The January 1-1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution made Fidel Castro a world-wide legend. After all, his little out-manned and out-gunned revolution had defeated a dictator backed by the United States, the world's richest & strongest nation, and by the Mafia, the world richest & strongest criminal organization. BUT it was the Bay of Pigs attack in mid-April of 1961 that cemented Fidel Castro as an everlasting international legend. Once the facts trickled out concerning the cowardly and ignorantly processed attack to overthrow Castro, it was Fidel himself who emerged as the fearless defender of his little island nation. The youthful President Kennedy in 1960 had inherited all the plans for the Bay of Pigs attack from the Eisenhower administration, meaning the same right-wingers who had sicced the Mafia on Cuba in 1952 were still around to dictate the plans for recapturing Cuba in 1960 and 1961. To Castro's advantage, they were cowards and idiots. History now knows, for example, that President Kennedy was told: "Hey, don't worry. When our bombs start falling on Cuba, the Cubans will turn against Castro and overthrow him themselves; and when Castro hears our bombs falling on Camp Colombia on the outskirts of Havana, he'll race for his getaway airplane." Of course, Fidel...unlike the Batista-Mafia rulers...didn't have a getaway airplane. And, of course, Fidel, when he heard the bombs falling on Camp Colombia, raced for the front-lines to defend his Revolution, ignoring the falling bombs and racing to the Bay of Pigs where he correctly guessed the ground attack would commence. And of course, the CIA was also 100% wrong about Cubans turning against Castro "when our bombs start falling." None, because they were familiar with the Batista-Mafia rule, turned against him. Prior to 1961, if the U. S. launched a air-ground-and-sea attack against another nation, it would first declare war, as it did in 1898 against Spain when it wanted to gain control of Cuba. But after 1961...with anti-Cuban thugs dictating things in Washington...the U. S. no longer declared war before it launched the cowardly air-land-sea attack on supposedly helpless Revolutionary Cuba.
In retrospect, Cuba's incomparable Revolutionary heroine, Celia Sanchez, best chronicled and contrasted the bravery of the Cuban rebels and the idiotic cowardice of their enemies: "We rebels...get far too much credit for winning the revolution. Our enemies deserve most of the credit, for being greedy cowards and idiots." Idolized by Fidel Castro, Celia also laid down the mantra and proclamation that still defines the Revolution: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." She first uttered and wrote down that amazingly prescient dictum in 1959. So, her proclamation, against all odds, lasted beyond her death from cancer at age 59 in 1980, beyond Fidel's death from natural causes at age 90 in 2016, and, in fact, it still holds firm.
While the Batistiano-directed machismo narrative in the U. S. since 1959 tries to ignore the leading role in the Revolution played by the petite doctor's daughter Celia Sanchez, many insiders...most of all Fidel Castro...place her at the forefront of the Revolution as the first major recruiter of rebels and supplies and then as a fearless guerrilla fighter, a military strategist, etc. After the triumph of the Revolution...as all experts including Castro's main U. S. biographer Georgie Anne Geyer well knew...Celia, with Fidel's total support, was the major decision-maker on the island from 1959 till she died of cancer at age 59 on January 11, 1980.
In Cuba today...as mandated by Fidel Castro...there are many statues and other major tributes to Celia Sanchez but, also mandated by Fidel, there are no statues of him nor are there any roads, buildings, and other edifices named for him.
Fidel Castro -- who survived hundreds of assassination attempts by the CIA, the Mafia, and the Cuban exiles -- died of natural causes at age 90 on November 25, 2016. The photo above shows Cuba's new President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, paying homage at Fidel's tomb on the far eastern tip of the island. As in 1961 during the Bay of Pigs attack, today the majority of the 11.24 million Cubans on the island support Fidel's revolutionary legacy and Diaz-Canel's nascent leadership. Since the semi-retirement of Raul Castro, Diaz-Canel on April 19th of 2018 became the first non-Castro and the first non-revolutionary to lead Cuba since 1959.
Born after the triumph of the Revolution, Miguel Diaz-Canel is the island's former Education Minister and he is shown above recently addressing Cuban schoolchildren as the island's President. Diaz-Canel's continuing popularity as Cuba's leader may hinge on how well he addresses the island's mammoth economic problems as the decent Obama presidency has been replaced by yet-another Republican administration in Washington that is tightly aligned with the top echelon of Cuban-American Counter Revolutionaries in Miami and in the United States Congress.
The promise made by President Trump to the still-living Brigade 2506 survivors of the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack still stands. Trump, the USA's Commander-in-Chief, stood in front of a huge Brigade 2506 banner in a plush building named for a Bay of Pigs commander in Miami's Little Havana and promised to reverse their long-ago defeat.
History registers the fact that the Bay of Pigs attackers captured by Fidel Castro's rebels were all later sold back to the United States in exchange for $53 million, most of it paid to Cuba in the form of Baby Aspirin. Of course, many of the returned attackers have continued...for six more decades...their fervent efforts to recapture Cuba, with golden but so-far unsuccessful opportunities provided by six Republican presidents SINCE 1959 AND five Republican presidents since the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack.
In 1962...after the humiliating Bay of Pigs defeat and after many more assassination attempts against Fidel Castro...the U. S. imposed an economic embargo/blockade against Cuba. Still in effect, it is now history's longest and cruelest embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a much-weaker nation. DE-classified U. S. documents confirm that the purpose of the Embargo was/is to STARVE, DEPRIVE, AND MAKE MISERABLE the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their Revolutionary Government. The United Nations...in 2016, the last year of the decent non-Republican Obama presidency...the UN vote, condoned and supported by President Obama himself, condemned the embargo with international unanimity -- 191-to-0. But it still exists...and in 1976 when the top Cuban-American newsman in Miami, Emilio Milian, bravely complained about murders and other atrocities against innocent Cubans, he was car-bombed. And today neither the U. S. media nor the intimidated and propagandized U. S. citizens have the guts to complain about the Embargo or about what President Trump might do to keep that promise he made to Bay of Pigs survivors in Miami.
The decent but car-bombed Cuban-American newsman in Miami, Emilio Milian, still to this day represents to much of the world precisely who and what has dictated America's Cuban policies and narratives since the 1950s...brutal tactics that intimidate Americans, Cuban-Americans, and the mainstream media, shaming BOTH THE UNITED STATES AND DEMOCRACY.
While President Trump, pressured by a mere handful of militant Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans and their sycophants, certainly has the nuclear-powered arsenal to recapture Cuba, to do so he would have to kill millions of Cubans like the ones depicted above marching in 2018. The very day Cuba would be attacked, even by an incomparable nuclear Superpower, another Revolution would immediately commence on the island -- another LONG-SHOT revolution, to be sure. But there are three reasons it might happen: {1} Trump; {2} a mere handful of Cuban-American extremists in Miami and in the U. S. Congress can dictate Cuban policy to Trump; and {3} a mere handful of Cuban-American extremists in Miami and in the U. S. Congress can dictate the Cuban narrative to this cowardly and unpatriotic generation of U. S. journalists and U. S. citizens. Therefore, for those three reasons it is as easy as pie to fabricate a Pretext or Excuse to attack Cuba in 2018. In 1898 the U. S. needed a Pretext to go to war against over-extended Spain and fulfill a centuries-old desire to capture Cuba. NO PROBLEM -- the U. S. warship USS MAINE blew-up in a violent explosion in Havana Harbor, killing 261 young U. S. sailors -- the PRETEXT for the easy Spanish-American War, in fact 261 pretexts.
Remember, the USS MAINE?
Shhhhhhhhh...you're not supposed to remember it.
Of course, thanks to the great investigative journalist-author James Bamford -- Operation Northwoods still looms as the most infamously documented Pretext in the annals of U.S.-Cuban history. Many of the same U. S. generals who had egged neophyte President Kennedy to attack Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, in 1962 begged Kennedy to allow them to carry out Operations Northwoods as the secret Pretext for an ALL-OUT TOTAL WAR AGAINST CUBA. All seven of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, had helped create Operation Northwoods. Among other horrendous domestic terror, it called for the rampant murder of innocent Americans so it could be blamed on Fidel Castro and used an as EXCUSE to attack Cuba.
So, whatever you do, don't Google-search Operation Northwoods because then you might learn two things you are not supposed to know: {1} How easy it is to classify-hide official U. S. documents to protect the reputations, pensions, bank accounts, and legacies of powerful people like General Lyman Lemnitzer; and {2} how classified-hidden U. S. documents have protected much of America's Cuban policy since the 1950s -- such as the vile purpose of the still-ongoing Embargo, the terrorists who downed the civilian Cubana Flight 455 airplane killing all 73 on board, etc., etc.
And whatever you do, don't dare Google-search Operation Northwoods, because, lo & behold!!, you might begin to think that well-known people who concocted elaborate plans to murder innocent Americans and blame it on Cuba to serve as a pretext for war against Cuba perhaps should be held accountable. But remember, if the issue is Cuba...the chances of that happening in the USA is slim & none. If it involved any other nation besides Cuba, then sure...the U. S. democracy would kick in. But Cuba is unique as the only nation that overthrew a vile U.S.-backed dictatorship and then had that dictatorship quickly and permanently resurface on U. S. soil!!
Now...fast-foward to 2018:
Since 1959...with the reconfiguration of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship on U. S. soil...Revolutionary Cuba has been abundantly aware of fabricated Pretexts that could be used by the U. S. government as an excuse to regain control of Cuba once and for all. Prime examples include Operation Northwoods, provocative flights by Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue airplanes, and many others. And now for well over a year alleged and mysterious sonic-wave or acoustic attacks in Havana against Americans are being used by Counter Revolutionaries to pressure President Trump into starving Cuba, nuking Cuba, or whatever would please the Counter Revolutionaries. Cuba and many impartial observers believe the accusations are a Pretext that has already induced Trump to gut embassies in Havana and Washington that President Obama had bravely reopened for the first time since 1961. Also, the "sonic" Pretext has been used by Trump to gut American tourism to Cuba, which Obama had increased to record levels. Impartial observers are quite aware that the "sonic" accusations have drastically hurt Cuba, which is vitally dependent on tourism, and drastically aided the Counter Revolutionary Cuban Americans as well as their economic-and-political sycophants. Thus, the "sonic" Pretext is greatly hurting Cuba and greatly benefiting anti-Cuban hardliners...so, uh, who might be behind them?
One of the world's most respected experts on acoustical waves happens to be Cuba's own Dr. Luis Velazquez Perez, the President of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. For over a year he has worked tirelessly investigating the Sonic-Acoustic wave accusations. He has provided his findings to U. S. experts and, further, he has begged both U. S. and Canadian experts to come to Havana and meticulously investigate the situation. Dr. Perez believes the perpetrators are people who want to hurt the Cuban government and have created the situation as a Pretext to do just that. He points out that the "last thing" Cuba wants is to have its vital tourism industry harmed as well as "the other things resulting from this that are hurting Cuba and bolstering those who want to harm us." Impartial sources tend to very much agree with Dr. Perez, among them the two top neuro-scientists at the University of Edinburgh who conducted an exhaustive research and then, in the Journal of Neurology, reported the "serious flaws" in the U. S. accusations and also "wondered" why the U. S. was not being more "cooperative" with them or with Cuban's respected experts like Dr. Perez.
Meanwhile, the Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress, like Senator Bob Menendez from New Jersey, are pounding the sonic-acoustic attacks for all they are worth -- and as a Pretext to hurt Cuba they are indeed worth a lot. Although most Cuban-Americans favor Obama's decency towards Cuba, it is rather apparent that only Counter Revolutionary extremists -- Menendez, Rubio, Ros-Lehtinen, Curbelo, Diaz-Balart, Cruz, etc. -- are eligible to be elected to Congress, regardless of their extremists reputations. And...once in Congress...they all seem to flock to the Western Hemisphere Committee and Foreign Relations Committee to better deal with the Western Hemisphere's foreign nation -- CUBA. Indeed, in those two committees it is normal for Cuban American extremists to be the Chair, the Sub-Chair and the Ranking Member. But what if the extremists Counter Revolutionary Cuban Americans in Congress are HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL? No problem. We're talking about Cuba, remember? For example, for three years the U. S. Justice Department/FBI conducted an expensive and exhaustive investigation of Senator Menendez and then in 2017 charged him in an expensive and exhaustive three-month trial with 17 criminal acts related to a multi-millionaire operator in Miami. The long trial in Newark, a Menendez stronghold, ended in a hung jury...meaning his Senate seat is secure and he is sure to be re-elected to another 6-year term in November. {Have I mentioned Cuba's uniqueness as the only little nation to overthrow a U.S.-backed dictatorship and then, for going on 7 decades, having to deal with the revengeful and self-serving remnants on U. S. soil, still unchecked and still backed by the world's Superpower? Well, yes, I guess I have mentioned it; BUT it bears repeating.}
Immediately after the Menendez trial ended in a hung jury, the U. S. Federal prosecutors vowed to re-try him. But apparently reminded of how much time and money they had already expended in trying so hard to prosecute him, and reminded that another hung-jury was very possible, the Federal Government finally decided not to retry Senator Menendez.
And so, when it comes to the Sonic-Acoustic Wave/Pretext being used to drastically hurt Cuba and drastically aid the U. S. Counter Revolutionaries, who do you believe -- Dr. Luis Velazquez Perez or Senator Bob Menendez? It's a fair question, I believe, and further...as a democracy-loving American, I believe America's mendacious Cuban policies since the 1950s have hurt America even more than they have hurt Cuba. And that leaves me...and I'm sure others like Dr. Perez...wondering why the U. S. democracy has not been strong enough to deal with it.
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