Cuba on Playa Girón

[John Dolva]

Well the 50'th anniversary is this year.

Obviously people are going to need to study Cubas greatly increased coverage on this.

Granma is one source : http://www.granma.cu/ingles/giron/Playa%20Giron.html

• 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BAY OF PIGS

Preparing another invasion

August 18.11

IN July 1961, President John F. Kennedy was putting the finishing touches on a plan to send in U.S. troops in order to prevent communist domination in Cuba.

• Your mission: to win April 14.11

"MY first instinct was to come back here. Imagine, we heard that they had bombed the airports. I immediately thought about the Rancho Boyeros one – I live now, and then, right beside the runway – what might have happened to my family, I asked myself."

• Renovation of Girón Museum

Mementos of war

April 7.11

CIENAGA DE ZAPATA.— The Girón Museum (Bay of Pigs), an institution which celebrates in images, artifacts and other elements the epic feat of April 1961, is close to the completion of a major renovation which will restore the building’s well-known splendor.

• The Moncada of the young artillery

March 24.11

IN October 1960, Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz called on young people to rapidly learn to handle antiaircraft weapons which were beginning to arrive in Cuba from the socialist countries.

• The commander who covered us with his life

March 18.11

I was in Playa Girón [bay of Pigs] like thousands of Cubans who had the privilege of living those heroic days in the defense of the socialist Revolution, with weapons in our hands, confronting imperialist aggression against our people.

• Why the invasion via the Ciénaga?

March 10.11

WITH the approval of President Ike Eisenhower, and as part of the strategy against the Cuban Revolution, government agencies and the CIA in particular, developed a military operation to prevent the consolidation of a “communist government” in the U.S. backyard.

• Poetry in battle

February 17.11

DURING the afternoon of April 17, 1961 following the mercenary landing and taking of Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs), militia forces from the Aguada de Pasajeros Battalion; militias working at the INRA (National Institute of Agrarian Reform) and Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) Security Detachment troops involved in...

[John Dolva]

October 1962 Missile Crisis

President John F. Kennedy did not react with common sense to the U.S. defeat at the Bay of Pigs. He sought revenge. The Taylor Commission, established by the President to analyze the fiasco, recommended initiating new political, military, economic and propaganda measures "against Castro." The report led to the preparation and implementation of a new undercover operations plan, known as Operation Mongoose, which beginning in November 1961 unleashed thousands of terrorist acts, sabotage, assassination attempts and armed attacks.

- If the United States presumes to humiliate our country, this it will not achieve!

- A people like this is invincible!

- Let the United States start giving evidence of good faith, not with promises.

Action not words!

- Differences with the Soviets

- Five Points

[John Dolva]

'' This is an edited speech cut up in three pieces from Ernesto Che Guevara's address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 11, 1964. You can find the complete speech plus his reply in the book: "To Speak the Truth" (published by Pathfinder Press) with the title: "Cuba's example shows that the peoples of the world can liberate themselves". Or here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1964/12/11.htm ''

[John Dolva]

Che Guevara, Imperialism speech 1965, translated

[John Dolva]

Fidel Castro in his own words

[John Dolva]

Havana. January 25, 2012

Reflections of Fidel

The fruit which did not fall

(Taken from CubaDebate)

CUBA was forced to fight for its existence facing an expansionist power, located a few miles from its coast, and which was proclaiming the annexation of our island, which was destined to fall into its lap like a ripe fruit. We were condemned not to exist as a nation.

Within the glorious legions of patriots who, during the second half of the 19th century, fought against the abhorrent colonial status imposed by Spain over 300 years, José Martí was the man who most clearly perceived such a dramatic destiny. He confirmed it in the last lines that he wrote, the night before the anticipated difficult combat against a battle-hardened and well equipped Spanish column, when he declared that the fundamental objective of his struggle was, “…to prevent the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. Everything that I have done up until now, and everything that I will do, is to this end.”

Without understanding this profound truth one cannot today be either a patriot or a revolutionary.

Without any doubt, the mass media, the monopoly of many technical resources and the substantial funds directed at dehumanizing the masses constitute considerable but not invincible obstacles.

Cuba demonstrated – starting from its position as a colonial yankee trading post, together with the illiteracy and generalized poverty of its people – that it was possible to confront the country which was threatening the definitive absorption of the Cuban nation. Nobody can even affirm that there was a national bourgeoisie opposed to the empire; the bourgeoisie developed in such close proximity to it that, shortly after the triumph, it sent 14,000 totally unprotected children to the United States, although that act was associated with the perfidious lie that parental custody was to be suppressed. This is what history recorded as Operation Peter Pan, described as the largest maneuver of child manipulation for political ends recalled in the Western Hemisphere.

National territory was invaded, barely two years after the revolutionary triumph, by mercenary forces – comprising former Batista soldiers and the sons of landowners and the bourgeoisie – armed and escorted by the United States with warships from its naval fleet, including aircraft carriers with equipment ready to enter into action, and which accompanied the invaders to our island. The defeat and capture of virtually all the mercenaries in less than 72 hours and the destruction of their aircraft operating from bases in Nicaragua and their naval transportation, constituted a humiliating defeat for the empire and its Latin America allies, which had underestimated the Cuban people’s fighting capacity.

In the face of the termination of oil supplies on the part of the United States, the subsequent total suspension of the historic sugar quota in that country’s market, and the prohibition of trade established over more than 100 years, the USSR responded to each one of these measures by supplying fuel, buying our sugar, trading with our country and finally, supplying the weapons that Cuba could not acquire in other markets.

The idea of a systematic campaign of CIA-organized pirate attacks, sabotage and military actions by armed bands created and supplied by the United States before and after the mercenary attack, and which would culminate in a military invasion of Cuba by this country, gave rise to events which placed the world on the brink of a total nuclear war, which neither of the parties involved nor humanity itself could have survived.

Without any doubt, those events resulted in the removal from the presidency of Nikita Khrushchev, who underestimated his adversary, disregarded opinions presented to him and did not consult with those of us in the front line concerning his final decision. What could have been an important moral victory thus turned into a costly political setback for the USSR. For many years the worst of crimes against Cuba continued and more than a few of them, like the U.S. criminal blockade, are still being committed.

Khrushchev made exceptional gestures to our country. On that occasion, I unhesitatingly criticized the non-consulted agreement with the United States, but it would be ungrateful and unjust not to acknowledge his exceptional solidarity at difficult and decisive moments for our people in their historic battle for independence and revolution in the face of the powerful empire of the United States. I understand that the situation was extremely tense and he did not wish to lose any time when he made the decision to withdraw the missiles and the yankees, very secretly, agreed to give up the invasion.

Despite the decades gone by, already half a century, the Cuban fruit has not fallen into yankee hands.

News reports currently coming in from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, the United Kingdom, the Malvinas and countless other points on the planet are serious, and all of them augur a political and economic disaster as a result of the stupidity of the United States and its allies.

I will confine myself to a few subjects. I must note that, going by what everyone is saying, that the selection of a Republican candidate to aspire to the presidency of this globalized and far-reaching empire is, in its turn – I am serious – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that I have ever heard. As I have things to do, I cannot devote any time to the subject. I already knew it would be like that.

Some news agency cables better illustrate what I wish to analyze, because they demonstrate the incredible cynicism generated by the decadence of the West. One of them, with amazing tranquility, talks of a Cuban political prisoner who, it states, died after a hunger strike lasting 50 days. A journalist with Granma, Juventud Rebelde, radio news or any other revolutionary organ might be mistaken in any interpretation of any subject, but would never fabricate an item of news or invent a lie.

A Granma informative note affirms that there was no hunger strike; the man was an ordinary prisoner sentenced to four years for attacking and injuring his wife in the face; that his own mother in law asked authorities to intervene; family members were kept fully abreast of all procedures used in his medical treatment and were grateful for the effort made by medical specialists who treated him. He received medical attention, as the note states, in the best hospital in the eastern region, as is the case with all citizens. He died from secondary multi-organic failure related to a severe respiratory infection.

The patient had received all the medical attention administered in a country which has one of the finest medical services in the world, provided free of charge in spite of the blockade imposed on our homeland by imperialism. It is simply a duty that is fulfilled in a country where the Revolution is proud of always having respected, for more than 50 years, the principles which give it its invincible strength.

It would be more worthwhile for the Spanish government, given its excellent relations with Washington, to travel to the United States and inform itself as to what is taking place in yankee jails, the ruthless conduct meted out to millions of prisoners, the policy of the electric chair and the horrors perpetrated on detainees in the country’s jails and those who are protesting in its streets.

Yesterday, January 23, a strong Granma editorial titled “Cuba’s truths,” which occupied an entire page of the newspaper, explained in detail the unprecedented shame of the campaign of lies unleashed against our Revolution by certain governments “traditionally committed to anti-Cuba subversion.”

Our people are well aware of the norms which have governed the impeccable conduct of our Revolution since the first battle and which has never been stained over more than half a century. They also know that it can never be pressured or coerced by enemies. Our laws and norms will be respected unfailingly.

It is worth noting this with clarity and frankness. The Spanish government and the shaky European Union, plunged into a profound economic crisis, must know what should guide them. It is pitiful to read news agency reports of the statements of both utilizing their barefaced lies to attack Cuba. First concern yourselves with saving the euro if you can, resolve the chronic unemployment from which young people are increasingly suffering, and respond to the indignados, constantly attacked and beaten by the police.

We are not ignorant of the fact that Spain is now being governed by admirers of Franco, who dispatched members of the Blue Division, together with the Nazi SS and SA, to kill Soviets. Close to 50,000 of them participated in the cruel aggression. In the most cruel and painful operation of that war: the siege of Leningrad, where one million Russian citizens died, the Blue Division was among the forces attempting to strangle the heroic city. The Russian people will never pardon that horrific crime.

The fascist right of Aznar, Rajoy and other servants of the empire, must know something about the 16,000 casualties of their predecessors in the Blue Division and the Iron Crosses which Hitler awarded to officers and soldiers from that division. There is nothing unusual about what the Gestapo police are doing now to the men and women demanding the right to work and bread in the country with the highest unemployment in Europe.

Why are the mass media of the empire lying so barefacedly?

Those who manipulate the media are striving to deceive and dehumanize the world with their crude lies, possibly thinking that it constitutes the principal resource for maintaining the global system of domination and plunder imposed, particularly upon victims in close proximity to the headquarters of the metropolis, the close to 600 million Latin American and Caribbean people living in this hemisphere.

The sister republic of Venezuela has become the fundamental objective of this policy. The reason is obvious. Without Venezuela, the empire would have imposed its Free Trade Treaty on all the peoples of the continent who inhabit it from the south of the United States, a region where the greatest reserves of land, fresh water and minerals of the planet are to be found, as well as large energy resources which, administered in a spirit of solidarity toward other peoples of the world, constitute resources which cannot and must not fall into the hands of transnationals imposing a suicidal and infamous system on them.

For example, it is enough to look at the map to comprehend the criminal dispossession signified by stripping Argentina of a little piece of its territory in the extreme south of the continent. There, the British deployed their decadent military apparatus to murder rookie Argentine recruits wearing summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United States, and its ally Augusto Pinochet, shamelessly supported them. Now, just before the London Olympics, its Prime Minister David Cameron is also proclaiming, as did Margaret Thatcher, his right to use nuclear submarines to kill Argentines. The government of this country is unaware of the fact that the world is changing, and the scorn of our hemisphere and that of the majority of the peoples for the oppressors is increasing every day.

The case of the Malvinas is not the only one. Does anyone know how the conflict in Afghanistan is going to end? Just a few days ago U.S. soldiers desecrated the corpses of Afghani combatants, killed by NATO drone bombings.

Three days ago a European agency reported, “Afghani President Hamid Karzai has given his backing to a negotiated peace with the Taliban, emphasizing that this issue must be resolved by the citizens of his country.” It went on to add, “…the process of peace and reconciliation belongs to the Afghani nation and no country or foreign organization can take away this right from the Afghanis.

For its part, a cable published by our press communicated from Paris, “France today suspended all its training and aid operations in Afghanistan and threatened to expedite the withdrawal of its troops, after an Afghani soldier shot four French soldiers in the Taghab valley, in Kapisa province… Sarkozy instructed Defense Minister Gérard Longuet to travel immediately to Kabul, and indicated the possibility of an early withdrawal of the contingent.”

After the disappearance of the USSR and the socialist bloc, the U.S. government imagined that Cuba would be unable to sustain itself. George W. Bush had already prepared a counterrevolutionary government to govern our country. On the very same day that Bush initiated his criminal war on Iraq, I asked our country’s authorities to end the tolerance afforded the counterrevolutionary capos who, in those days, were hysterically demanding the invasion of Cuba. In real terms, their attitude constituted an act of treason against the homeland.

Bush and his stupidities prevailed for eight years and the Cuban Revolution has already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has not fallen into the empire’s lap. Cuba will not be one more possession with which the empire spreads through the lands of America. Martí’s blood will not have been spilled in vain.

Tomorrow I will publish another Reflection to complement this one.

Fidel Castro Ruz

January 24, 2012

7:12 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

[Scott Kaiser]

Havana. January 25, 2012

Reflections of Fidel

The fruit which did not fall

(Taken from CubaDebate)

CUBA was forced to fight for its existence facing an expansionist power, located a few miles from its coast, and which was proclaiming the annexation of our island, which was destined to fall into its lap like a ripe fruit. We were condemned not to exist as a nation.

Within the glorious legions of patriots who, during the second half of the 19th century, fought against the abhorrent colonial status imposed by Spain over 300 years, José Martí was the man who most clearly perceived such a dramatic destiny. He confirmed it in the last lines that he wrote, the night before the anticipated difficult combat against a battle-hardened and well equipped Spanish column, when he declared that the fundamental objective of his struggle was, “…to prevent the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. Everything that I have done up until now, and everything that I will do, is to this end.”

Without understanding this profound truth one cannot today be either a patriot or a revolutionary.

Without any doubt, the mass media, the monopoly of many technical resources and the substantial funds directed at dehumanizing the masses constitute considerable but not invincible obstacles.

Cuba demonstrated – starting from its position as a colonial yankee trading post, together with the illiteracy and generalized poverty of its people – that it was possible to confront the country which was threatening the definitive absorption of the Cuban nation. Nobody can even affirm that there was a national bourgeoisie opposed to the empire; the bourgeoisie developed in such close proximity to it that, shortly after the triumph, it sent 14,000 totally unprotected children to the United States, although that act was associated with the perfidious lie that parental custody was to be suppressed. This is what history recorded as Operation Peter Pan, described as the largest maneuver of child manipulation for political ends recalled in the Western Hemisphere.

National territory was invaded, barely two years after the revolutionary triumph, by mercenary forces – comprising former Batista soldiers and the sons of landowners and the bourgeoisie – armed and escorted by the United States with warships from its naval fleet, including aircraft carriers with equipment ready to enter into action, and which accompanied the invaders to our island. The defeat and capture of virtually all the mercenaries in less than 72 hours and the destruction of their aircraft operating from bases in Nicaragua and their naval transportation, constituted a humiliating defeat for the empire and its Latin America allies, which had underestimated the Cuban people’s fighting capacity.

In the face of the termination of oil supplies on the part of the United States, the subsequent total suspension of the historic sugar quota in that country’s market, and the prohibition of trade established over more than 100 years, the USSR responded to each one of these measures by supplying fuel, buying our sugar, trading with our country and finally, supplying the weapons that Cuba could not acquire in other markets.

The idea of a systematic campaign of CIA-organized pirate attacks, sabotage and military actions by armed bands created and supplied by the United States before and after the mercenary attack, and which would culminate in a military invasion of Cuba by this country, gave rise to events which placed the world on the brink of a total nuclear war, which neither of the parties involved nor humanity itself could have survived.

Without any doubt, those events resulted in the removal from the presidency of Nikita Khrushchev, who underestimated his adversary, disregarded opinions presented to him and did not consult with those of us in the front line concerning his final decision. What could have been an important moral victory thus turned into a costly political setback for the USSR. For many years the worst of crimes against Cuba continued and more than a few of them, like the U.S. criminal blockade, are still being committed.

Khrushchev made exceptional gestures to our country. On that occasion, I unhesitatingly criticized the non-consulted agreement with the United States, but it would be ungrateful and unjust not to acknowledge his exceptional solidarity at difficult and decisive moments for our people in their historic battle for independence and revolution in the face of the powerful empire of the United States. I understand that the situation was extremely tense and he did not wish to lose any time when he made the decision to withdraw the missiles and the yankees, very secretly, agreed to give up the invasion.

Despite the decades gone by, already half a century, the Cuban fruit has not fallen into yankee hands.

News reports currently coming in from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, the United Kingdom, the Malvinas and countless other points on the planet are serious, and all of them augur a political and economic disaster as a result of the stupidity of the United States and its allies.

I will confine myself to a few subjects. I must note that, going by what everyone is saying, that the selection of a Republican candidate to aspire to the presidency of this globalized and far-reaching empire is, in its turn – I am serious – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that I have ever heard. As I have things to do, I cannot devote any time to the subject. I already knew it would be like that.

Some news agency cables better illustrate what I wish to analyze, because they demonstrate the incredible cynicism generated by the decadence of the West. One of them, with amazing tranquility, talks of a Cuban political prisoner who, it states, died after a hunger strike lasting 50 days. A journalist with Granma, Juventud Rebelde, radio news or any other revolutionary organ might be mistaken in any interpretation of any subject, but would never fabricate an item of news or invent a lie.

A Granma informative note affirms that there was no hunger strike; the man was an ordinary prisoner sentenced to four years for attacking and injuring his wife in the face; that his own mother in law asked authorities to intervene; family members were kept fully abreast of all procedures used in his medical treatment and were grateful for the effort made by medical specialists who treated him. He received medical attention, as the note states, in the best hospital in the eastern region, as is the case with all citizens. He died from secondary multi-organic failure related to a severe respiratory infection.

The patient had received all the medical attention administered in a country which has one of the finest medical services in the world, provided free of charge in spite of the blockade imposed on our homeland by imperialism. It is simply a duty that is fulfilled in a country where the Revolution is proud of always having respected, for more than 50 years, the principles which give it its invincible strength.

It would be more worthwhile for the Spanish government, given its excellent relations with Washington, to travel to the United States and inform itself as to what is taking place in yankee jails, the ruthless conduct meted out to millions of prisoners, the policy of the electric chair and the horrors perpetrated on detainees in the country’s jails and those who are protesting in its streets.

Yesterday, January 23, a strong Granma editorial titled “Cuba’s truths,” which occupied an entire page of the newspaper, explained in detail the unprecedented shame of the campaign of lies unleashed against our Revolution by certain governments “traditionally committed to anti-Cuba subversion.”

Our people are well aware of the norms which have governed the impeccable conduct of our Revolution since the first battle and which has never been stained over more than half a century. They also know that it can never be pressured or coerced by enemies. Our laws and norms will be respected unfailingly.

It is worth noting this with clarity and frankness. The Spanish government and the shaky European Union, plunged into a profound economic crisis, must know what should guide them. It is pitiful to read news agency reports of the statements of both utilizing their barefaced lies to attack Cuba. First concern yourselves with saving the euro if you can, resolve the chronic unemployment from which young people are increasingly suffering, and respond to the indignados, constantly attacked and beaten by the police.

We are not ignorant of the fact that Spain is now being governed by admirers of Franco, who dispatched members of the Blue Division, together with the Nazi SS and SA, to kill Soviets. Close to 50,000 of them participated in the cruel aggression. In the most cruel and painful operation of that war: the siege of Leningrad, where one million Russian citizens died, the Blue Division was among the forces attempting to strangle the heroic city. The Russian people will never pardon that horrific crime.

The fascist right of Aznar, Rajoy and other servants of the empire, must know something about the 16,000 casualties of their predecessors in the Blue Division and the Iron Crosses which Hitler awarded to officers and soldiers from that division. There is nothing unusual about what the Gestapo police are doing now to the men and women demanding the right to work and bread in the country with the highest unemployment in Europe.

Why are the mass media of the empire lying so barefacedly?

Those who manipulate the media are striving to deceive and dehumanize the world with their crude lies, possibly thinking that it constitutes the principal resource for maintaining the global system of domination and plunder imposed, particularly upon victims in close proximity to the headquarters of the metropolis, the close to 600 million Latin American and Caribbean people living in this hemisphere.

The sister republic of Venezuela has become the fundamental objective of this policy. The reason is obvious. Without Venezuela, the empire would have imposed its Free Trade Treaty on all the peoples of the continent who inhabit it from the south of the United States, a region where the greatest reserves of land, fresh water and minerals of the planet are to be found, as well as large energy resources which, administered in a spirit of solidarity toward other peoples of the world, constitute resources which cannot and must not fall into the hands of transnationals imposing a suicidal and infamous system on them.

For example, it is enough to look at the map to comprehend the criminal dispossession signified by stripping Argentina of a little piece of its territory in the extreme south of the continent. There, the British deployed their decadent military apparatus to murder rookie Argentine recruits wearing summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United States, and its ally Augusto Pinochet, shamelessly supported them. Now, just before the London Olympics, its Prime Minister David Cameron is also proclaiming, as did Margaret Thatcher, his right to use nuclear submarines to kill Argentines. The government of this country is unaware of the fact that the world is changing, and the scorn of our hemisphere and that of the majority of the peoples for the oppressors is increasing every day.

The case of the Malvinas is not the only one. Does anyone know how the conflict in Afghanistan is going to end? Just a few days ago U.S. soldiers desecrated the corpses of Afghani combatants, killed by NATO drone bombings.

Three days ago a European agency reported, “Afghani President Hamid Karzai has given his backing to a negotiated peace with the Taliban, emphasizing that this issue must be resolved by the citizens of his country.” It went on to add, “…the process of peace and reconciliation belongs to the Afghani nation and no country or foreign organization can take away this right from the Afghanis.

For its part, a cable published by our press communicated from Paris, “France today suspended all its training and aid operations in Afghanistan and threatened to expedite the withdrawal of its troops, after an Afghani soldier shot four French soldiers in the Taghab valley, in Kapisa province… Sarkozy instructed Defense Minister Gérard Longuet to travel immediately to Kabul, and indicated the possibility of an early withdrawal of the contingent.”

After the disappearance of the USSR and the socialist bloc, the U.S. government imagined that Cuba would be unable to sustain itself. George W. Bush had already prepared a counterrevolutionary government to govern our country. On the very same day that Bush initiated his criminal war on Iraq, I asked our country’s authorities to end the tolerance afforded the counterrevolutionary capos who, in those days, were hysterically demanding the invasion of Cuba. In real terms, their attitude constituted an act of treason against the homeland.

Bush and his stupidities prevailed for eight years and the Cuban Revolution has already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has not fallen into the empire’s lap. Cuba will not be one more possession with which the empire spreads through the lands of America. Martí’s blood will not have been spilled in vain.

Tomorrow I will publish another Reflection to complement this one.

Fidel Castro Ruz

January 24, 2012

7:12 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

Dear Fidel,

You certainly have succeeded in hiding behind closed doors, your political views as a ruthless dictator will keep the USSR from saving your skin, many have died, giving their lives for freedom as you rose to power. Your obsession for power mislead those who sought Democracy on a small and tiny island, your promise for free elections fell on deaths ears as money began to corrupt your life, there will be no one there to save you, not even your children. Because of you, groups and cells have been created to fight for freedom, and many of these "Freedom Fights" almost gave up, many of whom had a hard time trusting in who is who, you speak of the unwarranted invasions caused by the Yankees and do not acknowledge the many deaths and murders caused by your own G-2 men.

This year, I promise you, you and your brother will fall, Cuba will announce its freedom from Communism and hold free elections, those who have died for freedom will have not died in vain.

Scott Kaiser

Edited January 28, 2012 by Scott Kaiser

[Harry J.Dean]

Ah, yes, we that experienced your G-2 and cowardly

executions. It is then, even we 'turned sadly away.'

(former member M-26-7, H J Dean)

[John Dolva]

Well it seems the feelings are mutual.

So there we have a sample of the atmosphere at the time, which is what this topic is basically about.

When there has been a coup there is a winner (?). Will the winner ever concede victory (when it's a matter of conceding that it is a result of the assassination)?

[John Dolva]

El desembarco de Playa Girón, Cuba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdfQeXwZJw&feature=related

[Scott Kaiser]

There are still several survivors of the Bay of Pigs, I hope that with their help I can capture history as its told by those who were in the forefront of the battle, and preserver their own words, from the planning to infiltrating Cuba to their release from Castro, what their superiors told them about US Military being used, and why they thought they were betrayed by Kennedy.

I will discuss these topics with many of the Cubans in Miami after my assignment has been completed, it could take up to several months, but I know that after my mission it will be well worth the wait.

Scott

Edited February 8, 2012 by Scott Kaiser

[Douglas Caddy]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098064/John-F-Kennedy-bought-1-200-Cuban-cigars-hours-ordered-US-trade-embargo.html

[Scott Kaiser]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098064/John-F-Kennedy-bought-1-200-Cuban-cigars-hours-ordered-US-trade-embargo.html

A good Cuban cigar is hard to come by, I don't know how many people smoke Cuban cigars or if anyone many be interested in a good Cuban cigar, just let me know!

[John Dolva]

Interesting, Granma has an article on Cuban Cigars. I haven't read it but it's still listed on the front page of the english online version.

This is just for a bit of flavour. Women have always played a very significant role in progressive social change, particularly so in Cuba where the impetus of the Womens movement has a leading role.

While this is a tribute to Che it is also an acknowledgement of his wish that when he died someone would pick up his rifle. Someone does, she gathers a large group of women and this group in turn gather the rest of the people in carrying the 'torch' of Che. Which ultimately is not a rifle but an idea. It is this idea, not Che, Fidel or any particular person, that the Yankee Imperialists strive so to eradicate.

Hasta Siempre:

Nathalie Cardone - Che Guevara

[John Dolva]

Interesting, Granma has an article on Cuban Cigars. I haven't read it but it's still listed on the front page of the english online version.

This is just for a bit of flavour. Women have always played a very significant role in progressive social change, particularly so in Cuba where the impetus of the Womens movement has a leading role.

While this is a tribute to Che it is also an acknowledgement of his wish that when he died someone would pick up his rifle. Someone does, she gathers a large group of women and this group in turn gather the rest of the people in carrying the 'torch' of Che. Which ultimately is not a rifle but an idea. It is this idea, not Che, Fidel or any particular person, that the Yankee Imperialists strive so to eradicate.

Hasta Siempre:

Nathalie Cardone - Che Guevara

further on this: (from Granma)

Women under-represented in decision-making positions

Anneris Ivette Leyva

WE are not born women, we become women, Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist philosophy told us, a long time ago. Since that poorly understood warning, we have continued leaning a few things… wrong.

How many women feel the weight of conservative judgments disqualifying us as good mothers and loving wives, when we attempt to assume these roles along with others, in some kind of proportion?

How many women report that they can manage positions of significant responsibility and visibility thanks to those who at home "understand and help," as if it were a great favor?

Expectations of women have not changed much since the French author wrote her book The Second Sex, denouncing the subordinate position of women with this title. At the time, her contemporaries learned that the meaning of life lay in being a good mother and better wife, learning to carry out household chores and devoting oneself to satisfying the desires of others, regardless of the effect on one’s own happiness.

Sixty-three years after this landmark literary work, it remains difficult for society to overcome what is traditionally learned and facilitate women’s access to positions of greater responsibility, even within those sectors where they constitute the majority of the qualified personnel.

Given that these positions generally require more time and commitment, there are those who, ‘considering’ that a candidate is married, or has children, do not even offer female candidates the opportunity to choose. At the same time, given the opportunity of a promotion, some women limit themselves, fearing they might not be able to fulfill the responsibilities they have been taught to consider more important, at home.

NO PREDETERMINATION

Since the cultural emancipation created in Cuba by the literacy campaign more than 50 years ago, universal access to all levels of education and the support of the Revolution incorporating ‘housewives’ into the country’s economic life, Cuban women and men have known, but not grasped, that the social distribution of work is not naturally predetermined. It is the mechanism through which relations of power are reproduced – in this case patriarchal – with some positioned above others, incompatible with the goals of a society in which the struggle for liberation and justice is valued.

One of the innumerable expressions of clear prejudice is that, as of September, 2011, eight years after the approval of the maternity Decree-Law 234 which offered men the opportunity to take paternity leave, after the exclusive breast-feeding period – thus facilitating mothers’ return to work, perhaps given her greater prospects for professional or economic development – only 96 fathers had taken advantage of this option. A large portion of this group had done so only because they had no choice, given the mother’s illness or death, according to a report published in Granma January 27, based on information provided by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

It is paradoxical that such an advanced law, in comparison to others around the world protecting women workers’ maternity rights, should remain largely unused. But if something is acknowledged by experts on the issue and the country’s authorities, it is that these kinds of ground-breaking efforts cannot be left to spontaneity.

The cultural inertia which relegates women to the ‘weaker sex’ category must be answered with the determination to become something different, to shake off the guilt which ties us to an ideal in which frustration is justified, since everyone else comes first, and concentrate on our own empowerment.

It is significant that despite constituting 66% of the technical and professional graduates at the intermediate and higher levels of education in the country, the number of women who exercise decision-making power in the areas of human resources, economics and finances, does not exceed 40%, according to data available at the end of 2011.

In bodies such as the Sports, Physical Education and Recreation Institute (INDER), the Ministries of Steel and Metal, Communication and Agriculture, the figure does not reach 15%. In Tourism, it barely reaches 9% and, according to information from the National Statistics Office (ONEI), among those employed in 2008 in sales, hotels and restaurants, 50% are women.

At the same time, as a fundamental result of recent government efforts, seven entities have been able to ensure than 50 to 70% of their decision-making positions are held by women: the Ministries of Labor & Social Security, Education, and Finances & Prices; the Supreme Court; the offices of the Attorney General and the Comptroller General, as well as the Central Bank of Cuba.

No doubt, comparing these figures with those from previous years, the progress made by women in access to territory once considered exclusively the province of men is evident. However, in this area, the ‘outstanding debts’ remain greater than those ‘paid in full.’

According to information published by ONEI in its Cuban Women, Statistics and Realities report, women represent 81.4% of graduates from medical schools and constitute a majority, 58%, among practicing doctors in the country. Nevertheless, we rarely see a woman leading a large research center or hospital.

For some time now, according to the above source, the percentage of female graduates in Economics has surpassed the 50% mark, but they are infrequently found directing enterprises or budgeted state entities, How many of us, visiting one of these, have asked for the administrator or director, expecting a priori that a man will be sitting behind the desk?

The women ministers, deputy ministers, heads of department and management teams needed to close this power gap, can be found among those never even considered, despite their merits; and also among those who said ‘no’ beforehand or gave up a position because the other woman underneath their skin, the one holding a broom and wearing an apron, held sway.

No one can deny the reality of family responsibilities, but this concerns all human beings. If it is true that behind anyone who takes on a significant public commitment there is someone who helps in private, gender does not necessarily predispose women to playing one role or the other.

POLITICAL WILL AND FEMALE ATTITUDES

As has already been stated, the struggle against pre-established ‘truths’ cannot be left to spontaneity. The empowerment of women must be understood as a strategy directed toward men, who often resist given chauvinist thinking -justified with the best of intentions – and toward women, who as daughters of their times and culture, have not escaped patriarchal logic, despite being victimized.

This is not about awarding a position to a woman because of her gender per se, or in order to fulfill a political directive, without considering qualifications. Female leaders must be prepared to meet the requirements of one or another position. They could be hurt even more, left incapable of fulfilling a responsibility for which they were not correctly evaluated. Of course, after decades of overlooking women, an explicit, intentional policy is needed, which goes beyond subjectivity, seeking among women, the ones who are capable. Surely, many will be found.

In his report to the 6th Party Congress, President Raúl Castro Ruz identified this as a challenge in the effort to improve socialism in Cuba, which will define the future. In a strong self-critical statement, he said, referring not only to women, but to youth, Blacks and those of mixed race, "We have not consistently responded to the innumerable directives communicated by Fidel, since the first days of the revolutionary victory and over the years, because the solution to this imbalance was included in agreements adopted at the transcendental 1st Party Congress and the four which followed, and we did not assure their implementation."

At the political level this commitment can be promoted, while attitudes among women must be reinforced. There is no justice, 100 years after March 8 was declared International Women’s Day to honor the struggle for women’s rights, if for many women this means the paltry privilege of receiving a flower in the same hands with which they complete assigned tasks, or with which they place the plates on the table and later pick up.

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