Why Hurt Americans Too?

While Hurting Cubans!!

        A 74-year-old Californian battling lung cancer, Judy Ingels, this month broke a U. S. law -- the U. S. embargo against Cuba that, for over half-a-century, has made everyday Americans the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to the Caribbean island. The embargo is one of countless U. S. laws easily passed in the 535-member U. S Congress by a handful of counter-revolutionary types allied with a handful of miscreant politicians. While such laws have surely hurt Cuba, they also hurt Americans and thus such laws currently are condemned internationally by a 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations, but still they persist decade after decade.  Judy broke the embargo law by spending six days in Cuba so she could be treated with a renowned cancer drug -- Cimavax -- that was invented by Cuba's equally renowned medical scientists. This week -- on April 20th, 2017 -- the BBC in London told the world about Judy's life-saving, law-breaking trip to Cuba. With rare exceptions, the mainstream U. S. media doesn't touch stories that might shed positive lights on Cuba, so as not to displease a few counter-revolutionaries in Miami and Congress.

       Judy Ingles was accompanied to Cuba by her husband Bill and her daughter Cindy, so they very knowingly broke the embargo law too. But Judy told the BBC, "I'm not worried. For the first time, I have real hope." The Ingles family took a large supply of Cimavax back to California with them. All healthcare for Cubans on the island is free, including what many of them know as the "miracle cancer drug" Cimavax.

      The BBC reported that this now very healthy-looking Cuban lady, Lucretia de Jesus, was incapacitated and bound to a wheelchair with a severe case of lung and liver cancer. After being treated with Cimavax, Lucretia now regularly walks up and down five flights of stairs and is now planning a trip to Spain.

          Lucretia de Jesus's doctor is Elia Neninger. She told the BBC, "I never thought I would would work on something that would improve the lives of so many people. I have stage-four lung cancer patients who are still alive 10 years after their diagnosis." Cuba produces more doctors per capital than any other country. 

      One of America's top cancer experts, Dr. Kelvin Lee at the famed Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, told the BBC that he not only believes Cimavax successfully treats cancer but that it might also prevent cancer. He said: "If we could vaccinate the high-risk smokers to prevent them from developing cancer, that would have an enormous public health input both in the United States and the world." The BBC said Cuba's renowned biotechnology industry -- which has developed world-famed cancer, diabetes and other drugs -- was "nurtured by former President Fidel Castro since the very early 1980s." 

       After former U. S. President Barack Obama so bravely opened many long-closed doors to Cuba, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo took a Trade Mission to Cuba that included Dr. Candace Johnson. She is the President and CEO of the Roswell Cancer Institute in Buffalo. Dr. Johnson got permission from Cuba to use its unique cancer drug on her cancer patients in the United States but as of late April-2017 it has yet to be approved by America's Food & Drug Administration, so that's why Judy Ingles and her family broke the U. S. embargo law and went to Cuba to get treated and return to California with a large supply of Cimavax.

        This week's BBC article about Judy Ingels and Cuba's cancer drug shines more foreign light on why America's long-standing Cuban policy is designed to sate the revenge, economic and political motives of a few while it harms everyone else. The Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo doesn't have to fight the Cuban government to get access to Cimavax, but it still needs permission from the United States.

     When it comes to supporting the goals of Candace Johnson and cancer patients like Judy Ingles, most Americans are not supposed to be brave enough, smart enough, caring enough or patriotic enough to choose between such decent American women and the embargo-promoters in Miami and Congress.

         Since 1962 the United States has had only one President --  Mr. Obama -- with both the guts and the decency to sincerely try to end the embargo and other bellicose assaults on totally innocent Cubans...as well as totally innocent Americans like Judy Ingles and millions of Cuban-Americans, most of whom also oppose the embargo. But America's Cuban policy, especially since the famed Cuban Revolution victory in 1959, has never considered majority opinion in America or the near-unanimity of opinion worldwide.

         A simple but unasked question in America: If Cuba has a cancer drug that could quite possibly instantly and greatly help American cancer patients, what is the rationale still preventing that from happening? 

Is the answer "The embargo?"

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YES, A Fake and a Fraud

Defines the U. S. Media!!

        This photo of President Donald Trump is courtesy of Damon White and the New York Times. It was used this week -- April 20th, 2017 -- to illustrate a massive NY Times' article entitled "A Fake and a Fraud." That is the precise manner in which the Times' has depicted Mr. Trump in article after article and column after column every day for well over a year, or since it appeared the United States would democratically elect a President that the Times didn't like. And so, tomorrow and the days thereafter, if you read the Times, you can surely anticipate that most of its news coverage will be, in fact, anti-Trump propaganda. Understand that I am not a supporter of Mr. Trump but I am a passionate supporter of America and democracy, and thus I have respect for the Office of President of the United States. Is Mr. Trump more of a "fake and a fraud" than the New York Times? I don't think so. Moreover, I believe that the increasingly incompetent and biased mainstream U. S. media is more of a threat to the U. S. than the unpredictably enigmatic Donald Trump.

       Arguably the most important of America's Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson was the third American President and the genius who wrote America's Declaration of Independence. Study his quotation above and then perhaps you will agree with my opening paragraph and premise. My study of this quotation leads me to believe that Jefferson today would conclude that ultra-powerful propaganda sheets and pundit-driven television news coverage -- masquerading as prime news sources -- constitute a far bigger threat to Democracy than anything else -- including questionable Presidents and nuclear-powered rogue nations.

     The aforementioned New York Times article dated April 20-2017 was written by Charles Blow with the blaring title "A Fake and a Fraud" referencing Mr. Blow's and the Times' continuous and unending depiction of President Trump. Fine and dandy. The problem is: Day-after-day, month-after-month, and now year-after-year -- that is, with rare exceptions, almost all the Times' does and all that Mr. Blow does. 

Photo courtesy: Larry D. Moore.

     
        Charles Blow was born 46-years-old in Gibsland, Louisiana. He graduated from Alabama's Grambling State University. Since 2008 he has been an ultra-powerful and unchallenged writer-columnist for the ultra-powerful New York Times. He is also an ultra-liberal, and so am I when it comes to race and other social issues. In fact, I assume that I've literally crossed and re-crossed the famed iconic Civil Rights Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma, Alabama far more than Mr. Blow has. But unlike Mr. Blow, I don't believe totally innocent white children should continually be punished and ridiculed by extreme liberals by holding them responsible for injustices to African-Americans perpetrated long before they were born. I believe Mr. Blow's still ascending career is based to a large extent on that out-of-whack political correctness based on the deeply ingrained fear in America of being labeled "a racist." Moreover, I believe Mr. Blow's incessant assaults on President Trump show a disregard for the Office of President and for the political process that projected Mr. Trump to the White House. Also, I believe Mr. Blow has every right to disagree with me but I don't believe he believes I have the right to disagree with him, based on what is indicated directly below.

      Using his celebrity at the New York Times and stretching rampant political correctness to its pusillanimous limits, Charles Blow and many like him are ubiquitous pundits on network television "news" programs that mostly use punditry as biased propaganda tools and to promote whatever the pundits are selling -- mostly themselves. In the punditry battle depicted above on CNN, that's the extreme anti-Trump liberal Charles Blow on the right and the extreme pro-Trump conservative Paris Dennard on the left. Interestingly enough, both men are African-Americans as you can see. This bitter exchange aired on August 20th, 2016 in case you want to check that program's highlights. Mr. Blow -- no matter what he writes or says -- is totally unaccustomed to being challenged regardless of how extreme -- or, yes, racist -- his views may appear to be. In the pivotal moment depicted above, Mr. Dennard had just said something about Mr. Trump that Mr. Blow disagreed with. At that point Mr. Blow erupted into a tirade in which he claimed that CNN was committing "MEDIA MALPRACTICE" FOR EVEN PERMITTING MR. DENNARD ON THE PROGRAM. Fortified with rampant political correctness, it seems Mr. Blow and his ilk don't think contrary opinions, including mine I'm sure, should be allowed at this time in America's democratically challenged environs.

      And speaking of Charles Blow, out-of-whack political correctness, and Americans scared-to-death about being labeled racists, reminds me of...Cristina Escobar. She is an absolutely brilliant...in Spanish or English...broadcast journalist in Cuba. Just being Cuban in Cuba makes her a villain in the eyes of the politically correct and right-wing U. S. media, both factions of whom are now jokes as, I believe, Mr. Jefferson would agree. But Cristina Escobar is neither a villain nor a joke. She's just a brilliant, smart and well-educated broadcast journalist as she proves daily in Cuba and has proven on three separate journalistic visits to the United States. On both Cuban and U. S. soil she has made this statement: "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the United States than journalists in the United States have to tell the truth about Cuba." 

           Whether or not you believe in Cristina Escobar's quotation -- or Thomas Jefferson's quotation for that matter -- I believe it is incumbent upon you to believe that she is a smart, brilliant, and well-educated broadcast journalist and that he is perhaps the smartest and most brilliant of America's Founding Fathers.

        In other words, I believe that Cristina Escobar has a right to her opinion even if she is in Cuba. And I believe that Charles Blow should allow other people to disagree with him even if he is in an America that is trying to survive rampant political correctness. Yes, Mr. Blow's CNN tirade against an Africa-American, Paris Dennard, that supports President Trump was not...shall I say...lost on me. And neither was Cristina Escobar's firm opinion about whether Cuban journalists like her have more freedom concerning certain topics, such as contentious U.S.-Cuban relations, than American journalists.

And by the way........

      .........when Cristina Escobar made her topical quote about the U. S. media, she was serious. And so was Thomas Jefferson when he made his historic quote about the U. S. media.

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Anti-Cuban Propagandists

Also Harm America!!

       The photo above and the one that follows are courtesy of Elio Delgado Valdes and Havana Times.org. This week a stairwell collapsed in the building on the right in Havana. No one was injured but a concerned crowd congregated, including Cubans and some tourists. Those of us who have been to Cuba have seen many buildings such as this one that are badly in need of repair on the island. A handful of rich and powerful anti-Cuban propagandists and benefactors in the United States never fail to use incidents and photos such as this to assail Revolutionary Cuba while, in a more sane and fair milieu, those who should be assailed are the nefarious and gutless propagandists-benefactors, as well as the gutless cowards in the United States who allow them to reshape the United States democracy to fulfill their asinine, self-serving Cuban agendas. Currently the international condemnation of America's Cuban policy is expressed in unanimity with a 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations. A handful of anti-Cuban propagandists-benefactors in the U. S. -- hiding behind the skirts of the world superpower -- can ignore that worldwide denunciation because the majority of Americans in this particular generation are quite possibly the stupidest, the most cowardly and the most unpatriotic generation in America's very prominent and mostly proud history.

       This photo shows Cuban workers trying to rehabilitate that building in Havana where the stairwell collapsed this week. But they will mostly have to use outdated band-aides instead of suitable material and machinery. You see, two generations of a handful of Cuban-American remnants from the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship have dictated, since 1959, America's Cuban policies. That cruel and undemocratic dictation has been greased by two things: {1} Unholy alliances with such entities as the Bush dynasty and the Tea Party; {2} the cowardice and lack of patriotism from the majority of America's citizens.

            Americans are insouciantly programmed to deny that the above Carlos LaTuff graphic correctly defines America's Cuban policy, the policy that currently has that 191-to-0 international denunciation at the UN. Except for millions of propagandized Americans, the rest of the world realizes that America's Cuban policy shames America and harms America's worldwide reputation on a consistent basis more than any other issue, and that's saying a lot considering that Cuba is merely a nearby island. From 1962 until today the U. S. has imposed on Cuba the longest and cruelest economic embargo ever inflicted on a small nation by a large and powerful nation. Mr. LaTuff in Brazil understands that, as do other fair-minded citizens around the world. To put such an embargo in perspective, put...say...Canada in Cuba's place. Canada is a rich nation on America's northern border and its huge ally and primary trading partner is the United States. BUT WHAT IF, from 1962 till today, THE U.S. HAD IMPOSED A CRUEL AND ENDLESS ECONOMIC EMBARGO ON CANADA INSTEAD OF HELPING CANADA BECOME A RICH AND THRIVING NATION??? If that had relentlessly happened to Canada for all those decades, I believe Canada would have either capitulated long ago OR been brought to its knees about half-way through such an abominable assault on its sovereignty. If you doubt that, you are ignoring what little Cuba has been forced to deal with...such as the unique economic and military power of the U. S. that not only enforces the embargo against Cuba but ALSO is powerful enough to impose penalties against OTHER NATIONS if they dare try to treat Cuba decently. 

           The Carlos LaTuff graphic depicted above accurately describes the United States embargo of Cuba. The fact that it is unending reflects the cowardice and lack of patriotism of millions of Americans who inspired LaTuff's descriptive masterpiece, one that daily flashes around the world several times to severely damage America's image while also soliciting wild cheers from America's major international enemies.

      Beginning in 1952, American businessmen like Edmund Chester and the American Mafia relished having a two-bit army-sergeant named Fulgencio Batista as the thieving and for sale dictator of Cuba.

         From 1952 till the crack of dawn on Jan. 1-1959, U. S. businessmen along with Mafia kingpins like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky along with their pal Fulgencio Batista raped and robbed Cuba at will. 

      Meanwhile, the majority peasants on the island of Cuba, like this mother and her two children, were left to try to survive in dire poverty, with the power-brokers in Havana and Washington totally unconcerned.

           And meanwhile, while the Batista dictatorship in Cuba was raping and robbing the island at will beginning in 1952, Batista himself {on the left in this photo} was being squired in convertibles around Washington and hailed by the Eisenhower administration at lavish White House parties as "a great American friend in the Caribbean." HE SURE AS HELL WAS...a "great friend" of the American Mafia, greedy American businessmen and bought-and-paid-for American politicians!! And all the while two post-World War II generations of Americans have not cared enough to challenge their Cuban-addicted, anti-democracy ills.

       A 99-pound, child-loving doctor's daughter named Celia Sanchez emerged as the greatest anti-Batista guerrilla fighter and a bold revolution's greatest recruiter of rebels and supplies. By the time Batista had already placed his all-time largest bounty on her head, Celia's revolution by the start of 1957 was finally joined by some famed macho men -- the Castro brothers, Che Guevara, etc. Cuba's top historian, Pedro Alvarez Tabio, thus correctly stated: "If Batista had managed to kill Celia Sanchez anytime between 1953 and 1959, there would have been no viable Cuban Revolution, and no revolution for Fidel and Che to join." After her victorious Cuban Revolution, from Jan.1-1959 till her death from cancer on Jan.11-1980 Celia Sanchez -- despite massive and continuous assaults from the U. S. government and the revengeful transplanted Batistianos -- laid down the parameters that she deemed most propitious for the island's children.

      Fully cognizant of the fact that Batista's Cuba had left the majority peasants illiterate and in dire poverty without heath-care, Revolutionary Cuba under Celia Sanchez's guidance quickly introduced a program in which thousands of Cuban women who could read and write, like those above, were sent across the island to educate and assist the long-maligned peasant families. If Americans don't know about such things as Celia Sanchez and her "Cuban Literacy Campaign, that is understandable because the machismo-fueled and revengeful Batistianos in the U. S. since 1959 surely don't want Americans to know about the leading role the 99-pound doctor's daughter had in reshaping Batista's Cuba into Revolutionary Cuba. Vilifying macho men like Castro was/is a lot easier than vilifying an angelic female guerrilla fighter. But, please understand, Cuba's children since 1959 have benefited from the historic greatness of Celia Sanchez as well as the topical greatness of Celia-disciples on the island today -- such as the child-loving Rosy Amaro Perez.

       This photo is courtesy of Rosy Amaro Perez. It shows four little girls in today's Revolutionary Cuba. They are much-loved and well cared for and, yes, that is a typical and key aspect of Revolutionary Cuba in sharp contrast to Batista's Cuba. While there are buildings and other infrastructure in Cuba today that are badly in need of modern repair, thanks largely to the embargo and other Batistiano-imposed U. S. policies, Cuban children like these are prioritized with island-wide love and its limited resources. They are guaranteed free and excellent healthcare for life; free and excellent educations through college; etc. Just last week, after another exhaustive examination of Cuban families, the top United Nations child-monitor -- a lady named Maria Grazia Giammarinaro -- lavished praise on Cuba for its emphasis on child welfare and for working closely with the U. S. and the UN on combating human and sexual trafficking, which the U. S. State Department also recently confirmed. While America's Batistiano-imposed Cuban laws prevent the island's participation in international banking, the World Bank praised Cuba for the "exceedingly high percentage" of its resources devoted to education and healthcare on the island. The World Health Organization and the Pan Am Health Organization have also recently reiterated such praise. Of course, the mainstream U. S. media is not brave enough to report or discuss such praise for Cuba, perhaps because of such things as a brave Cuban-American newsman named Emilio Milian getting car-bombed in Miami in 1976 when he expressed concern about Batistiano-fueled terrorist acts against totally innocent Cubans.

       Cuban women and mothers all across the island of Cuba, like Rosy Amaro Perez, work tirelessly everyday on behalf of Cuban children. And Cuban women like Rosy don't deserve to be targeted and vilified endlessly by a handful of rich, powerful and self-servicing men and women in a rich, powerful and self-serving neighboring country. Rosy Amaro Perez is not the bad guy. Her enemies are the bad guys.

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The Cuba Americans Don't Know

Nor are they supposed to!!

       This photo is from Santiago de Cuba. On the southeastern tip of the island, it is Cuba's former capital and its second largest and most important city, behind only the present-day capital of Havana, which is situated on the northwestern tip of the alligator-shaped Caribbean island. If you glance at a Cuban map, you'll see why Havana is sometimes called "the tail" and Santiago "the head" or "the mouth" of the alligator, or island. In the photo above, those old cannon still stare out at the sea entrance to Santiago. Those symbolic old rusty cannon signify that, from its discovery by Columbus in 1492, Cuba has always had to try to defend itself against the massive imperialist designs of foreign nations -- particularly Spain and America. But the history of Santiago is not why I feature it on April 19, 2017. Rather, it's the great old city's topicality.

         The new Mayor of Santiago de Cuba is Beatriz Johnson Urrutia. There is nothing at all unusual about a female being the new Mayor of Cuba's second largest and most important city. The Cuban Revolution in 1952 was started and finished by great female guerrilla fighters and recruiters, especially Celia Sanchez, Haydee Santamaria, Vilma Espin, Tete Puebla, etc. It was a war that the Castro brothers, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara and the other macho male characters later joined. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, women like Celia Sanchez, Haydee Santamaria and Vilma Espin made almost all of the key day-to-day decisions in Cuba except for military matters, which also deeply involved Cuban females such as Tete Puebla who today is a General in the Cuban army but as a teenager in the 1950s she was a fiercely feared female guerrilla fighter. Key guerrilla fighters and top decision-makers like Celia, Haydee and Vilma have died but the patterns they crafted on the island continue with day-to-day decisions mostly made by women such as Josefina Vidal, Marion Marbon Gonzalez, Elaine Diaz Rodriguez, Ana Teresa Igarza, Tania Vazquez Garcia, Anazansi Rodriguez, etc., and rising stars like Cristina Escobar and Jennifer Bello Martinez who are today the two most influential leaders of the all-important twenty-something generation of Cubans. SO, with Beatriz Johnson Urrutia becoming the Mayor of the hugely important city of Santiago de Cuba, its par-for-the-course on the island, at least since 1959, the year the extremely cruel, thieving, and misogynistic Batistiano and Mafiosi leaders were chased off the island by the female-fueled Revolution, mostly to become counter-revolutionaries from nearby Little Havana in Miami, Florida.

      The mainstream U. S. media is neither gutsy enough or competent enough to tell you the truth about Cuba, but sources such as Sarah Stephens WILL tell you the truth about both the island and its hugely significant relations with its contentious neighbor, the United States. Ms. Stephens for the past ten years has expertly and lovingly led the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. She writes the insightful "Cuba Central" portion of the CDA website that is posted each Friday. She has greatly influenced any positives related to Cuba, including those so bravely made by former President Barack Obama. She has also had the guts and the decency to excoriate the vast Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S. and to challenge the handful of extremist Cuban-Americans who, since 1959, have mostly dictated the Cuban narrative in the United States as well as dictated the harshest anti-Cuban laws in the United States Congress, laws that, not coincidentally, are geared to enrich and empower them while also mounting cruel and continuous counter-revolutionary tactics against Cuba. Ms. Stephens is also not adverse to pointing out that the majority of Americans and Cuban-Americans who allow this, in their cowardice and stupidity, are extremely unpatriotic, as evidenced by their lack of concern regarding such things as the current 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations of America's Batistiano-fueled Cuban policy. And of course, Ms. Stephens regularly condemns the gutless and biased mainstream U. S. media for lying to the American people about Cuba. For example, Ms. Stephens correctly posted this sentence on her website: "It's not often that the U. S. media commits a gaffe and inadvertently tells the truth about Cuba." INDEED!! Sarah Stephens is your best source for the truth when it comes to Cuba, U.S.-Cuba relations, and the U. S. media.

       And that brings me back around to Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, the new Mayor of Santiago de Cuba. The U. S. media and the U. S. Castro Cottage Industry want Americans to believe that mean revolutionary rulers in Cuba regularly machine-gun or otherwise spend half-their-time punishing women on the island while, in fact, it is women like Beatriz who make most of the day-to-day decisions in Cuba. Of course, the Castro Cottage Industry that dictates America's Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policy also dictated a legal U. S. law in Congress that to this day dictates that everyday Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. Visitors to Cuba, you see, might make judgments for themselves instead of only being told, decade after decade, what the Castro Cottage Industry wants you to think about Cuba.

       And, uh, did I mention that Beatriz Johnson Urrutia has just been ELECTED Mayor of Santiago de Cuba? The two ladies above are dropping their votes in the ballot box. I don't know how they voted but I do know that most of the votes were for the very popular and highly respected Beatriz Johnson Urrutia. 

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Cuba Lies Demean America

More Than They Demean Cuba!

        The United Nations Special Rapporteur on monitoring the scourge of human trafficking is Maria Grazia Giammarinaro. She has just visited and closely examined Cuba and then, at the above news conference, made these conclusive comments: 

                 "Cuba applies good practices to fight the global problems of human trafficking."

                "The strength of the Cuban system is that people have a high level of education and know their rights."

                 "Cuba is a much less vulnerable country than many others." 

          While the mainstream U. S. media, which predicates its Cuban coverage on the dictates of the vast Castro Cottage Industry in America, wouldn't dare report on such Cuban positives such as the highly respected Maria Grazia Giammarinaro expounded on and which produced international headlines such as: "UN Praises Cuba for Practices Against Human Trafficking."

         When it comes to Cuba, extremely important and insightful observations from important, insightful, and unbiased people like Maria Grazia Giammarinaro are generally ignored by the mainstream U. S. media.

          On the other hand, Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and other Miami-based anti-Revolutionary zealots have 24-hour, around-the-clock access to the mainstream U. S. media to viciously assail Cuba without ever having to worry about being questioned concerning their extreme views or about such things as her close associations with Miami's most notorious Cuban-Americans such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Moreover, Ros-Lehtinen has been entrenched in the U. S. Congress since 1989 when her convenient Campaign Manager was Jeb Bush from the Batistiano-loving Bush dynasty. And like the U. S. media, the 535-member U. S. Congress also is not about to challenge anything Ros-Lehtinen says or advocates against Cuba. In other words, the United States of America changed more than Cuba in 1959.

        Meanwhile, while the UN this week praised Cuba's "high level of education" to account for its  excellent fight against human trafficking, the UN, the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization have all praised Cuba's health care system and its offshoots such as its development of important vaccines, as shown above. Those three organizations, for example, recently concluded that Cuba was the first nation in the world to become "totally free of AIDs being transmitted from mothers to babies." Both education through college and health care for life are totally free in Revolutionary Cuba. That was not exactly the case in pre-Revolutionary Cuba when the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship was only concerned with enriching the already rich.

        This was a typical Cuban family in Batista's Cuba. When the mainstream U. S. media provides 24-hour coverage for the Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S. to assail Revolutionary Cuba, at least they should also have to explain pre-Revolutionary photos like this one, and indeed there are many such photos.

Or this one!

Or this one!

      If Batista's Cuba was a brutal and poverty-riven hellhole for the island's majority peasants, which it was, it was also a gold mine and gravy train for Mafia thugs, like Meyer Lansky, and the chosen elites.

         On January 1, 1959, the startling triumph of the Cuban Revolution caused the extremely rich Batistianos and Mafiosi to flee but they quickly reconstituted their power on United States soil -- mainly the nearby Miami area and later in the United States Congress. Ironically, the financial and political rewards in the United States have been far more substantial than they were in Cuba BUT six decades of using that power in all-out counter-revolutionary efforts to recapture the island have failed...at least to this point.

       And so...from Jan. 1-1959 till Easter Sunday in the year 2017 US-Cuba Relations have remained in a hostile standoff, one that the recent two-term Obama presidency tried but failed to remedy because a handful of Miami-based Cubans in the 535-member U. S. Congress can easily dictate the cruelest aspects of America's Cuban policy.

       America, the world superpower, and Cuba, the nearby island, from geographical and humane standpoints should be the closest of friends so as to mutually benefit most citizens in both nations. Yet, America's Cuban policy since the 1898 Spanish-American War and, especially, since the Revolutionary triumph of Cuban sovereignty in January of 1959, has strictly been maintained to benefit only an elitist and nefarious few. For that reason, the current international vote of UN nations is 191-to-0 in condemnation of America's Cuban policy. And for that reason, America's policy related to LITTLE CUBA has more of an adverse effect on America's worldwide reputation than any other factor. If that is not so, try to suggest one single factor in the entire world that could possibly garner a unanimous 191-to-0 vote in the very diverse United Nations. And of course, America's Cuban policy is one major reason the last two generations of Americans have been called the most ignorant, the most cowardly, and the most unpatriotic generations in America's proud history. All the while, Cuba pugnaciously remains...CUBA.

        This new photo is courtesy of Ismael Francisco. It shows two gorgeous, healthy and happy Cuban twins -- Ambar on the left and Geradito on the right. I believe it is much better that these twin babies were born in Revolutionary Cuba than in Batista's Cuba. It's OK to disagree but not OK to be biased about it.

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