UN CONDEMNS Embargo -- AGAIN

Supports New Cuban Leader!!
{Saturday, May 12th, 2018}

       A powerful contingent from the United Nations in New York arrived in Cuba this week and showed its support for the island's first non-Castro/non-revolutionary leader since 1959. This photo shows Alicia Barcena, the UN's Latin American & Caribbean leader, chatting with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

     A Mexican, Alicia Barcena heads the United Nation's Commission for Latin America and the Carribbean {ECLAC}. In Cuba, as reported by journalists Nelson Acosta and Sarah Marsh of the London-based Reuters News Agency, Alicia Barcena made this important and updated statement: "This country which welcomes us today is testing its own ways to face the brutal human costs it has sustained during an unjust blockade. We evaluate it every year as an economic commission and we know that the blockade costs the Cuban people more than $130 billion at current prices and has left an indelible mark on its economic structure." But Alicia Barcena's conclusions are so important, so updated, and SO CORRECT that the U. S. mainstream media is, generally speaking, not courageous enough to report those words to Americans.

     The U. S. embargo/blockade of Cuba, as depicted above by Brazilian journalist Carlos LaTuff, was first imposed in 1962 after the 1961 Bay of Pigs military attack, repeated terrorist attacks and assassination attempts, and a myriad of other salacious efforts had failed to recapture Cuba for the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that had fled to Little Havana in Miami after being overthrown by the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. That entrenchment on U. S. soil, and eventually in the bowels of the U. S. government, has shamed America and Democracy for over six decades, as the UN's Alicia Barcena explained again this week. While generations of Americans have not had the patriotism or the courage to correct that insult to democracy, the unanimity of the UN vote condemning it...191-to-0...in 2016 during the final year of the decent presidency of Barack Obama...preceded the UN's blistering update this week.  

      With the help of a mere handful of right-wing thugs in Washington, a mere handful of Counter Revolutionary Cuban exiles in 1962 were rich enough and powerful enough to create the embargo/blockade. DE-classified U. S. documents have since revealed the purpose of the embargo/blockade: To starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. It hasn't worked because, obviously, there have always been enough Cubans on the island who remember {or now know of} the unconscionable brutality and thievery of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship from 1952 till 1959. As the graphic above clearly illustrates, a mere handful of self-serving Cuban-exiles in Miami and in the U. S. Congress have, decade-after-decade {even during the Obama presidency} managed to keep the embargo/blockade in place...defying the wishes of most Cuban Americans and the entire world.

      So this week a great and powerful lady, Alicia Barcena, representing the United Nations, again powerfully condemned the U. S. embargo of Cuba. But a few miscreants hiding behind the skirts of the World Superpower can overrule the sanity and decency of someone like Alicia Barcena, a disaster that has existed since 1962.

United Nations stalwart Alicia Barcena.

   The Batista-Mafia dictatorship that ransacked Cuba from 1952 till 1959 has, deep into a third generation now, been allowed to ransack America from 1959 till May of 2018...with no end in sight.

      As long as the United States government has a two-party system and one of them is the Republican Party, the past 60 years of Batistiano-Mafiosi insults to America and to Democracy will undoubtedly continue for ANOTHER 60 years or so!!!!     

    And that seems to be precisely what Alicia Barcena, representing the United Nations, told Cuba's new President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, this week. In other words, Barcena probably and Diaz-Canel possibly believe that the Cuban Revolution says a lot more about the United States than it says about Cuba.

      Brazil's Carlos LaTuff is among those who admire little Cuba's pugnacious defiance for six decades of the embargo-blockade that the UN's Alicia Barcena called "unjust" this week.

      But as the U. S. tries to secure its southern border, it seems, to some, to leave openings for "Anti-Cuba Terrorists Only." 

      But even during very fierce man-made or natural hurricanes, Revolutionary Cuba's Caribbean flag still waves...very fiercely.

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Cuba's Transition Takes Hold

USA and Florida Adjust!! 
{Wednesday, May 9th, 2018} 

    Yesterday -- Tuesday, May 8th, 2018 -- Financial Times reported that, "If Cuba is on your travel bucket list, you'll soon have more options..." It's update said, "JetBlue announced Tuesday that it will begin the first nonstop service to Jose Marti International Airport from Boston in November."

     Although Counter Revolutionary extremists/Batistianos dictate America's Cuban policies whenever Republicans control Congress and/or the White House {which is the case now}, Americans still have slivers of hope if they desire the freedom to visit the nearby island so they can judge it for themselves.  

      At 4:00 P. M. Monday -- May 7th, 2018 -- the Norwegian Sun made some more U.S.-Cuban history when it left Port Canaveral in Florida bound for Havana, Cuba. The 2,036-passenger ship then docked snuglyly in Havana while its passengers enjoyed what the new issue of Smithsonian Magazine calls one of the world's greatest tourist attractions in an 18-page article entitled "The Man Who Saved Havana." Actually since President Obama opened up commercial lanes to Cuba, now six cruise lines from the USA are making trips to Cuba despite efforts by the Trump presidency to reinforce and strengthened the U. S. Embargo against the island, which has been congressionally mandated since 1962. All the while Americans are supposed to be unaware that declassified U. S. documents state that the purpose of the embargo was/is to starve, deprive and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island for the purpose of causing them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. Perhaps that hasn't happened in six decades because there remain, lingering in the minds of enough Cubans, memories of the sheer brutality and thievery of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that spawned the Cuban Revolution.

     Meanwhile, JetBlue Airlines continues to make regular flights to Cuba from Orlando International Airport while other USA airlines are both engaging with Cuba now and dialing for new routes to the island. As the Miami Herald has repeatedly pointed out, the Miami hardliners in the U. S. Congress -- led by choirboy Marco Rubio -- are successfully encouraging the Trump administration to "starve" Cubans on the island while even in Rubio's hometown of Miami the majority of Cuban-Americans are being harmed the most by such tactics as shutting down the U. S. embassy in Havana that Obama had opened for the first time since 1961. While hardline Cubans in Congress -- including Rubio, Diaz-Balart, Ros-Lehtinen, and Curbelo from Miami alone -- grossly exceed the overall Cuban-American population, it seems only hardline Cubans are eligible to get elected to Congress even though, within the bowels of the U. S. democracy, they don't represent the pro-Cuban views of most Cuban-Americans.

     The prolific Cuban-born Fabiola Santiago since 1980 has been a top writer for the Miami Herald and is now its top Editorial Writer. She is notable for being a staunch Counter Revolutionary but she has repeatedly assailed the hometown choirboy Marco Rubio for putting his own personal ambitions -- both politically and economically -- ahead of what the majority of Cuban-Americans desire in relations with Cuba.

       This "Shame on you Rubio" banner flew over Senator Marco Rubio's home turf in South Florida when it was revealed he had taken $3.3 million from the NRA.

       Even fellow Republican Donald Trump accused Rubio of being owned by controversial Jewish billionaires like Sheldon Adelson, and thus Trump is not the only American who sorta thinks that's why Rubio puts Israel far ahead of America.

     In the Florida Republican presidential race, Trump wiped out Rubio on his home turf and Rubio then declared he would not run for a second term in the Senate, which he said couldn't get "anything done" and that was the excuse he used to explain why he missed so many votes in the Senate, except, of course, when hurting Cuba or aiding Israel. Despite low poll numbers, Rubio ran and was reelected to the Senate because it's his platform for another presidential bid and, of course, it again raised the specter that only Counter Revolutionary extremists can get elected in Miami although polls show most Cuban-Americans in Miami favor Obama-like decency towards Cuba.

    Meanwhile, Rubio, shown peering over Trump's right shoulder as the new President signed harsh anti-Cuban executive orders in front of the choir in Little Havana, Miami, USA. Although Rubio is a dire threat to both Trump's presidency and his leadership of the Republican Party, Trump tossed Rubio a bone by anointing him as America's new Cuban dictator. With Trump & Rubio, America, on a much larger scale, might be in more trouble than little Cuba where new President Miguel Diaz-Canel must confront such threats as the U. S. embargo and, of course, Rubio.  

      Meanwhile, Cuba's new President {as of April 19th}, Miguel Diaz-Canel, is firmly in place as the first non-Castro and the first non-revolutionary leader since 1959.

    But make no mistake, President Miguel Diaz-Canel's #1 idol is Cuba's #1 revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, who died at age 90 on Nov. 25, 2016. The photo above was taken in Santa Clara when a young Diaz-Canel was a popular educator on his way to becoming Education Minister and, for the previous five years, First Vice President. Insiders in Cuba know Diaz-Canel as being less inclined than former President Raul Castro to trust "United States capitalism", as Raul did when he negotiated with former President Obama to normalize relations between the two neighboring nations.

     With Miguel Diaz-Canel as Cuba's new leader, look for the island to concentrate on forging stronger ties with friendly and powerful nations like China as a counter-balance to the anti-Cuban Republican control of the White House and Congress.

     But this Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images photo reflects the fact that Cuba's new President knows he must concentrate less on Washington and more on what's happening in Havana. The Cubans shown above watching their island's transition -- Raul Castro to Miguel Diaz-Canel -- will expect their new leader to improve the Cuban economy despite obstacles such as the Embargo and what Diaz-Canel openly considers "a Batistiano-and-Mafiosi-loving Republican cabal in Washington." He expects to wait-out the Trump administration and he assumes "something more sane might transpire in 2020 or before then, as most of the world is hoping for."

    In stark contrast to his predecessor Obama, U. S. President Trump quickly went to Little Havana in Miami and turned America's Cuban policies back over to the few remaining survivors of the humiliating 1961 U.S.-Cuban exile defeat of Brigada Asalto 2506's disastrous {for Miami and for the United States} attack at the Bay of Pigs.

      In very significant contrast to Trump's highlighting the Brigade 2506 Cuban-exile attackers at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba's new President Miguel Diaz-Canel has emphasized photos like the one above, which highlights Cubans that rallied behind Fidel Castro's defense of the Revolution at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. "Marvel at Cuba's love of independence, Cuba's love of the Revolution!!" President Diaz-Canel told Bolivia's President Evo Morales on April 20th as he stressed this photo. "THAT brightly shown through in April of 1961 and it will shine through as we go forward today."

  Presidents Diaz-Canel & Morales.

They agreed about the Bay of Pigs. 

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Fidel's Tragic Love Story

Was With A U. S. Journalist!!
{Sunday, May 6th, 2018} 

     Anyone...and I do mean ANYONE...who has seriously studied U.S.-Cuban relations since the 1950s is well aware that Americans have been fed a continuous passel of lies -- from the U. S. government, from vicious Batistianos who fled the Cuban Revolution, and from an intimidated U. S. media. In fact, if Americans are unfamiliar with America's greatest investigative journalist, Peter Kornbluh, it is safe to assume they know practically nothing truthful about U.S.-Cuban relations since the 1950s. Kornbluh, among his exhaustive research, has unveiled troves of de-classified U. S. documents that reveal vitally important and extremely fascinating U.S.-Cuban facts. One of them -- Fidel Castro's massive love affair with powerful U. S. journalist Lisa Howard -- is illustrated above. Note on the lower-left that Kornbluh's revelations are buttressed by de-classified U. S. documents. The graphic above, newly spotlighted by Politico Magazine, illustrated a massive NEW essay that details the Fidel-Lisa love affair that "reshaped the Cold War" and, as many believe, factored into President Kennedy's assassination on Feb. 22-1963 and quite possibly led to Lisa's death at age 39 on July 4th, 1965. Incredible history.

     Thus, Peter Kornbluh's new documentation is an absolute must read and is entitled: "MY DEAREST FIDEL: AN ABC JOURNALIST'S SECRET LIAISON WITH FIDEL CASTRO -- The Untold Story of How Lisa Howard's Intimate Diplomacy With Cuba's Revolutionary Leader Changed the Course of the Cold War." In addition to being a great journalist-historian with impeccable credentials, Peter Kornbluh is a national treasure in the United States at the U. S. National Security Archive in Washington.

When he speaks, other historians listen.

    As an investigative journalist, author, and Cuban expert, Peter Kornbluh is nonpareil. Here is his very first paragraph about the Fidel-Lisa love affair:

                "Lisa Howard had been waiting for more than two hours in a suite at the Hotel Riviera, enough time to bathe, dress and apply makeup, then take it all off to get ready for bed when she thought he wasn't coming. But at 11:30 P. M. on that night in Havana -- February 2, 1964 -- Howard, an American correspondent with ABC News, finally heard a knock at the door. She opened it and saw the man she had been waiting for: Fidel Castro, the 37-year-old leader of the Cuban Revolution and one of America's leading Cold War antagonists."

     Titillatingly beautiful, Lisa Howard had been a successful movie and TV actress but had dreamed of being a journalist. She quit acting and started with the top radio network, Mutual Broadcasting, and quickly proved her mettle. She was hired by ABC News, then one of three television networks. She quickly zoomed to the forefront of television news in the U. S., but that ascendance coincided with learning some facts about U. S. relations with Cuba. She believed that right-wing Mafia extremists ousted from the Batista dictatorship were allied with right-wing politicians in creating criminal atrocities in trying to recapture Cuba. And that's how, as a high-profile U. S. television journalist, she got to know famous men...and to deeply love one of them, Fidel Castro.

     The photos above, used in Peter Kornbluh's superb newly updated depiction of a truly historical love affair, capture intimate dining moments shared by Lisa Howard and the man who had become the love of her life, Fidel Castro. Kornbluh unearthed and declassified sweet, haunting words Lisa wrote to Fidel, such as: "But I shall treasure will all my heart for as long as I live my trip to Cuba in April of 1963 and my meeting with you, my dearest Fidel. No matter...our personal desires are not important. We met and came together and, I know, felt something for one another that could not go further. Nothing personal could be realized. I am who I am and you are Fidel Castro and for us, at this moment in history...our personal desires are not important."

        The legendary Fidel Castro did not accept Lisa Howard's realistic explanation about why they could not continue as lovers. The three photos above -- taken by Elliot Erwitt and owned by Magnum, show in the lower-left Fidel pleading with Lisa but the other two photos show why Lisa felt she could not own Fidel...because she knew everyone else did. In his splendid portrait of this love affair, Peter Kornbluh declassified one of Fidel's pleadings to Lisa: "You don't understand me. You just want to do what you want to do. Why can't you treat me like a man?" Again, after that plea Lisa had to remind Fidel that he was not just a man but he had become a legend too...a legend that led an historic revolution but now had to SOMEHOW defend it.
       The photo on the lower-left above shows Fidel & Lisa briefly believing they were relatively alone. The photo on the lower-right shows the crowd after recognizing Fidel squeezing Lisa, shown in the lower-right, away from him as Fidel rubs his beard and capitulates. The top photo showed Lisa that being in the backseat of a chauffeured car with Fidel also offered very little privacy. Lisa loved the man, but not the legend.

     Peter Kornbluh for decades has uncovered or declassified a massive trove of documents -- typed and handwritten -- that reveal the torrid Lisa Howard-Fidel Castro love affair. But beyond that, it's historical significance takes precedence. On Jan. 20th, 1960 President John Kennedy inherited massive U. S. plans from the Eisenhower administration to recapture Cuba. Those plans included all-out schemes to murder Fidel Castro, the April-1961 Bay of Pigs military attack, and even a unanimous 7-0 opinion from the Lyman Lemnitzer-led Joint Chief of Staff to conduct murderous attacks on innocent Americans so they could be blamed on Cuba and then used as pretext for a massive attack on the island. But while all that was enveloping the Kennedy White House, Lisa Howard, while a high-profile journalist, worked massively to normalize relations between the U. S. and Cuba, and President Kennedy used her for that purpose. While informing both Kennedy and Castro, Peter Kornbluh's updated masterpiece quotes Lisa as telling Fidel, "The U. S. might attack you." Yet, THANKS TO LISA HOWARD, in the first two weeks of Nov.-1963 President Kennedy told his staff that, upon his return from Texas, his next priority would be to normalize relations with Cuba. But that decision was not a secret to Kennedy's enemies. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22-1963 and his return from Texas was in a casket.

        After the murder of President Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the new U. S. President, Lyndon Johnson -- among many other historically controversial things related to the much-younger John Kennedy blocking his ambitions to be President -- descended on Lisa Howard. President Johnson used his power to persuade ABC News to fire Lisa. It was an appeasement to the radical Cuban exiles and Mafiosi who had targeted Kennedy since blaming him for the defeat at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. But even after losing her treasured job at ABC News thanks to President Johnson, Lisa Howard continued to bravely work to normalize relations with Cuba. She was still doing that when she mysteriously died at age 39 on July 4, 1965.

      Since 1952, the year the United States government sicced the Mafia on Cuba to support the brutal and thieving U.S.-Batista dictatorship in Cuba...and especially since 1959 when the Cuban Revolution overthrew the Batista dictatorship, chasing its leaders to U. S. soil...Americans have mostly gotten false narratives about Cuba from the U. S. government and from the usually unchallenged Batistiano-Mafiosi exiles in Miami & in the U. S. Congress. In May of 2018 -- the first full month in six decades that Cuba has had a non-Castro leader, and one who was born AFTER the triumph of the Revolution -- PERHAPS IT IS FINALLY TIME THAT AMERICANS WERE TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS. That truth starts, not with the Batistiano-aligned U. S. government and not with the sycophantic mainstream U. S. media, but with America's greatest investigative journalist, Peter Kornbluh. His fascinating and historic update in May of 2018 of Fidel Castro's torrid love for Lisa Howard, and hers for him, is an example of great journalisn that Americans have a right to know. And yes, the intrigue includes the murder of a U. S. president and the possible murder of the American movie star-journalist who passionately loved both him and Cuba.

       When Lisa Howard fell in love with Fidel Castro, she was the most beautiful and the most well-known female journalist in the United States...and one of the very best.

Fidel and Lisa.

Fidel and Lisa.

   Lisa and Fidel.

      While Fidel Castro died of natural causes at age 90 in Havana on November 25th, 2016, Lisa Howard died under very mysterious circumstances at age 39 in New York City on July 4th, 1965. Not surprisingly, in his terrific May-2018 update on Lisa's love affair with Fidel Castro, the great journalist Peter Kornbluh bravely said, "The FBI would launch a bizarre inquiry" into her death.

      This photo shows the body of Lisa Howard. Peter Kornbluh: "The FBI would launch a bizarre inquiry." As posted on its letterhead, the theme of Cubaninsider has always been the same: The Cuban Revolution says a lot more about the United States than it says about Cuba. The life...and the death...of Lisa Howard is just one example. "The FBI would launch a bizarre inquiry." 

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Smithsonian Magazine Spotlights Havana

A Terrific 18-Page Update!!
{Updated Wednesday, May 2nd, 2018}

     The new edition -- dated May-2018 -- of Smithsonian Magazine, a magnificent offshoot of the famed Smithsonian Institute, reached my mailbox this week and it featured an 18-page article entitled "The Man Who Saved Havana." Brilliantly written by Tony Perrottet and buttressed with splendid photographs by Nestor Marti, the Smithsonian Magazine paints the best portrait of what is actually happening in the historic capital city of the Western World's most intriguing and, perhaps, most misunderstood island nation, a nation whose new and historic President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, turned 58-years-old just a few days ago.

Smithsonian photo of Eusebio Leal.

"The Man Who Saved Havana"

      The current -- dated May-2018 -- edition of Smithsonian Magazine features this map to delineate 15 of the historic landmarks in Havana that the now 75-year-old Eusebio Leal has "saved" with truly incredible reconstruction projects first approved and funded by Fidel Castro after Leal was sharp enough back in the 1970s to get Celia Sanchez to persuade Fidel to finance Leal's ambitious rebuilding plans. The new edition of Smithsonian Magazine reveals, with 18 splendid pages, that Leal's visions have come to remarkable fruition and are now on vivid display in Havana, Cuba.

    This is the magnificent 5-Star Hotel Manzana Kempinski restored by Eusebio Leal in Old Havana. The building dated from 1917 and had been run-down prior to Leal.

    This is the now restored Palacio del Segundo Cabo that Leal restored from a building that was first constructed in 1772. Smithsonian Magazine says it is now "the center for Cuban-European relations." {Those are key relations for Cuba's future}.

     This is the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Old Havana after it has been magnificently restored by Eusebio Leal. This is the building where Hemingway wrote "For Whom the Bell Tolls" when he was paying $1.50 a day for his room. Smithsonian Magazine says Havana is "one of the most extraordinary urban historical centers in the world." Leal himself told Smithsonian Magazine that, "Much has been done but much more can be done." And much more is being done in Havana thanks to Mr. Leal.

     When powerful people come to Havana, like Federica Mogherini above, they often ask to be shown around by the capital city's truly renowned Historian Eusebio Leal.

     The top official at the 28-nation European Union, Federica Mogherini, is depicted above being shown around historic Old Havana by Eusebio Leal when she visited Cuba on January 3, 2018. In the recent past Eusebio Leal has done the same for many historic figures such as Pope Francis and United States President Barack Obama.

     The greatest of the world's Travel Journalists, Tony Perrottet, wrote this latest masterpiece for Smithsonian Magazine -- the 18-page update for May of 2018 about "The Man Who Saved Havana." It is a splendid piece of journalism about Cuba that the mainstream U. S. media will not provide, and I heartily recommend it. It also reveals why I am a regular subscriber to the print edition of Smithsonian Magazine.

AND BY THE WAY:

     As one of two American biographers of Celia Sanchez, I'm aware that she -- as the Super Heroine of the Cuban Revolution and the one person that Fidel Castro idolized above all others -- I found it interesting that the aforementioned Smithsonian Magazine article revealed that Eusebio Leal credited Celia Sanchez for giving him the green light to restore Havana's historic landmarks. Leal told Smithsonian that, "Celia helped and protected me." America's best Castro biographer, Georgia Anne Geyer, wrote that Celia "over-ruled Fidel" wherever and whenever she chose, with his complete concurrence. Marta Rojas, Cuba's greatest {and still-living} author-historian, told me in 2005, "Since Celia Sanchez died of cancer at age 59 on Jan. 11, 1980, Fidel has ruled Cuba only as he precisely believes Celia would want him to rule it." And while she lived, any smart person who wanted something from Fidel, like Leal, first consulted Celia Sanchez.

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