Cuban Entrepreneurs Get Boost

But Want Much More 

        The BBC used this AP photo to illustrate an article this week about the changing entrepreneurial landscape in Cuba. A new 32-page document highlighted the latest government reforms aimed at stimulating the island's stagnant economy. Small and medium-sized private businesses, such as the bar depicted above, will soon be able to more fairly compete against state-owned enterprises. Cuba currently allows self-employment in several hundred categories from restaurant owners to hairdressers. However, the BBC investigation revealed that many small and medium business owners still complain that they do not have the same opportunities as state-owned businesses to import supplies and export products.

        Michael Bay is excited about being in Cuba this week to film scenes for "Transformers: The Last Knight." On his Instagram page, Bay wrote: "Amazing place, Cuba! Second American movie shot in Cuba!" 

     Michael Bay's latest "Transformers" blockbuster arrives in Cuba on the heels of Vin Diesel's Fast & Furious-8 production. Taking advantage of President Obama's easing of travel restrictions to the nearby island, they are the first two Hollywood movies to shoot in Cuba since 1961. Like Furious, the cast and crew of Transformers: The Last Knight are racking up frequent flyer miles from the United States to Cuba.

        This Sunday Missouri Governor Jay Nixon will arrive in Cuba at the head of a delegation hoping to pave the way for "solid business ties with Cuba." They will stay until June 1st. Governor Nixon said, "We especially want Cuba to become a significant export market for Missouri's rice growers." Cuba imports a lot of rice, most of it from faraway Vietnam because of the U. S. embargo, which President Obama "is sensibly and bravely easing," according to Governor Nixon. Louisiana and other states also crave Cuba's rice business.

       This week the Orlando Sentinel has an excellent update on the softening of U.S.-Cuban relations under President Obama. The article is entitled: "Defiance or Compliance: Embargo, Cuba-Americans and Obama." It references the "hard-liners" still opposing Obama's Cuban overtures but notes that younger Cuban-Americans even in Miami support Obama's detente and are benefiting sharply from easier contact with the island. The article includes a gallery of 34 photos taken by Kevin Spear to illustrate the changing relationship. The photo above and the following five are courtesy of Kevin Spear/Orlando Sentinel.

American tourists can enjoy a more welcoming Cuba.

Still a familiar sight in Cuba.

Cuba adjusting to Obama's boom in tourism.

 Tourists enjoying the tropical island.

Female Cuban soldier pointing out a prized souvenir.

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Reviving Cuba's Economy

  And Its Famed Cigars 
{Wednesday, May 25th, 2016}

      The Wall Street Journal this week published an updated article on the Cuban economy that is trying real hard to survive...and even thrive...amidst President Obama's harmonious sanity and the still lingering cruel insanity of Congress's Batistiano Helms-Burton law that was intended to finish off Revolutionary Cuba back in 1996. The article was written by Tripp Mickle and featured the usual superb photos, such as the one above, by Lisette Poole. It's ominous title was: "Cuba's Cigar Industry Isn't Ready for the American Moment." That assessment is correct. The brief window afforded by President Obama cannot suddenly offset the deeply ingrained imperial bawdiness of the previous ten U. S. presidential administrations, even including three Democratic presidents -- Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton -- whose efforts to loosen the stranglehold were cruelly erased by...an assassination, provocative terrorism, and a bought-and-paid-for Congress.  

       The aforementioned  Wall Street Journal article stated: "Cuba is trying to boost cigar production in anticipation of the end of the U. S. trade embargo but tobacco fields lie fallow, and the country isn't likely to be ready for the demand boom. The fertile soil here in the Pinar del Rio valley has long produced a richly flavored, slow-burning tobacco that is, without exaggeration, the envy of the world. Some of Cuba's best-paid workers roll the cured leaves by hand into cigars carrying the names Cohiba and Montecristo and Partagas, luxury brands as coveted by aficionados as the sparkling wine of Champagne or the simple malt whiskies of Scotland. For more than 50 years, Cuba hasn't been able to sell its cigars to its giant neighbor to the north, the world's largest cigar-market. Now, with the U. S. moving to restore trade with Cuba, excitement is building that a great opportunity is at hand. If the trade embargo is lifted anytime soon, however, Cuba is unlikely to be ready."

       The well-researched WSJ update on Cuba's cigar industry stated that the island "exported 91 million cigars in 2015, down 58% from 2006." With the best soil in the world for tobacco leaves, the WSJ explained that "Thousands of acres of the world's best tobacco-growing soil are now fallow with thorny 8-foot bushes known as Marabu choking the red, rich soil." In other words, Cuba's cigar industry, like sugar and all of its other industries, is the victim of the U. S. Cuban policy that has been dictated by the revengeful remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that was booted off the island to a safe and lucrative haven on U. S. soil.

        When Barack Obama became President of the United States in 2009, he was forced to march to the dictates of a Cuban policy that he and the rest of the world detested. Amazingly, even with Batistianos and Republicans firmly in control of the U. S. Congress, President Obama has skillfully used his Executive Powers to impose -- in the final months of his two-term presidency -- at least a degree of Cuban-related sanity and decency to the hallowed U. S. democracy that shamefully teamed with the Mafia to support the thieving-brutal Batista dictatorship in Cuba in the 1950s and then exacerbated that disaster by supporting the overthrown Batistianos and Mafiosi on U. S. soil from 1959 till today...at least till the Obama presidency.

       Prior to 1959, meaning prior to the Cuban Revolution, the U. S. and Cuba were the closest of trade partners, with the MIami-to-Havana commerce alone dominating the Florida Straits and the Caribbean. From a dollar standpoint, the nexus seemingly created millionaires minute-by-minute. But there was a problem. The newly minted millionaires were, in the 1950s, Batistianos, Mafiosi and greedy U. S. businessmen and politicians who backed the brutal dictatorship. There was never a consideration of evenly distributing all that commerce and wealth. That fact, coupled with the extreme brutality designed to perpetuate it, spawned the Cuban Revolution that shocked the world on January 1, 1959 by chasing the Batistianos and Mafiosi to the U. S. where, as it turned out, they still had mammoth support from greedy U. S. businessmen who have been able to purchase enough of the U. S. democracy to enact their own Cuban laws in a for-sale Congress. That unsavory cast of characters since 1959 has been trying to recapture Cuba while facing, till Obama, little resistance. The fact that they haven't succeeded remains utterly shocking.

        For sure, in Batista's Cuba prior to the revolution the island was awash in money. But almost every penny or peso was hoarded by the Batistianos, the Mafiosi and the politically savvy U. S. businessmen who supported them. The graphic above shows that there was no thought of helping ordinary Cubans and, indeed, extreme brutality was heaped upon them if they complained. In Revolutionary Cuba, despite the embargo since 1962, while everyday Cubans are certainly not rich, they have "metrics" praised by the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization, which include free and excellent education, free and excellent health care, free or subsidized shelter, free or subsidized food, and, according to the UN, Cubans are among "the world's safest people." The U. S. rates Cuba's Gross National Product PPC {purchasing power parity} at $212 billion, which is $18,796 per capita. And the U. S. says Cuba's nominal GNP is $79 billion, which is $7,274 per capita. That's different from the "20 dollars a month" the U. S. media harps on. Remittances from Cuban-Americans in Miami to relatives in Cuba total about $3 billion a year. And the vast disparity in wealth from the Batista years is not remotely evident in Revolutionary Cuba.  

       Since 1959, the tactics employed to regain control of Cuba have included assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs military attack, terrorism that included the bombing of Cuban hotels to discourage tourism, and a trade embargo imposed in 1962 for the stated purpose, according to declassified U. S. documents, of starving and depriving Cubans on the island for the purpose of causing them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government, presumably so the Miami-based Batistianos-Mafiosi could race back the next day. For all those decades, the Cuban narrative in the U. S. has been dictated by leading remnants of the Batista dictatorship who also have easily enacted fiercely anti-Cuban and pro-Batistiano laws in the U. S. Congress. In that milieu, the majority of U. S. citizens meekly acquiesced to whatever the Batistianos, hiding behind the skirts of the U. S. superpower, had in store for Cuba...even when it involves {to this day} unlimited streams of tax dollars paying for endless anti-Cuban/pro-Batistiano schemes. Yet, inspired by a more decent President, Mr. Obama, and by a younger generation of Americans and Cuban-Americans, such cowardly and undemocratic acquiescence has markedly subsided. As you can see from the graphic above, today the vast majority of younger Cuban-Americans even in Miami-Dade, which is also known as Little Havana, now favor ending the embargo and dealing sanely with Cuba. Yet, lest we forget, never has the U. S. dealt democratically with Cuba. So, not even remarkable inroads by Obama, even coupled with what appears to be a much more enlightened and patriotic younger generation of Americans, can be expected to forever hold off a few well-heeled and well-backed Batistianos. 

      But this graphic offers hope. It shows Mr. Obama dressed as Santa Claus gazing across the Florida Straits at Cuba. A huge goody bag is slung over his shoulder as he embraces the hope that his orchestration of air, land and sea business ties with Cuba will thwart the nefarious designs of a Republican-controlled Congress and even a future Republican president when it comes to Cuba. Obama considers the U. S. a democracy and Cuba a sovereign nation. Republicans consider Cuba a piggy-bank.

       President Obama's historic New Cuban Policy has already put into motion numerous obstacles for the Batistianos and their sycophants who still maintain that they will begin dismantling Obama's positive advances "the day he leaves the White House," which is a day that is fast approaching in January, 2017. As indicated above, Obama is allowing U. S. tourists to bring back some "Cuban goods," even including a limited amount of cigars. This week's Wall Street Journal article discussed the "fallow" fields of soil in Cuba, the best in the world for growing tobacco leaves, being overrun with thorny Marabu bushes. But if the embargo is lifted Cuban farmers would have the tractors and other equipment to revitalize that soil and once again be able to sell their world-class cigars to the world's largest market, the United States.

Freed from the embargo, Cuba could sell cigars {etc.} in the U. S.

And speaking of cigars:

President Kennedy famously loved Cuban cigars.

JFK's favorite cigar was the H. Upmann Petit.

        John Kennedy's truncated first-term as President of the United States was tightly tied to the tumultuous U.S.-Cuban quagmire. JFK in 1960 inherited a scheme from the Eisenhower administration to recapture Cuba, a dire plan devised by powerful right-wingers such as Eisenhower's Vice President Nixon and the Dulles brothers, Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles. JFK carried through on those plans, which included trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs attack, using planes from Florida to bomb sugar and tobacco farms, using speedboats to strafe coastal fishing cabins, etc., etc. But history also registers this fact: On Friday, Feb. 2, 1962, JFK called his Press Secretary Pierre Salinger into his Oval Office and told Salinger to "get me 1,000 of those Cuban cigars." Salinger, also a cigar aficionado, quickly rounded up 1,200 of JFK's favorite Cuban cigars, which were H. Upmann Petits, and gave them to the President the next morning -- Saturday, Feb. 3, 1962. After getting his supply of cigars, JFK immediately reached into his desk drawer, pulled out Document 3447, and signed it into law. Document 3447 was and is the document that legalized the United States embargo of Cuba.

        This is Pierre Salinger shown in 1962 smoking a Cuban cigar when he was President Kennedy's Press Secretary. Salinger later became an author and a correspondent for ABC News. It was Salinger who confirmed his purchase of the 1200 cigars that his boss, JFK, insisted on before he would sign the Cuban embargo into law. Salinger also confirmed another historic fact. In November of 1963, President Kennedy called his top aides into the Oval Office, including Salinger, and told them, "After I return from the southern trip to Miami and Dallas, the top priority of this administration will be to normalize relations with Cuba."

But Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
He would easily have been elected to a second term in 1964.
His death ended his plan "to normalize relations with Cuba."

      President John F. Kennedy's decision in November of 1963 and President Barack Obama's currently evolving decision represent the only two truly serious efforts since 1959 to normalize relations with Cuba. 

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Still Hating Cuba's Revolution

 Unforgiving Forever 

        Gloria Estefan, 58, was born in Havana in 1957 during the Batista dictatorship and the strengthening Cuban Revolution. The photo is courtesy of TV3.ie. Her family fled Cuba when Batista was overthrown on January 1, 1959. Settling in Miami, Ms. Estefan's father fought in the CIA-directed Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba in April of 1961. Ms. Estefan, a world-class singer, went on to become one of many extremely wealthy Cuban-Americans who will never forgive Fidel Castro for overthrowing the Batista rule in their homeland. 

         This is a view of the Miami skyline from Gloria Estefan's mansion, which sits on 1,339 of South Florida's expensive acres. The photo is courtesy of Celebrity Worth.com. She's worth over $500 million.

        In this month of May in 2016, Gloria Estefan has undoubtedly noticed that some of the world's most famed singers -- Smokey Robinson, Usher, Beyonce, Mick Jagger, Dave Mathews, etc. -- have recently visited Cuba, taking advantage of President Obama's herculean efforts to normalize relations with the island. In the past month, for the first time since 1961, Hollywood has also sent superstars and huge production crews to Cuba to shoot major movies. But for some, like Ms. Estefan, there will be no trips back to Cuba if the revolution is not overturned. She told Billboard Magazine, "I personally would find it very difficult to go there. I can't get on stage with a million Cubans in front of me and not...say something."

        One of Miami's most visible Cuban-American billionaires is Miguel Fernandez. He left Cuba in 1964 at age 12 and later served in the U. S. Army. He owns a $36 million mansion in Biscayne Bay and thousands of acres of very valuable Florida land, including the splendorous 4,000-acre Little River Plantation. He also owns 25,000 acres in Alabama and lots of sea, land, and air toys that might make non-billionaires blush.

         Like many ultra-rich Cuban-Americans, Miguel Fernandez is best known nationally as a financial supporter/associate of the Bush dynasty, which has produced one CIA director, a two-term Vice President, a two-term President, a one-term President, and a two-term Governor of Florida. In 2016 Mr. Fernandez was still contributing millions of dollars in dire hopes of putting a third Bush, Jeb, in the White House.

          Jeb Bush's well-funded 2016 presidential bid unceremoniously fell by the wayside, as did those of Cuban-Americans Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. The demise of the Bush dynasty may not be at hand but it for sure has been blunted. And that's probably the second best news Cuba has had since George H. W. Bush way back in the 1950s began assuming the political mantle of his father, the controversial Prescott Bush.

      As an antidote to the Bush dynasty, the Obama presidency has represented at least a temporary window for Cuba to chart its own course, even one that includes the U. S. as a partner or at least not an all-out enemy. Yet, five years from now, his overtures might seem like a mirage because much sincere cooperation can easily be shattered by just one pre-conceived incident, such as the Brothers to the Rescue "humanitarian" ventures in the Florida Straits. Obama's Cuba, in other words, is tenuous at best.

        An excellent correspondent for NPR, Mandalit del Barco, this weekend {May 21st} posted an interesting article entitled: "The U. S. Influence On Cuba's Rapid Cultural Change." The first line noted that: "As big-name celebrities flock to the territory, Cuban culture is undergoing rapid change." She tagged that sentence with a pertinent question: "But do Cubans want Chanel stores and Rolling Stones concerts?" Ms. Barco explores the pros and cons of President Obama's dramatic influences on U.S.-Cuban relations, which have vacillated wildly with the 1898 Spanish-American War, the perpetual U. S. occupation of Guantanamo Bay beginning in 1903, peaceful decades of coexistence under the U. S. yoke, the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship beginning in 1952, a bloody revolution from 1953 till 1959, a Cold War, a Hot War, a blockade, terrorism that included the bombing of Cubana Flight 455, and now significant but still tentative steps towards what's called detente or rapprochement. While many Americans naively assume that all modern-day Cubans on the island yearn to get rich and be Americanized as soon as possible, that is not necessarily so. The fact that Ms. Barco comprehends that many Cubans on the island want to Cubanize their nation, apart from about seven centuries of Spanish and American imperialism, makes her refreshing update worth Googling.

       Left to their own instincts, everyday Cubans and everyday Americans would be Good Friends and mutually beneficial neighbors. But since 1492, when Columbus discovered both countries, the everyday people have not been able to make those decisions. Such decisions have been made for the majority of Americans and Cubans by a handful of far more greedier Americans and Cubans. Unless that age-old dilemma is rectified, ephemeral periods of peace -- such as the current one orchestrated by Mr. Obama -- will fade into sorrowful oblivion like many other once-fond hopes that soon turned into illusions.

       Cuba's feisty young television journalist, Cristina Escobar, speaks for a lot of twentysomethings who believe Cubans on the island, not those in Miami and Washington, should shape Cuba's future. She told U. S. journalist Tracey Eaton, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans." A prime student of U.S.-Cuban history, she remembers what she calls "Lucky Luciano's idea of democracy." 

Question: Why is Cristina Escobar an expert on Lucky Luciano?

Answer: Because she is an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations. 

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Cuba's New Dawn

It's Happening!!
{Updated: Saturday, May 21st, 2016}

      Key representatives of Spain and Cuba are spending this week shaking hands on important new trade relations between the two nations. The Cuban contingent is led by Orlando Hernandez, the President of the island's Chamber of Commerce. Spain's mission is headed by Jaime Garcia-Legaz, his country's Secretary of Commerce. Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo had earlier visited Cuba to set up this week's discussions. Mr. Garcia-Margallo applauded U. S. President Barack Obama's "brave new approach to Cuba." Spain is currently Cuba's second leading trade partner, behind only China and now ahead of troubled Venezuela. The Obama-orchestrated openings offer Cuba its long-awaited new dawn.

       A bright and exciting new dawn has arrived on the island of Cuba for these teenage schoolgirls, a testament to President Obama's historic efforts in drastically altering...not reversing yet but sharply altering...America's half-century of severely hurting innocent Cubans on the island in the guise of "hurting Castro." The New Dawn is startling and there are 11 million Cubans who are deserving of it.

       Starting this week, another major Hollywood movie began shooting in Cuba, taking advantage of long-closed doors that President Obama has opened. "Transformers: The Last Knight" is a franchise that has already earned a whopping $3.7 billion before the fifth huge production began this week in Cuba. 

      Michael Bay, one of Hollywood's most powerful directors, took his massive crew to Cuba to flim "Transformers: The Last Knight." His superstar actors include Mark Wahlberg and Josh Duhamel.

        This is the celebrated cast of the "Fast & Furious 8" movie on location in Cuba just before the arrival of this week's huge "Transformers" production. "Fast & Furious" is also a mammoth multi-billion-dollar franchise with a huge cast led by the two superstars on the left in the above photo -- Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez. Prior to Obama, such gigantic American movies would never have been shot in Cuba.

       Beyonce {above} is among a long, long list of  world-famed American and British entertainers who have recently visited Cuba. And an influx of everyday Americans has sold out some Cuban hotels into 2017.

       With unmatched courage, intelligence and decency, President Obama has been the first American president since the 1950s with the guts and skill to stand up to the viscerally powerful Cuban-American hardliners and their right-wing sycophants in the U. S. Congress who have heretofore been unchallenged in their self-serving dictation of America's Cuban policy. The Obama quote above reveals something he has created, legalizing business openings, that no other American president was able to accomplish.

       President Obama himself became the first sitting U. S. president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928 to have the guts to visit Cuba. Coolidge had visited on a U. S. warship to emphasize America's pre-revolutionary dominance of the island. Obama thrilled Cubans by visiting the island on his gigantic Air Force One airplane and offering sincere friendship to the Cuban people whom he is trying to help, not hurt.

        In Cuba in April of 2016 President Obama assured Cuba and the world that "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." He made that exact quotation because he well knew that, prior to his presidency, Cuba had every reason to fear threats from the U. S., mainly Miami and the U. S. Congress. Moreover, President Obama is abundantly aware that, as his two-term presidency winds down, A Republican successor in the White House aligned with a Republican-dominated Congress would, once again, give Cuba ample reason to "fear threats from the United States" if his detente is rolled back. 

            But rest assured, President Obama has opened some massive doors to Cuba that even a Republican president and a Republican-dominated Congress will have trouble closing. The reopening of embassies in Washington and Havana for the first time since 1961 are among the many Obama-opened doors that most people in the world, including most Cuban-Americans, want to remain forever open. 

       For over five shameful decades prior to Obama, everyday Americans were the only people in the world denied the freedom to travel to Cuba. That abomination was based on the fact that since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 the cowardice of Americans as a whole has permitted a handful of the most vicious Cuban exiles, aligned with a handful of the most vicious right-wingers in Congress, to dictate America's Cuban policy to suit their revengeful, economic and political whims -- and easily make the abominations legal via laws routinely handed down by a few people within the hallowed halls of a dysfunctional, bought-and-paid-for, right-wing tilted Congress. Congress still has those "laws" intact but President Obama has skillfully and bravely sliced wickedly into many of them, such as by greatly easing the "legal travel to Cuba for U. S. citizens." Prior to President Obama, as the majority of Americans sat on their collective rear ends, America's Cuban policy -- ridiculed by the entire world -- had been purely to hurt Cuba while also greatly enriching and empowering a select group of Cuban-Americans, especially in Miami.

       Thanks to President Obama, Cubans this year have had the pleasure of watching the magnificent Adonia Cruise Ship arrive in Havana harbor from Miami. During its week-long stay, it also docked in the Cuban ports at Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba with its 704 well-heeled and excited passengers. Such cruises had been banned for five decades. Cardinal Cruise Lines will now make twice-monthly cruises to Cuba as other cruise lines and many other American companies are also trying to engage with Cuba.

           Thanks to President Obama, Cubans in the historic year of 2016 also got to see Air Force One, with Mr. Obama aboard, flying low over Havana on its way to landing at Jose Marti International Airport.

         And thanks to President Obama, starting this fall, for the first time since 1962, commercial airplane flights -- and not just cumbersome charter flights -- will be allowed to fly from the United States to Cuba.

         One Cuban basking in the glory of President Obama's new dawn for Cuba is Cristina Escobar, the island's talented newscaster. "Since the Cuban Revolution gave us sovereignty in 1959," she says, "my generation and my mother's generation of Cubans on the island have longed for the day the United States would accept us as an independent nation. Before Mr. Obama that was not the case and maybe after Mr. Obama it will not be the case. But, at least, he has shown respect for Cuba that, even if it is only of an evanescent nature, has been refreshing and hopeful. We are neighbors. We should also be friends." 

And by the way: 

           This political cartoon gem is courtesy of the great Patrick Chappatte and the New York Times. He expertly expresses the firm opinion that the current status of the Democratic presidential sweepstakes has pugnacious Bernie with tight grips around Hillary's ankles, which is preventing her from officially going to war against her surprisingly huge Republican challenger Trump. I do my best to avoid, with a quick-trigger TV remote, the obnoxiously biased pundits. But I go to great lengths to consult excellent political cartoonists to get a pulse on the political landscape. Mr. Chappatte says a lot with just two words.

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