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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A Special Cubaninsider Note

Why it started; Why it ends: 

 The Lion In Winter has died, age 90. 

     I started Cubaninsider about five years ago and this is about its 600th essay, with about 550 still posted and about 50 deleted for being totally out-dated. No one else has ever written or influenced a word on it and I have never made a penny off it because I think ads would distract from the photos, which I deem important, and I would never take a penny from a propaganda-lobbyist to influence my content.

       According to Alexa Rank, the top Online bean-counter, Cubaninsider has received as many as 7,005 pageviews in a single day and exceeded in excess of 50,000 pageviews in some months. It is strictly a one-trick-pony operation and I am told it gets more pageviews than some Cuban-related blogs that have more than 25 paid employees and contributors, including the extremely well-funded and fiercely anti-Castro propaganda rag Capital Hill Cubans run by Mauricio Claver-Carone, whom I consider the most dangerous individual appointed so far to President-elect Donald Trump's Transition Team. 

       Two things in all these essays that I have yet to explain are: {1} Why I started this blog; and {2} Why one of the everlasting shocks of my life came in 2004 when a 21-year-old Cuban female soldier and an also still-living Cuban media executive picked me up at the Victoria Hotel in Havana and drove me to meet Fidel Castro at his home. In the essay to be posted tomorrow -- Monday, Nov. 28, 2016 -- I will explain #1; then in the following essay that will be posted Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016  I will explain #2. After that, because of what happened at 10:29 P. M. on Nov. 25-2016, I will cease publishing Cubaninsider for good...unless the special lady who persuaded me to start it persuades me to continue it, which I don't think she will have the heart to do.

And lastly:

           This photo, I believe, explains why Fidel Castro's legacy will always say even more about the United States than it says about Cuba. The image is courtesy of CBS TV-Miami and it depicts a 44-minute, 21-second news conference that took place while a massive and loud celebratory demonstration heralding Fidel Castro's death was taking place outside in Miami's Little Havana section. Neither the news conference nor the wild demonstrations surprised anyone. Years ago, networks such as CNN had bought parking space near the famed Versailles Restaurant in anticipation of Castro's inevitable death. 

      The above news conference featured four visceral Cuban-American members of Congress from the Miami area although a fifth, Senator Marco Rubio, was elsewhere apparently holding his own news and celebratory event. On the left above is Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart; he actually resigned his safe seat in Congress to apparently create and expand other even more visceral anti-Castro endeavors. Second from the left is Congressman Carlos Curbelo. Standing before the microphones is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who began Miami's anti-Castro path to the U. S. Congress way back in 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager on the way to getting permission to be Florida's two-term Governor. On the right is Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, Lincoln's younger brother. The Diaz-Balart brothers' anti-Castro zealotry comes naturally; their father Rafael was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship before fleeing the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959 and becoming one of the all-time richest and most powerful anti-Castro zealots on U. S. soil. Ros-Lehtinen's family-oriented anti-Castro passion direct from Havana-to-Miami is just as strong as that of the Diaz-Balarts. The quartet never has to explain why only anti-Castro zealots can get elected to Congress from Miami even though the majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami are moderates who prefer President Obama's sane and peaceful overtures toward Cuba and desire an end to the embargo, which has been the Batistiano's congressionally mandated Crown Jewel since 1962...a Crown Jewel unanimously condemned by all the nations of the world via a 191-to-0 UN vote. 

        I watched this news conference online via CBS TV-Miami. Each of the quartet took turns, first in English and then in Spanish, excoriating Fidel Castro while seeming to imply that the Batista-Mafia dictatorship was as sweet and kind to the Cuban people as a Mother Teresa government might have been. Ros-Lehtinen called Fidel "a sadistic murderer" apparently to distinguish him from the Batista-Mafia leaders he chased to Miami. Actually, the sadistic murderer label during Ros-Lehtinen's long rant was one of her milder depictions of Fidel. It reminded some, I assume, of the Jim DeFede article, when he was the top columnist at the Miami Herald, that excoriated Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers for their support of famed and self-avowed terrorists such as the infamous Luis Posada Carriles. DeFede's outrage concerned how Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balarts had used their congressional and other power to get Posada and 3 others out of a Latin American prison to safe havens in Miami. If you take time to dial up that article, you'll note that DeFede asked Ros-Lehtinen to comment on his disclosures and she refused. But she doesn't miss chances to use the media to vent her morbid, slanted excoriations of Castro.

       Each of the above quartet seemed to conveniently confuse Fidel with Batista, simply because they can. For example, Mario Diaz-Balart raved about Fidel's "terrorism and narco-trafficking." Ummm, interesting. History proves -- with actual photographic and written documentations -- that the prime reasons the Cuban Revolution was spawned by Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro in 1953 were the murders of Cuban children apparently to serve as warnings to Cubans not to resist the Batista-Mafia rule that created mass poverty and starvation among everyday Cubans while the Batistianos, Mafiosi and U. S. business interests were robbing the island blind, with the Mafia engaged in wholesale gambling, drug and prostitution rackets. As for terrorism, Miami stalwarts such as the still-living Posada Carriles and the late Orlando Bosch not only bragged about decades of extreme terrorist acts against Fidel's Cuba but are tied by Latin American history and declassified U. S. documents to such horrendous acts as the bombing of the child-laden Cubana Flight 455 civilian plane. When Miami's top Cuban-American newsman, Emilio Milian, complained on the air against such terrorism against innocent Cubans, Emilio was car-bombed. {You might want to Google "Emilio Milian" and "Cubana Flight 455" and "Jim DeFede's Anti-Terror Article" because, for sure, they are not going to be mentioned by the mainstream U. S. media}. While Milian got car-bombed, DeFede only got fired although the last I saw him he was working at CBS10 in Miami; and yes, I exchanged emails with Jim to ascertain if he was still standing. I was, frankly, surprised...but pleased...he was.

      And lastly {I promise}. Assuming...I believe...that Americans are either totally stupid or totally scared, Ros-Lehtinen, speaking to the choir at the Nov. 25th news conference, turned and praised Lincoln Diaz-Balart for "writing" in the U. S. Congress some of the Cuban legislation that exists to this day and that was excoriated by that 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations. As noted, Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart's father Rafael was a key Minister in Batista's Cuban dictatorship before becoming with his four powerful sons a key anti-Fidel zealot in Miami. The U.S.-Cuban conundrum dictates that people like Lincoln Diaz-Balart "write" devastating Cuban directives that become "legal" and seemingly eternal U. S. laws that easily get sanctioned in Congress but then get a resounding 191-to-0 denunciation in the United Nations. {Unanimity doesn't impress Banana Republics but should, I think, impress a democracy}. WOW. Such laws and such things as the above news conference shame the U. S. and democracy, I believe, while also, in my opinion, unmercifully harming 11 million innocent Cubans on the island...all in the self-serving guise of harming the last six decades of Fidel Castro's 90-year life. And now that Fidel Castro has died of old age, I assume the adjustment in Miami and in Congress will be to maintain current very lucrative anti-Fidel laws and maybe craft some new ones to...you know...harm his legacy, the one that began at 10:29 P. M. on November 25th, 2016. WOW. Uh, did I already say that? If so, sorry. I was thinking about the kids aboard Cubana Flight 455.

Tomorrow I'll answer that #1 for you.

Yes, especially the United States.   

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