The Florida Shuffle

From 1959 Till Today!
{UPDATED: Tuesday, June 27th, 2017} 

         NBC News took anchor Megyn Kelly from Fox News with a $20-million-a-year deal and slotted her newly debuted "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly" at prime-time 7:00 PM on Sundays. On June 25th, 2017 her program led off with a superb 15-minute investigative segment entitled "THE FLORIDA SHUFFLE."

          This is a scene from the excellent investigative report "The Florida Shuffle" on Megyn Kelly's NBC program Sunday. Cynthia McFadden, shown above, hosted the segment from Palm Beach County in Florida and it served as a reminder that, since 1959, South Florida has been at the absolute forefront of the illegal drug bonanzas in the United States, including trafficking and its infamous Pill Clinics and Medicare schemes. "The Florida Shuffle" focused on a tragic aspect of the Opium Epidemic that is currently devastating much of America, specifically detailing how Palm Beach County is the epicenter for a lavish scheme supposedly helping addicts to recover but in actuality raking in vast sums of money from desperate families and from the federal government, the taxpayers. Enticed from many other states, addicts have flocked to South Florida for promised treatments that Cynthia McFadden discovered were "scams" that are often deadly. She pointed out that the Opium Epidemic is so widespread and out-of-control in the U. S. that a large percentage of American families with children up to age 26 are affected, and the sheer heartbreak of one such typical father and mother who lost their daughter in Palm Beach County is prominently featured by Cynthia McFadden. "The Florida Shuffle" prime-time report on NBC June 25th revealed how South Florida is today at the epicenter of the Opium Epidemic sweeping the U. S. but in reality it is a well-known fact that Miami in January of 1959 became America's drug capital thanks, unwittingly, to the Cuban Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-and-Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship.

        The best documentation of "HOW MIAMI BECAME THE COCAINE CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES" -- as stated by the above graphic -- was best told in the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" by Billy Corben in 2006. At one point in that documentary, pointing back at the lush and beautiful Miami skyline, the famed crime-reporter in Miami, Edna Buchanan, explained that it was courtesy of the mammoth drug revenue.

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

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

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

       In promoting its brand-new "War on Drugs" documentary, the History Channel used the above graphic with this exact caption: "Mainstream media finally exposes CIA drug trafficking conspiracy." The documentary itself doesn't shy away from using names, photos and videos of former top government and military officials -- including former CIA director, Vice President and President George H. W. Bush and, of course, Oliver North. But, like many other notable documentaries, the History Channel emphasizes the post-Batista role the leading anti-Castro Cuban exiles -- such as Miami's still-celebrated Felix Rodriguez -- played as Bush-connected CIA operatives. The documentary in detail shows how U. S. military bases and U. S. military airplanes were used to transport illegal drugs to the United States to, for example, fund its Iran-Contra scandal that involved operatives like North and Rodriguez supported from Washington by tax dollars.

         The photo above shows Vice President George H. W. Bush with Felix Rodriguez. But long before and long after this photo was taken, Mr. Bush was intimately involved with the most infamous Cuban exiles.

       This photo montage shows Felix Rodriguez -- left to right -- being grilled by Senator John Kerry about CIA drug operations; as a fierce pro-Bush opponent of John Kerry's political career and post-Senate ambitions; and as a newly graduated 2nd Lt. at Fort Benning in the Cuban-exile Brigade that was trained to attack Cuba in the failed April-1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. Mr. Bush and Mr. Rodriguez were both prominently mentioned in the History Channel's new "War on Drugs" documentary, especially with Oliver North.

      The topical mainstream media, such as Time Magazine above, stressed "White House Point Man" Oliver North but not with the detailed documentation it receives in the new History Channel update "War on Drugs." Not surprisingly, North has become a rich media star with Fox News and his radio talk show.

        The extensive 2-hour History Channel documentary "War on Drugs" is considered the most documented evidence of the CIA and Cuban-exile involvement in the illegal drug trade and features how it was backed by right-wing Republican powers in Washington, both in Congress and in the White House. In fact, the documentary explains that Cubans, highly trained by the U. S. government, were used in many of the great but often sanitized U. S. scandals -- the drug trade for sure but also  many others. In 1976 when the Chilean diplomat and the beautiful American Ronni Moffitt were killed by a car-bomb near the White House, it was apparently as a part of murderous U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile freely using highly trained Cuban-exiles in his famed assassinations; four of the five renowned burglars in the Watergate scandal that doomed the Nixon presidency were Cuban-exiles; etc., etc., etc. However, as the new History Channel documentary graphically points out, even the most visceral right-wingers involved in such schemes never faced justice. The History Channel poignantly mentioned the 14 well-known people pardoned by President George H. W. Bush who later and infamously also pardoned Orlando Bosch at the request of his now Miami-based son Jeb Bush. The late Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who still lives in Miami, will always be rated by history as the two all-time most famed Cuban-exile terrorists.

Indeed, "Orlando Bosch? Who?"

       Perhaps most stunning about the History Channel's new "War on Drugs" documentary is its new revelations about the CIA's long-known and well-funded no-holds-barred assaults on Cuba, starting with its support of the Batista dictatorship. But the History Channel spends a lot of its documentation time showing how Mafia kingpin Santo Trafficante's massive illegal drug operation in Batista's Cuba was INCREDIBLY also supported by the U. S. government in the United States after the Cuban Revolution's victory in 1959. 

      Of course, any mention of a "Florida Shuffle" or a "Cuban Shuffle" has to include Santo Trafficante Jr. and the famed Mob Lawyer Frank Ragano. Born in Tampa in 1914 and the son of the Sicilian-born Mafia kingpin of Tampa, Santo was the omnipotent Mafia boss of Florida both before and after he was booted out of Cuba with the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship by the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Santo, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky were the three famed Mafia bosses in Cuba along with Batista. Santo made Havana the drug capital of the Caribbean as well as the conduit for ship-loads of drugs to Miami. After getting kicked out of Cuba, Santo immediately resumed being the Mafia kingpin of Florida with his headquarters in Tampa but his main bankrolls in Miami. The aforementioned History Channel "War on Drugs"  detailed how elements of the U. S. government backed Santo in Cuba and in South Florida.

      Above is a very interesting AP photo and caption. Carlos Marcelo was the ruthless Mafia kingpin of both New Orleans and Dallas, and he was heavily invested financially in the Batista rule of Cuba. Marcelo is shown above dinning in New York with Santo Trafficante Jr. and their lawyer Frank Ragano after a benign grand jury questioning in the 1970s. Right after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, all historians know that Marcelo and Trafficante Jr. worked closely with the CIA and Cuban-exiles in repeated assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. But it is also known, and Ragano just before his death confirmed it, that Marcelo and Trafficante Jr. also vowed to kill both President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy because they blamed the Kennedys for the failure of the April-1961 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba.

       This book is one of the means, near the end of his life, that Mob Lawyer Frank Ragano, used to reveal Mafia deeds in Cuba and in the U. S. Ragano also revealed how easily he kept such thugs out of prison in the U. S. It is therefore known that Trafficante Jr. had little trouble using Mafia money to buy off politicians -- "except the two we offered the most money to, Castro in Havana and then Kennedy in Washington." Before that History Channel revelation, historians already knew that Trafficante Jr. hung around Havana a few days after Jan. 1-1959 to offer Castro even more money than the Mafia had been paying the Batista regime. 

      And so, on June 18-2017 The History Channel began airing a brilliant documentary that explains how the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 over the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship merely shifted nefarious and murderous Batistiano-Mafiosi money-making schemes from Cuba to South Florida...and, amazingly, such schemes continued to have support from powerful elements of the U. S. government.

        To form your own opinion about the national effect of South Florida's Cuban-related criminal activities -- from 1959 till today -- I suggest you go on line to view or review the still-pertinent 2006 "Cocaine Cowboys" documentary and, of course, Cynthia McFadden's "The Florida Shuffle" segment that aired in prime-time on NBC Sunday, June 25th, 2017. Both are searing reminders of how the deleterious effects of such activity spreads far and wide beyond South Florida, especially since the pivotal year of 1959.

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A Dose of Cuban Sanity

Countering Counter-Revolutionaries!

     Born in Cartagena, Colombia and raised in Webster, New York, Juan S. Gonzalez for the last 16 years has been America's best expert on Latin America. He served the Obama administration in that regard as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. With the transition on Jan. 20-2017 from the Obama presidency to the Trump presidency, of course, there is no room for a Latin American expert in the White House, especially when it comes to Cuba where Trump only gets his advice from extremists and self-serving counter-revolutionaries.

       After serving Obama well as America's top Latin American expert, Juan Gonzalez is now on the sidelines while right-wing Republican extremists {I'm a lifelong conservative Republican but not a right-winger} advise President Trump on topics such as Cuba. But Mr. Gonzalez as a speaker and writer thankfully still counters the counter-revolutionary extremists who want to continue, for another half-century or more, an anti-American Cuban policy that currently has the 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations and is also strongly opposed by THE MAJORITY OF CUBANS IN MIAMI. Juan Gonzalez penned a major article originating on ForeignPolicy.com this week entitled: "TRUMP'S CUBA POLICY AND THE RETURN OF THE AMERICAN BOGEYMAN." He succinctly and correctly points out that the counter-revolutionary Cuban zealots care nothing at all about America being viewed as the "bogeyman" by the international community. In his very first sentence Mr. Gonzalez pointedly mentioned "Sen. Rubio and Rep. Diaz-Balart" -- counter-revolutionary Cuban-American extremists in the U. S. Congress from Miami -- as being the real "Bogeymen." Mr. Gonzalez wrote: "Think about it: a vague announcement dressed in universally supported themes, like defending human rights..." He was referencing Trump's June 16th announcement in Miami's Little Havana speaking purely before counter-revolutionary zealots in a building named for a Bay of Pigs veteran. And Mr. Gonzalez added: "The paradox of U. S. policy is that pandering to the Cuba-American hardliners in Florida hurts Americans and Cubans..." Like most patriotic Americans, Juan S. Gonzalez resents self-serving politicians like Rubio, Diaz-Balart and Trump assuming that intelligent and courageous people will actually believe their claims that they have the best interest of innocent everyday Cubans and Americans at heart when it is obvious that they have only their own economic and political self-interests in mind, self-interests that greatly harm most Cubans and most Americans.

      The aforementioned article by Juan S. Gonzalez was illustrated by this Joe Raedle/Getty Images photo. It shows President Obama preaching to the choir on June 16th in Miami's Little Havana. Every poll in Miami reveals that what he said in Little Havana in rolling-back much of Obama's Cuban sanity is strongly against the wishes of MOST CUBAN-AMERICANS IN MIAMI as well as most Americans and obviously all 191 nations that voted last October in the UN. But within the bowels of the sacred U. S. democracy, America's Cuban policy has always been shaped to benefit only a greedy or revengeful few. That policy changed finally and drastically under Obama but surely it has resumed under Trump, and as always the timid and unpatriotic American people will let him get away with it even as impeachment talk concerning other issues escalates. The Latin American expert, Juan S. Gonzalez, you'll recall, called such things "a paradox," meaning that atrocities involving America's Cuban policy is permissible while lesser atrocities are not. The above speech by President Trump on June 16th was an atrocity for Cuba, for America and, yes, for the world.

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Cuba Will Fight On

Looking Past Trump's USA!
{UPDATED: Saturday, June 24th, 2017}

       This is journalist-screenwriter Max Brooks. I believe he has every reason to clap for himself. That's because he penned what I and others consider this week's best, smartest and bravest article when he updated the transition of America's Cuban policy from the courageous Obama to the lecherous Trump.

       The ethereally sane article by Max Brooks is entitled: "HANDING CUBA BACK TO RUSSIA IS THE WRONG MOVE FOR THE U. S." That simplistic title standing alone is actually analogous to sanely updating President Trump's lecherous roll-back of President Obama's decent overtures to Cuba. But here are the first two sentences of the Max Brooks' analysis that even unpatriotic Americans should read and heed:

                 "In Miami, to the cheers of hardliners, President Trump announced a reversal of the Obama administration's 'terrible and misguided deal' with Cuba. With a swipe of a pen, decades old trade and travel restrictions were reinstalled, destroying hopes for normalized relations with Cuba in the near future."

       This Getty Images photo of a street scene in Havana was used to illustrate the June 21st article by Max Brooks. As opposed to the daily avalanche of Batistiano-directed propaganda from Miami and from the U. S. Congress {and now the White House}, the Brooks' update reveals the utter stupidity and cowardice of the American people for sitting back on their unpatriotic asses and allowing self-serving Republican presidents like Trump to feed the island of Cuba to a handful of insatiable right-wing miscreants in Miami's Little Havana and in the Batistiano-infested United States Congress. If that sounds somewhat harsh...well, America's vile Cuban policy, condemned internationally by a 191-to-0 vote in the UN, is much harsher.

          The Joe Raedle/Getty Images photo above shows President Trump in Miami's Little Havana on June 16th doing what other gutless U. S. Republican Presidents have done for five decades -- feeding Cuba to a handful of revengeful and greedy Cuban-Americans in defiance of everyone else, including MOST Cuban-Americans in Miami. The Washington Post on June 22nd pointed out that, "The small business owners in Cuba -- and U. S. businesses -- will suffer the most. And the Cuban state will become even stronger in resistance. Trump is making good on a promise to a small but economically and politically powerful group of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans concentrated in Florida. The Cuba state considers itself a model for other small nations fighting the war against imperialism, firmly and proudly holding its ground in the David vs. Goliath battle over its sovereign future. It is not likely to capitulate now." In other words, the vast and extremely lucrative Castro Cottage Industry with tentacles reaching from Little Havana in Miami to Washington continues to spawn huge pipelines of cash and laws beneficial to only a handful of undeserving souls.  

       The above Daily Beast photo-graphic reflects how the non-Batistiano world...the WHOLE WIDE WORLD outside Little Havana and the Republican-controlled politics in Washington...views Trump's latest gutless assaults on Cuba. Journalist David Whitford's column this week was entitled: "TRUMP'S CUBA MOVES ARE AN EPIC DISASTER FOR ENTREPRENEURS, including the decent entrepreneurs in Cuba and in Miami.

         Cuba and the United States, neighboring nations that could be so beneficial to each other, will accept the Obama-to-Trump transition in Washington and revert back to the Cold War darkness that marred recent decades, threatening decent lives of Americans and Cubans. A vivid reminder of how effective one-sided propaganda {tinged with the necessary doses of intimidation} fuels such a disaster EVEN IN THE WORLD'S STRONGEST DEMOCRACY is this salient fact: The vast majority of Americans are not even ashamed that the current vote in the UN condemning America's Cuban policy is 191-to-0. Trump's roll-back of Obama's sane and positive Cuban advancements depended on the tested-and-proven belief that this generation of Americans is simply too unpatriotic and too afraid to intervene, and the disastrous effects will continue to befall the vast majority of Americans and Cubans.

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A Cuban History Lesson

And One Americans Need!
{Updated: Friday, June 23, 2017}

         For Americans in June of 2017 concerned about their beloved United States and their precious Democracy, I believe they need to comprehend and understand this photo of an extended Cuban family.

     With that preface, and with the true understanding that I am passionately pro-American and pro-Democracy, permit me to explain the four-generation photo depicted above, one Americans should understand.

       The gentleman in the middle is 79-year-old Elio Delgado-Legon. He lived the first part of his adult life in Batista's Cuba from 1952 till 1959. And he has lived the rest of his adult life in Revolutionary Cuba from 1959 till today. Elio is a smart man, and a very decent one. He is also a great writer. For his writing skill and his obvious knowledge of Cuba from both historic and topical standpoints, Elio is widely quoted and, in this digital age, his blog is well-read and much appreciated. BUT NOT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

         This is the 79-year-old Elio Delgado-Legon today in his Cuban home. He is still a great writer and a first-hand expert on both Batista's Cuba and Revolutionary Cuba, which also makes him an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations. The caption at the top of his blog fully explains why the Batistiano-directed Cuban narrative in the U. S. shuns historians and writers like Elio, effectively forcing Americans to accept only one-sided propaganda on a vastly important two-sided topic. It is "vastly important" to Americans because the island of Cuba on a daily basis for decades has done and is doing more than ANY OTHER THING to demean America and Democracy worldwide, just as evidenced by the current 191-to-0 vote in the UN. SO, here is the exact caption at the top of Elio's blog whereby he cogently defines both himself and Cuba:
                 "I am a Cuban who has lived for 79 years. Therefore I know full well how life was before the revolution, having experienced it directly and indirectly. As a result, it hurts me to read so many aspersions cast upon a revolutionary government that fights tooth and nail to provide a better life. If it hasn't fully been able to do so, this is because of the many obstacles that have been put in its way."
          Although Elio has an impeccable reputation for his 79 years in Cuba, and although he is an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations, the U.S. mainstream media wouldn't dare provide Americans with his points of view.

     Of course, Elio Delagado-Legon closely followed U. S. President Donald Trump's speech before a counter-revolutionary choir in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood on June 16th, 2017. Elio's column about that speech was entitled "Back to the Cold War" in case you would like to Google it online. He wrote:

               "Trump was surrounded by the most reactionary and backward of the Right, the so-called Cuban-Americans, by murderers and terrorists who are responsible for thousands of deaths and maimed people in Cuba, and the U. S. children of torturers from the Batista dictatorship who rekindle sad memories for the Cuban people. Trump spoke about Cuba without knowing Cuba, just to please the select audience and, analysts say, with a well-defined objective in mind -- to get votes in Congress from the reactionary congressmen with Cuban roots, who don't know Cuba either." 

      When Elio mentions the "murderers and terrorists" who have targeted innocent Cubans, he is referencing such things as the terrorist bomb that downed the child-laden Cubana Flight 455 civilian airplane on October 6, 1976. To this day memorials like the one above are in Cuba, the Caribbean and Latin America honoring those victims. Such memorials also are reminders that to this very day the well-known alleged bomb-master is a heralded and free man in Miami. When Cuban-American newsman Emilio Milian complained about such things in Miami, he was car-bombed. When the top columnist at the Miami Herald, Jim DeFede, wrote a scathing column excoriating the Miami members in the U. S. Congress -- including the Diaz-Balarts and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- for protecting such terrorists, he was soon fired. Of course, the second most famed Cuban-American terrorist, after Posada Carriles, was Orlando Bosch and he was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush at the request of Jeb Bush who was busy making political and financial hay in Miami. Meanwhile, the Cuban families of such terror victims still mourn.

      Two generations of Cubans, like this sister and mother, have suffered mightily since the downing of Cubana Flight 455 on Oct. 6-1976. In the photo above, they had just learned about their brother and son.

           Declassified U. S. government documents -- like the one above dated "November 5, 1976" -- prove that the U. S. government knew about both the plot and the terrorists that downed Cubana Flight 455. 

       And when Elio writes about innocent Cubans being "maimed" by Miami terrorists, he is referencing Cubans like Nancy Pavon. Americans are not supposed to know her story, but they should.

       On October 12, 1971 Nancy Pavon at age 15 was in bed alongside her 13-year-old sister Angela in a fishing cabin in the coastal village of Boca de Sama near the city of Holguin. Two huge speed-boats with cannon mounted on tripods attacked the cabin, killing Ramon Siam and Lidia Rivaflecha and seriously wounding Nancy and slightly wounding Angela. Nancy's right foot was shot off just above the ankle "as if it was sliced by a machete." In the photo-montage above you see Nancy in the hospital later that day and in a wheelchair following her return home. Since 1971 she says she has been "wonderfully cared for by Cuba and laughed at by the Miami people and media." THAT NIGHT, because such speed-boat attacks on coastal civilians were well-known in Cuba and well-celebrated on the docks and in the media in Miami, the oldest Pavon sister, Xiomara, was further up the coast with her rifle standing guard but unable to help her family.

  This is Nancy Pavon speaking about the attack.  

       This Getty Images photo shows President Trump on June 16-2017 prior to his pro-Batistiano Little Havana speech as he entered to rousing applause from what Elio Delgado-Legon called "the children of torturers from the Batista dictatorship who rekindle sad memories for the Cuban people." If there is a counter to that depiction...and there surely is...it does not discredit the fact that there are millions of Cubans on the island who totally agree with Elio and that is one reason for Revolutionary Cuba's amazing longevity.

      For example, Elio and millions of Cubans on the island comprehend the meaning of the historic photo above while Americans are not supposed to because they have been programmed to sanitize Batista's Cuba and vilify Revolutionary Cuba. This photo was taken in 1958 in the Sierra Maestra town of Chivirico, Cuba. The three upfront men were leading a pro-Batista rally. In the middle with the holstered pistol is Rafael Diaz-Balart and he is flanked by the Masferrer Brothers, famed for being the leaders of the Masferrer Tigers, a ruthless army that murderously put down even hints of CHILDHOOD anti-Batista dissent. Of course, Americans are not supposed to know such things and the mainstream media wouldn't dare mention it, but any online search would have enlightened the curious or the patriotic. As Elio referenced, after the Jan.1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship by the Cuban Revolution, Batista leaders -- including the three above -- found instant sanctuaries in South Florida as well as continued support from the powerful right-wing thugs in Washington who had, in 1952, sicced Batista and the Mafia on Cuba.

      The photo above shows the rich and powerful Rolando Masferrer, the leader of Batista's Masferrer Tigers, in South Florida in 1961. That year right-wing, pro-Batista thugs in Washington introduced Masferrer to an unwitting President Kennedy. Later an aide explained to Kennedy who Masferrer was and how his bloody Cuban rampages had been backed in Cuba and in Florida by the U. S. government, especially the CIA. President Kennedy, who had in 1960 inherited the U.S.-infested pro-Batistiano right-wing extremists, soon VERY FAMOUSLY BELLOWED IN THE OVAL OFFICE, "If I could I would blow the CIA to smithereens!!" Of course, JFK couldn't do that...not before his own Oct. 22-1963 assassination or before such calamities as the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and the incredible Batistiano-related influx of drugs, murders, and uncontrolled mayhem within Miami starting in 1959 and then filtering far outside of Miami all the way into the 1980s, causing President Reagan at one point to send his pro-Cuban exile Vice President, George H. W. Bush, to Miami with orders to "quiet the Cubans." {You can Google all that but also this very week in June of 2017 a two-hour documentary is running on the History Channel that explains the Cuban infestation of rampant drugs and murders in Miami following the Batista-Mafia defeat in Cuba}. And so, you ask, what happened to Rolando Masferrer on U. S. soil from where he tried to destroy Revolutionary Cuba? Well...in Miami at the time there were fierce internecine battles to determine who the U. S. would put back in charge of Cuba. It is that rivalry that, most historians say, resulted in the brutal car-bombing death of Rolando Masferrer in Miami on October 31, 1975.

          Beginning in 1959 Rafael Diaz-Balart, the man with the holstered pistol shown with the Masferrer brothers at that pro-Batista rally in Cuba in 1958, became one of the richest, most powerful and most visceral anti-Castro counter-revolutionary individuals in South Florida. His sister Mirta, by the way, was married to Fidel Castro from 1948 to 1955 and today at age 88 Mirta -- like most Cubans AND MOST CUBAN-AMERICANS -- supports Revolutionary Cuba far more than they support Miami's Little Havana Cubans. Rafael Diaz-Balart in South Florida created The White Rose, the very first highly funded paramilitary unit designed to recapture Cuba, but like all other efforts it failed. While still a counter-revolutionary exile...albeit a very rich and powerful one...Rafael Diaz-Balart died in Key Biscayne, Florida on May 6, 2005. And while he and his cohorts, despite intense backing from the U. S. government and the U. S. Treasury, never regained control of Cuba, Rafael Diaz-Balart had four sons who inherited both powerful wherewithal and unending revengeful motives against Cuba.

      This Miami Herald photo shows Rafael Diaz-Balart flanked by his four very rich and powerful sons -- one a banker, one a ubiquitous news anchor on all the NBC channels, one a former U. S. Congressman from Miami who remains a fierce counter-revolutionary who bragged about leaving Congress to revive The White Rose, and one a current U. S. Congressman from Miami who fiercely goaded...some say blackmailed...President Trump into rolling back President Obama's sane and peaceful overtures to Cuba.

     Indeed, when President Trump on June 16th was in Miami's Little Havana touting his pro-Batistiano Cuban stance, Mario Diaz-Balart was, FOR SURE, right behind him as if to...well, you know. In the above photo that is Mario's right hand closest to Trump's right hand. This photo is a metaphor for Cubans like Elio Delgado-Legon who, as Elio said, are "saddened by the reminders" that the Batista-Mafia rule of Cuba was supported by the superpower U. S. and today the Batistiano dominance of America's Cuban policy is condoned by the U. S. government, especially all Republican administrations like Donald Trump's.

       Also, as Cubans on the island like Elio have mentioned time-and-time-again, the mainstream U. S. media is nothing more and nothing less than "a giant counter-revolutionary propaganda machine." The photo above backs up that salient fact. On the left is Jose Diaz-Balart of the fiercely counter-revolutionary and omnipotent Diaz-Balart family, now a second generation that is about to turn into a third rich and powerful generation. Jose, as a counter-revolutinary/regime change news anchor on all of the top NBC news outlets, can say anything about Batista's Cuba or Revolutionary Cuba and the rest of the mainstream U. S. media is verboten to question it. Cubans on the island like Elio and like Cuba's brilliant young news anchor Cristina Escobar believe that the biased or intimidated U. S. media is more America's problem than Cuba's.

      Meanwhile, let's return to the four generations of Elio Delgado-Legon's Cuban family. Like most 79-year-old decent men, Elio loves and protects his daughter, his grand-daughter and his great-grandchildren as well as he can. He grew into adulthood in Batista's Cuba and he has lived the rest of his adult years since 1959 in Revolutionary Cuba. He knows both those disparate regimes like the back of his hand. A prolific writer, Elio again this week has penned a major article describing Batista's Cuba as having been run by "murderous, thieving thugs" and he defines Revolutionary Cuba as "a government that fights tooth and nail to provide us a better life. If it hasn't been able to do so, this is because of the many obstacles that have been put in its way." Those "obstacles," Elio believes {as does the UN}, have been "put in its way" by unchecked right-wingers hiding behind the skirts of the superpower in Miami and Washington. Although the U. S. media is totally dominated by such opinionnators as Jose Diaz-Balart, there is another side to the U.S.-Cuban conundrum, the side represented by Elio Delgado-Legon. As a fierce believer in America and in Democracy, I am ashamed of an American Cuban policy that gets a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations...and a Cuban policy that does not acknowledge the viewpoints of most Cubans on the island like Elio OR EVEN MOST CUBAN-AMERICANS IN MIAMI. And further...I believe such a situation has been allowed to fester and exist for over half-a-century purely because the last two generations of Americans have been and remain unpatriotic cowards. And that belief, I firmly believe, is not taking up for Elio but is taking up for the America that used to be and the America that can be again...if a strong, patriotic generation emerges.

And by the way:

       This truly superb photo is courtesy of Ernesto Gonzalez Diaz and the Havana Times.org. It shows Cubans on a very hot day enjoying the ocean-spray as it cascades over the famed Malecon seawall.

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America's Cuban Hypocrisy

Lucrative But Anti-American!!
{Tuesday, June 20th, 2017}

      To appease a handful of Miami-based extremists from the vile Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba, overthrown on the first day of January in 1959, everyday Americans for decades have been the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. That, of course, is designed for counter-revolutionary extremists in the U. S. to dictate the Cuban narrative and thus America's Cuban policies to suit their self-serving goals, which include getting economically and politically powerful as well as, thirdly, regaining control of Cuba. In that prism, Americans are not supposed to comprehend the image above. It was taken from Cuban state television last Friday, June 16th. The Cuban government aired U. S. President Donald Trump's entire speech delivered before the choir in Miami's Little Havana stronghold. As expected, the speech was replete with lies and hypocrisy with Trump assuming that whatever he said or whatever he does regarding Cuba, even with nukes, would be fine with the American people who, cowardly and unpatriotically, have allowed the Batistiano dictation of America's Cuban policy to shame America with a current 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations for its Cuban policy. Americans, meanwhile, are not supposed to be ashamed or embarrassed by the unanimity of that international consensus; instead, they are supposed to react with cowardice and with a lack of patriotism to whatever is said or done regarding Cuba, and that includes cowardly Americans not even reacting to such things as the terrorist bombing of a child-laden Cuban civilian airplane in which the well-known terrorists easily found sanctuary in Miami, as well as Americans not reacting to the car-bombing of the Cuban-American newsman in Miami who did have the guts to complain about such things. And that backdrop takes us to President Trump's Miami speech. 

       This photo shows President Trump ranting in Miami's Little Havana on June 16th as he shamefully heralded his roll-back of many of former President Obama's decent and sane overtures to 11.3 million very decent and very innocent Cubans on the nearby island. To comprehend this photo, you need to note the man on the far left that is right behind Trump. That's U. S. Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart from the Little Havana stronghold. Americans are not supposed to consider that Mario's father Rafael was a key Minister in the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba and then, beginning in 1959, was one of the very richest, most visceral, and most determined counter-revolutionaries in Miami's Little Havana region. To make such a connection in 2017, of course, would mean that Americans MIGHT question the basic fact that, since 1959, America's Cuban policy has been a reflection in both Miami and Washington of precisely what the Batista-Mafia dictatorship was in Cuba from 1952 till 1959. However, like so many self-serving or coerced U. S. politicians before him, President Trump assumes that propagandized or intimidated Americans are too quiescent, too stupid or too afraid to object to whatever he rules about Cuba, including its RE-capture.

       At the conclusion of his grossly anti-Cuban and anti-American speech in Miami on June 16th, this photo shows President Trump sanctimoniously waving to the choir in Miami's Little Havana stronghold.

      To properly judge President Trump's June 16-2017 speech in Little Havana, I believe Americans should understand the meaning of the above image. A Cuban is holding up a "I love Cuba" sign while far above and high in the sky off to the right a buzzard, obviously or at least metaphorically an American buzzard, looms ominously over the island as they have since the 1950s. Right after the Trump speech in Little Havana on June 16th, this image was posted on Facebook by a young Cuban woman who disagreed with every word Trump spoke...and her opinion counts as much in Cuba as Trump's opinion does in the U. S.

      The young Cuban woman who felt compelled to post that "I love Cuba" image on Facebook within seconds after President Trump's Little Havana speech was Rosy Amaro Perez. A superb broadcast journalist on Cuban state televison, Rosy is very healthy, very smart, very well-educated, happily married and the mother of a gorgeous little girl. And, oh yes, she passionately loves Revolutionary Cuba and the very last thing she wants for her Cuba is a return of the Batistianos. And, on the island, she's not alone.

         Not only did Rosy Amaro Perez feel obligated to quickly post her "I love Cuba" message on Facebook immediately after Trump's Little Havana speech, she also tagged it with this plaintive comment: "The Cuba that Trump described in Miami is not the Cuba I know, and I've lived here all my life." Trump, taking full advantage of the biased and hypocritical Cuban narrative in the U. S., depicted Cuba as the worst hellhole in the region or even the world, a nation totally controlled by a band of thieves and killers. To Rosy, Trump's extravagantly hyperbolic rants while preaching to the Miami choir was not depicting Revolutionary Cuba, where she has lived all her life, but instead was much more aptly describing the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that brutalized Cuba from 1952 till 1959 prior to the Revolution. "The Cuba that Trump described in Miami is not the Cuba I know, and I've lived here all my life." Right after Rosy expressed that view on Facebook, she got a very quick reply from another important young Cuban who asked, "May I quote you?" Rosy then replied that, yes, she could be quoted. That exchange is one Americans should know.

      The young Cuban who asked Rosy Amaro Perez if she could "quote her," was Cristina Escobar. As recognized in Cuba and the region, Cristina is a totally brilliant broadcast journalist -- in both English and Spanish. On visits to Washington, two universities in Alabama, a journalism seminar in California, and in video interviews posted on YouTube and the Pulitzer Center website, etc., Cristina has herself made extremely pertinent quotes, such as: "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington;" and "We journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about Cuba than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." While Americans are programmed not to consider what Cristina Escobar says or thinks, that 191-to-ZERO vote in the UN indicates clearly that the rest of the world does understand her viewpoints. In fact, THE VAST MAJORITY OF CUBAN-AMERICANS IN MIAMI, FLORDA -- according to ALL polls -- strongly support Obama's decent and pro-American Cuban policy as opposed to Trump's indecent and anti-American Cuban policy. Yet, the only Cuban-Americans in Miami that seem eligible to be elected to the U. S. Congress are self-serving counter-revolutionary zealots. AND THAT FACT IS MORE OF A PROBLEM FOR AMERICA THAN IT IS FOR REVOLUTIONARY CUBA and Cristina Escobar.

          And for those reasons, Americans should have the courage and the patriotism to at least consider what two young and important Cubans -- Rosy Amaro Perez and Cristina Escobar -- had to say about President Trump's self-serving and hypocritical speech in Miami's Little Havana stronghold on June 16, 2017.

And by the way:

      At the above news conference in Vienna, Austria Monday, June 19th, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez reacted furiously to U. S. President Trump's June 16th speech in Miami. With his left index finger gesturing strongly, he asked, "What can they threaten us with now that they haven't already done?" The irate Cuban also told the international press, "It will not be a Presidential directive of the United States that can twist the sovereign course of Cuba. As the world knows, we negotiated in good faith with the Obama presidency but we will not negotiate under pressure from Trump."

       And, by the way #2, a knowledgeable Cuban on the island is now saying that the highly respected Bruno Rodriguez's profile as the successor to the 86-year-old Cuban President Raul Castro next February is "growing by the day."

Cuba's Bruno Rodriguez.  

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