A New STILL PUGNACIOUS Cuba

Startling Constitutional Changes!!
{UPDATED: Saturday, July 28th, 2018}

     On July 22nd, 2018, the Cuban National Assembly completed the draft of a dramatically new Constitution, far more advanced and much more modern than the last major changes back in 1976. Now the drafts will be debated outside the parliament, among the people, from August 13th till November 15th and then they will be submitted to a nationwide referendum vote.

     The parliamentary changes to the new Cuban constitution are indeed drastic. Marriage in Cuba, for example, will now be defined as "a union between two people," meaning that people of the same sex can be wed on the island.

    While the mainstream media in the U. S. is accustomed to either ignoring Cuba altogether or adhering strictly to the dictates of Counter Revolutionary Cuban American extremists such as self-serving Miami Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress like Marco Rubio and Mario Diaz-Balart {Mario's extremely rich father was a former key minister in the Batista dictators}. BUT, incredibly, a major CNN article written by Andrea Diaz and posted online on July 26th used the photo above while accurately and fairly reporting on the vast Cuban changes, starting with the "union of two people" significance.

     Cuba's new Secretary of the National Assembly, Homero Acosta, was quoted in the CNN/Andrea Diaz article as saying: "We could not turn our backs on the marriage issue when preparing a new constitution. We studied international laws to have a better understanding of around 24 countries that have this concept incorporated. We will prevent any form of discrimination toward the Cuban people and whoever discriminates against them will be punished. The harassed, the less fortunate, the disabled...will be protected and respected as much as our strongest citizens." That comment from a newly elevated top Cuban official, Homero Acosta, was actually included in the CNN/Andrea Diaz article, which is astounding in the USA where the mainstream media usually confines its Cuban coverage to only to the anti-Cuban rhetoric of extreme benefactors like Rubio & Diaz-Balart.

  The two Cuban men shown above, Rainiel Torres and Dariel Hernandez, will soon be free to get married in Cuba.

 As gay men, new Cuban laws will protect Rainiel and Dariel from harassment and other forms of discrimination in Cuba.

   Cuba's new President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, became the island's first non-Castro and first non-revolutionary leader on April 19th. He was born in 1960, after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution over the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. He had served the previous five years as President Raul Castro's First Vice President but earlier had attained nationwide popularity as Cuba's Education Minister. The new constitution bears his imprint. Previously since 1959, the Castro brothers -- Fidel and Raul -- had served as head of both the Council of State and the Council of Ministers. With the new constitution, Cuba for the first time will have a Prime Minister who will be head of the Council of Ministers. But as President of the Council of State, Miguel Diaz-Canel will retain the superior position on the island...apparently because that is what the Cubans...the ones in Cuba, not the ones in Miami's Little Havana and in the U. S. Congress...want and will vote on in November via a nationwide referendum.

    The new Cuban constitution, at the behest of President Diaz-Canel, will step-by-step mandate private enterprise and the ownership of property. In the aforementioned CNN/Andrea Diaz article, he was quoted as saying: "The new constitution will take into account all human issues and bring social justice to the forefront to build a better political system for our people, and strengthen the national unity." Significantly, the new constitution does not mention communism but instead stresses "Socialism." But make no mistake, President Diaz-Canel worships the Castro legacy and "everything that the Revolution entails, starting with the independence and sovereignty it bequeathed to me when I was a baby."

    This week -- July 26th, 2018 -- marked the 65th anniversary of what Fidel Castro mandated as the start of the Cuban Revolution. It began in earnest on July 26, 1953, with Fidel's ill-fated, out-gunned attack on Batista's Moncada army barracks on the edge of Santiago de Cuba. Few of Fidel's lightly armed associates survived the attack and he himself ended up in a Batista prison from July-1953 till May-1955. But even then and until the Revolutionary victory on January 1, 1959, the rebels wore the July 26th armbands in memory of the Moncada attack.

    The 65th anniversary of Fidel's Moncada attack was celebrated off the island this week...including Italy, for example {above}.

Moncada -- one piece of Fidel's legend.

     This week -- July 26, 2018 -- a tired, frail-looking Raul Castro made the above speech in Santiago to commemorate the Moncada attack 65 years ago. He stressed the threat of another Republican administration in Washington. "Once again," he said, "on the heels of the hope with had with Obama, the U. S. government is firmly aligned with the remnants of the Batista and Mafia factions we fought against at Moncada and throughout the Revolution.' "We few who remain from those necessary conflicts, and especially the new constitutional leaders who have recently emerged, must be as vigilant as ever to protect our nation against foreign aggression."

     The photo above was revised this week on the 65th anniversary of the Moncada attack to emphasize the fact that the 87-year-old Raul Castro is one of the "few who remain" from the legendary rebels who overthrew the Batista regime on the first day of 1959. For example, Juan Almeida Bosque, shown on the left above, was born on Feb. 17-1927 and died on Sept. 11-2009. As a guerrilla fighter and commander, Juan was the closest rebel to Raul throughout the war and till the day he died as a top leader in Revolutionary Cuba. And, of course, on Nov. 25-2016 Fidel Castro died at age 90 in Havana.

     Cuba's new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, was right beside Raul Castro during the ceremonies in Santiago this week celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Moncada attack on July 26th, 1953. And President Diaz-Canel, as shown above, regularly pays homage at Fidel's tomb in Santiago.

    At his Moncada trial, surrounded by Batista soldiers, Fidel Castro, a lawyer, defended himself, famously concluding his soliloquy with the words, "History will absolve me." Atrocities, including vicious murders of children and University of Havana students by Batista's goons, forced the United States to insist that Fidel be released from prison in May of 1955 as a token of good-will to the Cuban people, who worshiped Fidel because of what they perceived as the only hope to escape the Batista-Mafia-U.S. stranglehold on their island. Prior to the release, other Moncada prisoners had been tortured to death but Fidel's fame and the watchful eye of New York Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews spared Fidel that fate. But with his U.S.-pressured release, Batista's plan was to murder Fidel beyond the prying eyes of Matthews and other U. S. journalists. But Fidel survived those assassination attemps and hundreds more...and the rest is indeed history, which will never "absolve" Fidel in the eyes of his enemies but millions of Cubans on the island have always cherished him...and now...cherish his legacy. If that were not so, there would never have been an incredible victory for the Cuban Revolution and...EVEN MORE INCREDIBLY...Revolutionary Cuba would not still be in power in the summer of 2018. Such basic facts, while politically and socially incorrect in the Batistiano-tainted USA, is nevertheless undeniably true.

    In a speech while still in his prime, Fidel Castro once said, "While some think of me as a tall rebel, I myself do not want to be remembered as tall an independence fighter as Jose Marti is remembered. Marti fought and died on Cuban soil in 1895 fighting Spanish domination. I fought and lived on Cuban soil fighting American and Mafiosi domination. As an independence fighter, he died for the most righteous cause. I have not yet died on a Cuban battlefield as an independence fighter. So, while I live, don't compare me to Marti." Also, just before he died at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016, Fidel Castro ordered that no statues should ever be built honoring him and no roads, buildings, etc., should ever be named for him. "A cult of personality," he said, "should never be built around my name. I didn't fight for that. I fought for an independent Cuba." On July 22nd of 2018, the draft of Cuba's new constitution officially acknowledged Fidel Castro's wishes and codified them into law.

    In 1953 the Federation of University Students {FEU} comprised Fidel Castro's most ardent supporters. That's why Batista's goons murdered many of them, including now famously martyred FEU leader Jose Antonio Echeverria, and shutdown the University of Havana. Today -- in the summer of 2018 -- the FEU remains the most ardent defender of Fidel Castro's revolution and his legacy.

    Today's inspirational leader of The Federation of University Students in Havana is Jennifer Bello Martinez, and she is cast in the mold of Jose Antonio Echeverria. Jennifer says, "If our enemies in Miami and Washington persuade the U. S. military to nuke this island, they had better get all of us. Because if they don't, those of us who are left have the revolutionary souls that Fidel would be proud of."

    Ubiquitous posters in Cuba proclaim: "Cuba es Nuestra" {"Cuba is Ours"}. Spain and other imperial powers who dominated Cuba for centuries, understand that poster in the configuration of the modern world. But ultra-rich, powerful, and revengeful forces in America, which dominated Cuba from 1898 {after the Spanish-American War} till January 1, 1959, don't. Thus, the world that was astounded by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 is even more astounded today that Cuba remains, after all these decades, free of American, Batistiano, and Mafiosi domination. But, as the simply-stated poster above indicates, those factions have always underestimated how many people on the island firmly believe "Cuba is Ours" -- not Spain's, not America's, not Little Havana's, and not the Mafia's.

"This is Cuba"
"Esta es Cuba"

"This is Our People"
"Esta es Su Gente"

"This is Cuba"**"This is our People"

    In other words, it seems that a third generation of Cubans on the island subscribe to the slogan "YO SOY FIDEL" {"I AM FIDEL"}. And as long as that is so, short of getting some Republican U. S. president to nuke the island, Cubans ON the island...not Cubans in Miami and Washington...will continue to rule Cuba. Of course, merely surviving man-made and natural hurricanes as well as other such calamities like...embargoes, sanctions, other Batistiano-written congressional laws, Bay of Pigs assaults, terrorism, and whatever else nature and nearby humans have planned for them...remains a daunting task.

"Yo Soy Fidel"

    If Fidel's revolution is ever overthrown, university students and graduates...like the young woman above and like what happened in the early 1950s...will again be in the forefront on the vulnerable but pugnacious island. That, of course, would mean another long-shot, but viable, revolution. From his mansion in Florida and from his safe seat in Congress, Marco Rubio doesn't believe that. But on the island, Jennifer Bello Martinez does believe it.

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A Few Interesting Books

Discoverable, RE-readable Gems!!

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Trying to Starve Innocent Cubans

Why U. S. Citizens Are to Blame!!

     A news article this week about Panasonic Lithium-ion batteries explained why neither the mainstream U. S. media nor the sanctimonious U. S. citizens have either the guts or the decency to react to a LEGAL 6-decade-old effort by the Batistiano-riven U. S. Congress to starve totally innocent Cubans on the nearby island. The London-based international news agency Reuters, which is far better than any U.S. news outlet, explained this week that Panasonic has ceased buying cobalt from a Canadian company, Sherritt International, because some of its cobalt...not much BUT a little bit...might have been mined in Cuba and possibly ended up in the Panasonic Lithium-ion batteries. Most of the cobalt used anywhere in the world comes from one troubled African nation, the Congo, and Panasonic gets most of its cobalt from a company in the Philippines. But, of course, no dictatorship in either the Congo or the Philippines ever got overthrown by a popular revolution and then quickly and permanently resurrected its rule on U. S. soil within the bowels of the U. S. democracy. Although neither the mainstream U. S. media nor the U. S. citizens have the courage to admit it, that's what happened following the Cuban Revolution's overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba on January 1, 1959. Over six decades later, there are daily examples of why the Cuban Revolution says a lot more about the superpower United States than it says about little Cuba. The latest example this week {late July in 2018} is Panasonic's cowardly capitulation to the uncontested effort of the U. S. Congress, on behalf of a 3rd generation of rich and powerful Batistianos, to starve 11 million totally innocent Cubans on the nearby island. Sanctimonious Americans, always ready to condemn Russia or China of abusing innocent people in much weaker countries, are the prime reason the U. S. got condemned by a 191-to-ZERO vote in the United Nations for the U. S. embargo against Cuba, the longest, stupidest, and cruelest ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation.

    The brave and decent effort by Democratic President Barack Obama to end the embargo against Cuba has, as expected, fallen victim to his successor, Donald Trump, who is yet another Republican President of the United States routinely allied with and dictated to by rich Batistianos considered in control of Florida's often pivotal 29 electoral votes that can put Bush-like and Trump-like patsy-presidents in the White House.

     But it is the Batistiano dictation in the U. S. Congress that has fueled history's longest and cruelest embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak nation. Of course, the purpose of the embargo, which has existed since 1962, was kept from the American people for decades by the easily employed method of classifying {hiding} U. S. documents "for national security reasons" when, quite often, the prime reasons are to protect miscreants within the U. S. government. And so...decades after 1962 we learned via DE-classified U. S. documents that the reason for the embargo was/is to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of everyday Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. So, the embargo in 1962...and apparently to this day...was imposed after the 1961 military attack at the Bay of Pigs as well as numerous assassination attempts and terrorist acts had failed to recapture Cuba, probably because...to this day...a strong majority of Cubans on the pugnacious island prefer revolutionary rule to foreign domination from Spain, for centuries, and from America from 1898, following the Spanish-American War, till 1959 when the Cuban Revolution provided independence. Two revolutionary wars against Spain had failed in the 19th century but in January of 1959 the revolution against Batista, the Mafia, and the U. S. succeeded in shocking the world. In the many decades since, the aftermaths...such as the nefarious Embargo...have changed the USA even more than they have changed Cuba. After all, Cuba is a weak island nation and the USA is the world's economic and military Superpower. And after all, other than the U. S. Embargo against Cuba, there is probably no OTHER TOPIC in this diverse world that could POSSIBLY get a unanimous...191-to-0...condemnation by all the UN nations, which include all of America's best friends.

      Hey!!! Some of those Panasonic Lithium-ion batteries MIGHT have some Cuban cobalt in them??? Well now, the mighty United States of America can't allow that or else we might not be able to starve, deprive, and make miserable the Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government!!! SURELY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, who have understood that brilliant and very effective reasoning for over six decades, WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO!!!

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Florida's Cuban Obsession

After SIX+ decades...

still punishing Cubans in Cuba...

while STILL...

trying to RE-capture the island...
while hiding behind the skirts...
of the world's Superpower!!

      I believe the man on the right in the above photo is the bravest man in the entire state of Florida. His name is David Richardson. A well-known Democrat in state political circles, he is now running to replace the extremist Cuban-born Counter Revolutionary Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who has represented Miami in the U. S. Congress since the Bush dynasty sent her to Washington way back in 1989, when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager as his entree to being accepted as a Counter Revolutionary and thus a two-term Florida governor. This week David Richardson was in Havana as the first and only serious Miami political candidate to display such bravery since 1959, the year the Cuban Revolution chased the leaders of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship from Havana to their new capital, Little Havana in the heart of Miami, Florida...changing the USA forever.

     While in Havana this week, congressional candidate David Richardson, as shown above in the blue Nike shirt, met with ordinary Cuban entrepreneurs who benefited from the decent Obama overtures to Cuba but, as expected, have been severely harmed by the indecent Trump-Rubio assaults since the Democrat Obama was replaced by yet another Batistiano-aligned Republican White House, which is now led by President Trump. Both in Havana and in Miami, Richardson has had the guts to say that the U. S. embargo against Cuba, in effect since 1962, has greatly punished three generations of totally innocent Cubans on the island while {1} lying to the intimidated American people that it is "hurting Castro" and meant "to help" everyday Cubans; and {2} the military and terrorists attacks as well as the embargo, to whet the appetites of three generations of rich and power Cuban-American Counter Revolutionaries, empowered Fidel Castro while he lived and has empowered his legacy, both on the island and around the world, since he died at age 90 on Nov. 25, 2016. David Richardson since 1959 is the first serious Miami politician with the guts to take his campaign to Havana and he is the only one with the guts to leave the state legislature in the capital of Tallahassee to go to either Havana or Miami to speak the truth about the Counter Revolutionaries, well knowing that when Miami's top Cuban-American newsman Emilio Milian did so he was car-bombed and when Miami businesswoman Vivian Mannerud Verble had a small, legal, and tangential relationship with Cuba her business was fire-bombed out of existence. But such things have been par-for-the-course since 1959 in the Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave...changing the USA forever.

      The 61-year-old David Richardson is a highly respected member of Florida's state legislature now running to replace the retiring Havana-born Counter Revolutionary Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who has represented Miami in the U. S. Congress since 1989. Although only extreme Counter Revolutionaries such as Ros-Lehtinen, Rubio, Curbelo, and the Diaz-Balart brothers {whose father was a key Batista Minister} seem eligible to represent Miami in the U. S. Congress,  David Richardson is one of five candidates for the coveted seat and the other four -- front-runner Maria Elvira Salazar, Donna Shalala, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, and Michael Hepburn -- are typical Little Havana political operatives.

   And so...the bravest man in the state of Florida, David Richardson, does not stand a chance to represent Miami in the U. S. Congress...although he may well also be the best politician in Florida. And that sheer fact is yet another reminder that the victory and longevity of the Cuban Revolution from way back in 1959 till this very day STILL says a lot more about the United States of America than it says about the island of Cuba.

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New President Changes Cuba

 The Miguel Diaz-Canel Imprint Sharpens!!

Photo courtesy: Enrique de la Osa/Reuters

     The photo above was used Wednesday, July 18th, 2018, to illustrate an article written by Rachel England for Reuters. She said: "The Cuban government has launched a program that will see mobile internet rolled out nationwide by the end of the year. Cuba is one of the least connected countries in the Western Hemisphere due to a lack of resources, the U. S. trade embargo, and low tolerance for outside support of public dissidence. But new President Miguel Diaz-Canel says, 'greater internet access will help boost the economy and help Cubans defend the revolution.'"

       In the days after April 19th, 2018, when he became President of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel spent considerable time touching base with Cuba-friendly world leaders. He firmly stated, "We must work as best we can with the Trump administration in Washington but unlike during the Obama term it now involves wasting too much of our time that can better be spent with international leaders of friendly nations."

      Cuba's new President backs up his comments. Diaz-Canel is shown above with an international leader that is very friendly to Cuba, Federica Mogherini. She is the High Representative for the 28 European Union nations that include key trade-partners.

     In addition to the July 18th-2018 Reuters report that President Diaz-Canel is aiming for nationwide internet access by the end of the year, he earlier this week reaffirmed a key decision in which he ordered his Ministers "to appear regularly on Cuba's excellent television channels to tell the people what each of you are doing to address the concerns of the people, so they can judge your efforts for themselves."

     This week, in reaction to Diaz-Canel's new orders stressing that televised news and cultural reports should connect the Cuban people more with their leaders, the photo above was taken at a national journalistic session. Diaz-Canel valued the input of two very popular television news anchors -- Rosy Amaro on the left and Cristina Escobar on the right. Journalist Sergio Gomez is in the middle of the above photo.

       Within the first month of his Cuban presidency, Diaz-Canel was confronted by a major tragedy -- the crash on the edge of Havana of a Cuban airplane in which 112 people were killed on May 18th, 2018. Diaz-Canel immediately went to the scene of the crash {above}. Standing in front of the burning wreckage, Diaz-Canel faced live television cameras and explained what he knew at the time about the crash. He explained why the 39-year-old Boeing 737 was leased from a tiny Mexican airline and had a Mexican crew, and he blamed the U. S. embargo as the reason Cuba cannot get needed spare parts or newer planes. After allowing both the U. S. and Mexican experts to investigate the cause of the crash, this week "pilot error" was blamed.

     The flight had taken off from Havana on the island's west end bound for a 450-mile flight to Holguin, a major city on the eastern end of the island. The crash site just southwest of Havana is depicted above by the red star. Since then, 16-hour bus rides have replaced the domestic flight as Cuba grounded all but 3 of its 16 major planes.

     Two of the passengers aboard the ill-fated Havana-to-Holquin flight on May 18th were...Dr. Monica Leyva Garcia and her precious baby girl. Waiting for them at the Holquin airport was Dr. Leyva's husband and the baby's father. He too is a doctor at the Holquin hospital. Monica Leyva had posted the above photo on her Facebook page on April 8th, 2018. Victims of the U. S. embargo? Diaz-Canel thinks so.

      U. S. Senator Marco Rubio -- a product of the Bush dynasty, the Tea Party, and Little Havana in Miami -- is currently in control of the U. S. Cuban narrative. He says...he lies...that the embargo is in place and should be strengthened TO HELP the Cuban people. The Trump administration, in compliance with the easily manipulated mainstream U. S. media, enables the self-absorbed Rubio to revel as America's latest Cuban dictator, reveling in the political power he gets from policies that torture innocent people, including babies, in a nearby much weaker nation. The gutless mainstream U. S. media that excoriates Trump for torturing migrant children who cross the U.S.-Mexican border illegally has neither the courage nor the integrity to criticize either Trump or Rubio for torturing totally innocent babies in THEIR OWN COUNTRY, which is the Caribbean island of Cuba.

      Meanwhile, the rest of the world -- including former U. S. President Barack Obama and Fabiola Sanchez, the Cuban-born editorial chief & top columnist at the Miami Herald -- agree with the unanimous UN vote {191-to-0} condemning the embargo against Cuba. It has, of course, existed SINCE 1962 to appease a mere handful of self-serving Counter Revolutionaries like Rubio who could not care less about the shame it bestows on the United States and on Democracy...OR how it effects the precious lives of Cubans on the island like Dr. Monica Leyva and her baby. {The above internationally accepted image of the U. S. embargo of Cuba was crafted by Brazilian journalist Carlos Latuff after he read the DE-classified U. S. document that detailed the reason for the embargo from 1962 till today and that reason was-is to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government}. Through all these decades since 1962, cowardly and unpatriotic Americans have not had the guts or the intelligence to do something about history's longest and cruelest embargo ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation. Carlos LaTuff speaks the truth; Marco Rubio revels in lies as he gloriously hides behind the skirts of the Superpower U. S. government, THE VERY SAME THING THE BATISTA-MAFIA DICTATORSHIP DID IN CUBA TILL THE CUBAN REVOLUTION IN 1959 CHASED IT TO LITTLE HAVANA IN MIAMI, Florida.

      Improving Cuba's fragile economy while trying to deal with yet another Republican administration in Washington {that is tightly aligned with counter-revolutionary Miami and Congressional hard-liners}, remains a daunting task for President Diaz-Canel's nascent leadership of the vulnerable and historically targeted nation that, unfortunately, lies just 90 miles from Key West, Florida. But the Cuban people all across the Caribbean's largest island got to know Diaz-Canel during his stint as a motorcycle-riding Education Minister and they strongly support him in these early stages of Cuba's first non-Castro and non-Revolutionary presidency since 1959.

The Diaz-Canel ledger.

     But, first and foremost, President Diaz-Canel's idol will always be Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who died at age 90 on November 25th, 2016. Improving Cuba's economy is #Two on Diaz-Canel's priority list; protecting Fidel Castro's revolution and legacy is #One. The so-called "Cuban experts" in Washington have rarely judged Cuba correctly, accounting for the island's Revolutionary victory over the vile U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship; over the vile Bay of Pigs attack in April of 1961; and over six decades of constant U.S.-CIA-Cuban exile-Mafia attempts to recapture the island. The Washington "experts" pre-judging Miguel Diaz-Canel as merely a "figurehead leader" once again plays into little Cuba's hands against its colossal northern enemy.

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