Old Friend Returns to Cuba

and he is still.................

.......Saddened by the Embargo!!
{Updated: Tuesday, Sept. 11th, 2018}

Photo courtesy: Steve Lundy/Associated Press.

      84-year-old George Ryan and twenty other avid anti-Embargo Americans arrived in Havana Monday -- Sept. 10th, 2018 -- on a mission to blunt the Trump administration's tightening of the Embargo against Cuba that has existed since 1962 to appease Counter Revolutionary Cuban-American extremists and their Republican sycophants. Ryan, the former Governor of Illinois, visited Fidel Castro in Havana in 1999 on the same mission. Till Castro died in 2016, each year he had sent a box of Cuban cigars to celebrate Ryan's birthdays. As a jab at the Trump administration, the Ryan group of twenty-one is staying at the Hotel Capri, one of the alleged places the Trump White House has labeled off-limits because it is where some of the alleged sonic-attacks against American diplomats have taken place, the excuse the Trump administration has used to curtail Cuban tourism that had reached new heights during the Cuba-friendly Obama presidency that preceded Trump's new assaults.

     The famed 82-year-old Chicago billionaire Jerry Reinsdorf is also on the George Ryan-led mission to Cuba this week that will extend from Monday through Thursday. For the past 25 years Reinsdorf has been the owner of Major League baseball's Chicago White Sox and the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls.

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Photo courtesy: Jorge Ray/Associated Press.

   Back in October of 1999 George Ryan visited Cuba at the invitation of his friend Fidel Castro. At the time George Ryan was the Governor of Illinois and he was one of the many Americans ashamed of the U. S. embargo against Cuba that has existed since 1962 at the behest of a handful of Counter Revolutionary extremists and their easily purchased sycophants in the U. S. Congress and in all Republican White Houses. At about the time of this visit, de-classified U. S. documents revealed that the purpose of the Embargo in 1962 was to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of ordinary Cubans to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. From cowardly generation-to-cowardly-generation since 1962, that remains the primary intention of the embargo after all other means to recapture Cuba have failed --including a world-record number of assassination attempts, the 1961 Bay of Pigs air-land-and-sea military attack, an endless litany of Congressional "legals" laws designed to destroy Cuba, and an astonishing series of murderous terrorist attacks against innocent Cubans in airplanes, on ships, in cars, and against pedestrians on foot. Such things, of course, embarrassed America's democracy-lovers, AND THEY STILL DO.

   The photo above was taken by T. J. Salsman for the Illinois Journal-Register. It shows Governor George Ryan on his October-1999 visit to Cuba. He was surrounded by students from Havana's Abraham Lincoln Primary School. Today -- Monday, Sept. 10-2018 -- Mr. Ryan arrives back in Havana. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, he said: "I can't go back as a tourist. This is not a client trip or a humanitarian trip. Hell, I'm 84 years old. I'm just really looking forward to going back to rekindle memories of old times and dreams we had back in 1999 for my first trip to Cuba in hopes of getting the embargo lifted."

    Of course, the Embargo from 1962 till today still hasn't been lifted, despite the herculean efforts of democracy-loving Americans like George Ryan and President Barack Obama. As a decent and brave two-term President that preceded the Republican Donald Trump, Obama did everything in his power to normalize relations with Cuba and end the Embargo but he failed because Batistiano-written laws in the U. S. Congress mandate that only Congress can end it. Thus, the U. S. democracy is not strong enough to end it, despite the efforts of Ryan, Obama, and millions of other decent Americans and despite the unanimity of world opinion as chronicled by the 191-to-0 vote condemning the Embargo in the UN in 2016, the last year the U. S. had a President who was not aligned as a political beneficiary of the Little Havana extremists in Miami.

     Cuba has changed drastically since 2016, the year that Fidel Castro died at age 90 and the year a weird and troubling U. S. election made Obama's successor as President the improbable Trump. That election, that transition, reveals how troubled the U. S. democracy is, and not just because it returns to the White House another Republican President tightly tied to the Cuban Counter Revolutionary extremists in Miami. The U. S. democracy, with a money-crazed and mostly bought-and-paid-for federal government, has many more serious problems than just Cuba. But it is a Democracy now in a downward spiral in which it is almost impossible to get decent democracy-lovers elected to Congress or to the Presidency. So, we are in a period when polls show that both Congress and the current President are extremely unpopular with American voters who often have to choose between the lesser-of-two-evils when they vote. Meanwhile in Cuba, it was the island's new President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who extended that invitation for a friendly American, George Ryan, to re-visit Cuba today. Diaz-Canel, a former Education Minister who is a non-Castro and a non-revolutionary, now leads Cuba while across the Florida Straits in the USA another handful of Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans have tight grips on a U. S. government still determined to regain control of Cuba.

    But does Cuba deserve for the U.S.-backed Batistianos-Mafiosi to regain control of the island that has been a sovereign nation since 1959? History, including the graphic above that tells of the Mafia-led plundering of Cuba from 1952 till 1959, says, "No. Cubans on the island, not foreign-backed plunderers, should determine the island's fate."

     From 1952 till 1959 Batistiano and Mafia thugs as well as rich U. S. businessmen wallowed in wealth on the island but the everyday Cubans, as shown above, lived in abject poverty with no hope of educational or health benefits and little hope of food.

    Yes, before Americans ever heard of Fidel Castro, photos like the ones above and articles in the New York Times by the great Herbert L. Matthews informed U. S. citizens that the Batista thugs were murdering Cuban children as warnings against resisting the brutal dictatorship. It was brave marches by Cuban mothers, like the ones depicted above, that fueled the revolution and inspired rebels like Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro to attempt what was considered impossible but vital -- the first overthrow of a U.S.-backed dictatorship.

     By not even bothering to throw crumbs at the Cuban peasants and even brutally murdering children as a warning to potential resisters, Batista's dictatorship gave birth to Fidel Castro and to an historic event known as the Cuban Revolution.

    Even when the right-wing rulers in Havana and Washington didn't consider the little rebellion in Cuba a threat, Batista's thugs routinely gunned down expected rebels, with famed murders including University of Havana students like Jose Antonio Echeverria, 23-year-old teacher Frank Pais and his teenage brother Jesus, etc., etc. Study the graphic above from 1953 just as the Revolution was getting started in the Sierra Maestra Mountains on the far southeastern tip of the island.

     The historic AP/NY Times photo above was taken in 1956. It shows Batista soldiers lavishly supported by American trainers getting ready to board airplanes to fly to the Sierra Maestra foothills and put down the rebellion. Such efforts cost many millions of U. S. tax dollars and wasn't challenged by propagandized United States citizens, but it failed miserably because the Cuban rebels were far more motivated.

     This photo reveals a basic fact about U.S.-Cuban relations. Fictionalized Hollywood movies have revealed more truths about U.S.-Cuban relations than either the U. S. government or the mainstream U. S. media has provided. The scene above is from one of the famed "Godfather" movies. It depicts famed Mafia thugs conducting a famed meeting atop the famed Hotel National in Havana. As a semi-truth, this scene is far more truthful than anything U. S. citizens will get from the U. S. government or the U. S. media regarding U.S.-Cuban relations.

     A mere handful of Counter Revolutionary extremists from Miami and in the U. S. Congress have been allowed to dictate America's Cuban narrative and American's Cuban laws since 1959. Therefore, Americans are programmed to believe that the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in the 1950s was a Mother Teresa-like angelic government and that the return of such an angelic foreign domination of Cuba is something the American people must accept and support -- OR ELSE!!

    And so, George Ryan, now 84 and the former controversial Republican Governor of Illinois, today -- Sept. 10th-2018 -- arrives in Cuba at the invitation of the island's new President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Ryan had visited the island in 1999 after being invited by the late Fidel Castro.

     Although a Republican himself, George Ryan seemed to conclude, as indicated by his quote above, that America's democracy had ceased to be the best government in the world. {"I don't know that we do......." He seems to have based that conclusion on his inside knowledge of the renowned corruption of politics in his Mafia-plagued state of Illinois AND on his knowledge of how easily the Bush dynasty profited from questionable economic and political alliances, especially with the Counter Revolutionary Cubans.

     This image chronicles the role Cuba...or the Cuban Revolutionary losers who regrouped in Miami in 1959 and later in the U. S. Congress...had in the precipitous decline of the U. S. democracy. In 2000 the Democrat Al Gore got the most votes nationwide but Florida's enormous pile of Electoral Votes handed the presidency to the Republican George W. Bush, whose qualification was the fact his father was also a former President also tightly aligned with Miami's Counter Revolutionary Cubans. Gore, unlike Bush, never got the chance to change America's cruel Cuban policies, never got the chance to prevent some questionable wars Bush desired, and never got the chance to make lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and to the hundreds of federal judgeships below that.

    If anyone dared to write the history of how remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Miami beginning in 1959 and by the 1980s in the U. S. Congress colluded with all Republican White Houses since 1959 to alter the U. S. government, the photo above would have to be seared into that devastating bit of American history. As the world watched on television FOR EXCRUCIATING DAYS, vote-counters like those above tried to count the famed "hanging chad Florida votes" that decided the 2000 presidential election and put another Bush, not the more capable Gore who got the most nationwide votes, in the White House. Therefore, no one should wonder that every Republican presidential candidate traipses to Little Havana in Miami to bow down to the Counter Revolutionary extremists who control all those often-pivotal Florida presidential Electoral Votes.

    Thus, no one should have been surprised when the first thing Donald Trump did as President of the United States was to fly Air Force One to Miami so he could thank the Cuban Counter Revolutionary extremists for his 2016 election AND remind them of the upcoming 2020 election. Trump's brazenness in standing before huge Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506 Assault Banners merely reflects his belief that propagandized and intimidated U. S. citizens have neither the courage nor the intelligence nor the patriotism to challenge such things.

     The humiliating U. S. defeat at Cuba's Bay of Pigs in April of 1961 somehow even today remains the theme in Miami's Little Havana that every U. S. Republican president, such as Donald Trump, must not only capitulate to but also support wholeheartedly with U. S. tax dollars, U. S. might, and U. S. prestige. And somehow in September of 2018 that seems to be an insult to the U. S. democracy. It also continues to enhance the belief that perhaps the defense of the Cuban Revolution at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, and subsequently, was/is apparently the honorable thing to do in a small, besieged island nation.

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CUBAN-CRAZED Florida Politics

Still Shaming U. S. & Democracy
{After All These Decades}
{Updated: Wednesday, September 19th, 2018}

    This week -- on Sept. 17, 2018 -- Cuba's new President Miguel Diaz-Canel made the above statement. Translated from Spanish to English, he said: "The blockade is the main obstacle for the prosperity of Cuba." Cuba calls the U. S. embargo, which has existed since 1962, a blockade. By whatever name, it is the longest and cruelest starvation-tool ever imposed by a powerful nation against a much weaker nation. Considering the longevity and the fierceness of the blockade-embargo, the mere fact that Cuba hasn't totally succumbed to it remains one of history's and modernity's greatest phenomenons. Yet, as President Diaz-Canel has also stated, the Cuban Revolution, which in 1959 overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship, has actually changed the USA even more than it has changed Cuba. After all, prior to 1959 no one would have predicted that the U. S. democracy would so blatantly, and for so long, align itself with the Mafia as an agent of it colonial past...a past still magnified by such things as the embargo-blockade against Cuba and the theft of Cuba's plush Guantanamo Bay in "perpetuity" since 1903 and the terrorist bombing of Cuba's civilian Cubana Flight 455 airplane. Americans, for example, are taught to condemn Russia for annexing Crimea or for targeting innocent Ukrainians or for blowing up a civilian South Korean airplane...for example. But the same Americans are also taught that such things are fine as long as the victims are...Cubans on the island.

Photo courtesy: Desmond Boylan/Associated Press.

      Now into a third generation of totally innocent Cubans on the island, women like Barbara Betancourt Bernal are trying to survive history's longest and most pernicious assaults ever directed at ordinary citizens in a small nation by rich and powerful miscreants in a huge, omnipotent nation. That undeniable fact has persisted since 1962 when the United States of America imposed an economic embargo against Cuba to appease the most extremist elements of the lucrative Cuban-American Anti-Castro Cottage Industry that arose on U. S. soil when the leaders of the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Havana regrouped with a new capital, Little Havana in Miami, Florida. Highlighting a weakening U. S. democracy, this situation has been allowed to exists for 6+ decades even though de-classified U. S. documents long ago revealed that the purpose of the 1962 embargo was to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their Revolutionary Government. This, of course, was after numerous assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, the April-1963 Bay of Pigs military attack, and a myriad of grisly terrorist attacks had failed to recapture Cuba. Fidel Castro died at age 90 in 2016 and Cuba's new leader is a non-Castro, non-revolutionary -- President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Yet, the anti-Castro extremists in Miami and in the U. S. Congress and in all Republican White Houses have attained so much economic and political power in the U. S. THAT starving, depriving, and making miserable the lives of ordinary Cubans on the island remains to this day -- in September of 2018 -- FAR TOO LUCRATIVE for the anti-Castro extremists to let go of from their luscious economic and political standpoints. Yet, somehow, pugnacious Cubans on the island like Barbara Betancourt Bernal honorably try to survive against the overwhelming and unchecked power of Cuban-American exile-extremists still hiding behind the skirts of the world Superpower and benefiting immeasurably from the lack of patriotism of a third generation of pusillanimous American citizens. Barbara has two teenage daughters in Cuba. This week [Sept. 13, 2018] America's top business network, CNBC, updated Barbara's tenacity with these words:

            "Elegant and charismatic, Barbara is the face of an increasingly visible phenomenon in Cuba: the rise in female bartenders who break convention to benefit from the growing tourism industry, grabbing job opportunities that have come in the last five years with the opening of new private businesses." 

          Barbara is a popular bartender at El Gato Tuerto, a club near Havana's famed Malecon seawall. CNBC quoted her this week as saying, "'You have to be a strong woman. With a strong character. You can't be weak or have a husband who says, 'you can't do it,' she says as she whips a silver shaker." In other words, Barbara Betancourt Bernal, the feisty mother of two teenage daughters on the island, is a far stronger and a far better person than a handful of second generational Cuban-American politicians and their self-centered sycophants who distort the U. S. democracy to feather their own economic and political nests by shamefully soliciting the backing of ultra-powerful Counter Revolutionary Cubans in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood...a gutless ploy that includes trying to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island like Barbara Betancourt Bernal. The video below reveals how every politician in Florida shamefully has to beg Cuban-American extremists in Little Havana for their support, which is crucial to winning top state and national offices.

     The image above is courtesy of the Miami Herald and, if you tap it, it'll shows a video in which Ron DeSantis pleads with the Little Havana choir to make him the next Governor of Florida. If you can stomach watching this sad 2 minute, 31 second commentary highlighting a cancerous blight on the U. S. democracy, you will hear the begging DeSantis paying homage to the Little Havana choir that sent him to the U. S. Congress, a position he has forsaken to seek the Governorship of Florida. In addition to reminding the choir that he sacredly fulfilled their desires in Congress, he pledged to do so again if he is elected Governor of Florida. DeSantis wildly promised the choir in this video that he will fervently seek to charge former Cuban president Raul Castro with murder and bring the 87-year-old revolutionary to trial in a Miami courtroom, certainly not in any unbiased forum. Perhaps the saddest aspect of such ridiculous and barbarous rhetoric is the fact that not only DeSantis but OTHER ambitious Florida politicians must replicate what DeSantis so vividly does in this video. So, I invite you to tap the 2 minute, 31 second video above and listen to DeSantis rant about what he will do to destroy Cuba if the Counter Revolutionary extremists in the choir will get him elected as the next Governor of Florida. I do not believe there is a single word in that diatribe that DeSantis would utter...at least with a straight face...in front of an unbiased audience.

    But the problem with Florida's Cuban-crazed politics, which direly affects all of America, is not just Ron DeSantis. Anyone else seriously running for high office in Florida also would be forced to bow before the ruling minority in Miami, the Counter Revolutionary Cubans. Otherwise Miami is awash with Cuban-Americans who favor the decent Obama approach to Cuba and, in fact, send billions of dollars across the Florida Straits to help the targeted Cubans on the island.

      At age 40 Ron DeSantis has resigned his seat in the U. S. Congress to seek Florida's governorship. A graduate of Yale and then Harvard Law, he is a former Lt. Commander in the Navy.

    Ron DeSantis [see the tweet above] savors the endorsement of President Donald Trump in his quest to be Florida's next governor. Trump needs the Counter Revolutionaries in Florida to avoid impeachment and, if he manages that, to get re-elected President in 2020. That's a most interesting scenario because DeSantis, Senator Marco Rubio from Miami, and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley are the three foxes in Trump's Hen House with presidential plans and plans for leadership of the Republican Party that don't include Trump. The billionaire individuals and corporations who own MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Post, and the NY Times are certainly engaged in a determined media coup to overthrow Trump, and they are indeed formidable. But the sly, back-stabbing foxes in Trump's hen-house -- especially Rubio, Haley, and DeSantis  are an even bigger threat to Trump, whose demise, I might add, would surely benefit Cuba.

     The prospect of Ron DeSantis as Governor of Florida is no better and no worse than anyone else in that position because whoever gets if will be marching to the drumbeats of the Counter Revolutionary Cubans. But if you tapped the video above and listened to DeSantis rave about what he plans to do to 87-year-old former Cuban President Raul Castro [now that #1 target Fidel Castro died at age 90 in 2016], you might begin to fathom what has happened on U. S. soil to the U. S. democracy since 1959. Not a word DeSantis said on the video would hold water outside of Miami but by just saying it, as opposed to campaigning on the abundance of real issues that affect most Floridians, DeSantis reveals the anti-democracy mistake right-wingers in Washington made in 1952 when they sicced the Mafia on Cuba and then many of the same right-wingers in 1959 quickly embraced on U. S. soil the most fervent remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that fled the Cuban Revolution in the wee hours of January 1, 1959.

    The most visceral of the Counter Revolutionary Cubans who became ultra powerful in Miami include easily Googled names such as Jorge Mas Canosa, Rafael Diaz-Balart, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Felix Rodriguez, and Jose Basulto. Even prior to the Bay of Pigs attack in April of 1961 Basulto was in Cuba on clandestine missions to sabotage Revolutionary Cuba for himself, the U. S. government, and Little Havana in Miami. As a pilot, like many other such Cubans, Basulto performed other controversial deeds for Republicans tied to the Batistianos, such as for the Contras in another U. S. loss in Nicaragua where rebel Danny Oterga remains the President to this day. But Basulto is most famed for founding Brothers to the Rescue, a fleet of airplanes that supposedly patrolled over the Florida Straits to rescue stranded Cubans. In 1996 Bill Clinton, the Democratic U. S. President, was strongly rumored to be planning to normalize relations with Cuba. Brothers planes began taunting Cuba in Cuban territorial waters and even directly over Havana where anti-Castro material was dropped. Always lavishly using the Miami media, Basulto bragged about the missions and claimed Cuba couldn't and wouldn't do anything about it. But Cuba did beg the U. S. State Department to stop them, but to no avail. Cuba then begged the United Nations to stop them, but to no avail because the U. S. has a UN veto. Cuba then declared that if the overflights continued it would do something. Basulto, flying the lead 3-plane convoy, still flew towards Cuba and Cuba sent up two planes and shot down two of the Brothers planes, killing three Cuban-Americans, but Basulto's plane turned around and made it safely back to Florida. Basulto and his supporters claim the shoot-downs were in international waters. Later lawsuits in Miami courtrooms awarded untold millions of dollars to Cuban families, with Basulto himself getting one of the huge cash settlements. Also, the mainstream U. S. media has been generally too afraid to challenge anything related to the Brothers controversy but renowned experts such as Wayne S. Smith, former U. S. diplomatic head at the U. S. Interests Section in Havana; Peter Kornbluh, the Cuban expert at the U. S. National Security Archives in Washington, and also both UN and U. S. documents paint more realistic portraits about the Brothers tragedy, which can readily be Googled, than Americans otherwise have been told. In other words, in an unbiased city, courtroom or forum, politicians like Ron DeSantis would have to be a bit closer to the facts than he was/is in the above video. Basulto was born 78-years-ago in Santiago de Cuba and like other legendary Cubans in Miami such as Canosa, Carriles, Bosch, Rodriguez, etc., Basulto has never for a moment shied away from his primary mission in life, the destruction of Castro's Cuba and later also Castro's legacy.

    As mentioned, it was no secret in 1996 that President Bill Clinton was planning to take steps to normalize relations with Cuba. But after the shoot-downs of the two Brothers planes in which Cuba clearly felt provoked and threatened, not only was Clinton forced to forget his normalization plans with Cuba but, as shown in the photo above, Clinton on March 12, 1996, signed the infamous Helms-Burton Act. That to this day is the Congressional Law that even President Obama could not get around when he tried desperately to normalize relations with Cuba. As explained by great Cuban authors like Julia E. Sweig, Ann Louise Bardach, etc., high-paid lawyers drafted the wording of the Helms-Burton Act that stipulates that only Congress can change the most debilitating anti-Cuban measures it mandates, and rich Cubans have made sure they can control Congress, as Obama and others have discovered. By 1996 Cuban billionaires in Miami were believed to have included Jorge Mas Canosa, Rafael Diaz-Balart, the Fanjul brothers, and many more.

     Seconds after signing Helms-Burton into law in 1996, the photo above seems to reveal just how much President Clinton was at the mercy of the Counter Revolutionary Cuban extremists. Study, if you will, Clinton's expression as he stares up at a clapping Bob Menendez who is still the entrenched Cuban-American U. S. Senator from New Jersey. That is so even though just last year Menendez, thanks to a hung jury, barely survived multiple corruption charges brought by the Federal Government after years of investigations into Menendez's dealings with a shady Miami millionaire. The man partially hidden by the woman as he looked down over Clinton's right shoulder is Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the Havana-born son of Rafael Diaz-Balart who was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship and then, after 1959, one of the richest and most visceral anti-Castro Cubans in Miami. Oddly enough, Rafael Diaz-Balart's sister in 1948 became Fidel Castro's wife. Like their father Rafael, Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart have been anti-Castro zealots all their adult lives and both have represented Miami...and Little Havana...in the U. S. Congress with destroying Revolutionary Cuba their goal, as it was their father's.

   Jose Basulto's hometown newspaper, the Miami Herald, often very bravely reports the facts even if the topic is Cuba. An example is the front-page headline above about "Thousands of Exiles Choosing to Return" from wealthy Miami to poor Cuba. Also, on March 21-2001 the Miami Herald had a factual article written by Gail Epstein Nieves and entitled: "Fliers Downed by Migs Violated Cuban Airspace, Colonel Says." George E. Buchner was the U. S. Air Force Colonel. The first sentence was: "Echoing the Cuban government, a defense expert testified Wednesday that two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down in 1996 because -- according to his review -- they had invaded Cuban airspace and appeared to be on a military, not a civilian, mission. Buchner testified that he reviewed transcripts of MIG cockpit-to-ground communications and radar data...on the day of the shoot-down, Feb. 24, 1996. He concluded that the two Brothers planes were blasted from the sky about six miles and 5.5 miles, respectively, off the Cuban coast. Cuba's territorial limit is 12 miles." The article went on to report "multiple violations of Cuban airspace since May 1994 and in at least one case on 13 July 1995 the Brothers pilot had released leaflets over Havana. The United States authorities had issued public statements advising of the potential consequences of unauthorized entry into Cuban airspace and had initiated legal actions against the above-named pilot." Again, those facts were contained in a major article in the Miami Herald on March 22-2001 just as trials in Miami courtrooms, in which Cuba was not represented, were beginning to award hundreds of millions of dollars to the families of the diseased and to the leader, Basulto, of the Brothers to the Rescue planes. But to this day -- in September of 2018 -- political benefactors like Ron DeSantis can spin the Little Havana narrative about the Brothers planes and expect it to GET HIM ELECTED THE NEXT GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA. It's testimony, I believe, to how drastically the Cuban Revolution changed America in January of 1959 when it chased leaders of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship to their lucrative sanctuary on U. S. soil.

     The Ron DeSantis pledge in Little Havana to bring Raul Castro to trial reminds Democracy-lovers of Ana Margarita Martinez. Trials in Miami courtrooms, in which Cuba was not represented, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars being awarded to just about anyone who charged Revolutionary Cuba with just about anything. And Ana took notice. Her husband had left her in Miami and returned to Cuba. So in a Miami courtroom in which Cuba, of course, was not represented, Ana sued Cuba, not her runaway husband. BINGO! LOTTERY!! She won $27.175 million.

Ana's former husband is Juan Pablo Roque.

     After Juan returned to Cuba, a reporter for the Miami New Times got in touch with him on the phone. Juan was asked, "What do you miss most about Miami?" The reporter thought he would say something like, "What I miss most about Miami is, of course, my beautiful former wife Ana!!" But that's not what Juan said. He immediately replied, "MY JEEP!!"

  Yes, the beautiful Ana Margarita Martinez also got to keep Juan's beloved jeep. Miami courtrooms being allowed to conduct Cuban trials is merely one aspect of the Soap Opera-style nuances that sometimes invade such shenanigans that have been allowed to persist on U. S. soil since January of 1959 when the Cuban Revolution dethroned the Batista-Mafia dictatorship on the island. But, of course, the remnants of that dictatorship quickly and permanently rebounded quite nicely in Miami and shortly thereafter in the U. S. Congress and in all Republican White Houses.

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WHY Cuba Fears Trump

With Obvious Reasons!!
{Updated: Sunday, September 9th, 2018}

     This week -- on Sept. 5th, 2018 -- Politico, arguably the most influential media source in Washington because of the extreme left-wing tilt of the once-pertinent Washington Post -- used the AP photo above to headline a massively long article written by Thomas Wright. It's this week's best and most important review of the Trump White House and all Americans should skip the left-wing/right-wing propaganda that saturates America's television "news" coverage and read this article. It expertly explains why the Trump presidency is a dire military threat -- not to big boys like Russia or China, but to smaller more vulnerable nations, like Cuba. The incisive Politico article started with the above photo of John Bolton, a right-winger well-known for his war-mongered views. The Trump administration is now awash with right-wingers from the Bush dynasty. President George W. Bush once shocked America's allies by naming Bolton the U. S. Ambassador to the UN. Of course, it was a brief recess appointment that was withdrawn before it came up for confirmation by the Senate. But President Trump didn't have to consult the Senate when he shocked America's allies by naming Bolton America's TOP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER. The U. S., trying to wiggle out of its trillion-dollar, 17-year war in Afghanistan, certainly doesn't deserve John Boldon as its National Security Adviser because many sane people fear Bolton will ADVISE Trump to settle disagreements -- not with Russia or China, of course -- but with littler nations like Cuba that might later involve cataclysmic regional consequences or even attract participants like Russia or perhaps China.

    With National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, President Trump's two most powerful advisers on Foreign Relations comprise a duo that Americans have a right to consider extremely dangerous, especially Americans who would like to avoid wars and who cringe at hundreds of billions of dollars in new weapons sales to nations like Saudi Arabia to benefit America's vast Military Industrial Complex. {Remember Eisenhower's famed warning? If not, you should dial it up online}. Bolton's war-mongering ideals have been prominent in all recent Republican administrations and, when Democrats control the White House, his war-mongering lucratively pinpoints right-wing Think Tanks and "news" programs. Bolton is fiercely opposed to Revolutionary Cuba. Pompeo, when in Congress, supported or proposed every anti-Cuban measure in Washington.

     America's President Donald Trump -- as of September 7th, 2018 -- has spent 586 days in the White House. Everyone of those days, the mainstream left-wing news media has pushed aside the coverage of news and almost totally concentrated on a coup to overthrow Trump instead of waiting for the 2020 election when the majority of Americans should make that decision. The coup is enormous and probably Trump will indeed succumb to it sometime in 2019, his third year as President. Indeed, the coup-mongers have many billions of dollars and a huge slice of the U. S. media to overwhelm Trump because his fierce enemies include the owners of...the NY Times, Washington Post, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS. It also seems that America's most powerful conservative voices, such as Russ Limbaugh, are now resigned to Trump in 2019 falling victim to the left-wing media coup that might evolve into volatile chaos. And Limbaugh is correct when he says that former President Obama is the elephantine shadow that will assure the success of the coup that will prevent Trump from finishing his 4-year Presidential term. Study the above Limbaugh graphic.

   In America's two-party system, Barack Obama is still the leader of the Democratic Party whose left-wing tilt put the improbable Trump in the White House in the first place. In the last two years, the Dems have swung even further to the extreme left, with Obama still the leader. In two terms as President prior to Trump, Obama proved to be the bravest, most decent, and most intelligent United States president when it came to trying to correct America's ageless extreme cruelty and utter stupidity regarding its quest to first dominate and then exploit Cuba, a process that began in earnest in 1898 with the Spanish-American War. Obama was the first U. S. President to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge arrived in a warship in 1928. And Obama's visit was to show respect for the Cuban people. Obama accomplished many positive things, such as reopening embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time since 1961, but since the 1980s a handful of Batistiano exiles from Little Havana in Miami have dictated Cuban policies in the U. S. Congress and, of course, in all Republican White Houses. So indeed, Cuba would be better off and so would America's worldwide reputation if Obama's Democratic Party replaces the Republican President Trump in the next few months or at least in 2020's election.

    President Trump simply does not have the moral authority or the political expertise of former President Barack Obama.

Also, there is something else in play that the mainstream media does not have the guts to admit, and that is this: There will never be a U. S. president, especially Trump or anyone aligned with the Bush dynasty, that will ever approach Fidel Castro's enduring popularity on the island of Cuba. Castro died at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016 and Cuba's new President is a non-Castro and a non-revolutionary, Miguel Diaz-Canel. But it is still Fidel's Cuba and there remain on the island millions of Fidel idolaters who would fight to the death to defend his revolution. If Americans don't understand that fact it is because they have been lied to, and to support such lies the Batistianos and their sycophants try massively hard to make it "illegal" for Americans to visit the island lest they {HEAVENS FORBID} judge it for themselves.

     One of Fidel's most ardent idolaters is Cuba's new President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, the former Education Minister.

    But Cuba is only an island and the nearby United States is the world's economic and military Superpower. And that's why the image above -- with President Trump pointing at Mauricio Claver-Carone -- symbolizes the distinct possibility that while Trump is President military action, prompted by some concocted PRETEXT, might well occur to at long last overthrow the pugnacious Cuban Revolution. If, indeed, that is Claver-Carone's plan he would hope to take advantage of Trump's obsession with avoiding impeachment and with the fact that even a threat of nuking Cuba would not make much of a ripple in the mainstream media. Every single major Trump adviser -- such as the aforementioned John Bolton and Mike Pompeo -- are fierce anti-Cuban war-hawks. And every single key appointment by Trump that directly affects Cuba is a fierce and self-serving Counter Revolutionary -- led by Mauricio Claver-Carone. Foreshadowing a drastic attempt to overthrow the Cuban government while Trump is President is the glaring fact that Claver-Carone is taking over as America's top man regarding Western Hemisphere Affairs. That means that Cuba and all nations friendly to Cuba in the Western Hemisphere will soon feel the wrath of Mauricio Claver-Carone now that he has the Trump-provided backing of the world's strongest military and the world's largest economy. And greatly exacerbating that basic fact are two things: {1} The mainstream U. S. media doesn't have the guts to tell the U. S. people the significance of Trump pointing to Claver-Carone; and {2} this generation of propagandized and intimidated Americans has neither the courage nor the patriotism to speak-out about whatever Claver-Carone, backed by Commander-in-Chief Trump, has in store for the vulnerable island of Cuba.

Also, 5 updated or pertinent photos:

     This REUTERS photo shows a security guard on the phone outside the U. S. Embassy building in Havana. Former President Obama opened embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time since 1962, but with Republican Trump now the U. S. President, the two embassies are now essentially gutted.

     This Tampa Bay Times photo shows a cruise ship in the far corner preparing to  dock at Havana Harbor.

     This Roberto Garaycoa Martinez photo shows two lovers silhouetted against the well-lit Havana skyline at night.

      This Tubal Palez Hernandez photo shows the late Revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, lower-right, making a speech on Sept. 8-2000 at the Riverside Harlem Church in New York City.

    This Yo Soy Fidel {"I Am Fidel"} photo is an accurate illustration that in September of 2018 Fidel Castro, who died at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016, remains the dominant force in Cuba.

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