Trump's Bully Pulpit

How Intimidating Is It?
{Saturday, December 23rd, 2017...Happy Holidays}

      A little over a year ago -- in November of 2016 -- America's daunting two-party political system produced a presidential race that came down to two candidates -- Democrat Hillary Clinton vs. Republican Donald Trump -- that were disliked by most Americans. The "no-win situation" left voters with the proverbial dilemma of having to not vote at all or to choose the "lesser of two evils". In that milieu, which is not exactly the democracy crafted by the Founding Fathers, Ms. Clinton got by far the most popular votes but Mr. Trump got by far the most electoral votes, which is a quirky situation most Americans don't even understand. But in 2016, as in 2000 when Republican George W. Bush beat popular-vote leader Al Gore in a regrettable election, Mr. Trump used his electoral vote edge to subdue Ms. Clinton. Now, finishing up the first year of his 4-year term, President Trump has about a 30% national approval rating and the entire mainstream U. S. media -- both print and electronic with the exception of Fox News -- is mired in a heated coup-like conspiracy to overthrow the, uh, democratically elected Trump presidency. But Trump, not any of his enemies, is the President. That means he has the Bully Pulpit, which was on display this week at the White House, in the United States Congress, and at the United Nations. Tweet, Tweet and Tweedledee.

        The saddest thing about President Trump's use of his Bully Pulpit is the sheer fact that he mostly uses Uncle Sam, the nickname for the proud and precious U. S. democracy, as his prime punching bag. Beyond that, he bows down to big boys like China, Russia, Vietnam, etc., but relishes bulling small countries, such as Cuba.

      In 2016, the last year of the Obama presidency, the United Nations voted 191-to-0 to oppose the U. S. embargo of Cuba. There were two abstentions, the United States and, of course, Israel, which the rest of the world consider a bought-and-paid-for vote because Israel is by far the biggest recipient of U. S. economic and military aid.

    In October of 2016 President Obama's U. S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, received a standing ovation when she explained, above, why the decent Obama administration could not support the U. S. embargo of Cuba. By then Obama had done everything he could to normalize relations with Cuba but a handful of miscreants in the 535-member U. S. Congress have kept it in place since 1962. 

     In October of 2017 the UN as always voted overwhelmingly against the insanely cruel U. S. embargo of Cuba, but this time the vote was not unanimous. It was 191-to-2 with no abstentions because the Trump-mandated vote as well as bought-and-paid-for Israel's were the only two countries in the world that supported the embargo.

    In order for Trump's USA to bully the United Nations or little nations like Cuba, he needs thuggish right-wing sycophants, but they are not hard to find these days.

    This week -- on Dec. 20th, 2017 -- President Trump's Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, made a speech that threatened all nations of the world unless they sided with Trump's newly mandated Jerusalem dictates, which defy not only world opinion but the positions of all U. S. administrations in the last 70 years. In a live broadcast carried around the world by international outlets such as CNN, the BBC, etc., Ambassador Haley prior to the vote warned that the U. S. would "take names" of all nations that voted against the U. S., implying that punishment would then be meted out accordingly. It was not the first time that Haley at the UN had used unmistakably threatening tones to remind the world of the consequences of opposing the USA even with a mere UN non-binding vote that the U. S. can routinely veto. After her threat, the UN vote opposing the dangerous U. S. stance on Jerusalem was 128-to-9. The nations siding with the U. S. -- presumably bought-off or afraid -- were: Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo. So, Ambassador Haley had to write down a lot of countries to punish. Of course, the likes of Russia and China are too big to punish but...what about the UK, all the EU nations, all the Caribbean nations, all the Latin American nations, all the Scandinavian nations, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc., etc. etc. That's a lot of nations even for President Donald Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley to punish.

      The quotation above was a Nikki Haley Twitter-Threat about "taking names" but it sure appears to have been dictated by her boss, Twitter-master President Trump.

          The photo-graphic above mocks the United States UN Ambassador as "ISRAEL'S AMBASSADOR TO THE UN." It is something, I believe, that President Trump and all Americans should be concerned about. You see, in reality, Nikki Haley is not Trump's puppet. That distinction, and her fealty, belongs to Marco Rubio.

   In the 2016 Republican primary, Senator Marco Rubio was Nikki Haley's fervent presidential choice. They mocked and ridiculed Trump, at least until he eliminated Rubio and the other 15 Republican contenders. Then Rubio, after even losing his home-state of Florida to Trump, vowed not to seek a 2nd term as the U. S. Senator from Miami, which was a lock because only anti-Cuban extremists get elected to Congress from Miami although most Cuban-Americans in Miami favor normalizing relations with Cuba. Also, it was assumed after her idol, Rubio, missed out on the presidency, Haley would continue her cushy job as the Governor of South Carolina and use it as a future stepping stone for her Presidential aspirations, which would be surpassed only by her devotion to Rubio. Politics, of course, have strange bedfellows. Rubio relented and grabbed a second 6-year term in the U. S. Senate, a position he once admitted he didn't like but now realized was needed to keep his presidential hopes on the front-burner. And, for some reason, Haley quit her job as Governor of South Carolina to accept Trump's offer as United Nations Ambassador.

      The political nexus tying Nikki Haley to Marco Rubio will one day rise up to smite the Trump presidency. Meanwhile, the two foxes in Trump's hen-house are closely monitoring the coup against Trump being relentlessly waged by the U. S. media.   

      If Trump doesn't know it now, he will soon find out that Nikki Haley's NUMBER ONE, now and for always, is Marco Rubio, not Donald Trump. The moment the Trump presidency appears vulnerable enough, which will happen before his first term ends in 2020, the two foxes in his hen-house will pounce and then feast...at least as far as the Republican Party is concerned. The extreme left-wing tilt of the other party, the Democrats, also favor future prospects for Rubio and Haley because they can easily claim that the left-wing Democrats now favor even illegal immigrants and other minorities over European immigrants and, yes, politically incorrect white people.

      President Trump apparently thought that putting his two bitter primary enemies, Senator Rubio and South Carolina's Governor Haley, in his hen-house was the best way to keep an eye on them...and at least postpone their White House ambitions till his own was fulfilled. But that decision will come back to haunt Trump.

     After Trump mocked Rubio during the 2016 presidential campaign, President Trump decided he needed to toss Rubio a tasty bone -- little CUBA!!

      Although Marco Rubio is clearly President Trump's prime back-stabbing threat, Trump has tried to ameliorate the situation by essentially anointing Rubio as the USA's most powerful Cuban dictator since the Bush dynasty back in the 1980s anointed future billionaire Jorge Mas Canosa to that very undemocratic position.

     Thus, with Rubio peeking ominously over his right shoulder, President Trump went to Rubio's Little Havana stomping grounds in Miami to sign legislation reversing much of Obama's decency towards Cuba, reverting back to Rubio's Cuban indecency.

     During the Republican primary in 2016, Trump had effectively stated that "Sheldon Adelson would have total control over Rubio," referring to the Jewish billionaire.

     Actually, Rubio's insatiable taste for money-burgers is as well known as his courting of billionaires, especially wealthy Jews that seek pro-Israeli politicians.

     In fact, Rubio is so pro-Israel that he often appears openly to tout Israeli causes and Israeli flags more fervently than United States causes and United States flags. 

      Indeed, when Republicans are in charge of Congress, that powerful branch of the U. S. government clearly favors Israel over any Democratic administration, as President Obama found out and as the quotation above attests. Obama as President didn't think the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu should come to Washington and address Congress on the eve of important U. S. elections. But with Republicans in control of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu easily prevailed, to the acute embarrassment of President Obama and the democracy-lovers in the United States.

      All U. S. Presidents since Israel's founding in 1948, like John Kennedy, have solidly supported Israel, as have the vast majority of Americans, including me.

    But there have been times, such as this week concerning Jerusalem, that the United States has had to use its economic and military clout on the international stage, as well as the frequent use of its UN VETO, to counter the consensus of the rest of the world that, at times, Israel uses its enormous nuclear-powered military disproportionately against helpless civilians in Israeli-dominated areas like little Gaza or in other Israeli-occupied territory that the international community fiercely opposes. Even the three Bush U. S. presidencies, for example, strongly opposed Israeli settlements being continually built on occupied land, but Israel can easily ignore U. S. wishes because of its dominance of the U. S. Congress and the extreme power in Washington of AIPAC, the omnipotent Israeli lobby that no U. S. politicians, Republican or Democrat, will ever challenge. To illustrate that point, back in the 1980s when the Bush dynasty anointed Jorge Mas Canosa as the first powerful Cuban dictator in the U. S., Canosa was advised to study and then replicate AIPAC. Canosa did that and created CANF, the omnipotent Cuban lobby in Washington that immediately began coming up with such omnipotent anti-Cuban legislation as the Helms-Burton Bill and such extremely lucrative Washington-to-Miami money pipelines as the lush Radio-TV Marti anti-Cuba propaganda machine that till this day sucks up tons of cash-cow tax-dollars even though two decades ago a famous ABC News report correctly labeled it "the broadcast to nowhere." And, no, your Congressman can't deny such things but neither can he or she challenge them. The two greatest U.S.-Cuban authors -- Julia E. Sweig and Ann Louise Bardach -- have explained all that minutely in their truly outstanding books, essays and articles.

    The world's smartest person, Albert Einstein himself, correctly defined Israel "as a blessing to the world." And the world needed that blessing soon after World War II.

     But the brilliant mind of Albert Einstein also made the statement depicted above that, all too often, right-wingers in America and right-wingers in  Israel routinely ignore...at their peril and at their nations' peril, both America and Israel. For right-wing extremists in America and Israel to not abide by the Einstein Doctrine delineated above will likely endanger Israelis, Americans, Arabs, and all citizens of the world. This is particularly true considering that mighty America and little Israel are both supreme nuclear powers with ultra-modern delivery systems on land, in the air, and both on and below the seas. But it is now a diverse nuclear-powered and proxy-war world that we live in, with all at risk from the endless lunacy.

       Therefore, this week when Nikki Haley -- Marco Rubio's puppet at the United Nations speaking on behalf of President Trump -- was acting like "Israel's Ambassador to the UN," not America's, Americans should take notice. Using Trump's bully pulpit, she clearly threatened to "take names" and then punish any nation that didn't support the Trump position on the Jerusalem controversy. Perhaps she scared seven little nations into supporting the U. S. vote but that's all. All of the large nations in the world, and all of America's best friends, ignored Haley's ignorant threat, as well they should. But at least Haley's big-bully threats to the whole world reminds other nations of what little Cuba has dealt with since the 1950s, what helpless Chile dealt with in 1973, what...well, you get the point, I hope. What Nikki Haley demonstrated at the United Nations this week is abundantly  clear: America's two-party political system needs to find better politicians than...Clinton, Trump, Rubio, Haley, etc., etc., etc. 

        The 128-to-9 UN vote on Jerusalem this week or the 191-to-0 UN vote in 2016 against the Cuban embargo are NON-BINDING VOTES because the U. S. has a veto in the UN. And regarding a NON-BINDING UN RESOLUTION Nikki Haley threatens every nation in the world that doesn't vote the way the U. S. insists they vote!!! Incredible. Simply...INCREDIBLE. And if the American people meekly allow such things, then THEY are to blame far, far more than the miscreants who benefit from them.

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Trump's War on Cuba

Another Bay of Pigs USA Defeat?
{Friday, December 22nd, 2017}

    Among my top news sources are the Voice of America reports sent to my email address each day. The VOA, supported by USA taxpayers, has influenced America's images to billions around the world with its international reach via its various media platforms. The image-graphic above headlined a major VOA report this week -- Dec. 18, 2017. It concluded that some of President Trump's recent decisions or comments -- such as eliminating the USA as a major player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with his dangerous & controversial Jerusalem decision -- will leave the USA "out in the cold." And the VOA seems to suggest that Trump's "America's First" doctrine AS APPLIED TO DESTROYING CUBA will also "leave America out in the cold" BY PLEASING ONLY AMERICA'S MOST VICIOUS ENEMIES WHO THEN USE IT AS EXCUSES TO ASSAIL AMERICA, verbally and otherwise. Yes, Cuba is a small island nation but its international influence -- as related to the USA -- is far out of proportion to its size or its economy. In 2016, the last year of the Obama presidency, the UN condemned the USA's Cuban policy by a 191-to-ZERO vote because not even the Obama administration could support a Cuban policy in Washington dictated by a mere handful of Batistiano-connected right-wing thugs. On Sunday, Dec. 17-2017 President Trump issued another incredibly stupid and grossly anti-American statement regarding Cuba, a statement Americans should go online and study. That official Trump statement, word for word, was:

            "Hopefully everything will normalize with Cuba, but right now, they are not doing the right thing. And when they don't do the right thing, we're not going to do the right thing. That's all there is to it. We have to be strong with Cuba. The Cuban people are incredible people. They support me very strongly. But we'll get Cuba straightened out."

          Americans who don't Google that quotation are, I believe, Americans who don't care a whit about America or its image. The stupidity of the Trump approach to Cuba is overwhelming in the belief that...as 2017 turns into 2018...a sovereign nation must conform precisely to USA's dictates or the Superpower USA will "get Cuba straightened out" is as un-American and un-Democratic as one can get in the modern world, a world far different than it was in, say, 1973. That's when the Nixon-Kissinger White House decided a wildly popular and democratically elected President in Chile should be replaced by a brutal dictatorship that would be "U. S. Friendly," which meant one that would allow rich Americans to reap the prime benefits of that country's resources. So, in 1973 a bloody coup killed the democratically elected President Allende in Chile and replaced him, for 17 bloody years, with the murderous but "U. S. Friendly" Pinochet dictatorship. Allende had famously tried to defend his government from the windows of his presidential palace till he ran out of bullets.

  After the bloody coup in 1973 that replaced the dead democratically elected Chilean President Allende with the murderous Dictator Pinochet, the photo above from the 1970s still haunts America's and the world's democracy-lovers. It shows Henry Kissinger -- on behalf of America and President Nixon -- warmly greeting Chile's new murderous but U. S. Friendly Dictator Pinochet. American citizens, disgracing America, accepted the shamefully undemocratic handshake above. Since 1959 right-wingers in Miami and Washington...in a process disgracefully accepted by many Americans...the Superpower USA has tried...but failed...to put a "U. S. Friendly" government in Cuba that probably would have resembled the "U. S. Friendly Pinochet government" in Chile or at least the U.S.-Friendly Batista-Mafia dictatorship that brutalized Cuba in the 1950s. Study Kissinger's glee depicted above.

      Chile's U. S. Friendly dictator Pinochet died peacefully in a hospital at age 91 in 2006. His key American friend Kissinger is now 94-years-old, un-scarred by his Pinochet connections only because of extreme right-wing propaganda that even great democracies are susceptible to if their citizens are asleep or undemocratic.

      To comprehend today's U.S.-Cuban relations, Americans need to understand the photo above, which was taken in Washington on Nov. 10-1938. It reflects the fact that the imperial-minded United States had replaced imperialist Spain as the dominant power in Cuba after the 1898 Spanish-American War, which needed the deadly explosion of the USS Maine warship in Havana Harbor to give the U. S. the pretext for the War. The photo above shows Dictator Batista, second from the left upfront, being welcomed to Washington by U. S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Wells on the left and Chief of the Staff of the U. S. Army General Malin Craig. The man on the right with his hat at his side is Cuba's new U. S. Ambassador Pedro Fraga. By 1938 a two-bit Cuban army Sergeant, Fulgencio Batista, was the U. S. Friendly Cuban dictator. He later retired to South Florida where his Mafia buddies...including the likes of Al Capone and Batista's best friend Meyer Lansky...also had homes. Legend correctly has it that Lansky, the #2 Mafia kingpin behind only Lucky Luciano at the time, in the early 1950s talked his buddy Batista into returning to Cuba as the U.S.-backed dictator so, to quote Lansky, "The mob can own its own country, which has been my long-time dream." And so, Batista acquiesced to Lansky's request...and the rest is history.

    Thus in 1952 the new U.S.-Friendly Cuban dictatorship was led by -- left-to-right -- Mafia kingpins Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky with Fulgencio Batista being the upfront Dictator. This arrangement permitted rich U. S. businessmen to also partake in the wholesale rape and robbery of the helpless island, creating a trilogy of evil intent.

     Of course, beginning in 1952 the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba left the majority peasants, as shown above in an historic photo, in dire poverty even as the island was being used as a lush piggy-bank for the Batistianos, Mafiosi, and U. S. businessmen.

     The wealthy Batista dictatorship -- supported by ill-gotten wealth as well as by the post-World War II superpower USA and by the Mafia, the strongest criminal organization in the world -- had a powerful military, which is shown in the Wikipedia photo above executing a Cuban rebel in 1956. But neither the rampant executions nor the wholesale poverty among the Cuban peasants were enough to fuel a revolution capable of overthrowing such an omnipotent dictatorship. BUT ONE HUGE MISTAKE BY Batista, the Mafia, and the United States DID IGNITE A REVOLT.

      The U.S.-backed Batistianos and the Mafiosi in Cuba developed a ploy to quell dissent among the majority peasants -- executing peasant children. But instead of quelling dissent, it historically ignited the firestorm that doomed Batista's regime.

       The gruesome murders of their children sent brave Cuban mothers into the streets to protest, and it was these demonstrations that fueled the revolution.

      "Los asesinatos de nuestros nijos" means "The assassinations of our children." Because of courageous mothers like the ones shown above carrying posters with such searing denunciations, the Cuban Revolution had the spark and the fuel, if not the immediate means, to succeed. In Revolutionary Cuba today the major Children's Hospital is named for little Willie Soler, one of the assassinated children.

     America's love affair with Cuba's brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista from 1933 through the 1950s is not exactly our proud America's proudest historical claim.

     This Corbis photo shows Batista's U.S.-armed troops preparing to leave for the Sierra Maestra in 1956 to end the Cuban Revolution. In a cable to Washington and also on Havana radio, Batista said, "This won't take long." Indeed, the rebels were grossly out-gunned and out-manned, but these soldiers didn't have the rebels' motivation.

The rebel leader was...Fidel Castro.

     No matter what the Batistiano-dominated Cuban narrative in the United States says today, there is no way the Cuban Revolution could have triumphed in 1959 without the fuel and inspiration provided by the Cuban mothers protesting the unconscionable murders of their children in Batista's Cuba. And furthermore, without such memories on the island today there is no way Revolutionary Cuba could possibly have survived all these decades against the U.S.-based and U.S.-backed Batistiano & Mafiosi forces still headquartered today in the United States.

      And that brings us back around to the Dec. 17-2017 Voice of America graphic depicted above. With the whole world opposing America's cruel Batistiano-fueled Cuban policies, as evidenced by that 191-to-ZERO condemnation in the UN, the sheer stupidity of President Trump's statement on Sunday, Dec. 17-2017 is mind-boggling, even for him. He proclaimed, if you remember the exact quotation shown at the top of this essay, that he will "straighten out" Cuba if Cuba doesn't do precisely what he demands that it do. Well, Mr. President, everyday since January 1 of 1959 Cuba has proven to the world that it will not submit to being dictated by a foreign power, even the world's #One foreign Superpower. And remember these particular two exact sentences Trump said on Dec. 17-2017: "The Cuban people are incredible people. They support me very strongly." Such delusional nonsense is, of course, very dangerous for both Cuba and for the United States of America itself.

      Almost without exception, Cubans on the island today dearly love former President Barack Obama and dearly hate current President Trump. That basic and undeniable fact is reflected by the young Cuban man shown above as he sits on Havana's famed Malecon seawall and gazes over the sea toward the nearby shores of Key West, Florida. This young man is typical of Cubans on the island today...they love Barack Obama and they don't hate America. This young Cuban's attire proudly features a large image of Barack Obama enmeshed among the American flag.

     It is highly possible that President Obama's most lasting legacy will be the unique kindnesses he displayed toward the Cuban people. No other American president since the 1950s had the guts and the intelligence to confront the Batistiano-Mafiosi dictation of America's Cuban policy. Cubans on the island will never forget that President Obama went to Cuba and told them in person and on live television: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." The very decent and brave President Obama sincerely believed those 12 famous and now historic words. But he didn't anticipate being replaced by President Trump in 2017.

      Throughout 2017 President Trump has shown no respect for 11.2 million totally innocent Cubans on the island, the people that President Obama respected and still respects so much. President Trump, with his Cuban harangues, is disrespecting America and Democracy, two entities that Obama would never disrespect. In Miami's Little Havana neighborhood in a plush theater named for a Bay of Pigs leader, and in front of a huge Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506 Assault banner, President Trump assured the choir, composed mostly of surviving Bay of Pigs veterans, that he, after all these decades, plans to reclaim Cuba for them. While Americans will roundly oppose Trump on almost all of his other actions, the sad indications are that this generation of propagandized Americans wouldn't oppose Trump even if he nuked Cuba. The Voice of America seems direly concerned about such things, even if many Americans are not. After all...Batista, the Mafia, the Bay of Pigs, terrorist assassinations as well as deadly hotel, car, and airplane bombings, AND the longest and cruelest embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak nation have never concerned the American people because the target was Revolutionary Cuba...although in essence it also targets America and democracy. So why would we expect this generation of Americans to be concerned if Trump kept all of the promises he made in the speech above to a handful of Bay of Pigs survivors???

      I mean...it's like Trump's and America's newly anointed U. S. dictator -- Senator Rubio -- preaches as he shapes and reshapes America's post-Obama Cuba Policy: All the good Cubans are either in Miami or the U. S. Congress while all the bad Cubans are still on the island. "Uh, absolutely, Senator Rubio!! Whatever you say or decide, sir!! Rest assured our tax dollars as well as our nukes and reputations will support you ALL THE WAY 100%!!"

And by the way:

  I think the Jamaica Observer is THE BEST newspaper in the Caribbean and the entire region, which includes Miami. On the island just south of Cuba, the Observer both in print and online has excellent and fair-minded journalists. Also, its photos and its Editorial Cartoons are simply terrific and amazingly descriptive in support of its interesting articles.

    For example, the Jamaica Observer photo depicted above told its readers precisely what the article was all about. It was entitled: "I want him but she's in the way."  

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Cuba's NON-USA Options

Russia? China? Iran?

{Monday, December 18th,2017}

     Aside from the high-profile threats from North Korea's nuclear insanity, the three biggest challenges -- or threats -- to America's Superpower status are, probably, in this order: the Russian military, the Chinese economy, and the Iranian ideology. With pugnacious little Cuba still thrusting its influence on the international stage FAR OUT OF PROPPORTION TO ITS SIZE, POPULATION AND ECONOMY, it is no coincidence that Russia, China, and Iran are all trying to take advantage of the latest cruel sanctions against Cuba devised by U. S. President Donald Trump and his apparent anointment of Senator Marco Rubio as America's latest Cuban dictator. The photo above of the Russian oil tanker bound for Cuba is an example. Back in May, 2017, it delivered 249,000 barrels of refined oil products to Cuba, which badly needed the gesture because of crisis-wracked Venezuela's inability to provide the island the oil it needs. Russia is not sure financially-strapped Cuba can repay financially-challenged Russia but the temptation to take advantage of the new Trump-Rubio assaults on Cuba is simply too much for Russia to ignore. In other words, America's Cuban policy -- with Trump & Rubio at the helm -- will continue to greatly embarrass all of America's best friends in the world while also greatly inspiring America's biggest challengers and most bitter enemies. Meanwhile, Americans are programmed to sit back and not give a damn. After all, little Cuba is the worst bad guy, right?

      In the first week of this month -- Dec.-2017 -- Russia's top automaker, Avtovaz, shipped 344 of its best brand-new cars -- like the Lada Vesta model above -- to Cuba. The plan is not only to break into the Cuban market but, considering Cuba as its pathway to other Caribbean and Latin American markets, it is a part of Avtovaz's nascent global reach...and its desire to compete with other auto giants.

     The President of Avtovaz is Nicolas Maure. He says, "We are also training Cubans to provide after-sale services for their fine Russian cars. We feel Cuba is a priority market for our excellent car exports as we seek entry into the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, where Cuba, while being a small nation, is a leading influence. We would like to remind the area that the Trump administration's cruelty towards Cuba can, at least partially, be offset by Russia's sympathy and by Russia's international reach."

     Russia's large shipment of Ladas to Cuba this month included this model of Lada SUVs. Nicolas Maure says, "The now-proven world-class quality of our Avtovaz cars, SUVs, and Trucks are ready to impact the world. We begin that reach, hopefully, with Cuba and then the Caribbean and Latin America. But we are already arranging shipments to China." Particularly backed by the governments of Russia, China, and Iran, executives like Russia's Nicolas Maure are reveling in the latest attempts by the Trump-Rubio nexus in Washington to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of everyday Cubans on the island, just as de-classified U. S. documents in 1962 gave as the purpose for the still-ongoing embargo against Cuba. Mr. Maure in Russia, and many like him, understand both the cruelty and insanity of that doctrine...and with Trump-Rubio now reversing former President Obama's sane and decent attempts to end it, America's biggest international enemies and challengers seek ways to take advantage of America's longest reigning insanity...insanity that persists even as the rest of the world condemns it by a very resounding 191-to-ZERO vote in the UN.

          Great democracy-loving Americans -- such as Emily Mandrala at the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas -- believe that June 16-2017 was a Day of Infamy for America and Democracy. That was the day, as shown above, that President Trump went to Little Havana in Miami and vowed to reverse all of the overtures toward Cuba that his predecessor, Mr. Obama, had so bravely mandated.

     On that Day of Infamy -- June 16-2017 -- President Trump very cowardly appeared before Miami's Counter Revolutionary choir in a plush theater named in Little Havana for a former Bay of Pigs leader. In essence, with the Executive Orders displayed above, he vowed to...at long last...recapture Cuba for the remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that was overthrown by the still-standing Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. Americans, thoroughly propagandized since Jan. 1-1959, are programmed to accept any atrocity directed at the Cuban people -- from the Bay of Pigs military attack in 1961 to the 1976 terrorist bombing of the child-ladened civilian Cubana Flight 455 airplane to the longest and cruelest {1962 till today} economic embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak nation. If you study the Day of Infamy photo above, you can see that the clapping man on the far left is Mario Diaz-Balart whose father was a key Minister in Cuba's Batista-Mafia dictatorship and, after Jan. 1-1959, one of the all-time richest and most militant Counter Revolutionaries in South Florida. Mario Diaz-Balart as well as his older brother, Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart, have been elected to the U. S. Congress from Miami, which still claims to be a democracy. Yet, polls show that most Cuban-Americans in Miami favor normal relations with Cuba but it seems only Counter Revolutionary extremists can get elected, one after the other, to the U. S. Congress from Miami. Today the most dangerous of that group is Senator Marco Rubio, anointed by Trump as America's new Cuban dictator. In that June 16-2017 Day of Infamy photo above, the clapping and grinning man third from the right is Marco Rubio. While Cuba does not deserve another Batista or a Marco Rubio as its dictator...even from his bases in Miami and Washington...this or a future generation of propagandized Americans may awake one sad morning and find a Batista-like Rubio as their new United States President.

      This week -- on Dec. 16, 2017 -- the Democracy-loving and Washington-based CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS used the above photo-graphic to launch a new campaign to oppose the latest Trump-Rubio sanctions that mostly and very adversely affect another generation of totally innocent Cuban children. Since 1962 self-serving Rubio-types have claimed the sanctions are designed to hurt or seek revenge on the Castros. The CENTER FOR DOMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS says that is a self-serving lie and that the U. S. sanctions are designed to primarily hurt Cuban children in keeping with the original 1962 purpose of the embargo, which -- according to de-classified U. S. documents -- was created to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island for the purpose of inducing them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. Of course, the Rubio-types in control of the self-serving United States Cuban narrative try their damnest to make sure that Americans don't know about such things as de-classified 1962 U. S. documents.

 This is the Executive Director of the Washington-based CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS. Her name is Emily Mendrala. In regards to the sanctions against Cuba, either Emily is a liar or Marco Rubio is a liar. And I believe it is high-time democracy-loving Americans had the courage and the patriotism to decide who is lying about a topic that gets America condemned by a 191-to-ZERO vote by the nations in the United Nations. P.S.: And the liar in question is not Emily Mendrala.

Now these two men...

wouldn't lie to you about Cuba...

to feather their own nests...

would they????
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And by the way:

     I firmly believe that a photo says a lot more than a thousand words, including mine. The photo above intrigued me. It was taken just a few weeks ago. It shows two men joyfully riding in the back-seat of a taxi on a street in Havana, Cuba. The man on the left is Richard Branson, the multi-billionaire Brit who founded and owns the vast Virgin empire, among other things. The young, bearded man on the right is Fidel Antonio Castro, the grandson of Fidel Castro. The extremely well educated Fidel Antonio is Richard Branson's dear friend and shows the famed Englishman around the island. And by the way, the astute Mr. Branson believes every word Fidel Antonio says and dis-believes every word President Trump and Senator Rubio say about the island. Mr. Branson's global empire, of course, wants Yankee dollars but he still has the courage to wonder out loud why "The American people are either too stupid or too afraid to speak out against an American practice that has tried to starve Cuban children on the island for six decades to benefit a few mean, greedy guys."

       For sure, Richard Branson, the Brit billionaire and international celebrity, knows more than a little bit about U.S.-Cuban relations. That's Mr. Branson in the middle in the above photo wearing the blue shirt. He loves and admires "the ingenuity, fortitude, and determination of the Cuban-Cubans, the ones on the island." And that, of course, is because he knows the Cuban-Cubans in Cuba. As Mr. Branson points out, the U. S. embargo against Cuba has tried mightily to make it unlawful for everyday Americans to visit one place on this earth -- Cuba. That, of course, is so Counter Revolutionary extremists in the U. S. can better dictate the Cuban narrative.

     But dictating the Cuban narrative to informed and intelligent people, such as Richard Branson, takes more than just a litany of big lies from people like Marco Rubio. Both the airplane and the HERE'S TO LOOKING UP comment belong to Mr. Branson. But both the clouds and the rainbow are courtesy of a much Higher Power. 

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