Fidel's American Shadows

Why They'll be PERMANENT!!

       Before you dismiss the Title and Sub-title of this post, study this Getty Images photo that silently but eerily says a million words or more about the history of the never-ending U.S.-Cuban conundrum. The photo was taken in October of 1979 and it shows a demonstration on the streets of New York City protesting the arrival of Cuba's revolutionary icon Fidel Castro who was about to make a speech at the United Nations. The lady in the center of the photo is Juanita. Notice how tightly she is being held or led by two rather imposing...or scary...men -- Cuban-American CIA-types, for sure. Her right arm, in fact, is being squeezed by the strong right-hand of one man and the strong left-hand of the other. Notice? Juanita's last name is Castro. She is the younger sister of Fidel Castro. She defected to the Miami area in 1964, the fifth year of her brother's rule in Cuba. Since then, like thousands of other Cuban-Americans, Juanita has led a well-to-do lifestyle in a really nice home that is surrounded in the Miami-Coral Gables-Fort Lauderdale region by the mansions of many Cuban-American millionaires and billionaires. Juanita is now 83-years-old, still healthy. The longevity of her Castro genes seem to top off at around age 90. Her oldest brother, Ramon, died earlier this year in Cuba at age 91. Her next oldest brother, Fidel, died last week at age 90. Her only other brother, Raul, is now 85 so it figures that he has about five more years to live. The 83-year-old Juanita spoke this week to Frances Robles of the New York Times. She wasn't too saddened by Fidel's death but she was embarrassed by the wild demonstrations that included savage pot-banging that took place just outside her home and were conducted by Cuban-American hardliners celebrating Fidel's death. She said: "It's not necessary to do what the Cuban people have done here in the streets of Miami. I cannot accept this. It's not a good thing." Thanks, Juanita, for the remorse...at least over the Batistiano celebrations.

       If not a million, this photo says at least a thousand words about the never-ending U.S.-Cuban conundrum wrought wittingly and unwittingly by Fidel Castro's incomparable 90 years on this earth. This photo was taken in March of 2016 by Ivan Alvarado for London-based Reuters. It shows a Cuban-American named Henry Godinez in Havana back in March watching the visiting U. S. President Obama making a speech to the Cuban people live on Cuban television. The photo was used yesterday -- Nov. 29-2016 -- to illustrate a major article in the New York Times WRITTEN BY HENRY HIMSELF. It is entitled "The Dream of a Free Cuba." Henry divides his time now between Chicago and Havana. I found his opening words quite interesting: "In my dreams as a young boy, I was chosen by the C.I.A. to assassinate Fidel Castro. I would be a hero and set Cuba free. Like many Cuban-Americans, I was raised to believe it was my obligation to do just that. Now Castro has died. In fact, I have been going back to Cuba for years..." 

       Did you also find Henry's words interesting? I think you should. Notice he said that, as a young Cuban-American boy, he dreamed about killing Castro for the C.I.A. BECAUSE HE WAS PROGRAMMED BY THE C.I.A. TO CONVINCE HIM THAT IT WAS HIS "obligation to do just that." Prior to Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution that chased the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders to U. S. soil, the United States -- the greatest democracy in history -- could very legitimately criticize nations like the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, etc., of using unchecked propaganda to soil the minds of masses of their own people. Since Castro chased the Batista-Mafia leaders to U. S. soil way back in 1959 -- mainly to Juanita Castro's Miami sanctuary -- the U. S. can no longer legitimately criticize other nations for their excessive use of propaganda, such as the U. S. has trouble criticising Russia for stealing Crimea when Russia can say the U. S. stole Guantanamo Bay from Cuba. Those sheer facts...which Americans are propagandized to ignore...helps account for the current 191-to-0 worldwide denunciation in the United Nations of America's Cuban policy, one dictated by two generations of Batistianos that Fidel Castro chased off Cuba only to create a vast and lucrative Batistiano enclave in the U. S. and in the U. S. Congress and, when a Republican is President, in the White House. ALSO, note that Henry as a Cuban-American has been going back and forth to Cuba all his adult life. As an American you are programmed via decades of propaganda not to understand that comment or to understand why you as an everyday American if you are not Cuban are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. But just for the record, here's the understanding: The most hardline Cuban-Americans, the Batistianos, have been allowed by intimidated or apathetic Americans to write laws in the U. S. Congress that enrich and empower a selected minority of Cuban-Americans at the expense of everyone else -- Americans, democracy, Cuban-Americans and citizens of the world. This has especially been so since the 1980s when the most violent and richest Cuban exiles hooked up conveniently with the economic and political power of the Bush dynasty. All other nations in the world understand that, accounting for the unanimous pro-Cuba & anti-U. S. vote in the UN. Americans are not supposed to understand it because, like the Cuban-American Henry, Americans since 1959 have been programmed/propagandized with mind-numbing lies, the same lies that caused Henry as a boy living in the U. S. to "dream" of going to Cuba and killing Fidel Castro for the C.I.A., which targeted Fidel for six decades.

       This is a truly historic photo {above} that says at least a million words about the Cuban-Revolution, words that propagandized Americans need to know considering the profound, eternal and unique effect that Cuba's unique revolution has had on the United States since 1959...or really since 1952 when a few thugs in the Eisenhower administration sicced the Mafia and brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista on Cuba. Brave Cuban women, like the one courageously marching with the above placard, ignited and fueled the Cuban Revolution at a time when no one believed a U.S.-backed dictator could be overthrown -- not Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, etc. But Batista in Cuba was overthrown by a popular, grounds-rooted revolution that owes its success to women like the one depicted above. The reason she was not mowed down, according to the acute analysis of the ever-watchful New York Times legend Herbert L. Matthews, was because there were too many unbiased and unafraid journalists like him and too many Cuban women like her. The routine murders of Cuban children in Batista's Cuba were obviously designed to quell resistance from peasant families. But they had the opposite effect. The female leaders of those families fought back...with street marches like this one AND by becoming the greatest female guerrilla fighters known to history...women such as the teenage legend Tete Puebla, today a General in the Cuban army, and Celia Sanchez, history's greatest female revolutionary. In fact, considering the footprints she left behind, maybe the greatest female or male.

        While women like Tete Puebla and Celia Sanchez were already fighting their long-shot guerrilla war in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra Mountains, Cuban women like these were marching in the major cities of Havana and Santiago de Cuba against, as the sign above says, Batista's murders of "nuestros nijos" -- "our children." And please note that it was signed "Madres Cubanas" -- "Cuban Mothers." While this photo also says a million words about the Cuban Revolution, propagandized Americans are not supposed to know a single word about it because the Batistianos chased off the island by the Cuban Revolution have controlled the Cuban narrative in the United States since 1959. When Americans this week watch unchallenged Cuban-American politicians and propagandists rave about Fidel Castro being a "mass murderer" or worse, Americans have a right to know that such accusations are often coming directly from first or second generation Cuban-Americans that were/are the dire enemies of the brave Cuban women depicted above -- enemies of these remarkable women in the 1950s and enemies of their legacy today! 

      This historic photo says at least a million words about BOTH the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba. The nine women dressed in black at the front of this march had all had children murdered by Batista's thugs, as the sign states. Now look at the woman in the front-middle wearing the light-colored jacket. She was the mother of Little Willie Soler. Willie and three other kids were murdered and their bodies left in a vacant warehouse as a warning for the community not to resist the Batista-Mafia thievery and brutality. So why does this long-ago photo say a million words about Revolutionary Cuba today? Permit me to answer that question: Today THE WILLIAM SOLER PEDIATRIC HOSPITAL is the largest children's hospital in Havana, one that was recently praised by both the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization for helping Cuba achieve the lowest infant mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere, a hemisphere that also includes...America! The U. S. media is not allowed to comment on such things because it might upset the Batistianos, but other media -- including the London-based BBC -- have explained that Cuba's free and excellent health and educational achievements have been accomplished despite facing the longest, since 1962, and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak one. The ultra-rich and ultra-powerful Diaz-Balart brothers, whose father Raphael was an ultra-rich and ultra-powerful Minister in Batista's Cuba and then in Miami, are literally saturating U. S. television networks this week ranting and raving, always unchallenged, about Fidel Castro being a "mass murderer" and then explaining why they, huge economic and political beneficiaries of "legal" laws mandated by Congress such as the embargo, should be allowed to continue for another six decades their truly gross Cuban policy even if the rest of the world opposes it by a 191-to-0 margin in the United Nations. The Diaz-Balart brothers, I don't think, will challenge any of these facts or the huge historical and topical significance of the photo shown above. And, sad to say, they don't have to challenge them because they control the Cuban narrative in the U. S. and Lincoln Diaz-Balart this week was actually praised at a celebratory Miami news conference for "writing" some of the still "legal" laws in the U. S. Congress that extremely benefit Cuban-Americans and extremely harm and discriminate against everyone else.

Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart.

      A 99-pound child-loving doctor's daughter named Celia Sanchez didn't march with those other Cuban women in the streets of Havana or Santiago de Cuba. But Celia emerged as the greatest player in both the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba, a fact never denied by Fidel Castro but a fact Americans to this day are not supposed to know. Celia is the greatest female revolutionary in history -- as a guerrilla fighter, for sure, but also as the prime recruiter of the rebels, the money, the weapons and the inspiration that defeated the supposed unbeatable Batista dictatorship that was supported by the strongest criminal organization in the world, the Mafia, and by the strongest nation in the world, the United States.

      In Cuba today, there are no statues of Fidel Castro and, by his own orders, there never will be. There are also no roads or streets or other edifices in Cuba today named for Fidel Castro. But there are many images and reminders, like the statue above, of Celia Sanchez that these tourists obviously admire.

This is Fidel Castro's favorite statue of Celia Sanchez.

      Other omnipotent Celia Sanchez contributions to the Cuban Revolution were the two quotations that best defined her revolution and the Revolutionary Cuba she left behind, the Cuba that the American Batistianos have been trying to re-capture every day since January of 1959. In March of 1959 and at least three times thereafter the bold and determined Celia Sanchez stated: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." Celia died of cancer at age 59 on Jan. 11-1980 and Fidel died of old age at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016. SO, no matter what happens now, her mantra -- the words quoted in brown above -- survived all these decades against overwhelming odds, just like her revolution. Celia, a very private person who tried to avoid the spotlight, was never shy about fighting Batista's U.S.-backed armies or about demeaning the Batistianos who fled to the United States to hide behind the skirts of the world superpower and hurl grenades back at her island. That's why, if you notice the graphic above, that THE WOMAN PROJECT.ORG believes Celia's all-time best quotation was: "We rebels get far too much credit for winning the Revolution. Our enemies deserve most of the credit, for being greedy cowards and idiots." INDEED, as pointed out by Fidel Castro's best U. S. biographer, Georgie Anne Geyer, and other historians, Celia was bitterly disappointed the Batistiano leaders didn't stand and fight in Havana before fleeing with tons of loot on their getaway ships and airplanes after the rebels captured Santa Clara and were charging towards Havana on the last day of 1958. Those greedy cowards and idiots have always been labeled "greedy cowards and idiots" by someone who would know, the great Celia Sanchez.

This was Celia's favorite photo of Fidel Castro.

This was Fidel's favorite photo of Celia Sanchez.

This was Celia and Fidel in 1960.

      This AP photo shows Cuban citizens mourning Fidel Castro's death as they watch a video about his life on a huge screen in Revolutionary Square. This Cubaninsider blog is not about Cuba, Fidel Castro, or Celia Sanchez. It's about my United States and how Cuba, Fidel Castro and Celia Sanchez have so massively reshaped it, creating the only totally unanimous vote -- 191-to-0 -- ever registered in the United Nations, a recent vote condemning America's Cuban policy. Five years ago when I sort of tentatively started this blog, I promised two relatives of Celia Sanchez -- one living in Cuba and one in the United States -- that I would continue this blog only as long as her soulmate, Fidel Castro, lived. Now that he has died at age 90, one of those relatives has asked me to continue it but...I have mixing, conflicting feelings about that. Just as his death was inevitable and actually anticipated every day since July 31, 2006 when he almost died of a massive and incurable intestinal problem, I also believe that it is now inevitable that the Batistiano element in the United States will finally "regain control of Cuba," the very thing that the incomparable Celia Sanchez promised 57 years ago, correctly, would never happen "as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." I am glad her promise was fulfilled and still viable at 10:29 P. M. Havana time on November 25, 2016. Both history and fate, I believe, owed her at least that much. And Americans need the freedom to fairly judge her. 

And by the way: 

       Toronto police say these two Canadian heroines have concluded an exhausting 3-year project that finished off a mammothly wicked child sex ring. They rescued 400 children and arrested 348 pedophiles. On the left is Detective Constable Lisa Belanger and on the right is Inspector Joanne Beaven-Desjardins.

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No Choice for Cuba Now

A Need to Shed U. S. Ties
A Key Cuban Leader Agrees

       The Tweet depicted above was sent around the world at 6:02 A. M. on Nov. 28-2016. Although it was penned by an American rogue, it instantly garnered international headlines because the rogue is Donald Trump, the President-elect of the United States of America. A little later in this essay I'll tell you how an important lady in Havana...the island's top Minister regarding U. S. affairs, in fact...reacted to Trump's insanely indecent but very serious threat. He is about to become, after all, the leader of the Free World and the world's most powerful Commander-in-Chief. But right now, as a democracy-loving American, I will make this suggestion to that lady in Havana: "Your nation is supported by a 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations with even the United States, as long as the decent President Obama is in the White House, refusing to sign on to what ALL the nations of the world consider America's Cuban policy -- at least the major part left uncorrected by Obama -- to be obscenely cruel and criminal, and directed by a Batistiano minority headquartered in Miami and the U. S. Congress. And starting on Jan. 20-2017 also headquartered in the White House. Therefore, despite the advances Obama has provided Cubans and Americans, you and Cuba have no choice now: You should cut all diplomatic ties with the United States and concentrate your time on dealing and negotiating with any and all of the rest of the nations in the world, the nations not dictated to by a handful of what now are second generational rich and powerful Batistiano  thugs. The nations of the world recently voted 191-to-0 to support  your Cuba and oppose America's Batistiano policy directed at Cuba. Americans have been taught by the U. S. media and by unchecked Batistiano propagandists to ignore the unanimity of that vote, but you shouldn't ignore it. The Trump threats are real; he just named to his Transition Team the top anti-Cuban zealot and fund-raising lobbyist in Washington. You are probably the best diplomatic negotiator in the Western Hemisphere, but negotiating with the Trump crowd would be a waste of time. Negotiating with the rest of the world, which supports Cuba, would not be wasting your time." 

      Almost the same instant that Donald Trump's Tweet was flashing around the world, so was this photo taken in Havana by Enrique De La Osa for Reuters. I've always believed that a photo is worth a thousand words...sometimes a million, it seems. This one shows two Cubans, who have lived all their lives on the island with Fidel Castro, sincerely mourning the 90-year-old revolutionary's death at 10:29 P. M. Friday, Nov. 25th. After media clowns Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski yesterday morning paraded an array of extremely biased Batistiano propagandists on MSNBC, they posted the extremely decent and intelligent quotes on the screen from American President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau...and then laughed at and mocked those quotes. Propagandized Americans, if they happened to have been watching, probably took it in stride because that is what they have come to expect from the U. S. media -- propaganda masquerading as news. Instead of seeking "news" from America's propaganda networks, Americans, I think, should switch to decent programming such as, say, the Smithsonian Channel that fills its airways with brilliantly produced documentaries that are both topical and historic. If Joe and Mika on MSNBC put the above photo on their screen, they would probably laugh at it and joke about it just as did with the decent and sincere quotes from President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau.

     The U. S. media is neither decent enough nor competent enough to have earned the right to comment on this photo taken by Adalberto Roque for Agence France-Presse and distributed worldwide by Getty Images. It depicts Cuba in its 9-day mourning period for Fidel Castro. Cubans and the Cuban government itself have a right, should they so choose, to mourn the historic event in manners they choose.

       This Miami Herald photo this week also says a thousand words -- or maybe a million! In the middle...that's Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who has been entrenched in the U. S. Congress from Miami since 1989. Uh, do you detect the celebratory glow on her face because of the death of 90-year-old Fidel Castro. That's, uh, interesting because a once-great Miami Herald columnist, Jim DeFede, in his closing days at that Little Havana newspaper, excoriated Ros-Lehtinen and the two gentlemen she is with in the above photo for their incredible support of Miami's most famed and notorious anti-Castro terrorists -- including Miami's heralded anti-Castro citizen named Luis Posada Carriles. DeFede asked Ros-Lehtinen to comment on his excoriation, and she refused. But, as you well know, she is ubiquitous in rushing to microphones to depict Fidel Castro as the worst human that has ever lived while always, directly or by implication, touting the gracious kindness of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship he overthrew but only chased as far as Miami and the U. S. Congress. Ros-Lehtinen and the two gentlemen with her have extreme family ties dating back to the Batista rule in Havana and to the most hardline Cuban exiles in Miami. AND OF COURSE, they have extreme ties to the Bush dynasty. Ros-Lehtinen, for example, began the Little Havana parade to the U. S. Congress in 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager. Although she backs Trump's cruel assaults on Cuba...verbal now and perhaps physical later...she didn't vote for him. She wrote in the name "Jeb Bush," her mentor. And oh, yes! I mentioned the two gentlemen with Ros-Lehtinen. That's, uh, Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart on the left and his brother Mario on the right. Both have been elected from Little Havana to the U. S. Congress. They are the sons of the late Rafael Diaz-Balart who was a rich and powerful Minister in Batista's Cuban dictatorship and, like his sons, a rich and powerful anti-Castro zealot in Miami's Little Havana. At a news conference Nov. 26 celebrating Fidel Castro's death, Ros-Lehtinen at one point turned and congratulated Lincoln Diaz-Balart for writing in the U. S. Congress some of the most stringent anti-Cuba/pro-Batistiano legislation that to this day remains "legal" laws of the United States. She was apparently referencing the purely anti-democracy Helms-Burton Bill that the rest of the world opposes 191-to-0 but Americans are supposed to be too scared or to ignorant to oppose. Of course, all this week you will see Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers ranting and raving about the evils of Fidel Castro across the U. S. networks, networks that have neither the guts nor the integrity to inform their viewers why Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers are so biased against Fidel Castro while obviously having such fond memories of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that roiled, robbed and ravaged Cuba from 1952 till the break of dawn on January 1, 1959. Hidden behind the protective wall of the U. S. media, are they roiling, robbing and ravaging America now?? A pertinent question; and one the media will ignore.

      In sharp contrast to the gutless Bush administration that preceded Obama's, and the gutless Trump administration that will soon succeed him, President Obama in the past 8 years has shown great respect and decency for 11 million innocent Cubans on the island and for the U. S. democracy. While Bush left office with an approval rating in the 20s and Trump will be very lucky to leave or be kicked out of office with a 5% approval rating, Mr. Omaha currently has an astonishing, for a two-term President, approval rating of 55%. One reason for that is his brave and decent Cuban policy that coincides with the 191-to-0 UN condemnation of the U. S. Cuban policy that Mr. Obama has tried so hard, against imposing odds -- a dysfunctional Congress and an incompetent media -- to correct. Study the image above, particularly the Obama quote: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." He made that statement back in March when he became the first sitting U. S. President to visit the island since 1928. But he made that statement when he assumed that neither a Bush or a Trump would succeed him in the White House. So as November turns to December and January of 2016 is right around the corner, Cubans on the island now have every reason TO FEAR A THREAT FROM THE UNITED STATES. Because Mr. Obama is a great and decent man and should also be respected for being a great and decent President, I remain incensed that two typical network anchors -- Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough -- mocked and laughed at Mr. Obama and his office while displaying his official quote about the death of Fidel Castro on their MSNBC screen and right after so lavishly agreeing with the ultra-biased comments of the Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the visceral son of a former key Minister in the brutal Batista dictatorship. President Obama's official statement consisted of three long paragraphs that, without laughing or mocking him or his office, Americans should read in its entirety. Listed below are some of his key comments that show respect for the Cuban people and for America:

            IN PARAGRAPH ONE: "At this time of Fidel Castro's passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people." 

           IN PARAGRAPH TWO: "During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends -- bonds of culture, commerce and common humanity." 

         IN PARAGRAPH THREE: "Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro's family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. The Cuban people must know that they have friends and partners in the United States of America." 

           As President Obama well knows, former Presidents like John Kennedy and former Cuban-American newsmen like Emilio Milian in Miami have been unmercifully targeted for saying decent things about Cuba, but less decent than the words and actions of Mr. Obama. One reason for those targetings is the fact that, since 1959, transplants from the ousted Batista dictatorship have so successfully cultivated their venom using the U. S. media as a very useful propaganda pipeline and conduit.

For example, on Nov. 28-2016 -- the first Monday morning after the death of Fidel Castro -- MSNBC co-anchors Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough spent much of their two-hour broadcast lavishing praise on the outlandishly slanted comments of a host of extremely biased Cuban-Americans such as Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart who was born when his father Rafael was a powerful Minister in Cuba's soon-to-be-ousted-and-chased-to-Miami Batista dictatorship. Then Mika and Joe followed up those outrageously biased on-air comments by posting on the screen President Obama's sane and decent comments. That's when Mika and Joe laughed at and mocked those words as well as President Obama and the office he holds. And in doing so, Mika and Joe were also laughing at and mocking decent Americans, decent Cubans, democracy, and the broadcasting industry. That morning, Mika and Joe were wearing expensive clothes similar to those shown above. THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN WEARING THEIR CRAZY CLOWN OUTFITS.

      The 44-year-old Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, was in Madagascar {above} on the morning of Nov. 26-2016 when he was awakened and told about the death of Fidel Castro. Trudeau has been a friend of Fidel Castro all his life, first meeting him as an infant because Pierre Trudeau, Justin's father and former Prime Minister of Canada, was one of Fidel Castro's all-time greatest friends, almost on a par with Nelson Mandela, the South African civil rights icon, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian generally considered the all-time greatest Latin American writer/author and famed as the hater of fiendish U.S.-backed dictators such as Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Pinochet in Chile, etc. While in Madagascar, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote and issued to the world an official statement about the death of Fidel Castro. The exact and complete words of that statement follow: 

                "It is with sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba's longest serving President. Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader and served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.

        "While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a lasting affection for 'el Comandante.'

               "I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his sons and his brother Raul Castro on my recent visit to Cuba. On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader." 

             To repeat, those were the exact and complete words in Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's official statement about the death of Fidel Castro. Mika and Joe, right after posting President Obama's official words and then laughing and mocking them, also posted some of Mr. Trudeau's words...and also laughed and mocked them. WITHIN HOURS of releasing his official statement depicted above, Justin Trudeau received right-wing death threats warning him not to return to Cuba for any ceremonies related to Fidel Castro's death. The warnings were heeded and Mr. Trudeau's aides quickly announced that he would not do so. A biased or right-wing media contributes greatly to such threats and disruptions of the world order. The likes of Mika and Joe -- patriotic chest-pumpers -- don't think people like President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau have the right to freely express opinions about a world landmark such as Fidel Castro, but they think Havana-born U. S. extremists like Lincoln Diaz-Balart should have all the airtime they request to vent their venomous, unchallenged views.

       This, by the way, is a photo of Justin Trudeau embracing Fidel Castro in 2000 in Montreal at the funeral of Pierre Trudeau, Justin's father and the former Prime Minister of Canada. Fidel was a pallbearer at Pierre's funeral. This week Justin, now the Prime Minister of Canada, has received death threats if he returns to Cuba for Fidel Castro's funeral. During the 9-day mourning period, there will be a funeral but Fidel's body was quickly cremated Saturday morning after his death late Friday night, Nov. 25, 2016. A few days before Fidel died, Justin was in Cuba but could not see him because Fidel's wife Dalia felt he was too ill. It is also believed that Justin Trudeau, because of the cremation, did not intend to return to Cuba.

      Remember the Donald Trump Tweet posted at the top of this essay, the tweet in which the President-elect threatened to quickly "terminate" President Obama's positive overtures to Cuba? Josefina Vidal remembers it. In the past 15 years as Cuba's Minister in charge of relations with the United States, it has been her responsibility to take note of such things and react to them. She has done so with absolute brilliance and, if that were not so, the viciously determined and Batistiano-powered Bush administration {that preceded Obama's decent administration} would have demolished Revolutionary Cuba's hard-earned sovereignty. Now Ms. Vidal has come to realize that the upcoming Batistiano-powered Trump administration is a replicate of past Bush administrations, only now, to quote Ms. Vidal, "There seems to be more of an urgency in Miami, Congress and soon the White House to reclaim Cuba." Just about the last straw for Ms. Vidal was that Nov. 28th "terminate" Tweet from Trump. Her reaction...study her expression above when she is irked or frustrated...was: "Does Trump mean he will terminate Obama's advances or does he mean he will terminate 11 million Cubans to make sure the old Miami Cubans reclaim Cuba before the last of them dies of old age?" Trump's use of the word "terminate" irked Ms. Vidal, as it should irk everyone.

       If you think Josefina Vidal has memorized every word of Donald Trump's Nov. 28th Tweet as President-elect, you might like to know that she has virtually memorized every word and gesture of Trump's pre-election speech back in October to the old Little Havana Cubans in Miami still very nostalgic about their Brigage 2506 attack on Cuba way back in April of 1961. That's why, in making "termination" promises to remaining Brigade 2506 veterans back in October, Trump stood before a huge Brigade 2506 banner.

       Now put Josefina Vidal's comment in perspective, the comment fueled by Trump's Nov. 28th "termination" Tweet that backed up his October "termination" speech to the surviving Brigade 2506 old-timers that still dominate the politics if not the majority opinions in Miami's Little Havana district. In case you have forgotten it already, here is Vidal's reaction, the one that counts the most right now in Cuba: "Does Trump mean he will terminate Obama's advances or does he mean he will terminate 11 million Cubans to make sure the old Miami Cubans reclaim Cuba before the last of them dies of old age." Trump will have about 4,000 nuclear weapons when he becomes Commander-in-Chief on Jan. 20, 2017. Just two of those weapons -- one landing south of Havana and the other north of Santiago de Cuba -- could "terminate" all 11.2 million Cubans on the island...if indeed that's what Trump meant. Josefina Vidal doesn't have any sophisticated weapons at her disposal. But she is a lot smarter than Trump...and a lot more decent than the current passel of Trump's Cuban advisers. With Trump's presidency on the horizon and visceral Miami Cubans dictating Cuban policy to both Congress and to the U. S. media, Vidal has just about concluded -- despite all the headway she brilliantly negotiated with Obama's team -- that she has no choice but to begin shedding all ties with the nearby United States of America and concentrate on the 191 nations that support Cuba, not the one that may want to "terminate" her very vulnerable but quite pugnacious island.

And by the way: 

    Alexa Rank is the top bean-counter of how many page-views significant blogs get each day, each month and all-time and it rates this one-trick-pony pretty highly. I was surprised to see that a Cubaninsider essay I posted back in August of 2013 has itself recently been getting over a thousand page-views a day. That essay is entitled "The Seven Best Books About Fidel Castro." So I googled it to ascertain why it was getting so many hits this week. The death of Fidel Castro is a primary reason, of course, but I also noticed it is still topical and I still stand by it. The seminal book depicted here -- "Guerrilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro" -- makes the Top Seven list of best Fidel Castro books. Geyer is the long-time conservative U. S. columnist who is not a big fan of Fidel's but her intense research was outstanding and beautifully chronicled and sequenced. Geyer, I think, best captures the all-important relationship between Fidel and his soulmate Celia Sanchez, including the fact that Celia was the "only one that could over-rule him" and the additional fact that Fidel spent three days contemplating suicide after Celia died of cancer on Jan. 11, 1980. But Geyer's "Guerrilla Prince" only makes #4 on that Top 7 list, so the top three must be seriously great, right? They are, and so are the bottom four. You can check them out by just Googling "The Seven Best Books About Fidel Castro."

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Fidel Castro: 1926-2016

Still Loved, Still Hated!!

 With No In-betweens!!

    {Please note: The essay I promised to post today about why I started this blog and when I planned to end it has been postponed till Wednesday, November 30th. That's because I still need to get final permission from an individual so I can use the real name to substantiate one of the key points in that essay}. 

       To the delight of these airline workers, this American Airlines jet made history today -- Nov. 28, 2016 -- flying from Miami to Havana. It became the first commercial flight from the U. S. to Havana in over half-a-century. On August 31st JetBlue Airlines had made history with a flight to Santa Clara but today the floodgates opened to the Cuban capital of Havana. In coming weeks American, JetBlue, Delta, Spirit, Frontier, Southwest and other carriers will fly from U. S. cities like Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Newark and Houston to Havana and nine other Cuban cities. This is all part of President Obama's startling overtures aimed at normalizing relations with Cuba, already creating thousands of new jobs and new friendships in both the U. S. and Cuba. In Cuba, for example, 8,000 homes are now renovated and renting out rooms to tourists using U.S.-based Bed & Breakfast websites to secure the customers and the payments. In the U. S., thousands of workers -- like the American Airlines employees holding the Cuban flag above -- are ecstatic over the sane advances made by President Obama's Congress-defying Executive Orders. President-elect Donald Trump is vowing starting on Jan. 20-2017 to reverse all of Obama's sanity and decency regarding Cuba with Executive Orders of his own to keep cowardly promises he made to Cuban hardliners in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. But most decent people, including most Cuban-Americans in Miami, favor Obama's overtures to Cuba, not Trump's threats. Also, if Trump carries through on his Cuban insanity and cruelty, he will anger thousands of U. S. businesses and workers, and not just airlines...not to mention disappoint every nation in the world based on the resounding 191-to-0 pro-Cuba/anti U. S. vote in the UN.  

        This morning -- Monday, November 28th, 2016 -- the Morning Joe show used its two hours on MSNBC to prove why it is nothing more and nothing less than a propaganda machine masquerading as broadcast journalism. Mika and Joe want the world to know that Fidel Castro was the worse killer-terrorist in the history of the world and that the Batista/Mafia/Diaz-Balart dictatorship Fidel Castro overthrew and chased back to U. S. soil was composed of the kindest, sweetest, most honorable people that have ever walked the face of the earth -- namely Havana first and then Little Havana in Miami since 1959. Mika and Joe  -- as boldfaced liars -- used a host of people such as the Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart to prove their anti-Castro venom. Lincoln is the rich and visceral son of Rafael Diaz-Balart, a rich and powerful Minister in the Batista-Mafia dictatorship who became very quickly one of the richest and most visceral anti-Castro zealots who founded the very first anti-Castro paramilitary unit on U. S. soil. Lincoln, who resigned a safe seat in the U. S. Congress to concentrate more on anti-Castro work in Miami, has a rich and visceral anti-Castro brother, Mario, entrenched now in the U. S. Congress and another rich and visceral brother, Jose, who is entrenched as a key news anchor on NBC and MSNBC. The indelible Diaz-Balart connection to the criminal Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba and since 1959 to the most indelible and controversial anti-Castro actions in Miami and in Congress is absolutely never mentioned by the mainstream U. S. media. But those extremely biased zealots can go on almost any television program in America and rant endlessly about Fidel Castro being the worst human being in history -- " a pathological liar and murderer" were among the milder accusations this morning. Mika and Joe agreed wholeheartedly, of course, with everything Lincoln Diaz-Balart said as they did with Carlos Curbelo, another Miami contribution to Congress, and other anti-Castro extremists. Finally Mika and Joe posted a decent quotation from President Obama about the death of Fidel Castro and then they mocked and laughed at the words of a very decent American president. They then posted on the screen a quotation by Justin Trudeau, the 44-year-old Prime Minister of Canada, who praised Castro's contributions to the Cuban people, namely rescuing them from the Batista, Mafia and Diaz-Balart dictatorship that Castro defeated only to chase the rich leaders to U. S. soil. Laughing and mocking President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau while loudly praising the one-sided diatribes from the likes of  Lincoln Diaz-Balart this morning shows Mika and Joe to be outright propagandists.

        The typical anti-Castro zealot on CNN this morning -- Nov. 28th -- was Boris Sanchez. Like MSNBC, CNN will only hire Cuban-American broadcasters such as Sanchez who are violently anti-Castro and pro-Batistiano. So the Boris Sanchez diatribes against Fidel Castro this morning almost brought tears to the eyes of co-anchors Chris Cuomo and Alyson Camerota. The Boris Sanchez story about his granddad and dad in CASTRO'S CUBA would also have brought tears to my eyes...if I had believed it. Networks like MSNBC and CNN only hire anti-Castro/pro-Batistiano Cuban-Americans as so-called "broadcast journalists." There are no exceptions to that rule, but they have monopolies and they get away with, as the national approval ratings and respect for broadcast journalism today is at record lows in single digits. Propaganda from alleged journalists like Boris Sanchez or from alleged and unbiased Castro experts like the Diaz-Balarts is an insult to journalism, democracy and the American people. This morning's critique merely proved what I already knew. It reminded me that the last Cuban-American journalist, Emilio Milian in Miami who told the truth about Batistiano terrorism, got car-bombed. It reminded me that Marco Rubio from Miami was in the U. S. Senate still claiming that his parents escaped the tyranny of Castro for the freedom of Miami...till it was pointed out by the Washington Post and the St. Petersburg Times that Rubio's parents had escaped the tyranny of Batista's Cuba long before there was any prospect that Castro would chase the Batistianos, the Diaz-Balarts, etc. off the island -- all the way to Miami, essentially. A suggestion to Boris Sanchez: Instead of assuming your viewers are idiots, tell the truth or at least try to appear truthful.  

       Beginning precisely at 10:29 P. M. on November 25, 2016, the abiding love and the equally abiding hatred of Fidel Castro has flashed all around the world. In that light, I though Cubaninsider readers would like to know the history of the above photo, because even Fidel Castro winks made history, you know, after his history-making Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1-1959 defeated the combined might of the powerful Batista dictatorship that was backed by the even more powerful Mafia and by the ultra-powerful United States. The all-out efforts of those three precise enemies failed to either assassinate Castro or recapture his supposedly vulnerable island in the next half-century, adding immeasurably to both his fame and his impending legacy. Therefore, you need to know the history {confirmed by the BBC} behind the wink, such as the question that spawned it and the words he buttressed it with in his reply to the awed young lady:

           The fawning female fan: 

                   "Uh, Fi..., Mr. Castro, I do so much admire your life!" 

           Fidel winked and then backed it up with these words: 

                   "Honey, if you like my life you will love my legacy." 

      After the triumph of the Revolution, to the utter chagrin of the all-business/no frills revolutionary leader Celia Sanchez, Fidel was deluged with and by young fawning female fans, especially from the United States and Germany. It got so bad that Celia famously installed two big bodyguards to keep them at bad. Still, many...like the session above...got past the bodyguard buffers and Celia's ire to have collective and individuals sessions with Fidel. He prefers redheads; Dalia, his devoted wife from 1980 till he died last Friday night at age 90, was a redhead and they had five loyal sons together. Three other famed redheads historically linked to Fidel {because they allegedly bedded him} were famed Hollywood starlets -- Maureen O'Hara, Rita Hayworth, and Beverly Aadland. Publicists for O'Hara and Hayworth denied the rumors of sexual trysts with Fidel but when it came to Aadland there was simply too much proof to deny it, with even confirmations from Celia's outrage and Errol Flynn's admitted compliance,  connivance or conspiracy.

       In 1959 Errol Flynn was still a Hollywood superstar in his 50s but by then he was significantly worn down by his indulgent lifestyle, which included his then quite gorgeous 17-year-old redheaded girlfriend Beverly Aadland. Like most Hollywood superstars, Flynn was enchanted with Fidel Castro's astonishingly victorious and female-powered Cuban Revolution...especially the fact that so many young Cuban women -- such as the teenage Tete Puebla {who today is a General in the Cuban army} -- were among the most effective and famous guerrilla fighters while women like Celia Sanchez, Haydee Santamaria and Vilma Espin were not only prime fighters but also major decision-makers, with Celia actually having more decision-making power than Fidel because he was her biggest backer. Flynn in 1959 rushed to Cuba and made a movie -- "Cuban Rebel Girls." As you can see from the above poster, Flynn played the Fidel character and Aadland -- "Errol Flynn's 17-year-old protege in her first starring role" -- played the Celia role. And as you can see, because Celia was not a redhead, Aadland's hair had been dyed. She actually should have been playing Tete Puebla, the black Cuban female guerrilla fighter who began annihilating Batista soldiers by the time she was 15. In 1959 Puebla, like Aadland, was 17 but Flynn hadn't learned about Tete's heroics yet so he scripted Aadland's role to equate that of the famed Celia in the Revolutionary War.

       Errol Flynn's movie, for example, included this scene that shows Beverly Aadland as Celia Sanchez helping to bandage Fidel Castro's wounded leg with Errol Flynn playing Fidel. Once during the war Celia actually did bandage Fidel's leg after it was grazed by a bullet. Fidel called it "a scratch, not a wound." 

       Indeed, Fidel Castro simply could not turn down redheads, especially in the halcyon days of 1959 and 1960 when it seems every redhead wanted to bed him. In 1959 a beautiful German redhead named Marina Lorenz debarked in Havana from a ship captained by her father. They are shown above with Fidel. Later Marina had some very private sexual hook-ups with Fidel, documented by historians and BY HER! 

       Marina Lorenz was born in Bremen, Germany in August of 1939. She is now 77 and lives in the United States. As you can see in the above photo, she still has RED hair to honor her memories of Fidel Castro. But in 1960 -- as told in her book and recounted by Wikipedia and other sources -- Cuban exiles working for the CIA put immense pressure on her to kill Fidel. The CIA knew she was one of the few people who might be alone with him and they teased her with photos of Fidel with other redheads. Jealous of other alleged Fidel lovers, Marina accepted their offer. She arrived back in Havana with CIA-directed poison in a toothpaste tube, the brand and type that she knew Fidel used. She was to replace his tube in his hotel bathroom with her poisoned one. Indeed, she was alone with Fidel in that Hilton Hotel room. At one point soon after arriving, she told him she had to go to the bathroom where she intended to make the toothpaste switch. But he touched her left shoulder and stopped her. Looking down into her face, he said, "Marina, you came here to kill me, didn't you?" Too startled to speak, she just stared up at him, finally shaking her head in the affirmative after realizing she would not leave that room, or at least Havana, alive. But she did. He escorted her to the door and motioned down the hallway for a bodyguard. He told him, "Treat Marina kind, as my friend. Whatever she wants, till you take her to the airport." To this day the 77-year-old Marina lives with the memory that he treated her kindly "even after he knew what he knew." She deeply regrets that the CIA used her youthful jealousy in one of the closest assassination plots the CIA ever concocted to kill him. It is a reflection that Celia Sanchez always had friends high-up in the U. S. government, including the CIA. The tip-off Celia received about Marina's last visit to Havana in 1960 is an example of the tips that helped save Fidel's life, Celia's life and the life of their precious revolution.

       When I was in Cuba in 2004 to research my biography of Celia Sanchez, I was directed to the city of Trinidad to interview a female guerrilla fighter named Sylvia who had fought with Celia. That's where I got documentation of that lady's most memorable battle, so memorable I used a whole chapter to tell it. Celia got a tip from an officer at Fort Benning in Georgia that the CIA's "best-trained assassin" was about to sneak onto the island with the "express purpose" of killing her. This was 1954 when Fidel was in prison on the Isle of Pines and had never laid eyes on Celia but knew all about her exploits. The information came from a U. S. officer that Celia trusted. She made two other quick contacts using a transmitter phone-hookup at one of her remote base-camps. Celia was told the would-be assassin's code-name was "Modesto" and he was a Cuban-American with ties to Modesto, California. She was provided descriptions of Modesto and his "two likely accomplishes." Modesto had a black mustache and a scar near his left ear. Also, she was told the three killers would report to and operate from a Batista military barracks on the edge of Santiago de Cuba that Celia was very familiar with. She was told the exact day Modesto left Fort Benning for Cuba via "a small boat off a ship." With that information and always with the info provided by brave peasants in the region, Celia used an 18-person guerrilla unit that included Sylvia to daily monitor Modesto's movements in a U. S. army jeep. He frequented a dirt road in a 15-mile radius outside the barracks and the three assassins often patrolled on foot searching for signs of Celia such as via binoculars by day and campfires at night in an area she was known to have base-camps. Modesto after about five days of patrolling would return to the barracks for supplies. Celia, with her own binoculars, watched them return to the barracks one last time. The next time Modesto's jeep kicked up dust on that dirt road, he rounded a curve and the jeep screeched and slid into a fallen tree that blocked his route. The three men leaped from the jeep and only managed to get off several hasty shots before they were mowed down by a hail of guerrilla fire. Sylvia told me, "Celia herself turned over the bodies of the three men so she could check their faces, wanting to make sure she got Modesto. The first two were not him. But the third one was. Celia then turned to us and said, 'It's him. Now let's get the hell out of here. Those shots weren't silent.' It was my first assignment with Celia, but not the last. We were always so confident. We all were. Because of Celia. She was always so damn precise. We didn't think we could lose, no matter the odds." Celia was also aided with solid tips from U. S. sources, such as the info that saved Fidel from Marina Lorenz's poisonous toothpaste and Celia from Modesto.

   Also, Celia Sanchez had a very good pair of binoculars!   

      Via the social media and news updates, this graphic of Fidel Castro has been ubiquitous online these last few days of November following his death at age 90. The prescient quote attributed to Fidel back in 1973 was authentic and is documented by a BBC video. Fidel made the statement after being asked a question by a U. S. newsman and his reply, although merely off-the-cuff in answer to a question that irked him, was indeed prophetic: "The United States will come to talk to us when you have a black president and the world has a Latin American pope." The world knows that Barack Obama is the first black United States president and that Argentine native Pope Francis is the first Latin American pope. Lo 'n behold!! Fidel lived long enough to see his prophecy come true, didn't he? Both the black President and the Latin American pope came to talk to Cuba on very friendly, kind and supportive terms. Many historians have stated that Fidel "out-smarted" ten U. S. presidents to carve out his revolution, his longevity and his legacy. Jesuit schoolteachers confirmed that Fidel's IQ was "so off-the-charts it couldn't be measured." There are many confirmed examples of the teachers using Fidel's photographic memory "to entertain his classmates." One Jesuit teacher wrote, "I would select an esoteric book with small print and have Fidel silently read one whole page and then take the book back and have Fidel recite the whole page to the class. It was uncanny, almost scary...and funny." {Uncanny...almost scary...funny. That also describes his 1973 quote-prediction.} 

            This photo shows Fidel Castro making a speech at the United Nations in 1960. This speech catapulted Fidel into the Guinness Book of World Records. That's because the speech was exactly 4 hours and 29 minutes long, by far the longest in UN history. For years Fidel was famous for making 6 and 7 hour extemporaneous speeches in Cuba's hot sun with as many as a million people in attendance. You can see a 6 minute, 38 second clip of this speech on YouTube by using the title: "Fidel Castro Speech at the United Nations." A 2:57 YouTube video entitled "Mr. K and Castro at the United Nations" shows Fidel getting off a Soviet airplane to arrive in New York for his 1960 UN speech. He is stopped by a swarm of reporters and answers questions in English. Another clip shows a reporter asking him why he came on a Soviet and not a Cuban plane. He replied, "The United States is brave enough to shoot down a Cuban plane but not brave enough to shoot down a Soviet plane. The Soviets, they have nuclear stuff." The reporter laughed but Fidel wasn't joking. Earlier in 1960 Fidel had survived the CIA plot to kill him using the poisoned TOOTHPASTE TUBE delivered by his young lover Marina Lorenz. And years later -- on Oct. 6, 1976 -- a famed Cuban-American CIA and anti-Castro terrorist-assassin masterminded a successful plot to blow up a child-laden civilian Cuban airplane USING ANOTHER TOOTHPASTE TUBE, this one packed with plastic explosives!! 

         The extreme act of terrorism that blew Cubana Flight 455 into the ocean -- killing all 73 on board including children and 24 teenage athletes -- has resonated loudly throughout the Caribbean and Latin America every day since October 6, 1976. Yet, because the Cuban narrative in the U. S. is tightly controlled by powerful Cuban-American extremists, few Americans to this day know about the only civilian airplane ever downed in the Western Hemisphere by an act of terrorism. That Cuban narrative -- ESPECIALLY THIS LAST WEEK OF NOVEMBER-2016 -- is screaming loudly about what a "sadistic killer and terrorist" Fidel Castro was. And Americans are not supposed to know that those screams are coming loudest from Cuban-Americans that Cuba and Latin America as well as the U. S. government well know support killer-terrorist still using the U. S. government and the U. S. media to seek revenge against Fidel Castro...or now his legacy...for kicking them or their parents off the island at the start of 1959. The alleged well-know bomber of Cubana Flight 455, thanks to unchallenged members of Congress from Miami, is today a heralded citizen of Miami who engages in anti-Castro and anti-Obama demonstrations in Miami's Little Havana sanctuary.

        A plethora of de-classified U. S. documents -- such as this one addressed in 1976 to the still-living Henry Kissinger -- leave no doubt that the highest echelons of the U. S. government knew right away...and still knows today...the terrorists who bombed Cubana Flight 455. But because of the U. S. government's unique and long-standing ties to Cuban and Mafia anti-Castro forces, the U. S. government is not capable of dealing with even the most notorious Cuban-American terrorists, and the U. S. media is too intimidated to be anything other than a propaganda conduit for diatribes against Castro and in support of the Batista-Mafia regime the Cuban Revolution transplanted to Miami back in 1959, two long generations ago. 

   Outside the U. S., victims of Cubana Flight 455 are mourned. 

 And outside the U. S., people know their history. 

U.S.-Cuban history includes a civilian airplane bombing.

        And speaking of the Guinness Book of World Records, Fidel Castro -- in addition to that UN speech in 1960 -- has another prominent mention. Many historians and documentaries, and now the Guinness Book, confirm that Fidel survived more assassination attempts than any person in history -- OVER 600!! But as the photo above indicates, they didn't seem to faze him too much although perhaps they should have. Most of the attempts were carried out by three of the most skilled and well-funded units in history -- the CIA, the Mafia and the Batistianos. The Journal-American reporter who showed Fidel the headline depicted above got this quotation from him: "And I thought the U. S. taxpayers had stopped funding Operation Mongoose." Operation Mongoose was the code-name of the most-famed CIA program that right-wing thugs in the Eisenhower administration passed along to the Kennedy administration in January of 1960. The sole purpose of Operation Mongoose was to "Kill Castro." For two years the Kennedy administration carried through on the inherited plans for the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba in April of 1961 and Operation Mongoose from 1960 till 1962. Then by November of 1963 the popular President Kennedy realized that the CIA and not Castro was the real enemy. That's when John Kennedy famously did two things: One day in the Oval Office, as two of his top aides -- Pierre Salinger and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. -- later confirmed, JFK threw a tirade and screamed, "If I could I would blow the CIA to smithereens!" A few days later he told all of his top aides that his "top priority" when he returned from Dallas was to "normalize relations with Cuba." But on Nov. 22-1963 he returned from Dallas in a coffin. Those are historic, unchallenged facts, like Operation Mongoose. And, sadly, they say a lot more about the United States than they say about Cuba. And what they say loudest of all is this: EVEN THE GREATEST AND STRONGEST DEMOCRACY IN HISTORY IS VULNERABLE IF ITS CITIZENS ALLOW A FEW THUGS TO ACT ON THEIR BEHALF, which includes putting the Mafia in Cuba in 1952; allowing the overthrown Batista regime to resurrect itself on U. S. soil in 1959 and in the U. S. Congress by the 1980s; boondoggles and crimes such as Operation Mongoose, the Bay of Pigs attack; unpunished and continuous terrorism such as befell Cubana Flight 455; and a continuous embargo of Cuba that the entire world now condemns with a 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations. Apathy, cowardice, and stupidity on the part of American citizens are far more to blame than the greed and criminality of a few thugs, many of whom have been allowed to get away with such things as the unending genocidal embargo and bragging about the bombing of a child-laden civilian airplane while calling Fidel Castro names that best describe them.

Aug. 13, 1926 - Nov. 25, 2016. 

      Although he would not admit it, his life and his impending legacy define the United States even more than they define Cuba. The latest proof of that is two-fold: {1} The 191-to-0 pro Cuba/anti-U. S. vote in the United Nations that Americans are programmed not to even consider; and {2} the morbidly anti-democracy celebrations in Miami on November 25th that the U. S. media was obliged to cover JUST LIKE a scared media in a Banana Republic would have been obliged to cover such shenanigans. In other words, because of Fidel Castro and what he wrought, Americans today are supposed to believe that zero is a larger number than 191 because the 191-to-0 configuration out of the UN tends to cast a positive glow on both Cuba and Fidel Castro. But in the United States, which has been badly reconfigured by the Batistianos since 1959, that is not permitted. And that's why Fidel Castro, the life he lived and the legacy that follows, says more about the United States of America and its democracy than he says about his island of Cuba.  

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