America, Cuba, and the Arts of Stupidity and Greed

Two Nefarious Forces Create A Deadly Combination!

  The majestic eagle still sits proudly, protectively, and pensively as America's sentinel and as the stoic symbol of a nation's strength, goodness, and greatness.

     Due south of America, Cuba remains the largest island in the Caribbean, dwarfing all others in the region, including the nearby island of Hispaniola that includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As friendly neighbors, the USA and Cuba would markedly improve the lives of 315 million Americans and 11 million Cubans. The mutual positive involvements of the two nations' vast resources and human productivity would drastically upgrade humanitarian conditions regionally and internationally, and exponentially encourage peace movements around a troubled world. So, you ask, if such simple basics would surely provide gigantic mutual advantages for both the USA and Cuba, why has that not materialized since the 1950s? The answer is rather simple: It has not materialized because a minute minority benefits immensely from the revengeful antagonism and wholesale villainy that persists between the two neighbors. And that fact is exacerbated by another undeniable fact: The art of greed that drives the salacious minority is matched by the art of stupidity {and cowardice} that inculcates the vast majority of Americans and Cubans who compliantly allow, decade after decade, the status quo to continue.

      Without trying to pontificate, the above conclusions resonated out to me after reading a couple of articles about Scandinavia-Europe in London's The Guardian, which is perhaps the world's best newspaper. The Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland often finished one-two-three-four-and-five -- competing only with themselves -- in international polls, many mostly paid for by the U. S. -- on such topics as: "The Happiest People in the World;" "The Best Educated People in the World;" "The Best Universal Health Care in the World;" and so on. Since 2011, for example, Norway alone has finished #1 in the world in topics such as "Best Education," "Best Universal Health," "Human Development Index," and "Democracy Index."  As I studied that data, it is apparent that the five Scandinavian countries have one thing in common: They hate foreign wars and, dating back to World War II, they have tried mightily and successfully to stay "neutral" in foreign conflicts. That, of course, saves a lot of money and other resources that can help their own people. It seems, in contrast, since World War II ended in 1945 Americans and Cubans have simply not been as intelligent, as patriotic, as brave, or as decent as the people in the above five Scandinavian nations -- Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.

     Let's take Norway {above]. It has five million people. It's per-capita income is among the world's highest -- $54,000 per year. The hearty Norwegians love the outdoors and spend much of their time partaking the wonders of their beautiful, huge, sparsely populated country.

        The environmentally-sound, bucolic nation of Norway [above], in addition to the high wages of its citizens, showers its people with luxuries. Time Magazine featured Norway in an article that showed a Norwegian farmer admiring his cattle. He explained that, like all Norwegians, he gets a government-paid 30-day vacation with his family to anywhere in the world. He merely had to fill out a sheet telling the government what needed to be taken care of on his farm while they were gone. The article said it was normal for Norwegians to speak five languages fluently. It said Norwegians could expect to get a letter from the government with notices such as: "The latest big-screen television is ready to be shipped to your home. You need to fill out the attached form and mail it back so we will know when it is convenient to install it in your home." All that, of course, is free of charge in a nation with high taxes but, as you might imagine, in a nation of citizens more than willing to set the rates of those taxes and then pay them. And Time Magazine explained that 25% of Norway's wealth is from its vast North Shore oil supply and the nation has saved and invested so much of that largess that "if it cut the spigot on the North Shore oil today, it would still have enough money from that spigot in reserve to guarantee the same lifestyle for its citizens for the NEXT 500 YEARS!" Norwegians, you see, are not worried about "a fiscal cliff;" they are not mad at a government geared to favor the very rich; and they actually toss out incompetent, corrupt incumbents.

       Norway [in the red above} is, to put it mildly, neither a facsimile of the USA nor Cuba. In other words, Norway does not fight continuous wars and it does not have 250+ military bases around the world {ala USA]; Norway does not import 70% of the food it needs to feed its people [ala Cuba];  Norway has no poor people and no one living under bridges or in cardboard boxes [ala USA}; Norway does not have to devote most of its resources to combat a USA embargo and/or the militant desires of unchecked foreign exiles bent on recapturing the country {ala Cuba}; Norway is not beset with rampant crime or the largest and most expensive prison population in the world {ala USA}; Norway does not have an economy in which about 2% of its population is obscenely wealthy and in prime position to make more obscene wealth while about 45% of its population lives in poverty and about 45% more struggle mightily {ala USA}; Norway does not have a two-way governmental system in which both parties are bought-and-paid-for by special interests (ala USA}; Norway does not allow veritable armies of self-serving lobbyists to work only for the obscenely wealthy Americans and foreigners {ala USA}; Norway does not have a government in which even incumbent Congressmen with a 10% overall approval rating cannot be voted out of office because the candidate with the most money (the bought-and-paid-for incumbent) wins [ala USA}; and Norway, which was targeted for centuries by fiends as evil as Germany's Hitler and Russia's Stalin, does not have a caged, defensive mentality {ala Cuba} because it has no enemies, real or imagined, and thus no gigantic Military Industrial Complex {ala USA}. (If that data is hard to swallow, drink water with it and it will go down much easier).

      Kristin Halvorsen {above} was Norway's Minister of Education a couple of years ago when she was besieged by delegations from other countries flying to Oslo to inquire why Norway was finishing #1 in the world on so many polls -- education, health, happiness, democracy, etc. She finally got a little peeved because, after all, she had other things to do -- such as running her nation's education system. So by the time the American delegation reached Oslo, Ms. Halvorsen threw up her hands and said, "OK, that's enough! I'll talk to one more foreign delegation but this one we will video tape and then pass out copies of the tapes to all the other delegations, complete with translations where needed. I've got work to do or else {she said without cracking a smile} Norway might fall to #2 in the world when it comes to education!" 

     While Norway's Minister of Education, Kristin Halvorsen, could joke about her country's lofty rankings on international topics that mattered, the American delegation that went to see her also discovered how peeved she was about the avalanche of visitors. The buzz throughout Scandinavia and Europe for two years has dissected the alleged "tongue-lashing" she gave the U. S. delegation, both during the official taping session and the aside conversation in the hallway. It supposedly went like this: "You people fly from the United States to Oslo to find out why we are so far ahead of you in educating students. As I became Minister of Education in Norway, I studied the U. S. education system and vowed to do the opposite. I have done that and that is why even the poll funded by the U. S. shows us #1 in the world. We spend about $4,000 per student. You spend about $12,000 or more per student. But our $4,000 goes to educating the student while I and other top officials make good but not astronomical salaries and benefits. We have, for example, an excellent higher education system that is free for all Norwegians. Your politicians tell your apparently not-to-intelligent voters, 'Hey, we just passed a great bill that assures every person in the U. S. can have a college education!' The ignorant Americans say, 'Great! I'll not only vote for you but I will contribute money to your campaigns.' The politician then goes to see the billionaire banker that really bank-rolls his political career and says, "Hey, we just passed a bill that will guarantee you billions more in profits without risking a penny. Any American student can now borrow almost unlimited amounts of money to go to college and you lend it to them. You charge outrageous interest on the loans and every penny is guaranteed by the government, not the student, to pay you back in full! Now, I know you are already a billionaire because of other such deals we've made for you but more billions of dollars from this scheme was easy as pie so I said why pass on it.' The billionaire giddily thanks his bought-and-paid-for politician, the ignorant taxpayers are also happy, and most of your college graduates have problems trying to pay back the loans that, in the end, the U. S. taxpayers mostly pay back. So I think you can see why I say I studied the U. S. education system, which is built to enrich millionaires and billionaires, so that, as Norway's Minister of Education, I would do the opposite. In other words, I use the $4,000 or so we allocate to educating each student to actually educating each student. Now you will pay for your nice round-trip to and from Oslo with tax dollars and then return to a system designed to make millionaires and billionaires richer instead of educating your students the way they deserve to be educated. But...thank you for coming."

        "OK," you wonder, "if beautiful Norway {above} has the best education system, the best health system, the best democracy index, no poverty, almost no crime, no wars, and the happiest people in the world, why don't Americans and Cubans try to move there? Uh, good question. Norway has five million people. The government, which has a socialist King and a socialist Prime Minister, takes care of them nicely and evenly. As mentioned, if the lush North Shore oil spigot was cut off entirely, the government has enough money set aside and drawing interest to take care of its people in the manner they are cared for now for the next 500 years. But while Norway is generous to others, including Cubans after Hurricane Sandy recently destroyed over 200,000 Cuban homes, it is not too inclined to invite millions of immigrants. Now, if Americans and Cubans want to spend tourism money in Norway, that is accepted on 15-day visas. On the 15th day, however, you had better be at the airport ready to depart because Norway does enforce its laws.

     And speaking of Scandinavians, they all seem to be robustly healthy and able to speak five languages fluently -- like, for example, Denmark's 22-year-old Caroline Wozniacki {above}.

     Known throughout Scandinavia by her nickname "Sunshine," Caroline Wozniacki has already spent time as the world's #1 ranked female tennis player. So, she has made millions on the tennis courts and millions more in endorsements. [Note: Caroline's boyfriend -- the world's #1 golfer, 23-year-old Rory Mcllroy from Northern Ireland -- is even richer than she is, but a lot less photogenic and not nearly as well educated}.

       And did I mention that Norwegians are inevitably healthy, happy, beautiful, talented, safe, can speak at least five languages fluently, don't tolerate crime, and don't fight wars? Take Heidi Hauge {above}, for example. I'm a lifelong fan of country music. I discovered Norway's Heidi Hauge recently and now I consider her the world's best female country singer backed by the world's best country band. If you doubt that, go to YouTube and type in "Heidi Hauge Crystal Chandeliers" or "Heidi Hauge Seven Spanish Angels" or "Heidi Hauge Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"and watch her sing, in perfect English, those and other classic songs. 

        Hey! I'm too old and too poor to move to Norway and I'm not Norwegian enough anyway but, I confess, I would love for America and for Cuba to be more like....NORWAY! Peaceful. Beautiful. Safe. Rich. No glaring disparity between the haves and have-nots. Nice borders. Friendly with its neighbors. And I understand that in Norway there are no lobbyists, no bought-and-paid-for politicians, and no wall-to-wall political ads! 

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The Cuban Revolution and the American Mafia

A Nexus Conveniently Overlooked

      The U. S. government's love affair with the Mafia created the Cuban Revolution in 1952. The U. S. government's love affair with the Mafia created the necessity and the wherewithal for the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The U. S. government's love affair with the Mafia is the reason Revolutionary Cuba is still alive at the dawn of the New Year 2013. Self-ordained American "patriots" such as Sean Hannity and Rob Sequin will call you "anti-American" or "a Commie" if you subscribe to those facts. But Americans are living a lie if they don't believe them. Permit me, a democracy-loving zealot, to explain.

     As a young man, Thomas Dewey [above] was a true American patriot, not a self-anointed or self-congratulatory one. He left a lucrative position as a Wall Street lawyer to become a Special Prosecutor in New York because he believed that the great American city should be ruled by the will of the majority of its citizens, not by fiendish Mafia kingpins. Against dire threats on his life, Dewey declared war on Mafia underlings till he worked his way up to Lucky Luciano, the undisputed American crime and Mafia leader who, as such, was the most significant ruler in New York City. Dewey could not charge Luciano with his many murders because no one left alive would dare testify against him. But Dewey led raids on 80 of Luciano's prostitution houses and used the evidence to arrest and prosecute Luciano, who was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The fantastic achievement rocketed Dewey to national and international fame. He became Governor of New York. In 1944 and 1948 he was the Republican presidential candidate.

      In fact, Dewey came so close to winning the 1948 Presidential election over incumbent Harry Truman that on Nov. 3-1948, the day after the election, the headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune proclaimed: "Dewey Defeats Truman!" It turned out to be an erroneous headline but the legend of Thomas Dewey, who died at age 69 in 1971, was etched in stone as a good and brave man, for whatever that is worth then and now.

      Lucky Luciano [above] was born Salvatore Lucania in Sicily in 1897. In New York City as head of the Italian Mafia he was responsible for at least 40 well-known murders on his pernicious, perilous path to becoming head of the Genovese Mafia Family, as well as numerous murders thereafter. He was feared by all and earned the historic distinction as The Father of Organized Crime in the United States. But there was one politician -- Dewey -- who was neither scared of Luciano nor willing to be bought off by the killer-thief.

   Thanks to Thomas Dewey, Mafia kingpin Lucky Luciano was arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to 50 years in prison. New Yorkers felt safe, but only briefly. Lucky, it turned out, had the lucky key to freedom.

     Shortly, photos of Lucky Luciano depicted him celebrating in his favorite watering holes around New York City. Once again free as a bird, he was America's prime killer, thief, and most feared leader -- not only of the Mafia but New York City too. The U. S. government claimed it freed Luciano because it needed his Mafia to protect the vast New York City waterways from German sabotage during World War II and also needed Luciano's Italian-Mafia connections prior to the invasion of Italy by American and British soldiers. Was Lucky Luciano that indispensable, that brilliant? Or did his money buy friends in high places?

       Benito Mussolini was Italy's fiendish Fascist dictator from 1922 till he was killed by partisans in 1945 when he was a staunch ally of Germany's ruthless dictator Adolph Hitler. Mussolini had used his powerful army to totally wipe out the Mafia in Italy and Sicily. [Note: Mussolini was not anti-crime but he was adamantly against sharing his dictatorship with the Mafia.] Mussolini had either killed or imprisoned all the Mafioso leaders in their home-bases of Italy and Sicily. But by the end of World War II in 1945, as a way of thanking Lucky Luciano, the U. S. government freed the Mafia leaders from their Italian prisons.

      Rampant crime, not to mention such entities as The Godfather movies, benefited enormously. However, the vast majority of the world, including Cuba during the 1950s, suffered immensely because of the rejuvenated Mafia. The U. S. - Mafia love affair began reshaping a world made safe for criminal bigwigs.

       On Lucky Luciano's order, Santo Trafficante Jr. [above] was the #3 man behind Batista and Meyer Lansky in the 1952-1959 dictatorship in Cuba. While all the other Batistiano and Mafia leaders fled the island in the early morning hours of Jan. 1-1959, Trafficante Jr. stayed behind because he believed Fidel Castro would accept his 40% kick-back offer. Fidel put Trafficante Jr. in prison. Che Guevara was going to have him shot. Celia Sanchez, believing that Revolutionary Cuba needed to have friendly terms with the U. S., freed Trafficante Jr. as a friendly gesture to America. Trafficante Jr. returned in triumph to Tampa as that city's powerful Mafia kingpin, believing Cuba would be quickly recaptured by the United States military.

       Trafficante Jr., like his father before him, lived a long life as the Mafia kingpin in Tampa. He was arrested once in Tampa but his lawyer, Frank Ragano, got him out of jail before dark. So the only time Trafficante Jr. spent a few nights in jail was in Havana when he attempted to buy a large piece of Revolutionary Cuba from Fidel Castro. The U. S., like Batista's Cuba, was a Mafia haven.

      As early as November of 1959, sitting in the offices of The Granma newspaper, Celia Sanchez told her friend [the still-living] Marta Rojas of "my irretrievable mistake in freeing that Mafia bug so he can hit us again and again from his safe haven." Celia Sanchez was the most brilliant Cuban revolutionary but she misjudged the Batista-Mafia dictatorship almost immediately reconstituting itself on U. S. soil in nearby Florida.

       Third from the left in the above photo is Carlos Marcello, the Mafia kingpin of New Orleans and Dallas; sitting just to Marcello's left cocking his eyes to the right and holding a glass in his right hand is Santo Trafficante Jr.; and their lawyer Frank Ragano is facing forward just to Trafficante Jr.'s left at the end of the table also holding a glass in his right hand. This was during the period when Marcello and Trafficante Jr. were trying to get the U. S. and the Cuban exiles to recapture Cuba for the Mafia. Regano, the lawyer for Marcello and Trafficante Jr., would later confirm that his two wealthy Mafia clients not only viciously sponsored terrorist attacks against Cuba but also both men vowed to murder both President John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, whom they blamed for not defeating Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. 

        Out of prison for good in the early 1940s thanks to his friends in the U. S. government, Lucky Luciano could relax in public from his reinstated throne, or soft perches, and once again openly rule as America's top criminal. His friends in the U. S. government had over-ruled Prosecutor Thomas Dewey and the state of New York. Having the Feds as a friend freed him from prison. Lucky Luciano's restored freedom would sharply impact and drastically darken American, world, and Cuban history. He was the first, for example, to mastermind and orchestrate massive influxes of illegal drugs into the United States. In the 1950s the Mafia used the ports of Havana and Miami to facilitate a prodigious flow of illegal drugs throughout America.

       Decent entities within the confines of the U. S. government, such as the FBI, could monitor and keep charts [above] of the Mafia, also known as La Cosa Nostra. But more powerful federal entities, such as the CIA, prevailed from 1947 -- just after World War II -- till the present day. Thus, murderous Mafia kingpins such as Carlos Marcello of New Orleans and Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sr. in Tampa were free to make millions of dollars while terrorizing both the United States and Cuba. [Note Marcello and Trafficante Jr. in the lower-center of the above FBI chart compiled in 1963.] In other words, the FBI knew all bout the inter-workings of the Mafia kingpins but was unable to do much about them, especially in the Mafia strongholds of New York, New Jersey, and Chicago but also in the southern cities of Miami, Tampa, and Havana {till 1959}. The FBI, you see, was a powerful component of the U. S. government, but not the most powerful.

        Thus, almost all of the famed Mafia kingpins served little or no prison time but died of natural causes as very rich and very free men. The above photo shows Lucky Luciano's body being removed from an airport in Naples, Italy, after he had died of a heart attack at age 64 on January 26, 1962. Lucky was at that airport in Naples to sign a movie contract with a producer who had purchased his life story.  

     The collage above depicts Lucky Luciano [on the left], Meyer Lansky [Luciano's top lieutenant in the front-center] and ruthless dictator Fulgencio Batista [in the upper-right military uniform] when they brutally raped and robbed Cuba in the 1950s while being supported by the United States government. [Note: The translation of "El Imperio En La Habana" is "The Empire in Havana."] The Empire, especially via its senseless and gruesome brutality against Cuban women and children, birthed the Cuban Revolution. In pre-revolutionary Cuba the Big Four decision-makers, backed by the United States, were: Fulgencio Batista, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Santo Trafficante Jr. [A rather brutal, thieving quartet]
                                          

     After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, the new Big Four decision-makers in Cuba were the Castro brothers Fidel and Raul along with two of the prime female guerrilla fighters -- Vilma Espin [on the left above] and Celia Sanchez [on the right]. Early in 1959 Vilma married Raul Castro; beginning in the closing days of December, 1956, when he joined her in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, Fidel Castro has verily worshipped the ground Celia Sanchez walked on. Thus, to this day at age 86 Fidel Castro still rates Revolutionary Cuba's Big Four as the ones pictured above and, beyond question, he continues to rate Celia Sanchez the clear #1. Beginning in the early days of Revolutionary Cuba, the Castro brothers were mainly concerned with defensive and military matters and, while they lived, Celia and Vilma were the most important day-to-day decision-makers on the island. [Celia died of cancer in 1980; Vilma died of cancer in 2007]. The two powerful women, of course, immediately instituted a still-existing system designed to protect the island's children in stark contrast to the years when Batista, Luciano, Lansky, and Trafficante Jr. were the prime decision-makers on the island backed by a neighboring country that happened to be the strongest nation in the world, a superpower that to this day defends its Cuban policy.

      The U. S. State Department lists Cuba on its very short list {four} of "Nations That Sponsor Terrorism." It does so in the face of clear evidence that every Caribbean and Latin American nation, as well as almost all nations in the world, believe that the only reason the U. S. lists Cuba as a "terrorist" nation is to sate the wishes of a handful of hardcore anti-Castro Cuban-exile zealots. The same unanimity of nations well understands, as evidenced by the yearly UN vote concerning the U. S. embargo of Cuba, that the very same hardcore Cuban-exile minority also controls that and all other aspects of the U. S. - Cuban policy, and have done so since 1959 to the continuous detriment of all nations in the world, including the U. S. 

     Since 1959 it is well known that children on the island of Cuba are among the safest in the world. But the image of a DC-8 airplane {the actual airplane shown above} is a reminder that even Cuban children, when off the island, are in dire jeopardy of being victims of terrorism. The above plane was Cubana Flight 455 when it flew two dozen young Cuban athletes to Caracas, Venezuela, for the Central American Youth Championships. On its return flight to Cuba -- on Oct. 6-1976 -- it was blown out the sky by plastic time-detonated bombs. All 73 on board died. Because it was a Cuban civilian airplane, Americans accepted the two most salient quotations that resonated in the Miami media from the two prime alleged terrorists: "It's the biggest blow yet against Castro!" and "There were no innocents on that airplane." 

       Openly displayed in Cuba to this day are photos of all 73 victims of Cubana Flight 455. Each photo is a vivid reminder that it was not the biggest blow yet against Castro but instead one flagrant reason that Castro is preferable on the island to those responsible for such horrific acts of terrorism. As to whether there were no innocents on that airplane, the consensus of world opinion is that all 73 were innocents.

        Beginning in 1959 at the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, the U. S. began training hundreds of the most zealous anti-Castro Cuban-born exiles, such as Posada Carriles. Decades later, in a famous interview by the omnipresent Ann Louise Bardach for the New York Times, Posada Carriles lavishly praised the U. S. government for its training in explosives and for additional financial support from entities such as Jorge Mas Canosa's super-powerful Cuban American National Foundation.

To this day Posada Carriles is a well-protected and heralded citizen of Miami.

      Around the world, including in nations that are America's best friends, U. S. - based terrorism against Cuba is considered shameful. The Cuban girl and Cuban woman featured in the above poster behind an image of Posada Carriles had just been told at Jose Marti Airport in Havana that their loved ones would not be returning on Cubana Flight 455. So, why does the U. S. State Department get away with listing Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism as opposed to a victim of terrorism? Many, including America's best friends around the world, believe the answer is: Cuba is a little island and the United States is the world's superpower.

      Jim DeFede was the top columnist at the Miami Herald. Then he very bravely wrote a famous column pointing out that terrorism against Cuba was the same as terrorism against America, England, or any other country. In that article DeFede excoriated Cuban-born U. S. members of Congress from Miami -- specifically Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart -- for their incredible support of well-known Miami terrorists. DeFede, of course, didn't remain at the Miami Herald very long after that article was published.

However, Jim DeFede remains a highly respected journalist on CBS-4 television in Miami.

      Cuban-exile Emilio Millan was the top journalist in Miami in 1976 when he used his newscast to criticize Miami-based terrorism against Cuba. When he turned the ignition in his car {above}, the car exploded.

      The Cuban lady speaking at the podium above is Nancy Pavon. Nancy has one leg. The other one was blown off when she was 15-years-old as she slept in a coastal cabin in her fishing village of Boca de Sama. Two huge speed boats with cannon anchored on tripods blasted the cabin, killing Nancy's parents, wounding her younger sister and "slicing off my leg as if it was cut by a machete." As the speedboats returned to Miami, the media was informed so their triumphant return could be registered by TV-Radio and newspaper coverage. In the speech above Nancy Pavon thanked the Cuban government for treating her injured leg "all these decades" while she also suggested that "the U. S. taxpayers are the ones who paid for those bullets and they are the ones who should be paying for my injury." 

        Jose Basulto, shown above promoting his book, is one of Miami's most famous Cuban-born exiles. He has bragged about being back in Cuba in April of 1961 committing sabotage as a prelude to the U. S./Cuban-exile Bay of Pigs attack. Basulto says he was caught by surprise when the U. S. airplanes began bombing the island, so he scrambled over the fence at the U. S. Guantanamo Naval Base. Basulto is also one of many Cuban exiles who have successfully sued Cuba in U. S. courtrooms in which Cuba is never represented. And, yes, the U. S. government has followed up with the awarded money, usually claiming its from "frozen Cuban assets" such as money from Cuba's percentage of telephone calls to the island. It should be noted, I think, that such lawsuits are "lawful" in U. S. courtrooms only because the U. S. State Department lists Cuba as "a sponsor of terrorism." So, do you think that is a prime reason the U. S. State Department lists Cuba as a "sponsor of terrorism?" Of course, if you are politically correct you are supposed to firmly answer that question this way: "Ahhh, NO! No way!" Thank you, for being politically, if not truthfully, correct.

      Thus, beginning in January of 1959, signs like the one above began to be posted block-by-block all over the island. Thanks to Celia Sanchez and Vilma Espin, each block had Cuban citizens as integral parts of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Their prime task was not to defend the island from foreign attack but to defend the children on each block from domestic or foreign harm. Because of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, children on the island of Cuba, to this day, are considered [by UN observers as well as American journalists stationed on the island] as perhaps the safest children on the planet. No longer is violence a part of their everyday lives on the sovereign island of Cuba. 

        Repetitious murders of children to quell dissent in Batista's Cuba instead spawned history's first revolution created by outraged women. The brave march depicted above was to loudly protest the torture-murders of little Willie Soler and his three schoolmates. The four bodies were left in a vacant warehouse. The lady bravely carrying the sign in the above photo helped inspire what became The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. So the death of her son was "not in vain" as she later stated.

       From 1959 till today, the Federation of Cuban Women has been a powerful force on the island of Cuba. It's purpose is to mandate the welfare of women and children, an idea spawned by the treatment of women and children during the Batista dictatorship. Revolutionary Cuban women defeated the Mafia in defense of their children.

     Vilma Espin will be remembered as long as the Cuban Revolution is remembered. She was President of the Cuban Federation of Women from 1959 till her death in 2007. No one on the island, including her husband Raul Castro, ever over-ruled her. ["Unidas Por La Patria" means "United for the Motherland."

      The two female guerrilla fighters shown above -- the stoic Celia Sanchez is typically the studious one while the effervescent Vilma Espin is the cheerful one -- earned their right to replace Batista, Luciano, Lansky, and Trafficante Jr. as the prime decision-makers on the island of Cuba. Celia Sanchez had the following quotation to explain how and why the Cuban Revolution shocked the world with its triumph over the Batista dictatorship: "In the end it came down to...for us leaders it was do-or-die and for their leaders it was do-and-run."  If that quotation does not define the Cuban Revolution, then surely this one, also from Celia Sanchez, does: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives."

       The Cuban Revolution also stands tall as the only revolution in which audacious women were at the very forefront as prime guerrilla fighters. That includes the two warriors -- Haydee Santamaria and Celia Sanchez -- pictured above. As smart as Luciano, Lansky, Trafficante, and Batista supposedly were, they ignorantly and needlessly ignited the firestorm in half the Cuban population, the female half. Haydee, for example, was tied to a chair and forced to watch the torture-murders of her brother and fiance, and then their warm testicles and eyeballs were rubbed over her chest. Celia was transformed from an angelic doctor's daughter into a fierce fighter and leader after the legal rape-murder of a ten-year-old girl, Maria Ochoa, that she adored. Except for such atrocities, Batista would never have been overthrown. Dutifully study the faces of the two female guerrilla fighters above. Now you can understand the Cuban Revolution.

      Tete Puebla, now a General in the Cuban Army, had just become a teenager when the infamous Masferrer Tigers came to her village and burned alive some of her relatives and friends in locked gunny sacks and sheds. By the time she was in her mid-teens, Tete was a ferocious guerrilla fighter in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. The Batista-Lansky-Masferrer brutality had created a hard-to-handle female warrior.

       This past summer Linda Pressly [above], a top producer at the BBC in London, contacted me because she was doing a documentary on Celia Sanchez. We exchanged about ten emails and five London-to-Virginia phone calls. Linda told me she was going to Cuba to finish her Celia Sanchez investigation and asked me who I would suggest she talk to. I gave her several names, most notably General Tete Puebla.

      General Tete Puebla graciously consented to discuss her memories of Celia Sanchez with the BBC's Linda Pressly. To this day, General Puebla stands ready to fight the Batistianos, the Mafia, the Masferror Tigers, or any other threat to Revolutionary Cuba. My point is: The biggest mistake the U. S., the Batistianos, and the Mafia made back in the 1950s was not in angering a young lawyer named Fidel Castro. It was in outraging young Cuban females such as Celia Sanchez, Haydee Santamaria, and Tete Puebla. Fidel Castro's enormous legend is based on the fact he was smart enough to exploit and build on that outrage.

            The second biggest mistake the United States ever made concerning the Cuban Revolution was in permitting the fleeing Batistiano and Mafioso leaders, complete with planeloads and shiploads of ill-gotten money, to reconstitute the Batista dictatorship on U. S. soil. The above photo shows the Masferrer brothers flanking the pistol-toting Rafael Diaz-Balart at a political rally in Batista's Cuba in 1958. Beginning in January of 1959, all three of these men were among the first to form paramilitary units in South Florida that hit back viciously at Revolutionary Cuba from U. S. soil. The late Rafael Diaz-Balart, one of South Florida's richest men, passed along his anti-Castro zeal to his four sons -- one a internationally known broadcaster, another a well-off banker-investor, and two -- Lincoln and Mario -- as members of the U. S. Congress from their safe district in Miami. (Mirta Diaz-Balart, Rafael's sister, married Fidel Castro in 1948 and till this day visits Fidel and their son in Havana, where she has a home). In the unique case of the Cuban Revolution, the losers have mostly written the history of that historic event. Thus, for the most part, Americans believe to this day that the Batista supporters were Mother Teresa-like angels and Pope Benedict-like saints while the Castro supporters were greedy fiends. That, of course, is a distortion of both history and topicality. If you disagree with that, why not do what the BBC's Linda Pressly did? Linda flew to Cuba and talked with General Tete Puebla. Tete is a first-hand expert on angels, saints, and...fiends.

     Irish-American author T. J. English graphically described "How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost It to the Revolution" in his best-seller "Havana Nocturne." It is a worthwhile, beautifully written book about the darkness of pre-revolutionary Havana that most authors ignore and most Americans are unaware of.

      Ann Louise Bardach, in books such as "Cuba Confidential," skillfully and truthfully chronicled the Cuban Revolution, including its gigantic Mafia connotations. To not know Ms. Bardach's journalistic work is to not know the Cuban Revolution or Revolutionary Cuba. And most Americans do not know Ann Louise Bardach.

        Ann Louise Bardach -- in countless essays and articles in numerous well-known venues -- also has honestly presented, in depth, both sides of a two-sided story. That, of course, makes Ann Louise  Bardach somewhat unique within the realm of the usually distorted U.S.-Cuban cauldron.

       From the History Channel one can readily purchase "Godfathers of Havana." It is an excellent and gripping documentary that depicts the sheer brutality and startling thievery of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in the 1950s, graphically explaining and showing why a revolution was both necessary and in its burgeoning infancy by 1953. It shows huge drug-loaded ships in Havana harbor and starving Cuban mothers trying to nurse infants. That dichotomy explains much of the bitter conflicts that followed.

       While the majority of Cuban peasant families were actually suffering from hunger and brutality back in the 1950s, as vividly depicted in the History Channel documentary Godfathers of Havana, Meyer Lansky's family [above] was one of the richest in North America, reportedly worth as much as $600 million in 1950s money. Such untaxed fortunes can be passed along to many generations.

          By the mid-1950s Latin American magazines were reporting that the top twenty-one officials in Cuba's Batista dictatorship each had in excess of $1 million in numbered Swiss bank accounts, with millions more sent to Miami and Union City banks or invested in various legal enterprises. As the rebels stormed from Santa Clara toward Havana, at least five planes and seven ships loaded with more loot were bolting for safer havens. Much of that money overwhelmed areas such as Miami and Union City on U. S. soil where the proud American democracy was more and more becoming susceptible to being purchased by wealthy special interests. Immoral, greedy ventures related to Cuba have greatly harmed the U. S. democracy.

      The above "Life Magazine" photo shows Meyer Lansky, accompanied by an elitist socialite, leaving the Rivieria Hotel with a satchel containing his one-night take from one of his famed casinos. The satchel contained $200,000 in cash. How do we know that? Well, at that point in Batista's Cuba he felt confident enough to show and to brag to "Life Magazine" about his Cuban piggy-bank. As illustrated in the aforementioned "The Godfather" movie, Lansky once told his friend Fulgencio Batista he already had plenty of money but he "wanted to own his own country." Batista obliged him. Their ownership of Cuba would never have been threatened --  not with their dictatorship supported by the strongest nation in the world -- except for their unnecessary brutality directed at the island's peasant women and children. That motivation provided Fidel Castro the wherewithal to overthrow Batista and to survive the Bay of Pigs attack as well as what the "Guinness Book of World Records" says is 638 assassination attempts. It also enabled him to enjoy a half-century [and counting] of revolutionary rule in Cuba and to produce a soon-to-be Fidel Castro legacy that will continue to spark the ire of the Batistianos, the Mafia, and American right-wingers. That money satchel in Lansky's hands helped create the need for a Fidel Castro in Cuba.

       It is interesting to note, I think, that Mafia kingpins took excellent care of their own families even as they wreaked havoc on others. The above photo shows Meyer Lansky and his daughter Sandi on a happy vacation in Israel. Sandi today is 74-years-old. She lives very quietly and quite decently in Florida.

       The Enrique Cirules book "The Mafia in Havana: A Caribbean Mob Story" is an excellent source to learn about how the Mafia impregnated and then birthed the historic Cuban Revolution.

      My abiding interest in the daunting nexus between the American Mafia and the Cuban Revolution is viewed through the prism of the U. S. democracy. Its impact is one reason I believe the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba say a lot more about the United States than they say about Cuba. Cuba, after all, is a little island; the United States, after all, is the world economic and military superpower that once was also the most beloved nation in the world because it spread more goodwill around the globe than any other nation. Then came the 1950s when the United States began massively supporting ruthless right-wing dictatorships; in some cases {Congo, Chile, Iran, etc.} fledgling democracies were overthrown to install brutal U. S. - friendly dictatorships. The Cuban Revolution is unique because it is the only popular revolution to overthrow a U. S. - backed dictatorship, the only one to defeat an offensive U. S. military attack (the Bay of Pigs), the only one to survive in the midst of history's longest embargo ever employed by a powerful nation against a weak one, and the Cuban Revolution as well as Revolutionary Cuba uniquely constitute the only revolution and the only nation forced to confront the United States when the world superpower was aligned with the Mafia in its imperialist objectives. With all that being said, the biggest impact of the Cuban Revolution on the U. S. has been, since 1959, the reconstitution of Cuba's Batista-Mafia dictatorship on U. S. soil. Summary: It is self-evident that the United States support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba, exacerbated by the reconstitution of that overthrown dictatorship on American soil, has created a catastrophic cataclysm of misfortune and upheaval for the U. S. democracy.  

    The greatest weakness of the U. S. democracy, I believe, is embodied by the last two generations of Americans who clearly have not been patriotic enough, intelligent enough, or brave enough to ask questions...such as: Why did the U. S. free Lucky Luciano from Prison? Why did the U. S. align itself with the Mafia to support the Batista dictatorship in Cuba? Why did the U. S. government revive the totally de-horned Italian-Sicilian Mafia at the end of World War II? Why were leaders of the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship allowed immediately (and it seems eternally) to reconstitute themselves on U. S. soil? Why, as superb Miami journalist Jim DeFede famously asked, does the U. S. denounce terrorism in all its forms except when terrorism is directed at innocent Cuban civilians? Etc., etc., etc.? In a future essay in this forum entitled "The Cuban Revolution and the United Fruit Company," I will endeavor to further answer those questions. In the meantime, I suggest you seek the answers yourself by, for example, Googling any of the aforementioned names or phrases mentioned herein and then forming your own opinions. But even if such investigative work inspires you to form your own opinions, the Mafia hopes you will continue to..."ask no questions." For example, don't ask: "Since the 1950s Cuba's mortal enemy has been the Mafia and Fidel Castro's mortal enemy has been the Mafia. And when it comes to Cuba, the Mafia's best friend has been the U. S. government. Now...is there something wrong with that picture that, for over half a century, remains the primary portrait of the Cuban Revolution in America?????" "HEY! NO QUESTIONS, REMEMBER?" "Uhhhh, sorry."

And don't forget...Cardinals and other wild birds need help with seeds in these cold winter months.

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