Cuba as Viewed by Cubans

Not by Marco Rubio!!!
{Sunday, January 21st, 2018}

Photo courtesy of: Roberto Leon/NBC News.

       On this third weekend in January of 2018 there is a lot of USA news to cover, including the first government shutdown on the one-year anniversary of the Trump presidency. But CNBC News this weekend featured a major article entitled: "TOURISM BOOMING IN CUBA DESPITE TOUGH NEW TRUMP POLICY." And the primary NBC News Network, which promotes itself as the "world's most-watched news source," this busy weekend had a major report entitled "DESPITE US-CUBA TENSIONS, MORE AMERICANS ATTEND HAVANA'S FAMED JAZZ FESTIVAL." That update by NBC News related to the Havana Jazz Festival that runs through Monday, January 22nd, 2018. The above photo was taken from that report and shows America's multiple-Grammy-winning jazz superstar DeeDee Bridgewater performing at this weekend's Havana Jazz Festival. You are invited...encouraged, actually...to use the above titles and dial up the NBC News report on the Festival because it actually presents an accurate report on Cuba from Cuba, and that's much better than getting force-fed propaganda about Cuba from Marco Rubio, who has never set foot in Cuba. If he did, he would learn what NBC News knows and what Americans that have been to Cuba, like me, know. And that is this: Cubans on the island are obsessed with their INDEPENDENCE, their BASEBALL, and their MUSIC, not with what Trump and Rubio in Washington are planning for them. And that basic fact, I believe, is precisely why Rubio...who is apparently Trump's newly anointed American dictator of Cuba...spends much of his time in the U. S. Congress trying to make sure everyday Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba, lest they might judge it for themselves as opposed to believing Marco Rubio.

     The image above is taken from the NBC News report on this weekend's Havana Jazz Festival. It shows U. S. Jazz legend DeeDee Bridgewater performing before appreciative Cuban fans and what NBC discovered to be a surprisingly "large" number of Americans. DeeDee told NBC: "I have a deep appreciation for the struggles of this country. I am thankful for President Obama's openings with this island and I just hope that this is going to continue to grow." And DeeDee told NBC that the U.S.-Cuban ties will "continue to grow if more and more Americans visit the island and engage with these wonderful people."

     The Miami-based Cuban-American who is the President & CEO of the giant Norwegian Cruise Line, Frank Del Rio, earlier this month said almost precisely the same thing that DeeDee Bridgewater told NBC News this weekend. As you can see on a YouTube interview conducted by Cristina Escobar, Frank Del Rio said, "I have arrived 8 times in Cuba on my cruise ships recently thanks to President Obama's openings to the island. We poll our tourists regarding which of the well-known 55 cities we have taken them to that they enjoy the most, and Havana comes out as the #1 city. That's because the Cuban people are the most welcoming people in the world, and that includes visitng Americans and Cuban-Americans like me." Of course, propagandized Americans who have never been to Cuba are supposed to believe every word Rubio, who has never been to Cuba, says about the island...and ignore what Cuban-Americans like frequent visitor Frank say about an island they know.

     Like America's NBC News, Cuba's well-respected television networks this weekend are covering the Havana Jazz Festival, providing live broadcasts across the island. Last week Cuban television lavishly covered Cuba's baseball playoffs. That doesn't surprise Americans who have visited Cuba and engaged with the Cuban people. The vast majority of Cubans, aside from their families and their fellow Cubans, are indeed obsessed with three primary things: their independence; their baseball; and their music. If Rubio says they are obsessed with re-locating to Miami or with being dominated by a foreign superpower again, he is flagrantly wrong.

     The photo above was also taken this 3rd weekend in January of 2018. It shows two outstanding young Cuban television journalists -- Yisel Martinez Garcia on the left and Rosy Amaro Perez on the right. They are flanking singer Luna Manzanares who had just been interviewed about Luna's upcoming European tour. Such things are far more important to Cubans on the island than whatever Trump & Rubio are concocting against them in Washington, and Americans need to know that.

     The photo above was also taken this weekend in a TV studio in Havana. It says a lot more about Cuba in January of 2018 than what Marco Rubio says about Cuba from his mansion in Miami or his seat in the U. S. Congress. Rosy Amaro Perez is a talented, well-educated, and very influential television news anchor in Cuba. She is the mother of a gorgeous, lookalike 4-year-old daughter. Like most Cubans, she is passionate about baseball and music. And like most Cubans on the island, especially the highly crucial young-adult generation, Rosy Amaro Perez is ultra-passionate about her island, its people, and its hard-earned independence. I know that because I happen to know Rosy. She told me this week, despite natural and man-make hurricanes that powerfully and frequently target the island, "We are happy in Cuba."

And so......

as of January, 2018........

it's still Rosy Amaro Perez's Cuba...

Not Marco Rubio's.

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The USA's Cuban Reach

And Its Deleterious Worldwide Image!!
{Updated for: Saturday, January 20th, 2018}

     Long one of the top journalists in England, Colin Randall, 69, has been a key reporter for such newspaper/website giants as The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, etc. He and his wife Joelle have been to Cuba many times because they love the much-maligned island nation in the Caribbean sea. They learned that U. S. dollars are very useful in navigating around Cuba. This month -- January, 2018 -- Randall went to his London bank to exchange 175 British pounds for U. S. dollars. When the bank learned he was going to Cuba, it refused the translation, telling him, "It is a U. S. policy." Outraged, Randall said, "You're a British company! I am British! I'm going to Cuba, which is an independent country! Why are you imposing Donald Trump desires on me?" WHY, indeed? Non-Americans ask that question daily around the world.

     The outraged question British journalist Colin Randall posed to his British bank, -- Marks & Spencer -- is very pertinent, so pertinent, in fact, that the giant London newspaper The Daily Mail featured it in a major article written by Mark Wood.

     The article in the London Daily Mail this week used the above photo to stress an abhorrent international fact: America's Cuban policy since the Cuban Revolution ousted the vile U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship in 1959 has been designed to appease only the most vicious Counter-Revolutionary exiles in the USA at the expense of everyone else, including 69-year-old British journalist Colin Randall and his wife Joelle. The London Daily Mail this week -- in mid-January of 2018 -- pointed out that this horrific situation has existed since 1960, the year U. S. President John Kennedy inherited the brutal, imperial Cuban policies that had been dictated by right-wing rogues in the Eisenhower administration -- such as Vice President Richard Nixon and the two Dulles brothers who were Eisenhower's most powerful cabinet members.

      As the above AP photo-caption cogently reveals, in 1960 -- in the first year of his presidency and the first year after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution -- President Kennedy was powerless to stop the above U. S. warplanes in an undeclared war from leaving bases in Florida to attack "Cuban fields with napalm-type bombs." The young President Kennedy had inherited those plans from the Eisenhower right-wingers.

   The young President Kennedy in 1960 had also inherited "OPERATION NORTHWOODS." As depicted above, that was the plan unanimously hatched by famed General Lyman Lemnitzer and his Joint Chiefs of Staff to, among other things, murder innocent Americans so those killings of innocent people could be blamed on Cuba and used as a pretext for a very savage military attack on Revolutionary Cuba.

      The young President Kennedy defied General Lymnitzer and the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding the Operation Northwoods plan to murder innocent Americans so it could could be blamed on Cuba. But remember, for decades -- until such facts were revealed by de-classified documents -- Americans were told that the rogues who devised such plans were the GOOD GUYS and the Cubans were the BAD GUYS. Also, as shown by the photo above, other powerful U. S. generals and the CIA persuaded President Kennedy to carry through on other inherited plans from the Eisenhower administration to recapture Cuba -- including the April-1961 Bay of Pigs military attack that Cuba embarrassingly defeated but the generals and the CIA blamed the defeat on Kennedy. Then in October-1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the same powerful forces begged Kennedy as Commander-in-Chief to nuke Cuba and the Soviet forces on the island. It is still considered the closest the world has ever come to a nuclear holocaust but, in hindsight, Kennedy's decision to avoid a nuclear war through 8 scary days in October-1962 probably saved millions of lives for sure and perhaps billions. During this time when the young President was being besieged by his top generals and CIA kingpins like Allen Dulles, Kennedy was being more wisely and sanely advised by three great speech-writers, authors, and journalists -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Ted Sorensen, and Pierre Salinger. Via those three legendary Kennedy aides we have learned that one day an exasperated President Kennedy screamed: "If I could I would blow the CIA to Smithereens!!" It is presumed that he lumped his top generals into the CIA bundle. And it was also from those three historians -- Schlesinger Jr., Sorensen, and Salinger -- that we learned that in November of 1963 -- just a few days before he took the fateful trip to Dallas -- that President John F. Kennedy told his most senior aides that, once he returned to Washington, his most urgent priority would be to normalize relations with Cuba.

      Of course, history registers the fact that on November 22-1963 America's popular young President, John Kennedy, returned to Washington from Dallas in a coffin. To this day, historians and conspiracy theorists debate not only who, along with the Oswald-Ruby known ties, were involved in the actual assassination but who were also the major forces that contributed to it or were slightly beaten to the punch by it. Those forces primarily today include the generals, the CIA, the Mafia, and Kennedy's Vice President Lyndon Johnson. In fact, newly de-classified documents in 2017 indicated that Kennedy's widow Jacqueline, who died in 1994, and his brother Robert, who was assassinated in 1968, both believed people close to Johnson killed their husband and brother. But it was also revealed anew in 2017 that Jacqueline's belief is contained in a paper that she ordered not to be published until 50 years after her death. Also, as indicated by the graphic above that shows President and Mrs. Kennedy in the fateful car in Dallas, it is generally believed that John Kennedy's murder or at least designs on his death related mostly to Cuban facts such as: Operation Northwoods, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the never-ending quest of Batistiano-Mafiosi remnants to overthrow Cuba's rebel-led government. Classifying...or hiding...documents and facts from the American people has hurt history and protected many criminals. For example, Operation Northwoods data was not de-classified until 1997, and that was many decades after Americans needed to know. And by 1997 there were two uncaring generations of Americans that simply didn't & don't give a damn.

     Of course, within minutes of President Kennedy's murder in Dallas on Nov. 22-1963, Cuba's revolutionary icon Fided Castro was blamed by the still-viable Operation Northwoods forces that had urged Kennedy to let them murder innocent Americans so it could be blamed on Castro. The publicity to blame Fidel was instantly buttressed by the well-known fact that the Kennedy brothers, John & Robert, had signed off on and assisted in many CIA-Mafia-Cuban exile assassination attempts against Fidel. Thus, it was easy to say Fidel had retaliated against Kennedy. But Fidel didn't live to be 90 by being either cowardly or stupid and his revolution hasn't survived all these many decades by being cowardly or stupid. Before dark on Nov. 22-1963 Fidel had informed the CIA, the FBI, and the U. S. State Department that his own well-respected intelligence operation would assist them in the investigations and that the U. S. could send experts to Havana to interrogate him, which the U. S. certainly did. To this day, no reputable source blames Fidel Castro for the assassinations of John Kennedy in 1963 or Robert Kennedy in 1968. But to this day, the usual suspects in addition to Oswald & Ruby are indeed still tied by reputable sources to the infamous murders.

       In 1960 the new President, John F. Kennedy, had a son named John F. Kennedy Jr. They are shown above in 1963 not long before JFK was murdered in Dallas.

     The above haunting image of JFK Jr. saluting his father's casket as it was being carried to Arlington National Cemetery to this day provokes tears across America.

     Awesomely handsome, intelligent, and starkly charismatic like his father, JFK Jr. could have been just about anything he wanted to be, including President of the United States. But, in another tragedy for the Kennedys and for America, JFK Jr. was killed, along with his wife and her sister, in a small plane he was piloting in 1999.

      While close family members famously blamed some famous individuals and some famously notorious groups for the murders of John and Robert Kennedy, the Kennedy family knew that Fidel Castro was not to blame and, in fact, Fidel had...for what it was worth...provided concrete evidence and clues as to who did it and who planned to do it. JFK Jr., in fact, told Fidel in phone calls how much he appreciated the Cuban Revolution and how much he hated the "criminal" Counter Revolutionary forces "operating freely" in the United States. And, in fact, JFK Jr. told that to Fidel face-to-face too. In the photo above, JFK Jr., in the middle, is introducing Fidel to a JFK Jr. friend that had accompanied President Kennedy's only son to Havana to meet a man -- Fidel Castro -- that JFK Jr. VERY DEEPLY ADMIRED.

     In Havana Fidel Castro hosted a dinner in honor of his famous visitor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. As shown by the photo above, Fidel Castro and JFK Jr. sat directly across from each other so they could talk to each other throughout the meal.

       Indeed, if John Kennedy Jr. had not died in that plane crash in 1999, there is an excellent chance THAT TODAY he would be the successor to Obama as the President of the United States. And if that were so, regardless of how many Rubios and Diaz-Balarts there are in the U. S. Congress, THERE WOULD SURELY BE NO U. S. EMBARGO AGAINST CUBA nor would there be continuous Operation Northwoods schemes to justify assaults on Cuba that former President Obama and the entire world condemned 191-to-ZERO in the United Nations. Yes, JFK Jr. was "a good man" as he referenced in the above quotation. And no "good man" can justify such American history as Operation Northwoods or the still-current U. S. Embargo that was, according to de-classified U. S. documents, created in 1962 to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to overthrow their Revolutionary government. {To do what? To replace it with the U.S.-backed Batistianos again?}. But JFK Jr. is not the President of the United States in 2018. Donald Trump is. Thus, another generation of Batistianos is free to target Cuba and to concoct schemes designed to justify blaming Cuba for whatever it is they want to blame Cuba for, which is whatever benefits a plethora of revenge, economic, and political goals.

      Both the modern, current, and future history of the United States are entwined in the memories of three giant men -- the Kennedy brothers who were assassinated in the 1960s -- John while he was President and Robert while he was running for President --  and Fidel Castro who died at age 90 in Havana on Nov. 25, 2016. So, the three giants are dead and their 1963, 1968, and 2016 deaths...I believe...say a lot more about the United States today than they say about Cuba. And two things they say are this: {1} The Cuban Revolution, somehow, is still viable; and {2} Donald Trump is President of the United States and Marco Rubio is Trump's anointed Dictator of Cuba.

 What if...JFK Jr....had landed safely?

What if?

What if.............?

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The Rubio Lies

How They Harm Americans!!
{Updated: Tuesday,, January 16th, 2018}

     The lies about Cuba by U. S. Senator Mark Rubio usually go unchecked by the mainstream media and by the U. S. government. The two-term, 8-year Obama administration mostly kept anti-Cuba extremists from Miami in check. But, in his first year as Obama's presidential successor, Donald Trump has essentially named the man he mocked as "Little Marco" during the 2016 presidential primary as America's newest Cuban dictator, ala Jorge Mas Canosa during the Bush presidencies and Fulgencio Batista and Lucky Luciana when the U. S. supported the thieving & ruthless Batista dictatorship in Cuba during the 1950s, at least till 1959 when the Cuban Revolution chased the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders to their new capital -- Little Havana in Miami. Have you read Marco Rubio's propaganda about Cuba's "health care" that is included within the black graphic? You should read it and, moreover, you should be intelligent enough and brave enough to know that it is a typical Rubio lie that harms innocent Americans, including Cuban Americans, as well as totally innocent Cubans on the island. In the last few days both the Miami Herald and USA Today have had major articles explaining that many Americans are "breaking U. S. laws" by going to Cuba for treatments against cancer, diabetes, etc., that many health officials agree is the best in the world. Americans, propagandized senselessly and endlessly by the likes of Rubio, need to be brave enough and patriotic enough to decide whether Rubio's hometown newspaper and America's largest newspaper are lying or whether Rubio is the self-serving liar.

Next 5 photos courtesy of Emily Michot/Miami Herald.

     A major article written by Mimi Whitefield in the Miami Herald is entitled: "U. S. and Cuban Researchers Join Forces to Bring Lung Cancer Patients New Hope." The article lauds Cuban medical researchers like Dr. Pedro Camilo Rodriguez at Cuba's famed Center for Molecular Immunology in Havana. They have developed drugs that have Americans breaking U. S. laws and defying Rubio to go to Cuba for treatments.

   While  a few revengeful and self-serving Cuban-Americans in Miami and the U. S. Congress try to starve Cubans on the island with history's cruelest economic embargo, the Miami Herald article explains that SOMEHOW Cuba scrounges up enough money to keep brilliant medical scientists like Mabel Cruz Rodriguez working and finding treatments for cancer, diabetes, and other diseases. Some such inventions are so remarkable that many Americans are now breaking Rubio-like United States laws to go to Cuba to benefit from such medical advancements.

     While Marco Rubio and his ilk in the United States Congress try to starve decent Cubans like Dr. Anabely Estevez, Rubio's hometown newspaper, the Miami Herald, heaps praise on her for the great work she does at Havana's famed La Prada Medical Center where many Americans go for treatment not available in the United States.

     The Miami Herald explained that top American cancer experts -- like Dr. Igor Puzanov at the famed Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York -- have great faith in Cuba's remarkable medical advances. Yet, Americans are programmed to believe Marco Rubio's lies and ignore the expertise of people like Dr. Puzanov.

     A lung cancer vaccine developed in Cuba named CIMAvax is what many Americans are risking jail time in the United States to go to Cuba to purchase.

     From Wisconsin, USA, Mick Phillips was supposed to have died from lung cancer years ago. But he drives to Canada and then flies to Cuba regularly for what he and his doctors consider the best lung cancer treatment in the world. Mick Phillips told Marco Rubio's hometown newspaper, the Miami Herald, that Cuba's CIMAvax vaccine has kept him alive for years now. He said, "My doctor says it's either divine intervention or CIMAvax that is keeping me alive, and I happen to know it's CIMAvax."

     At the airport on his way back from Cuba, Mick Phillips returns with a supply of the life-saving CIMAvax. To get it, he is breaking a Rubio-like U. S. law. But he says, "I want to live and my family and friends agree with that even if some politicians don't."

    Is Marco Rubio the liar about things related to Cuba or did Kaiser Health News lie this week -- on Jan. 10-2018 -- when it released a major article about "Cuba's Free Health Care"?? The KHN article is entitled: "A Poor Neighborhood in Chicago Looks to Cuba to Fight Infant Mortality." The article points out that Cuba's Infant Mortality Rate is lower than it is in the United States and, of course, considerably lower than in the ghetto areas of otherwise rich U. S. cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, etc., etc. 

     This photo is courtesy of Kaiser Health News. It shows Dr. Jose Armando Arronte-Villamarin. He is one of the dedicated doctors in poor little Cuba responsible for the fact that Cuba has a lower Infant Mortality Rate than the richest nation in the world, the United States of America. Dr. Arronte-Villamarin is in Chicago now with the team of Cuban doctors that Chicago urgently summoned to help that huge America city lower its alarmingly high Infant Mortality Rate. Chicago has enough wealth in the rich areas of its city that it could have summoned doctors from anywhere in the United States and anywhere in the world. But Chicago CHOSE THE DOCTORS FROM POOR LITTLE CUBA TO BAIL IT OUT FROM A SEVERE HEALTH CRISIS, and as always poor little Cuba obliged. Meanwhile Rubio's usually unchecked lies insult not only brilliant doctors like Jose Armando Arronte-Villamarin but they grossly insult America and Democracy. Rubio's main theme is that the U. S. should make sure to tighten the embargo against Cuba because every dollar that reaches the island goes into the Castro bank accounts. Well, poor little Cuba, since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, has guaranteed totally free health care for all Cubans and totally free educations through college for all Cubans. The richest nation in the world, the United States, does not do either of those things. The World Bank and the World Health Organization both confirm that Cuba spends a far largest percentage of its wealth on health and education for its people than do rich countries like the United States. And universally, Cuba's health care and its educational institutions are considered excellent. The U. S. embargo against Cuba...the cruelty that Rubio wants to expand...was started in 1962 for the exact purpose, as revealed by de-classified United States documents, to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their Revolutionary government. When the decent Obama administration refused to support the cruel embargo, it was condemned by a 191-to-ZERO vote in the United Nations. But Rubio's effective lies in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave proves to the world that the United States, since 1962, has not been as Free nor as Brave as it was before the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders resettled on U. S. soil beginning in January of 1959. Now go back and study the photo of Cuba's Dr. Arronte-Villamarin. Chicago apparently believes he is far more decent, honest, and sincere than Rubio, America's latest Cuban dictator.

Photo courtesy: Desmond Boylan/PRI.

     One of the biggest articles in America's biggest newspaper so far in January-2018 was written by Sally Jacobs and published in USA Today on January 9th. It's entitled: "Cuba Has A Lung Cancer Vaccine. Many U. S. Patients Can't Get It Without Breaking the Law." Lung cancer patient George Keays of Colorado, shown above, is one of the many cancer and diabetic sufferers in the USA who are breaking America's Cuban laws to go to Cuba for treatment that apparently is the best in the world to treat lung cancer and to prevent diabetic amputations, etc. The photo above shows Mr. Keays at the famed Pradera International Health Clinic in Havana as he breaks a USA law but he also believes Cuba's medical advances are saving his life. The photo topped the major article in America's major newspaper, USA Today. But Americans are not supposed to read it or pay attention to it because they are programmed -- via relentless anti-Cuban propaganda and even threats -- to believe every word that self-serving Counter-Revolutionary Cuban-Americans LIKE MARCO RUBIO say about Cuba to feather their own revenge, political, and economic nests.

  This week -- on January 9th, 2018 -- Marco Rubio CHAIRED YET ANOTHER anti-Cuban and anti-American assault on innocent Cubans and Americans in a session of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the Western Hemisphere. Unbelievably, the session was co-chaired by Senator Bob Menendez who recently had his corruption trial end in a hung jury after the U. S. Justice Department had spent 3 expensive years trying desperately to convict him for Miami-related shenanigans that also involved some of the Dominican Republic playgrounds.

     It seems that only anti-Cuban Cuban-American extremists like Rubio & Menendez can get elected to the United States Congress from Miami and New Jersey. Once there, they all seem to flock to the Foreign Relations & Western Hemisphere committees because, of course, Cuba is a foreign nation in the Western Hemisphere. Rubio reached the U. S. Senate with his bio conveniently claiming his parents escaped the Castro tyranny in Cuba for the freedom of Miami but, of course, his parents escaped the Batista tyranny in Cuba long before Castro chased the Batistianos to Miami. Also, one of America's greatest investigative journalists, Ken Silverstein, has a long and easily Googled article labeling Rubio the most corrupt, bought-and-paid-for politician in Washington. Rubio's vicious anti-Cuban co-chair in the Senate this week, Menendez, in 2017 escaped those 18 felony corruption-bribery charges because of a hung jury after a 3-year federal investigation and a 3-month trial in New Jersey. Yet, no fellow Congressman and no U. S. journalist would dare ask the Chair and co-Chair, Rubio & Menendez, this question: I know y'all say that U. S. laws must keep every penny from reaching Cuba because it all goes in the Castro bank accounts, but somehow Cuba, unlike the U. S., provides excellent free health care and free college educations for all its people...and Cuba's medical scientists have developed what appear to be the best lung cancer drugs and the best drugs that prevent diabetic amputations, etc., so would, uh, it be alright with you guys if Americans, including Cuban-Americans, could benefit from such things?

     Projected by the intimidated, incompetent, or politically correct mainstream United States media as a sweet choirboy from Miami, U. S. Senator Marco Rubio and his ilk for decades have been permitted to use the U. S. media to thrust their anti-Cuban propaganda down the throats of Americans. Even Rubio's hometown newspaper -- the Miami Herald that features Cuban-Americans in its most powerful positions -- has recently soured on Rubio's lies that also hurt Cuban-Americans in Miami, Florida.

      Decent, brave, democracy-loving Americans -- like Emily Mandrala at the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas -- saluted the four Cuban women who excoriated Marco Rubio in a recent blistering Miami Herald article, which the top Cuban-American executives at the Miami Herald apparently agreed with. And note in that CDA graphic above that the four Cuban women who wrote the Miami Herald article accused Marco Rubio of being a coward for refusing to meet with them to at least learn how his anti-Cuban crusade is hurting totally innocent women and children on the island. The women assumed he already knew that and didn't care.

And by the way:

     Remember the official purpose of the U. S. embargo against Cuba from 1962 till today? According to de-classified U. S. documents, the purpose, after the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs military attack, was to starve, deprive and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to overthrow their revolutionary government. Well, it hasn't worked...except to get the United States condemned 191-to-ZERO in the United Nations. The photo above was taken this second weekend in January, 2018. The two beautiful, well-fed, healthy, well-educated young women are Yanet Perez Moya and Rosy Amaro Perez. Like most Cubans, they are passionate about baseball and they are shown at Saturday's playoff game pitting the Havana Industriales vs. Los Tunas. By the way, their team, the Industriales, won the game.

     Neither Rosy nor Yanet hate Americans and they deeply admire what former President Obama tried to do for their island, which both Rosy and Yanet massively love with even more passion than they love baseball. And yes, Rosy and Yanet are aware that, with Obama having been replaced by Trump, America's Cuban policy is back in the hands of vicious Counter Revolutionaries like Rubio and Menendez.

      When they are not together at events such as baseball games and concerts, Rosy and Yanet are often side-by-side as talented young television news anchors. Regardless of what Rubio thinks in Miami and in Congress, Rosy and Yanet believe that the young-adults on the island, like them, will be the key to predicating Cuba's future and the last thing they want is for their beloved island nation to be ruled from Miami and Washington. After Rosy watched a live telecast of Trump excoriating Cuba in a speech in the Little Havana section of Miami, she immediately posted this sentence on her Facebook page: "The Cuba that President Trump just described is not the Cuba I know, and I've lived here all my life."

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A Bittersweet Visit to Cuba

A Special Visitor Returns!!
{Friday, January 12th, 2018}

Photo courtesy: Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press.

     This week one of the all-time greatest supporters of the Cuban Revolution, Michelle Bachelet, paid a nostalgic visit to the island. She is finishing up her second term as President of Chile and will leave office in March. She was President from 2006 till 2010 but Chile does not allow for consecutive terms. So she was a civilian humanitarian for four years before she was once again elected President in 2014. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Cuban President Raul Castro are shown above this week in Havana viewing an honor guard in Revolutionary Square. Even prior to her two democratically elected terms as Chile's President, she was a huge supporter of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Her father and Fidel Castro were key supporters of Chile's wildly popular democratically elected President Salvador Allende until the day in 1973 when the U.S.-backed {Nixon-Kissinger} coup resulted in the death of Allende to install, for 17 extremely bloody years, the brutal U.S.-backed Pinochet dictatorship. Michelle Bachelet's own father was one of the many victims of Pinochet's murderous reign.

    And so, this week now marks the final visit Michelle Bachelet will make to Cuba as the President of Chile. With Raul Castro retiring as Cuba's President in April, her visit highlights the changes taking place in Cuba, which is also basking in the Obama-to-Trump transition in the American White House that greatly and adversely affects every Cuban on the island. Michelle Bachelet was born 66-years-ago in Santiago, Chile. With only a few weeks left in her second and last term as Chile's President, it also marks a major loss for Cuba as far as Latin American support is concerned.

     As of March 11, 2018, the new President of Chile will be 68-year-old Sebastian Pinera. Educated at USA's Harvard University, Pinera is a right-wing multi-billionaire. He already served one term at Chile's President from 2010 to 2014 when Michelle Bachelet couldn't run for consecutive terms. And now once again the Harvard-educated billionaire Pinera is about to replace Bachelet as Chile's President...and Pinera is and will be again the only right-wing or conservative President that Chile has had since the vile and violent Pinochet dictatorship ended in 1990. Like Trump replacing Obama in the U. S., Pinera replacing Bachelet in Chile is bad news for Cuba but good news for America's vast Anti-Castro Cottage Industry.

    The vast and lucrative Anti-Castro Cottage Industry headquartered in Miami reacted typically to Chile's Cuba-loving President Michelle Bachelet's visit to Cuba this week. Unwilling to merely wait for the right-wing Pinera presidency, thuggish right-wing Miami journalist Andres Oppenheimer cowardly assailed the great Chilean lady with a scathing article in yesterday's Miami Herald. The shameful article was entitled: "Bachelet's Trip to Cuba Was Shameful, And A Blow to Latin America's Democratic left." Of course, Oppenheimer -- born 66-years-ago in Buenos Aires -- seems to pine for right-wing thugs to take over in Cuba, Chile, and elsewhere. The more politically correct or the more intimidating the anti-Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S. becomes, the larger become the bank accounts of one-sided "journalists" such as Oppenheimer. His syndicated column, his books, and his "Oppenheimer Presenta" on CNN's En Espanol are all slanted, right-wing rants and jokes. To bellow that Michelle Bachelet's visit this week to Cuba was "shameful and a blow to Latin America's Democratic left" is purely an example of Oppenheimer and his ilk preaching to the choir but also assuming that others are either too stupid or too afraid to question their lucrative right-wing propaganda.

     The photo above shows President Michelle Bachelet of Chile as she arrived in Cuba this second week in January, 2018. The reason right-wing journalist Andres Oppenheimer used a huge headline in the Miami Herald calling her Cuban visit "Shameful" is because Oppenheimer apparently considers her the exact opposite of vile right-wing dictators of old such as Jorge Rafael Videla in his native Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, Batista in Cuba, etc. Meanwhile, as the Anti-Castro Cottage Industry thrives in Oppenheimer's Miami, a great lady, Michelle Bachelet, is closing out two 4-year terms as Chile's President, and as Cuba's dear friend, and as the absolute antithesis to Oppenheimer, Videla, Pinochet, Batista, etc., etc. etc.

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