Cuba Changing While U. S. Still Fights Cold War

Cuban Changes Coming Fast and Furious
(Perhaps as A Prelude to the Dire Illnesses Afflicting Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez)
{Updated Wednesday, January 16, 2013}

       The AFP/Getty Images photo above depicted a scene that has been playing out all over the island of Cuba since Monday, January 14, 2013. That's when Cuba's revolutionary government began allowing its citizens to leave the country and return on their own initiative to the island. A government official above is explaining the new rules to eager Cubans. It's the latest in an ongoing series of major changes.

       Starting on Jan. 14-2013 Cubans were allowed to board a Cubana Airlines flight and fly to a foreign country with practically no restrictions, a monumental change in policy that will have ripple effects far beyond the island, and not just in nearby Miami. The reviled tarjeta blanca, the white card or exit visa that Cuba used to control who could leave the island, is no more. Also, no longer is Cuba requiring a notarized letter of invitation from a foreign host. Now Cubans need only a visa from the country they are traveling to. In preparation for Monday, Cuba had set up 195 locations around the island for its citizens to apply for their passports. This comes on the heels of Cubans being much more readily afforded access to cell phones and computers, being allowed to buy and sell cars and homes, being allowed to lease or purchase farm land, being allowed to apply for government loans to start a myriad of businesses ranging from beauty salons to restaurants, etc. In other words, even Revolutionary Cuba can make major changes; when it comes to Cuba, the U. S. policy is strictly in the hands of a few Cuban-exile zealots and their acolytes, which renders majority opinions obsolete, as it has done so caustically since 1959.

         The above AP/Ramon Espinosa photo on January 15th shows a Cuban lady with her passport in hand snuggled in an enthused line making an effort to respond to the government's new decision to allow its citizens to visit foreign countries and then return to the beleaguered but eternally fascinating island.

       By the way, Andrea Rodriguez {above}, an excellent Associated Press journalist based in Havana, is the best source for insightful, unbiased Cuban news on items affecting everyday Cubans on the island.

     Will Ostick {above}, spokesman for the U. S. State Department Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, told CBS-TV over the weekend: "The United States welcomes any reforms that allow Cubans to depart from and return to their country freely." Presumably, Ostick could not say more, at least until the State Department early this week gets permission from Cuban-exile zealots to elaborate. For example, the U. S. restrictions on Americans departing from and returning "to their country freely" will not be altered although Americans have longed for such freedoms in regards to Cuba for a long time now. Ostick also needs to check with his superiors to see if the monumental change in Cuba will effect U. S. laws that pertain only to Cuba, such as the blatantly biased "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy that favors Cuban exiles and emigrants over all others. Ostick this week also might ask his boss, "Secretary Clinton, how in the world do we explain to the American people that Cuba now has far less restrictions on letting its people fly to the United States than the United States has on allowing its people to fly to Cuba?"

       U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could be expected to reply somewhat in this manner: "Now, Will, you know well enough that Americans don't care if their freedoms are infringed upon when it comes to Cuba. And anyway, the NFL playoffs are underway. Concentrate on the really important things."

        Of course, Secretary Clinton is as helpless as President Obama and the majority of Americans when it comes to altering the arduous, duplicitous, mendacious, and inscrutable U. S. policy regarding Cuba.

      Americans tend not to care about how the U. S. policy regarding Cuba smears the image of democracy around the world. England is America's best friend. The above photo depicts an image that flooded British newspapers and television outlets this past weekend. It shows a massive protest at the U. S. embassy in London denouncing President Obama's failure to live up to his promise to close the prison facility at the U. S. Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, which Amnesty International has called "the gulag of our time." The Brits above were also protesting "the theft" of the luscious Guantanamo Naval Base from Cuba, which occurred shortly after the U. S. victory in 1898's Spanish-American War.

       Brits, but not Americans, are ashamed that there is one thriving McDonald's {above} on the island of Cuba -- at Guantanamo Naval Base! U. S. naval personnel generally relish assignments in Cuba. There are also KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and other such restaurants at Gitmo, the colloquially referred to term for Guantanamo Bay. Today there are 9,500 U. S. navy personnel and 7,000 civilians working there. Some 400 miles of paved roads line the complex that also includes five major swimming pools, four outdoor movie houses, state-of-the-art work-out facilities, tennis courts, etc....a veritable Caribbean paradise! 

       A huge British warship {above} sailed proudly into Havana Harbor back on June 14, 2012. It is the RFA Fort Rosalie. It's Commanding Officer, Captain Martin Gould, announced at the welcoming ceremony: "Our visit to Havana cements relations between our two countries." England is concerned with the drug trade in the Caribbean grossly affecting crime in the region it still has interests in and both England and America consider Cuba to be the best source for fighting the drug trade in the area, with England but not America able to openly acknowledge that fact. The Brits, but not the Americans, were also reminded that, after Fort Rosalie stopped in Havana, it was not allowed to continue on to an American port for a goodwill visit. That's because the anti-Cuban, anti-world, and anti-democracy Helms-Burton Act commands that all nations, including England, can be punished if they show a kindness to Cuba or a mutual accommodation with Cuba. Every nation in the world, including America's best friends, consider the Helms-Burton Act to be a self-inflicted American wound. However, Americans themselves are not supposed to consider it at all. {The Helms-Burton Act appeases a few Cuban exiles so let's keep it on the books and trust that Americans remain ignorant of its ramifications.}

      U. S. Senator Marco Rubio's recent visit to the Guantanamo Naval Base punctuated the reminder to Cubans that the island is much too small to challenge America's "perpetual ownership" of the base. The infamous Platt Amendment "granted" the U. S. possession of Guantanamo's plush 45 square acres on Dec. 10-1903. The U. S. agreed to pay Cuba $2,000 in gold per year. In 1934, when gold coins were discontinued, the U. S. began sending $4,085 U. S. Treasury checks to Cuba. Since 1960 Revolutionary Cuba, based on an edict handed down by Celia Sanchez and endorsed by Fidel Castro, has refused to cash the checks. (The 1959 payment had escaped the meticulous scrutiny of Celia Sanchez).

       While Senator Rubio's visit made fun of Cuba's inability to do anything about Guantanamo, U. S. warplanes based there, such as the two above, are daily reminders to Cubans that they are at the mercy of the world's supreme superpower and they will never be able to regain Guantanamo Bay from the U. S.

      The lush golf course above is one of the many luxuries U. S. navy personnel enjoy at Guantanamo Bay. The golf pro on the right is providing free lessons, courtesy of the apathetic U. S. taxpayers.

        The rest of the world considers the U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay to be an unwanted violation of Cuba's sovereignty and a cancerous-like anathema to the world's most famed democracy.

Since 2002 Gitmo has been used to house suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. 

        82-year-old Harry Henry and 79-year-old Luis La Rosa {above) are vivid reminders of how U. S. laws written only to appease viscerally anti-Castro Cuban exiles hurt everyone else, including innocent Cubans like Harry and Luis as well as the U. S. government itself. Harry and Luis, since their teens, had worked for the U. S. government at the Guantanamo Naval Base till they, and 65 other similarly employed Cubans, recently retired. The U. S. government wanted to pay their monthly pension fees, almost $700 each, for the rest of their lives. But Cuban-exile U. S. laws blocked those payments, at least till Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale and the Cuban government did some hand-stands to circumvent the blockage.

         ZKB (above} has just become the third major Swiss bank to drop Cuba from its portfolio in the past seven years. It did so to avoid billions of dollars in fines or curtailment of its U. S. portfolio. Such tactics continue to make the U. S. look like an imperialist bully still fighting the Cold War against the Soviet Union, which no longer exists although, of course, second generational Cuban exiles do exist and therefore so do U. S. laws that harm Cuba as well as America's best friends around the world. 

      Over the weekend Yoani Sanchez {Photo: Tracey Eaton}, the famed anti-Castro blogger, told USA Today in a phone call from Havana that Cubans on the island "are positioned like runners crouched into the starting blocks on a track" as they awaited the new traveling rules. The 37-year-old Sanchez said, "On your mark, get set, go! The majority of Cubans are very enthusiastic about this." Sanchez told USA Today that she would be among the first in line (on Jan. 14) to make preparations to fly out of Cuba. As the darling of anti-Castro factions in the Western World, Sanchez has been awarded medals and accolades from countries such as the U. S., Denmark, and Spain but Cuba has not allowed her to leave the island to accept the celebrated awards/rewards for her prolific anti-Castro blogging and books. She told USA Today that her passport is filled with visas from other countries but she has never been able to obtain a Cuban exit visa.

          In denying Yoani Sanchez an exit permit, Cuba says she speaks on behalf of a foreign power that uses her to help de-stabilize the Cuban government. However, Cuba has repeatedly told her that they will give her an exit permit if she will leave the island and never return. USA Today, in the Sunday (Jan. 13) telephone call, asked her about that. She said: "If it's not with a return trip, I'm not going anywhere." {Update: Yoani Sanchez kept her word; on January 14th she was first in line at an immigration office in Havana to test the government's new resolve that allows its citizens to visit foreign countries and then return. But she reminded the Associated Press that her case is very special: "I have hope but I'll believe it when I'm sitting in an airplane."} Meanwhile, the world awaits with abated breath {?} to learn Yoani's fate. On Monday, January 14, 2013, the long, front-page "Cover" story in USA Today quoted Yoani Sanchez as saying that she wanted to fly to Chechnya, Spain, Italy, Germany, Chile, Brazil, New York, Silicon Valley in California, and "the northern Cuban city of Miami." Yes, Yoani considers Miami to be in northern Cuba!

       That last quote from Yoani Sanchez reminds me of the map {above) that shows 47 contiguous U. S. states minus Florida. And it reminds me that once the U. S. government offered to trade Florida to Spain for Cuba but Spain refused and later lost the island when it lost the Spanish-American War in 1898. Yoani Sanchez wants to visit "the northern Cuban city of Miami?" There are many who hope she gets the chance. Considering that the U. S. merely and unfairly took Guantanamo Bay from Cuba in 1903, perhaps the U. S. might want to make amends and give Florida to Cuba as a belated payment for Guantanamo Bay.

      John McAuliff {above} is perhaps the world's best expert on U. S. - Cuban relations. On January 15, 2013, Mr. McAuliff told the AP: "Cuba now provides greater freedom of travel to virtually all of its citizens than does the United States." {True Cuban experts such as Mr. McAuliff are generally ignored by the U. S. media}

        Josefina Vidal, Cuba's Minister of North American Affairs, says, "Yoani Sanchez's fame and fortune depends on her being an anti-government dissident on the island and not, say, in Miami where she feels she might get lost in the crowd or even London, Paris, or Madrid. Do I feel that is why she herself puts restrictions on an exit permit? Yes. Ha! Ha...! Forgive me for laughing but are you, an American news-reporter, actually saying we in the Cuban government also are allowed an opinion? Uh, thank you. I'm very much impressed." 

     Real-life cat-fights between Cuba and the U. S. in 2013 are reminiscent of make-believe cat-fights in the American West of the 1860s: "Alright, Yoani! You have three choices -- the six-gun in my left hand, the six-gun in my right hand, or the exit visa for you to leave Dodge...er, Havana...and never come back! Which is it? Hurry! My trigger fingers are itchy and I've got some other misfits to take care of after I get done with you!"

     By the way, in January of 1959 Ed Sullivan hosted the top television show in America. On January 11-1959 Mr. Sullivan flew to Havana (above) and introduced Americans to the island's new leader. Fidel Castro, somewhat shyly, told Mr. Sullivan: "Please pardon my rebel uniform. But I can't yet afford a suit."

Mr. Sullivan replied: "Fidel, Americans will understand. This is all new to them too."

        The above Getty Image photo was taken on July 26, 1960, at a gala revolutionary celebration. Celia Sanchez, Revolutionary Cuba's prime decision-maker {but don't say that out loud; I repeat: No digos eso voz alta!}, is feigning outrage after Fidel playfully tried on a goofy hat. She screamed: "Fidel! They're taking photographs. Americans will think the leader of Cuba is a clown! Cuba's leader should be dignified!"

This hearty, colorful, and dignified guy is a Himalayan Moral.

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A Potpouri of Photos Defining Revolutionary Cuba

A Few 1955-2013 Snapshots of Cuba
{Updated Jan. 10-2013}

        Enrique Meneses died at age 83 in Madrid, Spain, on the first Sunday of this New Year 2013. He spent over a half century as one of the world's most famous photographers and he was famed as an adventurous journalist. He is most remembered for the four months he spent with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra in 1957 when the odds were still prohibitive against a nascent rebel uprising surviving against the might of the U. S.-and-Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship in Cuba. His photos and captions were among the first to tell the world about Fidel Castro's "uphill but courageously ongoing fight." During his own four dangerous months in the Sierra, Enrique  shadowed both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, later remarking that "I spotted greatness in one particular man." He was referring to Fidel Castro, whom he admired the rest of his life. On his deathbed, Enrique said, "Fidel is three years older than me and assassins haven't dogged my trail on a daily basis. I never thought Fidel would out-live me. He was lucky to survive each year since I met him in 1957."

      Above is one of the most famous Enrique Meneses photos, taken in the Sierra Maestra Mountains in 1957. The three rebels on the right are Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Camilo Cienfuegos -- the three leading male Commanders at the time. The three men on the left are updating Fidel on the movements of a Batista army in the foothills of the Sierra: "Just over the rise thirty yards up you can see the front elements." Enrique Meneses wrote a book entitled "Fidel Castro" and the two men spoke on the phone last December.

         In his book Enrique Meneses wrote, "I was attracted to the Cuban Revolution because it was the first revolution started by the mistreatment of women by a brutal dictatorship. When I got there and saw the fighting in the mountains and foothills in 1957, I did not think the rebels had a chance but I knew Batista and his backers had been stupid for rousing the female population on the island to such a fever pitch."

     Enrique Meneses continued: "But soon I realize that Fidel Castro's vastly superior intelligence in fully utilizing the totality of the fury of the female half of the population has over the years, beginning in the 1950s, defeated forces far superior in arms and manpower. He elevated women to a new worldly plateau."

                                     

      Jon Lee Anderson {above} is probably the world's quintessential adventure journalist today. His articles for The New Yorker and others shed glaring lights on some of the planet's most dangerous places and most egregious wrongs. He also, of course, wrote the definitive Che Guevara biography. Jon Lee Anderson has been a close friend and deep admirer of Enrique Meneses. Anderson coined this epitaph for Enrique: "He was the last of the great adventure journalist." The last, that is, except for Jon Lee Anderson.

    The beautiful young lady above is propitiously gracing an art exhibit in New York City, where she accompanied her boyfriend, the artist Arlis del Rio, back in Nov.-2012. Her name is Vilmita Rodriguez Castro. She is the grand-daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and his late, legendary wife Vilma Espin.

     A few weeks earlier -- back in June-2012 -- Mariela Castro {above}, the feisty daughter of Raul Castro and Vilma Espin, relished her visits to San Franciso and New York City, and so did the U. S. media. She endorsed Barack Obama for a second presidential term. On her return flight to Cuba she joked, "Fox News is ecstatic over my endorsement of President Obama. They think I just handed the election to Romney!" Twice married and the mother of two children, Mariela has always been a fearless rebel, like her famed mother. In college, Mariela alarmed her father Raul and her uncle Fidel, but not her mother, when she appeared topless in a play. In recent years she very successfully defied both her father and her uncle by campaigning fearlessly and tirelessly for gay rights on the island. Also this past summer she engaged in a heated Twitter exchange with the famous anti-Castro blogger Yoani Sanchez. Because it was Mariela vs. Yoani, and because Twitter almost rules the world and has proven it can start wars and revolutions, the verbal cat-fight appeared for awhile to be the start of World War Three, or at least another Bay of Pigs!

       Castro women have always had an auspicious affinity for their neighbor, the United States of America. The photo above shows the Castro sisters Emma and Augustina in Miami in 1957 soliciting money to support the anti-Batista revolution their brothers Fidel and Raul were waging in the Sierra Maestra.

    Fidel Castro, after getting out of a Batista prison in 1955, began his recruitment of revolutionary funds in Miami, as depicted by the above photo. In those halcyon days, Miami Cubans hated Batista much more than they hated Fidel!

A Fidel Castro fact (not a factoid): His favorite American city has always been New York City!

That's a nattily dressed Fidel Castro strolling in New York City's Central Park. 

      Dr. Aleida Guevara {above}, the daughter of Che Guevara, is considered one of the most skilled and dedicated baby doctors on the island of Cuba. In 2012 Dr. Guevara made a triumphant tour of England, delivering sold-out speeches in six major cities. In the above photo a reporter for the London Daily Mirror has asked Dr. Guevara, "How much do you think your father, also a doctor, regretted ending up a rebel instead of practicing medicine?" Dr. Guevara replied, "Not at all, my dear. He had an early calling to medicine and a later calling to try to help poor people in another fashion. You might say...I am my father's daughter."

        Cubans admire pure feminine beauty combined with sheer physical and mental courage as well as a high degree of intelligence. So, it's no wonder Liaena Hernandez Martinez {above} is their favorite soldier. She hails from Guantanamo province and while still a top university student was also the most decorated soldier in Brigade de la Frontera. One superior wrote: "She guards the coastline as if Genghis Khan is coming to capture the island, but if he does touch Cuban soil Liaena will be there to nab him! I guarantee it!"

          As an 18-year-old in 2008 {above}, Liaena was profiled by the BBC as she campaigned door-to-door to become the youngest person ever elected to the Cuban National Assembly. The BBC described her as "a polished, determined campaigner and one who kisses and sweet-talks babies like a polished politician in London." She won. And, yes, they do have elections in Cuba and it is not mandatory to belong to any party.

        Now a poised and elegant public speaker, Liaena is popular with many young Cubans who hope that one day she will be President of Cuba. Asked about it, she said modestly, "Probability, no; possibility, yes."

Liaena's idol is Dilma Rousseff {above}, the President of Brazil.

       Why does Ileana Hernandez Martinez idolize President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil: "She is a woman. She is the most powerful person, male or female, in Latin America. She is a fighter, a guerrilla fighter. At my age she had already been imprisoned and tortured for three years by a foreign-backed dictatorship. She is a socialist. She loves and admires Cuba. I idolize everything she has been and everything she stands for. I and all young Latin American women should aspire to be what President Rousseff is today."

Hey! The above photo courtesy of Susan and Richard Day reminds me that it's winter in Virginia.

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Cuban Dissidents (1) and the American Media (2)

Add the U. S. Government (3) and You Have A Dynamic Trio

       Tracey Eaton {above} is my friend. I met him in Cuba in 2004 when he was head of the Dallas Morning News bureau in Havana. Prior to that, and since then, I have exchanged scores of emails with Tracey. That's because I consider him America's best and fairest journalist on a topic that interests me -- Cuba. This month {Jan.-2013} Tracey emailed me to solicit my opinion of Cuban dissidents, explaining that he was writing a major article on that subject. I have always valued his opinion. Before I went to Cuba, he advised me to stay at the Victoria Hotel; I did. After I got to Cuba, he advised me to eat at the in-home restaurants knows as paladars; I did. And I appreciated the fact that he valued my opinion regarding Cuban dissidents.

        Al Neuharth is my all-time favorite journalist. Born in Eureka, South Dakota in 1924, he still writes a column entitled "Plain Talk" that appears each Friday in USA Today, which happens to be my all-time favorite news source and newspaper. I consider Al Neuharth an American treasure.

        Back in 1982 Al Neuharth founded USA Today, which I have subscribed to since 1982. It remains the most readable major newspaper in America. It is also one of the fairest, even on controversial, hot-button topics such as...Cuba. Mr. Neuharth himself, for example, has correctly called the self-inflicted U. S. embargo of Cuba "insane." And he has readily acknowledged that Fidel Castro has "out-smarted" the last ten U. S. presidents. In fairness, Mr. Neuharth and USA Today have also sharply criticized Cuba when such criticism was warranted, which, of course, it sometimes is.

         On January 7, 2013, an article in USA Today featured this across-the-page headline: "CUBAN ABUSES UP, DISSIDENTS SAY." It was written by Tracey Eaton. And it was a totally biased and distorted article. 

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         Am I surprised that my favorite journalist in my favorite newspaper teamed up for a blatantly distorted, biased, and myopic presentation on an issue that is important to the United States as well as to a neighboring country and the world? No, not at all. Cuba says a lot more about the United States than it says about Cuba. One thing it says is...the United States should not have teamed with the Mafia to support the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in the 1950s. Another thing it says is...when the Batista dictatorship was overthrown by a popular revolution in January of 1959, the United States should never have allowed the leaders of that ousted dictatorship to reconstitute a richer and more powerful dictatorship on U. S. soil, creating what essentially has been yet another Banana Republic dictatorship that has existed and thrived since January of 1959 to the detriment, I believe, of the U. S. democracy. Because Cuba is a little island and the United States is by far the richest and strongest nation in the history of the world, the losers, not the winners, have dominated the historical records of the Cuban Revolution as well as the topical journalism related to it. Thus, no way am I surprised that my favorite journalist and my favorite newspaper teamed to produce a biased and distorted view within the bowels of a malaise that is also known as the U. S. - Cuban conundrum. You see, all my friend Tracey and USA Today were really doing, in a capitalist world captive to commercialism, was to gratuitously feed the gargantuan appetites of American consumers who have been programmed to accept biased and distorted data pertaining to the topic of Cuba. Tracey and USA Today thus realized that an article extolling both sides of a TWO-SIDED story would not be understood and would, in fact, be far over the heads or IQs of their readers. Therefore, just one side was presented. And, yes, there is another side...and one that I believe a rejuvenated U. S. democracy, refurbished with a large dose of integrity, should be and would be strong enough to embrace. 

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        Thomas Jefferson -- before he died at his Monticello home in Charlottesville, Virginia, on July 4, 1826 -- had this very famous and very pertinent quotation regarding newspapers:

"The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them."

       Thomas Jefferson, I believe, would not have been pleased with my favorite journalist and my favorite newspaper if he had read the Jan. 7-2013 article in USA Today under the screaming across-the-page headline: "Cuban Abuses Up, Dissidents Say!" Mr. Jefferson, first off, would have demanded that both sides of a two-sided story be aired; and Mr. Jefferson, secondly, would have been disappointed that USA Today's readers had been pre-programmed to accept only one side of the two-sided Cuban issue.

         Cuba's Las Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) {Tracy Eaton photo for USA Today} are  darlings of the anti-Cuban foreign press and, of course, were prominently featured and quoted in Tracey's article on dissidents for USA Today, as were twenty or so other dissidents. That's fine. But on an island of 11.2 million people, the article seemed to suggest that about 11 million of them are vehemently against the Cuban government. That is not so. Fair-minded journalists, including Tracey, often allude to the fact that the dissident community on the island is "very small." In fact, most of the women on the island from 1959 till today belong to the pro-government Federation of Cuban Women. And most of the adults on the island belong to the block-by-block Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Thus, articles that suggest the Ladies in White are among the vast majority on the island are simply false. It is also fair to state, I believe, that sometimes non-dissidents, meaning everyday Cubans not working for the government, will occasionally react disrespectfully or even violently to dissidents.

       Tracey also provided the above photo to USA Today to illustrate his article suggesting that abuses against Cuban dissidents have increased dramatically, implying that the prominent neck, shoulder, and chest scars were examples of dissident abuse at the hands of the government. However, by the next day Tracey himself, on his excellent Along the Malecon blog, was suggesting that the above scars had nothing whatsoever to do with politics but everything to do with a girlfriend-boyfriend spat.

        Tracey used this photo of James Cason on his Jan. 8-2013 Along the Malecon blog to explain the other side of the apparently two-sided story about the scars: "When James Cason was chief of the U. S. Interests Section in Havana, he told me that the democracy movement needed victims. It needed blood." James Cason was such an arrogant anti-Castro buffoon when he headed the U. S. Interest Section in Havana that he made constant headlines. But typically, his anti-Castro antics had its rewards back on U. S. soil. On Jan. 20-2011 James Cason was elected Mayor of Coral Gables on the edge of Miami!

       Josefina Vidal is Cuba's highly respected and acutely informed Minister of North American Affairs. If you are going to present the views of 20 or so Cuban dissidents, I believe it is only fair to provide Ms. Vidal's viewpoints too. She has repeatedly said: "In Cuba we are very tolerant of the small dissident community. We do not consider them a threat to our sovereignty. We believe they have a right to be heard and if columnist DeWayne Wickham of USA Today or Andrea Mitchell of NBC News or Wolf Blitzer of CNN ask me, as they have recently, if they can talk to such dissidents, I always say, 'certainly.' What I object to and guard against is when foreign money or foreign influence backs and, in fact, often creates the dissidents. Please understand that we, as with any sovereign nation, will not allow that. As Minister of North American Affairs for Cuba, much if not most of my time is devoted to being on the look-out for foreign agents trying to provoke Cuba into jailing or fighting off foreign attempts to de-stabilize our government, and then using our reaction to such provocations to blame us. Other than that, I assure you, I view my primary job as being friendly to all nations, especially our neighbors, including the United States." In other words, what the highly capable Josefina Vidal mostly defends Cuba against is precisely what James Cason told Tracey Eaton "the democracy movement" {a euphemism for "regime change"} needed most: "victims...blood."

      Yoani Sanchez {above} is the internationally acclaimed and beloved anti-Cuban Cuban blogger. She is easily the world's most quoted dissident. The Huffington Post, the Voice of America, Tracey Eaton, and almost any politically-socially correct journalist in the Western World quote Yoani's every word and, of course, the Huffington Post, the Voice of America, and other powerful media outlets massively promote and sell her books and videos. Yoani's fame has spawned a lot of Yoani-wannabes.

      But non-dissidents on the island of Cuba -- and I believe they constitute the majority -- tend to believe that Yoani Sanchez's fame was "Made in the USA" simply, or at least partly, because she is the most visible dissident on the island. Non-dissidents on the island are usually ignored.

       For example, Rosa Baez {above} is a non-dissident in Cuba and she will readily inform you that she is thus among the vast majority on the island. {"That's why the Mafia is in Miami, not Havana!"} The above photo is taken from a long video-interview Tracey Eaton did with Rosa and it's still posted on YouTube and Along the Malecon. I have no objection to Yoani Sanchez but Rosa Baez also has a right to a viewpoint.

       The child-loving Rosa Baez not only has her prolific pro-Cuban government blog {"La Polilla Cubana"} but she also is one of the primary users of the social media, especially Facebook, to get her views heard and seen. Of course, she is not quite as politically correct as anyone who would hold up their hand and say, "Hey, I'm anti-Castro AND anti-Cuba!" But Rosa is also a part of this diverse world.

         Since the triumph of the female-forged Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, Rosa Baez has been a proud member of the pro-government Federation of Cuban Women. So are most Cuban women.

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