Batistiano Lies Since 1959

Have Hurt Cuba But...

They Have Hurt America Much More
{Friday, July 8th, 2016} 

       Yesterday, July 7th, U. S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced that eight major U. S. airlines will begin round-trip service to Cuba beginning this fall from ten U. S. cities, including Los Angeles. Such commercial flights from the U. S. to Cuba have been illegal for over five decades, during which only special charter flights were allowed. Since 1962, everyday Americans have been the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to Cuba, apparently to assure that a few Cuban exiles could dictate the Cuban narrative in the United States. Foxx's announcement reflects yet another example of President Obama boldly slicing into the long-time Batistiano dictation of America's Cuban policy, a situation easily mandated with the concurrence of the U. S. Congress, at least prior to President Obama.

The upcoming U.S.-to-Cuba commercial flights will be historic.

      This recent but historic photo shows The Adonia, the beautiful Carnival Cruise Line ship, arriving in Havana Harbor -- LEGALLY, thanks to President Obama. U. S. cruise ships are now allowed to dock in Cuban ports for the first time in five decades. Carnival pioneered but faces competition from other cruise lines.

       This Airbnb photo shows how Cuba, like it has since 1492, is trying to survive as it takes advantage of historic efforts by U. S. President Barack Obama to normalize relations with the vulnerable but feisty island. The Havana home above is one of the 4,000 listed by Airbnb. And the innovative Bed & Breakfast company based in San Francisco only started listing in Cuba in 2015. Airbnb this week told the Los Angeles Times that Cuba is the fastest growing market in its 8-year history. This year Starwood Hotels & Resorts became the first U. S. hotelier to sign a deal in Cuba in six decades. Now Marriott International and other powerful competitors plan to do the same. Meanwhile, the home-sharing Airbnb has already acquired a powerful niche in Cuba that is the envy of the traditional hotel powerhouses in the United States. Meanwhile, reacting to the startling overtures provided by President Obama, Cuba plans on saving what it considers the best of the Cuban Revolution without seriously changing the essence of it as the most famed of the few remaining revolutionary elders, including Fidel, reach or approach their 9th decades on the island.

     This is an Associated Press photo taken by Ramon Espinosa. It and the next two photos illustrated a major AP article this week {July 6, 2016} by Havana correspondent Michael Weissenstein. It is entitled "The Children of the Exiles Discover Cuba." It is an excellent report from Cuba and it precisely parallels the theme of my previous Cubaninsider essay this week entitled "Journalism: Cuba vs. America." That pertinent and correct theme is this: Since the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship by the Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1-1959 the transplanted Batistianos have dictated the Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policy to the detriment of Cuba but even more to the detriment of America and democracy. The Weissenstein article revolved around a 20-year-old Cuban-American named Miranda Hernandez. That's her in the center of the above photo. She is now a senior at the University of California-Berkeley. Miranda's grandparents came to the U. S. in the 1960s and she grew up in Miami. Like almost all Americans and Cuban exiles, she says her image of Cuba was "a North Korea with beautiful beaches." That's because, like all Americans, she was thoroughly propagandized -- lied to about Cuba, the revolution, the exiles, and the U. S. government's role in Cuba from 1952 till today. After, at long last, President Obama sliced deeply into those lies, Miranda and other college-age U. S. daughters of Cuba, shown above, traveled to Cuba to see the island and judge it for themselves. Like Linda Ronstadt depicted in the previous essay, Miranda was literally blown away when her own eyes and ears revealed a Cuba far different from the lies that had dominated the first 20 years of her American life. She told the AP's Michael Weissenstein: "I will say outright, in all honesty, that Cuba is not so bad. Many people think that Cuba is a terrible place where people are not happy, but that's not the case." She and the other daughters of Cuba who traveled to the island via the Obama-blessed CubaOne program will, back in the United States, not be so easily lied to about Cuba, the revolution, the exiles, etc. Miranda and her friends reveal precisely why the self-serving orchestrators of America's vile Cuban policy since the 1950s have used the U. S. Congress to mandate their agendas, such as making everyday Americans the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to Cuba. Visiting Cuba, like Miranda, Americans could judge it for themselves, meaning downright lies would be rendered less effective.

    This AP/Ramon Espinosa photo shows 20-year-old Cuban-American Miranda Hernandez standing next to the apartment that was the former home of her grandparents before they defected to Miami. Miranda had long talks with the Cubans living there now free of charge and with their friends in the neighborhood. She discovered that was a better way to learn about Cuba than being force-fed lies all her life back in the U. S. by rich Cuban-Americans and their easily acquired and self-serving political allies in the U. S. Congress.

      This AP/Ramon Espinosa photo shows Miranda Hernandez and her Cuban-American friends exploring Havana's Malecon waterfront. That's Miranda in the white shorts, the 6th person from the left. Just think how remarkable this photo is: After being bombarded with propaganda about Cuba for the first 20 years of her life, Miranda got to visit Cuba so she could make free judgments about the nearby, very important island. It's an island that unwittingly says a lot more about the United States of America than it says about Cuba.

    

A basic fact:

   The thieving U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship brutally ruled Cuba from 1952 till the Cuban Revolution overthrew it in 1959.

  

   From 1959 till the current Obama presidency, the transplanted Miami Cuban Mafia easily dictated America's Cuban policy. And Mr. Obama's two-term presidency lasts only a few more delicate months.

   

   As cogently reflected each October by a 191-to-2 vote in the UN, America's worldwide image before and perhaps after Obama has cast more of a negative impact on the U. S. than any other topic. Yet, there remains in Miami, New Jersey and Washington a rich and powerful lobby that doesn't care one iota about the above Cuba-related image. Prior to Obama, most Americans were either too timid or too propagandized to even engage the issue. This week's AP article about 20-year-old Cuban-American student Miranda Hernandez visiting Cuba for the first time, along with recent polls, indicates that most young Americans and Cuban-Americans are becoming much less timid and much less propagandized. And that's very good for Cuba, and America!

Legal travel to Cuba even for Americans!!!

Wow!! What a concept.

     This photo was taken by Mel Melcon for the Los Angeles Times. It was used to illustrate a Times article yesterday -- July 7th, 2016. The article is entitled: "Latino Gang Members Firebomb Black Residents To Drive Them Out..." The Los Angeles residence is Boyle Heights. The scared boy in the doorway of his home is 12-year-old Marc Anthony Garcia; his worried grandmother is 68-year-old Irena Vega. The photo and article in the LA Times comes during the hours that other great American cites -- Dallas, New Orleans, St. Paul, Chicago, etc. -- are being roiled by unspeakable crimes and protests related to racial and inequality issues. The vast disparity between the haves and have-nots is a mammoth American problem, perhaps a fatal one. As he glances around the corner, what is Marc so afraid of? As she sits in her doorway and ponders, what is Irena thinking? Was the obvious injury to her left arm caused by a firebomb?

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Journalism: Cuba vs. America

Are There Similar problems?

       Pilar Montes knows much more than a little bit about journalism in Cuba and in the United States. Moreover, she's fair-minded in her judgments. This week she penned a major article, which originated on Havana Times.org, entitled: "Cuban Journalists Defend Their Right to Inform." It's an incisive, insightful, and important article because journalists everywhere...Cuba, the U. S., etc. -- have every right to inform and do so freely. Ms. Montes wrote about a journalism meeting in the Cuban city of Santa Clara in which representatives of the Plenary of the Cuban Journalists Association complained about governmental restrictions. Good for them and good for the Cuban government for simply being on hand to respond.

      
      At that session in Santa Clara, both the Cuban journalists and the Cuban government agreed that the freer the Cuban press is, the better the Cuban people will be. And both sides confirmed that the state-controlled Cuban media has become much freer and balanced in listening to and publishing complaints from everyday Cubans. In the aforementioned article, Pilar Montes wrote: "Examples of the population annoyance fill our TV reports and the Letters to the Editor section which appears in the Friday edition of Granma." Granma is the leading newspaper in Cuba. Fair-minded journalists, such as Pilar Montes, are free to criticize the Cuban government and so are everyday Cubans via the state-controlled media. And they are now much freer to openly comment -- pro or con -- about advances by the Cuban government in opening up to common demands that deeply concern the people. Americans are not supposed to know that, but that's America's problem, not Cuba's -- a sovereign island that has enough problems of its very own. Uniqueness is often misguided because people in different countries are not so different in trying to navigate their everyday lives. 

       Karina Marron is an important journalist in Cuba. She is, in fact, the Assistant Director of Granma, the island's top media source. Instead of ignoring and not reporting on that anti-government journalism meeting in Santa Clara, Ms. Marron attended the session and answered all questions. Her main point: "Journalists on the island, like elsewhere, have a right and, I think, a duty to complain if they feel they are restricted from freely reporting the news as they see it. I agree. But understand that, in Cuba, we have a problem with foreign-based and foreign-funded anti-Cuban aspects filtering into if not usurping our media. So, from a societal standpoint the Cuban state has to respond to that. As our response has been more successful and, may I say, more understood, you journalists in Cuba have noticed the additional freedoms you have to perform your important work. You can criticize us, and then critique whether we respond to such criticism or not. In print publications and in radio and T-V shows, we strongly encourage the airing of legitimate complaints against the government and then we invite the complainants to follow up and see if we have responded correctly...or responded at all. So, yes, the state has made progress and, yes, we do have to make more."

An improved and improving Cuban media. Yes, no or maybe?

      Study the above Gallup Poll and you will see that Americans have an incredibly dismal view of their own U. S. media and that compunctious assessment is getting much more dismally with each passing day.

     The recent purchase of the iconic Washington Post by Jeff Bezos highlights why the U. S. media is held in such low regard by Americans. Mr. Bezos, the Amazon founder, is currently worth $59.1 billion, which is growing about as fast as the media's reputation is plummeting. For decades the iconic Post was a liberal bastion and a journalistic beacon, with such democracy-loving revelations as the Watergate scandal that doomed President Nixon. As a lifelong conservative Republican, I treasured the integrity of the Post...until Bezos turned it into what I consider a propaganda machine that lobbies for his personal financial interests and political leanings. That, unfortunately, has come to typify the entire mainstream U. S. media -- print, radio and television, and online. It is all owned by billionaire individuals and billionaire corporations that take advantage of the media's monopolistic characteristics to incessantly propagandize in the interest of its billionaire owners. Those interests include sweet financial deals and monopolies readily available via having the resources to lobby politicians while also proselytizing their victims, everyday Americans, into not complaining...at least, not too awful much.

        Prior to such things as greedy and politically-minded billionaires buying up the mainstream media in the United States, the sacrosanct news media felt obligated and compelled to fairly report the news even from a business standpoint because, supposedly, the best and fairest news would get the biggest readership or ratings and thus the most advertisement dollars. But that Walter Cronkite era is long gone and will never return. The U. S. media now has a billionaire monopoly that caters only to billionaires, certainly not to its readers or listeners or viewers, all of whom are considered propagandized pawns. And, without exaggerating one iota, a weak and biased media perhaps constitutes the greatest threat to the American democracy, a fact that the Founding Fathers seemed to realize 240 years ago, back in 1776.

      The aforementioned article this week by Pilar Montes concerning Cuban journalists campaigning for more freedom on the island reminds me of Cristina Escobar, Cuba's brilliant 28-year-old broadcast journalist. She has made three significant journalistic visits to the United States -- one to California in 2014 and since then two more publicized trips to Washington. She not only made news and history by dominating a White House news conference with six pertinent questions directed at Josh Earnest, but she garnered some additional headlines with such frank and interesting comments as: "Cuba journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." Some top U. S. journalists -- such as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News -- respected Ms. Escobar's comments but, for the most part, both the U. S. media and propagandized Americans either ignored them or scoffed at them. Yet, the well-educated, superbly talented, and awesomely intelligent Ms. Escobar obviously and sincerely believes what she says. In fact, if she didn't she probably would be living in a $10 million mansion in Miami and also be the top broadcast anchor in America. That is not an hyperbolic assumption. Reliable sources report that Ms. Escobar, as fluent in English as she is in Spanish, has been offered anchoring jobs by at least two major U. S. networks not to mention what one source called "a veritable gold mine" if she would defect to Miami and denounce Cuba. As a Cuban journalist, of course, she doesn't live in a mansion nor does she have a gold mine, but she has integrity.

        Cristina Escobar is Cuba's dynamic television news anchor. She also has, in English, a popular regional program. Now, concerning her recent and dynamic visits to the U. S. -- and the reputed offers she has received to entice her to defect to Miami or to anchor in New York -- if one day I tuned in the 6:30 P. M. evening news on NBC or CBS or ABC and see that she is the new anchor, I probably will alter some...but not all...of my views on U.S.-Cuba relations. By the same token, if she became an anchor on cable news programs I probably wouldn't know it because, unless there is major breaking news, I never watch even CNN because of the incredible saturation of Talking Head propagandists that insult even my meager IQ. 

     This Cubaninsider essay about hard-working journalists Pilar Montes, Karina Marron, and Cristina Escobar reminds me...as strange as it may seem...of the above photo. Yes, that's Linda Ronstadt. The photo was taken in the 1970s when she was the hottest and greatest pop singer on the planet -- in either English or Spanish. To this day in July of 2016, if truth be known, daily I go to YouTube to hear and see Linda Ronstadt sing her classics such as "Long Long Time," "Blue Bayou," "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," etc. It turned out, as I only learned recently, that when this photo was taken Linda, the pop superstar, was making her first trip to Cuba where she fell in love with the island. Linda, the Mexican-American girl from Tucson, on August 18, 2014 -- after she had retired from performing -- was interviewed by AZCentral about her love for Cuba and her hatred for such things as the anti-Cuban Cuban Adjustment Act that was easily rammed through the U. S. Congress. She said: "We allow Cubans to come in and say they are refugees. Well, in Cuba -- I've been there, you know -- people are fed, people are housed, people are clothed. There isn't violence in the streets." Then, I recently noticed online that Linda, in a 2003 interview published by City Pulse, said: "Cuba is an amazing country. I've been all over Latin America and it's the only Latin American country I've been in that didn't have armed troops on the streets, there weren't homeless people everywhere, and kids had school uniforms and had school books paid for and had their health care paid for. There's things going on in Cuba that we don't know about, and that's because of the Miami Cubans. It's a total propaganda device and they have bracketed this country with propaganda about Cuba, huge amounts of which are untrue." Those exact comments from Linda Ronstadt, still readily available online, were based on personal observations because, as America's top female pop singer from the late 1960s till deep into the 1980s, she traveled widely as a performer at sold-out concerts and, clandestinely, she also traveled to...the island of Cuba!!

      This photo is very dear to me. It was taken in 1975 at a concert in Roanoke, Virginia. I was there, and I remember this moment. It shows Glenn Frey leading Linda Ronstadt back on stage for an encore. Glenn himself was a superstar in her band. He recently died and Linda wrote the heart-wrenching obituary in Time Magazine about his life. I wasn't a concert-goer, except when Ronstadt was close. I've read many articles and books about her, including her best-selling memoir. Anyone who knows me knows I still cherish her singing, especially via YouTube. But only this week, when someone pointed out the two aforementioned articles to me, did I know about Linda's love for Cuba. Thus, I believe that she will agree with me when I say that Cuba says a lot more about the United States of America than it says about Cuba.

      Linda Ronstadt's observations about Cuba were based on her personal visits to the island beginning in the 1970s. Her comments remind me precisely why the powerful anti-Cuba lobby in the United States, with the felicitous help of the U. S. Congress, has mandated that everyday Americans for the past five decades have been the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. In other words, such visits as the freedom-loving Linda Ronstadt took might produce opinions of the island that differ from the propaganda Americans have been fed by self-serving anti-Cuba lobbyists all these years. And that's one reason why President Obama's ongoing brave and historic efforts to normalize relations with Cuba are so very important. Americans, like all other citizens of the world, deserve the freedom to visit Cuba so they can enjoy it or judge it for themselves. President Obama cannot erase all of the anti-Cuban and anti-American laws unleashed by Miami and Congress, but he has erased or weakened many of them. That's why more and more Americans can visit Cuba, and that includes celebrities such as Beyonce and Jay-Z {above} but also Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Dave Mathews, Vin Diesel and his Fast & Furious movie crew, Smokey Robinson, etc. In other words, as Linda Ronstadt opined, the United States, 240 years after it became a country, is better when it finally applies democratic principles to its Cuban policy.

And lastly: 

        This image is used courtesy of NBC. It was featured on that network's top newscast at 6:30 PM this week, July 5th. It was a heart-wrenching portion of a report entitled "City Under Siege." It concerned another typical day in the great American city of Chicago where dozens of people, including children playing in a park, were shot in the gun-crazed United States of America. There are people ensconced in the U. S. Congress who are extremely critical of many things but noncommittal about this prayerful sign.

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Cuba, A Supreme Peace-Maker?

 Yes! No! Maybe?

    In this first week of July in the turbulent year of 2016 this photo is providing exorbitant fodder for fueling the well-funded anti-Cuban narrative in the U. S. It shows a powerful Cuban, Salvador Valdes Mesa, shaking hands with North Korean dictator Kim Jon-un in Pyongyang. Valdes is one of six Cuban Vice-Presidents. He equates his mission to North Korea with Cuba's diligent 4-year successful effort to end the bloody half-century of warfare between FARC and the U.S.-backed Colombian government. Valdes explained his Pyongyang trip this way: "Cuba supports the peaceful and independent reunification of North and South Korea and it reflects the principled position taken by Cuba in the process of normalizing relations with the United States and Cuba's leading role in trying to end a half-century of warfare between FARC and Colombia that had killed and displaced millions. International powers continually providing modern weapons to one side or the other only prolongs wars for decades. Peace, Cuba believes, is much better than war." 

        Indeed, the powerful and well-funded anti-Cuba narrative and the mainstream media in the U. S. hope Americans didn't notice the above EPA photo taken by Alejandro Ernesto last month -- June, 2016. It shows Cuban President Raul Castro orchestrating an historic handshake between Juan Manuel Santos, the President of Colombia, and Rodrigo Londono, the rebel leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its acronym FARC. Cuba doggedly hosted four years of negotiations in Havana to bring about this handshake, which was deemed impossible by the U. S. government that has spent billions of dollars supporting the Colombian government's bloody but unsuccessful war against FARC. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry was among those who thanked and congratulated Cuba, but the U. S. Cuban narrative and the U. S. media mostly ignored it. Yet, the international media -- BBC, The Guardian, El Pais, EPA, etc. -- heralded Cuba's peace-making efforts for "at last mercifully ending the world's longest running war." 

         The FARC rebels began fighting the Colombian government in 1948 but in 1964 it evolved into a full-scale war. Finally, in 2016 Cuba brokered an end to the fighting by hosting four years of peace talks in Havana. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, loudly applauded Cuba's efforts.

        Some historians claim that the Korean War is the "longest war in history, from 1953 till today." It started in June of 1953 when the North invaded the South. An armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, but there has never been a peace treaty. Thus, technically North and South Korea are still at war in July of 2016.

      Most of the casualties in the Korean War, like in most wars, were innocent civilians like this Korean girl and child. The number of civilian casualties on both sides ran into the millions. From 1910 till the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was ruled by the strong-arm of imperialist Japan. Almost immediately after World War II, Korea became a prized target in the Cold War, creating the significant Korean War that is often, and unfairly, called the "Forgotten War." Many generations, including the two represented in the above photo, never forgot it. Indeed, in all wars civilians who suffer the most are the very last to forget.

        In the Korean War the U. S. and the UN supported the South while China and the Soviet Union supported the North. Thus, the world's most awesome firepower was in play on both sides of another bloody war that began within five years of the end of World War II. Bombs like these killed a lot of people, only to end in a stalemate between the world's military powers. But South Korea, backed by the West, has emerged as a capitalist economic power while the communist North is an economic basket case, evoking an image of starving people while its government spends huge sums on a nuclear-powered military.

      After the armistice in 1953, North and South Korea have been separated at the 38th Parallel by a generally effective truce but, as noted, technically the Korean War has never ended. To this day the U. S. has thousands of soldiers stationed between North and South Korea. Considering the billions of dollars the U. S. devoted to the half-century FARC-Colombia War, it could be said that Cuba did U. S. tax-payers a huge favor by finally brokering peace between those warring factions. If Cuba could possibly do the same by helping to peacefully unite North and South Korea, U. S. tax-payers would again be well rewarded.

      That returns us to Salvador Valdes Mesa, the powerful Cuban who this week visited North Korean dictator Kim Jon-un, a visit Valdes equates with Cuba brokering the peace agreement between Colombia and FARC. He says, "Others who didn't try doing that just sat back and did nothing but promote the war for over half a century. The same with North and South Korea, again for over half-a-century. It was worth trying to end the war in Colombia and it's worth trying to end the Korean War. FARC rebels are blending back into Colombia's productive, more peaceful society. Uniting North and South Korea is a worthwhile project that would save millions of lives and free up tons of wealth that could be used for peaceful people-loving projects." 

         Salvador Valdes Mesa is shown here being hosted and courted by Zi Jinping, the ultra-powerful Chinese leader. China is both a huge military competitor and a huge economic partner of the United States, and it is far too big and powerful to dismiss or dis-engage. Little Cuba, of course, is not a world economic or military power, yet it is a player on the world stage far out of proportion to its size or population. Geographically and culturally, Cuba is far closer to the United States than to faraway China...or Korea...or Russia. But Valdes says, "We desire to be sovereign, independent. For centuries, Spain first and then the United States desired owning us. In 1959 Cuba finally won its independence and we desire to keep it. If China agrees and America disagrees, China scores points with us. We want peace...in the Caribbean but also in Colombia, Korea, and the world. Only in peace can we help our country and be helped by other countries." 

             If the words of Mr. Valdes are sincere, and there appears to be no valid reasons to doubt them, his visits this week with the leaders of North Korea and China can be afforded positive perspectives.

       However, it should be remembered that the anti-Cuba narrative in the U. S. relishes using this Manuel Guillen image of North Korea's dictator to mock Salvador Valdes Mesa's visit to Pyongyang, a visit Valdes said parallels Cuba's desire to peacefully unite North and South Korea with Cuba's desire to peacefully unite FARC and Colombia. Indeed, Cuba's determined FARC-Colombia efforts proved to be worthwhile although they too were originally mocked. Thus, those who are busy mocking Salvador Valdes Mesa's trip to North Korea this week should, perhaps, be devoting their time to peaceful, not warlike, gestures. 

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Cuba and Puerto Rico

 U. S. Piggy-banks...
and Caribbean cousins!!
{Updated for Sunday, July 3rd, 2016}

        As islands in the Caribbean Sea, Cuba and Puerto Rico are almost kissing cousins. They are separated by the island of Hispaniola, which includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Cuba, the largest Caribbean island, is much larger than Puerto Rico. Cuba's population exceeds 11 million and Puerto Rico has about 3.5 million people, all of whom are U. S. citizens. The history of Cuba and Puerto Rico converged in 1898 when the U. S. scored an easy victory against over-extended Spain in the Spanish-American War. Spain's empire lost four countries to imperialist-minded America, including Cuba and Puerto Rico. The U. S. dominance of the two Caribbean jewels diverged markedly on Jan. 1-1959 when the Cuban Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Doggedly, Revolutionary Cuba has thwarted many obstacles to maintain its sovereignty, such as the air, land and sea Bay of Pigs attack in 1961 and a stifling economic embargo first imposed by the U. S. in 1962 that extends to this very day although President Obama has finally sliced deeply into it. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico is a U. S. Territory populated with U. S. citizens who are represented in the U. S. Congress and can vote. In other words, in 1898 Cuba and Puerto Rico became kissing cousins after the Spanish-American War but since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 the superpower U. S. has tried to destroy Revolutionary Cuba while being obliged to support Puerto Rico. Not surprisingly, Cuba has experienced dire financial straits since 1959 but, amazingly, Puerto Rico is even more of an economic basket case than its Caribbean neighbor Cuba.

        Harry Franqui-Rivera of Hunter College is a leading authority on both Puerto Rico and Cuba. He told London's The Guardian how he sums up the U. S. relationship with the two Caribbean islands: "A successful Cuba would make the U. S. look bad and a failed Puerto Rico would make the U. S. look even worse." If you study that quote, you will begin to understand Cuba and Puerto Rico from the American perspective. One, Cuba, has been a long-time U. S. target, and the other, Puerto Rico, has been a long-time U. S. Territory. 

        This composite by Almy/Getty Images was used by The Guardian to illustrate an article written by Alan Yuhas entitled "Caribbean Neighbors Cuba and Puerto Rico Wonder Who Really Won." The photo on the left shows a crumbled building in Havana due in large part to the U. S. embargo. The Photo on the left shows a crumbled building in San Juan, the U. S. Territory of Puerto Rico. Inspired by discriminatory U. S. laws designed to hurt Cuba, millions of Cubans live in the U. S. after being lured by laws that provide them financial and other incentives beginning the moment they touch U. S. soil, privileges provided no other immigrants. But more millions of Puerto Ricans live in the U. S. because, as U. S. citizens, they can easily flee poverty and crime on their island. So, the question posed by The Guardian is appropriate. While Cuba staged a successful revolution to get shed of a U.S.-backed dictatorship, Puerto Rico has considered and is still considering getting shed of being a U. S. Territory. Puerto Rico, it seems, hates the inequality of U. S. capitalism as much as Cuba does...or did. A recent Puerto Rican documentary by Aljazeera America went to the island to discover that it is so broke it can't pay its $72 billion debt, including a $1.9 billion payment that was due Friday, July 1st, 2016. But, as Professor Franqui-Rivera predicted, the U. S. Congress with a bill signed Friday by President Obama bailed out Puerto Rico, as for now. The aforementioned documentary pointed out that most of that bail-out tax fund will go to U. S. hedge fund operatives that most Puerto Ricans blame for their financial problems. The documentary showed one hedge funder showing off "our new 6-star hotel" and the "biggest collection of luxury yachts in the world." The hedge funder was asked how he justified such things when the Puerto Rican government couldn't provide health care or safe environs for its people and was closing down one school after the other. The hedge funder pleaded ignorance to that but they have banded together to make sure they get their money...from U. S. taxpayers, of course.

      This Reuters photo shows Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla in Havana a few weeks ago in June. Puerto Rico has generally had friendlier relations with Cuba than with the United States. A New York Times article this week, on June 30th, hinted that Governor Padilla is siding with the independence movement that has always been strong and at times violent. But as of this month of July in the year 2016 the U. S. Congress and President Obama have joined forces to ease Puerto Rico's financial doldrums.

        On June 4th, 2016, Puerto Rico's Governor Padilla announced plans to open a major commercial office in Havana. He told Marc Frank of Reuters that he considers Puerto Rico as independent as Cuba. His exact words were: "The future of Puerto Rico depends on Puerto Ricans, just like Cuba's future depends on what Cubans on the island decide." Mr. Padilla's new office in Cuba is derived from President Obama's detente.

            The demonstration depicted above by this AP photo shows that many Puerto Ricans on the island and in the U. S. are "FED UP" with Wall Street and hedge fund billionaires preying on Puerto Rico.

       Cuba can commiserate with Puerto Rico about being overwhelmed by U. S. policies designed to enrich already rich Americans who have more than enough money to lobby necessary members of Congress.

       This photo shows President John Kennedy signing the embargo against Cuba. From the Eisenhower-Nixon administration, he had inherited the Bay of Pigs plans to recapture Cuba. Kennedy in the first two years of his administration that started in January of 1960 followed up dutifully on those plans as well as fully supporting the CIA-Mafia-Cuban exile plans to assassinate Fidel Castro. In 1962, Kennedy's last full year in office, a declassified U. S. document confirmed that the embargo was designed to starve and deprive Cubans to entice them to overthrow Castro after the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack failed quite dismally. Yet, in the first two weeks of November, 1963, Kennedy told his staff that his top priority after he returned from Dallas was to normalize relations with Cuba. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22-1963.

    The U. S. embargo against Cuba has been in effect since 1962.

      In all the decades since the Kennedy assassination, only America's current President, Mr. Obama, has seriously attempted to end the embargo against Cuba. But the vast Castro lobby in the United States since 1959 has simply been too lucrative and too strong for even Mr. Obama to "lift the embargo" of Cuba.

       The anti-Castro lobby easily dictates the embargo and other unpopular Cuban issues to the U. S. Congress despite the massive inroads made by President Obama to normalize relations with Cuba.

       In July of 2016 as you try to understand the Obama-orchestrated "U.S.-Cuba Reboot" take note of the headlines about the U. S. bailing out the economic doldrums of the U. S. Territory of Puerto Rico. As Caribbean islands, Cuba and Puerto Rico have a lot in common -- including the 1898 Spanish-American War when the U. S. snatched away much of Spain's imperialist treasures. While a lot of rich Americans have feasted on the spoils of the Spanish-American War, both Cuba and Puerto Rico to this day are in dire need of a "reboot" that will benefit everyday Cubans and Puerto Ricans, not just a few greedy miscreants.

Caribbean cousins: Puerto Rico & Cuba.

        This photo was taken in Havana by Kamilia Lahrichi and it is used this weekend to highlight a June 2-2016 article in USA Today written by Kamilia Lahrichi. The surprising article states that Islam is "thriving" in Cuba with a population of "about 10,000." A focal point in Old Havana, it says, "is a mosque that was inaugurated in June of 2015 thanks to funding from Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan." Yes, a very surprising and interesting article.  

And by the way:

       A magnificent website -- first-americans.com -- has posted 36 gorgeous photos of teenage Indian girls in the 1800s. This is a Kiowa girl. Her name is "O. O. Be" and the photo was taken in 1884. All the 36 photos are gripping.

        This is an Arapaho girl. She was the only child that survived the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, one of the most shameful episodes in U. S. history. Albert S. McKinney took this stupendous photo.

A beautiful Comanche girl.

Two beautiful Comanche girls.

Lizzie starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

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