Friendlier Nations Respond!!
Next month -- in January, 2018 -- 344 Lada Vesta sedans will be shipped from Russian auto-maker AvtoVAZ to Cuba. Its President and CEO, Nicolas Maure, says, "Cuba is one of our priority export markets as we aim to get more involved with other Latin American countries." Maure, like other CEOs in foreign nations other than the USA, loved the latest brand-new 180 punitive sanctions against Cuba announced on Nov. 9th-2017 by the Trump-Rubio/Miami-Washington cabal intent on finally bringing the pugnacious Caribbean island to its knees. As the Obama-orchestrated positives aimed at Cuba are being reversed, Cuba is receptive to expanding its relations with friendlier nations competing with or unfriendly to the USA.
The 344 Lada Vesta sedans heading to Cuba from Russia next month will be followed by many more, or at least both Cuba and Russia hope that will happen. Reportedly, these sedans are high-quality vehicles that first Cuba and then other Caribbean and Latin American nations will embrace. In Cuba, of course, they would clash with the ubiquitous and tourist-loving 1950s-era U. S. cars on Cuban streets and highways still fine-tuned somehow by creative and expert Cuban mechanics.
The Swiss food & beverage giant Nestle this week -- Nov. 28th-2017 -- began building a $55 million factory at Cuba's ultra-vital, deep-water Muriel Economic Zone 28 miles southwest of Havana. On Nov. 9-2017 the new 180 vastly punitive measures against Cuba issued by the Trump/Rubio-led counter-revolutionary U. S. cabal had specifically prohibited U. S. companies from being involved at the Muriel Port, which underwent a billion-dollar modernization with lots of financial help from Brazil. Its significance to Cuba's financial viability is obviously something Trump & Rubio want to destroy. But companies like Nestle building factories at Muriel is like a life-preserver for Cuba as Rubio devises new methods to reclaim the island for a few enormously rich Rubio-supporters in his hometown -- Little Havana in Miami. Rubio perhaps didn't know it, considering he's never been to Cuba, but Nestle already had three successful factories operating on the targeted island.
The Cuban in charge of the Muriel Port Economic Zone is a brilliant lady named Ana Teresa Igarza. She has reached agreement with 30 foreign companies. Since November 9th, she has ceased what had been encouraging talks with a bevy of U. S. companies to concentrate on non-U. S. companies. Now that Trump-Rubio has out-lawed U. S. companies participating in the expansive Muriel Port zone, Ana says she has "begun to notice an uptick in interests from foreign companies not under Washington's yoke. The U. S. is the only nation hostile to either Cuba or the Muriel project as far as I know. I am receiving calls from U. S. competitor-enemy nations."
The little guy above gesturing with his right index finger is saying, "Wait, there's more!" And, indeed, there is. Far above its size, population, and economy, the resilient and pugnacious island of Cuba has proven it could be a ferocious and influential American enemy but for its own sake it wants to be America's ferocious friend. Yet, a small minority of second-generational Cuban-Americans, to sate their personal whims, want Cuba to be America's ferocious enemy so Superpower America will reclaim the island for them. At the moment, with Trump in the White House and unchecked Miami-Cubans like Rubio in the U. S. Congress, Cuba as America's ferocious enemy has the upper-hand over Cuba as America's ferocious friend.
For example:
One of the great Cubans Trump-Rubio hurt on Nov. 9-2017 is Maria Guadalupe Guzman, a renowned virologist at Cuba's Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine. During the Obama presidency, top U. S. scientists worked closely with Maria and her colleagues on such vital issues as dengue immunity and the Zika viruses. Also, Cuba has developed advances with cancer and diabetic medicines that have some Americans traveling even illegally to Cuba for treatments. Maria was expecting an important visit and collaboration from two key U. S. researchers from the U. S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention a few days ago, according to the renowned Science Magazine in an article written by Richard Stone. But they called Maria and said they had to cancel...because of the new Trump-Rubio sanctions. Of course, even IF such U.S.-Cuban collaboration cured some of the world's most alarming diseases and viruses, the American people are programmed to not question Trump-Rubio decisions that Maria calls "a crying shame for Cuba, America and all the countries that our collaborative work was benefiting in both medical and environmental sciences."
Prior to the Trump & Rubio cruelty replacing President Obama's decency, America's medical and scientific researchers relished opportunities to collaborate with Cuba's renowned scientists such as Maria Guadalupe Guzman. As the article above documented, Maria's monumental work in areas such as "Deciphering Dengue" is known worldwide. Yet, seldom will anyone in America have the courage or decency to question Trump & Rubio for punishing millions of innocent people by punishing Maria just because she's a Cuban in Cuba. Americans who allow Counter Revolutionaries like Rubio to dictate Cuban policies are shaming America but, more importantly, also hurting countless millions of people who are susceptible to deadly viruses like the dengue plague. Calling Maria an enemy and not allowing U. S. scientists to work with her is a sin that the decent President Obama tried so hard, in confronting the likes of Rubio, to correct. The U. S. media that paints Rubio as a choirboy is simply lying, perhaps because it is too afraid to upset Little Havana.
This week on Dec. 1-2017 Reuters, the great London-based news agency, had a major article entitled: "Cuba Battling Medicine Shortages In Wake of Cash Crunch." I provide that data in case you want to dial it up online and read it. The article, as you could see, quotes Cuba's Pharmaceutical Director Rita Maria Garcia Almaguer as saying: "The production of some forms of pharmaceuticals was stalled because the resources were not available on time, which means we were unable to fulfill the high demands of the national health system. But the industry has been recovering and most production is stable now." She said she was most concerned with shortages in cancer and HIV medicine. Unlike U. S. media sources, Reuters is not afraid of Counter Revolutionary forces in Miami and in Congress, so this Reuters article, as you can readily see, said: "Cuba's health system is one of the revolution's most treasured achievements, having produced results on a par with rich nations using the resources of a developing country and in spite of the decades-old U. S. trade embargo." An American with guts might want to re-read that long sentence because gutless Americans believe MARCO RUBIO when he bellows that the Superpower U. S. must keep every dollar from reaching Cuba because it all goes into "the Castros' Swiss bank accounts." Such RUBIO lies are accepted only by propagandized American cowards. No one else believes them, yet they punish innocent Cubans daily.
This is Cuba's Pharmaceutical Director Rita Maria Garcia Almaguer that Reuters featured in that Dec. 1-2017 article. Rita has devoted her life to helping Cuba's health system, free to all Cubans, do the best possible job taking care of everyone on the island despite, as Reuters pointed out, having to confront "the decades-old U. S. trade embargo." Only a non-U.S. news agency would have the guts to say that. Thus, in the U. S., the media portrays Rita as America's enemy while portraying RUBIO, the Little Havana choirboy, as just a Mother Teresa-like saint.
Thus, as Little Havana's "choirboy" Rubio is allowed to craft new U. S. rules and laws in his attempt to starve and deprive the Cubans on the island. He could rejoice at an article this week in Granma, the island's leading newspaper. It advised the Cuban people that there is a shortage of certain medicines due to such things as the tightened U. S. sanctions since Obama's departure, the financial problems in Venezuela, the water drought that has afflicted the island, the devastating hurricanes that have destroyed valuable cotton and tobacco crops, etc. When Marc Frank, the great Reuters journalist on the island, reviewed that article in Granma this week, Frank mentioned that even a temporary shortage of medicine is particularly disheartening because "free medical care and medicines for all its citizens is a hallmark of the Revolution." In years past, unbiased journalists like Marc Frank have reported on such things as a company in Jamaica being successfully fined by the U. S. for shipping a box of BABY ASPIRIN to the island. And now in December of 2017, because such U. S. laws haven't totally deprived Cubans on the island, Rubio seems intent on expanding such cruelty simply because another generation of cowardly Americans allow him to do so...on their behalf and on the behalf of democracy.
Meanwhile, the rest of the nations in the world are not afraid of Rubio. Thus, America gets condemned 191-to-Zero in the United Nations for its Cuban policy. But, of course, Rubio obviously doesn't care...as Cuba looks far afield elsewhere.
Vietnam, for example is currently shipping thousands of tons of free rice to Cuba, ostensibly to help Cubans still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Irma but presumably to remind Cuba that the thriving Vietnamese economy is eager to invest more of its assets in Cuba. That's interesting. The above shipment to Cuba at the Haiphong Port was being prepared when President Trump was in Vietnam saluting the Vietnamese economy and seeking more Vietnamese trade with the United States. Trump's presidential predecessors -- Clinton, Bush, and Obama -- had done the same thing. Back in the 1960s-70s Communist North Vietnam had won a long, bloody war against the U. S. and South Vietnam and then united all of Vietnam into a Communist state. But that's been no problem since for the U. S. because, unlike the U. S. loss in the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the losing U.S.-backed Vietnamese militants didn't regroup as a rich and powerful entity on U. S. soil determined to recapture their country. The same thing can be said regarding the bloody 1950s Korean War, especially when a half-million Chinese soldiers intervened against over-matched U. S. soldiers. No problem. Like with Communist Vietnam today, Communist China is a powerful and even favorable trade partner with the United States. Again, unlike the Cuban Revolution, no Chinese dictatorship ever resettled on U. S. soil.
Today resurgent Communist Vietnam, a rising power that is being increasingly wooed by the United States to increase trade, is anxious to tighten its ties with Cuba. The photo above shows Vietnam's Deputy Finance Minister Nguyen Huu Chi handing a symbolic sack of free rice to Cuba's Vietnamese ambassador Hermino Lopez.
But "wait there's more!!":
In a few weeks -- in Feb.-2018 -- 57-year-old, non-Castro Miguel Diaz-Canel will be Cuba's new President. The quiet-spoken, education-minded Diaz-Canel -- who grew up on the island a big fan of the Beatles and motocycles -- is generally well-liked and admired on the island. Last week when 24,000 polling places hosted the voting in island-wide municipal elections, Diaz-Canel's prominence was highlighted. And on Nov. 25-2017 at key ceremonies marking the one-year anniversary of Fidel Castro's death at age 90, Diaz-Canel was the primary speaker. He used that occasion to assail, far more acutely than ever before, the 180 new Trump-Rubio sanctions on Cuba issued on Nov. 9th-2017. "At some point, and it may be upon us," he said, "we must distance ourselves as far as possible from the United States, despite the close geographical permanence. When the only nation in the world that is your enemy and the only nation trying to destroy a close-by much weaker nation, perhaps the primary...or sole, if possible...emphasis should be directed elsewhere."
Cuba's emerging leader Miguel Diaz-Canel has already cultivated close ties with China's omnipotent leader Zi as Diaz-Canel looks "elsewhere" beyond the USA.
Reportedly, Miguel Diaz-Canel has already been offered some intriguing propositions by Russia's Putin, who is purposely exceeding Chinese overtures.
But Cubans on the island consider their next leader, Miguel Diaz-Canel, to be "more a lover than a fighter." Thus, they expect to see him cutting red ribbons with foreign companies although Cubans on the island are keenly disappointed that American companies will not likely be among the ribbon-cuttings that Cubans want to see.
Unlike the Little Havana choirboy Marco Rubio, Miguel Diaz-Canel is not backed by the world's biggest economy and the world's largest nuclear arsenal. But if that sounds totally lop-sided, remember that Cuba has been David to America's Goliath since 1959...and it's still standing. That takes us to December-2017, close to 2018. And what Miguel Diaz-Canel is thinking in Cuba by necessity in 2018 must counter what Marco Rubio is planning in the USA. David vs. Goliath? Absolutely.
But surely NOT impossible:
Miguel Diaz-Canel simply has more foreign friends than Rubio has and, for sure, Diaz-Canel continues to look "elsewhere" than the U. S. for some more friends.
Barack Obama, America's two-term former President, has been the only U. S. leader since the 1950s with the guts, decency, and intelligence to desire normal as opposed to abnormal relations with Cuba. Trump & Rubio on Nov. 9-2017 convinced Cuba's next leader, Miguel Diaz-Canel, that waiting for the U. S. to have another Obama-like leader is no longer worthwhile. So, Diaz-Canel is gazing "elsewhere" and there are other "elsewhere" nations gazing back at him.
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