“President Bush announced that he believes in democracy and that democracy can exist in Iraq. ‘They can have a strong economy, they can have a good health care plan, and they can have free and fair voting’. Iraq? We can’t even get this in Florida.” – Jay Leno, American TV Host and Comedian (b. 1950)
Four years ago, at age 72, my Dad had a triple heart bypass operation. After having had one heart attack back in 2001 from which he made a full and speedy recovery, his doctor advised him that another was likely and that he may not be so lucky the second time around. Sixty one years of smoking had taken their toll. The problem was we didn’t realize how much of a toll until Dad was admitted to hospital for the procedure. Back in the day when the VHI had a 100% monopoly on the Irish private healthcare market (as opposed to the 80%+ monopoly they have today) my Dad was lucky enough to have good coverage, so he was able to have his procedure carried out at the Mater Private hospital in Dublin. The doctors told us that the procedure itself would be pretty straightforward and factoring in a few days post-procedural recuperation in the Mater, he could expect to be home within 7-10 days. However, as I already mentioned, 61 years of smoking had taken their toll, so much so that after the operation, my Dad’s lung capacity was so low that his lungs could not support his heart without the application of oxygen from a machine. This continued to be the case for another four weeks and while we waited for Dad’s heart to grow stronger, he was simultaneously being eased off of the artificial oxygen.
After 6 weeks Dad came home and made a full recovery. Then the bills start to arrive; actually correction, let me refer to them as statements. All told, the entire cost (to include consultants fees, lab fees, surgery and stay at the Mater Hospital) came to somewhere in the region of €50,000 - €60,000 ($70,000 - $84,000 for my greenback loving American friends), and maybe even more. The reason I say statement as opposed to invoice – Dad’s portion to be paid? Zero. Everything was paid. At the time I believe his annual VHI premium was approximately €700. So, did having private healthcare insurance, even with a provider that had a 100% monopoly on the market, at a premium that was eminently affordable, pay dividends for our family? Absolutely.
The provision of universal health care for all Americans has been an issue that has been a central plank of the Democratic Party agenda in the United States for half a century. Ever since the introduction of Medicare (a social program that provides hospital insurance, medical insurance and a prescription drug plan for citizens aged over 65 and certain categories of disabled citizens) by the administration of Lyndon Johnson in 1965, successive Democratic presidents have tried, unsuccessfully, to pass legislation that would provide universal medical, dental and mental health care for all its citizens. It’s a widely known fact that the United States is the only country within the coalition of nations that would be categorized as “wealthy and industrialized” that has not implemented a universal health care plan. Former first lady Hillary Clinton and long time senator Ted Kennedy are just two of the most high profile public representatives that have dedicated much of their political lives to the advancement of the argument of universal health care for all Americans and its passage into law. Historically, even when the Democrats have held majorities in the House of Representatives and/or the Senate, the long arm of the drug, pharmaceutical and insurance companies and other stakeholders in the debate has been able to embed itself into the body politic of the country and wield tremendous influence and power among the nations’ politicians, both Republicans and Democrats alike.
That being said, Republicans have never wanted universal health care, period. It has never been a priority for them on any level and they have fought tooth and nail to impede debate on the matter and to consistently vote down proposals to advance the implementation of even the most basic universal health care plan. Their opposition is, at least to my mind, almost entirely along ideological grounds. You consistently hear the words “socialized medicine” being used by prominent Republican politicians, big business tycoons and far right commentators, as if the word “socialized” is designed to drive fear into the minds of Americans that the concept of universal health care is some kind of communist based, big government, liberal, left-wing conspiracy. In fact, most famously, back in 1961 then private citizen, B movie actor and prominent Republican supporter Ronald Reagan recorded an 11 minute LP record, sponsored by none other than the American Medical Association, setting out his opposition to “socialized medicine”.
The hard facts are that today there are almost 50 million Americans that have no form of private medical insurance at all. A large percentage of those that are insured are paying extraordinarily high premiums for what I would consider to be average cover. For example, my wife and I recently enrolled in my company sponsored health plan that provides medical, dental and optical cover. Luckily, my employer is a Dutch company, so from a cultural perspective they understand the benefits (not only a human level but also in terms of them being a good corporate citizen) of providing a high quality health care plan to its employees. When my wife and I were private contractors our joint annual medical premiums totaled almost $7,000. The huge cost of health care coverage in this country has sadly forced hundreds of thousands of people to declare involuntary bankruptcy. Michael Moore did a masterful job of highlighting the issues that Americans face every day in relation to health care costs in his movie “Sicko”.
The two most basic elements of the argument being made by those folks in favor of universal health care are that a) health care is a basic human right or entitlement and that b)ensuring the good health of all citizens ultimately benefits a country economically. The opposition proponents argue that health care is not a right and that as such it is not the responsibility of government provide health care to its citizens. Maybe it’s me but why does it always seem that the anti-health care people are the more well-off and affluent members of our society?
President Obama has vowed to pass landmark legislation in his first term that would finally bring America into the mainstream in providing a universal health care plan for all its citizens. It seems more and more likely that he will actually send up legislation this year to the Congress for passage into law. Let us wish him luck in this brave and momentous endeavor.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
CIA... the secret government within a government
“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo” – Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd President of the United States 1945-1953
Controversial journalist and author Christopher Hitchens once wrote that in the “Nixon era, the United States was in essence a ‘rogue state’. It had a ruthless, paranoid and unstable leader who did not hesitate to break the laws of his own country”. I would contend that for close on a century, and certainly since 1947 when the power brokers within the financial, industrial, military and intelligence communities came together and were given official bureaucratic recognition in the form of the Central Intelligence Agency, that a secret government has existed in the United States, one that has corrupted and usurped the country’s political and democratic institutions, been responsible for the waging of covert wars in dozens of countries and deeply complicit in the murder of thousands of Americans; a list that includes dozens of political, cultural and social leaders and to its eternal shame, at least one president.
The concept of the existence of a secret government is not a new phenomenon. Writing in 1922, and referring to the challenges he faced as then New York City mayor, John F. Hylan provided this revealing insight, “The real menace to our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses, generally referred to as ‘international bankers’. This coterie of powerful international bankers virtually runs the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business. These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen and seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection”. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that over the next three generations, one Rockefeller would become governor of New York and Vice President of the United States and many notable members of these banking and oil companies, including W. Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush (father to George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush) would go on to become governors, senators and presidents.
I am the first to admit that I am a conspiracy theorist at heart. However, by the same token I am not naïve enough to believe that random, so called unrelated coincidences just happen. Born out of the old wartime intelligence organization that was known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA was created by an act of Congress in 1947 at a time when anti communist sentiment was beginning to reach fever pitch. Woven deep in to the DNA of the CIA were prominent members of America’s banking, oil and industrial corporations. For the next forty years the agency would use fear of the red menace, and the fulfillment of its own warped ideology, to justify the most despicable acts of treason and violence. Sadly, CIA had willing and enthusiastic support in every branch of federal, state and local government, law enforcement and the media. Perhaps most famously, future President George H.W. Bush was a secret, high level CIA operative for over 20 years before being named head of the agency by Gerald Ford in 1976. Bush has repeatedly denied being a CIA agent despite a huge volume of evidence to the contrary, evidence that includes his presence in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 and a documented telephone call that he made to the FBI on the day of Kennedy’s assassination from Tyler, Texas (less than an hour’s drive from Dallas).
In a 1977 article that he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, Watergate investigative journalist Carl Bernstein wrote that there was “…more than 400 journalists, who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading news organizations”.
We now know that some of the executives that Bernstein was referring to were William Paley, chief executive of CBS, Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc and Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, among others. It is perhaps not surprising that the national media would row in behind the government in endorsing the lone assassin theory in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination (and indeed has continued to do so to this day); in fact the person that purchased the famous Zapruder film footage of Kennedy’s murder, two days after the assassination, was none other than Henry Luce of Time magazine, who then proceeded to hide it from public view for 6 years until District Attorney Jim Garrison subpoenaed it as part of his investigation.
The reason for the background is this. The CIA is once again back in the news, again, for all the wrong reasons, and again a large segment of the media is complicit in the narrative being served up to the American people. In the wake of the ongoing investigation into advanced interrogation techniques and torture carried out by the CIA during the Bush administration, focus is being placed on what information was made known to members of Congress about the specifics of these interrogation techniques and whether the CIA withheld vital information from leading politicians. In the past couple of weeks, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has gone public, saying she was lied to by the CIA about whether or not water-boarding and other forms of torture were being used in the name of Bush’s war on terror. The CIA of course has denied it lied. Many leading politicians and newspaper editors have since come to the defense of the CIA, saying that whatever about lying to overseas governments and law enforcement organizations (as if this was somehow acceptable), the CIA would never lie to a member of Congress.
Really? Firstly, do these political leaders really expect Americans to believe that the CIA is so holier than thou that it would never lie to the United States Congress, when it has done nothing but lie for over 60 years? Secondly, why would politicians and the public be even surprised that they would be lied to by the CIA? Every dog on the street knows that CIA has indulged in every form of skullduggery known to man; from illegal wiretapping to opening the mail of regular Americans, from political espionage and covert paramilitary operations to coup d’états and assassinations, from carrying out torture to creating real life Manchurian candidates. The history of the CIA has left a black mark on the fabric of American society and this country has been the worst for its existence.
Controversial journalist and author Christopher Hitchens once wrote that in the “Nixon era, the United States was in essence a ‘rogue state’. It had a ruthless, paranoid and unstable leader who did not hesitate to break the laws of his own country”. I would contend that for close on a century, and certainly since 1947 when the power brokers within the financial, industrial, military and intelligence communities came together and were given official bureaucratic recognition in the form of the Central Intelligence Agency, that a secret government has existed in the United States, one that has corrupted and usurped the country’s political and democratic institutions, been responsible for the waging of covert wars in dozens of countries and deeply complicit in the murder of thousands of Americans; a list that includes dozens of political, cultural and social leaders and to its eternal shame, at least one president.
The concept of the existence of a secret government is not a new phenomenon. Writing in 1922, and referring to the challenges he faced as then New York City mayor, John F. Hylan provided this revealing insight, “The real menace to our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses, generally referred to as ‘international bankers’. This coterie of powerful international bankers virtually runs the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business. These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen and seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection”. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that over the next three generations, one Rockefeller would become governor of New York and Vice President of the United States and many notable members of these banking and oil companies, including W. Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush (father to George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush) would go on to become governors, senators and presidents.
I am the first to admit that I am a conspiracy theorist at heart. However, by the same token I am not naïve enough to believe that random, so called unrelated coincidences just happen. Born out of the old wartime intelligence organization that was known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA was created by an act of Congress in 1947 at a time when anti communist sentiment was beginning to reach fever pitch. Woven deep in to the DNA of the CIA were prominent members of America’s banking, oil and industrial corporations. For the next forty years the agency would use fear of the red menace, and the fulfillment of its own warped ideology, to justify the most despicable acts of treason and violence. Sadly, CIA had willing and enthusiastic support in every branch of federal, state and local government, law enforcement and the media. Perhaps most famously, future President George H.W. Bush was a secret, high level CIA operative for over 20 years before being named head of the agency by Gerald Ford in 1976. Bush has repeatedly denied being a CIA agent despite a huge volume of evidence to the contrary, evidence that includes his presence in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 and a documented telephone call that he made to the FBI on the day of Kennedy’s assassination from Tyler, Texas (less than an hour’s drive from Dallas).
In a 1977 article that he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, Watergate investigative journalist Carl Bernstein wrote that there was “…more than 400 journalists, who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading news organizations”.
We now know that some of the executives that Bernstein was referring to were William Paley, chief executive of CBS, Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc and Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, among others. It is perhaps not surprising that the national media would row in behind the government in endorsing the lone assassin theory in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination (and indeed has continued to do so to this day); in fact the person that purchased the famous Zapruder film footage of Kennedy’s murder, two days after the assassination, was none other than Henry Luce of Time magazine, who then proceeded to hide it from public view for 6 years until District Attorney Jim Garrison subpoenaed it as part of his investigation.
The reason for the background is this. The CIA is once again back in the news, again, for all the wrong reasons, and again a large segment of the media is complicit in the narrative being served up to the American people. In the wake of the ongoing investigation into advanced interrogation techniques and torture carried out by the CIA during the Bush administration, focus is being placed on what information was made known to members of Congress about the specifics of these interrogation techniques and whether the CIA withheld vital information from leading politicians. In the past couple of weeks, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has gone public, saying she was lied to by the CIA about whether or not water-boarding and other forms of torture were being used in the name of Bush’s war on terror. The CIA of course has denied it lied. Many leading politicians and newspaper editors have since come to the defense of the CIA, saying that whatever about lying to overseas governments and law enforcement organizations (as if this was somehow acceptable), the CIA would never lie to a member of Congress.
Really? Firstly, do these political leaders really expect Americans to believe that the CIA is so holier than thou that it would never lie to the United States Congress, when it has done nothing but lie for over 60 years? Secondly, why would politicians and the public be even surprised that they would be lied to by the CIA? Every dog on the street knows that CIA has indulged in every form of skullduggery known to man; from illegal wiretapping to opening the mail of regular Americans, from political espionage and covert paramilitary operations to coup d’états and assassinations, from carrying out torture to creating real life Manchurian candidates. The history of the CIA has left a black mark on the fabric of American society and this country has been the worst for its existence.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Cuban Revolution - A Half Century On...
“I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba” – Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (b. 1926), revolutionary and leader of Cuba 1959-2008
A full half century after a wild eyed and bearded 32 year old Cuban revolutionary swept to power to the chants of ‘Viva Fidel’, and a generation later than it probably should have happened, the United States this month took the first step in improving its long standing sour relations with Latin America. In allowing unlimited travel and money transfers between Cuban Americans and their families back in the homeland, the Obama administration has extended an olive branch to the Castro brothers and in the process signaled its short term goal of agreeing a rapprochement of sorts with the Cuban regime. Over time, the broader geo-political benefits to America may well include less volatility in the hemisphere and increased trade between the United States and her Latin American neighbors. You can be sure that as President Obama embarks on a new policy of détente with Fidel and Raul Castro, he has one eye firmly in the direction of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
As a European living in the United States it has long baffled me as to why, for the period of at least the last 30 years, and definitely the last 20 years (since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in 1989) the government of the United States, under presidents of both parties, would adopt such a rigid and clearly outdated policy of isolation with Cuba. The Cold War as we know it essentially ended when Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev turned his back on his own revolution (1917) and launched the policies of glasnost and perestroika in the mid 1980’s, paving the way for the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the breakup of the old USSR as we knew it.
Indeed it is today acknowledged by many historians, commentators and politicians of the time that the Soviet threat was consistently overstated, in a period spanning the terms of 8 presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, by over-zealous and right wing hawks within the military, industrial, intelligence and financial nexus that has controlled the defense budget, and ostensibly the foreign policy agenda of the United States, since the latter presidency of FDR.
The genesis of Cuba’s isolation is well documented of course. In the halcyon, care free days before the revolution, Cuba was an island sanctuary 90 miles off the coast of Florida. During the era of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, which coincided with that of American president Dwight Eisenhower, Cuba famously became a haven for American organized crime leaders and a cash cow for some of America’s largest corporations. Even though President Eisenhower officially recognized the new Cuban government shortly after Castro rolled into the streets of Havana on New Year’s Day 1959, it quickly became clear that the Cuban revolution would involve draconian domestic reforms and the nationalization of US owned industries on the island. Relations between the governments deteriorated rapidly, resulting in the American withdrawal of diplomatic recognition of Cuba on January 3rd 1961, 17 days before President Kennedy was sworn into office.
In the meantime (in fact as early as April of 1960), President Eisenhower had given the CIA the green light to commence covert activities against the Cuban regime, with the intention of ousting Castro, by fair means or foul. When the democratically elected president of Iran had threatened to nationalize the Iranian oil industry in 1953, the CIA (with help from British intelligence) successfully ousted President Mosaddeq in a coup d’état. The plan was to do the same with Castro.
Castro was no angel, that’s for sure, but there is no doubt that the severing of diplomatic relations and the covert efforts to oust him from power only served to push Castro closer to the Soviet Union for support, both in terms of trade and ideology. The Bay of Pigs disaster in April 1961 convinced Castro that the United States was intent on a military invasion of Cuba, which had the result of only driving Cuba further into the arms of its Communist benefactor half a world away. The subsequent military buildup on the island led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The rest, as they say, is history. Economic, trade and diplomatic sanctions against Cuba were locked down for more than a generation thereafter. Ironically, Castro has gone on to outlive the terms of ten American presidents before handing over power to his brother Raul in February 2008.
The U.S. trade embargo on Cuba remains in place to this day. The question is why? Surely not because either Castro brother can be categorized as Communist; and even if they are, what threat does Cuba pose to the United States of America? The changes recently announced by President Obama are the first step in what I believe is a deliberate strategy to fully normalize relations with Cuba for the first time in fifty years.
A full half century after a wild eyed and bearded 32 year old Cuban revolutionary swept to power to the chants of ‘Viva Fidel’, and a generation later than it probably should have happened, the United States this month took the first step in improving its long standing sour relations with Latin America. In allowing unlimited travel and money transfers between Cuban Americans and their families back in the homeland, the Obama administration has extended an olive branch to the Castro brothers and in the process signaled its short term goal of agreeing a rapprochement of sorts with the Cuban regime. Over time, the broader geo-political benefits to America may well include less volatility in the hemisphere and increased trade between the United States and her Latin American neighbors. You can be sure that as President Obama embarks on a new policy of détente with Fidel and Raul Castro, he has one eye firmly in the direction of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
As a European living in the United States it has long baffled me as to why, for the period of at least the last 30 years, and definitely the last 20 years (since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in 1989) the government of the United States, under presidents of both parties, would adopt such a rigid and clearly outdated policy of isolation with Cuba. The Cold War as we know it essentially ended when Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev turned his back on his own revolution (1917) and launched the policies of glasnost and perestroika in the mid 1980’s, paving the way for the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the breakup of the old USSR as we knew it.
Indeed it is today acknowledged by many historians, commentators and politicians of the time that the Soviet threat was consistently overstated, in a period spanning the terms of 8 presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, by over-zealous and right wing hawks within the military, industrial, intelligence and financial nexus that has controlled the defense budget, and ostensibly the foreign policy agenda of the United States, since the latter presidency of FDR.
The genesis of Cuba’s isolation is well documented of course. In the halcyon, care free days before the revolution, Cuba was an island sanctuary 90 miles off the coast of Florida. During the era of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, which coincided with that of American president Dwight Eisenhower, Cuba famously became a haven for American organized crime leaders and a cash cow for some of America’s largest corporations. Even though President Eisenhower officially recognized the new Cuban government shortly after Castro rolled into the streets of Havana on New Year’s Day 1959, it quickly became clear that the Cuban revolution would involve draconian domestic reforms and the nationalization of US owned industries on the island. Relations between the governments deteriorated rapidly, resulting in the American withdrawal of diplomatic recognition of Cuba on January 3rd 1961, 17 days before President Kennedy was sworn into office.
In the meantime (in fact as early as April of 1960), President Eisenhower had given the CIA the green light to commence covert activities against the Cuban regime, with the intention of ousting Castro, by fair means or foul. When the democratically elected president of Iran had threatened to nationalize the Iranian oil industry in 1953, the CIA (with help from British intelligence) successfully ousted President Mosaddeq in a coup d’état. The plan was to do the same with Castro.
Castro was no angel, that’s for sure, but there is no doubt that the severing of diplomatic relations and the covert efforts to oust him from power only served to push Castro closer to the Soviet Union for support, both in terms of trade and ideology. The Bay of Pigs disaster in April 1961 convinced Castro that the United States was intent on a military invasion of Cuba, which had the result of only driving Cuba further into the arms of its Communist benefactor half a world away. The subsequent military buildup on the island led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The rest, as they say, is history. Economic, trade and diplomatic sanctions against Cuba were locked down for more than a generation thereafter. Ironically, Castro has gone on to outlive the terms of ten American presidents before handing over power to his brother Raul in February 2008.
The U.S. trade embargo on Cuba remains in place to this day. The question is why? Surely not because either Castro brother can be categorized as Communist; and even if they are, what threat does Cuba pose to the United States of America? The changes recently announced by President Obama are the first step in what I believe is a deliberate strategy to fully normalize relations with Cuba for the first time in fifty years.
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