Cuba and Vietnam

So Similar, So Different!
{Monday, April 10th, 2017}

       Often on this Cubaninsider blog I've excoriated America's television networks, including CNN, for evolving primarily into propaganda machines instead of the responsible news outlets they certainly have the resources and wherewithal to be. Networks like MSNBC, for example, spend 24 hours-a-day with anchors such as O'Donnell, Maddow, and Hayes trying desperately to destroy the Trump presidency instead of even making an effort to deliver the news. During daytime and prime-time hours with anchors such as Harlow, Burnett, Cooper, Lemon, etc., CNN is no better than MSNBC. Yet, CNN is still the network to watch, at least between 3:00 A. M. and 6:00 A. M. That's when CNN actually covers the news with a brilliant array of reporters, such as the world's best war correspondent Arwa Damon. Last weekend -- Saturday, April 8th, 2017 -- CNN exposed Arwa's importance and brilliance in prime-time with her one-hour documentary entitled "Return to Mosul." It was...is...a brilliant example of broadcast journalism at its finest.

       For years Arwa Damon has reported for CNN from the most dangerous war zones in the world, wars that are drastically significant to the U. S. and other powers who routinely provide ultra-modern weapons to foreign elements that fight seemingly unending proxy wars, such as the Civil War in Syria that, in recent years, has killed about a half-million civilians and flooded many countries with frightened refugees. For the most part, CNN only airs Arwa's superb and important reports only in the 3-to-6-AM period, otherwise mocking broadcast journalism with endless streams of propaganda pundits. But Arwa's documentary "Return to Mosul" in prime-time Saturday was a fantastic exception for American broadcast journalism.

      The image above illustrated one of the many emotional segments in "Return to Mosul" for Arwa Damon and her viewers. She has spent so much time reporting from ongoing war-torn hellholes like Mosul in Iraq that she speaks the native languages fluently. Beyond that, she has bonded with the civilians who, as always, suffer the most from such ungodly conflicts. The newly born Mosul baby that Arwa is holding is named "Arwa" after Arwa. That illustrates the enormous respect the besieged citizens of Mosul have for Arwa because, more than anyone else, she has reported their plight to the rest of the world. In the very Mosul house where this baby was born, Arwa recently spent 28 hours direly threatened, along with the Iraqi civilians and their out-gunned Iraqi defenders who were trying desperately to ward off a blistering ISIS attack on the home. Upon her "Return to Mosul" the fearless and dedicated Arwa was showered with appreciation via hugs and kisses...and a baby named for her. Americans should appreciate Arwa too. 

       Instead of being normally relegated to the 3-to-6 A. M. time-slot, CNN's most brilliant and most important broadcast journalist, Arwa Damon, should be featured and highlighted in prime-time every night. That would make amends for America's broadcast journalism that highlights an endless stream of propaganda-spewing pundits, which is an insult to Americans, to Democracy and to journalism.

       Saturday -- April 8th, 2017 -- in prime-time on CNN, right after the superb documentary "Return to Mosul" that featured Arwa Damon, the "Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown" documentary series kicked off its 8th season. Mr. Bourdain returned to his favorite place -- Communist Vietnam -- to host his superb season opener from Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital that now is home to 8 million nice and U.S.-friendly people.

        As it happened, U. S. President Barack Obama was in Vietnam when Anthony Bourdain and his CNN crew got there, so they shared on camera some beer, a nice meal and an interesting conversation. Mr. Obama mentioned how important it was to become friends with "former enemies." Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, of course, had also paid a loving visit to Communist Vietnam. Vietnam is, after all, now a major U. S. trading partner. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, right after overthrowing imperialist France in a bloody war, Vietnam was faced with a far bloodier and longer war when the U. S. sought a regime-change in the distant country. The superpower U. S. discovered, as had the French, that military superiority on foreign soil was no match for people willing to die to defend their sovereignty.

         And so, a united Vietnam in 2017 is a Communist country but also very sovereign and very prosperous...and one beloved by U. S. Presidents such as Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama. The photo above from "Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown" shows Obama with a Vietnamese lady who is now an expert chef. Like many Vietnamese women today who are extremely U.S.-friendly, back in the 1960s and 1970s this woman was a fierce "Vietcong" fighter vilified in the U. S.

      This photo was taken from the ABC-TV documentary entitled "How Women Won the Vietnam War." Vietnamese women like these, unknown to most Americans, were the primary and decisive fighters throughout the Vietnam War, something the Vietnam War had in common with Cuba's Revolutionary War.

A typical "Vietcong" female soldier.

This woman captured a U.S.-armed South Vietnamese soldier.
She also took his U. S. rifle, which gave her two.

"Vietcong" female with captured U. S. soldier, 1966.

This "Vietcong girl" captured this downed U. S. pilot.

A do-or-die "Vietcong" female soldier.

A captured "Vietcong" soldier with his child.

"Vietcong" soldier brutalized by U.S.-backed soldiers.

Beheaded "Vietcong" male soldier displayed.

       But the main "Vietcong" soldiers that determined the outcome of the Vietnam War were females like the two shown above. Those who survived are like the women who so warmly hosted Presidents Bush and Obama in modern-day Communist Vietnam, and who hosted Anthony Bourdain and his "CNN Parts Unknown" season-opening documentary Saturday, April 8th, 2017. This photo reminds me of Cuba's Revolutionary War in the 1950s that preceded the 1960s Vietnam War that featured these two female "Vietcong" soldiers.

      During the Vietnam War, broadcast journalism in the U. S. was so superbly respected that once the great Walter Cronkite indicated that the "bloody experience" should end, it quickly ended...and so did the Presidency of "LBJ" because President Johnson was blamed by Cronkite for prolonging it. However, Mr. Cronkite has died and so, for the most part, has America's respect for broadcast journalism. That, of course, direly hurts America and, as an offshoot, threatens Cuba because there is today no mainstream broadcaster in America that has the guts to report fairly on U.S.-Cuban-Batistiano relations.

         It was not the U. S. government that decided the Vietnam War should end, it was a great broadcaster named Walter Cronkite and caring U. S. protests led by key Americans like Dr. Benjamin Spock and Martin Luther King who declared that the Vietnam War should end. Too bad, I guess, that the likes of Cronkite, Spock and King have not injected themselves into ending America's Cuban policies -- the embargo, the occupation of Guantanamo Bay, etc. -- that currently have a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. 

       Cuba's do-or-die female guerrilla fighters like Celia Sanchez and Haydee Santamaria were the primary architects, recruiters and warriors that predicated the victory for the Cuban Revolution in 1959 against superior forces backed by the strongest nation in the world, the United States, and by the strongest criminal organization in the world, the Mafia. The aforementioned ABC-TV and CNN documentaries in hindsight acknowledged the leading role Vietnamese women played in winning the Vietnam War and confirmed that a united Communist Vietnam is today a top U. S. trading partner and a key American ally and success story. Also, the female "Vietcong" fighters are no longer labeled anti-American fiends. But by sharp contrast, the United States media to this day is too afraid, too politically correct or too biased to acknowledge the greatness and decency of Cuban warriors like Celia and Haydee or to fairly judge the very decent generation of Cuban women on the island today who have similar values. Of course, the difference between the island of Cuba and Communist Vietnam today is simply this: No brutal Vietnamese dictatorship was overthrow by a popular revolution and then allowed to regroup on American soil.

       This recent photo is also pertinent. It shows a present-day Cuban female leader signing a major agreement with a present-day female Vietnamese leader. Cuba and Vietnam are close friends today; in fact, Cuba today has just one enemy and that happens to be the nearby world superpower that allows a few revengeful Cuban-Americans to dictate its Cuban policy. Thus, Cuba has been under the dire restraints of a U. S. economic embargo since 1962 while Communist Vietnam is today a major U. S. ally and trading partner. To repeat, the difference is the fact that, since 1959, remnants of the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba have been permitted to dictate America's Cuban narrative and Cuban policies. Vietnam today, of course, dictates its own narrative and policies thanks to its back-to-back victories in bloody wars against France and the United States. As the updated photo above shows, Cuba today is trying to emulate the prosperous Vietnam economic system but, as always, the Batistiano-influenced U. S. Cuban policy fiercely fights Revolutionary Cuba's ongoing efforts to remain sovereign and to prosper.

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A Cuban Policy FOR CRIMINALS

From 1952 TILL TODAY!
{Friday, April 8th, 2016}

        From the very top Mafia kingpin Lucky Luciano in 1952 till Silvio Clark Morales this Thursday -- April 6th of 2017 -- the United States policy regarding Cuba has been predicated largely in the best interest of civilian and political criminals. If you deny that, you conveniently perhaps have ignored Thursday's front pages of the Miami Herald and USA Today. The photo above is used courtesy of Univision and it was used Thursday to illustrate the major article in the Miami Herald. The article was written by Nora Gamez Torres and is entitled: "ALLEGED CUBAN SMUGGLER PLEADS GUILTY TO SEX TRAFFICKING." Don't read it if you want to keep your head in the sand about Miami's becoming a world-class criminal bastion since 1959 when it became the top destination for the leaders of Cuba's Batista-Mafia dictatorship after it was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution. But, for what it's worth, here are the exact opening words of the article:

                     "From high school teacher to pimp and human smuggler. This was the premise involving a Cuban resident in Miami accused of illegally bringing women from the island and forcing them into sex slavery in the United States. Silvio Clark Morales, 31, plead guilty in federal court Thursday to 7 of the 9 charges against him. Facing a maximum sentence of life in prison, Morales agreed to a plea deal and is now looking at a possible 30-year prison sentence. With his head down and tears streaming down his face, Morales..." 

          The school teacher, Morales, had no criminal record but, being a Cuban-American in Miami, he apparently realized he could easily and quickly become rich in a criminal enterprise AND FACE NO CONSEQUENCES. The criminal enterprise he chose was trafficking Cuban girls and women from the island to Miami because, after all, he seemed to realize that two generations of the richest and most powerful Cuban-Americans with ties back to the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba ruled not only Miami but, after a nice alliance with the Bush dynasty, also the U. S. Congress and Washington when it related to Cuban issues. This week Mr. Morales discovered that, after all, there indeed were some consequences even in Miami, perhaps because one of the final Executive Orders outgoing President Barack Obama issued last December was to end, at least temporarily, the Batistiano-loving U. S. law known as Wet Foot-Dry Foot.

         After the air, land and sea Bay of Pigs military attack on Cuba in April of 1961 was famously defeated by Revolutionary Cuba, and after numerous CIA-Cuban exile attempts to kill Fidel Castro failed, powerful Cuban-Americans in Miami -- aligned with self-serving right-wing politicians -- discovered they could easily enact laws in the U. S. Congress to destroy Revolutionary Cuba and recapture the island. One such law, of course, was the 1962 Economic Embargo that, according to declassified U. S. documents, was designed to starve & deprive Cubans on the island for the purpose of inducing them to overthrow their government; it is an embargo that exists to this day because Cuban-American extremists continue to dictate Cuban laws in the U. S. Congress, laws that currently have a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations but laws that two generations of unpatriotic Americans pusillanimously allow. Another such law, enacted in 1966, was the Cuban Adjustment Act that, like all the others, was designed to destroy Cuba but to also enrich and empower a handful of extremist Cuban-Americans who were mostly in Miami and mostly aligned with the Bush dynasty. Gradually after 1966 the Cuban Adjustment Act was revised with more and more insanely discriminatory anti-Cuban and pro-Cuban American laws, with the Wet Foot-Dry Foot colossal added in 1995.

       
        The infamous, discriminatory and undemocratic Wet Foot-Dry Foot law was designed to entice Cubans off the island to hurt Cuba and to help enrich and empower the most extremist Cuban-Americans in Miami. It allowed Cubans -- AND ONLY CUBANS -- to be home free the moment their front foot touched U. S. soil. The gross enticement called for special privileges only for Cubans such as instant legal residence, financial benefits and an easy path to citizenship. By then, the intimidated and propagandized American people were too afraid or simply too unpatriotic to care about how harmful such Cuban-only U. S. laws were to the image of America and democracy worldwide, such as demonstrated by the current 191-to-0 denunciation in the United Nations of America's Cuban policy. Of all the U. S. presidents since the 1950s, only President Obama had the sheer guts to challenge the Batistiano dictation of America's laws related to Cuba.

       On Dec. 12-2016 -- just days before his two-terms ended -- President Obama signed an Executive Order that ended Wet Foot-Dry Foot. By overturning the extremely discriminatory law, President Obama made it tougher on Cuban-American criminals in Miami AS REFLECTED by the aforementioned major article in Thursday's Miami Herald related to the human trafficker Silvio Clark Morales convicted of luring Cuban girls and women to Miami as "sex slaves." Sex traffickers, of course, loved Wet Foot-Dry Foot and it spawned more. Of course, even as Miami residents this week were devouring that article, the Miami Cuban-American members of the U. S. Congress -- Rubio, Diaz-Balart, Curbelo and Ros-Lehtinen -- were busy trying to get President Trump to issue Executive Orders of his own that would overturn Obama's sane and decent Executive Orders related to Cuba, and the pressuring of Trump remains an ongoing proposition.

      The photo depicting the basket full of cash is courtesy of USA Today and the South Florida Tri-County Task Force. It was used this week -- April 6th, 2017 -- to illustrate the TOP #1 article that blared across the FRONT PAGE of USA Today, America's largest newspaper. The article is entitled: "Greetings from Doral, Florida: The Cash Machine Fueling the Drug Trade." Doral is a suburb on the western edge of Miami. The article that started on the Front Page of Thursday's USA Today continued on to take up an entire full page, explaining in depth that the Miami area fuels the nationwide, devastating drug trade in the United States. It uses such bold sub-titles as: "And Not One Arrest." Of course not!! We're talking Miami here and, since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1-1959, Miami has been a wealthy and out-of-control Banana Republic on U. S. soil. Famed documentaries such as "Cocaine Cowboys" have documented that the extremely impressive Miami skyline was largely built with tons of drug money following the Cuban Revolution-fueled transition of South Florida. Numerous USA Today articles have labeled Miami as the "epicenter" for America's drug trade, illicit pill factories, the gross fleecing of billion-dollar tax supported entities such as Medicare, etc., etc. And then yesterday the aforementioned huge article that starts across the Front Page of USA Today merely updates the decades-old criminal activity centered around Miami that affects the entire nation. 

        Doral is a suburb on the edge of Miami, Florida. The top Front Page article in USA Today Thursday -- for what it's worth -- highlighted Doral as "THE CASH MACHINE FUELING THE DRUG TRADE." On the last page of that huge article was this glaring sub-headline: "AND NOT ONE ARREST." So I repeat: of course not.

      The Mayor of Doral on the edge of Miami is Juan Carlos Bermudez. He was asked by USA Today to comment on Thursday's scathing article about his city. His blocked-off reply was: "It's not good for Florida. It's not good for Doral. It's not representative of the majority of the businesses we have here." Wikipedia reveals that at the start of this 21st Century, Spanish was by far the first language in Doral -- by a 74.5 percent margin to 16.15 percent for English. I have no problem with that but I do have a problem with polls that show that most of South Florida's two million Cuban-Americans favor former President Obama's decent policies regarding Cuba but it seems that such moderates can't get elected to local or national offices despite being in a clear majority. Yet...Miami-Doral remains on U. S. soil; BUT SO, I GUESS, DOES GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA. Thus, I wonder if USA Today will ever have a Front Page article depicting what Miami-Doral and Guantanamo Bay have in common. Uh, just wondering...you understand.

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Lying About Cuba Harms America

To Benefit A Nefarious Few!

       Americans are not supposed to see or understand photos such as this one because it's a Cuban positive in April of 2017 and therefore might serve to contradict the Cuban narrative in the United States, a narrative self-servingly dictated since 1959 by elements that fled the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba. But permit me to show you this photo, taken by Miguel Febles Hernandez, and explain its meaning. In the forefront are a Cuban mother and her daughter. They had just had check-ups...health care in Cuba is totally free...at a brand new, just-opened polyclinic shown in the background. The clinic is named for "Rosa Castellanos," which is fitting because the Cuban Revolution was spawned in 1953 by Cuban females outraged by the Batista-Mafia treatment of the island's besieged women and children. The "Rosa Castellanos Clinic" is located in the municipality of Najasa to serve its citizens free of charge 24 hours a day. I mention it not because it is earth-shaking news outside of today's Cuba but because propagandized Americans, since 1959, have meekly and callously allowed miscreants from their soil to...attack Cuba militarily such as at the Bay of Pigs; to sanitize themselves and vilify innocent Cubans; to attack Cuba with terrorist acts such as the bombing of the civilian Cubana Flight 455; to car-bomb a Cuban-American newsman named Emilio Milian in Miami just because he objected to such things; and to try to starve and deprive Cuba from 1962 till today with the cruelest and longest economic embargo ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak one. Much larger nations than Cuba would have succumbed long ago to such assaults engineered by unchecked counter-revolutionaries hiding behind the skirts of the world's superpower. One reason Revolutionary Cuba still stands as a sovereign nation is because it still has on the island a bevy of fiercely determined and very talented women...such as Isabel Gonzalez Cardenas. 

       One of the Cuban officials who presided over the opening of the Rosa Castellanos Clinic was Isabel Gonzalez Cardenas. She is the President of the Provincial Assembly in Camaguey, Cuba. At the clinic's opening ceremony she said, "Now and forever we will do all we can with all the resources we have to take care of our people, especially the women and children who are the best gauge of how a society cares for its citizens. This new clinic is an example. We have been assaulted and embargoed for over half-a-century from a nearby nation that happens to be the world's superpower, but as long as we can breathe on this island we will continue the best we can to try to protect our people far better than they fared when the superpower and the Miami Mafia criminals ruled Cuba on the island just as they are now trying to rule it from the United States." 

        A handful of vicious Cuban-Americans from Miami entrenched in the U. S. Congress -- such as Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart -- dictate America's Cuban policy that currently and correctly has a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. The cowered and/or incompetent U. S. media will eagerly promote anything Rubio and Diaz-Balart say or propose about Cuba, without ever mentioning such things as...Diaz-Balart's father was a powerful Minister in the Batista dictatorship and after 1959 an extremely rich and powerful counter-revolutionary zealot in Miami. Rubio, as any Google research will confirm, is every bit as controversial as Diaz-Balart within the confines of Miami's Banana Republic-like politics, controversies the mainstream media wouldn't dare touch. All polls show that most of the two million Cuban-Americans in South Florida favor a decent Cuban policy but there seems to be zero chance that a moderate Cuban from the rich Banana Republic could get elected to the United States Congress. In the last few days Rubio made headlines by bragging he had met "three times" with President Trump about Cuba, three ominous meetings that are far more insulting to the United States than to Cuba, which as Isabel indicated is still breathing. And in the last few days, Diaz-Balart has made headlines by demanding that Cuba, essentially, totally capitulate to his dictates "WITHIN 90 DAYS" or else!! Yes, OR ELSE. Cuba has been getting or else dictates from the rich, powerful & unchallenged Diaz-Balarts since 1959. 

       Meanwhile, on the island of Cuba itself, women like Isabel Gonzalez Cardenas are diligently working to protect and improve the lives of Cuban citizens, especially the women and children that she says "are the best gauge of how a society takes care of its people." Isabel deserves to smile and be proud of herself.

Batista's Cuba in the 1950's.

Isabel's Cuba in April of 2017.

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Cuba in Trump's Crosshairs

A Great Floridian Is Worried!!
{Wednesday, April 5th, 2017}

    This week -- April 3rd, 2017 -- CBS News blared this major headline: "Florida Congresswoman Worried Trump Administration May Reverse Obama Policy on Cuba." That bold, astute, caring Congresswoman, of course, is Kathy Castor. Ms. Castor is by far the best and the bravest Florida member of the United States Congress since the Batista-Mafia Banana Republic in Cuba was chased to its new stronghold in Miami by the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. Ms. Castor was born in Miami 50 years ago but has represented the Tampa-St. Petersburg area in the United States Congress since 2007. She has been the only member of Congress from Florida since 1959 to have the decency, the guts and the respect for America and Democracy to fight for a sane Cuban policy, not one dictated by the most vicious remnants of Cuba's brutal, thieving Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Congresswoman Castor told CBS News this week: "There are some real hardliners that are pressing to roll back the progress that we have made on Cuban engagement. I'm hopeful the Trump administration will not do that and they're also hearing comments from Chambers of Commerce, families, and entrepreneurs that are growing businesses in Cuba. Why would we go backwards...when for the first time in 50 years we're seeing business on both sides of the Florida Straits grow?"

       The sheer decency and sanity of Congresswoman Kathy Castor regarding Cuba is generally ignored by the mainstream U. S. media that is simply too afraid and too incompetent to depart from the Cuban narrative espoused by only the most ardent revenge-seekers against the Cuban Revolution. So CBS by merely quoting Kathy Castor is a rare display of guts and fairness from the mainstream U. S. media.

     In 2016 when President Obama himself traveled to Cuba and was very engaged in a bold series of Executive Orders regarding Cuba, Congresswoman Castor was on the island to encourage the President and to do her job representing the best interests of her constituents in the Tampa area, especially U. S. businesses desiring commerce with Cuba. As noted, she remains the only Florida member of Congress with the decency and the courage to be ashamed about a Batistiano-driven U. S. Cuban policy that properly gets a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. This week Ms. Castor told CBS that an American Cuban policy dictated only by biased extremists both shames and harms America, not to mention 11 million totally innocent Cubans on the island. She told CBS April 3rd, "I know they {the extremists} argue that nothing has changed in Cuba, but to the contrary, a lot is changing in Cuba. Young entrepreneurs are building businesses on the island. What we've got to do is lift the embargo...so we can build on the progress that we've made." 

        Last week two of the Cuban-American/Miami-based members of the U. S. Congress -- Mario Diaz-Balart and Marco Rubio -- made headlines with their typical Cuban extremism. Diaz-Balart, whose father was a key Minister in Cuba's Batista dictatorship, offered to trade his Republican vote on the Heath Bill if his Cuban dictates were adhered to by President Trump. Diaz-Balart wanted to give Cuba "90 days" to do his and the atrocious Helms-Burton bidding or...ELSE. That particular grossness by Diaz-Balart was so extreme that he was finally excoriated in a Miami Herald editorial written by the Miami Herald's most extreme anti-Castro, Cuban-born Editorial Writer Fabiola Santiago who blasted Diaz-Balart for...amazingly...using his anti-Cuban extremism to harm the thousands of Miami Cuban-Americans who were benefiting from the current Health Care bill that Diaz-Balart eagerly seemed willing to trade away if Trump would back his anti-Cuban extremism. Miami's Rubio is as extreme as Diaz-Balart when it comes to benefiting from anti-Cuban extremism. Rubio last week made headlines by bragging that he had met "three times" with Trump to expound on his anti-Cuban extremism, which demands that Cuba conform to his extreme dictates.

      A handful of Miami-based Cuban-American extremists...such as Rubio, Diaz-Balart, & Ros-Lehtinen in the United States Congress..are allowed to endlessly dictate America's Cuban narrative and Cuban policy because neither the U. S. citizens nor the U. S. media has the guts or the patriotism to challenge them.

       Havana-born Fabiola Santiago since 1980 has been the most consistently vicious anti-Castro reporter, columnist, and now editorial writer for the Miami Herald. When she of all people writes a scathing editorial criticizing Mario Diaz-Balart's anti-Cuban extremism in the U. S. Congress, I believe it is high-time for even timid Americans to realize that allowing the son of a former Batista Minister to make and promote extreme anti-Cuban decisions in the U. S. Congress is, to say the least, an insult to democracy and to America. 

       Miami-born Kathy Castor, who has represented Tampa in the U. S. Congress for the past decade, incredibly had her sane and decent views expressed April 3rd by a CBS News report. That was amazing and extraordinary because normally the mainstream U. S. media is too afraid and too incompetent to air anything other than the self-serving anti-Cuban extremism of the most extreme remnants of the extremely cruel Batista-Mafia dictatorship from 1950's Cuba. Most of the two million Cuban-Americans in South Florida, from Tampa on down to and including Miami, agree with Kathy Castor but there appears to be zero chance that such a moderate Cuban-American can get elected to the U. S. Congress. Meanwhile, Kathy Castor continues to wage a brave fight to infuse America's Cuban policy with some sanity and decency.

This photo is by and used courtesy of Dany del Pino.

        You see, Congresswoman Kathy Castor does not believe the United States of America should be engaged, decade after decade, in hurting precious, totally innocent Cuban children...such as these two...to sate the self-serving appetites of a few extremists. The current 191-to-0 condemnation of America and Americans in the United Nations stems solely from the fact that Americans have allowed this to happen...generation to generation. The little girl above is expressing a childish opinion to the little boy on their embargoed and besieged island but she is too young to understand that the embargo and the targeting is aimed at them from the richest and strongest nation in the world. But Congresswoman Kathy Castor from Tampa understands it...and one day this little Cuban girl and this little Cuban boy will too.

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Cuba's Mafia History Lingers

Still Topical Today!!
{Monday, April 3rd, 2017}

         On April 1st, 2017 The Economist -- founded in London 173 years ago and still one of the world's most respected media sources -- used the above photo to illustrate a major article about Cuba. It is entitled: "WHAT THE TOURIST INDUSTRY REVEALS ABOUT CUBA: Sun, Sand and Socialism." The intriguing and insightful first paragraph states:

                     "Few places are as naturally alluring as Cuba. The island is bathed in sunlight and lapped by warm blue waters. The people are friendly; the rum is light and crisp; the music is a delicious blend of African and Latin rhythms. And the biggest pool of free-spending holidaymakers in the western hemisphere is just a hop away. As Lucky Luciano, an American gangster, observed in 1946, 'The water was just as pretty as the Bay of Naples, but it was only 90 miles from the United States.'"

            Unlike the U. S. media, The Economist has the freedom to report fairly on Cuba and thus it can mention the island's Mafia past. Any serious update should make such a reference as a reminder of Cuba's U.S.-imposed Mafia history, which began in earnest with America's top gangster Lucky Luciano in 1946.

       YES, that Lucky Luciano -- "The man who organized crime in America" and then was sicced on Cuba in 1946 so rich U. S. businessmen and politicians could participate in the rape and robbery of the island.

       Lucky Luciano's arrival in Cuba in 1946 occurred after the United States government callously freed him from a 50-year prison term in New York -- supposedly because, as the supreme Mafia kingpin, he was needed to protect the U. S. from Hitler's Germany and to help the Allies win World War II. That somewhat questionable excuse to this day -- in April of 2017 -- still affects Cuba and its U. S. relations.

       The Mafia had eyed Cuba since the 1920's but its "massive criminal empire" in Cuba began to take shape in 1933 when Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky first aligned with Cuba's Fulgencio Batista. 

        But the most brutal, thieving Lucky Luciano-Meyer Lansky-Fulgencio Batista dictatorial plundering of Cuba began in 1952 when right-wingers high-up in U. S. President Eisenhower's administration, with no objection from U. S. citizens, supported the pillaging of Cuba so rich American businessmen could partake in the spoils. The wholesale thievery didn't spawn the do-or-die revolution but the extreme brutality did. 

        The murders of peasant children supposedly to quell resistance resulted in brave Cuban mothers mounting anti-Batista marches that fueled the revolution and emboldened a young lawyer named Fidel Castro. The Luciano-Lansky-Batista starvation of Cuban children also included totally neglecting their educational and health needs, dooming the Mafiosi rule even with the support it was receiving from U. S. businessmen and the U.  S. government. The lower-right photo reflects the fate of dissidents...at least till they were organized, first by the doctor's daughter Celia Sanchez and the young school-teacher Frank Pais and then, after the murders of Pais and his teenage brother Jesus, by Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro.

        The initial organized recruiting and resistance was led by guerrilla fighters Celia Sanchez and Haydee Santamaria, both of whom played key roles in Cuba after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution.  

       The Havana Mob operation in Havana was run by Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, with enormous kick-backs to Dictator Batista. But soon the gangsters in Cuba included other top U. S. Mafia leaders, such as Santo Trafficante. In 1959 many of these criminals and their loot landed back in the United States.

       All the top American Mafiosi who fleeced and brutalized Cuba beginning in 1952 fled the island in the wee hours of Jan. 1-1959 instead of hanging around to fight the advancing and outraged revolutionary rebels. Typically, the frightened criminals just returned to safer havens on nearby United States soil. The photo above shows Santo Trafficante Jr. with his talented lawyer Frank Ragano after Santo Jr. returned to Tampa, Florida where he and his father were the Mafia kingpins for decades. After fleeing Cuba, Santo Jr. typically was tied to numerous Mafia and CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. In fact, Ragano himself, just before he died of cancer, tied Santo Jr. and other Mobsters to assassination attempts against both Kennedy brothers -- President John and presidential-candidate Robert -- because the Mafiosi and Cuban exiles blamed the Kennedys for the failure to recapture Cuba during the Bay of Pigs attack in April, 1961.

       The above photo shows Trafficante Jr. in the center with Frank Ragano on his left and Carlos Marcello on his right. Marcello, who participated in and profited from the Mafiosi rule of Cuba, was the long-time Mafia kingpin of both New Orleans and Dallas; according to many sources, including their expert lawyer Ragano, Marcello was more obsessed with killing the Kennedys than with killing Fidel Castro.

Photo courtesy of Larry Warner.

      While the Cuban Revolution on Jan.1-1959 booted the Mafiosi and their supporters out of Cuba, the Mob leaders who simply returned to the U. S. lived out long and lucrative lives, such as Trafficante Jr. who died on March 17, 1987 of natural causes as a totally free man...like most of his criminal associates.

                Lucky Luciano -- the most powerful of all the Mafiosi kingpins in the U. S., Italy and poor little Cuba -- died of a heart attack {above} at the Naples Airport in Italy on Jan. 26-1962. His real name when he was born in Italy in 1897 was Salvatore Lucania. He was at the Naples Airport that fateful day to meet a producer interested in making a movie of Lucky's life, which he considered fitting for a criminal of his renown.

       Although he died at the Naples Airport in his native Italy, Lucky Luciano's body was flown back to the United States so he could have a massive funeral procession in New York City where his criminal career began. Then he was buried {above} in the huge tomb at St. John's Cemetery in Queens, New York City.

        This photo shows Lucky Luciano lounging happily in Havana in 1948 when he was in his heyday as the most powerful criminal in the world and as the all-time most powerful Mafia figure. So, on April 1st in 2017 when the London-based The Economist published an interesting update on today's Cuba, it was very appropriate for the article to include a prominent quote from Lucky himself about the island he once ruled.

      The April 1-2017 article in The Economist also reminded me of this photo. Outraged Cuban women -- like the three victorious guerrilla fighters shown above -- were keys to starting the Cuban Revolution and to finishing it. The sad-looking rebel on the left is Tete Puebla. By the time she was 15, Tete had carved out a reputation as a fearless guerrilla fighter against Batista's soldiers. In regards to this photo, Tete was later asked, "You had just arrived in Havana after chasing the Batistianos and Mafiosi off the island, so why did you look sad?" She replied, "Because we were hoping they would hang around Havana and fight us." 

      Today Tete Puebla is a General in the Cuban army. In April of 1961 she defended Revolutionary Cuba at the Bay of Pigs when the revengeful Cuban exiles -- backed by U. S. air, land and sea support -- attacked Revolutionary Cuba. If necessary, she will defend Cuba today with the ferocity she fought back then.

         And yes, to understand the torrid history of U.S.-Cuban relations, you need to know the massive role played by seedy American politicians as well as the most brutal and powerful Mafia kingpins, such as Lucky Luciano. That's why the April 1-2017 Cuban article in the The Economist appropriately included a Lucky Luciano quotation. The Economist, you see, understands that second generations of U.S.-based Batistianos & Mafiosi are just as determined to regain control of Cuba as Lucky and his pals were long, long ago.

America's top crime writer, T. J. English, knows Cuba.

And so, T. J. English knows........

"How the mob owned Cuba,

and then lost it to the Revolution."
But the Mob wants it back!!

Rich, powerful and very determined!

And little Cuba...is just across...the Florida Straits.

  

  And, uh................

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