Does Florida Own Cuba?

Or Is Cuba A Sovereign Country?

       Few people on this planet know as much about U.S.-Cuban relations as author/journalist Paul Guzzo at Florida's top newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times. In fact, the Times lists Paul's title as "History Writer" and he is indeed that...and much more.

     Additionally, Paul Guzzo is unique as one of the few U. S. journalists and authors who has the courage and integrity to rise above incessant Batistiano propaganda and report the truth...as raw and sometimes as dangerous as it is...regarding U.S.-Cuban relations. Therefore, it is surely not surprising that during this Holiday season as the pivotal year of 2016 draws to a close that Paul Guzzo in the Tampa Bay Times has penned the most definitive article related to the Cuba-U.S. entanglements. His latest gem, a must-read unless you prefer U.S.-Cuban propaganda, is entitled: "Billionaire Philanthropist David A. Straz Jr. Has Spent Years Quietly Uniting Tampa and Cuba." Before you can consider yourself knowledgeable and up-to-date on the U.S.-Cuban conundrum, you need to know David A. Straz Jr. and why, even as a well-known billionaire in Florida, he needs to very quietly display his love for Cuba.

       This photo of David A. Straz Jr. is courtesy of Paul Guzzo and the Tampa Bay Times. Mr. Straz calls Cuba "a wonderful country" and Revolutionary Cuba loves him back. When his private jet approaches Havana's Jose Marti Airport, all out-going and all in-coming air traffic is halted until Mr. Straz's plane is safely parked in a special place and he has walked off the tarmac. Behind the scenes for many years Mr. Straz, a well-known billionaire philanthropist, has worked tirelessly -- on behalf of Cuba and the United States -- to try to make sure that a majority in the United States and not just a self-serving and revengeful few have input in an American Cuban policy that currently gets a resounding 191-to-0 denunciation in the United Nations. So why, you ask, does such a powerful man as Mr. Straz make his contributions to U.S.-Cuban relations so "quietly" from his base in Tampa, Florida. Paul Guzzo reports that one of Mr. Straz's primary political mentors suffered greatly from also trying to bring decency and sanity to America's Cuban policy, and that's not exactly a great testament to the sacrosanct United States democracy that began a continuous, perhaps unstoppable, backslide way back in 1952 when the United States teamed with the Mafia to support the vile Batista dictatorship in Cuba and then in 1959 the avalanche picked up speed and power when the United States allowed the transferred ousted regime to refurbish itself powerfully on precious American soil.

         The antithesis to Tampa's David A. Straz Jr. is Miami's Marco Rubio. In January Rubio will begin his second 6-year term in the U. S. Senate, a body he once slammed for not getting anything done. Rubio first entered the Senate six years ago with his bio loudly heralding the fact that his parents had escaped the Castro tyranny in Cuba for the freedom of Miami. That was a Batistiano fact; the St. Petersburg Times revealed that, actually, Rubio's parents had escaped the Batista tyranny in Cuba long before the audacious Castro had chased Batistiano and Mafiosi leaders to Florida. Rubio hit the Senate six years ago running for President of the United States in 2016, accounting for the fact that he was actually dead-last in the Senate when it came time to vote. A billionaire auto dealer in Miami had put up the first $10 million to finance Rubio's presidential bid with a promise that whatever money it took to put Rubio in the White House would follow. Running for President and soliciting billionaire dollars consumed Rubio but his first-term in the Senate was highlighted when he was wiped out by Donald Trump in the Florida primary, after which Rubio loudly said he would not seek a second term as Senator from Miami. But that, of course, soon changed when, apparently, it was deemed that his high-profile seat in the Senate was needed as a platform for his 2020 presidential bid. The election to a second term in the Senate, despite losing the primary in his home state to Trump, was a foregone conclusion because, it seems, only anti-Castro zealots in Florida can get elected to the U. S. Congress although polls show that the majority of Cuban-Americans even in Miami favor President Obama's and David A. Straz's decent and compassionate efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. The same Cuban-American minority that overwhelms Congress also seem to think they own Cuba, which happens to be a sovereign nation, at least as long as they can't get the U. S. to recapture it for them.

       During the 2016 presidential campaign, the victor Donald Trump pointed out that "Sheldon Adelson would have total control over Rubio." Sheldon Adelson is the controversial Vegas-Macao casino owner who is worth in excess of $30 billion but is just one of many Jewish billionaires apparently anxious to put Rubio in the White House in 2020. Meanwhile, except for leading the Senate in missed votes and vowing to erase all of President Obama's positive overtures related to Cuba, Rubio has yet to make a mark helping needy Americans or innocent Cubans and in America's money-crazed political arena he doesn't have to. Meanwhile, President-elect Trump is poised to take his Cuban-related advice from the likes of Rubio.

        President-elect Trump, caving in to Senator Rubio and the other five Cuban-American anti-Castro zealots in Congress, even went to Miami's Little Havana and promised elderly Brigade 2506 veterans that he would immediately erase all of President Obama's Cuban sanity and insanely fulfill their long-awaited desire to regain control of Cuba. Brigade 2506 was the unit that attacked Cuba in April of 1961 but instead of annihilating Fidel Castro it helped to forever enshrine his revolutionary credentials at the Bay of Pigs.

      This historic photo reflects how Florida was reconfigured beginning in January of 1959 after the Cuban Revolution booted the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders off the Caribbean island to what turned out to be a very soft landing on nearby U. S. soil. On the left above is Santo Trafficante Jr. who, along with his father, was the Mafia kingpin in Tampa for decades. But from 1952 till 1959 Trafficante Jr. was one of the Top Four dictators in Cuba, right behind Fulgencio Batista, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. After getting kicked out of Cuba, Trafficante Jr., of course, returned to Tampa as that city's Mafia kingpin. The gentleman carrying the satchel above is the famed Mafia lawyer Frank Ragano. Just before he died in 1998 Frank was kind enough to history to reveal and document many Cuban-Mafia schemes, including in Cuba and Florida.

       This 1958 Life Magazine photo shows Meyer Lansky, the Jewish Mafia kingpin, leaving his Riviera Hotel casino in Havana with a satchel containing a reported $200,000 in 1958 cash. Such fleecing of Cuba from 1952 till 1959 reportedly resulted in tons of money being sent ahead to Swiss and Israeli banks as well as Mafia-related banks in Miami, Tampa and Newark. So, hooking back up with that kind of money beginning in 1959 purchased a lot of property and, even more significantly, greased a lot of for-sale politicians.

     Talented 28-year-old broadcast journalist Cristina Escobar is one of Cuba's and the region's most influential experts on U.S.-Cuban relations. In fact, her thesis at the University of Havana was acutely accurate in predicting How President Obama Would Affect Relations With Cuba. She has made notable journalist ventures to California and Washington but she is adamantly pro-Cuban and fluent in both Spanish and English. In both languages she has stressed the same theme: "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington." She admits now that, with the Republican Trump soon taking over the White House and anti-Cuban zealots like Rubio dictating Cuban policy in the Republican-controlled Congress, "We might finally lose our hard-earned sovereignty to a superpower but, like other true patriotic Cubans who died fighting for it on Cuban soil, we must try with everything we have to defend it." 

       There was a time in the not-too-distant past that graphics like this one did not routinely mock the U. S. democracy. The recently concluded, money-crazed, ridiculously long U. S. presidential election left frustrated American voters trying desperately to choose between what most of them considered the lesser of two evils -- the Democrat Hillary Clinton and the equally unpopular Republican Donald Trump. Both campaigns -- before, during and after the election that shocked the world by electing Trump as the leader of the Free World -- correctly complained about a "rigged" election, and indeed it was rigged by special interest money -- both domestic and foreign -- and by an establishment-rigged system that doesn't want to relinquish the greedy and lucrative grip that the nation's billionaires have on the world's economic and military superpower. The graphic above from a conservative group attacks the Democratic National Committee but just as many are replicated by liberal groups attacking the Republican National Committee, perhaps proving once and for all that a rigged two-party system needs some adjustment in the world's greatest democracy. One additional legitimate point that such pundit-driven, self-serving graphics actually make is this: Whether it's a foreign country like Russia or whistle-blowers like Wikileaks, Andrew Snowden, etc., most of the "dreaded leaks" of such things as classified documents or supposedly hidden emails are not attacked for their authenticity but rather for merely being LEAKED. It's a reminder that one of the built-in weaknesses of the U. S. democracy has been and is the routine use of classifying...or hiding...documents and actions from the American public for the oft-stated purpose of "protecting national security" when actually it is meant to "protect" the high-powered perpetrators of secretive evil deeds.

        FOR EXAMPLE, FROM THE 1950S TILL TODAY AMERICANS HAVE KNOWN LITTLE ABOUT THE U. S. GOVERNMENT'S CLASSIFIED AND NEFARIOUS ACTIONS REGARDING CUBA, such as why and how a few right-wing thugs in the Eisenhower administration teamed the U. S. democracy with the Mafia to support the brutal, thieving Batista dictatorship in Cuba in 1952. Or how more high-flying U. S. thugs spawned the Cuban Revolution that booted the Batista-Mafia leadership back to U. S. soil in 1959. Or how, once on U. S. soil, the Batistianos and Mafiosi, aided and abetted by such entities as the Bush dynasty and the Tea Party, controlled the Cuban narrative in the U. S. and then dictated Cuban-related laws in the U. S. Congress designed to recapture Cuba and, in the meanwhile, enrich and empower a handful of the most revengeful anti-Cuban zealots in Miami first and later in Congress. FOR EXAMPLE, study the DE-classified letter depicted above that was dated "13 March 1962" and signed by a rather powerful man -- General Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff and America's most powerful military leader. The letter was classified, hidden, for about four decades...long after the long-admired General had died. The letter followed the April of 1961 U.S./Batistiano attack at the Bay of Pigs that was supposed to recapture Cuba but instead turned into a disaster that greatly enhanced Fidel Castro's grip on the island as well as his international standing. So, General Lemnitzer proposed another "Justification for U. S. Military Intervention in Cuba." The 1961 attack by then was not only labeled a U. S. disaster but also a criminal act conducted by the U. S. democracy, although the U. S. went to elaborate lengths -- even lying to the world in the United Nations -- about its total involvement. My point is, as a democracy-loving American I believe that democracy from the 1950s till today would be better served if the American people knew or know WHO was and is making six-decades of disastrous, even criminal, decisions related to Cuba. Those decisions have resulted in what today stands loudly as a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations of America's Cuban policy, a worldwide vote that reflects the fact that Americans are the only citizens in the world without the freedom to freely visit Cuba and the only citizens in the world who have been bombarded for six decades by anti-Cuba/pro-Batistiano propaganda. Propagandists controlling narratives and actions apart from the participations of its citizens occur, I'm told, in oppressive dictatorships and Banana Republics but I don't believe should be hallmarks of a democracy. Notice in the above secretive first paragraph that General Lemnitzer stressed the word "pretexts" to justify another military attack on Cuba. A world superpower seeking or inventing self-serving "pretexts" to justify laws, attacks, and other ignominious acts against a vulnerable smaller nation have existed regarding Cuba since the murderous explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 served as the "pretext" for the Spanish-American War that finally gave the U. S. its long-desired dominance of Cuba, plus a few imperial bonuses such as the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam. Since 1959's triumph of the Cuban Revolution, of course, uncovering or dictating "pretexts" to recapture or continue attacking Cuba have been easy considering the control of the Cuban narrative, the continuous control of Congress and the malignant control of Republican White Houses. This eliminates checks-&-balances that were supposed to protect the great but fragile American democracy. In other words, restudy the above letter and ask yourself if democracy would have been better served if the American public had been aware of such things...like what General Lemnitzer was up to in March of 1962.

       This photo and the one that follows were taken by Reynaldo La O and are used courtesy of Havana Times.org. Above is a birthday party that took place in a bedroom in the Cuban town of Guantanamo, almost within sight and sound of the plush and unwanted U. S. Naval Base on occupied Cuban soil at Guantanamo Bay. These seven Cuban children...and their parents and grandparents...have been punished by a U. S. embargo first imposed in 1962 and now is etched in history and chronicled as the longest and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation. A few "hardline" Cuban-Americans, first and second generational remnants of the ousted Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba, have benefited revengefully, economically and politically from the embargo along with a few easily acquired sycophants such as the Bush dynasty and the likes of Torricelli, Helms, & Burton in the U. S. Congress. The majority of Americans, Cuban-Americans and all the nations of the world...based on the current 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations...oppose the ignominious embargo. Yet...the unanimity of world opinion reveals that the once sacred U. S. democracy has been unable to correct the nefarious situation for the last six decades. Beyond the benefactors of the embargo, the primary culprits are the vast majority of American people who...either due to pure cowardice or a glaring lack of patriotism...allow it to happen.

       This little birthday girl is no one's enemy. She's just...a little girl. Her Cuban parents and grandparents dearly love her. Look at her birthday plate...cake, cookies, food. To decent, democracy-loving citizens of America and the world, it is abhorrent that a few parents and grandparents living in nearby mansions in a far-more-powerful country are able to craft an American Cuban policy that may benefit them but surely has greatly harmed little girls in Cuba like this for six decades...and running. A U. S. democracy that cares so little about this little girl is now a democracy that needs some adjustments. And that long-overdue adjusting, I believe, should start with making sure that Rubio*Ros-Lehtinen*Menendez*Diaz-Balart*Cruz*and*Curbelo as unchallenged incumbents in the 535-member U. S. Congress should not be allowed to dictate a U. S. Cuban policy that the rest of the world unanimously opposes. This angelic little birthday girl deserves that adjustment because she has a life to live, hopefully a life free of punishment.

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CUBA: On Christmas Day 2016

A Special Comment 

        Unafraid of being politically incorrect in the United States of America, on Christmas Eve 2016 I would like to join The Medicc Staff to wish the totally innocent, much maligned children in Cuba a Merry Christmas. MEDICC is the acronym for Medical Education Cooperation With Cuba and it is one of many organizations in the United States that have admirable compassion for everyday Cubans on the island. I have been to Cuba and I remain indelibly impressed how very much, all across the island, the people of Cuba and the Revolutionary government of Cuba care for their children who are, plainly, the revolution's top priority. As a patriotic, democracy-loving U. S. citizen, I am just as indelibly ashamed that...for six decades...a revengeful, thieving and ignominious minority have been permitted to feast on their omnivorous punishment of Cuban children such as the happy, resilient ones depicted above. When a minority in the world's greatest and strongest democracy is allowed to punish children on a nearby island for six decades, the primary culprits, in my opinion, are not the perpetrators themselves but rather the majority of Americans who, decade after decade, permit it to happen due to pure cowardice, ignorance or an egregious lack of patriotism. If this conclusion and sentiment seems off-base or an exaggeration, believe me when I say it is not. All the nations of the world agree with me, based on their current 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations that harshly condemns America's Cuban policy. Of course, the perpetrators of America's Cuban miasma -- a cancerous minority primarily in Miami and the U. S. Congress -- could care less about how much harm and hubris their actions create for the United States and democracy. But, I must say, I remain frustratingly surprised that the majority of American citizens also carelessly don't give a damn either.

The Cuban flag bedecked with Christmas themes.

And so, to the children in Cuba

I want to wish all of you

a Merry Christmas...

and a Happy New Year...

and also say, "I'm sorry."

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Cuba, the Punching Bag

And Still A Cash-Cow...

With a Trove of Votes!! 

      The Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, wrote a letter this week and addressed it to Cuban President Raul Castro and then actually mailed it. But any 5-year-old remotely familiar with Florida politics could easily detect that it was purely directed at and lavishly publicized to the extreme anti-Cuban hardliners that Mr. Scott apparently feels comprise the coveted political bigwigs in his state. I mean...let's get serious, Gov. Scott. Your very first two sentences made fun of the 85-year-old Cuban leader regarding the death of his beloved 90-year-old Brother: "As you know, following the death  of your brother Fidel, the streets of Miami were packed with people celebrating. This celebration represented the hope for an end to the decades of torture, repression, incarcerations and death that you and your brother have caused the people of Cuba." Get real, Governor! Did those celebrations in any manner or degree relate to revenge? Those first two sentences were not meant for Raul Castro because they merely replicate what he has heard many times before from Florida politicians seeking money and votes, but harassing him about his brother's death, as you know, plays really big with Florida's most extreme anti-Cuban zealots. Yet, sir, polls show that even most Cuban-Americans in even Miami favor President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, not the continued asinine efforts to use Cuba as a punching bag, cash-cow and lush political bonanza.

      And Governor Scott...after morbidly teasing Raul Castro about the death of his brother, your tone in appeasing only the most extreme elements in your state didn't soften, such as your unbiased, high-brow statement regarding the next path you expect him to take: "This path is best characterized by oppression, tyranny, wrongful imprisonment, torture, and murder." With such a sentence you even insult the intelligence of the extremists, not to mention everyone else. Even in total control of the Cuban narrative, and even safely ensconced behind the skirts of the world superpower and without any worry that the media will question anything you say related to Cuba, you mostly insult America and democracy by heralding Banana Republic aspects of your state. Bragging about the wild street celebrations of Fidel Castro's death is a reminder of how those same streets so rudely treated the world's Civil Rights icon Nelson Mandela just because he was Fidel Castro's dear friend and certainly not a friend of the extremists you cater to.

         Believe me, Governor Scott, my concern is not for Raul Castro or for the legacies of his two brothers who died this year at ages 91 and 90. My concern is for America and democracy, neither of which, in my opinion, is served by a one-sided, bully-driven Cuban policy emanating out of Florida that severely harms, decade after decade, millions of totally innocent Cubans on the island in the guise of hurting, overthrowing or annihilating the Castros. Your entire letter...indeed your entire political career in Florida although you were born 64 years ago in Bloomington, Illinois...is based on the age-old premise that every single thing Revolutionary Cuba has ever done is totally wrong and every single thing the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that preceded it ever did was totally correct and, particularly, every single thing the Cuban-exiles in Florida have done is absolutely right. With all due respect, Governor Scott, that premise is not only a huge distortion, it is a blatant lie, and one that most Americans, most Cuban-Americans and all the nations of the world...based on the 191-to-0 UN vote...know to be a blatant lie. Thus, sir, your letter to Raul Castro this week speaks only to the choir, not to anyone else...and I am very sure you fully realize that.

       Florida Governor Rick Scott's letter to Cuba's Raul Castro this week did not raise the bar toward helping the much-maligned everyday Cubans on the island. As usual, it seems to be the familiar ploy of always raising the bar even higher in trying to help Rich Scott's political career with no concern for the collateral damage it may cause innocent Cubans or America's image related to its imperialist Cuban policy, an image that actually can't get much lower than the UN's 191-to-0 evaluation. One of the kinder...and stupidest...sentences in Governor Scott's letter was this one: "Like your brother, you are known for firing squads and imprisonment of those who oppose you." Was that sentence a last-ditch broadside against Raul Castro who has heard such things from across the Florida Straits for decades? Of course not. It was a sentence aimed to appease extremist hardliners in Florida, nothing more and nothing less. It also, I think, reveals why Americans are fed-up with establishment career politicians who treat citizens as idiots and patsies, but correcting the situation seems to be getting harder when voters are constantly left to choose between the lesser of two-or-three evils from a pool of bought-and-paid-for career politicos.

        In order to totally vilify Revolutionary Cuba, Florida politicians seem eager to totally sanitize the thieving, brutal Batista-Mafia dictatorship that spawned the revolution. But their are countless photos like the one above that attest to the fact that, from 1952 till 1959, the Batistianos, Mafiosi and U. S. businessmen fleeced the island without any consideration of the majority peasants, such as these.

       By way of contrast, in Revolutionary Cuba no one...not even Florida politicians...can deny that children are prioritized with excellent health for life and education through college provided eternally free despite rich Florida politicians insisting that its northern superpower neighbor inflict it with history's all-time longest and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak one. The healthy, well-dressed Cuban schoolgirl sitting confidently on the lion's back represents today's Cuba while the poverty-stricken woman and seven children represent Batista's Cuba. A Florida politician is not about to discuss the difference between the black-and-white photo of the peasant women and children in Batista's Cuba and the color photo of the well-cared-for girl atop the lion's back in Revolutionary Cuba.

       But it was photos like this one that reveal what gave birth to the Cuban Revolution. The well-documented murders of children apparently meant to quell dissent in Batista's Cuba inspired the revolution after brave Cuban women, instead of being quelled, were inspired to let everyone know what was happening. Today Cuba has dissidents too, some legitimate and some encouraged and/or funded from the U.  S., but documentations such as the repetitious one above in Batista's Cuba are not functions of Revolutionary Cuba, although Florida politicians are never challenged when they say otherwise.

        Florida politicians project the falsehood that Cuban exiles from Batista's Cuba were Mother Teresa-like angels on U. S. soil. That's not exactly true. The memorial above remembers the 73 people, including 24 teenage Cuban athletes, that were aboard the civilian Cubana Flight 455 when it was blown into the sea by a terrorist bomb. The historic event from Oct. 6-1976 to this day has a tight Florida nexus, including the alleged bombers who still today have heralded Miami sanctuaries thanks to Miami members of the U. S. Congress helping secure controversial pardons from a Panamanian prison. When Cuban-American newsman Emilio Milian in Miami complained about such terrorist attacks, he got car-bombed; when Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede excoriated the Miami members of the U. S. Congress, he was shortly fired.

      Even in Revolutionary Cuba...as in the rest of the world...the relatives of terror victims cry, and cry, and then just cry some more. This Cuban mother and sister had a son and brother aboard Cubana Flight 455.

      The highly respected Director-General of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, has praised Revolutionary Cuba "for devoting such a high percentage of its revenue to the health, education and shelter of its citizens." The WHO recently hailed Cuba for being "the first nation in the world to totally eradicate the transmission of HIV from mother to child." And as reported by USA Today last month, Florida recently cut its HIV programs and its nation-leading infections have soared. USA Today has also reported on Florida's being the "epicenter" for medicare fraud and the "epicenter" for pills that attract addicts from distant states just to buy the pills. And Florida also probably does not want to compare its infant mortality rate or it crime rate with Cuba's. Margaret Chan has praised Revolutionary Cuba as "a role model" for other countries when it comes to using limited funds to provide good health and educational care for "all its people." 

    With Raul Castro, Margaret Chan inspects a Cuban hospital.

       While the U. S. media is not in the business of admitting there are two-sides to the U.S.-Cuban conundrum, the Cuba Central segment of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas is not nearly so biased or intimidated. So, the Cuba Central and CDA websites are excellent sources for Cuban information, which often does the best job of refuting the words and tactics of Florida politicians.

        The dynamo at the Center for Democracy in the Americas, Sarah Stephens, has worked tirelessly for the past decade on behalf of the people of Cuba and the United States democracy. No one has exceeded her expertise and her energy when it comes to trying to normalize relations between the two neighbors.

        This photo shows American superstar Dave Matthews helping the Center for Democracy in the Americas celebrate its tenth anniversary of trying to bridge the gap between the Florida straits and bring sanity and harmony to U.S.-Cuban relations. Mr. Matthews has accompanied Ms. Stephens to Cuba.

      Cuba superstar Carlos Varela teamed with Dave Matthews at the gala celebrations honoring the Center for Democracy in the Americas. Even the Miami Herald in a major article lavishly saluted Sarah Stephens and her monumental work in bringing Cubans and Americans together and for her influencing President Obama's Herculean efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, a nearby country that is not Florida's.

           And yet, it appears to me that Florida Governor Rick Scott's nonsensical, weird, and morbid letter to Cuba's Raul Castro this week was inspired by the lucrative Castro Cottage Industry's firm belief that America's incoming President, Donald Trump, will reverse all of President Obama's sane and decent efforts to normalize relations with the island. Instead of celebrating the death of Fidel Castro in his letter or on the streets of Miami, Governor Scott seemed to be mostly celebrating the impending Trump presidency, which figures to cater to the vast Castro Cottage Industry that thrives on punishing and bullying Cuba while, most of all, keeping the spigots wide open on the unending pipelines that are filled with tax dollars that gush on a continuous basis from Washington to Miami. You know, Miami's lush anti-Castro propaganda machine, Radio-TV Marti, still needs another billion-or-so tax dollars to tell not-so-stupid Cubans on the island how mean Fidel was and Raul is; and, of course, the U. S. Congress needs to continue funding a bevy of Cuban regime-change programs as well as such incredibly discriminating anti-Cuba/pro-Cuban exile programs as Wet Foot/Dry Foot that, since 1966, permits only unfettered and unvetted Cubans whose feet touch U. S. soil to be home free, with instant major benefits. If Governor Rick Scott can write another letter and justify any such things within the bowels of a democracy, or explain to us why all the nations of the world {via the 191-to-0 UN vote} oppose America's cruel Cuban policies, then we should all take time and read it.

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Cuba: Awaiting A Siege

Starting Jan. 20-2017??

      Apathetic Americans who have sat back and meekly allowed only a handful of extremely biased Cuban-Americans to dictate a disastrously self-serving and undemocratic Cuban policy for six decades need to know this young man. His name is Lazaro Manuel Alonzo. He is a talented broadcast journalist in Cuba -- well-educated, opinionated, and an integral part of the young adult-twentysomething generation on the island that apparently appear ready to pay any price to maintain Cuba's independence as a sovereign nation, a status it has had -- for better or worse -- only since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution over the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship on the first day of 1959. Since then, Batistiano-Mafiosi factions aligned with the most right-wing elements of the Bush dynasty have controlled the U. S. Congress to create extreme pro-Cuban exile/anti-Cuba laws that still exist and were designed to regain control of Cuba decades ago. Such a cruel, undemocratic and discriminatory policy currently has a unanimous 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations, a denunciation of America's democracy that Americans are not supposed to be smart enough, brave enough or patriotic enough to even react to. In Cuba, that surprises Lazaro Manuel Alonso...and now even alarms him. "Cuba's fate in the near term," he says, "will depend on my generation of Cubans." He grinned softly, sardonically, before punctuating his words. "With Trump in a few weeks becoming Commander-in-Chief in America, my generation on the island might be faced with capitulating or losing to a much more powerful force or doing the patriotic thing...even if we lose." 

       This White House photo concerns young-adult Cubans on the island like Lazaro Manuel Alonso. It also thrills Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress and elderly Cuban exiles in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood who never managed to eliminate Fidel Castro but still long to regain control of the island in their decades-long and fervent desire to reverse the Cuban Revolution. The photo above shows President Barack Obama in the White House talking on the phone after having discussed a few key issues...one being Cuba...with key staff members. Lazaro and other young Cubans lament that President Obama's two-term presidency is about to end and a Republican president, Donald Trump, will soon return to a siege mentality towards Cuba. In the above photo, that's Ben Rhodes and Susan Rice sitting closest to President Obama's desk. Mr. Rhodes and Ms. Rice have greatly influenced President Obama's monumental efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, a sane and brave effort to help besieged Cubans on the island and to help America's worldwide image, which currently is taking a 191-to-0 pounding in the UN because of its cruel and abhorrent Cuban policy. Instead of democracy-loving, decent advisors like Mr. Rhodes and Ms. Rice, President-elect Trump has already revived a huge stable of Bush-era anti-Cuban benefactors and zealots such as Mauricio Claver-Carone, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega, John Bolton, etc. as his advisors on Cuba. Hopeful...now fearful...everyday Cubans, as well as America's democracy lovers, have noticed.

      Among everyday Cubans who fear a Trump replacing an Obama as U. S. President are Julia de la Rosa and her husband. In the past 18 months, thanks to President Obama slicing deeply into America's Draconian and Batistiano-directed policies, Julia and her husband have built a Bed and Breakfast business in Havana that now has 17 well-paid employees. The San Francisco-based Airbnb has driven customers to hundreds of Cuban start-ups like Julia's. She and her husband had plans to continue growing their business, till tweets and remarks by President-elect Trump made them fearful. Julia and 100 similar entrepreneurs signed a letter delivered in Washington earlier this month, on Dec. 7-2016, thanking President Obama and begging...yes, begging...President-elect Trump "not to turn your back on us." And then Julia told Nikki Abrego of Fox News Latino these sweet but haunting words: "I hope that President-elect Trump recognizes how much these Obama changes helped Cubans like us. We want to improve our relations with the U. S. and think about a decent future and about what our two countries can accomplish together." American citizens should study those words, a decent Cuban couple thanking outgoing President Obama for helping them start a very successful business but having to beg the incoming Trump presidency for their sovereign right to maintain and grow their business that already employs 17 everyday Cubans.

      Americans also, I believe, have a right to know who Marta Elisa Deus Rodriguez is. She is a smart, well-educated Cuban who loves Cuba dearly. But she went to Spain to start her successful accounting business. Spain, you see, has not been embargoed or besieged or targeted by the superpower United States since 1962. But, with new horizons opening up on the island by a brave and decent President Obama, Marta moved back to her beloved Cuba and quickly established a thriving accounting firm. She was among the 100 new Cuban entrepreneurs who, on Dec. 7-2016, thanked President Obama and begged...yes, begged...President-elect Trump "not to turn your back on us." On Dec. 7th Marta told Reuters, "I now run three businesses in Havana and I want to grow all of them. That's why I hope the new American administration does not change Mr. Obama's policy." Four Cubans now work full-time in one of Marta's Havana offices.

       With a drastic increase in tourism thanks to President Obama, well over 10,000 Cuban homes and private restaurants have already been renovated or built by newly successful Cuban entrepreneurs. The four young women above are now happily and gainfully employed by an expanded paladar, which are popular restaurants in private homes that many tourists flock to. President Obama has drastically increased the amount of money that Cuban-Americans can send to relatives or friends in Cuba...now well over $3 billion a year...and this has helped finance entrepreneurial businesses. President Obama has also greatly increased the excuses for Americans to travel to Cuba although the Batistiano-directed U. S. Congress still unforgivingly and undemocratically maintains a decades-old law that means everyday Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba, apparently a law designed to prevent Americans from making their own judgments about the island as opposed to Batistianos themselves totally controlling the U. S. narrative in the U. S., a narrative that says that the four young Cubans shown above shouldn't have the right to work for a successful entrepreneur in Havana, Cuba.

  The letter, the plea, from 100 new Cuban entrepreneurs. 

"Please, President-elect Trump, let us work in our own country." 

       This photo -- courtesy of Doug Mills/The New York Times -- shows U. S. President-elect Donald Trump at a Carrier air conditioning factory where he touted his job-saving as a billionaire businessman. Juxtapose this photo with the one right above it regarding the letter 100 new Cuban entrepreneurs begged Trump to allow them to continue their successful start-up businesses in Cuba. Americans are programmed to ignore that letter but the rest of the world does not. Decent, totally honest young entrepreneurs in a sovereign nation asking the next U. S. president to let them continue to grow and hire more everyday Cubans to work for them? What if, for example, entrepreneurs in Spain asked Russia for permission to continue their businesses? Would the American people and the U. S. government find that objectionable? What if, for example, President Trump told Russia to get out of Crimea and the Ukraine, or told China to stop putting military bases on disputed islands in the South China Sea? President Trump won't do that for two reasons: {1} Russia and China are far too big and strong; and {2} Russia and China would quickly remind President Trump about the equally disputed U. S. occupation of Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, which is complete with an unwanted U. S. military base. Americans who don't comprehend those two answers also don't comprehend the world's unanimous 191-to-0 repudiation of its Batistiano-directed and decades-old Cuban policy.  

        This billboard in Cuba registers the fact that today in the United Nations not a single nation in the entire world agrees with America's Cuban policy, and that includes every single one of America's best friends and, of course, also includes all of America's worst enemies who continually exploit the UN result in their anti-American endeavors. Yet, in a shameful commentary on America's democracy, a handful of extremist Cuban-Americans and a mere handful of sycophants in the U. S. Congress can maintain decade-after-decade the embargo-blockade that, in essence, is more anti-American than anti-Cuban. But, obviously, not enough Americans give a damn and...obviously...the revenge, economic and political benefactors of America's zero-to-191 Cuban policy couldn't care less about how it harms America...or decent young Cubans like Lazaro, Julia, Marta, and others in their own sovereign nation.

     This image of Cubans and Americans as "Good Friends" pleases President Obama and democracy-lovers all around the world, but it appears to drastically dis-please a handful of hardline Cuban-Americans who, incredibly, can use the U. S. Congress to dictate, with a not-so-secretive bit of heinous chicanery, their self-serving biases to the rest of America's 320 million people and the world's 7.5 billion people.  

         On the other hand, this quintessential Carlos Latuff image appears to be the one that an omnipotently powerful handful of Cuban-Americans love in defiance of unanimity worldwide. A democracy that can't address this issue is not the democracy that emerged from World War II as history's all-time most respected government and/or democracy. It can be argued that the precipitous dip to a 191-to-0 international condemnation of America's Cuban policy is the only thing that can get a unanimous vote in the fractious United Nations and, more significantly, lingers poignantly as proof that World War II's GREATEST GENERATION of Americans has evolved into what now can be labeled -- by a measure of 191-to-zero -- as the WORST GENERATION of cowardly and unpatriotic Americans. If that is not true, then stand up and defend the Carlos Latuff image depicted above. I'll wait while you gather all of your rebuttals.

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TWO Reconfigured Nations

Legacies of the Cuban Revolution!

      This photo is courtesy of Jorge Davila Miguel and El Nuevo Herald. It inspired the title of this essay -- "Two Reconfigured Nations" -- because it reminded me that the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959 reshaped two nations, Cuba and the United States. This photo on Dec. 18-2016 illustrated Mr. Davila's insightful article entitled "Las Batallilas de Miami" -- "The Miami Battles." It chronicles to this day the fierce divergence of opinions about Cuba that exists among impatient Cuban-Americans in Miami, Florida.

        As an extremely influential journalist, Jorge Davila Miguel regularly reports on U.S.-Cuban issues -- primarily Havana vs. both Miami and Washington -- for CNN's Spanish network as well as newspapers such as El Nuevo Herald and blogs such as Fernando Ravsberg's Letters from Cuba. In the aforementioned article Mr. Davila had just returned from Cuba where he covered the aftermath of Fidel Castro's death before returning to Miami where he confronted, as always, the ubiquitous emotional and sometimes physical battles spawned by the everlasting reactions to the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba that the Cuban Revolution shockingly overthrew. It reshaped Cuba with six decades of anti-American Castro rule but may have reshaped America even more, especially Miami's Cuban dominance first and then Cuban-exile dominance of the U. S. Congress relating to luminous anti-Castro laws that rile the entire world and negatively affect America's international image, as reflected by the current 191-to-0 condemnation vote in the United Nations. Two generations of Cuban-Americans have flourished financially and politically, particularly after forming what many consider an unholy alliance with the Bush dynasty. Assassination attempts, military and terrorist attacks, and even history's longest and cruelest economic embargo have failed to overthrow Revolutionary Cuba even though the myriad of unending attempts have been launched by and/or from the world's superpower. In his Dec. 18th article, Mr. Davila wrote, "President-elect Trump is the great white hope of Cuban exiles. The great hope number 13, it is worth underlining." The number 13 references the number of presidential administrations, counting the two-termers, that Revolutionary Cuba has stubbornly, ever miraculously, survived. Mr. Davila mentioned a recent poll by Florida International University that said 52% of even Miami Cuban-Americans supported two-term President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. But Mr. Davila dismissed the poll as "A survey war" and seemed to indicate, as illustrated by the photo of the two combatants, that a Hot War may yet evolve to dissolve the issue, once and for all, as the volatile Trump is about to replace the peace-minded Obama as President and Commander-in-Chief. In any case, Jorge Davila Miguel understands the pulse and rhythms that are freshly emanating forth from Havana, Miami and Washington at a very pivotal juncture -- the death of Fidel Castro juxtaposed against the imminent Obama-to-Trump transition. When Mr. Davila speaks, I listen. I also believe that his photo depicted at the top of this post speaks volumes about a renewed urgency in Miami to finally get a resolution for the Castro problem that has tormented them for the last six-decades of Fidel Castro's 9-decades of life, a life that was ended by old age, not by his enemies.

       As the crucial year of 2016 winds down to a precious few days, the one-star red-white-and-blue Cuban flag flies over the beautiful but troubled island, which remains a pugnacious bastion against the ominous threat of dictation as represented by a red-white-and-blue American flag emblazoned with fifty stars.

       The two young Cubans above are wearing anti-blockade/anti-embargo T-shirts to stress their slogan "Cuba Es Nuestra" -- "Cuba Is Ours." But it may not be for long unless their generation of young adults on the island are willing to fight for it, politically and otherwise. There will be a test of their resolve. And, whether they realize it fully or not, that test, pitting them as dire underdogs, is right around the corner.

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