Miami Old Guard Still Rules

Beyond Fidel's Lifetime!!
{Updated: Tuesday, August 29th, 2017}

     The photo above of the University of Havana is courtesy of Wikipedia. It is used to illustrate the best, fairest and most insightful article this month of August-2017 regarding the tumultuous and everlasting U.S.-Cuban relations. The August 28th article was written by Elizabeth Redden and is entitled: "A U. S. University Cuts Itself Off From Cuba." That university, not surprisingly, is the University of Miami. The article pointed out that many other universities have engaged with Cuba since President Barack Obama in 2014 opened doors that had long been locked shut by hard-line Cuban exiles who fled the January-1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution to regroup in nearby Miami in the section now known, all these decades later, as Little Havana. In 2017 many of the most prominent buildings and institutions at the University of Miami are, of course, named for the most vehement counter-revolutionary anti-Castro zealots such as Jorge Mas Canosa, Manual Artime, etc. Elizabeth Redden's Aug. 28th article about the University of Miami "cutting itself off from Cuba" began with these words: "After meeting with hard-line, anti-Castro leaders, the University of Miami says it won't enter into institutional agreements with Cuba. But what do faculty members think?" Of course, if you are a Cuban-American in Miami or a non-hard-line professor at the University of Miami or anywhere else, all polls show that you most likely favor normal relations with Cuba that would involve sane and decent engagements with the island. The fact that such sanity and decency has not prevailed in the United States for the past half-century reflects one basic fact that, unfortunately, intimidated Americans are not supposed to be brave enough to admit, namely: For a half-century America's Cuban policy has been constructed by hard-line Cuban extremists to benefit hard-line Cuban extremists politically and economically.

Respected journalist Elizabeth Redden.

      The insightful Elizabeth Redden article Aug. 28th about the University of Miami "cutting off ties to Cuba" {WOW!! What a surprise} highlighted the sane and decent reactions of non-hardliners and unbiased Cuban experts -- such as Lisandro Perez, a renowned authority on Cuba. Ms. Redden said Mr. Perez "expressed bafflement" about the University of Miami statement. He said, "I don't understand the concept. It's not just that I disagree with it: I don't understand the concept of a university research center that focuses on Cuba and does not have contact with Cuba."

       In other words, Mr. Perez doesn't understand "the concept" of the University of Miami because it defies every logic except the solitary one that, after all these decades, still sharply benefits the ultra-powerful minority of elderly counter-revolutionaries in Miami. Everyone else pays for it, especially U. S. taxpayers, U. S. democracy lovers, and millions of innocent Cubans on the island.

      Cuba's revolutionary icon Fidel Castro died at age 90 on November 25th, 2016. His brother Raul, now very tired at age 86, will step down as Cuba's President in a few months -- no later than February, 2018 -- with a non-Castro set to replace him.

      History will always link Fidel Castro with the all-time most infamous Cuban-American terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Posada is now 89-years-old and today is still a heralded citizen of Miami. He was born on February 15, 1928 in Cienfuegos, Cuba. Both history and the Guinness Book of World Records register the fact that Fidel Castro survived by far the most assassination attempts made against any person. Posada proudly was involved in some of them but history also records that he was successful in many famed terrorist attacks apart from individual assassinations.

       In January of 1959 after the Cuban Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship, many of the most vehement anti-Castro Cubans were sent by the U. S. government to Fort Benning in Georgia to train for the recapture of the island. Fort Benning graduates included what became arguably the three most famous anti-Castro Cubans -- Jorge Mas Canosa, Felix Rodriguez, and Luis Posada Carriles. The Bay of Pigs attackers in April of 1961 were trained at Fort Benning and in U.S.-friendly dictatorships such as Somoza's Nicaragua. As the photo here indicates, Posada graduated from Fort Benning as a 2nd Lt. but after the Bay of Pigs attack he stayed on the U. S. payroll as an anti-Castro zealot...while fervent anti-Castro Cubans like Jorge Mas Canosa, Felix Rodriguez, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, etc., aligned themselves with the Bush dynasty as their tickets to fame.

      By his own admissions, Luis Posada Carrilies was tied to many attempts to kill Castro but also to numerous anti-Cuban terrorist acts such as hotel and airplane bombings. He will forever be tied -- as the graphic above indicates -- to the Oct. 6-1976 terrorist bombing of the civilian Cubana Flight 455 in which all 72 on board died.

     As this de-classified document documents, the U. S. government -- Kissinger, etc. -- was well aware of Posada's involvement in the bombing of Cubana Flight 455.

     The top international news organizations, such as the London-based BBC as indicated above, have always had the courage and integrity to tie Posada to the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 and to the fact that he was "a CIA agent", which meant that U. S. taxpayers paid for his deeds. The U. S. media doesn't have that courage.

      The photo above shows a sister and a mother who had just been told that Cubana Flight 455 had crashed into the ocean with no survivors. Yes, Cuban victims cry too.

Cubans still mourn Cubana 455 victims.

     Memorials like this in Cuba and the Caribbean honor the victims of Cubana Flight 455 and remind the world that Posada is still a heralded citizen of Miami, Florida.

         For attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro in Panama in 2000, Posada and three other Cubans were sentenced to lengthy Panama prison terms. But Posada had powerful friends from Miami who happened to be in the United States Congress, including Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers Lincoln and Mario whose father Rafael had been a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship.

      The Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has been in the United States Congress from Miami since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager as a prelude to his becoming the two-term Governor of Florida. In a famous article in the Miami Herald by top columnist Jim DeFede, Ros-Lehtinen was pinpointed as the prime force that freed Posada from the Panamanian prison. DeFede's article famously stated that terrorism against innocent Cubans was the same as terrorism against innocent Brits, Americans, etc. He asked Ros-Lehtinen if she would comment about the article in which he excoriated her for freeing Posada, but she refused. However, she eagerly uses the U. S. media, as indicated above, to excoriate Cuba at every opportunity.

      With the exception of the Jim DeFede article in the Miami Herald, seldom has the mainstream United States media had the courage to report fairly about Posada or about the Miami and Washington politicians who support him. But the top international media, such as the London-based The Guardian, are, of course, not so restrained.

      And so, as he nears his 90th birthday in February in Miami, Posada's famed antagonist Fidel Castro died of natural causes in Havana at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016. But the Posada-Castro nexus still defines U.S.-Cuban relations from 1959 till today.

And the nexus shames the U. S. and democracy.

     As a free and heralded citizen of Miami to this day, Luis Posada Carriles is shown above leading an anti-Obama demonstration in Miami because President Barack Obama had made some peaceful and decent gestures toward the Cuban people.

And by the way:

    This Reuters photo was taken by Rodi Said on August 26, 2017. It shows one of the most important military Commanders in the world right now. Her name is Nowruy Ahmed. She is shown studying war plans in her headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Her all-female unit of the Kurdish Peoples' Army is a key force in the ongoing battle to take the vital city of Raqqa from the Islamic State. Her brigade is supported by U. S. airstrikes. General Ahmed told Reuters, "We cannot determine the time period in which the Battle of Raqqa will end precisely because war has its conditions. But...according to our plans the battle will not take longer than two months from now."

     General Ahmed's all-female Kurdish brigade was already a legendary fighting force long before it entered Raqqa. This Reuters photo was also taken by Rodi Said.

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CNN's Elian: A Review

The Epic Cuba-U.S. Tale!!
{Sunday, August 27th, 2017}

     This week -- Thursday, August 24th, 2017 -- CNN Films debuted a classical 2-hour movie-documentary entitled "Elian." Before daylight on August 25th, the first of many replays aired on CNN, which has an international reach. That's good because, probably more than anything else, the saga of a little Cuban boy named Elian Gonzalez during four months beginning on Thanksgiving Day in 1999 best defines the tumultuous David vs. Goliath-Cuba vs. U.S. relations since 1952. In 1952 right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration sicced the Mafia on Cuba in support of the vile U.S.-friendly Batista dictatorship. It spawned a Cuban Revolution that verily shocked the entire world on the first day of 1959 by actually overthrowing a U.S.-backed dictatorship. Many of the Batista-Mafia leaders had previous ties to South Florida and that's where many of them fled, establishing the Little Havana section of Miami as their new Government-in-Exile on U. S. soil. The idea, with the backing of the superpower U. S. government, was to quickly regain control of Cuba...but that still ongoing process has incredibly been unsuccessful after all these decades. In the meantime, the Cuban Government-in-Exile has essentially operated as a separate government, especially since the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s advised anti-Castro zealot Jorge Mas Canosa to study Israel's AIPAC and then create an ultra-powerful Cuban political powerhouse in Washington. Canosa did that, creating the omnipotent CANF -- the Cuban American National Foundation. With almost unlimited access to the U. S. Treasury, Canosa became a billionaire and no one in Miami or Washington dared challenge the CANF's dominance financially or politically. That is, till 1999 when the Clinton administration finally challenged Miami's and the CANF's awesome power related to the saga of a 6-year-old Cuban named Elian.

      This photo in Cuba shows Elian with his mother Elizabeth. After the creation of the CANF lobby, Jorge Mas Canosa and the Cuban-exiles were able to get just about anything they wanted from the U. S. government -- including pipelines of tax dollars from Washington-to-Miami and essentially whatever anti-Castro laws they wanted the U. S. Congress to pass. So, from the 1980s till this very day in 2017 billions of tax dollars have supported such things as a radio-television anti-Castro propaganda operation in Miami that primarily just makes selected Cubans richer. Other very easily enacted Cuban-exile Congressional laws included the infamous Wet Foot-Dry Foot bonanza that encouraged massive defections from Cuba to Miami with financial and residence-citizenship incentives available only to Cubans and to no other immigrants. With Wet Foot-Dry Foot in vogue in 1999, Elizabeth -- without permission from Elian's father Juan Gonzalez -- challenged the treacherous Florida Straits to get herself and her 6-year-old son to Miami. Elizabeth and 10 others drowned but she managed to save Elian by putting him on an inner-tube, which miraculously washed up on Florida's shore and was discovered by two Cuban-American fishermen.

      The rescued 6-year-old Elian quickly became a prized possession of anti-Castro zealots in Miami, including his very passionate cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez.

      With Marisleysis in charge of Elian, she had the total backing of all the richest and most powerful Cuban-American anti-Castro zealots in Miami -- including the super-rich CANF bosses, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, etc., etc. Elian was showered with toys and luxuries but also lavishly paraded before the national news media time and again. Marisleysis also became a celebrity as Elian's caretaker and as the chief spokesperson for the anti-Castro exiles in Miami. Videos of Elian supposedly desiring to stay in Miami and begging his father to come stay there too were ubiquitous in the media, as shown in the new CNN docu-movie. But there also was another video that seemed to reflect Elian's true, non-coerced feelings. In that video as an airplane flew overhead Elian flamboyantly waved his hands up at the airplane and proclaimed plainly, "I want you to take me back to Cuba!!" As CNN Films pointed out, the Miami Cubans in charge of Elian tried to distort Elian's words even though Spanish is very well understood in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood and the audio of Elian's airplane plea is very clear on the video. While the brilliantly choreographed 2-hour CNN presentation is essentially fair and well-documented, it is slanted in favor of Marisleysis' emotional desires and attempts to keep Elian in Miami and make sure that he never returned to Fidel Castro's Cuba where they insisted "Castro would exploit the issue!" Of course, Marisleysis and the Miami Cubans were gleefully and powerfully doing just that as hard as they could.

     This photo shows Elian's cousin Marisleysis taking him to Disneyland. While she was in charge of Elian in Miami, Marisleysis repeatedly, as shown by CNN Films, taunted the little boy's father by daring him to come to Miami and "get your son." That was a cheap-shot at a time when the Miami Cubans were sure they had Elian for keeps. Cubans in Cuba and Cubans in Miami, as well as the U. S. government, were well aware that defying the Cuban extremists in Miami would not have been healthy for Elian's father Juan. CNN Films pointed that out by showing the car-bombed vehicle in which top Cuban-American newsman Emilio Millian was gruesomely silenced merely for criticizing Miami-related terrorist acts against innocent Cubans, such as the bombing of the civilian Cubana Flight 455. So, Marisleysis' nationally publicized taunts to Juan to come to Miami to get his son rang very hollow with everyone other than the anti-Castro zealots. The taunts were even understood by usually intimidated Americans normally too scared to even discuss the situation.

      While CNN Films chronicled its "Elian" docu-movie with a slight tilt to anti-Castro Miami zealots like Marisleysis Gonzalez and Cuban-exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa and Canosa's billionaire son, it was also balanced enough to fairly include assessments from unbiased Miami residents such as Carl Hiaasen, the legendary Miami Herald columnist and best-selling author. Hiaasen for years has been brave enough to correctly critique the hold anti-Castro extremists have on politics in both Miami and Washington. CNN Films pointed that out in "Elian" by stressing the Reagan-Bush anointment of the omnipotent Canosa government that had the economic and voting clout to determine which Republicans got to serve in Congress or the White House. Hiaasen has written about that incessantly and in "Elian" he commented about Miami's exploitation of little Elian as a wedge in its anti-Castro war that has snared America's democracy and the American taxpayers in its grips since January, 1959.

      Millions of words in print and vocalized on video have tried to tell the tale of the Elian Gonzalez saga that gripped Cuba, America and much of the world for four months in late 1999 and early 2000. But the AP photo taken by Alan Diaz will always highlight that startling international drama when U. S. Marshalls in a pre-dawn Miami raid rescued the traumatized 6-year-old Elian from a closet and from the clutches of Miami's fierce anti-Castro community. It stands today as a unique hallmark in which the U. S. government actually challenged the power of the anti-Castro Cubans.

   As CNN Films cogently documents, Cuba's Fidel Castro fought just as hard to get Elian Gonzalez returned to Cuba from Miami as he had fought against the U.S.-backed Batistianos in the Revolutionary War and against the Batistiano-U.S. military attack at the Bay of Pigs. And like in his Revolutionary War and at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro -- again against all odds -- won his fervent battle to bring Elian back to Cuba, an event wildly cheered throughout the island. The "Elian" docu-movie of that colossal event includes the adult quotation by Elian in which he calls Fidel his "God." It also includes rare video footage of Fidel and the 6-year-old Elian engaging in small talk as well as videos of Elian making speeches in support of Fidel, the Revolution, and today's Cuba. In an updated CNN interview Elian reflects on the death of Fidel at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016 and he mentions that "Fidel was young when he fought the Revolution and it is the young Cubans today who will decide the island's future."

     Elian's comment about "young Cubans" deciding "the island's future" echoes a now notable quotation by Cuba's brilliant young television anchor Cristina Escobar. On both Cuban and U. S. soil Cristina has proclaimed: "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington." Another young Cuban, Elian Gonzalez, agrees with Cristina Escobar, a fervent supporter of Cuban sovereignty.

         For eternity, Elian Gonzalez will be remembered as the traumatized 6-year-old boy who miraculously washed ashore in Florida on an inner-tube in 1999. But he's now a 23-year-old man, Cuban to the core. He is shown above with his fiancee, Ilianet Escano. It is a miracle that he is alive...and back in Cuba. His saga...especially the gigantic tug-of-war that enveloped him...is a microcosm of Cuba's colossal relationship with the United States. But it is, perhaps, the most significant highlight because it revealed the essence of the unending Cuba-U.S. conflict: The great U. S. democracy made a huge mistake when it selfishly teamed with the Mafia in 1952 to support the vile Batista dictatorship in Cuba; and the great U. S. democracy in 1959 made an even bigger mistake when it allowed the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship on the island of Cuba to reconstitute itself on U. S. soil with Miami as its new capital.

     The splendid docu-movie "Elian" by CNN Films is a brilliantly produced chronicle of the enormous impact that a little boy named Elian Gonzalez had and has on U.S.-Cuban history and topicality. If you missed the initial showing on CNN on August 24th, it will be replayed many times. Elian's historic story has vast repercussions today.

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Blast from the Past TONIGHT

U.S.-Cuban History Revisited!!

           Tonight -- Thursday, August 24th, 2017 -- CNN will air a highly publicized documentary-movie entitled: "Elian: A Boy Caught Between Two Worlds." It's the deeply researched saga of Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy who became the centerpiece of a U.S.-Cuban tug-of-war in 1999. As today, in 1999 Cuban-American extremists were in control of Miami and backed by a litany of long and lingering United States Laws that include strong financial and residence incentives for Cubans to defect to Miami. Elian's mother Elizabeth and ten others drowned in the Florida Straits trying to reach U. S. soil where, unlike all other would-be immigrants, they would be home-free the moment their front-foot touched U. S. soil. Elian, now 23-years-old, survived the tragedy as a 6-year-old in 1999 when he washed ashore on an inner-tube. He ended up in the hands of counter-revolutionary Cubans in Miami but both Elian's father Juan Miguel Gonzalez and Fidel Castro wanted him back!!!

       All the leading politicians in Miami and in the U. S. Congress in 1999 were Counter Revolutionary Cuban-American extremists. That, of course, included the Havana-born Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who has been in the U. S. Congress since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager, starting a steady stream of Cuban Counter-Revolutionaries tightly connected to the Bush dynasty who have easily ended up in the U. S. Congress because, apparently, it is not politically correct for moderate Cubans to get elected although most Cuban-Americans even in Miami favor normal relations with Cuba. So the photo above in 1999 shows 6-year-old Elian in the arms of a smiling and very proud Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Surely she assumed, as did all the other rich and powerful Cuban exiles in Miami, that they reserved the right to dictate America's Cuban policies, which in this case revolved around making sure "Fidel would never see the day Elian would return to Cuba." However, for one of the few times in American history since 1959, the Clinton administration in 1999 challenged the normally unchallenged Cubans in Miami and in the U. S. Congress. Thus, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's hold on little Elian Gonzalez was amazingly challenged!!

      In the annals of Cuba, America, and the world, the photo above is emblazoned forever as a part of history. As the world watched the gripping saga of the United States government finally opposing Cuban-American extremists in Miami, federal officers rescued the frightened, traumatized 6-year-old Elian from a Miami closet.

Elian at age 6 in Miami.

Elian back in Cuba with Fidel Castro.

      Two years ago when Elian was 21, he and his father Juan were interviewed by America's ABC-News. It was the first time Americans had heard the adult Elian.

        In that ABC television interview, the 21-year-old Elian was asked what he thought of Fidel Castro. He said, "I am his friend but above all I consider him my father."

         In that ABC-TV interview, Elian laughed and his father grinned when he said, "I feel I have forgotten my English skills a bit." Juan, like Elian, idolized Fidel Castro.

      As an adult in Cuba and when he has traveled abroad, Elian has repeatedly expressed his worshipful opinion of Fidel Castro. Elian unabashedly cried at a memorial service after the Cuban icon died at age 90 on November 25th, 2016. The quotation above as registered by CNN was made in 2014 and repeated in 2016.

The legend of Elian is eternal.

Elian epitomizes Cuba-U.S. relations.

        The famous photo used above on the cover of Newsweek Magazine shows the still traumatized Elian in the loving arms of a female U. S. Marshall seconds after he was rescued from that Miami closet by heavily armed federal Marshalls. The Cuban-American extremists, believing it to be a victory over Castro, vowed that it would not happen and they did not believe the U. S. government would challenge them.

      At age 23 in August of 2017, Elian Gonzalez says, "My excellent education and healthcare position me to do what I will do the rest of my life. That is to work and produce on behalf of the Cuban people and the Revolution. I enjoy representing Cuba off the island. One day, if our relations with America improves, I would like to visit the United States to thank some people who helped my father and me back in 1999."

       Reviews of the docu-movie "Elian" are excellent. It will debut worldwide on CNN at 10:00 P. M. Eastern Time tonight -- Thursday, August 24th, 2017. It is expected to get high ratings and will be replayed often on CNN. The first replay, in fact, is set for 2:00 A. M. on Friday, August 25th. "Elian" chronicles an epic Cuban-U. S. battle.

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Cuba in Limbo

Awaiting the Trump Attack!!

      Yesterday -- August 22nd, 2017 -- the top article in the Miami Herald was written by that newspaper's leading counter-revolutionary "journalist" Nora Gamez Torres. The article is entitled: "Video Offers Rare glimpse of Hardline Ideology From Presumed Next Leader of Cuba." It actually provides the typical anti-Cuban propaganda piece by Nora Gamez Torres and includes the video that she proceeded to excoriate.

      The excoriated, maligned speaker in the video Nora Gamez Torres so massively denounced was Miguel Diaz-Canel. He is shown above with his wife. In February-2018 the 57-year-old Diaz-Canel is set to replace the 86-year-old Raul Castro as Cuba's next leader. Since 1959 Counter-Revolutionaries in the U. S. have devoted their oxygen to getting rid of the Castro Revolutionary rule in Cuba. Well, Diaz-Canel is not related to any Castro. But pending a belated recapturing of Cuba, the Counter-Revolutionaries on the soil of superpower America will surely commence to excoriate Diaz-Canel from this day forth. Speaking to the Miami Herald choir, Nora Gamez Torres assumes the rest of her readers are idiots as she expressed SHOCK...shock, I tell you!!...that Diaz-Canel would have the audacity in that video to criticize the Batistiano-directed U. S. embargo of Cuba or such other assaults on everyday Cubans as the notorious terrorist bombing of the child-ladened civilian Cubana Flight 455.  

       The above photo captured U. S. President Donald Trump's cowardly trip to Little Havana in Miami where he signed an Executive Order to reverse some of former President Barack Obama's sane and decent overtures to Cuba. As reflected above, Trump's signature on the nefarious act was wildly cheered by the Counter-Revolutionary choir in Little Havana, including Senator Marco Rubio who is shown peering over Trump's right shoulder with a satisfactory grin on his countenance.

     The above Rainier Ehhardt/AP photo shows President Trump with two fellow Republican foxes in his presidential hen-house. That's Senator Marco Rubio on the left and Jeb Bush on the right. Rubio & Bush were among the 16 Republicans who were supposed to deny the outsider Trump the Republican nomination and now that Trump is in the White House Rubio & Bush are stealthy back-stabbers hoping to dethrone President Trump so they can take over the Republican Party and maybe the White House if and when Trump is impeached. In the meanwhile, trying to placate anti-Cuban counter-revolutionaries like Rubio & Bush, Trump seems willing to allow Rubio & Bush to dictate his Cuban policy, which bodes ill-will for innocent Cubans.

     During the Republican presidential primary, Trump & Rubio called each other the vilest of names. Now Rubio pretends he is the President's most sincere pal. 

     During the Republican primary in which he annihilated Rubio's first presidential bid, Trump mocked Rubio unmercifully and Rubio returned the insults by demeaning everything about Trump, including his manhood and small body parts {hands, etc.}.

    Trump's use of the water bottle to mock Rubio referenced Rubio's embarrassing and puerile reach for water during his first nationally televised Republican speech.

     In stark contrast to that vitriol, this photo was taken on June 16-2017 in Miami's Little Havana when Rubio was patting Trump's back and laughing out loud because the actual back-stabbing by Miami counter-revolutionaries like Rubio had succeeded in pressuring President Trump to counter the Obama decency by assaulting Cuba. 

      Yet, the ambitious Rubio is mostly back-stabbing President Trump to pave the way for Rubio's apparently cherished goals -- to be President of the United States and therefore Dictator of Cuba. Such high-profile but subtle comments as shown above seem to be in concert with Rubio's plans to sabotage the Trump presidency so the "Little choirboy" from Little Havana in Miami can be the primary benefactor.

And meanwhile:    

Contemplate the above photo by Enrique Verdecia Carballo. 

A sunrise or a sunset?

Enrique & two precious Cuban children.

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