Trump's War on Cuba

Another Bay of Pigs USA Defeat?
{Friday, December 22nd, 2017}

    Among my top news sources are the Voice of America reports sent to my email address each day. The VOA, supported by USA taxpayers, has influenced America's images to billions around the world with its international reach via its various media platforms. The image-graphic above headlined a major VOA report this week -- Dec. 18, 2017. It concluded that some of President Trump's recent decisions or comments -- such as eliminating the USA as a major player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with his dangerous & controversial Jerusalem decision -- will leave the USA "out in the cold." And the VOA seems to suggest that Trump's "America's First" doctrine AS APPLIED TO DESTROYING CUBA will also "leave America out in the cold" BY PLEASING ONLY AMERICA'S MOST VICIOUS ENEMIES WHO THEN USE IT AS EXCUSES TO ASSAIL AMERICA, verbally and otherwise. Yes, Cuba is a small island nation but its international influence -- as related to the USA -- is far out of proportion to its size or its economy. In 2016, the last year of the Obama presidency, the UN condemned the USA's Cuban policy by a 191-to-ZERO vote because not even the Obama administration could support a Cuban policy in Washington dictated by a mere handful of Batistiano-connected right-wing thugs. On Sunday, Dec. 17-2017 President Trump issued another incredibly stupid and grossly anti-American statement regarding Cuba, a statement Americans should go online and study. That official Trump statement, word for word, was:

            "Hopefully everything will normalize with Cuba, but right now, they are not doing the right thing. And when they don't do the right thing, we're not going to do the right thing. That's all there is to it. We have to be strong with Cuba. The Cuban people are incredible people. They support me very strongly. But we'll get Cuba straightened out."

          Americans who don't Google that quotation are, I believe, Americans who don't care a whit about America or its image. The stupidity of the Trump approach to Cuba is overwhelming in the belief that...as 2017 turns into 2018...a sovereign nation must conform precisely to USA's dictates or the Superpower USA will "get Cuba straightened out" is as un-American and un-Democratic as one can get in the modern world, a world far different than it was in, say, 1973. That's when the Nixon-Kissinger White House decided a wildly popular and democratically elected President in Chile should be replaced by a brutal dictatorship that would be "U. S. Friendly," which meant one that would allow rich Americans to reap the prime benefits of that country's resources. So, in 1973 a bloody coup killed the democratically elected President Allende in Chile and replaced him, for 17 bloody years, with the murderous but "U. S. Friendly" Pinochet dictatorship. Allende had famously tried to defend his government from the windows of his presidential palace till he ran out of bullets.

  After the bloody coup in 1973 that replaced the dead democratically elected Chilean President Allende with the murderous Dictator Pinochet, the photo above from the 1970s still haunts America's and the world's democracy-lovers. It shows Henry Kissinger -- on behalf of America and President Nixon -- warmly greeting Chile's new murderous but U. S. Friendly Dictator Pinochet. American citizens, disgracing America, accepted the shamefully undemocratic handshake above. Since 1959 right-wingers in Miami and Washington...in a process disgracefully accepted by many Americans...the Superpower USA has tried...but failed...to put a "U. S. Friendly" government in Cuba that probably would have resembled the "U. S. Friendly Pinochet government" in Chile or at least the U.S.-Friendly Batista-Mafia dictatorship that brutalized Cuba in the 1950s. Study Kissinger's glee depicted above.

      Chile's U. S. Friendly dictator Pinochet died peacefully in a hospital at age 91 in 2006. His key American friend Kissinger is now 94-years-old, un-scarred by his Pinochet connections only because of extreme right-wing propaganda that even great democracies are susceptible to if their citizens are asleep or undemocratic.

      To comprehend today's U.S.-Cuban relations, Americans need to understand the photo above, which was taken in Washington on Nov. 10-1938. It reflects the fact that the imperial-minded United States had replaced imperialist Spain as the dominant power in Cuba after the 1898 Spanish-American War, which needed the deadly explosion of the USS Maine warship in Havana Harbor to give the U. S. the pretext for the War. The photo above shows Dictator Batista, second from the left upfront, being welcomed to Washington by U. S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Wells on the left and Chief of the Staff of the U. S. Army General Malin Craig. The man on the right with his hat at his side is Cuba's new U. S. Ambassador Pedro Fraga. By 1938 a two-bit Cuban army Sergeant, Fulgencio Batista, was the U. S. Friendly Cuban dictator. He later retired to South Florida where his Mafia buddies...including the likes of Al Capone and Batista's best friend Meyer Lansky...also had homes. Legend correctly has it that Lansky, the #2 Mafia kingpin behind only Lucky Luciano at the time, in the early 1950s talked his buddy Batista into returning to Cuba as the U.S.-backed dictator so, to quote Lansky, "The mob can own its own country, which has been my long-time dream." And so, Batista acquiesced to Lansky's request...and the rest is history.

    Thus in 1952 the new U.S.-Friendly Cuban dictatorship was led by -- left-to-right -- Mafia kingpins Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky with Fulgencio Batista being the upfront Dictator. This arrangement permitted rich U. S. businessmen to also partake in the wholesale rape and robbery of the helpless island, creating a trilogy of evil intent.

     Of course, beginning in 1952 the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba left the majority peasants, as shown above in an historic photo, in dire poverty even as the island was being used as a lush piggy-bank for the Batistianos, Mafiosi, and U. S. businessmen.

     The wealthy Batista dictatorship -- supported by ill-gotten wealth as well as by the post-World War II superpower USA and by the Mafia, the strongest criminal organization in the world -- had a powerful military, which is shown in the Wikipedia photo above executing a Cuban rebel in 1956. But neither the rampant executions nor the wholesale poverty among the Cuban peasants were enough to fuel a revolution capable of overthrowing such an omnipotent dictatorship. BUT ONE HUGE MISTAKE BY Batista, the Mafia, and the United States DID IGNITE A REVOLT.

      The U.S.-backed Batistianos and the Mafiosi in Cuba developed a ploy to quell dissent among the majority peasants -- executing peasant children. But instead of quelling dissent, it historically ignited the firestorm that doomed Batista's regime.

       The gruesome murders of their children sent brave Cuban mothers into the streets to protest, and it was these demonstrations that fueled the revolution.

      "Los asesinatos de nuestros nijos" means "The assassinations of our children." Because of courageous mothers like the ones shown above carrying posters with such searing denunciations, the Cuban Revolution had the spark and the fuel, if not the immediate means, to succeed. In Revolutionary Cuba today the major Children's Hospital is named for little Willie Soler, one of the assassinated children.

     America's love affair with Cuba's brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista from 1933 through the 1950s is not exactly our proud America's proudest historical claim.

     This Corbis photo shows Batista's U.S.-armed troops preparing to leave for the Sierra Maestra in 1956 to end the Cuban Revolution. In a cable to Washington and also on Havana radio, Batista said, "This won't take long." Indeed, the rebels were grossly out-gunned and out-manned, but these soldiers didn't have the rebels' motivation.

The rebel leader was...Fidel Castro.

     No matter what the Batistiano-dominated Cuban narrative in the United States says today, there is no way the Cuban Revolution could have triumphed in 1959 without the fuel and inspiration provided by the Cuban mothers protesting the unconscionable murders of their children in Batista's Cuba. And furthermore, without such memories on the island today there is no way Revolutionary Cuba could possibly have survived all these decades against the U.S.-based and U.S.-backed Batistiano & Mafiosi forces still headquartered today in the United States.

      And that brings us back around to the Dec. 17-2017 Voice of America graphic depicted above. With the whole world opposing America's cruel Batistiano-fueled Cuban policies, as evidenced by that 191-to-ZERO condemnation in the UN, the sheer stupidity of President Trump's statement on Sunday, Dec. 17-2017 is mind-boggling, even for him. He proclaimed, if you remember the exact quotation shown at the top of this essay, that he will "straighten out" Cuba if Cuba doesn't do precisely what he demands that it do. Well, Mr. President, everyday since January 1 of 1959 Cuba has proven to the world that it will not submit to being dictated by a foreign power, even the world's #One foreign Superpower. And remember these particular two exact sentences Trump said on Dec. 17-2017: "The Cuban people are incredible people. They support me very strongly." Such delusional nonsense is, of course, very dangerous for both Cuba and for the United States of America itself.

      Almost without exception, Cubans on the island today dearly love former President Barack Obama and dearly hate current President Trump. That basic and undeniable fact is reflected by the young Cuban man shown above as he sits on Havana's famed Malecon seawall and gazes over the sea toward the nearby shores of Key West, Florida. This young man is typical of Cubans on the island today...they love Barack Obama and they don't hate America. This young Cuban's attire proudly features a large image of Barack Obama enmeshed among the American flag.

     It is highly possible that President Obama's most lasting legacy will be the unique kindnesses he displayed toward the Cuban people. No other American president since the 1950s had the guts and the intelligence to confront the Batistiano-Mafiosi dictation of America's Cuban policy. Cubans on the island will never forget that President Obama went to Cuba and told them in person and on live television: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." The very decent and brave President Obama sincerely believed those 12 famous and now historic words. But he didn't anticipate being replaced by President Trump in 2017.

      Throughout 2017 President Trump has shown no respect for 11.2 million totally innocent Cubans on the island, the people that President Obama respected and still respects so much. President Trump, with his Cuban harangues, is disrespecting America and Democracy, two entities that Obama would never disrespect. In Miami's Little Havana neighborhood in a plush theater named for a Bay of Pigs leader, and in front of a huge Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506 Assault banner, President Trump assured the choir, composed mostly of surviving Bay of Pigs veterans, that he, after all these decades, plans to reclaim Cuba for them. While Americans will roundly oppose Trump on almost all of his other actions, the sad indications are that this generation of propagandized Americans wouldn't oppose Trump even if he nuked Cuba. The Voice of America seems direly concerned about such things, even if many Americans are not. After all...Batista, the Mafia, the Bay of Pigs, terrorist assassinations as well as deadly hotel, car, and airplane bombings, AND the longest and cruelest embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak nation have never concerned the American people because the target was Revolutionary Cuba...although in essence it also targets America and democracy. So why would we expect this generation of Americans to be concerned if Trump kept all of the promises he made in the speech above to a handful of Bay of Pigs survivors???

      I mean...it's like Trump's and America's newly anointed U. S. dictator -- Senator Rubio -- preaches as he shapes and reshapes America's post-Obama Cuba Policy: All the good Cubans are either in Miami or the U. S. Congress while all the bad Cubans are still on the island. "Uh, absolutely, Senator Rubio!! Whatever you say or decide, sir!! Rest assured our tax dollars as well as our nukes and reputations will support you ALL THE WAY 100%!!"

And by the way:

  I think the Jamaica Observer is THE BEST newspaper in the Caribbean and the entire region, which includes Miami. On the island just south of Cuba, the Observer both in print and online has excellent and fair-minded journalists. Also, its photos and its Editorial Cartoons are simply terrific and amazingly descriptive in support of its interesting articles.

    For example, the Jamaica Observer photo depicted above told its readers precisely what the article was all about. It was entitled: "I want him but she's in the way."  

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Cuba's NON-USA Options

Russia? China? Iran?

{Monday, December 18th,2017}

     Aside from the high-profile threats from North Korea's nuclear insanity, the three biggest challenges -- or threats -- to America's Superpower status are, probably, in this order: the Russian military, the Chinese economy, and the Iranian ideology. With pugnacious little Cuba still thrusting its influence on the international stage FAR OUT OF PROPPORTION TO ITS SIZE, POPULATION AND ECONOMY, it is no coincidence that Russia, China, and Iran are all trying to take advantage of the latest cruel sanctions against Cuba devised by U. S. President Donald Trump and his apparent anointment of Senator Marco Rubio as America's latest Cuban dictator. The photo above of the Russian oil tanker bound for Cuba is an example. Back in May, 2017, it delivered 249,000 barrels of refined oil products to Cuba, which badly needed the gesture because of crisis-wracked Venezuela's inability to provide the island the oil it needs. Russia is not sure financially-strapped Cuba can repay financially-challenged Russia but the temptation to take advantage of the new Trump-Rubio assaults on Cuba is simply too much for Russia to ignore. In other words, America's Cuban policy -- with Trump & Rubio at the helm -- will continue to greatly embarrass all of America's best friends in the world while also greatly inspiring America's biggest challengers and most bitter enemies. Meanwhile, Americans are programmed to sit back and not give a damn. After all, little Cuba is the worst bad guy, right?

      In the first week of this month -- Dec.-2017 -- Russia's top automaker, Avtovaz, shipped 344 of its best brand-new cars -- like the Lada Vesta model above -- to Cuba. The plan is not only to break into the Cuban market but, considering Cuba as its pathway to other Caribbean and Latin American markets, it is a part of Avtovaz's nascent global reach...and its desire to compete with other auto giants.

     The President of Avtovaz is Nicolas Maure. He says, "We are also training Cubans to provide after-sale services for their fine Russian cars. We feel Cuba is a priority market for our excellent car exports as we seek entry into the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, where Cuba, while being a small nation, is a leading influence. We would like to remind the area that the Trump administration's cruelty towards Cuba can, at least partially, be offset by Russia's sympathy and by Russia's international reach."

     Russia's large shipment of Ladas to Cuba this month included this model of Lada SUVs. Nicolas Maure says, "The now-proven world-class quality of our Avtovaz cars, SUVs, and Trucks are ready to impact the world. We begin that reach, hopefully, with Cuba and then the Caribbean and Latin America. But we are already arranging shipments to China." Particularly backed by the governments of Russia, China, and Iran, executives like Russia's Nicolas Maure are reveling in the latest attempts by the Trump-Rubio nexus in Washington to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of everyday Cubans on the island, just as de-classified U. S. documents in 1962 gave as the purpose for the still-ongoing embargo against Cuba. Mr. Maure in Russia, and many like him, understand both the cruelty and insanity of that doctrine...and with Trump-Rubio now reversing former President Obama's sane and decent attempts to end it, America's biggest international enemies and challengers seek ways to take advantage of America's longest reigning insanity...insanity that persists even as the rest of the world condemns it by a very resounding 191-to-ZERO vote in the UN.

          Great democracy-loving Americans -- such as Emily Mandrala at the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas -- believe that June 16-2017 was a Day of Infamy for America and Democracy. That was the day, as shown above, that President Trump went to Little Havana in Miami and vowed to reverse all of the overtures toward Cuba that his predecessor, Mr. Obama, had so bravely mandated.

     On that Day of Infamy -- June 16-2017 -- President Trump very cowardly appeared before Miami's Counter Revolutionary choir in a plush theater named in Little Havana for a former Bay of Pigs leader. In essence, with the Executive Orders displayed above, he vowed to...at long last...recapture Cuba for the remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that was overthrown by the still-standing Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. Americans, thoroughly propagandized since Jan. 1-1959, are programmed to accept any atrocity directed at the Cuban people -- from the Bay of Pigs military attack in 1961 to the 1976 terrorist bombing of the child-ladened civilian Cubana Flight 455 airplane to the longest and cruelest {1962 till today} economic embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak nation. If you study the Day of Infamy photo above, you can see that the clapping man on the far left is Mario Diaz-Balart whose father was a key Minister in Cuba's Batista-Mafia dictatorship and, after Jan. 1-1959, one of the all-time richest and most militant Counter Revolutionaries in South Florida. Mario Diaz-Balart as well as his older brother, Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart, have been elected to the U. S. Congress from Miami, which still claims to be a democracy. Yet, polls show that most Cuban-Americans in Miami favor normal relations with Cuba but it seems only Counter Revolutionary extremists can get elected, one after the other, to the U. S. Congress from Miami. Today the most dangerous of that group is Senator Marco Rubio, anointed by Trump as America's new Cuban dictator. In that June 16-2017 Day of Infamy photo above, the clapping and grinning man third from the right is Marco Rubio. While Cuba does not deserve another Batista or a Marco Rubio as its dictator...even from his bases in Miami and Washington...this or a future generation of propagandized Americans may awake one sad morning and find a Batista-like Rubio as their new United States President.

      This week -- on Dec. 16, 2017 -- the Democracy-loving and Washington-based CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS used the above photo-graphic to launch a new campaign to oppose the latest Trump-Rubio sanctions that mostly and very adversely affect another generation of totally innocent Cuban children. Since 1962 self-serving Rubio-types have claimed the sanctions are designed to hurt or seek revenge on the Castros. The CENTER FOR DOMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS says that is a self-serving lie and that the U. S. sanctions are designed to primarily hurt Cuban children in keeping with the original 1962 purpose of the embargo, which -- according to de-classified U. S. documents -- was created to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island for the purpose of inducing them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. Of course, the Rubio-types in control of the self-serving United States Cuban narrative try their damnest to make sure that Americans don't know about such things as de-classified 1962 U. S. documents.

 This is the Executive Director of the Washington-based CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS. Her name is Emily Mendrala. In regards to the sanctions against Cuba, either Emily is a liar or Marco Rubio is a liar. And I believe it is high-time democracy-loving Americans had the courage and the patriotism to decide who is lying about a topic that gets America condemned by a 191-to-ZERO vote by the nations in the United Nations. P.S.: And the liar in question is not Emily Mendrala.

Now these two men...

wouldn't lie to you about Cuba...

to feather their own nests...

would they????
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And by the way:

     I firmly believe that a photo says a lot more than a thousand words, including mine. The photo above intrigued me. It was taken just a few weeks ago. It shows two men joyfully riding in the back-seat of a taxi on a street in Havana, Cuba. The man on the left is Richard Branson, the multi-billionaire Brit who founded and owns the vast Virgin empire, among other things. The young, bearded man on the right is Fidel Antonio Castro, the grandson of Fidel Castro. The extremely well educated Fidel Antonio is Richard Branson's dear friend and shows the famed Englishman around the island. And by the way, the astute Mr. Branson believes every word Fidel Antonio says and dis-believes every word President Trump and Senator Rubio say about the island. Mr. Branson's global empire, of course, wants Yankee dollars but he still has the courage to wonder out loud why "The American people are either too stupid or too afraid to speak out against an American practice that has tried to starve Cuban children on the island for six decades to benefit a few mean, greedy guys."

       For sure, Richard Branson, the Brit billionaire and international celebrity, knows more than a little bit about U.S.-Cuban relations. That's Mr. Branson in the middle in the above photo wearing the blue shirt. He loves and admires "the ingenuity, fortitude, and determination of the Cuban-Cubans, the ones on the island." And that, of course, is because he knows the Cuban-Cubans in Cuba. As Mr. Branson points out, the U. S. embargo against Cuba has tried mightily to make it unlawful for everyday Americans to visit one place on this earth -- Cuba. That, of course, is so Counter Revolutionary extremists in the U. S. can better dictate the Cuban narrative.

     But dictating the Cuban narrative to informed and intelligent people, such as Richard Branson, takes more than just a litany of big lies from people like Marco Rubio. Both the airplane and the HERE'S TO LOOKING UP comment belong to Mr. Branson. But both the clouds and the rainbow are courtesy of a much Higher Power. 

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Rubio: Too Extreme For Miami?

It begins to seem that is true!
{Saturday, December 16th, 2017}

      Like many thousands of others, Luisa Yanez has come a long, long way since her birth in Havana. Today she is one of the three ultra-powerful Editorial Board Editors at the Miami Herald. Ms. Yanez is one reason I'm surprised that even the Miami Herald's Editorial Masters seem to be getting fed-up with Miami's two-term U. S. Senator Marco Rubio whom, for all intents and purposes, President Trump has anointed America's latest Cuban dictator who is intent, after all these decades, to overthrow the 1959 Cuban Revolutionary triumph. The Herald, for example, rebuked Rubio when he spoke out against the long-standing Wet Foot-Dry Foot law that encouraged Cuban defections to the U. S. because the moment their feet touched U. S. soil they were home free with special privileges. President Obama finally ended that particular discriminatory practice but, with the Republican Trump in the White House, Rubio expects to reverse all of the Obama-orchestrated positives related to Cuba. And this week the Miami Herald, in a major article apparently approved by its three Editorial Masters, including Ms. Yanez, again seems to sharply rebuke Dic...uh, I mean...SENATOR Rubio. I'm a bit surprised by this article but I find it very interesting that this propagandized generation of mainstream Americans has swallowed more of Rubio's carefully fabricated "choirboy" image than have powerful Miami Herald Cuban-American Editorial Editors like the Havana-born Luisa Yanez.

      The Miami Herald this week published a scathing article against Marco Rubio that was co-written by a Cuban-Cuban, Nuiris Higueras, who owns the upscale Atelier Restaurant in Havana. After the very decent U. S. President Obama made positive overtures to Cuba -- the first such gestures from the U. S. since 1959 -- Nuiris and thousands of other Cubans on the island became successful entrepreneurs making money to support their families. Then in 2017 President Trump, especially after anointing Rubio as his Cuban dictator, began reversing Obama's kindnesses that greatly benefited Cubans in Cuba as well as Cubans in Miami. This week -- in the article written by Nuiris and three other successful female entrepreneurs on the island -- the Miami Herald was fair enough to give the other side of what has long been a one-sided perspective of U.S.-Cuban relations. The MIAMI HERALD  article is entitled: "U. S. Policy Is Hurting Cuba's Entrepreneurs." As noted, Nuiris and three other female Cuban entrepreneurs -- Yamina Vicente, Julia de la Rosa, and Marla Recio -- co-wrote that article. It excoriated America's Cuban dictator, Rubio, for what he is doing to totally innocent families in Cuba. And to its credit the Miami Herald this week allowed those four decent Cuban women to expose the blatant and self-serving lies that both the United States government and the mainstream United States media has, for decades, allowed Counter Revolutionaries like RUBIO to get away with WHILE ALL THE WHILE FEATHERING THEIR OWN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL NESTS.
               With consummate ease, Marco Rubio can lie to the American people about why he so cruelly attacks Cubans on the island -- "to hurt the Castros." But of course, he can't lie to the Cuban female entrepreneurs who wrote the Miami Herald article. They repeatedly call Rubio a liar and repeatedly marvel why the American people allow him to get away with it. They mock Rubio for repeatedly claiming he "supports the private sector." They mock his "claims to be the leading architect of the administration policy toward our country." They mock his cowardice in refusing to "meet with us." AND BECAUSE OF MARCO RUBIO they say: "Many of us now must decide which of our workers to lay off." But despite the fair-minded article in Rubio's home-town newspaper, don't expect the propagandized or uncaring American people to decide between the self-serving, cruel-minded Rubio and decent, intelligent, hard-working Cuban women like Nuiris Higueras who don't deserve to be continually punished on their sovereign island by a greedy, self-serving "choirboy" hiding behind the skirts of the world's Superpower to further his personal agendas.

      Another young Cuban woman who co-wrote that blistering anti-Rubio article in the Miami Herald is Marla Recio. Thanks to openings provided by President Obama, Marla created a thriving Events Planning business on the island of Cuba. Trump & Rubio, she wants the world to know, is destroying it. Marla was also featured in the June 16-2017 New York Times article entitled "In Cuba, Trump Reversal Could Hurt Small Business." And Marla this week made her opinions about Trump & Rubio known to Collin Laverty, one of America's prime advocates for sane and decent U.S.-Cuban cooperation. She told Laverty: "They are deteriorating the quality of life for Cuban families." {She was blaming Marco Rubio & Donald Trump}. But Americans are easily programmed to believe that Marla is the bad guy and Marco is the good guy.

      Shamefully backed by President Donald Trump, Senator Marco Rubio believes that he alone should be allowed to dictate America's Cuban Policy. He is thus, with Trump in the White House, determined to reverse Obama's Herculean attempts to normalize relations with Cuba...meaning Rubio wants to finally regain Batistiano-like control of Cuba with a Policy that the rest of the world, including Obama's USA, condemned by a 191-to-ZERO vote in the United Nations. Rubio's Cuban Policy is also condemned by most Cubans in Miami although to this day Miami only sends Counter Revolutionary extremists like Rubio to the United States Congress. On Nov. 9th-2017 the Trump-Rubio regime in Washington announced 180 new harsh and cruel sanctions against Cuba. Rubio then shamefully and sanctimoniously announced that if it weren't for a few far-out liberals he could have included more than a mere 180 new assaults on innocent Cubans. Of course, Rubio always claims that everything he does is to hurt the Castros. It is believed by every unbiased Cuban expert I'm aware of that Rubio, and the shameful elements of the mainstream media that protects him, know FULL WELL that he is lying to further his revenge, economic, and political goals. As the aforementioned Miami Herald article acutely points out, Rubio's actions are hurting the most decent and the most deserving families on the island. The four brilliant and courageous women who wrote that article this week begged Rubio to come to Cuba and sit down and discuss the situation with them...or allow them to come to Washington to meet with him. Rubio has not had the decency or the guts to respond to them although, of course, he has hosted and powerfully supported in Washington the most visceral Counter Revolutionary dissidents on the island.

    The above photo-graphic, I think, defines today's U. S. government that MOST AMERICANS believe is bought-and-paid-for so it can primarily serve a handful of greedy billionaires. The image above was taken from Fox News, the right-wing media outlet that supports Marco Rubio's blatant goal of turning the U. S. democracy into a BATISTA-LIKE regime that ruled and brutalized Cuba from 1952 till 1959. Complicating the extreme right-wing influence of Fox News is the fact that the other five U. S. news networks -- CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and CBS -- are all extreme left-wing outfits that have neither the courage nor the integrity to challenge anything Rubio does to innocent Cubans while Trump is in the White House or when-if Rubio or some Batistiano like him takes it over. For example, none of the aforementioned top six U. S. television networks have even had the guts or decency to question Miami-related terrorism against Cuba that includes deadly hotel bombings, the deadly bombing of a child-laden Cuban civilian airplane, an historic series of assassinations and/or assassination attempts, etc. So what if, considering the never-ending Batistiano ties to Republican administrations, the U. S. simply nuked Cuba??? If so, judging by past acceptance, the U. S. media would either applaud or be too afraid to question such an atrocity. So now, study the Fox News graphic above. I believe it might make unbiased democracy-loving Americans cringe because of what it means today and what it portends for America's future. Throughout 2016 during the Republican presidential primary Trump and Rubio were bitter enemies. But as president, Trump is so afraid of Rubio's Little Havana roots in Miami that Trump fulfilled Rubio's second most-cherished goal -- next to being President himself -- and that was to be named by President Trump as America's Cuban dictator, which he essentially is today. But at least, with the quotation above, Trump surely called a spade a spade: "Sheldon Adelson would have total control over Rubio." AND, YES, AMERICA...that is quite possible thanks to a U. S. Supreme Court ruling that permits billionaires to make virtual unlimited donations to or purchases of politicians, including those with dangerous designs on the U. S. presidency. So, you ask, who is Sheldon Adelson?

      Now 84-years-old, Sheldon Adelson as of December-2017 is reportedly worth in excess of $38.6 billion. He owns lavish gambling palaces in Las Vegas and Singapore. As a controversial figure, he also owns the top newspapers in Nevada and Israel, presumably to help blunt criticism of his properties, politics, or his pundits.

     Even above his casinos and his newspapers, Sheldon Adelson is best known for using his extreme wealth to influence politics and politicians from coast to coast.

       Spending a mere $100 million or so to influence politicians & political issues is a mere drop-in-the-bucket as far as Sheldon Adelson's total wealth is concerned.

       Thus, during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, the 17 contenders...uh, yes, there were 17 -- including the four listed above -- sought some of that Adelson money and, apparently, were willing to sell their political beliefs to get some of it.

     But it appeared that Little Havana's Marco Rubio was the most eager politician to cash in, economically and politically, with bundles of Sheldon Adelson's cash.

       Of course, throughout the presidential primary Fox News reported that Marco Rubio was in line to get the lion's share of Sheldon Adelson's political buy-outs.

      As it turned out, Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential bid soon fizzled out but it is believed that he is accumulating enough cash to possibly purchase the post in 2020.

     Of course, Marco Rubio's well-known taste for money-burgers meshes with an opportune time in America's high-stakes political games: The U. S. Supreme Court in a recent ruling, many believe, powerfully favored the influence of billionaires over the long-standing democratic Founding Father's principle of ONE PERSON-ONE VOTE.

     Yet, the biggest reason that someone like Marco Rubio has a viable chance to reshape the proud American democracy into a Batistiano farse lies in what the mainstream U. S. media has evolved into -- namely, propaganda outfits as opposed to news-gathering journalism. The right-wing media, like Fox, propagandizes for a right-wing extremist, like Rubio. But the left-wing media -- NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, the NY Times & the Washington Post -- separately and collectively propagandize for an extreme left-wing America while putting the actual coverage and deliverance of NEWS far into the background. As indicated by the propaganda cover above, even the left-wing U. S. media supports Rubio BECAUSE the left-wing billionaire media owners believe Rubio is Washington's most For-Sale politician and, in time, they can purchase him but in the meantime just reshaping America's democracy is fine with left-wing extremists and right-wing extremists alike.

     Therefore, both right-wing & left-wing extremists in the U. S. latch onto Rubio's For-Sale extremism as "The Republican Savior." In other words, drastically changing the Founding Fathers' version of America makes for strange bedfellows and the dichotomy personified by the malleable Rubio -- meaning FOR-SALE Rubio -- appeals to both right-wing and left-wing American extremists.

       And so, whether it's left-wing or right-wing propaganda extolling the "virtures" of Marco Rubio, America democracy-lovers should look past the mainstream U. S. media and Google some basic Rubio facts. Rubio's biggest asset is that billionaires know he's For Sale and...DEMOCRACY IS THE PRIME VICTIM.

  Ken Silverstein is a great investigative journalist.

      For many years Ken Silverstein has earned plaudits for his investigative journalism while working for respected publications like...Harper's Magazine, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes Magazine, etc. Thus, it is important, I believe, in the U. S. democracy that Ken Silverstein has investigated Marco Rubio.

     Ken Silverstein's mammoth investigative article about Marco Rubio featured the above graphic and first appeared in the New York Observer. American's interested in their democracy should dial-it-up online. Ken Silverstein minutely and expertly documents his article with precise names, dates, and events that predicate the career of Marco Rubio, who is falsely portrayed as a "choirboy" by much of the mainstream U. S. media. As far as I know, not a single word of Ken Silverstein's article has been challenged nor has he been sued. The title of his article...in case you would like to go online and read it...is: "MARCO RUBIO: POOR LITTLE RICH BOY RUNS INTO REAL ESTATE TROUBLE." The sub-title is: "The Senator's Three Houses, Various Lady Friends, Assorted Con Artist Pals and Piles of Unexplained Income." And the first paragraph is: "When it comes to sheer brazen corruption, chicanery and dishonesty there is one candidate who stands head and shoulders above everyone else and that is the right-wing Cuban-American and Tea Party darling Senator Marco Rubio of -- naturally -- the great state of Florida. Mr. Rubio's entire public image...is less tethered to reality than The Wizard of Oz." Yes, the graphic above, the title, the sub-title, and the first paragraph are followed by even more damning documentations of Marco Rubio's pathway to the Senate and his intended lane to the White House. And yes, the author is Ken Silverstein, one of America's best journalists. AND YES, neither the mainstream U. S. media nor Marco Rubio's highly paid army of publicists, as far as I know, have ever disputed a single word superbly documented by Ken Silverstein.  

     In sharp contrast to Marco Rubio, there is no controversy surrounding Kathy Castor. She was born in Miami but since 2007 she has brilliantly represented Tampa in the U. S. Congress. On behalf of democracy and her constituents in Florida, Kathy Castor in the 535-member United States Congress has fervently fought to bring sanity and decency to America's Cuban policy. Yet, the mainstream United States media that portrays Marco Rubio as a choirboy will never introduce the far more decent and more talented Congresswoman Kathy Castor to the American people. That is an un-democratic fact that should TODAY worry all democracy-loving Americans. 

  The moral of this story is simple: Marco Rubio appears...remember, I said "APPEARS" -- to have two fervent and dangerous goals. And they appear to be: {1} To become President of the United States and {2} to become Dictator of Cuba. Of course, if he attains the former he can also attain the latter. After all, the President of the United States is also the Commander-in-Chief. I know that concerns Ken Silverstein. I believe it should concern all democracy-loving Americans and Cuban-Americans.

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