James

@upholdreality Exactly 100% truth A So-called national security threat only because our mobsters got kicked out and the exploited corporations who raped, pillaged and robbed the people and natural resources were put in their place. A perfect opportunity for Hyman Ross

A transnational Jewish-Italian mob network centered on Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante ran Cuba as a privatized extraction arm of US empire: gambling, laundering, narcotics, prostitution, political bribery. What the US could not openly run on its own border, the syndicate ran for it in Havana. Batista was on a $ 1.28-million-a-month retainer, delivered every Monday at noon. His development bank bankrolled half of every new mob casino. And this was not just gambling. Havana was a key node in the postwar heroin pipeline: Turkish opium, Marseille labs, Havana transshipment, New York distribution. By the late 1960s, that French Connection network supplied most of America’s heroin. Then Castro won. In January 1959 the casinos were smashed, the bosses fled or were detained, and Batista escaped with a fortune estimated around $300 million. The national lottery, once a graft channel, was converted into a housing fund. But the mob did not disappear. It was redeployed. Lansky’s lieutenant Doc Stacher later said Lansky offered to finance Castro’s assassination as early as 1959. By September 1960, the CIA was running the operation directly. The Agency hired Johnny Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante. The opening offer was $150,000. The weapon: poison pills from the CIA’s Technical Services Division. The 1975 Church Committee found concrete evidence of at least eight CIA plots against Castro between 1960 and 1965. The same Havana-Miami underworld that lost Cuba in 1959 became useful again as the deniable violence arm of US policy. Of the three mob figures the CIA hired, Giancana was murdered before he could testify to Congress. Rosselli was murdered after he did. Trafficante survived. The continuity is structural, not anecdotal: Tampa, Havana, Miami. Casinos became exile paramilitaries. Exile paramilitaries became lobby infrastructure. Jorge Mas Canosa, a Bay of Pigs veteran and CIA-radio figure, founded the Cuban American National Foundation in 1981 at the suggestion of Reagan's advisors. It was modeled on AIPAC and built to harden Cuba policy permanently. The lobby's most famous operative was Luis Posada Carriles: CIA-trained, Bay of Pigs veteran, Iran-Contra contractor under Oliver North, perpetrator of the 1976 mid-air bombing of Cubana Flight 455 (73 dead) and the 1997 Havana hotel bombings. By 1998, he had publicly named Mas Canosa as his financier. He died free in Miami in 2018. They did not just lobby. They wrote the laws. 1992: Cuban Democracy Act. 1996: Helms-Burton. 2019: Trump activates Title III, letting US claimants sue foreign firms using confiscated Cuban property. Today the legal afterlife of Batista’s Cuba runs through federal court: hotel chains, expropriation claims, embargo law, and Miami political power. Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State, is a product of that machine. When he says “freedom in Cuba,” hear the history underneath it: the old casino mobster class wants its island back

@richardaucock Yep, exactly, and the camera is always at such a tight Shot that it misses the action plus key overtakes.

F1’s biggest problem right now is surely the terrible TV direction. Something happening? Yup, we’ve missed it.

@zacharycneel Controversial that your closer loaded the bases and hit the batter in the shoulder, clear as day and to the eye and ear?

In the last 14 days, Oregon has lost to No. 1 UCLA on a grand slam in the bottom of the 8th, and a controversial HBP in the bottom of the 11th. If you’re looking for silver linings, it’s not hard to argue that the Ducks have earned a top-16 seed.

@AndresR030105 The class of the confederacy

An ugly scene at the end of the game. Texas Tech starts talking to the fans and making hand gestures and the teams do not shake hands. Keagan Rothrock’s dad, Greg Rothrock, was seen getting berated by a Red Raider fan at the end of the game as well.

@Ha02116Harris @jen_schro @BradyVernon So Alabama has a better ERA than UCLA, hence the number one overall seed got it ESPN sent their congratulations along with the gift basket full of money to pay your players more

@James50895779 @jen_schro @BradyVernon They got handled by Nebraska for 1. And yes, Bama and Tennessee have elite pitching.

Hey @BradyVernon can you do me a favor and compile a list of offensive records UCLA hasn’t broken this year?

@InsideUSC The closer named Troy is always a good sign, as in the Fall of… See the Odyssey.

@InsideUSC Maybe they should try softball, it’s kind of popular

USC has lost at least four Big Ten games where it led in 8th or 9th inning

@YourAnonCentral never got over the loss at the Bay of Pigs, the only military defeat the US has suffered in Central America in its history.

The Cuban dictatorship has existed this long as a reaction to US tyranny. It is the US that attacked first and for decades wanted to not only raid the island for its resources but also prey on its people, promising the myth of a "free market" at the whims of organized crime.

@NCAASoftball @UCLASoftball 8 seed. Uh huh. ESPN-SEC rules more important than record-setting softball.

Record-setting Bruins. 👏 @UCLASoftball breaks the #NCAASoftball single-season run record with 639 runs!

@BladeoftheS Looks like you forgot excellent free education for life, all the way up to becoming a doctor, without the burden of hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.

Americans would be much better off if Cuba took over the USA. It has better free Healthcare, people live longer, they are happier, fewer babies die, more people own their own home's and crime is lower. And this is all while being blockaded for 60 years. Free the USA.

@jen_schro @BoydLinhart @BradyVernon Considering UCLA’s top two pitchers were bought by wealthy southern oil Men, then yes. Not in Westwood.

@BoydLinhart @BradyVernon Well, If you’re watching this LA regional I’ll go out on a limb and say this is the one of (if not the) lowest spend

@FurkanGozukara Wait, didn't trump declare Washington DC 100% safe After he sent the national guard troops in to pick up the trash?

Terrifying reality check. MS NOW confirms the Trump administration's Secret Service engaged in a massive shootout in a busy area of DC. The street is covered in evidence markers because they failed to stop a known suspect (21 year old Nasir Best) they stopped last year!

There's a rumor that Donald refused to go to Don Jr's wedding in the Bahamas because the authorities down there have an old warrant for sex trafficking

China delivers MASSIVE 75,000-TON aid package to Cuba 15,000 TONS of rice unloaded at port ‘Fraternity and solidarity’

@InsideUSC Considering Washington will not score a run this weekend and barely made the tournament… Will let you know in four hours

Should USC have considered saving ace Mason Edwards for tomorrow with potential matchup vs. UCLA?

@LindseyGrahamSC Teddy Roosevelt help liberate Cuba from the Spanish, only for us to let it matriculate into fascism, that’s the Republican formula so go ahead and have at it again, worked out so well last time

I believe the liberation of the wonderful people of Cuba from the clutches of communism is close at hand. Cuba Libre.

@LindseyGrahamSC You can drink a Cuba libre with the boy prostitute, why don’t you liberate the wonderful people of China and Vietnam from communism next?

@wamphairo @MichaelTLester Also see the only war the US has ever lost in central America, in history, 1961

@MichaelTLester US is afraid of communism succeeding in Cuba, and after all, it has succeeded : it has resisted the most brutal economic agression for nearly 70 years without collapsing... Do you want to know what is communism without embargo? Look at China or Vietnam...

I had almost 300 responses to my Cuba post. The most common reply was: "Because communism." Okay. Let's accept that as true. Communism is a failed economic system. Cuba's government is repressive. Castro was a dictator. Now answer the question: Why does punishing ordinary Cubans with a 67-year embargo serve American interests? If the goal is freedom for the Cuban people, starvation is a strange way to free them. If the goal is regime change, it hasn't worked in 67 years. If the goal is to help Cubans, lifting the embargo costs us nothing and gives them everything. The communism answer explains why we don't like Cuba. It doesn't explain the embargo. Try again.

@ProudSocialist Name the fucking threat, asshole, you lying sack of exile shit

Marco Rubio: “Cuba is a national security threat to the US.” This is a blatant lie to manufacture consent for an invasion of Cuba. Cuba is not a threat to the US. The US is the one who is a threat to Cuba as it has strangled the island for decades with an unnecessary embargo.