Cuba-US Friendship Takes Off

     But Hardliners Might Stop It 
Updated: Tuesday, July 12th, 2016 

       The U. S. government has authorized eight American airlines to operate direct flights to Cuba beginning in the fall. Thanks to President Obama, these will be the first U.S.-to-Cuba commercial flights in over half-a-century, as opposed to special charter flights. The airlines include American, Delta, Jet Blue, United, Southwest, etc. The non-stop flights will take off from major U. S. cities from New York to Los Angeles. Four other airlines have requested permission for Cuban flights but those requests are still pending. The approved flights will be from many cities with large Cuban-American populations -- Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Orlando, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and Newark, New Jersey. Fourteen of the 20 daily flights will be from Florida.

      Cuba's Minister of Tourism is Manuel Marrero. He says the island has been "challenged" by the avalanche of U. S. tourists since President Obama announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba in December of 2014. Mr. Marrero said this week, "U. S. visitors to Cuba in the first half of 2016 has been 83.9 percent higher than in 2015." Cuba is adjusting to the human tsunami.

         Kathy Castor was born 49-years-ago in Miami but she has represented the Tampa area in the U. S. Congress since 2007. She has always been a bright, beautiful beacon as a politician in Florida brave enough to fight for decency and sanity when it comes to U.S.-Cuban relations. She says, "The newly announced commercial flights between Tampa and Havana will strengthen family ties and open our communities to greater engagement and progress." Of course, the six most visceral anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress, accustomed prior to Obama of dictating America's Cuban policy, are outraged about the impending commercial airplane flights that, among many other absurdities, they or their elders have long prohibited.

      U. S. Cuban-American Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey is particularly outraged about United Airlines flights from Newark to Havana beginning as early as September. Perhaps the kindest sentence the AP quoted Menendez regarding the issue was: "Cuba remains a key ally of some of the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations and enemies of the United States..." Menendez says he worries about the safety of Americans on flights to Cuba. Of course, he was also outraged when President Obama removed Cuba from the Sponsors of Terrorism list that made Cuba, a victim of terrorism, quite susceptible to being easily sued in Miami courts for just about anything anyone wanted to sue the unrepresented nation for.

      This North Jersey.com photo shows United Airline jets at Newark's Liberty International Airport. If President Obama has his way, they will start flying to Cuba; if Senate Menendez has his way, they won't.

      The United States Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, the 45-year-old former mayor of Charlotte, is a strong advocate for normalizing relations with Cuba. Mr. Foxx said this week, "Restoring regular air service to Cuba after a half century builds tremendous potential to reunite Cuban-American families and foster education as well as opportunities for American businesses of all sizes." That viewpoint not only coincides with President Obama's but also connects with the vast majority of Americans and Cuban-Americans.

      Sarah Stephens, the dynamo at the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas, remains one of America's most dynamic advocates for democracy and, therefore not coincidentally, for normalizing relations with Cuba. While the mainstream U. S. media -- especially since 1976 when Miami's top Cuban-American newsman, Emilio Milian, was car-bombed for denouncing such terrorism against Cuba as the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 -- has had neither the courage nor the integrity to report fairly on U.S.-Cuban relations, Sarah Stephens has never failed to do so. Her Cuba Central segment each Friday on her CDA website regularly and cogently contradicts what she feels are anti-democratic rhetoric or actions from the Cuban-American hardliners in the U. S. Congress or elsewhere. Regarding the historic flights to Cuba beginning in September, Ms. Stephens says: "This is great news. Congress must still act to restore the freedom to travel to Cuba for all Americans. Restoring all travel rights will be good for American travelers, good for U. S. airlines and good for increasing contact and economic opportunity for the Cuban people." Democracy and The Center for Democracy in the Americas has a superb advocate in Sarah Stephens.

       This AP photo shows this week's opening of the first so-called bulk store in Havana. It's called "Zona+" and Reuters says it "offers products in bulk at lower prices than in more expensive retail outlets."

         This is a Wikipedia photo that the Reuters News Agency used this week to illustrate an article that revealed a U. S. industry that is overflowing with sales and cash -- the weapons industry!! The photo shows a Goshawk assembly line at McDonnell Douglas. The U. S. Air Force admitted that the international demand for U. S. weapons is robust and growing...an increase of 36% in sales to $46.6 billion in 2015 alone. The sophisticated weapons include deadly unmanned systems, munitions and fighter jets. Nations like the U. S., Britain, France, Russia, etc., feast on the sales of weapons in a world already inundated with death, destruction and untold millions of helpless and pitiful refugees seeking but often not finding safe existences. But the weapons industry is booming!

      The U. S. Air Force Deputy Undersecretary is Heidi Grant. She told Reuters this week, "The appetite for weapons just keeps getting bigger and bigger." Rogue nations and even non-nations seem to be over-loaded with an unending supply of powerful weapons and munitions. Ms. Grant doesn't relish that situation but the world is what it is, which means it is very, very troubled.   

      The Secretary of the U. S. Air Force is Deborah Lee James, Heidi Grant's boss. It is a good sign that women in the Western world are increasingly holding powerful positions in both the military and political spheres. Women are as capable as men and, by their nature, are less greedy and less prone to warfare.

       A great American journalist named Anita Snow this week posted this photo on her Facebook page. She was referencing a Newsweek article that pointed out this fact: It has been ten years since the police in Norway have killed anyone. The article stated, "As in Britain, police in Norway typically patrol while unarmed and only bear arms in extenuating situations." That fact impressed Anita Snow and should resonate with all peace-loving Americans who seldom get to watch a newscast that doesn't feature constant reports about deadly police-civilian shootings or, as the events in Dallas reminded us, civilian-police shootings.

     And speaking of Anita Snow, I'm familiar with her Facebook page because I consider her a great journalist and one of America's top experts on U. S. relations with Cuba and Mexico. She is a key Latin American Editor for the Associated Press. For over a decade...1999 till 2009...Ms. Snow was the AP's excellent and fair-minded correspondent in Havana. I still have clippings of some of her articles, including one in 2007 when, for an entire month, she only used a Cuban ration card to buy her food so she could experience what it was like for everyday Cubans to do that. Also, I am pleased to learn that Ms. Snow will soon publish her memoir, which I'll pre-order from Amazon.

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How Much Will Cuba Change

After Obama's Detente

      President Barack Obama made history in December of 2014 when he bravely and astutely announced that he wanted his United States to "normalize" relations with Cuba. Then, after boldly defying the Miami hardliners and the U. S. Congress, he followed up historically on that vow. The photo above shows President Obama holding a 2016 news conference in Cuba, the first U. S. president to visit the island since 1928 when President Coolidge pulled into Havana Harbor aboard a warship. In Cuba, as noted above, Mr. Obama saliently told the Cuban people: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." Since the Spanish-American War in 1898, when the U. S. finally gained dominance of Cuba from Spain, no American president prior to Obama had either the guts or the integrity to make such a statement. That especially has been true since 1959 when the Cuban Revolution overthrew the brutal U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Since 1959, two generations of Cuban-exile hardliners from Miami have dictated America's Cuban policy with the considerable help of a pusillanimous and conniving U. S. Congress. Miami and Congress buttressed their Cuban policy during every Republican presidential administration -- Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush #1 and Bush #2. But even Democratic administrations -- Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton -- all tried and miserably failed to alter a Cuban policy that the rest of the world has watched play out in disapproved amazement for over half-a-century, and that's a half-century too long.

       Of all the U. S. presidents since the 1950s, only Obama has had the guts, intelligence and patriotism to assuage an American Cuban policy that the rest of the world abhors, including America's best friends. Obama's gutsy assurance to Cuba that it will not have "to fear" the much stronger United States provides Revolutionary Cuba a window in which it can not only breathe easier but also make positive changes.

The Castro brothers have ruled Cuba since 1959.

Fidel turns 90 on August 12th; Raul is 85.

     From the U. S. standpoint, even in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the mainstream U. S. media has never been brave enough or free enough to tell the truth about U.S.-Cuban relations. That's why, during this critical Obama-orchestrated juncture, a free and brave journalist named Fernando Ravsberg is America's best source to get insightful and unbiased information regarding Cuba. His website -- Cartas Desde Cuba/Letters From Cuba -- is one of the many places where you can garner Ravsberg's journalism, which is widely republished by many venues. His article flashing around the world this second week in July-2016 is entitled "The Collimated Journalists" and it's a must-read for anyone interested in judging Cuba's reaction to Obama's sane and decent overtures. The word collimate is a verb that Merriam-Webster defines as "to make {as light rays} parallel." So, Ravsberg's title references the similarities, the parallels, of Cuban and U. S. journalism. And, yes, when it comes to Cuba, there are many.

       The caption to the above journalistic photo reads: "Funnily enough, the Cuban press now seems to be in sync with the Miami press." As a democracy-loving American, I don't think that is very "funny" but I understand the relevance as, I believe, Fernando Ravsberg would. The U. S. democracy changed dramatically in 1952 when right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration -- VP Nixon, the Dulles brothers, etc. -- aligned the U. S. government with the Mafia to support the thieving and brutal Batista dictatorship in Cuba. When it was overthrown on January 1, 1959, the Batistianos and the Mafiosi merely restructured their dictatorship on U. S. soil, mostly in South Florida with Miami, called "Little Havana," as their new capital. Continually backed by the U. S. government, the U. S. Congress, and billions of U. S. tax dollars, the Cuban Mafia, based in Miami but with branches in New Jersey and Washington, have dictated America's Cuban policy from 1959 till...well...till Obama. The Bay of Pigs attack in 1961, an economic embargo since 1962, numerous assassination attempts against Castro, etc., have amazingly failed to recapture Cuba. In 1976 well-known Cuban-exile terrorists blew up a civilian Cuban airplane, killing all 73 on board. When Miami's top Cuban newsman-journalist, Emilio Milian, complained about such things, he was car-bombed. Later when Jim DeFede was the top columnist at the Miami Herald, he wrote a blistering column excoriating Miami members of Congress for using the U. S. government to get a female President of Panama, who had close Miami ties, to free four famed anti-Castro zealots -- including the legendary Luis Posada Carriles who will forever be tied to the Cubana Flight 445 bombing -- from a Panamanian prison where they were ensconced because of an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro on Panama soil. DeFede didn't last long at the Miami Herald after that column and today Carriles is a heralded free man in Miami and anti-Castro zealots control the editorial processes of the Miami Herald. Yes, since 1959 the Cuban press has been controlled by the dictates of the Castro brothers; and since 1959 the U. S. media in regards to Cuba has been largely controlled by anti-Castro zealotry. That's why the caption above resonates when it equates Cuban journalism to U. S. journalism. To deny that is to deny the historic existence of, say, Cubana Flight 455, Luis Posada Carriles, Emilio Milian, Jim DeFede, etc. And, of course, since the invention of the ubiquitous and easily accessed Google search engine, denying such historic and topical events is impossible unless one is simply lazy or uninterested, which also means unpatriotic.

      And that circuitous route takes us back around to the internationally respected Cuban journalist Fernando Ravsberg. The photo above shows him being scolded face-to-face by...Fidel Castro. Yes, Fernando is brave enough and fair enough to criticize Fidel. But, distinguishing Fernando from the mainstream Miami and U. S. media, Fernando also has the guts and integrity to praise Castro, especially in contrast to the Batista-Mafia dictatorship and in such areas as Revolutionary Cuba's free and excellent educational system, its free and excellent health care, its largest medical school in the world that provides free educations to poor foreign students including Americans, its Operation Miracle program that has provided totally free eye operations that have restored or improved eyesight for thousands of poor people in the region, etc. While Ravsberg has sharply criticized Revolutionary Cuba, he has also sharply contrasted it with the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that preceded it, and that's something that, with few exceptions, had not been permitted in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave prior to Obama.

      While as a journalist Fernando Ravsberg has reported directly on and freely about Castro's Cuba, the good and the bad, he also has repeatedly aired the views of everyday Cubans and anti-Castro Cubans on the island, as in the above photo. On the other hand, unlike the mainstream U. S. media, Fernando is not afraid to challenge the lucrative, vast, one-sided and self-serving Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S.

      In his aforementioned article this week, Fernando Ravsberg used the above photo of young Cuban journalists and journalism students during an important session taking place in Santa Clara, Cuba. These young, well-educated Cubans campaigned bravely and righteously to improve journalism, an improvement that would be beneficial to their chosen profession as well as to the lives of all Cubans on the island.

      And Fernando Ravsberg used this graphic to point out that journalists should not be restricted from doing their jobs, which are vital functions for any free society -- in Cuba, the U. S., and around the world.

       The photos Fernando Ravsberg used this week to illustrate his journalism-themed article were taken by Raquel Perez Diaz. This one simply shows journalists covering an event and trying to do their jobs.

      Fernando Ravsberg used the unambiguous editorial cartoon above to illustrate his article entitled "The Collimated Journalists" that cogently drew parallels between Cuban and U. S. journalism when it comes to reporting on Cuba. The Spanish word "basta" used here means "enough" and conveys the message that censorship of journalists is evil and has existed long enough. The little girl reading the billboard...she could be Cuban or American...wants to be told the truth about U.S.-Cuban relations. As a Cuban or as an American, she deserves that. And that's the message that Fernando Ravsberg was conveying this week.

       A new era in U.S.-Cuba relations is upon us, thanks to President Obama's brave and historic efforts to curb and normalize America's long-standing covetous, bullying and undemocratic involvement with the nearby, very important island nation. Thus, I believe we all should join great journalists such as Fernando Ravsberg in insisting that journalism in both Cuba and the United States should be afforded the freedom to tell the truth about Cuba, the United States and the interactions between the neighboring countries.

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Batistiano Lies Since 1959

Have Hurt Cuba But...

They Have Hurt America Much More
{Friday, July 8th, 2016} 

       Yesterday, July 7th, U. S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced that eight major U. S. airlines will begin round-trip service to Cuba beginning this fall from ten U. S. cities, including Los Angeles. Such commercial flights from the U. S. to Cuba have been illegal for over five decades, during which only special charter flights were allowed. Since 1962, everyday Americans have been the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to Cuba, apparently to assure that a few Cuban exiles could dictate the Cuban narrative in the United States. Foxx's announcement reflects yet another example of President Obama boldly slicing into the long-time Batistiano dictation of America's Cuban policy, a situation easily mandated with the concurrence of the U. S. Congress, at least prior to President Obama.

The upcoming U.S.-to-Cuba commercial flights will be historic.

      This recent but historic photo shows The Adonia, the beautiful Carnival Cruise Line ship, arriving in Havana Harbor -- LEGALLY, thanks to President Obama. U. S. cruise ships are now allowed to dock in Cuban ports for the first time in five decades. Carnival pioneered but faces competition from other cruise lines.

       This Airbnb photo shows how Cuba, like it has since 1492, is trying to survive as it takes advantage of historic efforts by U. S. President Barack Obama to normalize relations with the vulnerable but feisty island. The Havana home above is one of the 4,000 listed by Airbnb. And the innovative Bed & Breakfast company based in San Francisco only started listing in Cuba in 2015. Airbnb this week told the Los Angeles Times that Cuba is the fastest growing market in its 8-year history. This year Starwood Hotels & Resorts became the first U. S. hotelier to sign a deal in Cuba in six decades. Now Marriott International and other powerful competitors plan to do the same. Meanwhile, the home-sharing Airbnb has already acquired a powerful niche in Cuba that is the envy of the traditional hotel powerhouses in the United States. Meanwhile, reacting to the startling overtures provided by President Obama, Cuba plans on saving what it considers the best of the Cuban Revolution without seriously changing the essence of it as the most famed of the few remaining revolutionary elders, including Fidel, reach or approach their 9th decades on the island.

     This is an Associated Press photo taken by Ramon Espinosa. It and the next two photos illustrated a major AP article this week {July 6, 2016} by Havana correspondent Michael Weissenstein. It is entitled "The Children of the Exiles Discover Cuba." It is an excellent report from Cuba and it precisely parallels the theme of my previous Cubaninsider essay this week entitled "Journalism: Cuba vs. America." That pertinent and correct theme is this: Since the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship by the Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1-1959 the transplanted Batistianos have dictated the Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policy to the detriment of Cuba but even more to the detriment of America and democracy. The Weissenstein article revolved around a 20-year-old Cuban-American named Miranda Hernandez. That's her in the center of the above photo. She is now a senior at the University of California-Berkeley. Miranda's grandparents came to the U. S. in the 1960s and she grew up in Miami. Like almost all Americans and Cuban exiles, she says her image of Cuba was "a North Korea with beautiful beaches." That's because, like all Americans, she was thoroughly propagandized -- lied to about Cuba, the revolution, the exiles, and the U. S. government's role in Cuba from 1952 till today. After, at long last, President Obama sliced deeply into those lies, Miranda and other college-age U. S. daughters of Cuba, shown above, traveled to Cuba to see the island and judge it for themselves. Like Linda Ronstadt depicted in the previous essay, Miranda was literally blown away when her own eyes and ears revealed a Cuba far different from the lies that had dominated the first 20 years of her American life. She told the AP's Michael Weissenstein: "I will say outright, in all honesty, that Cuba is not so bad. Many people think that Cuba is a terrible place where people are not happy, but that's not the case." She and the other daughters of Cuba who traveled to the island via the Obama-blessed CubaOne program will, back in the United States, not be so easily lied to about Cuba, the revolution, the exiles, etc. Miranda and her friends reveal precisely why the self-serving orchestrators of America's vile Cuban policy since the 1950s have used the U. S. Congress to mandate their agendas, such as making everyday Americans the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to Cuba. Visiting Cuba, like Miranda, Americans could judge it for themselves, meaning downright lies would be rendered less effective.

    This AP/Ramon Espinosa photo shows 20-year-old Cuban-American Miranda Hernandez standing next to the apartment that was the former home of her grandparents before they defected to Miami. Miranda had long talks with the Cubans living there now free of charge and with their friends in the neighborhood. She discovered that was a better way to learn about Cuba than being force-fed lies all her life back in the U. S. by rich Cuban-Americans and their easily acquired and self-serving political allies in the U. S. Congress.

      This AP/Ramon Espinosa photo shows Miranda Hernandez and her Cuban-American friends exploring Havana's Malecon waterfront. That's Miranda in the white shorts, the 6th person from the left. Just think how remarkable this photo is: After being bombarded with propaganda about Cuba for the first 20 years of her life, Miranda got to visit Cuba so she could make free judgments about the nearby, very important island. It's an island that unwittingly says a lot more about the United States of America than it says about Cuba.

    

A basic fact:

   The thieving U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship brutally ruled Cuba from 1952 till the Cuban Revolution overthrew it in 1959.

  

   From 1959 till the current Obama presidency, the transplanted Miami Cuban Mafia easily dictated America's Cuban policy. And Mr. Obama's two-term presidency lasts only a few more delicate months.

   

   As cogently reflected each October by a 191-to-2 vote in the UN, America's worldwide image before and perhaps after Obama has cast more of a negative impact on the U. S. than any other topic. Yet, there remains in Miami, New Jersey and Washington a rich and powerful lobby that doesn't care one iota about the above Cuba-related image. Prior to Obama, most Americans were either too timid or too propagandized to even engage the issue. This week's AP article about 20-year-old Cuban-American student Miranda Hernandez visiting Cuba for the first time, along with recent polls, indicates that most young Americans and Cuban-Americans are becoming much less timid and much less propagandized. And that's very good for Cuba, and America!

Legal travel to Cuba even for Americans!!!

Wow!! What a concept.

     This photo was taken by Mel Melcon for the Los Angeles Times. It was used to illustrate a Times article yesterday -- July 7th, 2016. The article is entitled: "Latino Gang Members Firebomb Black Residents To Drive Them Out..." The Los Angeles residence is Boyle Heights. The scared boy in the doorway of his home is 12-year-old Marc Anthony Garcia; his worried grandmother is 68-year-old Irena Vega. The photo and article in the LA Times comes during the hours that other great American cites -- Dallas, New Orleans, St. Paul, Chicago, etc. -- are being roiled by unspeakable crimes and protests related to racial and inequality issues. The vast disparity between the haves and have-nots is a mammoth American problem, perhaps a fatal one. As he glances around the corner, what is Marc so afraid of? As she sits in her doorway and ponders, what is Irena thinking? Was the obvious injury to her left arm caused by a firebomb?

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Journalism: Cuba vs. America

Are There Similar problems?

       Pilar Montes knows much more than a little bit about journalism in Cuba and in the United States. Moreover, she's fair-minded in her judgments. This week she penned a major article, which originated on Havana Times.org, entitled: "Cuban Journalists Defend Their Right to Inform." It's an incisive, insightful, and important article because journalists everywhere...Cuba, the U. S., etc. -- have every right to inform and do so freely. Ms. Montes wrote about a journalism meeting in the Cuban city of Santa Clara in which representatives of the Plenary of the Cuban Journalists Association complained about governmental restrictions. Good for them and good for the Cuban government for simply being on hand to respond.

      
      At that session in Santa Clara, both the Cuban journalists and the Cuban government agreed that the freer the Cuban press is, the better the Cuban people will be. And both sides confirmed that the state-controlled Cuban media has become much freer and balanced in listening to and publishing complaints from everyday Cubans. In the aforementioned article, Pilar Montes wrote: "Examples of the population annoyance fill our TV reports and the Letters to the Editor section which appears in the Friday edition of Granma." Granma is the leading newspaper in Cuba. Fair-minded journalists, such as Pilar Montes, are free to criticize the Cuban government and so are everyday Cubans via the state-controlled media. And they are now much freer to openly comment -- pro or con -- about advances by the Cuban government in opening up to common demands that deeply concern the people. Americans are not supposed to know that, but that's America's problem, not Cuba's -- a sovereign island that has enough problems of its very own. Uniqueness is often misguided because people in different countries are not so different in trying to navigate their everyday lives. 

       Karina Marron is an important journalist in Cuba. She is, in fact, the Assistant Director of Granma, the island's top media source. Instead of ignoring and not reporting on that anti-government journalism meeting in Santa Clara, Ms. Marron attended the session and answered all questions. Her main point: "Journalists on the island, like elsewhere, have a right and, I think, a duty to complain if they feel they are restricted from freely reporting the news as they see it. I agree. But understand that, in Cuba, we have a problem with foreign-based and foreign-funded anti-Cuban aspects filtering into if not usurping our media. So, from a societal standpoint the Cuban state has to respond to that. As our response has been more successful and, may I say, more understood, you journalists in Cuba have noticed the additional freedoms you have to perform your important work. You can criticize us, and then critique whether we respond to such criticism or not. In print publications and in radio and T-V shows, we strongly encourage the airing of legitimate complaints against the government and then we invite the complainants to follow up and see if we have responded correctly...or responded at all. So, yes, the state has made progress and, yes, we do have to make more."

An improved and improving Cuban media. Yes, no or maybe?

      Study the above Gallup Poll and you will see that Americans have an incredibly dismal view of their own U. S. media and that compunctious assessment is getting much more dismally with each passing day.

     The recent purchase of the iconic Washington Post by Jeff Bezos highlights why the U. S. media is held in such low regard by Americans. Mr. Bezos, the Amazon founder, is currently worth $59.1 billion, which is growing about as fast as the media's reputation is plummeting. For decades the iconic Post was a liberal bastion and a journalistic beacon, with such democracy-loving revelations as the Watergate scandal that doomed President Nixon. As a lifelong conservative Republican, I treasured the integrity of the Post...until Bezos turned it into what I consider a propaganda machine that lobbies for his personal financial interests and political leanings. That, unfortunately, has come to typify the entire mainstream U. S. media -- print, radio and television, and online. It is all owned by billionaire individuals and billionaire corporations that take advantage of the media's monopolistic characteristics to incessantly propagandize in the interest of its billionaire owners. Those interests include sweet financial deals and monopolies readily available via having the resources to lobby politicians while also proselytizing their victims, everyday Americans, into not complaining...at least, not too awful much.

        Prior to such things as greedy and politically-minded billionaires buying up the mainstream media in the United States, the sacrosanct news media felt obligated and compelled to fairly report the news even from a business standpoint because, supposedly, the best and fairest news would get the biggest readership or ratings and thus the most advertisement dollars. But that Walter Cronkite era is long gone and will never return. The U. S. media now has a billionaire monopoly that caters only to billionaires, certainly not to its readers or listeners or viewers, all of whom are considered propagandized pawns. And, without exaggerating one iota, a weak and biased media perhaps constitutes the greatest threat to the American democracy, a fact that the Founding Fathers seemed to realize 240 years ago, back in 1776.

      The aforementioned article this week by Pilar Montes concerning Cuban journalists campaigning for more freedom on the island reminds me of Cristina Escobar, Cuba's brilliant 28-year-old broadcast journalist. She has made three significant journalistic visits to the United States -- one to California in 2014 and since then two more publicized trips to Washington. She not only made news and history by dominating a White House news conference with six pertinent questions directed at Josh Earnest, but she garnered some additional headlines with such frank and interesting comments as: "Cuba journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." Some top U. S. journalists -- such as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News -- respected Ms. Escobar's comments but, for the most part, both the U. S. media and propagandized Americans either ignored them or scoffed at them. Yet, the well-educated, superbly talented, and awesomely intelligent Ms. Escobar obviously and sincerely believes what she says. In fact, if she didn't she probably would be living in a $10 million mansion in Miami and also be the top broadcast anchor in America. That is not an hyperbolic assumption. Reliable sources report that Ms. Escobar, as fluent in English as she is in Spanish, has been offered anchoring jobs by at least two major U. S. networks not to mention what one source called "a veritable gold mine" if she would defect to Miami and denounce Cuba. As a Cuban journalist, of course, she doesn't live in a mansion nor does she have a gold mine, but she has integrity.

        Cristina Escobar is Cuba's dynamic television news anchor. She also has, in English, a popular regional program. Now, concerning her recent and dynamic visits to the U. S. -- and the reputed offers she has received to entice her to defect to Miami or to anchor in New York -- if one day I tuned in the 6:30 P. M. evening news on NBC or CBS or ABC and see that she is the new anchor, I probably will alter some...but not all...of my views on U.S.-Cuba relations. By the same token, if she became an anchor on cable news programs I probably wouldn't know it because, unless there is major breaking news, I never watch even CNN because of the incredible saturation of Talking Head propagandists that insult even my meager IQ. 

     This Cubaninsider essay about hard-working journalists Pilar Montes, Karina Marron, and Cristina Escobar reminds me...as strange as it may seem...of the above photo. Yes, that's Linda Ronstadt. The photo was taken in the 1970s when she was the hottest and greatest pop singer on the planet -- in either English or Spanish. To this day in July of 2016, if truth be known, daily I go to YouTube to hear and see Linda Ronstadt sing her classics such as "Long Long Time," "Blue Bayou," "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," etc. It turned out, as I only learned recently, that when this photo was taken Linda, the pop superstar, was making her first trip to Cuba where she fell in love with the island. Linda, the Mexican-American girl from Tucson, on August 18, 2014 -- after she had retired from performing -- was interviewed by AZCentral about her love for Cuba and her hatred for such things as the anti-Cuban Cuban Adjustment Act that was easily rammed through the U. S. Congress. She said: "We allow Cubans to come in and say they are refugees. Well, in Cuba -- I've been there, you know -- people are fed, people are housed, people are clothed. There isn't violence in the streets." Then, I recently noticed online that Linda, in a 2003 interview published by City Pulse, said: "Cuba is an amazing country. I've been all over Latin America and it's the only Latin American country I've been in that didn't have armed troops on the streets, there weren't homeless people everywhere, and kids had school uniforms and had school books paid for and had their health care paid for. There's things going on in Cuba that we don't know about, and that's because of the Miami Cubans. It's a total propaganda device and they have bracketed this country with propaganda about Cuba, huge amounts of which are untrue." Those exact comments from Linda Ronstadt, still readily available online, were based on personal observations because, as America's top female pop singer from the late 1960s till deep into the 1980s, she traveled widely as a performer at sold-out concerts and, clandestinely, she also traveled to...the island of Cuba!!

      This photo is very dear to me. It was taken in 1975 at a concert in Roanoke, Virginia. I was there, and I remember this moment. It shows Glenn Frey leading Linda Ronstadt back on stage for an encore. Glenn himself was a superstar in her band. He recently died and Linda wrote the heart-wrenching obituary in Time Magazine about his life. I wasn't a concert-goer, except when Ronstadt was close. I've read many articles and books about her, including her best-selling memoir. Anyone who knows me knows I still cherish her singing, especially via YouTube. But only this week, when someone pointed out the two aforementioned articles to me, did I know about Linda's love for Cuba. Thus, I believe that she will agree with me when I say that Cuba says a lot more about the United States of America than it says about Cuba.

      Linda Ronstadt's observations about Cuba were based on her personal visits to the island beginning in the 1970s. Her comments remind me precisely why the powerful anti-Cuba lobby in the United States, with the felicitous help of the U. S. Congress, has mandated that everyday Americans for the past five decades have been the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. In other words, such visits as the freedom-loving Linda Ronstadt took might produce opinions of the island that differ from the propaganda Americans have been fed by self-serving anti-Cuba lobbyists all these years. And that's one reason why President Obama's ongoing brave and historic efforts to normalize relations with Cuba are so very important. Americans, like all other citizens of the world, deserve the freedom to visit Cuba so they can enjoy it or judge it for themselves. President Obama cannot erase all of the anti-Cuban and anti-American laws unleashed by Miami and Congress, but he has erased or weakened many of them. That's why more and more Americans can visit Cuba, and that includes celebrities such as Beyonce and Jay-Z {above} but also Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Dave Mathews, Vin Diesel and his Fast & Furious movie crew, Smokey Robinson, etc. In other words, as Linda Ronstadt opined, the United States, 240 years after it became a country, is better when it finally applies democratic principles to its Cuban policy.

And lastly: 

        This image is used courtesy of NBC. It was featured on that network's top newscast at 6:30 PM this week, July 5th. It was a heart-wrenching portion of a report entitled "City Under Siege." It concerned another typical day in the great American city of Chicago where dozens of people, including children playing in a park, were shot in the gun-crazed United States of America. There are people ensconced in the U. S. Congress who are extremely critical of many things but noncommittal about this prayerful sign.

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