30.6.17

TV News -- Cuba and U.S.

A Fair Comparison!
        Ladies and gentlemen, the tweet above from America's Tweeter-in-Chief is totally dominating the news in the United States, illustrating the extreme depths to which journalism has sunk -- from news operations to propaganda machines.
      The "Crazy Mika" and "Psycho Joe" that President Trump tweeted about are the soon-to-be husband-and-wife team Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. They have teamed up the past few years as the co-hosts on the MSNBC Morning Joe program, which masquerades as a "news" operation but in reality is nothing more and nothing less than a propaganda machine. They once were social and media friends with Donald Trump, then something happened. Now every single morning, day after day and month after month, they fill their airtime with anti-Trump rants and name-calling as leading proponents of the mainstream media's unabashed coup designed to topple the Trump presidency -- which I too don't support but at least I have respect for the Office of President and the electoral process that elected him in my United States.
      Like ALL THE ANCHORS on MSNBC and CNN, Mika Bryezinski is totally unconcerned with presenting Trump news or other news but totally interested in demeaning Trump and thus also demeaning the exalted Office he holds and the precious democracy that amazingly put him in office largely because many Americans have long-since tired of the established media and the established incumbents in Washington. The uncouth and sometimes unwise President has thus occasionally, as with the above tweet, blistered Mika with vile adjectives and descriptions, BUT NOT NEARLY AS VILE AS THE ADJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTIONS Mika has used EVERY MORNING to demean Trump, with the real news be-damned. In the brouhaha over Trump's fired-back tweet yesterday, the left-wing U. S. media is tripping over itself to project Mika as a saintly lady and superb journalist while the Trump choir will always staunchly support him -- and that includes Fox News and a solid core of about 38% of Americans that his enemies call "an irredeemable basket of white racist deplorables." In that milieu, perhaps more so than any time since the 1860s, a civil war or a revolution or at least recurring violent acts and demonstrations are looming as dire possibilities. If so, the sharp decline of the U. S. broadcast media will have played a huge role even as it surely will try, at least initially, to sanctimoniously cover the upcoming smoky and fiery streets and battlefields...WHILE ALWAYS POINTING THE BLAME ELSEWHERE
          MEANWHILE, the decrepit U. S. broadcast media will cast aspersions at everything related to Cuba in its role as a United States propaganda conduit for the anti-Cuban counter-revolutionary Cuban-American propaganda zealots in Miami and the U. S. Congress. Therefore, based on what I've seen and observed in Cuba and what the superb U. S. broadcast journalist Andrea Mitchell has seen and observed in Cuba, I'll hereby review today's Cuban broadcast media as fairly, honestly, and judiciously as I possibly can.
       Americans are not supposed to know it but Cuba has a vibrant and influential television news apparatus with perhaps North America's best and most dedicated and best-trained young broadcast journalists. such as Cristina Escobar and Rosy Amaro Perez. That's Rosy above interviewing 87-year-old Roberto Fernandez Retamar this week. He is a respected historian with intimate and still vivid knowledge of Batista's Cuba and Revolutionary Cuba. Thus, this interview was not only scintillating but also very topical as Revolutionary Cuba adjusts to the stark transition in the U. S. from Obama to Trump.
        Within in a few months -- on or before February-2018 -- a very tired 86-year-old Raul Castro, the last of the three Castro brothers -- will step down as President of Cuba, relinquishing the position to a much younger non-revolutionary and non-Castro. Cuban insiders on the island fully comprehend that Cuba's future will soon cease to revolve around neither the elderly still-living revolutionary icons on the island nor the elderly still-living Bay of Pigs counter-revolutionaries in Miami's ubiquitous Little Havana neighborhood. It is thus already evident in Cuba that the healthy, well-educated young adult generation of Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington, will predicate Cuba's future. I am talking about Cubans like the four young Cuban-loving Cubans depicted above. That's why Americans should know old Cubans on the island like Mr. Fernandez, the 87-year-old historian, and talented young Cubans on the island like, from left to right, those shown above: Antonio Guzman Morales, Rosy Amaro Perez, Yanet Perez Moya, and Ramadan Arcos. If Americans knew that old Cuban historian they would know why, AGAINST ALL ODDS, Revolutionary Cuba evolved and why, against all odds, it has survived the last six decades. And if Americans get to know these four young Cubans, they might understand how and why Revolutionary Cuba might survive many more decades. And, yes, that knowledge is important considering how much America's worldwide image is tied to a Cuban policy that gets a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations.
        In the U. S.,  broadcast journalism is also ubiquitous and influential but both polls and unbiased personal observations show that media influence and respect in America is not as substantial as its counterpart in Cuba. In the Trump era it is apparent that all the mainstream U. S. networks except Fox are primarily concerned with dispensing anti-Trump propaganda as opposed to covering Trump news or other news...and that includes NBC-CBS-ABC-MSNBC-and-CNN. However, as in most things, there are exceptions to the rule and one exception at NBC particularly stands out regarding both Donald Trump and Cuba.
         The Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for NBC News is Andrea Mitchell, a true broadcast journalist as opposed to the vastly over-abundant propaganda-pundits that occupy almost all of the airtime on the American networks. As the most glaring exception to that disconcerting and embarrassing industry-wide rule, Andrea Mitchell actually reports knowledgeably and fairly on topics that include Trump and Cuba. I thus find her extremely refreshing because, while I am not a Trump supporter, I strongly support the Office of President and the electoral process that put him in office. And, of course, I believe firmly that America's Cuban policy -- maliciously directed since the 1950s by right-wing thugs and pro-Batistiano miscreants -- does more on a daily basis than anything else to demean American and democracy in the eyes of the world. The mainstream U. S. media is also a culprit in that regard with its cowardly or politically correct lies and distortions about U.S.-Cuban relations. That's why, to me, Andrea Mitchell stands out so preeminently in the U. S. mainstream media. Shown above standing on a street in Havana, she has taken time to know U.S.-Cuban relations and, just as significantly, she reports that understanding fairly. To know Cuba, for example, is equivalent to visiting Cuba...and Andrea Mitchell does that. To not know is to not visit Cuba.
        When in Cuba, Andrea Mitchell, as above, interviews Cubans who understand the pulses and rhythms of the island's everyday people, an often misunderstood and misreported aspect of U.S.-Cuban issues.
         United States journalists are typically programmed and intimidated into seeking and reporting only anti-Cuban "news" but the veteran NBC superstar, Andrea Mitchell, is gutsy enough to also seek out Cuban positives, as above. Cuba's advanced medical research has produced effective cancer and diabetic treatments, for example, that have proven very successful on the island and in many other countries, so Andrea Mitchell has the unique courage and the integrity to question why counter-revolutionaries in Miami and in the United States Congress can get away with denying such treatments to needy American patients, some of whom are having to break U. S. laws to go to Cuba and obtain the treatments first-hand.
        On a trip to Cuba this month of June-2017, Andrea Mitchell revealed how the Batistiano-pressured Trump administration seems willing to sacrifice United States security by rolling back Obama-inspired cooperation with Cuba, which happens to have one of the region's best cyber monitoring systems and it readily shares such badly needed data with the United States. In the photo above, Andrea is interviewing Lt. Col. Miguel Guitierrez, the Cuban that heads that highly respected intelligence-gathering system and, for both America's and Cuba's security, he wants to continue sharing his information with the U. S.
        The above photo shows Andrea Mitchell in Cuba this month interviewing Lt. Col. Yohanka Rodriguez, the co-head of Cuba's intelligence-gathering cyber institution that is considered, by the United States and Cuba, to be vital to the security of both nations. Yohanka Rodriguez told Andrea Mitchell that "We have recently turned over 17 findings related to the U. S. that the Americans needed to know and that the Americans deeply appreciated getting." Her personal visit this month to the building where Cuba obtains such information and shares it with the U. S. is something Andrea Mitchell does that lesser U. S. journalist would not dare do. Andrea Mitchell also questions why counter-revolutionaries in the United States can get away with preventing needy Americans from benefiting from Cuba's medical advancements or get away with trying to prevent the U. S. government from benefiting from Cuba's vital cooperation in combating drug and human trafficking in the Caribbean and also in the Florida Straits between the United States and Cuba.
       This photo shows a California family -- husband, wife and daughter -- in Cuba knowingly breaking the obscene Batistiano-driven United States law that, for many decades, has made everyday Americans the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. Judy Engels, in the middle and strongly supported by her husband and daughter, goes to Cuba to benefit from Cuba's treatment of advanced lung cancer, and her American doctors, unlike the counter-revolutionaries in Miami and in the U. S. Congress, approved of her breaking the Batistiano-embargoed law concerning Americans being the only people in the world denied the freedom to visit Cuba, apparently so the counter-revolutionaries can continue to dictate the Cuban narrative and the Cuban laws in the United States. America's Cuban policy, wildly denounced by that 191-to-0 vote in the UN, is designed to appease a handful of counter-revolutionaries while harming the freedoms and the lives of everyone else, including Judy Engels. If Andrea Mitchell is the only mainstream U. S. journalist to report on such things, perhaps the media should re-examine itself.
        The photo above shows the U. S. Coast Guard making a huge drug seizure in the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba. The U. S. State Department in the Obama administration went to great lengths to designate Cuba as America's prime "cooperative asset" in combating both drug and human trafficking in the region. Of course, most of the mainstream U. S. media doesn't report such vital U.S.-Cuban cooperation because it might displease a handful of counter-revolutionaries in Miami and in Congress. And that's why the U. S. media's exception to that rule, Andrea Mitchell, is significant and glaring when it comes to pointing out that positive U.S.-Cuban relations benefit everyone and negative U.S.-Cuban relations only benefit the insatiable greed and revenge of a few counter-revolutionaries in Miami and in the U. S. Congress.
        This month of June-2017 Andrea Mitchell's NBC reporting from Cuba explained how counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans in Congress from Miami like Marco Rubio, who has never been to Cuba, pads his political and economic bases by hurting totally innocent everyday Cubans like Julia de la Rosa. The worried expression on Julia's face relates to President Trump, pressured by the likes of Marco Rubio, turning back President Obama-orchestrated actions that enabled Julia to create a ten-bed Bed-and-Breakfast business that flourished and enabled her to hire 17 Cubans to work for her -- thanks to Obama. Over 8,000 privately owned Bed-and-Breadfast businesses in Cuba have teamed with the U.S.-based Airbnb, which says that "Cuba is our fastest growing market." But all that is threatened by self-serving non-Cuban Cuban-Americans like Rubio having undue and obscene influence on President Trump's Cuban policy. With tears in her eyes, Julia de la Rosa, the totally innocent Cuban lady shown above, told Andrea Mitchell, "With what Trump and Rubio, unlike Obama, are doing, I am afraid. I don't want to think about it. I worry about my family but I also worry about the 17 families on my payroll who need the money I pay them."
      This photo shows President Trump flashing his newly signed anti-Obama, anti-Cuban, and anti-American Cuban policy on June 16, 2017 in Miami's Little Havana anti-Cuban bastion where he was surrounded and wildly applauded by only the usual passel of self-serving counter-revolutionary zealots. Of course, the strong majority of Cuban-Americans IN MIAMI favor Obama's decent policies regarding Cuba, not Rubio's and not Trump's. And yet, Americans are not supposed to be brave enough or intelligent enough to question why only counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans can get elected to Congress from Miami...or why only laws benefiting just a handful of extreme counter-revolutionaries can get passed in a democratic Congress.
       Neither Donald Trump nor Marco Rubio have ever been to Cuba and they are not likely to ever see the island unless they finally team with the CIA and the omnipotent United States military to recapture Cuba for the Little Havana-based Batistianos. In the meantime, neither Trump nor Rubio seem to care about the vast majority of innocent and decent Americans, like cancer-stricken Judy Engels in California, or the vast majority of innocent and decent Cubans, like bed-and-breakfast entrepreneur Julia de la Rosa in Havana.
        But while the vast majority of the mainstream U. S. media remains too intimidated or too incompetent to report fairly on Cuba, a topic that shames America in the eyes of the entire world, NBC's Andrea Mitchell has both the guts and the integrity to report fairly about Cuba from Cuba. On the Havana street above as well as at Cuban government institutions such as the Cyber Security Center, Andrea Mitchell is able to detect and sense the pulses and rhythms of the Cubans while also gaining intimate knowledge of why positive U.S.-Cuban relations are so badly needed by both countries. In her last report for NBC from Cuba this month, Andrea Mitchell said, "The problem is that a crackdown by President Trump would hurt the small business owners in Cuba, the very people Trump and Rubio say they want to help..." She added, "But if the Obama gains are stopped, Vladimir Putin and others are ready to step in." And so, for what it's worth, Andrea Mitchell tells the American people about the cruelty and dangers of allowing counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans like Rubio and sycophants like Trump roll-back America's Cuban policies to the Dark Ages of the Cold War, ignoring Cuban victims like Julia de la Rosa and American victims like Judy Engels.
  And that brings us back around to Cuba's Rosy Amaro Perez.
       On the island of Cuba, Rosy is not only an excellent and influential broadcast journalist, she is also a wife and a mother who happens to believe strongly and proudly in Cuba's future and in the preservation of the island's sovereignty. But across the Florida Straits in Miami as well as in the U. S. White House and in the U. S. Congress, counter-revolutionaries like Trump and Rubio oppose Rosy and have at least a billion-to-one advantage over her when it comes to power and wealth. YET, she doesn't consider that a hopeless situation. Remember the photo at the top of this essay that shows Rosy this week interviewing the 87-year-old historian Roberto Fernandez Retamar? He was telling Rosy that revolutionary heroines like Celia Sanchez and Haydee Santamaria back in the 1950s were also at least billion-to-one underdogs against the combined might of Batista, the Mafia and America, but "their superior will-to-win somehow won." And that's the history lesson that Rosy Amaro Perez and a strong contingent of her young-adult acolytes on the island are depending on to maintain Cuba as a proud and independent nation despite its proximity to Miami and Washington in the age of the unworthy billion-to-one favorites like President Trump and Senator Rubio.
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28.6.17

Cuba and Fake News

A Serious Problem!
      The photo-graphic above mocks CNN and the entire Broadcast Industry in the United States for failing to cover the news while descending into "Fake News" and, even more appalling, into left-wing or right-wing propaganda machines. The four CNN anchors depicted above...AND ALL THE CNN AND MSNBC ANCHORS...have evolved into nothing more and nothing less than left-wing, anti-Trump propagandists who rarely bother to actually dispense real news whether it involves Trump or anything else. The other 24-hour U. S. cable "news" operation, Fox, dispenses right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda. And ALL THREE networks are politically correct cowards as extreme anti-Cuba, pro-Batistiano propaganda promoters. America's democracy was founded, as Thomas Jefferson famously opined, on the principle that a free, vibrant and honest news media was its most vital ingredient. Well, Mr. Jefferson didn't envision television's dominance of the U. S. media and he could not possibly have predicted the depths to which America's broadcast "news" industry has sunk.
     The Founding Father who wrote America's Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, believed the media of his day in the form of newspapers were more important to democracy than government itself. If he were alive today in the dominant and addictive television age, he undoubtedly would cringe at what appears to be a propaganda conspiracy involving CNN, MSNBC, The NY Times, and The Washington Post to destroy the Trump presidency with propaganda instead of covering Trump news as well as other news. {I am not a Trump supporter but I do respect the office of President, the U. S. democracy, and Mr. Jefferson's depiction of the media's role within the basic fabric of the fragile United States government}.
         The famous Jefferson quote and the "Fake News" aspect now attached to broadcast journalism in the United States brings to mind the talented broadcast journalist, Cristina Escobar, in Cuba. On Cuban soil and on United States soil in Washington, California and Alabama while covering U.S.-Cuban news or being interviewed herself at speaking engagements, she has made this exact quote: "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba."
         Americans are programmed to dismiss any opinion coming from Cuba -- even from the extremely intelligent and respected Cristina Escobar -- but for the sake of their democracy, and especially the role broadcast journalism has in it, perhaps they should listen to and heed her critique of the U. S. media.
        For the last two decades, Sean Hannity -- with both his ubiquitous radio talk show and his anchor-role on Fox News -- has been one of America's most powerful and influential conservative voices. He has millions of listeners and viewers but, like the left-wingers on the other two Cable News Networks, Hannity primarily just preaches to the choir. I, for example, depend on London's BBC World News for the fairest and best coverage of American news. But, being deeply concerned with the American democracy, I also closely observe the United States media and actually agree with the famous quotes of both Thomas Jefferson and Cristina Escobar. On Fox News and on his equally powerful radio show, Hannity assaults the "Fake News" on CNN and MSNBC, as well he should, but Hannity himself is not immune to such things as the politically correct fake news regarding Cuba and sometimes related to his pro-Trump zealotry. In the report depicted above Hannity was berating Jeff Zucker, the "Fake News" anti-Trump boss at CNN.
       In this last week of June-2017, Sean Hannity on Fox has been showing undercover video that got three CNN News operatives fired because they were caught discussing their anti-Trump propaganda obsessions. Hannity and other anchors at Fox revel in pointing out, correctly, that all "news" shows on CNN and MSNBC are obsessed with anti-Trump propaganda while so-called News Networks should be obsessed with gathering and providing legitimate Trump news and other news...just like the BBC does in England.
        The photo-graphic above depicts Fox's Sean Hannity verbally berating the "Fake News Chiefs" at NBC and CNN -- Andy Lack and Jeff Zucker FIND AND DANDY!! But Americans are left with only left-wing or right-wing propaganda machines when it comes to ALL OF THE UNITED STATES "NEWS" NETWORKS.
          A prime example of what's wrong with the broadcast news industry in the U. S. is Sharyl Attkisson. She is a great broadcaster and an award-winning investigative journalist, as she proved during 21 years at CBS and during lesser stints at CNN and Fox. But journalists like Sharyl Attkisson are not what the U. S. "news" networks want these days. They want propaganda pundits, non-journalists who are extremely biased with selective propaganda but also crave the airtime to promote themselves as well as their books and other projects. That leaves little or no room for true journalists like the superb Sharyl Attkisson.
 Back when true broadcast journalists were on U. S. networks.
Covering real news, Sharyl Attkisson on a B-52 Kosovo mission.
Award-winning broadcast journalist, Sharyl Attkisson.
        The must-read book depicted above is the new best-seller written by Sharyl Attkisson who earlier had a best-seller entitled "Stonewalled." As you can detect from looking at the cover above, Sharyl Attkisson agrees with me and many millions of other Americans about the extreme descent of broadcast journalism in the U. S., a monopolistic industry that much prefers hiring biased propaganda-pundits as opposed to real journalists. In this new book Sharyl Attkisson explains how "shady political operatives and fake news" monopolized by the news networks make a mockery of the U. S. democracy. THOMAS JEFFERSON, I BELIEVE, WOULD AGREE WITH HER AND OVER IN CUBA I KNOW THAT A BROADCAST JOURNALIST NAMED CRISTINA ESCOBAR AGREES WITH WHAT SHARYL ATTKISSON IS WRITING ABOUT.
BUT, GUESS WHAT?
         Americans and others craving truly great broadcast journalism should become familiar with the husband-and-wife team of Darren Foster and Mariana van Zeller now starring on the Fusion Network.
         Important social and news happenings, such as depicted above, are told not by pundit-infested and propaganda-driven "news" networks but by great documentary experts like Mariana van Zeller.   
     Born in Portugal, Mariana van Zeller became a U. S. citizen in 2015. The parents of a young son named Vasco, Mariana and her photographer-producer husband Darren have criss-crossed the globe to create superb documentaries on the most important, the most sensational, and often the most dangerous news and social events of modern times -- including wars, rebellions and dire criminal enterprises. Last night I watched on the documentary-loving Fusion Channel Mariana's brilliant coverage of the current international terrorism threats. Her documentary "The OxyContin Express" was by far the best coverage of the opioid epidemic in the United States and she bravely exposed the primary culprits behind it. She went to alcohol-devastated Indian reservations in today's American West and her "Rape on the Reservation" documentary told a riveting story that all Americans need to know. Her "Pimp City" documentary brilliantly exposed the Sex Slave Trade that American "news" networks and American politicians generally consider too raw and too pervasive to discuss. And, yes, if there is a Webby or Peabody or Levingston award for great documentaries, rest assured that she has won them.

           This black-and-white photo shows Mariana van Zeller in harm's way telling a news story in one of her documentaries, the type news events that need to be told. In stark contrast to the non-journalist propaganda-pundits that saturate the U. S. "News" networks, Mariana has every right to present her "PRESS" credentials because, indeed, she is a BROADCAST JOURNALIST -- and the best you'll find.
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26.6.17

The Florida Shuffle

From 1959 Till Today!
{UPDATED: Tuesday, June 27th, 2017} 
         NBC News took anchor Megyn Kelly from Fox News with a $20-million-a-year deal and slotted her newly debuted "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly" at prime-time 7:00 PM on Sundays. On June 25th, 2017 her program led off with a superb 15-minute investigative segment entitled "THE FLORIDA SHUFFLE."
          This is a scene from the excellent investigative report "The Florida Shuffle" on Megyn Kelly's NBC program Sunday. Cynthia McFadden, shown above, hosted the segment from Palm Beach County in Florida and it served as a reminder that, since 1959, South Florida has been at the absolute forefront of the illegal drug bonanzas in the United States, including trafficking and its infamous Pill Clinics and Medicare schemes. "The Florida Shuffle" focused on a tragic aspect of the Opium Epidemic that is currently devastating much of America, specifically detailing how Palm Beach County is the epicenter for a lavish scheme supposedly helping addicts to recover but in actuality raking in vast sums of money from desperate families and from the federal government, the taxpayers. Enticed from many other states, addicts have flocked to South Florida for promised treatments that Cynthia McFadden discovered were "scams" that are often deadly. She pointed out that the Opium Epidemic is so widespread and out-of-control in the U. S. that a large percentage of American families with children up to age 26 are affected, and the sheer heartbreak of one such typical father and mother who lost their daughter in Palm Beach County is prominently featured by Cynthia McFadden. "The Florida Shuffle" prime-time report on NBC June 25th revealed how South Florida is today at the epicenter of the Opium Epidemic sweeping the U. S. but in reality it is a well-known fact that Miami in January of 1959 became America's drug capital thanks, unwittingly, to the Cuban Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-and-Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship.
        The best documentation of "HOW MIAMI BECAME THE COCAINE CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES" -- as stated by the above graphic -- was best told in the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" by Billy Corben in 2006. At one point in that documentary, pointing back at the lush and beautiful Miami skyline, the famed crime-reporter in Miami, Edna Buchanan, explained that it was courtesy of the mammoth drug revenue.

       The "Cocaine Cowboys" graphic above shows the gorgeous Miami skyline and also touts "THE BLOOD-DRENCHED MIAMI DRUG CULTURE" that played a role in creating it "in the 1970s and 1980s." Also note in the upper-right that the graphic promoting the scintillating documentary heralds the fact that the truth is far more dramatic than the famed Oliver Stone movie "Scarface," which started off with actual black-and-white film of Cubans arriving on the dock in Miami prior to turning Miami into the very deadly drug oasis.


       Billy Corben's documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" was so gripping that Hollywood's elite movie stars became enchanted with it but the documentary itself stands uncontested for exposing the Cuban-connection to Miami's drug culture following the 1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba.


         While NBC is to be congratulated for its update Sunday night -- June 25, 2017 -- on Miami's ongoing drug connection, the History Channel the previous Sunday -- June 18th as noted above -- began a brilliant two-hour documentary entitled "America's War on Drugs." With massive documentations, including with notable former CIA personnel, this must-see program explains in detail how the CIA and the U. S. government -- especially the Reagan-Bush administration with Cuban-exiles at the forefront -- introduced illegal drugs into the U. S. and used the profits to finance such secretive right-wing operations as Iran-Contra against anything that hinted of being pro-communist or pro-peasants in small foreign nations.


       In promoting its brand-new "War on Drugs" documentary, the History Channel used the above graphic with this exact caption: "Mainstream media finally exposes CIA drug trafficking conspiracy." The documentary itself doesn't shy away from using names, photos and videos of former top government and military officials -- including former CIA director, Vice President and President George H. W. Bush and, of course, Oliver North. But, like many other notable documentaries, the History Channel emphasizes the post-Batista role the leading anti-Castro Cuban exiles -- such as Miami's still-celebrated Felix Rodriguez -- played as Bush-connected CIA operatives. The documentary in detail shows how U. S. military bases and U. S. military airplanes were used to transport illegal drugs to the United States to, for example, fund its Iran-Contra scandal that involved operatives like North and Rodriguez supported from Washington by tax dollars.
         The photo above shows Vice President George H. W. Bush with Felix Rodriguez. But long before and long after this photo was taken, Mr. Bush was intimately involved with the most infamous Cuban exiles.
       This photo montage shows Felix Rodriguez -- left to right -- being grilled by Senator John Kerry about CIA drug operations; as a fierce pro-Bush opponent of John Kerry's political career and post-Senate ambitions; and as a newly graduated 2nd Lt. at Fort Benning in the Cuban-exile Brigade that was trained to attack Cuba in the failed April-1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. Mr. Bush and Mr. Rodriguez were both prominently mentioned in the History Channel's new "War on Drugs" documentary, especially with Oliver North.
      The topical mainstream media, such as Time Magazine above, stressed "White House Point Man" Oliver North but not with the detailed documentation it receives in the new History Channel update "War on Drugs." Not surprisingly, North has become a rich media star with Fox News and his radio talk show.
        The extensive 2-hour History Channel documentary "War on Drugs" is considered the most documented evidence of the CIA and Cuban-exile involvement in the illegal drug trade and features how it was backed by right-wing Republican powers in Washington, both in Congress and in the White House. In fact, the documentary explains that Cubans, highly trained by the U. S. government, were used in many of the great but often sanitized U. S. scandals -- the drug trade for sure but also  many others. In 1976 when the Chilean diplomat and the beautiful American Ronni Moffitt were killed by a car-bomb near the White House, it was apparently as a part of murderous U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile freely using highly trained Cuban-exiles in his famed assassinations; four of the five renowned burglars in the Watergate scandal that doomed the Nixon presidency were Cuban-exiles; etc., etc., etc. However, as the new History Channel documentary graphically points out, even the most visceral right-wingers involved in such schemes never faced justice. The History Channel poignantly mentioned the 14 well-known people pardoned by President George H. W. Bush who later and infamously also pardoned Orlando Bosch at the request of his now Miami-based son Jeb Bush. The late Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who still lives in Miami, will always be rated by history as the two all-time most famed Cuban-exile terrorists.
Indeed, "Orlando Bosch? Who?"

       Perhaps most stunning about the History Channel's new "War on Drugs" documentary is its new revelations about the CIA's long-known and well-funded no-holds-barred assaults on Cuba, starting with its support of the Batista dictatorship. But the History Channel spends a lot of its documentation time showing how Mafia kingpin Santo Trafficante's massive illegal drug operation in Batista's Cuba was INCREDIBLY also supported by the U. S. government in the United States after the Cuban Revolution's victory in 1959. 
      Of course, any mention of a "Florida Shuffle" or a "Cuban Shuffle" has to include Santo Trafficante Jr. and the famed Mob Lawyer Frank Ragano. Born in Tampa in 1914 and the son of the Sicilian-born Mafia kingpin of Tampa, Santo was the omnipotent Mafia boss of Florida both before and after he was booted out of Cuba with the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship by the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Santo, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky were the three famed Mafia bosses in Cuba along with Batista. Santo made Havana the drug capital of the Caribbean as well as the conduit for ship-loads of drugs to Miami. After getting kicked out of Cuba, Santo immediately resumed being the Mafia kingpin of Florida with his headquarters in Tampa but his main bankrolls in Miami. The aforementioned History Channel "War on Drugs"  detailed how elements of the U. S. government backed Santo in Cuba and in South Florida.
      Above is a very interesting AP photo and caption. Carlos Marcelo was the ruthless Mafia kingpin of both New Orleans and Dallas, and he was heavily invested financially in the Batista rule of Cuba. Marcelo is shown above dinning in New York with Santo Trafficante Jr. and their lawyer Frank Ragano after a benign grand jury questioning in the 1970s. Right after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, all historians know that Marcelo and Trafficante Jr. worked closely with the CIA and Cuban-exiles in repeated assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. But it is also known, and Ragano just before his death confirmed it, that Marcelo and Trafficante Jr. also vowed to kill both President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy because they blamed the Kennedys for the failure of the April-1961 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba.
       This book is one of the means, near the end of his life, that Mob Lawyer Frank Ragano, used to reveal Mafia deeds in Cuba and in the U. S. Ragano also revealed how easily he kept such thugs out of prison in the U. S. It is therefore known that Trafficante Jr. had little trouble using Mafia money to buy off politicians -- "except the two we offered the most money to, Castro in Havana and then Kennedy in Washington." Before that History Channel revelation, historians already knew that Trafficante Jr. hung around Havana a few days after Jan. 1-1959 to offer Castro even more money than the Mafia had been paying the Batista regime. 
      And so, on June 18-2017 The History Channel began airing a brilliant documentary that explains how the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 over the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship merely shifted nefarious and murderous Batistiano-Mafiosi money-making schemes from Cuba to South Florida...and, amazingly, such schemes continued to have support from powerful elements of the U. S. government.
        To form your own opinion about the national effect of South Florida's Cuban-related criminal activities -- from 1959 till today -- I suggest you go on line to view or review the still-pertinent 2006 "Cocaine Cowboys" documentary and, of course, Cynthia McFadden's "The Florida Shuffle" segment that aired in prime-time on NBC Sunday, June 25th, 2017. Both are searing reminders of how the deleterious effects of such activity spreads far and wide beyond South Florida, especially since the pivotal year of 1959.
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cubaninsider: "The Country That Raped Me" (A True Story)

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