley Schwadron political cartoon. 

      And note this Lisa Donnelly political cartoon.

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