A 60-Year Quest to Recapture Cuba!!
And a 60-Year Insult to Democracy!
{Updated: Wednesday, January 24th, 2018}
{Updated: Wednesday, January 24th, 2018}
One of America's greatest experts regarding Cuba and U.S.-Cuban relations is Philip Peters. He was a State Department official in the Batistiano-loving/Cuba-hating George H. W. Bush administration. He is Vice President of the Lexington Institute. He is a highly respected author-writer and in 2007 he started the blog The Cuban Triangle to explain the tenuous tentacles that connect Havana, Miami, and Washington. His very first post on his blog, by the way, was entitled: "What Next for Posada?" Luis Posada Carriles, of course, is the most famous/infamous Cuban-American terrorist whose imprint on U.S.-Cuban relations from 1959 till today remains one...but just one...of the greatest insults to the U. S. democracy. {Posada turns 90 on Feb. 15th and remains today a very heralded citizen of Miami}. The current Philip Peters essay on his The Cuban Triangle blog is entitled: "The Havana Health Mystery." Within the bowels of that topical headline, Philip Peters expertly and fairly discusses the latest pretext for self-serving Cuban-American extremists who are presently led, as Mr. Peters points out, by Miami's Counter-Revolutionary contribution to the U. S. Senate, Marco Rubio. Of course, because Philip Peters' current update on "The Havana Health Mystery" is fair and balanced, Americans are not supposed to read it because it contradicts Rubio's propaganda. And that, unfortunately, is the way a few self-serving Cuban-Americans extremists have dominated America's Cuban policy for the past 60 years...or ever since they were booted off the island by an historic phenomenon known as the Cuban Revolution, which has affected the U. S. even more than it has affected the sovereign and neighboring island of Cuba.
Nevertheless, I believe it is important that brave, democracy-loving Americans read and study the current essay posted on Philip Peters' The Cuban Triangle blog. His expertise examines the present pretext that right-wing extremists like Rubio are using as their latest reason -- the alleged "sonic attacks on Americans in Cuba" -- to implore the Superpower U. S. government to recapture Cuba for them. The previous 60 years, as Mr. Peters references, included the criminally hatched but long-classified OPERATION MONGOOSE and Operation Northwoods. "Mongoose" was the record-setting and government-funded assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and "Northwoods" was the even more infamous plan to murder innocent Americans so the murders could be blamed on Cuba. Of course, proselytized Americans still are not suppose to Google those two schemes even though they have been de-classified since the 1990s. Likewise, Americans today are not supposed to dial up Philip Peters' fair and expert appraisal of Rubio's current pretext -- the "sonic attacks" -- because Peters expertly challenges Rubio's latest excuse to assault, nuke, or otherwise attack Revolutionary Cuba. But just for the record, here are some of the highlights of Philip Peters' "The Havana Health Mystery" article:
"This is a doozy even in the context of U.S.-Cuba relations. Within weeks Senator Rubio was urging the Secretary of State..."
That preamble by Peters referenced Rubio's efforts to use the "alleged sonic attacks" as the Mongoose/Northwoods-type excuses to assault Cuba. Peters continued with these factual refutations of Rubio's pretext:
"The shorthand for what happened in Havana quickly became 'sonic attacks' even though there is no evidence of attacks, sonic or otherwise. What we really have is a health mystery that has confounded U. S., Canadian, and Cuban investigations. The FBI, after sending four experts and their equipment four times to Havana, has concluded that there is no evidence of a sonic attack. But you have to hand it to Rubio and his allies: Sonic attacks is quite a branding triumph without having to argue the merits of diplomatic relations with Cuba. They scored a substantial policy victory that has hobbled diplomatic relations. Senator Rubio was quite sure that no one from Miami could be involved."
With those comments, Philip Peters was referencing the fact that Rubio and his ilk also are "quite sure that no one from Miami" could possibly have been involved in the terrorist bombing of the civilian, child-laden Cuban airplane that sent 73 innocent souls into the ocean and, of course, Rubio is also "quite sure that no one from Miami" had anything to do with the terrorist car-bombing of the decent and brave Cuban-American newsman in Miami who broadcast opposition to such terrorism. Moreover, even today Americans are not supposed to Google facts about such things as the Miami-based airplane bombing of CUBANA FLIGHT 455 or the car-bombing of EMILIO MILIAN, further evidence that the Cuban Revolution says a lot more about the U. S. than it says about Cuba itself. And Philip Peters astutely suggested that January of 2018 is a particularly crucial time for the U. S. to leave its dastardly Cuban policy in the hands of a handful of self-serving extremists like Rubio. Peters put it this way:
"Cuba is about to go through a leadership transition and the uncertainly that will come with a government that, for the first time in 60 years, is not led by a Castro."
But such sane, decent, and accurate words from an expert like Philip Peters are not supposed to factor into the U. S. democracy's Cuban policy, one dictated by extremists like Rubio and one that is condemned in total unanimity by a 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations when not even the Obama administration could support it. But in the Trump era in the past year, the unanimity of world opinion and the majority opinions of Americans and Cuban-Americans are not supposed to count but the anti-American/anti-democracy opinions of Marco Rubio are supposed to count.
The decent Obama has been out of the White House just over a year. In defiance of a Batistiano-controlled Congress, Obama's Cuban policies were approved by most Americans, most Cuban-Americans and the entire world. But, as indicated above, Rubio from Miami and the U. S. Senate, with self-serving idiocy from his fire-spewing mouth, opposed Obama's Cuban decency that was probably the only topic in the world that could have attained unanimous support in a very diverse world.
And that brings us up-to-date with this photo of Senator Marco Rubio in January of 2018. It was taken on Jan. 9-2018 when Rubio chaired an anti-Cuban session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Western Hemisphere Committee. Only anti-Cuba Cuban-American zealots, it seems, can get elected to the United States Congress from Miami and Newark, and they immediately apply for Foreign Relations & Western Hemisphere Committees and therefore such anti-Cuban zealots as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Robert Menendez, and now Rubio have chaired such committees so they can better assault Cuba, a foreign nation in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, on January 9th, 2018, Rubio chaired the Senate's latest massive anti-Cuban boondoggle, using the "sonic attacks" that Philip Peters fairly addressed as the new Mongoose & Northwest-type pretext to defeat the Cuban Revolution once-and-for-all to...WHAT? Restore the Batistiano-Mafiosi rule??
IINCREDIBLY, within the bowels of the great American democracy, that Jan. 9th-2018 U. S. Senate assault on Cuba was chaired by Marco Rubio and co-chaired by Bob Menendez. They are not only the two most anti-Cuban Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Senate, they are easily the two most controversial U. S. Senators. Rubio reached the U. S. Senate from Miami with his bio still claiming that his parents fled the tyranny of Castro's Cuba while, in fact, they fled the tyranny of Batista's Cuba LONG BEFORE Americans ever head of Fidel Castro. The best true biographical update on Rubio is by Ken Silverstein, one of America's greatest and most respected journalists. Americans are not supposed to Google Silverstein's easily dialed-up and in-depth Rubio bio because Silverstein minutely documents Rubio as "head and shoulders above everyone else" when it comes to chicanery and corruption in Washington and that says quite a lot. As for Rubio's Cuban-American co-chair in that U. S. Senate Jan. 9-2018 assault on Cuba, Menendez after a bruising 3-month trial in 2017 was bailed out by a hung-jury that failed to convict him on any of the 18 felony charges expensively prosecuted by the U. S. Justice Department after 3 long and expensive years of investigating the Menendez shenanigans with a convicted Miami felon and multi-millionaire. Yet, in this month of January-2018 the U. S. Justice department has announced it will ONCE AGAIN try to convict Menendez in yet another federal courthouse although trying to convict a high-profile Cuban-American in Miami or Newark courts is an almost impossible task. AND YET, Americans still tolerate Rubio & Menendez as the Chair and co-Chair of this month's farcical U. S. Senate assault on Cuba, an assault in which Chairman Marco Rubio and Co-Chairman Bob Menendez punctuated the farce with "testimony" from the most radical anti-Cuban propagandists such as the infamous Havana-born benefactor Otto Reich.
In a review of the 60-year Cuban-exile extremists assault on Cuba, I invite democracy-loving Americans to dial up Ken Silverstein's unchallenged and lushly documented article that details why Rubio is "heads and shoulders above everyone else" when it comes to chicanery and corruption in Washington political circles.
While the controversial Rubio chaired that Jan.9-2018 anti-Cuban farce in the Senate, the co-chair was Robert Menendez. Yes, the Robert Menendez that the FBI and the U. S. Justice department for three years has been trying to convict on multiple corruption and bribery charges as delineated above. In 2017 after a 3-month trial in federal court in his backyard in Newark, Menendez was bailed out by a hung-jury. But in January of 2018 the U. S. government announced it will not give up in trying to prosecute Menendez, meaning the expensive attempt is still ongoing.
The farcical anti-democracy United States Senate assault this month on Cuba -- incredibly Chaired by Marco Rubio and co-Chaired by Robert Menendez -- was highlighted by the "EXPERT TESTIMONY" of Otto Reich. Born in Havana 72 years ago, Otto Reich epitomizes the extreme favor Fidel Castro in January of 1959 bestowed on exiles like Reich when the Cuban Revolution chased the Batista-Mafia leaders off the island to U. S. soil. As Cuban-American billionaires like the Bush-anointed Jorge Mas Canosa and like the politically savvy Fanjul brothers quickly learned, getting extremely rich being anti-Castro in the U. S. even beat getting rich being aligned with the Batista-Mafia leaders in Cuba back in the 1950s. After all, fleecing an island is not nearly as lucrative as fleecing the world's economic Superpower, which has proved to be quite easy with the proper political connections. Otto Reich as a Bush prodigy in the U. S. has personified that basic fact for decades and no one knows better than Reich how rewarding anti-Castro propaganda can be in the United States...EVEN AFTER THE DEATH OF FIDEL CASTRO AT AGE 90 ON NOV. 25-2016. And so...on Jan. 9th, 2018 the two anti-Castro CO-CHAIRS IN THE U. S. SENATE, Rubio and Menendez, naturally called on the "EXPERT TESTIMONY" of Otto Reich.
From 1959 till today, the only trick the anti-Castro extremists in the U. S. needed to know was to hook-up with the Bush dynasty and that started in the 1950s long before 3 Bush presidential terms and 2 Bush terms as Florida's governor. Canosa was the all-time most important BUSH POINT MAN but, as indicated above, Otto Reich earned that moniker too.
Somewhere in the last 60 years, America 's democracy-lovers deserved for such things as the Otto Reich alliance with the Bush dynasty to have been ferreted out and corrected. But the Rubio-Menendez-Reich menagerie playing out in the U. S. Senate on January 9th-2018 proves that such an alliance is still to this day far too lucrative for far too many in the United States.
While Marco Rubio insults democracy by claiming his War on Cuba is designed to hurt "the Castros," every intelligent observer with even a modicum of guts fully realizes that Rubio and his ilk primarily hurt totally innocent everyday Cubans like the lady vendor depicted above. Rich thugs in a nearby rich nation hurting non-rich people in a weaker nation. Self-serving miscreants in the USA have gotten away with that for 60 years.
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While the mainstream U. S. media, for whatever reasons {the Emilio Milian car-bombing?}, still promotes Rubio as a Mother Teresa-like saint, his hometown paper, the Miami Herald, has had recent Editorials saying he is "out of touch," apparently with everything except assaulting Cubans on the island, promoting himself, and catering to right-wing billionaire donors. The Miami Herald, see above, provided an entire article for four female Cuban entrepreneurs to rant their outrage at Rubio, calling him a coward for at least not bothering to listen to them or meet with them to learn how much he is hurting not the Castros but everyday Cubans who had benefited from openings provided by former President Obama, openings that Rubio is determined to squash with headwinds provided by President Trump. The Miami Herald Editorial Board obviously agreed with the four female Cuban entrepreneurs, not with their own "out of touch" Rubio.