By Earl Bousquet
It was clear in discussion circles that outgoing President Joe Biden was only setting-up incoming President Donald Trump (and Secretary of State Marco Rubio) to take turns biting his bait.
Expectedly, Trump not only reversed Biden’s lame duck last-minute decree, but just one day after Cubans the world over celebrated the 172nd anniversary of the birth of their national hero (and intellectual author of the revolution) Jose Marti on January 28, the US president signed into law the Laken Riley Act.
This latest anti-Cuba law will allow for arrest and detention of migrants merely accused of violence and for their deportation without conviction.
President Trump also announced he would reopen ‘Migrant Detention Centres’ at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay (closed-down by then-outgoing President Barack Obama) to house 30,000 detained migrants accused of violence.
While signing the presidential decree, President Trump went into one of his usual temper-tantrums to claim he was sending the detained migrants to Guantanamo because they too were “too dangerous” to be held in US prisons.
Likewise, he claimed Venezuela’s crime rate was “down by 70%”, not because of the nation’s successful crime-fighting and gang-busting successes at home, but because “many countries are shipping their criminals to the USA”, who his administration is now “shipping back”.
However, the new lives expected in the ‘Land of Opportunity’ today are hard to come by, with many Cubans who fell for so-called ‘Open Invitations to Freedom’ coming to grips with the harsh reality of having to pay for housing, education, health and other social services they grew-up enjoying for free back home.
Also faced with the increased wave of anti-immigrant sentiments whipped-up during the presidential campaign, many Cubans whose dreams have turned to living nightmares in the US are quietly heading back home, leading to unconfirmed press reports Rubio’s State Department intended to make it virtually impossible for Cubans in the US to visit relatives at home.
Insulting as it is to Cuba’s sovereignty, these latest steps are just a few more in the unending competition between the Republican and Democratic parties to see which can be the best at ensuring the worst by making life harder for Cubans at home.
Both parties maintained the ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’ designation imposed by President Trump in his first term and Biden’s related announcement had absolutely nothing to do with easing Cuba’s burdens and everything to do with suckering Trump.
Trump claims he wants to be remembered as “a peacemaker and a unifier”, but won’t ever share a unified position (on anything) with Biden.
The world welcomed Biden’s announcement with much skepticism, but international groupings and leaders far-and-wide also called for Washington to lift the 63-year-old multi-pronged embargo that permanently punishes Cuba’s 11 million citizens.
The vengeful Lone Ranger president has returned to the saddle at the White House with something like ‘Vengeance is mine!’ as his daily prayer-before-meals -even withdrawing official security from former friends and loyal political servants who dared cross him on the campaign trail.
Trump -married to an immigrant- also decreed a ban on the ‘Birth-right Citizenship’ law that allowed children of immigrants born in the US to become American citizens, irrespective of their parents’ legal status.
It’s been challenged in the courts, but, like with his ban on Federal spending, despite possible delays, Trump’s related signature presidential decrees still stand.
Today, as always, thanks to continuing US and Western dominance of the international mainstream media, truthful information about Cuba is still being manipulated or hidden, to keep the world ignorant about its many significant achievements -despite the US blockade and sanctions.
Same with information about how these measures negatively affect Cubans’ health and nutrition and crippled Havana’s ability -as a matter of bipartisan American state policy- to import medicine and food, or necessary equipment for its dying electricity plants or hospitals and community clinics.
The sanctions and embargos imposed by a dozen US administrations since 1962 have cost Cuba $1,499 trillion in 63 years -an amount both unimaginable and unknown to most and still kept hidden.
President Fidel Castro launched ‘Operation Truth’ 66 years ago as an endless global effort to keep the world truthfully informed about Cuba and the Prensa Latina (PL) news agency has done a remarkable job since 1959.
The 65th anniversary of Operation Truth in January 2024 resulted in the addition of ‘Voices of the Global South’ to PL’s international platform, which has, in the past year, fulfilled that mission in both the global South and North.
Israel’s responsive attack on Gaza and Palestinians following October 7, 2023 was exactly 100-days-old when PL celebrated the ongoing ‘Operation Truth’ last year, by which time South Africa’s case against the Benjamin Netanyahu regime at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was underway in The Haque.
Thanks to ‘Voices of the Global South’, more people everywhere now have much-more access to better news from more reliable sources -unavailable from or outlawed by the usual suspects in the international media- about what’s been happening in Gaza, the West Bank and other parts of Occupied Palestine.
Ditto the real story of who’s winning and losing in Ukraine and why Venezuela has survived 11 years of sanctions since the death of President Hugo Chavez.
But the confusion in the minds of so-many about the obvious rat-and-cheese nature of Biden baiting Trump by announcing a policy he knew would not survive his departure from the Oval Office, was yet-another clear indication why ‘Operation Truth’ was (and still remains) an eternal necessity -and not only for Cuba.
