A Cuban President meets Americans story [Video]

It is one thing to write the news, and it is another thing to touch it, to become part of the story, even if in just the smallest of ways.

Certainly, living in Russia, the Pariah Nation of the Planet, at least according to the West, draws its own share of curiosity about what life is like here, is Russia free, is President Putin evil and so on…

But the big story in and about Russia is its emergence as an independent civilization state, and yesterday was a day in which that development was made present in a most direct manner.

The third president of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, came to Moscow a few days ago to meet with President Putin to discuss greater financial integration and trade between the two countries. Already long-time allies since the Castro / Soviet Union days, Cuba is a major customer for Moscow’s Russia Today International TV, as the network features a Spanish-language channel in addition to its English, Arabic and German newsrooms.

While this above is the essence of what is really going on, the bit of personal experience is that President Diaz-Canel came into our offices yesterday, and I met him personally and greeted him face-to-face.

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez on Twitter: “Recorrimos hoy una parte de las modernas instalaciones de @ActualidadRT, dialogando con sus directivos y periodistas. Admirable trabajo de profesionales jóvenes que seguimos con sumo interés en #Cuba, donde el canal transmite 24/7 desde 2020. pic.twitter.com/zHCbIK41Dj / Twitter”

Recorrimos hoy una parte de las modernas instalaciones de @ActualidadRT, dialogando con sus directivos y periodistas. Admirable trabajo de profesionales jóvenes que seguimos con sumo interés en #Cuba, donde el canal transmite 24/7 desde 2020. pic.twitter.com/zHCbIK41Dj

Of course, meeting such a dignitary as a President has its own thrills, no matter who the person is. It is that mystical difference between “just the news” and reality being shown forth. But there were some interesting features about our meeting and the greater event that took place in just a couple minutes in our newsroom.

1. President Diaz-Canel spoke to me in English. “I am pleased to meet you.” And of course I responded the same, because I was.
2. There were a total of three Americans present, including myself, and the President shook hands exclusively with all three of us.

Is this making too much out of happenstance? Maybe. But a further feature of the visit was that the First Lady, Lis Cuesta Peraza, was traveling with him. Although we didn’t get to meet her, this didn’t seem out of phase at the time, however, her presence for me characterized and enhanced a sense of nobility in simplicity about this visit. One can see this in the photos, that everything is really quite ordinary.

Also, the FSB had our place under real solid surveillance. It is probably reasonable to assume that our identities were known, our nationalities were known, and even quite possible that the President knew them, too. I will have to try to ask him about this, and if I get an answer, that will be a story in itself.

So, the President of Cuba comes to Russia and, perhaps deliberately, greets citizens of the nation most critical of his own.

And all three of us were delighted to meet him.

Speculation aside, whether President Diaz-Canel knew who we were or not, we all knew who he was and we all wanted to meet him anyway. In other words, national bias did not exist for us.

So, while this may be nothing more than a fabulous piece of conjecture, I propose that this meeting shows something quite different: that many Americans have no interest in carrying forward rhetorical resentments against other powers, and that much of our nation’s geopolitical drama is carried out for no real or rational reason whatsoever.

Think about this: Would Joe the Imposter have gone to shake hands with President Diaz-Canel? Or would President Trump have done so? (I think Mr. Trump might, but I give it even odds). In fact, in this matter I have to give President Obama the second piece of credit due him – he saw that the need to isolate Cuba belongs to another time perhaps, but it makes little to no sense now.

“But Cuba is Communist! It has human rights violations!!” scream the neo-cons. Well, sure, but so does the American government in its willingness to impose LGBT woke-prop on Muslims in Afghanistan, or to utterly plunder Iraq and Syria for oil while fundamentally destroying these nations, or to murder Muammar Qaddafi simply because Hillary had a hot flash one day.

“We came, we saw, he died. (Laughter)”)

How disgusting that a power-ravenous woman can laugh at the taking of another human being’s life. Aren’t mothers supposed to LOVE life?

This is really sad.

What is far more sad is that people who feel and act this way manage to get themselves into positions of power and authority where they can act on their feelings with impunity. Now, certainly any world leader has to make terrible decisions, but here is not merely a terrible decision, here we see evil, gloating over the destruction of life that had no need of destruction. Qaddhafi submitted his WMD’s right away in 2001, and was helpful in the War on Terror, yet he was put to a miserable death just the same.

The West likes to point the finger at “Autocratic” governments like that of Russia, Cuba or China and say that these lands are run by power-hungry thugs. Yet Mr. Biden is strongly alleged to have links to neo-nazi thuggery in Ukraine, and he has cozy agreements with that other thug in the Far East – you know – that nation that has been trading places with the United States in the category of “world’s biggest economy.”

When you point a finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you.

Yet in a simple meeting between regular people, one of whom happens to be a national leader, I saw something far more hopeful. A gentleman, and from what I experienced, quite a humble gentleman, given fearsome power over his land, making contact with regular people that, by and large, would really like nothing better than just to be friends.

Is it really that simple?

It might be.