The Havana-Miami Nexus

So Close, So Similar, So Different!

       This is the Saratoga Hotel in Havana. For six days this week it served as the home-base for the Royal Family of Morocco and their entourage. The Royals included King Mohammed VI, Princess Lalla Salma, Crown Prince Maulay Hassan and Princess Lalla Khadiza. They praised Cuba's "well-known warmth."

      After their six-day vacation in Cuba, this Saudi Arabian airplane flew Morocco's Royal Family to nearby Miami, Florida. It is not known why they used a Saudi Arabian plane instead of a Moroccan plane.

     Waiting to greet the Royal Family of Morocco at the huge and ultra-modern Miami International Airport was its Director Emilio Gonzalez. The Moroccan royals instantaneously were reminded that there is a vast disparity in wealth between Havana in Cuba and Little Havana in Miami. Havana is not overrun with billionaires, millionaires and ultra-modern state-of-the-art skyscrappers. The Miami area has 41 billionaires at last count plus thousands of multi-millionaires...and, OH YES, MANY OF THEM have two things in common with the first officials the Moroccans met in Miami, such as Emilio Gonzalez, who is Cuban-born AND, of course, a former key U. S. government official courtesy of the George W. Bush presidency. Mr. Gonzalez served the Bush dynasty as a powerful National Security and Foreign Policy adviser...which you probably already guessed before reading it here. So, except for the ostentatious wealth and the vast Bush dynasty influence in Miami, the Moroccan Royal Family will not notice many differences between Havana and Little Havana. After all, both famous cities are ruled by Cubans.

And by the way......

        This beautiful photo of four gorgeous little Cuban girls is courtesy of child-loving Rosy Amaro Perez, one of my friends.

      This Rosy-produced photo shows two of the little Cuban girls finding comfort in each others' hugs as they prettily feign fear after being told a real scary story about a lobo, a wolf.

Rosy, her own daughter, and her husband.

A wonderful, child-loving Cuban family.

Rosy's family-loving photo.

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Cuba vs. Cuban-Americans

Six Tumultuous Decades!

       As a superb American journalist and author, Tom Englehardt this second week in April-2017 did something that very few U. S. journalists-authors have either the guts or the integrity to do. He explained how totally innocent Cubans on the island have suffered for six decades because a handful of Cuban exiles from the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship have been allowed to dictate America's Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policies since 1959, resulting in the current anti-U.S./pro-Cuba vote of 191-to-0 in the United Nations. Americans have been propagandized to ignore that anti-American unanimity.

     This week in The Huffington Post a major article, penned by Tom Englehardt, was entitled: "Washington Has A Cuba Problem." The sub-title is: "For Almost 60 Years, Washington Has Lavished On A Modest-sized, Improvished Island Nation." In the main body of the article, Tom Englehardt wrote: "I'm talking, of course, about Cuba, which the United States has embargoed since 1959, as it hasn't North Korea or any other country on the planet." Tom Englehardt, of course, clearly understands that neither North Korea nor any other country allowed a brutal and overthrown U.S.-backed dictatorship to immediately and eternally regroup on U. S. soil and -- while lavishly hiding behind the skirts of superpower America -- engage in an endless and unsavory effort to recapture Cuba while enriching and empowering themselves. All the while, as the nations of the world condemn the atrocity with  that searing 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations, the mainstream U. S. media is too gutless and the majority of Americans are too unpatriotic to give a damn -- with rare exceptions such as Tom Englehardt, of course.

      The following six photos are courtesy of Sanne Derks/Al Jazeera. This elderly Cuban couple live in the Cuban village of Valle de los Ingenis. The water tanks are now common life-savers to areas of Cuba suffering from the most devastating drought on the island in over a century. The natural calamity is exacerbated by the Batistiano-dictated U. S. embargo of the island that, from 1962 until today, constitutes the longest and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation.

      Because the United States embargo punishes Cuba and also punishes or discourages international banks and other nations willing to engage in commerce with the island, the Cuba government has major problems replacing aging infrastructure such as the out-dated water pumps shown in the above photo.

    Cubans like this man try to fill water buckets like these.

       The Cuban government uses water trucks like this one to try to alleviate the drought-embargo shortages, but the enormous problems are often overwhelming for the government and the people.

       This Cuban woman in Vinales Valley spends her days and much of her nights trying to use her available non-cooking and non-bathing water to wash her family's clothes and her neighbor's clothes. As her neighbor observes, she does it with a smile because it is her life and the lives of many other Cubans.

      This Cuban man is using his horse-drawn wagon, which is outfitted with rubber tires, to deliver water from a tank to needy Cubans. Most of the two million Cuban-Americans even in South Florida favored former President Barack Obama's courageous efforts to help decent Cubans like this man and eleven million other Cubans on the island like him. UNFORTUNATELY, such caring and moderate Cuban-Americans don't seem to be eligible to get elected to the U. S. Congress where a handful of extremists Cuban-American rule the roost, not to mention the Cuban narrative and the Cuban policies in the United States.

        Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has represented Miami and anti-Castro zealotry in the United States Congress since 1989. A regular parade of similarly minded, mostly unchecked Cuban-Americans from South Florida have followed her to Washington, almost everyone of them tightly allied with the Bush dynasty.

       Jeb Bush's pathway to two terms as Florida's governor was paved in 1989 when he was Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's Campaign Manager for the seat in the U. S. Congress she has held for all the years since.

    Cuban-Americans like Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen, shown here with Orlando Bosch, can use the mainstream U. S. media 24-hours-a-day to vilify and excoriate the Cuban Revolution and never have to worry about being quizzed about her numerous extremely controversial Cuban-exile associations. 

       Like South Florida's politics, it seems only the most visceral anti-Castro Cuban-Americans are eligible to be elected to the United States Congress despite polls that show most Cuban-Americans, including those in Miami, favored President Obama's bravery and decency in trying to ease instead of proliferate problems for millions of innocent Cubans on the vulnerable island. There are 535 members of the U. S. Congress but apparently it takes only a handful of extremist Cuban-Americans -- allied with a few right-wingers such as Jesse Helms, Dan Burton, and Robert Torricelli -- to enact devastating anti-Cuban laws...such as the Helms-Burton Act and the Torricelli Bill. This second week of April-2017 in Congress, for example, Ros-Lehtinen is leading the enactment for something called the "Nica Act" and at last check she had the signatures of support from 14 fellow Republicans and 10 Democrats. The "Nica Act" seems designed to prevent Nicaragua from getting loans from the IDB, World Bank and IMF. Why Nicaragua?

       The President of Nicaragua is Danny Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo is Nicaragua's Vice President. They strongly support Cuba. So, there's your answer to Congress's "Nica Act" question.

       This photo was taken in 1985 by Mark Reinstein for ZUMA. It shows Danny Ortega and Rosario Murillo at a news conference. They got married in 1979 after falling in love when they teamed up and fought side-by-side as Sandinista guerrilla fighters to overthrow the United States-backed Somoza dictatorship, which was fiercely anti-Castro and fiercely opposed to all revolutionary-types inspired by the Cuban Revolution, which had reconfigured Latin America when it overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959.

       Like other democratically elected Latin American leaders inspired by the Cuban Revolution, Nicaraguan President Danny Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo have spent everyone of their adult years -- as guerrilla fighters and as politicians -- idolizing Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. The photo above, I believe, explains why the "Nica Act" -- designed to punish Nicaragua -- is working its way through the United States Congress in April, 2017. Americans, of course, are not supposed to know what a "Nica Act" is nor are they supposed to wonder why or if it will harm millions of innocent Nicaraguans.

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Cuba, Stones, and Glass Houses

A Hypocritical Foray!

        In the last two days, these images were shown worldwide in both video-audio-and-photo fashion Online and on Television. It is a reminder that those who live in expensive glass houses should not throw rocks at their neighbor's poorer home. The montage above registered a now-famous event that occurred in the USA This week -- April 10, 2017 -- on America's most-famed airline -- United. The fully loaded airplane was about to take off when United realized it was over-booked and it needed four of the seats for United personnel to fly to another destination. When it couldn't clear those four seats, three security agents boarded the plane and randomly ordered the passenger depicted above to leave the plane and take a later flight. He refused. When pressured, he shouted, "I'm a doctor! I must get to Louisville for my patients!" When he was being forced from his seat he continued to scream and tried desperately to grab on to anything that would prevent his removal from the seat he had paid for. He was eventually pulled from the seat, screaming and moaning, and pulled forcefully down the aisle in view of the other passengers. The two photos above on the right side were taken after the doctor in total shock somehow returned to the plane and raced up and down the aisle incoherently but very clearly shouting, "I gotta go home...I gotta go home...they gonna kill me...they gonna kill me!" As he zombie-like ran up and down the aisle, the doctor's pants were low and exposed some of his lower body. His wife was one of the alarmed passengers.

       In this Smart Phone era, the incident on the United plane was recorded by outraged passengers, including the lady above. It was not only taped for posterity and world-wide exposure, but onlookers like this dumb-founded woman shouted their outrage at the agents.

   United Airlines' CEO Oscar Munoz exacerbated the issue and further infuriated people around the world when his first official statement blamed, at least partially, the bloody and mauled victim.

              In this Twitter-era, tweets like the one above became ubiquitous within the first hour after images like the ones above were flashed around the world -- complete with video, screaming audio and...blood.

      And speaking of throwing stones at vulnerable targets from glass houses, U. S. taxpayers since the early 1980s have lavishly funded...literally with hundreds of millions of dollars...Radio-TV Marti in Miami. The radio unit started in 1983, the TV united in 1990. It is nothing more and nothing less than an anti-Castro, counter-revolutionary propaganda outfit aimed at Cuba but mostly it simply preaches, at massive expense decade after decade, to the choir in South Florida. That fact is well known and was revealed many years ago by ABC-TV News with a still-famous report entitled "The Broadcast to Nowhere" because it is easily blocked or jammed by Cuba. Since then, as your Google search would validate, other reputable articles have noted the laughable quality of the broadcasts because many of the participants are not broadcasters although some of the salaries would indicate they are top-of-the-line journalists. Respected and unbiased Cuban expert Tracey Eaton, now also a Professor in Florida, documented on his Along the Malecon blog the actual salaries and payments to vendors and others that might anger even the most timid U. S. taxpayer, with many of the payments listing the amounts but not who got them. While Radio-TV Marti throws a continuous barrage of stones at any-and-everything attached to Revolutionary Cuba, don't expect to ever hear it broadcast a criticism of Cuba's Batista-Mafia dictatorship or, since 1959, of the remnants of the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship that regrouped in South Florida. And don't expect American taxpayers to have the courage to complain about the hundreds of millions of their dollars devoted to Radio-TV Marti and, of course, the mainstream U. S. media for the most part does not have the courage or integrity to even report the debacle. But England's BBC and other braver sources do. In fact, the BBC also broadcast internationally a report that the George W. Bush presidency was paying tax dollars to journalists at so-called reputable media such as the Miami Herald to produce and publish anti-Cuban articles. That BBC report, in case you'd like to check, was broadcast on Sept. 8-2006 and entitled "U. S. Paid Anti-Cuba Journalists." Even the U. S. media, including the Miami Herald, was forced to react to that farce, which was more a slap at democracy than Cuba. Yet, if the subject is Cuba, Americans are not supposed to complain...not even when their tax dollars go to lavishly fund Radio-TV Marti or to pay-off so-called legitimate journalists to throw stones at Cuba as if NO ONE in Miami or Washington lives in a glass house.

        And speaking of Radio-TV Marti, at one point Marti, backed by massive tax dollars, funded an expensive airplane to fly around Cuba to beam its propaganda signals at the island in an attempt to defeat Cuba's success in rather easily blocking the broadcasts. A few of Washington's braver and more decent officials, feeling sorry for the taxpayers and for America's mounting reputation as a propaganda-dispenser, explained -- to no avail -- that even if a broadcast or two got through to the people on the island, they would be too smart to believe what Miami said as opposed to what they were seeing daily in Cuba.

      Cuba provides passports for Yoani Sanchez, the island's most famed anti-Castro and counter-revolutionary dissident, to fly around the world and then return to Cuba. Sanchez, as shown above, stopped off in Miami to utilize Radio-TV Marti to broadcast her anti-Castro vibes...at least to the choir.

      And of course, as Cuba's most famed anti-Castro/counter revolutionary zealot, Yoani Sanchez was sure to be wined, dined and whatever at the Batistiano-dominated U. S. Congress. She is shown above being flanked by Cuban-American U. S. Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez. By the time she arrived in Miami and Washington, Sanchez was already the world's most famous anti-Cuban blogger. Upon her return to Cuba, she also announced that she had the wherewithal to hire additional workers and start her own well-funded digital newspaper online, which she did.

      The founder of Radio-TV Marti, America's most powerful anti-Castro media outlet, and the founder of the Cuban American National Foundation, America's most powerful anti-Castro political organization, was Jorge Mas Canosa. He is shown above in his 2nd Lt.'s uniform after being sent to Fort Benning in Georgia, along with dozens of other anti-Castro Cubans, right after they fled the victorious Cuban Revolution at the start of 1959. Fort Benning was where the then-secretive Army of the Americas trained soldiers from U.S.-friendly dictatorships -- Batista's in Cuba, Somoza's in Nicaragua, Trujillo's in the Dominican Republic, etc. -- and then sent them back to defend those dictatorships. Beginning in 1959 anti-Castro Cubans were sent to Fort Benning to train in what the above caption calls the "Special Brigade 2506" to prepare to attack and recapture Cuba. That air, land, and sea attack -- known to history as the Bay of Pigs -- occurred in April of 1961 but for a second time Fidel Castro's rebels shocked the world with a startling victory, again humiliating the U. S. and further enhancing Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution in the annals of history.

        After the Bay of Pigs victory solidified Fidel Castro's revolutionary rule in Cuba, it also entrenched the most anti-Castro Cuban zealots in South Florida where, essentially, their new capital became and remains to this day the Little Havana section of Miami. Probably the three most famous-infamous of the Miami Cubans were Jorge Mas Canosa, Luis Posada Carriles, and Orlando Bosch. You are welcome to Google their bios. The photo above, as well as the caption with it, is courtesy of www.LatinAmericanStudies.org and it shows Mas Canosa in 1978 with his .357 magnum pistol.

       After surviving what history records as 634 or so assassination attempts, Fidel Castro died of natural causes at age 90 in Havana on Nov. 25th, 2016. It's rather unlikely that 634 number will ever be broken.

       After Fidel Castro raced to the front-lines to lead the victory at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the CIA employed many of the most zealous anti-Castro Cubans as well as anti-Castro Mafia hit-man in repeated attempts to kill him. Reputable documentaries as well as The Guinness Book of World Records list the failed assassination attempts against Castro as "634." While CIA operatives such as Posada were unsuccessful in killing Castro, they were successful in massive and repeated terrorist acts against innocent Cubans and against foreign tourists in terror-targeted Cuban hotels. 

        Posada and Bosch reign as the two most famed Cuban terrorists and both men bragged openly about such exploits for many decades. Bosch received a highly controversial pardon after it was requested by Jeb Bush and granted by his father President George H. W. Bush, and Bosch lived out his long life as a celebrated free man in Miami. Posada, after alleged and publicized help from Miami members of the U. S. Congress, was freed from a Panamanian prison after he had been sentenced for an assassination plot against Castro in that country. Today Posada is still a celebrated citizen of Miami. The graphic above depicts the terrorist bombing of the child-laden Cuban civilian airplane -- Cubana Flight 455 -- on Oct. 6, 1976 that killed all 76 on board. Although declassified U. S. documents reveal the names of the Cubans involved, such things have gone unpunished even as...people in glass houses throw stones at Cuba.

        The victims of Cubana Flight 455 are to this day honored with memorials such as the one above not only in Cuba but elsewhere across the Caribbean and Latin America.

        And to this day, countries in the Caribbean and Latin American -- such as Guyana above -- still call "for justice" concerning Cubana Flight 455.

Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles.

      The whole dynamic of U.S.-Cuban relations changed drastically when Ronald Reagan was elected U. S. President in 1980. The Reagan-Bush administration quickly anointed Jorge Mas Canosa leader of the Cubans-in-Exile because he was judged to be the most fervent and smartest of the anti-Castro Cubans who already enjoyed vast and well-funded anti-Castro advantages. But -- as detailed by the well-respected Julia E. Sweig in her unchallenged and brilliant book "What Everyone Needs to Know About Cuba" -- Mas Canosa was advised, apparently by his long-time Bush allies, to study AIPAC -- the ultra-powerful Israeli political superpower in the U. S. -- and then replicate it on behalf of the Cuban exiles. Mas Canosa followed that sage advice and created the Cuban American National Foundation. What followed were anti-Castro/pro Cuban-exile laws easily enacted in the U. S. Congress -- such as the Torricelli Bill, Helms-Burton Act, Wet Foot-Dry Foot, Radio-TV Marti, etc., etc., etc. Not surprisingly, Mas Canosa became a billionaire with his massive Mastec company in Miami and the United States of America was/is saddled with a Cuban policy that currently has an astounding 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations.

       The wealthy Bush political dynasty, since the 1950s when declassified U. S. documents confirm George H. W. Bush's CIA connections to anti-Cuban projects, has been primary supporters of anti-Castro zealots like Jorge Mas Canosa. That alliance crystallized in 1976 when GHW Bush was CIA Director and became more indelible during his two terms as Vice-President under Reagan, his one-term as President, his son George W. Bush's two terms as President and his youngest son Jeb Bush's two terms as Governor of Florida. Mas Canosa died in 1997 at age 58 of lung cancer and other illnesses but there are many major edifices in Miami that honor him today and he has never been challenged, thanks partly to his Bush connections, as the all-time most powerful Cuban in the United States.

       While all Republicans in Congress and in the White House bowed to Jorge Mas Canosa, even Democrat presidents such as Bill Clinton were also no match for Mas Canosa when it came to shaping America's Cuban policy.

      At the start of 1996 U. S. President Bill Clinton became the second Democrat U. S. president to famously announce to his staff that he was going to normalize relations with Cuba. The first was President John Kennedy in November of 1963 just days before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22-1963. President Clinton had the same idea in 1996, believing he had the power to do so. But the photo above shows President Clinton on March 12, 1996 very reluctantly signing the Helms Burton Act into law. Helms Burton to this very day is intended to "eviscerate" Cuba because it was written -- supposedly by high-powered lawyers funded by Mas Canosa and his associates -- in such a manner that only Congress can change it, meaning that even the very decent Democrat President, Barack Obama, while he could write positive Executive Orders related to Cuba, could not change Helms-Burton. In the photo above, the big man standing just to the right of President Clinton is Cuban-American anti-Castro zealot Robert Menendez, the U. S. Senator from New Jersey. The lady in red looking over President Clinton's shoulder is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who is an anti-Castro extremist born in Havana but has represented Miami in the U. S. Congress since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager as a stepping stone to his becoming Florida's two-term anti-Castro governor.

      Please study the photo and the caption above. Yes, the Helms-Burton Act from 1996 till today was/is intended to "asphyxiate" Cuba just like a vast array of other U. S. laws as well as assassination attempts, military attacks, terrorist acts, etc., have tried to do. Have you studied the above photo? Look at President Clinton's expression right after he very reluctantly signed Helms-Burton into law. President Clinton is glancing up at Robert Menendez, the ultra-powerful and entrenched anti-Castro Cuban-American U. S. Senator from New Jersey. A few days ago -- in this year of 2017 --the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that a very serious corruption case against Senator Menendez and his close friend, a well-known millionaire in Miami, can go forward.

But remember...

          ..........this particular essay is about people living in glass houses {or mansions} and throwing stones at poor little, supposedly helpless Cuba. So, I'll use Cristina Escobar as the coda to this story. Cristina is Cuba's bold, beautiful and brilliant broadcast journalist. She anchors news programs in Cuba in Spanish and also anchors a regional program in English. Did I say she's brilliant? Oh, yes, and she is. She did her University of Havana thesis on predicting...quite accurately...what the Obama effect would be on Cuba. She is still in her 20s -- very Cuban and quite opinionated in her expert analysis of U.S.-Cuban history and current relations. She says: "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the United States than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." She means it and...she really is brilliant.

       As a Cuban journalist, Cristina Escobar has made trips to California, Washington, Alabama, etc. The photo above captured her when she made history as the first Cuban journalist to ask questions at a White House news conference, and she asked President Obama's chief spokesman Josh Earnest six quite pertinent questions, such as, "Will Cuban regime-change programs continue even amidst Obama's detente?" When I learned respected journalist Tracey Eaton was going to Cuba to get video interviews, I advised him to be sure to interview the brilliant, out-spoken and most influential Cuban broadcast journalist. He did and two of those videos are on YouTube, one in Spanish but one with English translations on the screen. She says interesting things such as, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." She also on those videos talks about undemocratic atrocities aimed at her island, such as "Helms-Burton." 

     This photo shows Cristina Escobar interviewing Ricardo Alarcon, the famed Cuban revolutionary, diplomat, politician, and historian. The photo was used by the University of Alabama newspaper -- The Crimson Tide -- to promote Cristina's speaking engagement on the Tuscaloosa campus. During both serious and jovial intervals, she was...that adjective again...BRILLIANT. Robert Olin, the Dean of the University of Alabama's Arts and Sciences Department, said, "Cristina is essentially the Katie Couric of Cuba." In other words, Robert Olin at the University of Alabama thinks Katie Couric is brilliant too.

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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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