A Great Lady Died This Month

Neither Cuban Nor American, Her Life Impacted Everyone

          Nadezhda Popova died this month, -- on July 8th, 2013 -- at age 91. Everyone who has lived since World War II owes her a huge debt and we should salute the unique ethos that made her so special.

On Sept. 1-1939 Hitler's Germany attacked Poland to start World War II.

       Hitler's ally in the attack on Poland was Stalin's even larger and more powerful Soviet Union army. Together they swiftly and brutally captured Poland and shortly, with Stalin as his ally, Hitler had captured Europe, including France, and then had England and America in his sights. History's two greatest fiends -- Hitler and Stalin -- had armies, especially combined armies, very capable of conquering the world because England was alone and the United States was at least two years away from attaining a suitable war capacity.

         But Hitler made a fatal mistake and double-crossed Stalin, believing he could capture the vast Soviet Union prior to turning his Nazi sights back on England and America. Hitler's capacity to win the war ended with his attack on Russia...and the rest is history. Nadezhda Popova was a large part of that history.

       Still a teenager, Nadezhda "Nadya" Popova -- a Ukrainian national -- was appalled at what she witnessed when the Nazis attacked her homeland. She saw Nazi pilots machine-gun helpless women and children as they fled their bombed-out homes; she saw Nazi soldiers surround villages and then herd every male, including young boys, into one group and then machine-gun them all to death; and she saw Nazi solders laughingly rape young girls and women. She begged the Russian army to let her fight. 

At age 19, Nadya was arguably already the best fighter-pilot in the world!

     Flying planes like this one, and with a machine-gun in the pilot's seat and small but deadly bombs attached to the plane's belly, Nadya spent all of her days and most of her nights searching for Nazi soldiers. If she saw isolated pockets of Nazis she would fly low and attack them with her machine gun. If she knew where Nazi patrols or armies were located, Nadya would use maps and reconnaissance information to fly toward them, cutting off her motor so she could glide silently over them to release her bombs. Each time she believed she would kill Nazis but "I assumed I would die too because of their return fire or because my motor wouldn't restart on my ascent out of the glide." But hundreds and hundreds of times, in that manner, Nadya killed Nazi soldiers and lived! Cutting off her motor to glide, and being right above the Nazi soldiers, they could see that the deadly pilot was a female -- dropping bombs on them and shooting at them with a machine gun! She out-fought and out-flummoxed the Naxis!

This is Nadja's squad reading about a successful attack on the Nazis.

This is one of the planes that Nadja flew.

This is Nadya's squad just before a night attack on Nazi soldiers.

          Nadya trained other Russian women to fight with the determination and skill that, in reality, only she possessed. And soon the Nazi soldiers had given the female fighter-pilots a now-famous World War II nickname -- "The Night Witches." Nadya became a legend as a solo pilot but when she created squads of Witches she used co-pilots in each plane: "Better to do some machine-gunning." She had many close calls. It is documented by historian Albert Axell that Nadya once returned with exactly 42 bullet holes in her plane, including holes in the map she had in her lap and the gloves she wore on her hands. After that flight, Nadya told her co-pilot/navigator who was counting the bullet holes, "Why bother, Katya, my dear? We will live long." But the next day Nadya watched four planes in her squad shot out of the air. "What a nightmare," she tearfully recalled decades later. "Poor girls, my friends. Yesterday we had slept in the bunks together."

Nadezhda Popova

1921 - 2013

          The Washington Post this month had a huge article written by Emily Langer recounting the 91 years Nadya Popova spent on this earth, reflecting on the perils she had endured and her contributions to civilization. Not long before she died, the still very alert Nadya said: "At night sometimes, I look up into the night sky, close my eyes and picture myself as a girl at the controls of my bomber. And I think, 'Nadya, how on earth did you do it?'" But she did do it. As a girl...a teenager...she saw evil and she did something about it.

Those eyes that saw so much as a girl are closed forever now.

Those eyes saw the Nazis attack her homeland.

And her reaction to what she saw deserves to be remembered forever.

****************** 

Cuba Shoots Itself In The Foot!

By Dealing With North Korea
{{Updated: Friday, July 19, 2013}}

         This Reuters photo taken by Desmond Boylan shows a deactivated Soviet-era medium range nuclear-capable ballistic missile on display at the La Cabana fortress in Havana. As a tourist attraction and as a Cold War relic, no one complained about this exhibit because it served an historic purpose.

      This Reuters photo taken by Carlos Jasso today shows soldiers guarding containers holding arms seized from the North Korean ship Chong Chon Gang at the Manzanillo Container Terminal in Colon City, Panama. That ship was known to have smuggled drugs and other contraband and thus was on suspicious watch-lists of many nations. Not surprisingly, the ship was seized before it entered the Panama Canal on a trip from Cuba back to North Korea. Obsolete weapons were discovered under bags of Cuban sugar. REUTERS and other respected news agencies are sending this news around the world: "Cuba said the weapons were being sent back to North Korea for repairs and included two anti-aircraft missile batteries, nine disassembled rockets, two MIG-21 fighter jets, and 15 MIG-21 engines, all Soviet-era military weaponry built in the middle of the last century." This incident makes Cuba look like a rogue nation and the UN investigation of the containers will be extensive and time-consuming, creating multiple anti-Cuban headlines day after day. It also very correctly portrays the Cuban government as acting ignorantly for these reasons:

            #1 Involvement with North Korea, especially a closely monitored North Korean ship, is stupid.

              #2 Cuba's excuse that it needed the obsolete weapons up-graded to defend its sovereignty is equally stupid because Cuba's only perceived enemy, the United States, has the military wherewithal to totally destroy Cuba if it desired to do so and no amount of Cuban weaponry, modern or obsolete, could prevent that.

           #3 The success of the Cuban Revolution and the longevity of Revolutionary Cuba both depended on two vital things: The support of the majority of Cubans back in the 1950s and the support of most of the world's sovereignty-loving people since then, as expressed yearly at the UN and by many admirers worldwide.

This North Korean incident will usurp much of that support.  

      The revelations that this North Korean ship -- the Chong Chon Gang -- left Cuba with out-dated Soviet-era weapons hidden under containers of brown sugar is startling. It is the clearest example of Cuba stupidly and needlessly shooting itself in the foot, apparently a result of the ill, almost 87-year-old Fidel Castro no longer pragmatically making and prioritizing the day-to-day decisions on the island.

      Ricardo Martinelli, the President of Panama, said that the North Korean ship was nearing the Panama Canal on its way from Cuba back to North Korea. Panama seized the ship because it had a reputation for smuggling drugs but parts of an apparent surface-to-air missile system was discovered hidden under the sugar containers. Martinelli surmised and later Cuba confirmed that the weapons were being shipped to North Korea for repairs and the sugar was to pay for it. It is also well known that a top North Korean general was recently in Havana and met with President Raul Castro. Also, several countries have noted that a Cuban airplane recently flew to North Korea. President Martinelli, who tweeted images of the missile parts, said the Panama Canal was for "peaceful transit" and he adamantly stated that it would not be a "passageway" for weapons of any type. Martinelli thus garners international acclaim at Cuba's expense. 

        In addition to letting down and disappointing its regional friends, Cuba's involvement with the North Korean ship is apparently in violation of at least three United Nations resolutions relating to weapons restrictions against North Korea. The additional and compounding stupidity involves the fact that the North Korean ship was well known to international anti-smuggling operations and thus any nation associated with that ship or anything else connected to North Korea will be closely monitored. So Panama is rightly praised and Cuba is correctly damned for this incident, a fact that most members of the United Nations, including Cuba's friends, will support. The UN has been Cuba's friend. Cuba just slapped it in the face.

         The New York Times used the above illustration Wednesday to reveal that back in 2012 another North Korean ship -- the Oun Chong Nyon Ho -- made a trip from Cuba to North Korea through the Panama Canal "without attracting suspicion." The last thing Cuba needs is North Korea-related headlines in the NY Times!

      For almost fifty years Fidel Castro amazed the world by protecting Cuba against vastly superior forces, including a brave defense at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961 followed shortly by an alignment with the Soviet Union to off-set or counter-balance the threat from the world's other superpower, the United States. Exceedingly smart but sometimes reckless, Fidel often stood on the precipice but he never jumped off the cliff or allowed anyone or anything to push him off. He was too pragmatic for that. Anyone who has seriously studied him knows that this week's disturbing connection to the North Korean ship does not bear Fidel's imprint. He has always been too intelligent and too pragmatic to put Revolutionary Cuba in such a position. Paying 10,000 tons of Cuban sugar to a UN-maligned and tightly monitored pariah nation so it would repair and return an out-dated Soviet-era missile system? Fidel's methodologies would not have permitted that. He has long realized that Cuba could expend 98% of its resources on a modern weapons system and, to quote him, "It would be like a girl using a sling-shot to defend herself against nuclear weapons fired from land, from the air, from on the sea and from beneath the sea. Physical weapons in the girl's hand won't help against super-powered enemies. But a strong collection of friends, neighbors especially, could protect such a girl." It was a re-reading of that quotation that makes it clear that Fidel had nothing to do with Cuba stupidly shooting itself in the foot via that strange, unnecessary involvement with North Korea.

        Fidel Castro turns 87 on August 13th; and he is very ill. Many felt that, after his passing, only his legacy could sustain the Cuban Revolution. Now it appears his legacy will not be able to do that, not when such ignorant decisions as revealed by that North Korean ship are capable of being made apart from either his wishes or his legacy. The amazing longevity of Revolutionary Cuba equates only to Fidel's own amazing time on this earth. And that time is drawing short, perilously short for Cuba. After all, no one will ever replace him.

And by the way........

        This right-handed fire-baller, 26-year-old Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez, recently defected from Cuba and by this time next week he will be about $60 million richer than he was on the island. He is in Tijuana right now where about fifteen wealthy Major League teams are vociferously bidding for him. Currently young Cuban superstar multi-millionaires -- Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig, Aroldis Chapman, etc. -- are leading the Oakland A's, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, etc. toward cherished post-season playoff berths. One scout in Tijuana expressed this consensus opinion: "After signing, Miguel will get a couple of starts in the minors and then become an immediate ace for a contender!" The American thirst for Cuban baseball stars has become one of the prime issues in U.S.-Cuban relations because of vast financial consequences.

*********************

Cuba Squeezed Between U. S. and Russia

ONCE AGAIN!

     The ongoing saga of 30-year-old Edward Snowden has thrust Cuba into the chasm that separates nuclear powers America and Russia, reminiscent of the Cold War era. The U. S. considers Snowden a fugitive of the first order for releasing a batch of embarrassing intelligence data amassed by the National Security Agency. Snowden for three weeks has been holed up in a Russian airport but he seeks asylum in Venezuela, Bolivia, or Nicaragua -- three close Cuban friends -- but fears any flights on the way to those destinations might be interdicted by American jets or jets of American allies. However it evolves, anti-American and human rights organizations will champion Snowden's efforts to bring transparency to the operations of the world's great democracy. In the photo above, a typical sign featured in a major pro-Snowden march near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin resulted from international news that U. S. allies had dangerously refused to allow a plane carrying Bolivia's President to fly over their territory because it was suspected Snowden might be on board. That Berlin demonstration might be a harbinger of what will come if the U. S. is perceived as bullying Snowden or as a democracy saddled with shielding nefarious deeds. 

       This week Snowden held an international news conference at the Russian airport. Flanked by human rights activists he expressed fear for his future on a day U. S. President Obama phoned Russian President Putin to ask the old KGB chief not to shelter Snowden, who has considerable international support.

       This REUTERS/Desmond Boylan photo shows a crowd, including journalists and spies, at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana this week awaiting passengers from an incoming Russian airplane.

Russia's Aeroflot airline has five weekly flights from Moscow to Havana with this the most direct route.

      But this is the normal route Aeroflot planes take in flights to Cuba, meaning they fly over major stretches of Canadian and American land. Would the U. S. intercept such a flight if Snowden was on board?

      But Aeroflot does not fly into Venezuela, Bolivia or Nicaragua -- the presumptive Snowden destinations. Thus, Cuba is the logical transit point. But the island is seeking to improve relations with the U. S. and is a major U. S. ally when it comes to battling drug and human trafficking as well as recently returning fugitives from the U. S. over to American authorities. And Russia is a real big boy not as easily bullied as an island.

      The above photo was taken on February 16, 1959. It shows Fidel Castro signing the Instrument of Office document in Havana naming himself Cuba's Prime Minister. Standing to Fidel's right ready to sign was Cuban President Manuel Urrutia, a judge who had backed Fidel's rebel movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959. From Jan. 1-1959 till Feb. 16-1959 the U. S. didn't know exactly how to deal with the popular and newly famed Fidel. From Feb. 16-1959 till today, however, the U. S. has not been so undecided. Before and after ousting Batista Fidel considered a democratic Cuba.

After America's rebuff, Soviet Union dictator Nikita Khrushchev's courtship of Fidel fueled the Cold War.

Vladimir Putin, as head of the Soviet Union's dreaded KGB, also heavily courted Fidel Castro.

As strongman/President of Russia, Vladimir Putin courted/courts Fidel Castro.

A perplexed, flummoxed Fidel in April of 1959 listening to U. S. Vice President Richard Nixon. 
This was the pivotal moment when Nixon told Fidel, "We'll recapture Cuba within three weeks."

Fidel was never overthrown but a corrupt Nixon presidency was.

So, Fidel had the last laugh, or smile, when it comes to the Richard Nixon boast in April of 1959.

The impact of Fidel's revolutionary legacy will also outlast Nixon's political legacy.

In fact, Fidel's legacy may retard U. S. influence in Latin America for decades to come.

94-year-old Nelson Mandela is Fidel's dear friend.

Mandela is perhaps the world's greatest anti-imperialist icon.

Mandela quote: "Fidel Castro is history's greatest fighter for sovereignty."

For decades, the two men have stayed close and communicated often, even through dire illnesses.

Fidel Castro turns 87 in less than a month, on August 13th. He has many things to ponder....
...Nixon, Khrushchev, Putin, Snowden, Obama, Mandela. Many things.

Meet 11-year-old Latonya Clayton!
Today's Jamaica Observer named Latonya the top student in Jamaica!

       Latonya scored 99.6 over-all with 99 in mathematics, 100 in science, 99 in Social Studies, 100 in Language Arts, and a perfect 12/12 in Communication Tasks! Latonya attends St. Jude's Primary School and she lives in the inner-city community of Olympic Gardens in Kingston. She is a Caribbean jewel. 

Congratulations, Latonya, for being beautiful, dedicated, palpably focused, and SMART!

       And by the way, the Jamaica Observer daily features the world's best and most topical political cartoons. This week the government raised taxes on the island's taxi drivers. The cartoon above {Sunday, July 14th} shows a driver's reaction to the government official who, the driver believes, does things like that because he believes the majority of people on the island are cowards and idiots for putting up with it.  

********************

Jamaica Provides Unbiased News Regarding Cuba

The Ongoing Edward Snowden Saga Is An Example

      This Reuters/Alexander Natruskin photo shows Anna Chapman -- Russia's all-time most beautiful U. S. spy -- at a news conference confirming her proposal of marriage to Edward Snowden, currently America's most famed fugitive. After releasing tons of embarrassing U. S. National Security Administration material, Snowden is currently holed up at a Russian airport trying to secure a flight to Venezuela that U. S. jets will not force down. At the above news conference Anna backed up her Tweet to Snowden: "Snowden, will you marry me?" And she admitted she indeed had tweeted this tease to the NSA: "NSA, will you take care of our children?" Anna, now 31, was booted out of the United States in 2010 as a renowned Russian spy.

Shown above in Switzerland, Anna Chapman adds spice to the ongoing Snowden saga.

     If you seek up-to-date, unbiased news related to Cuba and/or the Caribbean, the Jamaica Observer newspaper or jamaicaobserver.com is probably your best bet in a era when good news is hard to find.

The best Jamaican newscast is "Jamaica Now" anchored by Heather Cummings.

Heather, perhaps the best news-anchor in North America, is also an international music sensation.
Jamaica, you see, famously sprinkles a little spice over its hard news, such as the Snowden Saga.

       This is the Moscow-to-Havana flight that many thought was taking Edward Snowden to the island two weeks ago and may actually be doing that this week. Rely on Jamaica for the best ongoing coverage.

       Since the London Guardian broke the story of Snowden's leaks of secretive U. S. government documents, the 30-year-old American has been Fugitive #1 on America's list. Now Russia is increasingly uneasy about his sanctuary in a Moscow airport. The Jamaican news coverage of the Snowden saga has been the best and, as usual, the sexiest. It's important this week if Snowden does fly to Havana, at least as a transit point. Jamaican media focuses on such highlights but also stresses the spicy aspects.

       For example, Alexei Pushkov, who heads the international affairs committee in the Russian parliament and generally is the first to speak knowingly of Prime Minister Putin's wishes, advises Snowden to accept Venezuela's offer of asylum and do it "pronto." But to the delight of the amused Jamaican media, Pushkov strongly suggested that Snowden "stay and marry Anna Chapman. Pairing them together, in a movie, would be great cinema!" Pairing them together in real life, of course, would enhance the movie.

      Anna Chapman is the splendiferously red-headed Russia spy deported from the U. S. three years ago. Monday's USA Today said that the feisty, flirtatious Anna "proposed to Snowden on Twitter last week." 

     Anna Chapman was such a knock-out that she appeared nude on the covers of Playboy and Maxim. Pushkov says: "Anna is now 31-years-old and as breathtakingly beautiful as ever and she probably knows more about secretive U. S. documents than Snowden will ever know. They could get together, compare notes, and then Hollywood could make a movie. That girl who shoots the bow-and-arrow could play Anna!"

      Pushkov obviously was impressed with Jennifer Lawrence in "The Hunger Games" and so were the Academy Award voters who made her the youngest-ever "Best Actress" winner. And the powerful Russian is obviously still a fan of the Russian spy Anna Chapman, accounting for a Jennifer-Anna synergy/fetish. 

Come to think of it, Jennifer Lawrence, now 22, does look a lot like Anna Chapman.
So, if Pushkov matches Chapman with Snowden, Jennifer indeed could play Anna.

Alexei Pushkov probably realizes that Jennifer Lawrence {above}, like Anna, is a natural red-head.

         Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Monday his government had received an asylum application from Snowden and it was now up to him if he wanted to fly to Caracas. There are five Moscow-to-Cuba flights each week but none to Venezuela and the flights to Cuba normally pass over U. S. land.

      Cuban President Raul Castro, shown above conferring with heir apparent Miguel Diaz-Canel, yesterday strongly supported his ally Maduro's decision but refused to clarify whether or not Cuba would assist Snowden's transit via Cuba to Venezuela. Diaz-Canel advised Raul not to worsen relations with the U. S. 

       Meanwhile, Mr. Snowden has many admirers around the world...and not just the renowned Russian spy Anna Chapman. The photo above was taken in front of Berlin's famed Brandenberg Gate as Germans marched in a pro-Snowden demonstration. But now it's up to Snowden to respond to Venezuela's invitation...AS WELL AS ANNA'S! Presumably his priority is Venezuela at the moment, but that's just a guess.

The AP's Franklin Reyes today took this photo of tourists admiring an old car in Havana.

***************************