The sole publisher of Cubaninsider, Rich Haney, has passionately studied Cuba day and night since the 1980s and he has visited the island. He is a fiercely pro-democracy conservative Republican from Virginia and he believes the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba say more about the United States than they say about Cuba.
The NY Times Thinks So!! {Updated: Friday, September 14th, 2018}
Photo courtesy: Michelle Eve Sandberg/Corbis/Getty Images.
A lot of headline-grabbing things are happening in the USA right now but the majestic New York Times yesterday -- Sept. 12, 2018 -- used a massive article to explain that the Trump administration's impending war against Cuba is getting underwayand perhaps that deserves a headline too. The above photo illustrated that article, depicting a street in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood where a boisterous protest against the U. S. opening an embassy in Havana occurred during the Obama administration in 2015. Now the NY Times seems to think that the Trump administration's war to both overturn Obama's overtures to Cuba ANDoverthrow Cuba's government is now underway.
The huge NY Times article on Sept. 12-2020 highlighted the above photo, which is courtesy of Raul E. Diego/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images. It shows President Trump in Miami's Little Havana assuring the Counter Revolutionary Cuban extremists that he will reverse Obama's Cuban overtures as well as their {and America's} humiliating defeat at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. The Trump speech was in Little Havana's lavish Manuel Artime Theater, named for a leader who led the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba. The NY Times now believes alarming new developments in Little Havana portend Trump's war on Cuba to appease the Little Havana extremists that he deems necessary to again secure Florida's massive array of Electoral Votes he would need for a 2020 re-election {if he survives a first-term impeachment, which now may be about a 50-50 proposition}.
The gripping Sept. 12th-2018 article was written by Frances Robles, the NY Times' greatest expert on events in Little Havana. For years, Ms. Robles covered Little Havana for the Miami Herald. Her insightful and scary article is entitled: "The FBI Is Quietly Contacting Cubans in Florida, Raising Old Alarm Bells."NO KIDDING!! Among her scary revelations was:"At least five Cuban-Americans have been surprised by FBI agents" because they support Obama's overtures to Cuba,NOT TRUMP'S??
When the New York Times' greatest expert on Little Havana, Frances Robles, believes fresh incidents in Miami may be a preclude to President Trump keeping his promises to the Counter Revolutionary extremists, Americans should,but probably won't, take notice. Extreme intimidation and almost total control of the Cuban narrative in the U. S. by Cuban extremists has, since 1959, sufficiently scared and programmed Americans not toeven weigh in on the U.S.-Cuban conundrum, as Frances Robles and other Cuban experts seem to understand and, as brave journalists, have the integrity to report. In yesterday's article, Frances Robles details the ongoing FBI harassment of Cubans in Miami who support Obama-like decency towards Cubans on the island. And if theFBI is overtly doing that, what in the hell is theCIA, which orchestrated the Bay of Pigs and many other attacks on Cuba, doing covertly??
The Frances Robles-NY Times article should rekindle memories of Emilio Milian this week. Like most Cuban-Americans in Miami, Emilio strongly opposed deadly terrorist attacks by Miami's extremist Cubans against totally innocent Cubans on the islandand Cubans in Miami. Emilio was the top Cuban-American newsman in Miami and he bravely voiced those opinions on his news programs in 1976 when he starkly denounced such horrendous events as the terrorist bombing that killed all aboard the civilian, child-laden Cubana Flight 455 aircraft. Then Emilio was silenced by a typical Counter Revolutionary weapon in Miami, a car-bomb. Most significantly is the fact that the intended message, sent to the U. S. media and to the U. S. citizens, has largely been heeded since 1976's typical example involving Emilio. To this day, the vast majority of Americans, even in the digital age, are too afraid to Google such things asCubana Flight 455 orEmilio Milian oryesterday's Frances Robles article lest they upset the Counter Revolutionary extremists in Little Havana, in the U. S. Congress, and, of course, in all Republican White Houses.
And that's why this week's use of the above photo by Frances Robles and the New York Times is so significant to the United States democracy that a mere handful of Counter Revolutionary Cuban extremists have been allowed to demean since 1959 when they fled the Cuban Revolution for their Little Havana sanctuary in Miami and later in the U. S. Congress. Of all the anti-democratic things President Trump has done since January 20th of 2017, the above speech to the Counter Revolution choir in Little Havana was/isprobably the MOST anti-democratic Trump endeavor. Yet, the programmed and intimidated U. S. citizens and U. S. media -- including those who are fiercely advocating Trump's impeachment -- can once again be expected to be too afraid, too stupid, or too unpatriotic to question Trump even as he appears, as Frances Robles suggests this week, to be creeping closer to his war on Cuba to appease a handful of Little Havana extremists he deems necessary to his political survival. Would such an unwinnable war...even if he nukes Cuba...create an endless conflagration throughout the region? Yes, most likely. But who cares? After all,THE TOPIC IS CUBA and the Cuban RevolutionMUST BE DESTROYED even if the effort finishes destroying the America we once proudly knew.
The photo above shows a Russian Lada passing by the Russian embassy in Havana. It was used to illustrate a major article/report by NBC News today entitled: "U. S. Officials Suspect Russia In 'Attacks' Mystery On Diplomats In Cuba, China." It said, "The evidence is not yet conclusive." The attacks started"in late 2016," which was the last year of the Cuba-friendly Obama administration that had greatly helped Cuban tourism and other aspects of its economy. The attacks have thus hurt Cuba drastically and greatly pleased the vast Counter Revolutionary Cubans in Miami and in the U. S. Congress. NBC said "26 U. S. government workers were injured in the still unexplained attacks" but added that"the victims included multiple CIA officers" and NBC also used the word"spies" to describe many of the "U. S. workers" affected. Spies or not, the blaming of Cuba has hurt Cuba and greatly pleased Cuba's legendary enemies in Miami and in the U. S. Congress, and that aspect of the investigation is rarely mentioned in the U. S. media or by the U. S. government. NBC mentioned that"Russia and China" have spies in Cuba but probably not as many as the United States.
The photo above -- courtesy of Desmond Boylan/Associated Press -- was also used to illustrate the exhaustive NBC article. It is well worth reading for an update on the"mystery attacks" in Havana that have supposedly been going on and massively investigated since 2016, Obama's final year as President. As long as the investigations and the updates continue, they will continue to be used by the vast Counter Revolutionary forces in Miami and in the U. S. Congress to massively hurt Cuba. For the sake of fairness, that equation should be mentioned in evaluating the "mystery" but NBC News today at least stressed that "the victims included multiple CIA officers" as opposed to regular U. S. embassy workers in Havana, and that is an interesting revelation to ponder.
.......Saddened by the Embargo!! {Updated: Tuesday, Sept. 11th, 2018}
Photo courtesy: Steve Lundy/Associated Press.
84-year-old George Ryan and twenty other avid anti-Embargo Americans arrived in Havana Monday -- Sept. 10th, 2018 -- on a mission to blunt the Trump administration's tightening of the Embargo against Cuba that has existed since 1962 to appease Counter Revolutionary Cuban-American extremists and their Republican sycophants. Ryan, the former Governor of Illinois, visited Fidel Castro in Havana in 1999 on the same mission. Till Castro died in 2016, each year he had sent a box of Cuban cigars to celebrate Ryan's birthdays. As a jab at the Trump administration, the Ryan group of twenty-one is staying at the Hotel Capri, one of the alleged places the Trump White House has labeled off-limits because it is where some of the alleged sonic-attacks against American diplomats have taken place, the excuse the Trump administration has used to curtail Cuban tourism that had reached new heights during the Cuba-friendly Obama presidency that preceded Trump's new assaults.
The famed 82-year-old Chicago billionaire Jerry Reinsdorf is also on the George Ryan-led mission to Cuba this week that will extend from Monday through Thursday. For the past 25 years Reinsdorf has been the owner of Major League baseball's Chicago White Sox and the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls.
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Photo courtesy: Jorge Ray/Associated Press.
Back in October of 1999 George Ryan visited Cuba at the invitation of his friend Fidel Castro. At the time George Ryan was the Governor of Illinois and he was one of the many Americans ashamed of the U. S. embargo against Cuba that has existed since 1962 at the behest of a handful of Counter Revolutionary extremists and their easily purchased sycophants in the U. S. Congress and in all Republican White Houses. At about the time of this visit,de-classified U. S. documents revealed that the purpose of the Embargo in 1962 was tostarve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of ordinary Cubans to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. From cowardly generation-to-cowardly-generation since 1962, that remains the primary intention of the embargo after all other means to recapture Cuba have failed --including a world-record number of assassination attempts, the 1961 Bay of Pigs air-land-and-sea military attack, an endless litany of Congressional "legals" laws designed to destroy Cuba, and an astonishing series of murderous terrorist attacks against innocent Cubans in airplanes, on ships, in cars, and against pedestrians on foot. Such things,of course, embarrassed America's democracy-lovers,AND THEY STILL DO.
The photo above was taken by T. J. Salsman for the Illinois Journal-Register. It shows Governor George Ryan on his October-1999 visit to Cuba. He was surrounded by students from Havana's Abraham Lincoln Primary School. Today -- Monday, Sept. 10-2018 -- Mr. Ryan arrives back in Havana. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, he said: "I can't go back as a tourist. This is not a client trip or a humanitarian trip. Hell, I'm 84 years old. I'm just really looking forward to going back to rekindle memories of old times and dreams we had back in 1999 for my first trip to Cuba in hopes of getting the embargo lifted."
Of course, the Embargo from 1962 till today still hasn't been lifted, despite the herculean efforts of democracy-loving Americans likeGeorge Ryan and President Barack Obama. As a decent and brave two-term President that preceded the Republican Donald Trump, Obama did everything in his power to normalize relations with Cuba and end the Embargo but he failed because Batistiano-written laws in the U. S. Congress mandate thatonly Congress can end it. Thus, the U. S. democracy is not strong enough to end it, despite the efforts ofRyan,Obama, and millions of other decent Americansand despite the unanimity of world opinion as chronicled by the 191-to-0 vote condemning the Embargo in the UN in 2016, the last year the U. S. had a President who was not aligned as a political beneficiary of the Little Havana extremists in Miami.
Cuba has changed drastically since 2016, the year thatFidel Castro died at age 90 and the year a weird and troubling U. S. election madeObama's successor as President the improbableTrump. That election, that transition, reveals how troubled the U. S. democracy is, and not just because it returns to the White House another Republican President tightly tied to the Cuban Counter Revolutionary extremists in Miami. The U. S. democracy, with a money-crazed and mostly bought-and-paid-for federal government, hasmany more serious problems than just Cuba. But it is a Democracy now in a downward spiral in which it is almost impossible to get decent democracy-lovers elected to Congress or to the Presidency. So, we are in a period when polls show that both Congress and the current President are extremely unpopular with American voters who often have to choose between the lesser-of-two-evils when they vote. Meanwhile in Cuba, it was the island's new President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who extended that invitation for a friendly American,George Ryan, to re-visit Cuba today. Diaz-Canel, a former Education Minister who is a non-Castro and a non-revolutionary, now leads Cuba while across the Florida Straits in the USA another handful of Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans have tight grips on a U. S. government still determined to regain control of Cuba.
But does Cuba deserve for the U.S.-backed Batistianos-Mafiosi to regain control of the island that has been a sovereign nation since 1959? History, including the graphic above that tells of the Mafia-led plundering of Cuba from 1952 till 1959, says,"No. Cubans on the island, not foreign-backed plunderers, should determine the island's fate."
From 1952 till 1959 Batistiano and Mafia thugs as well as rich U. S. businessmen wallowed in wealth on the island but the everyday Cubans, as shown above, lived in abject poverty with no hope of educational or health benefits and little hope of food.
Yes, before Americans ever heard of Fidel Castro, photos like the ones above and articles in the New York Times by the great Herbert L. Matthews informed U. S. citizens that the Batista thugs were murdering Cuban children as warnings against resisting the brutal dictatorship. It was brave marches by Cuban mothers, like the ones depicted above, that fueled the revolution and inspired rebels like Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro to attempt what was considered impossiblebut vital -- the first overthrow of a U.S.-backed dictatorship.
By not even bothering to throw crumbs at the Cuban peasants and even brutally murdering children as a warning to potential resisters, Batista's dictatorship gave birth to Fidel Castro and to an historic event known as the Cuban Revolution.
Even when the right-wing rulers in Havana and Washington didn't consider the little rebellion in Cuba a threat, Batista's thugs routinely gunned down expected rebels, with famed murders including University of Havana students like Jose Antonio Echeverria, 23-year-old teacher Frank Pais and his teenage brother Jesus, etc., etc. Study the graphic above from 1953 just as the Revolution was getting started in the Sierra Maestra Mountains on the far southeastern tip of the island.
The historic AP/NY Times photo above was taken in 1956. It shows Batista soldiers lavishly supported by American trainers getting ready to board airplanes to fly to the Sierra Maestra foothills and put down the rebellion. Such efforts cost many millions ofU. S. tax dollars and wasn't challenged by propagandizedUnited States citizens, but it failed miserably becausethe Cuban rebels were far more motivated.
This photo reveals abasic fact about U.S.-Cuban relations. Fictionalized Hollywood movies have revealed more truths about U.S.-Cuban relations than either the U. S. government or the mainstream U. S. media has provided. The scene above is from one of the famed "Godfather" movies. It depicts famed Mafia thugs conducting a famed meeting atop the famed Hotel National in Havana. As a semi-truth, this sceneis far more truthful than anything U. S. citizens will get from the U. S. government or the U. S. media regarding U.S.-Cuban relations.
A mere handful of Counter Revolutionary extremists from Miami and in the U. S. Congress have been allowed to dictate America's Cuban narrative and American's Cuban laws since 1959. Therefore, Americans are programmed to believe that the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in the 1950s was a Mother Teresa-like angelic government and that the return of such anangelic foreign domination of Cuba is something the American people must accept and support --OR ELSE!!
And so, George Ryan, now 84 and the former controversial Republican Governor of Illinois, today -- Sept. 10th-2018 -- arrives in Cuba at the invitation of the island's new President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Ryan had visited the island in 1999 after being invited by the late Fidel Castro.
Although a Republican himself,George Ryan seemed to conclude, as indicated by his quote above, that America's democracy had ceased to be the best government in the world. {"I don't know that we do......." He seems to have based that conclusion on his inside knowledge of the renowned corruption of politics in his Mafia-plagued state of IllinoisAND on his knowledge of how easily the Bush dynasty profited from questionable economic and political alliances, especially with the Counter Revolutionary Cubans.
This image chronicles the role Cuba...or the Cuban Revolutionary losers who regrouped in Miami in 1959 and later in the U. S. Congress...had in the precipitous decline of the U. S. democracy. In 2000 the Democrat Al Gore got the most votes nationwide but Florida's enormous pile of Electoral Votes handed the presidency to the Republican George W. Bush, whose qualification was the fact his father was also a former President also tightly aligned with Miami's Counter Revolutionary Cubans. Gore, unlike Bush, never got the chance to change America's cruel Cuban policies, never got the chance to prevent some questionable wars Bush desired, and never got the chance to make lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and to the hundreds of federal judgeships below that.
If anyone dared to write the history of how remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Miami beginning in 1959 and by the 1980s in the U. S. Congress colluded with all Republican White Houses since 1959 to alter the U. S. government, the photo above would have to be seared into that devastating bit of American history. As the world watched on televisionFOR EXCRUCIATING DAYS, vote-counters like those above tried to count the famed"hanging chad Florida votes" that decided the 2000 presidential election and put another Bush, not the more capable Gore who got the most nationwide votes, in the White House. Therefore, no one should wonder that every Republican presidential candidate traipses to Little Havana in Miami to bow down to the Counter Revolutionary extremists who control all those often-pivotal Florida presidential Electoral Votes.
Thus, no one should have been surprised when the first thing Donald Trump did as President of the United States was to fly Air Force One to Miami so he could thank the Cuban Counter Revolutionary extremists for his 2016 electionAND remind them of the upcoming 2020 election. Trump's brazenness in standing before huge Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506 Assault Banners merely reflects his belief that propagandized and intimidated U. S. citizens have neither the courage nor the intelligence nor the patriotism to challenge such things.
The humiliating U. S. defeat at Cuba's Bay of Pigs in April of 1961somehow even today remains the theme in Miami's Little Havana that every U. S. Republican president, such as Donald Trump, must not only capitulate to but also support wholeheartedly with U. S. tax dollars, U. S. might, and U. S. prestige. Andsomehow in September of 2018 that seems to be an insult to the U. S. democracy. It alsocontinues to enhance the belief that perhaps the defense of the Cuban Revolution at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, andsubsequently, was/isapparently the honorable thing to do in a small, besieged island nation.
Still Shaming U. S. & Democracy {After All These Decades} {Updated: Wednesday, September 19th, 2018}
This week -- on Sept. 17, 2018 -- Cuba's new President Miguel Diaz-Canel made the above statement. Translated from Spanish to English, he said:"The blockade is the main obstacle for the prosperity of Cuba." Cuba calls the U. S. embargo, which has existed since 1962, a blockade. By whatever name, it is the longest and cruelest starvation-tool ever imposed by a powerful nation against a much weaker nation. Considering the longevity and the fierceness of the blockade-embargo, the mere fact that Cuba hasn't totally succumbed to it remains one of history's and modernity's greatest phenomenons. Yet, as President Diaz-Canel has also stated, the Cuban Revolution, which in 1959 overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship, has actually changed the USA even more than it has changed Cuba. After all, prior to 1959 no one would have predicted that the U. S. democracy would so blatantly, and for so long, align itself with the Mafia as an agent of it colonial past...a past still magnified by such things as the embargo-blockade against Cuba and the theft of Cuba's plush Guantanamo Bay in"perpetuity" since 1903 and the terrorist bombing of Cuba's civilian Cubana Flight 455 airplane. Americans, for example, are taught to condemn Russia for annexing Crimea or for targeting innocent Ukrainians or for blowing up a civilian South Korean airplane...for example. But the same Americans are also taught that such things are fine as long as the victims are...Cubans on the island.
Photo courtesy: Desmond Boylan/Associated Press.
Now into a third generation of totally innocent Cubans on the island, women like Barbara Betancourt Bernal are trying to survive history's longest and most pernicious assaults ever directed at ordinary citizens in a small nation by rich and powerful miscreants in a huge, omnipotent nation. That undeniable fact has persisted since 1962 when the United States of America imposed an economic embargo against Cuba to appease the most extremist elements of the lucrative Cuban-American Anti-Castro Cottage Industry that arose on U. S. soil when the leaders of the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Havana regrouped with a new capital, Little Havana in Miami, Florida. Highlighting a weakening U. S. democracy, this situation has been allowed to exists for 6+ decades even thoughde-classified U. S. documents long ago revealed that the purpose of the 1962 embargo was to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their Revolutionary Government. This, of course, was after numerous assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, the April-1963 Bay of Pigs military attack, and a myriad of grisly terrorist attacks had failed to recapture Cuba. Fidel Castro died at age 90 in 2016 and Cuba's new leader is a non-Castro, non-revolutionary -- President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Yet, the anti-Castro extremists in Miami and in the U. S. Congress and in all Republican White Houses have attained so much economic and political power in the U. S. THAT starving, depriving, and making miserable the lives of ordinary Cubans on the island remains to this day -- in September of 2018 -- FAR TOO LUCRATIVE for the anti-Castro extremists to let go of from their luscious economic and political standpoints. Yet, somehow, pugnacious Cubans on the island like Barbara Betancourt Bernal honorably try to survive against the overwhelming and unchecked power of Cuban-American exile-extremists still hiding behind the skirts of the world Superpower and benefiting immeasurably from the lack of patriotism of a third generation of pusillanimous American citizens. Barbara has two teenage daughters in Cuba. This week [Sept. 13, 2018] America's top business network, CNBC, updated Barbara's tenacity with these words:
"Elegant and charismatic, Barbara is the face of an increasingly visible phenomenon in Cuba: the rise in female bartenders who break convention to benefit from the growing tourism industry, grabbing job opportunities that have come in the last five years with the opening of new private businesses." Barbara is a popular bartender at El Gato Tuerto, a club near Havana's famed Malecon seawall. CNBC quoted her this week as saying,"'You have to be a strong woman. With a strong character. You can't be weak or have a husband who says, 'you can't do it,' she says as she whips a silver shaker."In other words, Barbara Betancourt Bernal, the feisty mother of two teenage daughters on the island, is a far stronger and a far better person than a handful of second generational Cuban-American politicians and their self-centered sycophants who distort the U. S. democracy to feather their own economic and political nests by shamefully soliciting the backing of ultra-powerful Counter Revolutionary Cubans in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood...a gutless ploy that includes trying tostarve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of Cubans on the island like Barbara Betancourt Bernal. The video below reveals how every politician in Florida shamefully has to beg Cuban-American extremists in Little Havana for their support, which is crucial to winning top state and national offices.
The image above is courtesy of the Miami Herald and, if you tap it, it'll shows a video in which Ron DeSantis pleads with the Little Havana choir to make him the next Governor of Florida. If you can stomach watching this sad 2 minute, 31 second commentary highlighting a cancerous blight on the U. S. democracy, you will hear the begging DeSantis paying homage to the Little Havana choir that sent him to the U. S. Congress, a position he has forsaken to seek the Governorship of Florida. In addition to reminding the choir that he sacredly fulfilled their desires in Congress, he pledged to do so again if he is elected Governor of Florida. DeSantis wildly promised the choir in this video that he will fervently seek to charge former Cuban president Raul Castro with murder and bring the 87-year-old revolutionary to trial in a Miami courtroom, certainly not in any unbiased forum. Perhaps the saddest aspect of such ridiculous and barbarous rhetoric is the fact thatnot only DeSantis butOTHER ambitious Florida politicians must replicate what DeSantis so vividly does in this video. So, I invite you to tap the 2 minute, 31 second video above and listen to DeSantis rant about what he will do to destroy Cuba if the Counter Revolutionary extremists in the choir will get him elected as the next Governor of Florida. I do not believe there is a single word in that diatribe that DeSantis would utter...at least with a straight face...in front of an unbiased audience.
But the problem with Florida's Cuban-crazed politics, which direly affects all of America, is not just Ron DeSantis. Anyone else seriously running for high office in Florida also would be forced to bow before the ruling minority in Miami, the Counter Revolutionary Cubans. Otherwise Miami is awash with Cuban-Americans who favor the decent Obama approach to Cuba and, in fact, send billions of dollars across the Florida Straits to help the targeted Cubans on the island.
At age 40 Ron DeSantis has resigned his seat in the U. S. Congress to seek Florida's governorship. A graduate of Yale and then Harvard Law, he is a former Lt. Commander in the Navy.
Ron DeSantis [see the tweet above] savors the endorsement of President Donald Trump in his quest to be Florida's next governor. Trump needs the Counter Revolutionaries in Florida to avoid impeachment and, if he manages that, to get re-elected President in 2020. That's amost interesting scenario because DeSantis, Senator Marco Rubio from Miami, and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley are the three foxes in Trump's Hen House with presidential plans and plans for leadership of the Republican Party thatdon't include Trump. The billionaire individuals and corporations who own MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Post, and the NY Times are certainly engaged in a determined media coup to overthrow Trump, and they are indeed formidable. But the sly, back-stabbing foxes in Trump's hen-house -- especially Rubio, Haley, and DeSantis are an even bigger threat to Trump, whose demise, I might add, would surely benefit Cuba.
The prospect of Ron DeSantis as Governor of Florida is no better and no worse than anyone else in that position because whoever gets if will be marching to the drumbeats of the Counter Revolutionary Cubans. But if you tapped the video above and listened to DeSantis rave about what he plans to do to 87-year-old former Cuban President Raul Castro [now that #1 target Fidel Castro died at age 90 in 2016], you might begin to fathom what has happened on U. S. soil to the U. S. democracy since 1959. Not a word DeSantis said on the video would hold water outside of Miami but by just saying it, as opposed to campaigning on the abundance of real issues that affect most Floridians, DeSantis reveals the anti-democracy mistake right-wingers in Washington made in 1952 when they sicced the Mafia on Cuba and then many of the same right-wingers in 1959 quickly embraced on U. S. soil the most fervent remnants of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that fled the Cuban Revolution in the wee hours of January 1, 1959.
The most visceral of the Counter Revolutionary Cubans who became ultra powerful in Miami include easily Googled names such as Jorge Mas Canosa, Rafael Diaz-Balart, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Felix Rodriguez, and Jose Basulto. Even prior to the Bay of Pigs attack in April of 1961 Basulto was in Cuba on clandestine missions to sabotage Revolutionary Cuba for himself, the U. S. government, and Little Havana in Miami. As a pilot, like many other such Cubans, Basulto performed other controversial deeds for Republicans tied to the Batistianos, such as for the Contras in another U. S. loss in Nicaragua where rebel Danny Oterga remains the President to this day. But Basulto is most famed for founding Brothers to the Rescue, a fleet of airplanes that supposedly patrolled over the Florida Straits to rescue stranded Cubans. In 1996 Bill Clinton, the Democratic U. S. President, was strongly rumored to be planning to normalize relations with Cuba. Brothers planes began taunting Cuba in Cuban territorial waters and even directly over Havana where anti-Castro material was dropped. Always lavishly using the Miami media, Basulto bragged about the missions and claimed Cuba couldn't and wouldn't do anything about it. But Cuba did beg the U. S. State Department to stop them, but to no avail. Cuba then begged the United Nations to stop them, but to no avail because the U. S. has a UN veto. Cuba then declared that if the overflights continued it would do something. Basulto, flying the lead 3-plane convoy, still flew towards Cuba and Cuba sent up two planes and shot down two of the Brothers planes, killing three Cuban-Americans, but Basulto's plane turned around and made it safely back to Florida. Basulto and his supporters claim the shoot-downs were in international waters. Later lawsuits in Miami courtrooms awarded untold millions of dollars to Cuban families, with Basulto himself getting one of the huge cash settlements. Also, the mainstream U. S. media has been generally too afraid to challenge anything related to the Brothers controversy but renowned experts such as Wayne S. Smith, former U. S. diplomatic head at the U. S. Interests Section in Havana; Peter Kornbluh, the Cuban expert at the U. S. National Security Archives in Washington, and also both UN and U. S. documents paint more realistic portraits about the Brothers tragedy, which can readily be Googled, than Americans otherwise have been told. In other words, in an unbiased city, courtroom or forum, politicians like Ron DeSantis would have to be a bit closer to the facts than he was/is in the above video. Basulto was born 78-years-ago in Santiago de Cuba and like other legendary Cubans in Miami such as Canosa, Carriles, Bosch, Rodriguez, etc., Basulto has never for a moment shied away from his primary mission in life, the destruction of Castro's Cuba and later also Castro's legacy.
As mentioned, it was no secret in 1996 that President Bill Clinton was planning to take steps to normalize relations with Cuba. But after the shoot-downs of the two Brothers planes in which Cuba clearly felt provoked and threatened, not only was Clinton forced to forget his normalization plans with Cubabut, as shown in the photo above, Clinton on March 12, 1996, signed the infamous Helms-Burton Act. That to this day is the Congressional Law that even President Obama could not get around when he tried desperately to normalize relations with Cuba. As explained by great Cuban authors like Julia E. Sweig, Ann Louise Bardach, etc., high-paid lawyers drafted the wording of the Helms-Burton Act that stipulates thatonly Congress can change the most debilitating anti-Cuban measures it mandates, and rich Cubans have made sure they can control Congress, as Obama and others have discovered. By 1996 Cuban billionaires in Miami were believed to have included Jorge Mas Canosa, Rafael Diaz-Balart, the Fanjul brothers, and many more.
Seconds after signing Helms-Burton into law in 1996, the photo above seems to reveal just how much President Clinton was at the mercy of the Counter Revolutionary Cuban extremists. Study, if you will, Clinton's expression as he stares up at a clapping Bob Menendez who is still the entrenched Cuban-American U. S. Senator from New Jersey. That is so even though just last year Menendez, thanks to a hung jury,barely survived multiple corruption charges brought by the Federal Government after years of investigations into Menendez's dealings with a shady Miami millionaire. The man partially hidden by the woman as he looked down over Clinton's right shoulder is Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the Havana-born son of Rafael Diaz-Balart who was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship and then, after 1959, one of the richest and most visceral anti-Castro Cubans in Miami. Oddly enough, Rafael Diaz-Balart's sister in 1948 became Fidel Castro's wife. Like their father Rafael, Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart have been anti-Castro zealots all their adult lives and both have represented Miami...and Little Havana...in the U. S. Congress with destroying Revolutionary Cuba their goal, as it was their father's.
Jose Basulto's hometown newspaper, the Miami Herald, often very bravely reports the facts even if the topic is Cuba. An example is the front-page headline above about "Thousands of Exiles Choosing to Return" from wealthy Miami to poor Cuba. Also, on March 21-2001 the Miami Herald had a factual article written by Gail Epstein Nieves and entitled: "Fliers Downed by Migs Violated Cuban Airspace, Colonel Says." George E. Buchner was the U. S. Air Force Colonel. The first sentence was:"Echoing the Cuban government, a defense expert testified Wednesday that two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down in 1996 because -- according to his review -- they had invaded Cuban airspace and appeared to be on a military, not a civilian, mission. Buchner testified that he reviewed transcripts of MIG cockpit-to-ground communications and radar data...on the day of the shoot-down, Feb. 24, 1996. He concluded that the two Brothers planes were blasted from the sky about six miles and 5.5 miles, respectively, off the Cuban coast. Cuba's territorial limit is 12 miles." The article went on to report"multiple violations of Cuban airspace since May 1994 and in at least one case on 13 July 1995 the Brothers pilot had released leaflets over Havana. The United States authorities had issued public statements advising of the potential consequences of unauthorized entry into Cuban airspace and had initiated legal actions against the above-named pilot." Again, those facts were contained in a major article in the Miami Herald on March 22-2001 just as trials in Miami courtrooms, in which Cuba was not represented, were beginning to award hundreds of millions of dollars to the families of the diseased and to the leader, Basulto, of the Brothers to the Rescue planes. But to this day -- in September of 2018 -- political benefactors like Ron DeSantis can spin the Little Havana narrative about the Brothers planes and expect it to GET HIM ELECTED THE NEXT GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA. It's testimony, I believe, to how drastically the Cuban Revolution changed America in January of 1959 when it chased leaders of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship to their lucrative sanctuary on U. S. soil.
TheRon DeSantis pledge in Little Havana to bring Raul Castro to trial reminds Democracy-lovers of Ana Margarita Martinez. Trials in Miami courtrooms, in which Cuba was not represented, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars being awarded to just aboutanyone who charged Revolutionary Cuba with just aboutanything. And Ana took notice. Her husband had left her in Miami and returned to Cuba. So in a Miami courtroom in which Cuba, of course, was not represented, Ana sued Cuba, not her runaway husband.BINGO! LOTTERY!! She won $27.175 million.
Ana's former husband is Juan Pablo Roque.
After Juan returned to Cuba, a reporter for the Miami New Times got in touch with him on the phone. Juan was asked,"What do you miss most about Miami?" The reporter thought he would say something like,"What I miss most about Miami is, of course, my beautiful former wife Ana!!" But that's not what Juan said. He immediately replied,"MY JEEP!!"
Yes, the beautiful Ana Margarita Martinez also got to keep Juan's beloved jeep. Miami courtrooms being allowed to conduct Cuban trials is merely one aspect of the Soap Opera-style nuances that sometimes invade such shenanigans that have been allowed to persist on U. S. soil since January of 1959 when the Cuban Revolution dethroned the Batista-Mafia dictatorship on the island. But, of course, the remnants of that dictatorship quickly and permanently reboundedquite nicely in Miami andshortly thereafter in the U. S. Congress and in all Republican White Houses.
