25.9.22

An Election & A Hurricane for Cuba

 

     Today -- Sunday, September 25th, 2022 -- Cuba held an important nationwide election as the government tries to get the support of its 11 million people to pass a "Family Code" bill. The powerful London-based Reuters News Agency, which covers Cuba closely and fairly, says that, if passed, it will be "the most progressive" Civil Rights bill in Latin America. As you can see above, Raul Castro voted on the key bill today. {He turned 91-years-old back on June 3rd, 2022}.
      Prominent television journalist and dedicated mother Rosy Amaro is shown casting her vote in Havana today.
   After casting their "Family Code" vote today, Rosy and her 8-year-old daughter Mariana proudly called it a "Code of Love."
      As a prominent journalist and mother, Rosy Amaro Perez has long been a strong advocate for the rights of "women and girls" on the island. Thus, she campaigned for the passage of the "Family Code" bill that the entire nation was voting on today -- September 25th, 2022.
    Meanwhile, Cuba is also bracing today for Hurricane Ian that is expected to hit the western tip of the island, including Havana, by Tuesday morning, September 27th, 2022. Both Havana and the Isle of Youth, the second largest island shown in red above, are in Ian's path and it is predicted that it will be become a dangerous hurricane starting Sunday night, the 25th. Havana is home to two million people and the Isle of Youth has 80,000 people.

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24.9.22

A Key ELECTION in Cuba Sunday!!

 Election DAY: Sept. 25, 2022

    Revolutionary Cuba is not known for its nationwide elections, but this weekend -- Sunday, September 25th, 2022 -- a widely anticipated Nationwide Election will be held, indicating changes in the drastically targeted island nation that is reeling because of the expanded and ageless U. S. Blockade/Embargo that is currently trying to finally and totally starve the Cuban economy; and that is happening even as Cuba emerges from the Pandemic and this Monday & Tuesday expects to be blasted by a tropical Hurricane. This weekend the photo shown above -- by Yamil Lage, the Cuban who works on the island for the Paris-based AFP News Agency -- is being flashed around the world by the Washington Post and other major newspapers. The Washington Post paragraph highlighted above says: "After 79,000 neighborhood meetings, months of discussion, and an outpouring of more than 300,000 suggestions from citizens, Cubans will vote in a referendum Sunday that could redefine family rights -- including legalizing same-sex marriage." In other words, despite many of other worldwide issues, the world understands that the election Sunday, September 25th, 2022 in Cuba is very important...and so does Cuba's Revolutionary government.

     The Cuban people Sunday-Sept. 25th-2022 will be voting on a new Family Code. The Washington Post article above says, "The proposed new Family Code would be among the most progressive in Latin America, defying a long tradition of machismo in Cuba. In addition to approving same-sex marriage, it would allow gay couples to adopt, and increase the rights of women, the elderly and children." In the next paragraph above, as you can see, the Washington Post points out that some powerful forces, including the Catholic Church, "have expressed unusually vocal dissent" against the new Family Code proposals.
       But the Revolutionary government in Cuba is strongly promoting the drastically new progressive issues in the Family Code bill that Cubans across the island will be voting on Sunday, September 25th, 2022. In the photo above two of Cuba's most popular News anchors were a part of a panel that kicked off this weekend with a Family Code discussion that was aired in primetime on nationwide television. For sure, it will be an important election in Cuba.
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23.9.22

The Ignorance of the Trump-Biden Cuba Policies

 Cruelty to most, Lucrative to a Few!!

    This interesting photo was taken today in Havana. At the end of this post today I will explain its meaning. But first, today's top Cuban headline.

     The top Cuban Headline circling around the globe today on September 23rd, 2022 was published by London's international  INDEPENDENT newspaper. The headline says: "Travelers who have visited Cuba in the last 11 years will need visa to enter US" and the Sub-Headline says: "Trump's final travel act, ranking the island alongside Iran, North Korea and Syria, could affect hundreds of thousands UK holidaymakers." The article quickly explained that Trump's last acts included putting Cuba on the Sponsors of Terror list, which allows rich Trump-donors in Miami to sue Cuba in U. S. courtrooms, and Trump legalized other cruel and stupid but lucrative Cuba-related policies. Most importantly, this worldwide article explains that, in the USA's two-party political system, the current DEMOCRAT President Joe Biden "has continued" the ignorant, cruel, and asinine policies established by the REPUBLICAN Trump who preceded Biden as President.
     During the Trump presidency these are the four architects who created the cruelest {for Cubans in Cuba} policies but also the lucrative policies {for Cubans in Miami}. For example, this is the quartet that legalized Title 3 of the Helms-Burton Act, which not even the Miami-aligned President George W. Bush had REFUSED to activate because Bush considered it too cruel to impose on innocent families in Cuba. BUT THE QUARTET ABOVE LEGALIZED TITLE 3!!
    Of course, beginning on January 20th of 2021 many observers believed that the Democrat President Joe Biden would reverse at least the cruelest of Republican President Donald Trump's Cuban policies, such as Title 3. But today -- on September 23rd, 2022 -- London's worldwide newspaper, the Independent, reminded the world that Biden "has continued" Trump's cruel Cuban policies.
      Of course, the drastic decline of the mainstream U. S. media means that most Americans have no idea why the "skull & bones" shown above is attached to the infamous Helms-Burton Act that to this today makes Cubans in the U. S. very rich and makes Cubans in Cuba very poor, or worse.
   And for sure most Americans have no idea what Title 3 of Helms-Burton means. But to repeatThanks to Trump & Biden, it means riches for U. S. Cubans and poverty, or worse, for Cuba's Cubans.
    And of course, making sure that Americans don't understand what U. S. policies regarding Cuba mean is why, decade after decade since 1959, such legal U. S. laws as Helms-Burton and Title 3 exist!!
    Meanwhile, today -- September 23, 2022 -- this photo was taken in Havana by one of the Caribbean's most talented and renowned photographers, Roberto Suarez. The photo says, "Hey, the U. S. blockade hasn't starved me...at least, not yet!!!!"
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22.9.22

The US-Cuba Conundrum

 SEPTEMBER 2022

    Since 1492, the year that both Cuba and the US were discovered by Columbus, American writers have written endlessly about The Cuban Conundrum. One day they perhaps will begin to comprehend Cuba, but that simply has not happened and now we are in September of 2022!! Until 1898 the US simply watched across the Florida Straits as the world's imperative powers fought over the Caribbean's largest and most beautiful island. But in 1898 the U. S. believed it was strong enough to easily beat Spain on Cuban soil, which it did in quickly winning the Spanish-American War. It was believed by some that the U. S. would install a democracy in Cuba, but that didn't happen. Thus in January of 1959 the Cuban Revolution surprised the world by defeating the U.S.-backed & Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship, which quickly spawned the creation of Little Havana on U. S. soil in the heart of Miami, Florida.
     Of course, the American writer who has best chronicled the Cuban Conundrum has been the great T. J. English in his classic book Havana Nocturne, which told us "How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost It to the Revolution."
     Without studying and understanding Havana Nocturne, Americans have no comprehension of why and how the USA's dire efforts to regain control of Cuba have been so direly futile since January of 1959...even as the world's Superpower is determined to utterly destroy the rebels in the much smaller, weaker, and poorer island nation.
    That very brief synopsis of the very expansive Cuban Conundrum leads us to today -- September 22, 2022 -- when the top Cuban Headlines shown above saturate the U. S. media. Of course, since January of 1959 the U. S. media has consistently provided Americans a distorted and biased view of the Cuban Conundrum -- namely declaring that all the Cubans in Cuba are bad and all the Cubans in Miami and Congress are good!!
     But for the record, and for what it's worth, above is the Associated Press article on Thursday, September 22nd, 2022. Incredibly, one result of the vast Cuban Conundrum changing the U. S. landscape since 1898 and especially since 1959 is the sheer fact that few Americans now trust the U. S. media, which has always been considered a vital part of a viable democracy. One recent poll lists U. S. trust in its media at 11% of the American people. And YES, the Cuban Conundrum that since 1492, since 1898, and since 1959 has so drastically changed the United States has also had a deleterious affect on the drastic decline of the U. S. media in the United States of America.
    As suggested by T. J. English's great book Havana Nocturne, perhaps the U. S. has been affected more than Cuba by the Cuban Conundrum...especially since 1898 and 1959. Beginning in these last few days in September of 2022, perhaps it is time for more intelligent and more honest Americans to be allowed to be included in the crafting of the USA's Cuban policies.
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20.9.22

US Harassing People Helping Cuba?

     Today -- on September 20th, 2022 -- this top engineer reported to the Cuban people on nationally televised newscasts the progress being done to rebuild the island's most important power station in Matanzas 65 miles southeast of Havana. It was destroyed recently in the latest in a series of explosions and fires that have devastated Cuba's energy and tourist sectors, killing dozens of Cubans. Prior to the Matanzas disaster even the famed Saratoga Hotel in the heart of Havana had been destroyed with the loss of two dozen lives. Accidents? Sabotage?
  The Cuban government has said that the deadly explosions have been caused by coincidental accidents or natural causes but Cuba's prime minister/diplomat regarding the United States, Carlos Cossio, is not adverse to cast blame on Cuba's superpower northern neighbor: "After the explosions in the Mariel Economic Zone and the Saratoga Hotel, we did not ask for foreign help. But we did ask for help, even from the United States, after the deadly fires in Matanzas took us, with help from Mexico and Venezuela, five days to extinguish. Our phone call to the U. S. was not helpful. It came at a time when the U. S. was offering more millions of dollars to people who wanted to receive the money in exchange for helping in the six-decade-old U. S. efforts to overthrow Cuba's revolutionary government, apparently to restore the cruel previous Batista-Mafia-style rule that made the U. S. businessmen so rich throughout the 1950s till the revolution intervened in 1959. Still in late 2022 the U. S. is openly still pumping millions of dollars into attacking Cuba...and also now in late 2022 the Miami and Congress stalwarts are urging the U. S. FBI to begin investigating certain organizations that are trying to help Cuban children and their families who are being severely assaulted by the U. S. blockade that has severely harmed generations of children and families on this island."

     A large group of Puerto Ricans dedicated to helping Cuban families during the endless blockade of Cuba "says it has been targeted by the FBI for visiting Cuba." Both Cuba and Puerto Rico came under the U. S. umbrella in 1898 after the U. S. won the easy Spanish-American War fought in Cuba. After losing two revolutionary wars against Spain, Cuba in 1952 began a revolutionary war against the U.S.-backed and Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship, and finally the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959 was finally successful, shocking the world. But then Cuba has had to spend the last six+ decades trying to fend off the dire efforts of the United States to regain control of the Caribbean's largest island nation.
     While the U. S. Territory of Puerto Rico has a large group of people, all of whom are U. S. citizens, trying mightily to help Cuban families, there are also thousands of Cuban-Americans in the U. S. who are also trying to do the same thing. The most notable Cuban-American passionately trying to help Cuban families on the island is the professor from Seattle, Carlos Lazo. That is Carlos second from the right above. His powerful organization BRIDGES of LOVE flies planeloads of food and medicine to Cuba. In the photo above Carlos and some of his followers were delivering vital boxes of medicine to help the children at Cuba's largest Children's Hospital, the one that was named for "William Soler."
     The photo above shows William Soler's mother, wearing the sunglasses and the white blouse, leading one of the marches that fueled the revolution that ended up defeating the Batista dictatorship. Little Willie Soler was one of the Cuban children that mothers such as these said were gruesome victims of Batista's plans to quell dissent, but instead of quelling dissent such murders arguably led directly to Batista's amazing defeat because of brave marches like the one depicted above.
    The historic black-and-white photo of Little Willie's mother contrasts with the modern color photos shown above in September of 2022. On the left is Carlos Lazo, the Cuban-American professor who is desperately trying to help Cuban children and their mothers on the island survive the blockade and other obstacles hurled at them from Miami and Washington. On the right is Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American U. S. Senator from Miami who is trying desperately to thwart everything that Carlos Lazo is trying to do. For sure, Senator Rubio seemingly is dealing from a stacked deck...or at least he is backed by the ultra-power of the U. S. government as well as the U. S. media. But, apparently worried about the nascent yet burgeoning power of Carlos Lazo, it seems that Senator Rubio recently reached into his abundant tool chest to pick out a new ploy -- asking the FBI "to investigate" Carlos Lazo's growing BRIDGES of LOVE movement.
      Senator Rubio's hometown Miami Herald published the above official statement about why Rubio believes the FBI should investigate BRIDGES of LOVE and its leader Carlos Lazo.
     While he certainly doesn't have the U. S. government nor the U. S. media on his side, as you see above Carlos Lazo makes ubiquitous use of Social Media platforms as well as very visible demonstrations and marches from Seattle to Washington and in Senator Rubio's hometown of Little Havana/Miami. The image above shows a "Carlos Lazo's response" to Rubio.
    And, of course, worldwide organizations such as OXFAM support Carlos Lazo's struggle to help Cuban women in their daily struggle to have the "RIGHT TO LIVE WITHOUT  A  BLOCKADE."
     And so...in September of 2022 Carlos Lazo's fight to end the Blockade and Senator Rubio's fight to oppose Carlos Lazo appears to be a stacked deck that favors the U. S. Senator from Miami.
     But tireless and also supremely dedicated, Carlos Lazo will not stop "until the blockade of Cuba ends so this current generation of children and their mothers in Cuba no longer live under the cruel dictates, the yokes, of a few ultra-powerful people that benefit from it and live, like me, in my beloved United States of America. It pains me how the blockade still harms Cuban mothers in Cuba, like my own mother, but it also pains me about how much it still casts shame on my beloved United States of America."
Carlos Lazo is ashamed of the Blockade!!
Carlos Lazo
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15.9.22

Key Democrat Slams Biden About Cuban Genocide

 

    In 2016 the Democrat that persuaded President Barack Obama to try to end the Republican genocide against Cuban families in Cuba was Ben Rhodes. After the Obama administration left the White House in January of 2017 the Republican President Donald Trump immediately restored the genocide, to the dismay of Ben Rhodes. In the book above he had explained how he had steered Obama to end the genocide, but only to have the Trump presidency reinstate it to new heights starting in January of 2017. Then in January of 2021 Ben Rhodes believed that Trump's successor, the Democrat President Joe Biden, who had been Obama's Vice President for 8 years, would quickly stop the genocide. But now in September of 2022 Ben Rhodes is excoriating President Biden for not ending Trump's Cuban genocide.
     This week Reuters, Yahoo News, and other media are telling the world that Ben Rhodes, who orchestrated Obama's effort to end the genocide against Cuba, is blasting the Joe Biden presidency for failing to end the Trump-expanded genocide against the Cuban families: "Disappointed doesn't begin to scratch the surface of how I feel about the Biden-Cuba policy." Yes, even most Democrats now are direly disappointed with President Biden's Cuban policy but, in a political system now influenced by mammoth financial donations, money counts more than majority opinions.
     In his excoriation of fellow Democrat Biden, Ben Rhodes said what Americans -- Democrats and Republicans -- believe: "Granted it was Trump who initially reversed Obama's policy of normalizing relations with Cuba. But then Biden doubles down on Trump policies. Why would any Cuban official ever, ever negotiate anything with America ever again after this? We had Trump -- in the most grotesque, callous way -- politicizing this. But then to have a Democratic administration legitimize what Trump did by continuing it -- it's a gaslighting to those people in Cuba."
     In the USA's money-crazed political system, what 330 million Americans might think about Cuban policy bows to political financial power...as Ben Rhodes admits in September of 2022. The photo above shows President Obama and Ben Rhodes peering out the windows as the presidential airplane Air Force One flew over Havana in March of 2016. Ben Rhodes was the man who had persuaded President Obama to end the genocide against Cuban families...and it was Ben Rhodes who had persuaded President Obama to actually visit Cuba, becoming the first President to do that since Republican President Herbert Hoover had arrived in Cuba in 1928 on a warship.
    In addition to being a key advisor to President Obama, Ben Rhodes was also his boss's prime speech writer. So, yes, it was Ben Rhodes who wrote the words that President Obama cogently delivered in a live statewide radio and television broadcast when he told the Cuban people: "Cuba Does Not Need To Fear A Threat From The United States." But shamefully, for both America and Democracy, that promise lasted only for a few months...till the Obama presidency was replaced by Trump's on January 20th, 2017. NOW IN SEPTEMBER OF 2022 UNDERSTAND WHY DECENT PEOPLE LIKE DEMOCRAT BEN RHODES ARE SO DISMAYED THAT DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN IS PERMITTING THE GENOCIDE THAT REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT TRUMP HAD LEFT HIM.
     By the way, in the great book Ben Rhodes wrote to explain how he had orchestrated the Obama administration's effort to end the U. S. genocide against Cuban families, it is interesting to know the lengths Ben went to in order to do it. One thing he did was to make secret flights to Canada and to a Caribbean island to meet with Alejandro Castro Espin, the son of two Revolutionary icons Raul Castro and Vilma Espin. During their delicate negotiations in which Ben represented President Obama and Alejandro represented Cuba, the two men became friends.
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cubaninsider: "The Country That Raped Me" (A True Story)

cubaninsider: "The Country That Raped Me" (A True Story) : Note : This particular essay on  Ana Margarita Martinez  was first ...