The Bush War On Cuba

1952 To 2015 And Beyond
Updated: Tuesday, September 15th, 2015

      Julie Feinsilver is a Cuban expert with a highly respected background as a professor at American University, author, essayist, investigative journalist, speaker, and as an official with the Pan American Health Organization. This past weekend, on September 12th, in an interview with journalist Sheila MacVicar, Ms. Feinsilver pointed out how the decades-old War on Cuba orchestrated by the Bush dynasty continues to hurt a lot of people every day. She discussed how hundreds of Cuban doctors and nurses serving in Venezuela have defected to Colombia where they await Visas to fly to Miami as 150 or so have done in recent days while hundreds more wait in Bogota to do the same. They were enticed by a Bush-directed U. S. law that dates back to 2006 entitled CUBAN MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL PAROLE. Never heard of it? Trust me, you are not supposed to know about it because, if you did, you might object to your tax dollars funding yet another obscene Bush dynasty program designed to hurt Cuba. The U. S. is not in need of more Cuban doctors and nurses but by enticing them to defect the plan is to hurt Cuba. It does, but it also harms hundreds of thousands of the poorest people throughout the Americas that those Cuban doctors, in 67 countries, serve free of charge. Julie Feinsilver and many other fair-minded Cuban experts are heart-broken about the myriad of U. S. laws and programs that cause so much misery for so many innocent people while projected to the American people, including the taxpayers, that it's all about hurting Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed mayhem of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship way, way back on January 1, 1959. In this month of September, 2015, gullible American taxpayers are still paying dearly for such schemes as luring Cuban doctors and nurses to defect to the U. S. where they are not needed but where, instantly because they are Cuban exiles, special privileges await them...not to mention bonuses when they agree to defect.

       Sheila MacVicar, by the way, was in Bogota, Colombia, to interview not only Julie Feinsilver but also many of those 700 Cuban doctors and nurses that have defected or are in the process of defecting to the U. S. as part of the George W. Bush directive in 2006 to hurt Cuba with what the Bushes named "The Cuban Medical Professional Parole." Ms. MacVicar, a Canadian, has long been one of America's best broadcast journalists -- at CBS-TV News from 2004-2013 after stints at ABC-TV News from 1990-2001 and at CNN from 2001-2004. She had accumulated multiple Emmy and Peabody awards prior to being hired by Aljazeera America where her America Tonight program reports on investigative stories that need investigating.

         Soledad O'Brien is another of the many journalistic stars on U. S. networks -- Joie Chen, John Schuster, John Seigenthaler, Ali Velshi, Morgan Radford, Stephanie Sy, etc. -- who have flocked to Aljazeera America for the freedom to "pursue under-reported stories." None of them are anti-American or pro-Cuban but they are respected broadcast journalists who actually go out and report the news.

       Antonio Mora is an anchor at Aljazeera America after being an Emmy-winning journalist at ABC-TV News where he  anchored Good Morning America. Mora was born in Havana on December 14, 1957 during the Batista dictatorship. His well-to-do family fled Castro's Cuba in 1960 for the U. S. where Cubans are afforded special privileges. He graduated from Harvard Law School. As a broadcast journalist, Mora is very much anti-Castro. He recently went back to Havana to host a fair and insightful anti-Castro half-hour program on Aljazeera America, which included revisiting the very room in Havana in which he was born. His anti-Castro views did not distract from his excellent and interesting reporting from Havana.

         For twenty years at CNN, Lucia Newman was the world's best broadcast journalist when it came to reporting on Latin America. CNN stationed her in Havana in 1997. Today, now at Aljazeera, she is still the best reporter on Latin American news. In the photo above she was with Pope Francis on his recent tour of South America. When Pope Francis visits Cuba in a few days -- September 19th through the 22nd prior to his U. S. visit -- the best reports figure to come from Lucia Newman. She was born in London on February 18, 1952. She is fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Like Sheila MacVicar, Solodad O'Brien, Ali Velshi, Antonio Mora, etc., Lucia Newman is certainly not pro-Cuban but she is fair-Cuban, which separates her from many of her former colleagues still stuck mostly with talking-head pundits promoting themselves or the people they work for. Because Cuba shapes so much of the U. S. image in the Americas and around the world, fair-minded journalism on U.S.-Cuban relations past and present is even more important to the U. S., the superpower, than it is to Cuba, the island. That's why the U. S. media's unfair reporting on the Bush dynasty's long-standing War on Cuba hurts the U. S. more than it hurts Cuba. The example this week is those 700 Cuban doctors and nurses in Bogota enticed by an old Bush scheme to defect to the U. S., not to help the U. S. but to hurt Cuba. As an off-shoot of that indecency and insanity is the very typical fact that  poor people are being deprived of free health care. But collateral damage has never been a concern during the Bush War on Cuba.

      This photo was taken by Joe Raedle on September 12th, 2015. It shows Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush opening a field office in Miami. Note that he is opening his dress shirt to reveal a "Reagan-Bush '84" T-shirt. Speaking to his choir, Jeb can brag about the Bush dynasty but speaking to the nation he is a bit more reticent as he tries to hide the basis for his political and economic prowess -- his last name. Also note that this photo shows Cuban-American members of the U. S. Congress from Miami -- Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- cheering on their favorite to be the next U. S. President. 

      Marco Rubio, the Senator from Miami, is also a Republican presidential contender. He is a protege of Jeb Bush. He is a protege for his former boss, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen. He is a protege of the rich and ultra-powerful Diaz-Balart family, whose patriarch, Rafael Diaz-Balart, was a key Minister in the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that, essentially, reconstituted itself in Miami in January of 1959 after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. So...why are the most powerful anti-Castro Cuban-American politicos in Miami supporting Jeb Bush for President and not Marco Rubio? Well, the answer is plain: The alignment of the Bush political dynasty with the most ardent anti-Castro zealots dates back to the 1950s and became indelible during the two-term Reagan-Bush presidency in the 1980s and then was enshrined with the one-term George H. W. Bush presidency in the 1990s. Since then the brothers George W. Bush, a two-term President, and Jeb Bush, a two-term Florida governor and would-be President, have merely rode the coattails of the alliance that ties the Bush dynasty to the anti-Castro Cuban-American extremists. That, of course, is an undeniable fact but it is also one that will be denied with flagrant, repetitive, and well-funded protestations until all believers become either pusillanimous doubters or bought-and-paid-for acolytes.

            The Bush political and economic dynasty, which started way back in the 1930s with Prescott Bush, has been tightly connected to the political success of all prime Cuban-Americans, especially since the 1980s, and that includes Jorge Mas Canosa, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Diaz-Balarts, Mel Martinez, etc.

         And that's why, in 2015 as the Presidential race in the U. S. heats up, the most powerful Cuban-American politicians support a Bush, in this case Jeb, as opposed to one of their own from Miami, Florida.

       Since the 1960s, and especially since the 1980s and 1990s, the Bush dynasty alliance of the Bush dynasty with the most zealous anti-Castro Cuban-Americans has accounted for almost every anti-Cuban law, bill, or regime-change program authorized by the U. S. Congress and lavishly funded by the U. S. taxpayers. That includes numerous well known items such as the Helms-Burton Act, the Torricelli Bill, Wet Foot/Dry Foot, Radio-TV Marti, etc. And it includes numerous items Americans have never heard of, such as The Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program. Never heard of it? I didn't think so. But in 2015 it is a program from the George W. Bush administration that our tax dollars are still paying dearly for today as one of about 35 very expensive, ongoing, underhanded, and nefarious anti-Cuban regime-change programs {as recently delineated dollar-by-dollar-by-endless dollars by investigative reporter Tracey Eaton}.    

         This photo shows a Cuban airplane being loaded with medical supplies and a large contingent of medical personnel prior to flying from Havana to Sierra Leone to fight the Ebola plague that was recently roiling several African nations. As usual, Cuba was among the first and foremost nations to respond, garnering praise from the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Secretary of State John Kerry, etc. Such recognition, however, roiled the legions of anti-Castro zealots in the U. S., especially the Bush dynasty and Miami hardliners. Led by the Bush political machine, the myriad of tax-funded efforts to counter Revolutionary Cuba has included lavish Brain-and-Talent-Drain programs designed to entice Cuba's abundance of baseball and ballet stars as well as the island's well-trained doctors and nurses to defect to the U. S. where U. S. laws that benefit and apply only to Cuban exiles await them. That's why in 2006 the George W. Bush administration came up with something called The Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which targets for defection the Cuban doctors and nurses working in other countries. 

          The Bush program enticing Cuban doctors to defect has accounted for the numbers depicted above by the USCIS, which is the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In other words, as of a few years ago, 824 Cuban doctors working in Venezuela had defected to the U. S. via juicy enticements and the special Cuban-exile laws that awaited them. The lushly funded enterprise, of course, has nothing to do with the U. S. wanting those extra doctors; it has only to do with hurting Cuba with a brain-drain of doctors that the Cuban government has trained under its free education policy at the world's largest medical school.

           This AP/Getty Images photo was taken in Miami last week. It shows -- left to right -- Congressman Carlos Curbelo, former Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Along with Senator Marco Rubio, who was off campaigning for President, these four anti-Castro hardliners are headliners in a second generation of Miami-based Cuban-Americans who demand being dictators of America's Cuban policy, and rarely are they denied that privilege. At this news conference Curbelo, the Diaz-Balart brothers, and Ros-Lehtinen were updating the media on their Herculean efforts to expedite the defections of all those Cuban doctors and nurses in Bogota, Colombia. There are, of course, a lot of other things of dire concern to people in Miami and around the United States but, it seems, ever since Ros-Lehtinen arrived in the U. S. Congress in 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager, all of the Bush-aligned members of the U. S. Congress from Miami, including the Diaz-Balart brothers whose father was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship, have allowed their obsessions with regaining control of Cuba obscure other aspects of governing in the best interests of Americans and Cuban-Americans. The Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen were excoriated by Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede for spending so much of their congressional power supporting famed Cuban terrorists when there were better things to do in the U. S. Congress with both their time and tax dollars.     

         This photo was taken at Jose Marti Airport in Havana last month -- August, 2015. It shows Cuban doctors and nurses boarding a plane that was already loaded with their medical supplies. The plane was destined for the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, which had been devastated by Tropical Storm Erica. Dozens of Dominicans were killed and many are still missing. Dominica's GPA, which is only $1 billion, was cut in half. As usual, Cuba was the very first country to rush in to help the 72,000 Dominicans recover.

         This map shows Dominica located far to the southeast of Havana. It was a French colony beginning in 1690 and an English colony beginning in 1763 before finally gaining its independence in 1978. Dominica is an English speaking nation. It's ethnic mix is 86% black and 9% mixed. Cuba has a well-deserved reputation for helping regional nations like Dominica in emergency situations free of charge. Cuba has the largest medical school in the world and the most doctors per capita worldwide. On the island, medical care is both effusive and totally free, helping account for a far lower infant mortality rate than in the United States. Cuba also has about 51,000 medical personnel working in the very poorest areas of 67 countries. Much of that largess is free of charge but nations such as Brazil and Venezuela pay Cuba for those badly needed medical services. Since 1959, when the Cuban Revolution defeated the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, two generations of transplanted Batistianos, especially in alliance with the Bush political and economic dynasty, have made political and economic war against Cuba for the purpose of overthrowing the Castro government. That political and economic war has even severely targeted Cuban medical personnel. 

        This summer -- in July of 2015 -- CNN used this image to signal to the world that the United States and Cuba had forged a new, peaceful relationship. Since 1952, when the U. S. teamed with the Mafia to support the Batista dictatorship in Cuba, U.S.-Cuban relations have had varying degrees of catastrophic consequences -- including the Revolutionary War from 1953 till 1959; numerous assassination attempts against Revolutionary Cuba's new leader Fidel Castro; the Bay of Pigs attack in April of 1961 that resulted in boosting Castro's regional and international reputation; the closing of the U. S. and Cuban embassies in January of 1961; Cuba's tight alignment with the Soviet Union from 1961 till 1990; the U. S. economic embargo/blockade against Cuba beginning in 1962 and extending to this day; the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962; many vile and unpunished terrorist acts against innocent Cubans including the bombing of the civilian Cubana Flight 455 on October 6, 1976; and so forth...all to appease insatiable Cuban exiles and their self-serving sycophants who have convinced American taxpayers that, HEY!!!!!, IT'S ALL WORTH IT BECAUSE ANY DAY NOW WE'LL GET RID OF 89-year-old FIDEL CASTRO AND RECAPTURE CUBA!!

By the way................

 .......this is Tom Cruise starring in his latest movie "Mena."

        The movie "Mena" is currently in production. This scene was shot in Atlanta. Tom Cruise plays Barry Seal in what is being billed as a true story. If it actually sticks to facts, it will be worth seeing. Barry Seal was a superstar drug dealer...either for the U. S. government or the Medellin Drug Cartel or both. After the movie comes out, take your pick. In the meantime, googling "Barry Seal" would also be interesting. Gary Webb, a great investigative journalist, ended up with two bullets in his head but not before he wrote a famous book about the CIA allegedly introducing Iran-Contra crack cocaine to Los Angeles, almost paralyzing the city. Tom Cruise's Barry Seal "facts" would possibly include interesting data on such things.

Gary Webb's book "Dark Alliance" was made into a movie "Kill The Messenger."

Gary Webb's death still is fodder for conspiracy theorists. 

                This is Barry Seal, his beautiful wife Betty, and their three children in 1981. Barry was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1939 and assassinated in Baton Rouge on February 19, 1986. He made a lot of money flying drugs, etc., for the U. S. and/or Pablo Escobar's Colombian drug operation. His wife Betty is now 64. She told the London Daily Mail that just before Barry was murdered he told her he "feared the CIA." Barry was also tied to the infamous Operation 40, which is also worth googling because it was the CIA anti-Castro terror team linked to a lot of things, including the JFK assassination, and tied to a lot of famous U. S. names that went on to much higher offices and even bigger Gary Webb-like scandals, such as Iran-Contra.

       Operation 40 has as much to do with U.S.-Cuban relations today as anything else, including the Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs, etc. Wikipedia describes it as the secretive CIA operation formed to assassinate Fidel Castro and recapture Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs attack in April of 1961. Wikipedia reveals that Operation 40 members included the most notorious Cuban CIA officers -- "Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Felix Rodriguez..." Note the caption above identifies ten members of Operation 40 at a celebratory meeting in a Mexico City nightclub in January of 1963. Third from left above is Barry Seal, whom Tom Cruise plays in his new movie. Just to the right of Barry Seal, in the glasses looking up to the ceiling, is Porter Goss, later named President George W. Bush's CIA Director in 2004. In the front-left smoking the cigarette and leaning over laughing is Felix Rodriguez, one of George H. W. Bush's all-time best friends.

       Felix Rodriguez was born in Havana in 1941 and, like many of the most ardent anti-Castro exiles, he was sent in 1959 to the infamous Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. After graduating {above} as a 2nd Lieutenant, Rodriguez gained fame and infamy as a key CIA operative -- Operation 40, Iran-Contra, etc. -- with tight alliances to Colonel Oliver North and the Bush dynasty.

        In 1967 Felix Rodriguez {above, left} oversaw the execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia. He later wrote a famous book -- "Shadow Warrior" -- and famously signed photo captions, as above, to special friends.

George H. W. Bush has been one of Felix Rodriguez's closest friends.

George H. W. Bush note to Felix Rodriguez.

At age 74, Felix Rodriguez today is a famed citizen of Havana.

        This Wikipedia photo shows President George W. Bush naming Porter Goss CIA Director in 2004. Goss had been elected to the U. S. Congress from Florida from 1993 till 2004. Now 76, Mr. Goss could expertly critique Tom Cruise's new movie about Barry Seal...as could Luis Posada Carriles, Felix Rodriguez, etc.

         Colonel Oliver North, of course, will always be the luminous face of the Iran-Contra Scandal in which, among other things, arms and drug sales were supposedly used to fund the U. S. government's support of the Contras fighting the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. How is Colonel North and a covey of Cuban-exile and CIA operatives who worked for him portrayed in the upcoming Tom Cruise/Barry Seal movie, if at all? One thing is sure, Colonel North survived the scandal nicely -- becoming an author, radio talk-show host, and being blessed with his own one-hour program on the Fox News Network. But Barry Seal, as the Tom Cruise movie will undoubtedly show in a very fiery coda, was among the many who didn't survive.

        George H. W. Bush, shown here as Vice President, had documented ties to many things that the upcoming Tom Cruise/Barry Seal movie might acknowledge, but we'll have to wait and see, won't we?

       Prescott Bush, George H. W. Bush's father, had a dire influence on President Dwight Eisenhower. That didn't bode well for Cuba, NOT AT ALL! The Eisenhower administration in 1960 passed along to the Kennedy administration such projects as the Bay of Pigs attack and many assassinate-Castro schemes.

          So, if you're interested in the origin of the Bush War on Cuba you might want to google "Prescott Bush." A former controversial U. S. Senator, he was far more controversial as a businessman. Why was he reprimanded for violating the Trading With The Enemy Act in the middle of World War II? Hey, Google!

      Prescott Bush was not only a mentor to the infamous Richard Nixon but he was very instrumental in getting Eisenhower to make Nixon his Vice President for eight years in the 1950s. That, of course, didn't turn out well for Cuba...either during the U. S. support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship beginning in 1952 or right after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959. As we've documented many times, when Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro came to Washington in April of 1959 to declare good relations with the U. S., Vice President Nixon told Fidel that the U. S. and the Cuban exiles would recapture the island "in a matter of weeks." That dire threat actually declared War on Cuba and has predicated U.S.-Cuban relations since. In the 1950s the Nixon wing of the Eisenhower White House was influenced by anti-Castro stalwarts Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles, Averill Harriman and...Prescott Bush. Like a right-wing menagerie, Richard Nixon was mentored by Prescott Bush and Nixon in turn became a mentor for George H. W. Bush.

Prescott Bush's influence regarding Cuba and other issues in the 1950s was paramount.

            But Prescott's son George H. W. Bush also had a strong influence on President Eisenhower in the 1950s on issues such as Cuba. Whether it was the Bay of Pigs, Northwoods, Operation 40, the embargo, the aforementioned George W. Bush-directed Cuban Medical Professional Parole program or a myriad of other things, since the 1950s the Bush War on Cuba has greatly affected U. S. and world affairs. A third Bush president, Jeb, or a fourth Bush president, Jeb's son George Prescott, etc., etc., might continue that scenario another six decades or so. JUST WHAT CUBA AND THE WHOLE WORLD NEEDS -- MORE BUSHES!!

          On a more pleasant note, prior to the Bush War on Cuba this Yale Library photo shows Yale University's baseball captain, first baseman George H. W. Bush, being gifted in 1948 with a book -- "The Babe Ruth Story" -- by Babe Ruth himself. The photo was taken just two months before Babe died of cancer and about the time George H. W. Bush, as a senior, was joining the ultra-secret Skull & Bones society at Yale. In fact, you could spend a fascinating month googling just a few of the other secretive Bush organizations, and googling your way to de-classified documents is most fascinating of all. Ummmmm.....? Tom Cruise claims his new movie will be the true story of Barry Seal. If that is so, all I can say is...WOW!!

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U.S. Media vs. Cuba

It Embarrasses U. S. Democracy

       In this digital age, few Americans rely on the best source for news -- daily printed newspapers. The alternative, unfortunately, has been disastrous for the U. S. democracy. Study the above photo and I believe you will agree that televised cable news is a poor substitute for newspapers. Cable news outlets, even with low ratings and replays of newscasts to fill out 24-hour days, are commercial successes. Their staple, talking-head pundits, save cable operations the expense of having to actually go out and cover the news. Some of the talking-head pundits are paid big salaries because they are utilized about every hour, but others are perfectly willing to appear daily and/or nightly because the airtime provides them free advertisements for themselves, their latest book, or their promotional company. Take, for example, Ana Navarro. Since graduating from the University of Miami in 1993, the Miami-based Navarro has made a lucrative career out of promoting Republican politicians, especially Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. CNN, projecting Navarro as a political expert, provides her countless hours each week of free but very biased publicity. Her advocacy seems simple: Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and George P. Bush {Jeb's son} should be the next three Presidents, with each serving two terms. Such rubbish with a litany of talking-head pundits is how CNN and other cable "news" outlets save tons of money instead of spending a little of their corporate stashes by sending out actual news reporters to gather the news that Americans really need.

               As CNN and all cable "news" outfits well know, talking-head propaganda saves money by replacing actual news gathering but it also, because of its ubiquitous repetitions, tries to leave the impression that this is the new standard for television news. Maybe so, but Americans and democracy deserve better.  

And speaking of the U. S. "news" media............

         .................a brilliant young Cuban broadcaster named Cristina Escobar has been on Cuban television as well as regional and international networks this year expressing her vivid opinions on both U.S.-Cuban relations and what she terms "the pathetic state of the U. S. news media." And her opinion counts, especially in Cuba, where she is the island's most influential journalist, but also regionally and internationally as her ubiquity ascends to new heights. At age 27, and exceedingly fluent in English and Spanish, she is both highly educated and extremely knowledgeable from historic and topical standpoints. She stunned veteran U. S. journalists when she was in Washington to cover the last Vidal-Jacobson diplomatic session prior to the opening of embassies in Washington and Havana for the first time since 1961. First off, Cristina made history by being the first Cuban journalist to ask questions at a White House news conference, stunning the crowded forum with five searing questions that were answered over a 14-minute span by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Secondly, while in Washington, Cristina made several speeches at pro-Cuban events and gave a plethora of interviews in Spanish and English. Her primary theme in Washington was clear. She wanted to make this point: "The lies the U. S. media tells about Cuba and about U.S.-Cuban relationships hurts everyday Cubans. It hurts them a lot. Since the Cuban Revolution chased the Miami Mafia off the island in 1959, my island has suffered since the early 1960s from a military attack, many terrorist attacks, and what the United Nations calls the longest and cruelest economic blockade in history. Most of that has been engineered by two generations of Miami Mafia but other profiteers seeking regime change in Cuba remain ready allies. And just as hurtful as all that for everyday Cubans is the biased and incompetent U. S. media. In Cuba, I pride myself on being a broadcast journalist. I would be ashamed to be a broadcast journalist in the United States. It's easier and safer in the U. S., I guess, to tell lies about Cuba. But that's an American problem, too, because most people can see through such American charades."

           It is, of course, perfectly alright for Americans to disagree with Cristina Escobar about "lies in the U. S. media." But Americans who desire normal relations with Cuba, or Cuban-Americans who want to regain control of the island, should at least respect her views. She is not only Cuba's most influential journalist, she is a leader of a energetic and restless generation of young adults on the island who plan to shape post-Castro Cuba in their image, not Miami's or Washington's. With all the economic and military advantages Americans, the Mafia, and Cuban-Americans have enjoyed since 1952, they were not able to maintain the Batista dictatorship a generation ago and they may not be able to dismiss the sovereignty-fueled determination of Cristina Escobar's current generation. In 2015 the Batistiano influence in the U. S. Congress is a powerful force. But so is Cristina Escobar. A stronger, less biased, and less money-crazed U. S. media needs to acknowledge Cristina's side of the two-sided U.S.-Cuban conundrum. Hurting Cubans on the island and still not even recapturing the island is a losing proposition all the way around the world.

***

         This is one of ten photos used recently to illustrate a major article about Cuba in the Kansas City Star. It was written by Lewis Diuguid and is entitled "U. S. Could gain Immensely From Strong Ties To Cuba." Above is an ultra-modern hospital in Havana, the kind the World Bank praised when it lauded Cuba for spending an exceedingly high percentage of its wealth on education and health; and the kind the World Health Organization recently praised when it lauded Cuba for having better pre-natal care and a lower infant mortality rate than far richer nations, including the U. S. In the recent article in the Kansas City Star, Lewis Diuguid cogently explains that, among other advantages of having close ties to Cuba, the U. S. government could benefit from emulating Cuba's emphasis on education and health programs that are designed purely to help educate Cubans and improve their health, not to enrich drug companies and other Wall Street entities. The insightful and well-researched Kansas City Star article this week is in stark contrast to what the Miami Herald and other media outlets in the U. S. routinely tell Americans about Cuba, such as emphasizing the many decaying buildings and dissidents who are mostly funded and/or encouraged by America's regime-change programs. Through it all...the Bay of Pigs, the embargo, the downing of Cubana Flight 455, etc., Cuba has managed, since 1959, to stress education and health on the island. The Kansas City Star article this week minutely explains to you the results, which are positive. AND YES, AMERICA, IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO READ AND STUDY EVEN POSITIVE and fair ARTICLES ABOUT CUBA.

          This is one of those ten photos used in the aforementioned Kansas City Star article to illustrate, through hell and high water, how Cuba has maintained truly remarkable educational and health services on the island despite such vile impediments as the U. S. embargo, which has been designed to starve and deprive the island since the early 1960s. Fair-minded journalist Lewis Diuguid used this caption to explain this photo: "The Literary Campaign Museum in Havana helps people understand the enormous task Cuba launched in 1961 at the urging of leader Fidel Castro to eliminate illiteracy." Mr Diuguid provides statistics to document that literacy in Cuba easily exceeds literacy in most other nations, including the United States. 

       To understand the ten updated color photos in that Kansas City Star article this week, Americans need to understand black-and-white photos such as this one taken in the 1950s during the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba. From 1952 till the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, this was a typical peasant family on the island of Cuba, a family that constituted the island's majority. While the Batistianos, the Mafiosi, and U. S. businessmen were robbing the nation at will, peasants like these were not even an afterthought -- unless they objected too vocally and then, as historians well know, they were brutally assaulted by legendary Batista goons such as the Masferrer Tigers army. Aware that few Americans know or care about Cuban families like this one in Batista's Cuba, to this very day -- to combat President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba -- powerful propagandists saturate U. S. "news" programs with distortions such as, "In the 1950s Cuba had one of the best economies in all of Latin America!" Of course, that is like saying that, between them, Bill Gates and the penny-less man living under the bridge are worth $70 billion, and Americans are supposed to believe each of them is worth about $35 billion. Yet, since 1959 such distortions, such lies, have controlled the saturated Cuban narrative throughout the United States.

      U. S. and Cuban historians are abundantly aware that this photo from Batista's Cuba accurately reflects the plight of the majority Cuban peasants in the 1950s. This photo also illustrates how a female-powered popular revolution could evolve and eventually overthrow a strong dictator supported by the Mafia, the strongest criminal organization in the world, and by the United States, the strongest nation in the world.

         But this photo from Batista's Cuba illustrates best what crowned the downfall of Batista, the Mafia, and the United States in Cuba -- even more than the extreme poverty inflicted on the majority peasants. The unconscionable murders {"asesinatos"} of Cuban children {"hijos"} -- apparently just to quell resistance -- turned out to be the biggest mistake Batista in Cuba and his supporters in Washington ever made. Cuban mothers like these very bravely took to the streets to denounce the wanton murders of their children. A young lawyer named Fidel Castro took note: He believed if he could utilize the feminine outrage on the island, he could overthrow Batista. It shocked the world but it was a presciently correct judgment.

         This is the front entrance of one of today's most important hospitals in Cuba. It's the William Soler Pediatrics Hospital. Its director made headlines in the Caribbean by complaining that the U. S. embargo prevented him from obtaining some badly needed supplies. For Americans to understand Cuba today, they need to know who William Soler was. He was 14 when he and three of his classmates were brutally murdered in a vacant warehouse, murders considered warnings for Cubans not to resist the brutal Batista dictatorship. But William Soler's mother led one of the bravest and most important street marches.

         This photo was taken on January 4th, 1957, and it shows William Soler's mother, in the center wearing the white jacket, leading a march of 500 women in the streets of Santiago de Cuba. They were protesting the gruesome murders two days earlier of William Soler and three of his schoolmates. Jerry A. Sierra, in his brilliant History of Cuba website, correctly lists this as one of the decisive moments of the Revolutionary War. It helped galvanize crucial support for the rebel cause and it also got the attention of Batista's supporters in Washington, embarrassing some and scaring others. Yes, in Cuba today one of the most important children's hospitals is named for William Soler, a key component of the Cuban Revolution.

          A 99-pound doctor's daughter named Celia Sanchez -- outraged by what she considered the legal murder of a 10-year-old peasant girl named Maria Ochoa who, Celia believed, had been kidnapped as part of a routine program to lure rich pedophiles to Mafia-run hotel/casinos -- became the eternal face of the Cuban Revolution. A do-or-die guerrilla fighter {above} as well as the revolution's prime recruiter of rebels and supplies and later the prime decision-maker in Revolutionary Cuba, Celia Sanchez and William Soler's mother to this day are remembered as two women Fulgencio Batista should not have angered. To understand Cuba requires at least a basic understanding of Celia Sanchez, William Soler, and Maria Ochoa.

         If everyday Americans were allowed to visit Cuba today, they would see billboards like the one above honoring Celia Sanchez...as well as beautiful statues and major edifices, such as hospitals, named for her. But, hey! Cuba is the one place in the world that everyday Americans are not allowed to visit. That's so because the U. S. democracy has, since 1959, allowed profiteers to dictate America's Cuban policy.

One of many Celia Sanchez statues in Cuba today.

May 9th, 1920 -- January 11, 1980

Cuban schoolgirls still celebrate Celia Sanchez's birthday, May 9th.

"Sweet Dreams"

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