After Trump's Impeachment

Then What??
{Thursday, December 14th, 2017}

     While America's embattled President, Donald Trump, appears to be staring straight ahead to stay abreast of his powerful enemies in the Democratic Party and in the Mainstream U. S. Media, I believe he would be better advised to look behind him over his right shoulder. His prime and most fatal enemies are most likely the foxes he put in his own hen-house. I have thought from the beginning, and that belief is now exacerbated, that Trump's choice as the U. S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, guaranteed that he would not finish out his 4-year term as President. I also didn't think that Haley would tip her hand in his first year in the Oval Office nor in the second year, except in subtle behind-the-scenes activity...such as with constant meetings and/or contacts with Senator Marco Rubio, the other fox in Trump's hen-house.

    On Sunday, Dec. 10-2017, Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared on CBS's very high-profile Face the Nation program. Regarding her boss's decision on Jerusalem and his other controversies, Haley made sure to make the obligatory pro-Trump statements. But not-so-subtly, she purposely tightened the noose around Trump's neck when she suggested that women accusers against sexual predators should be heard, even if Trump is a target. Unlike the plethora of politicians as well as Hollywood and television sexual predators...alleged and admitted...who are currently biting the dust, Trump's denouement as President will only tangentially be related to sexual innuendos. His foreign entanglements...especially with Russia and even Israel...can be expected to end Trump's presidency in its third year. But Haley's comment on Face the Nation was intended, I truly believe, to grease the skids so even gentle pushes from behind his back by her and Rubio with send the President careening wickedly and swiftly down a precipitous and perilous slope.

  In the Republican presidential primary Nikki Haley wildly supported Marco Rubio and both of them assaulted rival Donald Trump cruelly and, true to form, he fired back.

     Apart from his ultra-vital billionaire donors, Nikki Haley, as the Governor of South Carolina, was Marco Rubio's most vociferous presidential backer because the most powerful Cuban-Americans in Miami supported Jeb Bush and the Bush dynasty.

    Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley were often side-by-side -- both in front of cameras as above and far out of public sight.

     By the time the above photo was taken, it is believed that the Nikki Haley-Marco Rubio alliance...uh, at least politically...was firm. She was willing to forsake her high-profile job as Governor of South Carolina if another job...specifically Secretary of State...would better further her own presidential ambitions. Rubio, the most ambitious presidential hopeful on the planet, reportedly gave her some early advice: She should first opt for less minefields than would befall an unprepared Secretary for State and instead aim for the UN spot on her White House pathway.

     For sure, the indelible Nikki Haley-Marco Rubio alliance was momentarily shattered but not ended when Rubio was unceremoniously wiped out in the presidential primary by Donald Trump. Haley still had her cozy job as South Carolina's governor but the bitter Rubio, after not being able to trounce Trump even in his home-state of Florida, belittled the United States Senate and indicated he would not seek a second term. But Haley and Rubio were both far more interested in the presidency than being a Governor or a Senator. So Rubio changed his mind and won a second term in the Senate, which he belittled as not being able to get anything done and he explained that was why he actually missed an alarming number of votes in the Senate. Meanwhile, the presidential primary had fueled Haley's taste for the White House. And Rubio, with second thoughts, realized a second 6-year term in the Senate was necessary to keep his presidential aspirations viable and his rich donors happy.

     And so, Nikki Haley soothed Marco Rubio's embarrassing presidential defeat and used her political astuteness to advise him that, yes, he needed the second stint in the Senate as his springboard for presidential runs in 2020 and 2024. Of course, his Vice Presidential partner would be Nikki Haley. Then by 2028 she would have her springboard to bounce right into the top White House spot after him.

      Agreeing with Marco Rubio that she wasn't ready to test the Secretary of State minefields, Nikki Haley surprised a lot of people by giving up her job as Governor of South Carolina to accept President Trump's offer to become the U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Of course, when Nikki Haley was sworn in, above, as UN Ambassador by Vice President Mike Pence, the person standing right beside her was Marco Rubio. By that time, they both believed that, if Trump didn't make it through his first four years as President, Rubio as Senator and Haley as UN Ambassador would have the positions and the money to be poised to test their still-festering presidential ambitions by taking over the reins of the Republican party.

     And that brings up back around to Nikki Haley's appearance this past Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation. As she did Sunday, Ms. Haley will continue to make the politically astute and obligatory defenses of her boss, President Donald Trump. But increasingly, especially if she or Marco Rubio sense that the teetering Trump is on the very edge of that precipitous and precarious cliff, she will, I believe, put the White House goals of herself and Rubio far ahead of worrying if Trump ends up at the bottom of the cliff. Her Face the Nation reference tying Trump to a mounting array of sexual accusers was subtle but quite calculated and surely not a slip of the tongue.

      The lure of being the U. S. Ambassador to the UN was not what caused Nikki Haley to quit as the Governor of South Carolina. She has strong presidential ambitions but would actually prefer being Marco Rubio's Vice President prior to her becoming Leader of the Free World. The Haley-Rubio alliance is indelible.

       As a matter of fact, President Trump has a lot of Foxes in his hen-house...not excluding Mike Pence...but by far the two most dangerous Foxes are Rubio & Haley.

      In an increasingly frayed two-party political system, especially with the Democrats so discombobulated, the montage above might well dominate America's near future -- President Marco Rubio and Vice President Nikki Haley. So, you ask, what does that have to do with Cuba or Cubaninsider? A lot, actually. It seems rather obvious to me that Rubio has two ambitions: {1} To be President of the United States; and {2} to be Dictator of Cuba. As America's Commander-in-Chief, he could conceivably be both.

     From start to finish, the money-crazed 2016 U. S. presidential election revealed to the world that America's precious Democracy was in dire trouble. The two-party system, careening downhill precipitously, produced two final candidates -- Republican Trump vs. Democrat Clinton -- that left Americans choosing between what they considered the lesser of two evils. And that's precisely how Trump shocked the world by getting elected President of the United States, which supposedly and instantly made him "the leader of the Free World." But now, after one year of the Trump presidency, it appears likely that he will be impeached, perhaps in the 3rd year of his 4-year term. SO, what then? Well, it might mean a Republican Party led by Marco Rubio and a Democratic Party led by Kirsten Gillibrand. But it's still a two-party system with new Supreme Court-approved parameters that favor politicians willing to sell-out to the highest bidders -- meaning 15 or so multi-billionaires anxious to purchase the American democracy for their very own totally undemocratic fiefdom.  

     But whoever is America's President and Commander-in-Chief starkly affects the rest of the world...including big competitors like China or Vietnam who are too powerful to push around and little nations like Cuba that are small enough to be preyed on, decade after decade, by a cancerous-like minority backed by the largest treasury in the world and by the strongest military in the world. So, in his first few months as U. S. President, Trump flew Air Force One to Communist China and to the very unified Communist Vietnam...thanks to the U. S. defeat in the Vietnam War...to suck up to mighty China and mighty Vietnam as prime U. S. trade partners. But even before sucking up to China and Vietnam, on April 16th, 2017, Trump flew to Little Havana in Miami. It was there {above} in a plush Theater named for a losing 1961 Bay of Pigs leader that Trump insulted Democracy by signing proclamations designed to appease the choir, which...after all these decades...still pines for the U. S. to overthrow the 1959 Cuban Revolution. In the shameful photo above, the clapping bald-headed man standing directly behind Trump is Florida's Governor Scott who is flanked on his right and left by two viciously one-sided Little Havana/Counter Revolutionary/Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress -- Mario Diaz-Balart and Marco Rubio. Mario's dad was a key Minister in the overthrown Batista Dictatorship in Cuba who in 1959 quickly became one of the richest and most powerful militants in a reconfigured South Florida. Rubio followed the well-greased Miami trend of sending only Counter Revolutionary zealots to the U. S. Congress although most Cuban-Americans even in Miami favor normal relations with Cuba. Of course, Rubio, now in his second 6-year term in the U. S. Senate, after his failed presidential bid in 2016, made it all the way to the Senate claiming his parents escaped the tyranny of Castro's Cuba when, in fact, they escaped the Batista tyranny two years before Americans began to first learn about Fidel Castro. But people like Mario and Marco don't reach the U. S. Congress from Miami by claiming any ties to Batista. And, most shameful of all, the last two generations of Americans have meekly accepted such assaults, not only on Cuba but also on the basic tenets of their frayed Democracy that has been fraying badly since 1959 when the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba reconstituted itself on U. S. soil.

        AND SO, in the closing days of 2017, which will mark the end of the first year of the Trump presidency, things are heating up with serious threats of impeachment. That salient fact means we are left with this question regarding America's two-party Democracy: Can the money-crazed system in the next presidential cycle in 2020 elect a decent President like, say, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand? The answer is: NO.

     Surely, America's democracy needs a female President but not a money-crazed dynastic one like Hillary Clinton, who merely helped the unqualified Donald Trump attain the White House. My pick would be Kirsten Gillibrand although Amy Klobuchar has long been one of the most powerful advocates for normalizing relations with Cuba. As you can see above, 9 bills proposed by Klobuchar have become laws and she currently has a decent Cuban bill under consideration. Kelly Ayotte would also be far better than any male contender from either the Democrat or Republican parties. But I believe when the U. S. Supreme Court legalized virtually unlimited money from multi-billionaires to buy-up the U. S. democracy, getting a Gillibrand or a Klobuchar or a Ayotte elected President of the United States is virtually impossible in today's money-crazed, lobbyist-mad political environs.

But:

  Now it seems that politicians like Marco Rubio, who allegedly feast on money-burgers provided by a handful of multi-billionaires, have by far the best and easiest paths to the White House whether or not they are ready or worthy. Sadly, the United States and the rest of the world long depended on America's NON-MONEY CRAZED democracy, one that didn't spawn Marco Rubios but instead stressed public servants. 

      Unquestionably, the U. S. democracy from 1776 till at least 1952 was by far the greatest form of government ever devised on this fragile planet. But in 1952...a few rogues in the Eisenhower administration got away with teaming the U. S. democracy with the Mafia to support the wicked Batista dictatorship in Cuba. Then in 1953 the same rogues began using America's might to mount coups and install U.S.-friendly dictatorships in the Caribbean and Latin America. This persisted into the 1970s when Nixon-Kissinger decided the democratically elected Salvador Allende government in Chile wanted to keep most of its resources for its own people. So a bloody U.S.-backed coup killed Allende and replaced him for the next 17 years with the murderous but U.S.-friendly Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. But even more telling of democracy's decline was January of 1959. After the Cuban Revolution rid the island of the Batista-Mafia rule, the leaders merely fled to U. S. soil. The self-serving sycophancy of the Bush dynasty, and others, helped meld the Batistiano-Mafiosi remnants into the fabric of the American democracy, and that proud democracy, as depicted above, has gradually descended into such depths as: {1} A Rubio has a better chance than a Gillibrand to be the next President of the United States, and {2} the once-proud U. S. democracy gets condemned for its ongoing Cuban policy by a 191-to-ZERO vote in the United Nations. And so, the little Uncle Sam character depicted above is now merely a faint caricature of what the Founding Fathers built.

       AND So, in the closing days of 2017, does it appear that this generation of Americans have the wherewithal, courage, and patriotism to resurrect the democracy bequeathed to them by the Founding Fathers way back in 1776? NO, I DON'T THINK SO.

     Even the Voice of America yesterday -- Dec. 11, 2017 -- hinted to its worldwide audience that the next century will likely belong to...Communist China. The VOA reported that China only recently developed a taste for wine and yet it has quickly become the world's #2 wine consumer on the way to being #1. The young Chinese lady above, working as she enjoys her wine, was probably educated at a top U. S. university...Yale, Harvard, Stanford?...but returned to a China that now is #2 in wine consumption while fast becoming #1 in the realms of the two M's -- money and military -- that the United States has long dominated internationally.

      Also this week -- the second week of December, 2017 -- Anthony Bourdain's popular CNN program "Parts Unknown" featured a decisive visit to Shanghai, the incomparable city-state on the central China coast. It has over 24 million people with the world's busiest container port. It is becoming the global financial hub. After absorbing Shanghai's incredible and burgeoning wealth, Anthony Bourdain mused wryly, "Should I become a Communist?" Hopefully not, but...?

      As he gazed across the waters at Shanghai's skyline, Anthony Bourdain asked some Chinese experts how China, as epitomized by Shanghai, has crept up so ominously on the U. S. democracy. Its startling market economy, including its tremendous trade surplus with the very cooperative United States, was one answer. Another was...unlike the United States...China has not spent decades financing or participating in foreign proxy wars. Thus China can well afford to send hundreds of thousands of students to top, eagerly awaiting universities in the U.S. and UK, universities direly seeking and reaching for all that upfront Chinese money...as U. S. college students now face a debilitating $1.3 trillion Student Loan debt designed to make the students suffer but rich bankers much richer. And the health system in Shanghai, like the education system, had learned from the U. S. emphasis on creating extreme wealth for the health industry instead of stressing healthcare for its non-rich citizens. Only the U. S. democracy, China keeps reminding its people, has educational and health policies primarily designed to enrich its already richest people. This was pointed out to Anthony Bourdain even as he marveled at how Shanghai was now "over run" with millionaires and billionaires thanks to its reconstructions of what it perceives as "democracy's weaknesses in creating but not distributing wealth."

      Also, while the U. S. infrastructure -- roads, rails, airports, etc. -- need vast infusions of cash while the U. S. is fighting trillion-dollar wars, Anthony Bourdain noted that Shanghai has ultra-modern airports and four world-class railroad stations...with trains that travel 268 miles-per-hour. Meanwhile, China -- while vastly increasing its military -- is currently spending billions of dollars building modern railroads across much of Asia and now Africa, spreading its influence even further.

    This historic photo, courtesy of Wikipedia, is used by Chinese historians today to equate China's rise to Super-stardom with America's ascendancy -- both courtesy of imperial Japan's quest in the 1930s and 1940s to dominate the world. Japan's Dec. 7-1941 attack at Pearl Harbor famously awakened America, the "Sleeping Giant" as referenced by Japan's top general, into becoming a full-bore World War II participant, just as England's Winston Churchill was praying it would become. The image above was China's Pearl Harbor. The scorched Chinese baby was one of the few survivors after Japanese war planes had bombed Shanghai on August 28th, 1937. Such atrocities turned China into a major U.S.-British ally in World War II and, of course, spawned Mao, China's most legendary Communist leader. The Shanghai that Anthony Bourdain marveled at this week on CNN is reflective of the Communist China that, unless the U. S. has another Pearl Harbor-like awakening, is ascending into what will soon become China's, not America's, century. The photo above still provides a vivid education for 1.3 billion Chinese while the education learned on Dec. 7-1941 at Pearl Harbor seems to have been forgotten by this generation of Americans. I believe that is what Anthony Bourdain learned when he featured Shanghai on his CNN Parts Unknown program this month. Shanghai today rose from the ashes that scorched the Chinese baby depicted in the historic 1937 photo. As the VOA and CNN indicated, the Chinese today are trying REAL HARD to perfect their form of Communism while Americans today are NOT EVEN TRYING to re-discover their form of Democracy.

      Thus, in December of 2017 America's President Trump is battling loud impeachment cries in the very first year of his 4-year democratically elected term while China's Dictator Zi is being hailed worldwide as "the strongest Chinese leader since Mao" and "easily the most powerful leader in the entire world."

So, what in the hell happened?

Well, lately:

Donald Trump happened...

and Marco Rubio happened...

and Nikki Haley happened...

and the American people can't seem to fix it.

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Hypocrites Who Assault Cuba

China Is TOO BIG to Assault!!

And So Is Vietnam!!
{Monday, December 11th, 2017}

      The Chairman of Ford Motor Company, Bill Ford, this week reemphasized the U. S. hypocrisy in its decades-old attempt to destroy little Cuba while being afraid of its two old war opponents -- China and Vietnam. Both of those Communists powers are Super Trade Partners of the United States. In the 1950s China's infusion of 500,000 troops turned the Korean War into a U. S. disaster while in the 1960s North Vietnam's victory in the long, bloody Vietnam War over massive U. S. forces fused all of Vietnam under Communist rule. So, in the fading days of 2017 China is on a path to replace the U. S. as the world's #1 economic power as it also begins to challenge America's military prowess -- with massive help from U. S. companies like Ford Motor Company. This week both the Detroit Free Press and USA Today published a major article written by Phoebe Wall Howard. The article is entitled: "Ford's Designs on China Include 50 New Vehicles." It said that "Ford plans to introduce 50 new vehicles in China by 2025." The article quoted the Ford Chairman, Bill Ford, who was in Shanghai, as saying: "China is not only the largest car market in the world, it's also at the heart of electric vehicle and SUV growth and the mobility movement." With friends like Bill Ford, Communist China is poised to overtake the U. S. as the world's economic...and maybe military...Superpower, the U. S. that picks on LITTLE Cuba.

      Last month -- November, 2017 -- U. S. President Donald Trump made sure to visit and suck up to Communist China's President Zi Jinping. Zi is now considered the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, and far too powerful to be challenged by the United States of America! After the lovely handshake above, Trump told the media, "I like him and I believe he likes me a lot." Trump, of course, hopes that is so.

       Back in November, of course, President Trump sucked up to Communist Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang. The three Trump predecessors -- Obama, Bush, and Clinton -- had done the same thing to the Vietnamese leaders. In other words, if you can't beat them, join them...and make them a major trading partner while also encouraging American tourists and businessmen to visit both China and Vietnam.

      American tourists visiting Vietnam today flock to a major attraction -- the immense network of connecting underground tunnels that enabled Communist North Vietnam to defeat first French and then American armies supporting non-Communist South Vietnam. After the French loss, some smart Washington politicians warned warmongers that, "To beat the North Vietnamese you would have to kill them all...men, women, and children." That warning, of course, simply went unheeded.

    The warmongers in Washington -- realizing their hubris could be concealed by easily classified U. S. documents -- believed they had something the defeated French didn't have, and that was an Air Force that could bomb any nation into submission. In the 1960s Americans on television watched B-52s -- just one part of the U. S. Air Force -- drop millions of tons of bombs on North Vietnam. Also, of course, deadly chemicals were dropped to defoliate forests so the bombers could better see who and what they were bombing. But the warmongers, like the French, had miscalculated...even when 500,000 U. S. soldiers were on the ground to take advantage of history's greatest air bombardments. There were two reasons the U. S. military was humiliated in Vietnam: {1} As the French had learned, the North Vietnamese were willing to fight to the last person; and {2} the amazing underground tunnels shielded enough of their soldiers and weapons to keep fighting until, finally, the American people got tired of the casualties. The Vietnam War officially ended in 1975. Since then, the world-famed city of Saigon has been known as Ho Chi Minh City. Meanwhile, one conclusion of the Washington warmongers proved correct: classifying...hiding...their warmongering worked and to this day very little of the stupidity and hubris, which American tax-dollars pay for, has been de-classified.

Vietnamese women were vital during the War.

     The stern-faced Vietnamese female soldier above captured a South Vietnam soldier. She also took his U.S.-supplied rifle, which gave her 2 rifles and a prisoner.

2 North Vietnamese female fighters.

2 Cuban female fighters -- Haydee & Celia.

Vietnamese female captured U. S. soldier.

Vietnamese girl captured U. S. pilot.

      Both the photos and the descriptions of the do-or-die Vietnamese female guerrilla fighters are authentic but not intended to demean American soldiers, many of whom were my friends or relatives. Few of them wanted to go to that war and many who returned home alive were maimed or emotionally harmed. One of history's most famed Americans, the boxing champ Muhammad Ali, in 1967 was sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. His famous quotation depicted above explained his decision, which eventually was accepted by most Americans. Ali's given birth name in Louisville, Kentucky, was Cassius Clay.

      Both before and after his 1967 stance on the Vietnam War, Clay/Ali was the Heavyweight Champion of the World and his legacy today crowns him as one of America's all-time greatest and best-known icons. Of course, classified U. S. documents still attempt to assuage the culpable reputations of many government officials who sicced the Mafia on Cuba in 1952, spawning the Cuban Revolution, and who sicced those B-52s on Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In the interim, Clay/Ali's quotation has stood the test of time, eclipsing the warmongers. 

     Both Cuba and Vietnam today feature strong female representation in their governments, derivatives of lessons learned from foreign-misogynistic wars. Above a Cuban female leader signs an agreement with a Vietnamese female leader.

     In November of 2017 Vietnam began sending tons of rice to Cuba to help the island recover from recent devastating hurricanes...as the U. S. embargo continues to try to starve Cubans on the island to appease a few hard-line Cubans in the United States.

Vietnamese rice bound free-of-charge to Cuba, Nov.-2017.

  Meanwhile in Washington, Senator Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump believe now is the time, once and for all, to destroy Revolutionary Cuba. Fidel Castro died a year ago at age 90; a drought destroyed vital tobacco and cotton crops; hurricanes in 2017 destroyed thousands of Cuban homes and other properties; export prices for nickel, a key Cuban mineral, dropped precipitously; and paying off past loans from European nations drastically reduced the island's available cash. All the while the U. S. embargo from 1962 till today easily registers as the longest and cruelest embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak nation. Quite aware of such a debilitating perfect storm confronting Cuba, on Nov. 9th-2017 Rubio and Trump -- not so unlike hovering Buzzards observing a dying potential meal down below -- issued 180 additional enhancements to the Embargo, obviously designed to strangle Cuba with economic sanctions opposed by the rest of the brave, free-thinking world.

      And meanwhile, while the U. S. is afraid of BIG China and Vietnam, its claws still encircle LITTLE Cuba. All the while, American citizens are supposed to be too ignorant or too afraid to be ashamed of the image depicted above, an image that condemned the United States of America by a 191-to-ZERO vote among the nations in the United Nations, including America's best but very embarrassed international friends. And of course, the mainstream United States media is too intimidated or too politically correct to mention that the original purpose of the embargo in 1962 was created to, according to de-classified U. S. documents, starve, deprive and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. It hasn't happened because, apparently, too many Cubans on the island remember the brutal U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. But...yes...since 1962 the embargo has been desperately trying to starve, deprive and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island while, at the same time, serving the revenge, economic, and political motives of two generations of Cuban-American Counter Revolutionaries in Miami and in the U. S. Congress, like Marco Rubio.   

      Meanwhile, the updated photo above reveals the cowardice and hypocrisy that vividly contrasts an America that is afraid of BIG China & Vietnam with an America that pounds LITTLE Cuba to sate the revenge, economic, and political desires of a handful of Counter Revolutionaries, from Jorge Mas Canosa beginning in 1959 till Marco Rubio today. The young Vietnamese woman above, whose mother was probably a do-or-die guerrilla fighter against United States soldiers, is today a tourist guide in flourishing Communist Vietnam. As noted, prime tourist attractions today in Vietnam are the underground tunnels that saturated the nation and helped win the Vietnam War despite being the world's most-bombed country. The Vietnamese woman above, as a tourist guide, is showing American tourists one of those tunnels and explaining how they were camouflaged. While North Vietnam, as well as China in the Korean War, bloodied America in two historic wars, the very unified Communist Vietnam today as well as the forever united Communist China today are Super-beloved American trading partners. Meanwhile, from the 1950s till today LITTLE Cuba, which the U. S. is not afraid of, is still being unmercifully and shamefully targeted.

So...what is the difference?

      The startling triumph of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution in 1959 chased the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship to U. S. soil. First in Miami and then in Washington, thanks to the sycophancy of self-serving entities like the Bush dynasty, the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders attained far more money and far more political power in the United States than they had ever amassed in Cuba. By the time the George H. W. Bush CIA-Vice Presidential-and-Presidential years ended, Cuban-American billionaires in Miami were the key backers of George W. Bush's two terms as President and Jeb Bush's two terms as Florida's governor...not to mention Jeb's 2016 presidential bid, etc. Now contrast all that with the fact that no overthrown Chinese or Vietnamese dictatorships ever resettled as governments-in-exile entities on U. S. soil. If you make those contrasts, I believe you will understand why today Communist China and Communist Vietnam are major United States trading partners while the United States -- SINCE 1959 -- has tried to either recapture Cuba or starve it to death.

      But despite the weird handshake above, Revolutionary Cuba has  -- after all these decades -- neither  been recaptured nor starved to death. That is truly an amazing fact, considering that two generations of the most vicious Counter Revolutionary Cubans, now epitomized by Marco Rubio, have had the backing of the Superpower U. S. government and the apathy of the propagandized U. S. citizens in their eternal quest to regain control of the pugnacious Caribbean island. In December of 2017, the question becomes: Will the four-handed handshake depicted above between Senator Rubio and President Trump FINALLY spell doom for LITTLE Revolutionary Cuba???

?????????????????

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The U.S.-Cuban Boomerang

Aiming at Cuba and Then Ducking!!
{Saturday, December 9, 2017}

     In America's world of science, the boyish- looking Dr. Alex Berezow is actually a very BIG man. He got his Ph.D in microbiology from the University of Washington. He is the Founding Editor of RealClearScience and the Assistant Editor of RealClearWorld. In May of 2016 he joined the American Council on Science and Health. A journalist and author, Dr. Alex Berezow, in addition to his books, has contributed major articles to media giants like The Wall Street Journal and BBC News, and he is a highly paid contributor to America's largest newspaper, USA Today. He also hates Revolutionary Cuba about as much as Marco Rubio.

    In a major article published by his various outlets on Dec. 6-2017, Dr. Alex Berezow seemed to make the case that the Superpower U. S. should go ahead and just destroy Revolutionary Cuba and then remake the Caribbean island in America's 1950s image, meaning a return of the Batistiano remnants now firmly ingrained in Miami, in the U. S. Congress, and in the Trump White House. The article by Dr. Berezow is entitled: "Sonic Attack: Cuba Plays US for Fools." His widely published one-sided appraisal of the mysterious "sonic attacks" against United States personnel attached to its embassy in Havana could have been written, it appears, by vicious U. S. Counter Revolutionaries like Rubio who sense that Cuba's current economic woes provide a perfect scenario for renewed attacks. Dr. Berezow summed up his anti-Cuban rage this way:
                    "Yesterday, a panel of Cuban scientists declared that  there was no sonic attack; instead, they blamed stress and mass hysteria. The fact that the Cubans would issue such an insultingly stupid report means that they aren't taking America's concerns seriously. That also means that the Trump administration was completely justified in its decisions to downsize the U. S. embassy in Cuba and to expel some Cuban diplomats."

      Of course, Dr. Alex Berezow's slanted views on the "sonic wave mystery" doesn't address the fact that, so far, the winners are the Counter Revolutionary extremists in the U. S. and the losers are the Cuban people suffering anew from the vast array of new sanctions from the Trump administration based on the excuse created by the still unsolved sonic mystery. Dr. Alex Berezow's conclusion was this: "The Obama rapprochement is off. Cuba's failure to cooperate is a shame. The U. S. isn't even holding them responsible for the attack. If there really was a sonic weapon, the most likely culprit is Russia. Maybe the Cubans will care if one of their own is the next victim." Wow!! This guy is America's scientific genius at the forefront of rendering an unbiased assessment of a mystery that the Trump-Rubio team is using as a trigger to justify shooting fresh bullets at Cuba? Are there any real scientific geniuses? If so, just where are they hiding?  

        Meanwhile, on the island itself Cubans are forced to navigate in minefields unique only to them. Bright, young, well-educated, innovative, and creative young Cubans -- like Idalia del Rio -- have more obstacles than most success stories but Idalia is symptomatic of why Revolutionary Cuba, against imposing odds, is still standing. In an insightful article written by Tyler Wetherall, even the London-based The Guardian seems awed by Idalia's accomplishments. The article is entitled: "Meet the Fashion Brand Bringing Cuban Design to the World." The sub-title says: "One Innovative Designer Has Found a Way Around Both the Regime and the U. S. Embargo and Become the First Cuban Clothing Company to Shop Anywhere in the World."

       Idalia del Rio was actually in Mexico, circumventing Cuban and USA obstacles, trying to replenish her color ink supply when The Guardian's Tyler Wetherall finished talking to her. The outfit worn above is one of Idalia's designs and on her popular website -- Clandestina.co -- she sells a vast array of her creations and productions.

      The Cuban Supermodel Karina Valero models some of Idalia del Rio's most dazzling, best-selling fashions on her Clandestina.co website. How Idalia created a company in Havana that sells her designs around the world is told by The Guardian, the London-based media giant that covers Cuba fairly. So, the article chronicling how Idalia del Rio expanded her fashion brand internationally is worth reading.

      This apartment building in Matanzas, adorned by the huge Cuban flag, doesn't conceal the problems and the unknowns of the two Cuban men looking down from the balcony. Of course, they deserve less problems and less wondering about what both Cuba and the USA have in store for them. Cuba, you see, has been a sovereign nation since 1959 -- ALMOST. Independence with U. S. entanglements is actually neither sovereign nor independent. The two men in the balcony know that is true. 

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Cuba Adjusting to Trump

Confusion Plus Unknowns!
{Thursday, December 7th, 2017}

      The Reuters and Voice of America news agencies yesterday used the above Reuters photo of two tourists to illustrate an article entitled: "China's Exports to Cuba Slump as Island's Cash Crunch Deepens." That's good news for Marco Rubio and the Counter Revolutionaries in the U. S. trying to strangle Cuba once-and-for-all, but bad news for Cubans on the island. The article pointed out that Cuba is being hit by the perfect storm -- the U. S. transition from Obama-to-Trump; Venezuela's drastic economic troubles; a prolonged drought; devastating hurricanes; etc. Chinese exports to Cuba, the article reported, "slumped 29.8 percent down to $1 billion from January through October this year. Cuba's trade in goods last year was $12.6 billion, compared with $15 billion in 2015, but more than 80 percent is in imports, not in exports."

      The Desmond Boylan/Associated Press photo above was used in various reports yesterday and today to update the mysterious sonic attacks against U. S. embassy workers in Havana that are being used by Rubio and the Counter Revolutionaries as the latest excuse to attack the island with a new barrage of economic sanctions. The Washington Post's update concluded, "What exactly happened to two dozen Americans in Cuba remains a mystery to Cuba, science, and FBI investigators."

     The AP reported yesterday that the mysterious acoustical assaults...or whatever it was...on 24 Americans "has caused anomalies in white brain tissue" according to the U. S. but the report also stated that "most of the victims have fully recovered." That latter revelation is also a mystery, I reckon. Meanwhile, Cuba is being punished by gleeful Rubio-led anti-Cuban extremists in Washington with Trump-mandated new sanctions that continue to reverse former President Obama's decent Cuban policies.

      Interspersed among the newly punitive 180 measures the Trump administration issued on Nov. 9-2017 against Cuba are United States business interests trying to sneak into the crevices as Cuba itself adjusts to America's post-Obama Cuban policies. The Royal Caribbean Cruise Line is adding its 2,350-passenger Majesty of the Seas to its regular sailings to Cuba. The magnificent ship will begin sailing to Cuba from Tampa in April. The Royal Caribbean's 1,160-passenger Empress of the Seas is already sailing to Cuba from Miami. Royal Caribbean, in addition to Havana, is adding the Cuban ports of Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba to its itinerary. Later this month Holland America will become the 6th cruise line to have Cuban cruises.

     The new wave of extremely punitive Trump measures against Cuba announced on Nov. 9-2017 were orchestrated by Miami's Counter Revolutionaries in Congress led by Senator Marco Rubio, which is well-known in Washington. But significantly, Rubio complained loudly about a liberal contingent that prevented his assaults from being even MUCH MORE punitive. So Rubio apparently is unhappy with Florida ports -- Tampa, Miami & Fort Lauderdale  -- engaging in Cuban commerce.

      It appears that Trump's latest assault on Cuba is the selection of Philip Goldberg as the Top Man at the U. S. Embassy in Havana. In his last two ambassadorial assignments -- in Bolivia and the Philippines -- Goldberg has feasted on spats and entanglements. Apparently, Goldberg's antipathy towards Cuba and his combativeness earned him his new assignment in Havana...for what it's worth. After President Obama reopened the U. S. Embassy in Havana for the first time since 1961, the Trump presidency has sufficiently gutted it and the Cuban embassy in Washington. So an antagonistic charge d'affaires -- or Top Man -- like Goldberg in Havana will likely add to the bickering and hostility at the U. S. embassy in Havana.

      Of course, Jeffrey DeLaurentis was President Obama's Top Man at the real U. S. embassy in Havana. DeLaurentis was also Obama's choice to be the U. S. Ambassador to Cuba but just one man in Congress, Senator Rubio, blocked the DeLaurentis appointment from even coming before the Senate for a vote.

      As far as is known, every unbiased source in Washington believed the highly respected Jeffrey DeLaurentis was the perfect person to be the United States Ambassador to Cuba. But when a mere handful of self-serving, revengeful Counter Revolutionaries like Rubio can made America's decisions regarding Cuba, everyone else -- including Cubans, Americans, and Cuban-Americans -- suffer. So, as the Obama-to-Trump transition closes out the first week of December-2017, America does not have a decent and extremely capable man, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, as its badly needed Ambassador to Cuba. Instead, the United States has a volatile anti-Cuban Top Man, Philip Goldberg, at a Rubio-gutted and totally dysfunctional U. S. embassy building in Havana. From Obama-to-Trump and from DeLaurentis-to-Goldberg is what the American people are left with...and probably deserve for not caring enough about their democracy to let it descend into a disastrous Trump-Rubio-Goldberg morass.

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