The Sandoz Collection by Sandoz Diego Cerveza (best short books to read .TXT) 📖

It's like getting raped without a rubber. Of course, even the rubber would be made in China.

China is mucho mysterioso and today its money markets and the stock exchange have replaced its Great Wall. Confucius made room for capitalist confusion and economic dichotomy in its public square psyche...Tiananmen Square...American outrage ...the outcome? Business as usual...America doesn't see red in China anymore...it sees green and that drives the machine.

This is one Communist led revolution that has been a success under the circumstances..ecomonically, militarily, and diplomatically with the so called "free world"....Cuba too, for it's sheer staying power and longevity and muy gigante Castro cajones in holding off the Beast for decades, and then...there is Vietnam....and it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? 50,000 dead ... an American crime against itself. We were told "go fuck ourselves" and being who we are, we did just that.


Those feisty Vietnamese ricers beat the crap out of the Japaneses, flambeaued French imperialism into French toast at Dien Bien Phu and then Giap wholloped the heavy weight contender, the Ugly America with a resounding knock out victory and a final score of 53,000 Americans dead, needlessly. If nothing else, the conflict of conscription led to demonstrations back in the states, mistrust of the government, rioting, Black Panthers, SDS...it ignited a revolution in the Sixties. Women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, gay rights. No, it didn't result in the overthrow of anything except a collective human conciseness., Lets face it, the other side had more guns but we had more flowers, and we learned never take a gardenia to a gun fight. The French Student Revolts of the Sixties however are modern day models of proletarian efficiency and that is because they took less flowers to the barricades. Next time...leave the flowers in the garden.

It did change our concienseness and spawned a new and improved generation of Tom Joad inspired Tom Hayden types...politicians who over time, ripened, and softened, turning into just plain old liberal Democrats, (dogs without teeth) no longer street fighting activists. So in essence, Vietnams own revolution infected it's violator, it's rapist, America, with a revolutionary spirit, and gave America a dose of political clap, it's side effect, residual effects, made it the most influential revolt of all time.....a comedian at the time regarding democracy said..."Why are we trying to ram democracy down the throats of Vietnam at the point of a bayonet. In my neighborhood, if something is that good, they steal it..."

There will be no such outcry today in draft-free America over Iraq or Afghanistan. The thinking is that it's only volunteers whose asses are on the line, along with the civilians of those countries, so the world doesn't really rally or stand up loud and proud and take notice, except the families of the dead, and a few quietly, passive activists, reserved and resigned to the fact that their "warriors" died for a good cause, whether or not it is, or was, or will be. Not mine to judge. Most wars are stupidity of the highest order anyway. But...as with all revolutions, eventually, the walls come tumbling down.


In the past, America has managed to back its own future enemies along with dictators who ruled their countries with an iron fist, and we backed them as long as it was in our best interests. Examples: Batista in Cuba, the Shah of Iran, Chiang Kai Shek, Joseph Stalin, ...hell we even backed to the hilt Saddam Hussein (he was keeping Iran at bay for us) and leave us not forget that at one point we gladly armed and supported and in effect created our own enemy in Osama Bin Laden in his peoples revolt against the Soviet Union. America backed the Brits in India against Ghandi in post WWII, and the British claims to Palestine.

A good rule of thumb...if America is backing a world leader...chances are that leader is destined for the political guillotine, and will be overthrown by their own angry populace, or at some point that backed leader will turn on it's Master becoming it's sworn enemy, such as Bin Laden...in America we're lucky, unlike the old Soviet Union, you can disagree with this countries policies...as long as it's not too loud, too proud and too far left of Pennsylvania Avenue.

..So..you say you want a revolution..."the revolution will be televised."

Take a fistful of green leafy Lenin, mix with a philosophical pinch of Karl Marx, and my oh, Mao! You have the makin's for a real oldtime Uncle Ho Chi Minh hoe-down that gyrates to a sexy, balmy, palmy Caribbean calypso boshevik beat played by a company of campy commies in a tropical paradise. Viva Cuba! Lee-Ward Islands, Left-Wing Islands. Face it amigo's and amiga's, when you go to the Islands mon, Forgettabout Club Med...this juke joint's a jumpin' Club Red! It's hi-fi, high-Fidel-ity 45 rpm socialism spinning out of control, and out of tune with the times on a turntable of nostalgia in a "me" generation of capitalism in the digital world of MP3's!

Cigars and Commies conjur up the world vision we have of cocky Cuba and it's cockier Castro. The cold war castrator has kicked America in it's red, white and blue stars and stripes balls of democracy for decades. He has sucessfully flipped off the American Eagle, and has given us a hearty Hi-Yo Silver middlefinger along with a heartfelt "Fuck You" every chance he could. He's outlived them all, and in the squared circle of the Cold War championship ring..he IS Jerry Lee Lewis, he IS the last man standing. Kennedy, had beautifully coiffed metrosexual hair, but also harbored a hardon for Castro. Eventually JKF was DOA and went down for the count. In the case of Tricky Dicky Richard Nixon, the entire belief in the American way of political life went ejaculation limp, with the nation having spent itself screwing the rest of the world in a baccanal in the boudiour of bad behaviour in a display of Military Industrial might, God On Our Side muscle, and political rape at the point of a bayonet. Dick Gregory had some great comments about forcing democracy down the throats of a people with guns..."In my neighborhood," he said, "If something is that good, someone will steal it!"

A revolutionary compost pile in a Cold War garden, Cuba sits 90 miles offshore. Socialists and communists have never been popular in the American peoples republic of demon-cracy, the land of Lincoln, (the man, not the car!) and the land of Jefferson. For that matter it frowned on anyone who fought for civil rights and they were most likely labeled as communists. Labor leaders and others who fought for workers rights were labeled communist. Martin Luther King, Ceasar Chavez, hell, Lucille Ball..commies all..must have been her red hair. Eleanor Roosevelt fighting for civil rights...damn commie bitch. How dare her. America has never been kindly towards "socialist" causes such as equal rights for all, health care for all, veterans benefits, and the homeless. Veterans, (of which I am one from the Vietnam Era and not proud of it) after they have given a few years of service, a limb or two as an amputees offering to Lady Liberty are really screwed all the way from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. The list goes on and on as to a litany of failings of this "most powerful nation on earth" and the reputation it has earned as the bully in the political playground beating the shit out of the smaller kids who dare defy it. Enter, stage far left, Cuba and Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz...the communist thorn up America's ass for almost 50 years.

BC...Before Castro...The Ugly American had been portrayed in film by Marlon Brando as the Ambassador to a small ricer country, (shock, sigh, epiphany)..a euphemism for Vietnam, north and south, and the Ugly American has been portrayed off screen in real life in many countries around the world including the real life Vietnam, and closer to home, in Cuba. Cuba was part of the war chest trophy booty at the end of the Spanish American War rainbow, a political pot of tropical gold that exploded in flames in Havana Harbor. Some say the fuse was lit by the match of yellow journalism with political pyro, William Randolph Hearst igniting it one day, and by wars end, we had in possession, the Phillipines, Guam and Cuba. The country with African roots was from then on dominated by American greed, politics and for awhile, organized crime that bolstered the island nations government, promoted prostitution and gambling, lining the political pockets of the halls of Cuban power while the United States forced itself on her as though she were a street alley whore in the employ of her red, white and blue pimp.

Enter stage left. The pre-revolutionary Fidel Castro, who, when born, shot from the womb in 1926...a socialist cannonball looking for an imperialist bullseye to penetrate. One child of a Cuban brood of Castro children that numbered a half a dozen, his life was good...tropical balmy and tropical palmy, where he grew up in the confines of economic comfort in a hardship free household. Fidels padre, a Spainard by birth, was a sugar plantation owner of some means who was married twice. Madre the Second, Fidels mamacita, was a maid to his fathers first wife. Hence, Fidels Levi-Leninist 501 genes were split down the middle..plantataion overseer on the right, and the proletarian left on the other side. which may explain his schizophrenia in dealing with the west and the east and never the twain shall meet except headon in a collision of diametrically opposed social philosophies.

Jesuit boarding schools and a penchant for baseball pennants, provided the macro elements of his education, which was a strange mixture of religion and secular interests. Fidel merely wanted to graduate with a mortar board (not a mortar, they came later) and hit one out of the ballpark! A Louisville slugger the prefered "weapon" of choice at the time, not the grenade. Gimme some peanuts and cracker jacks was probably numero uno on his private hit parade.

Law school in 1945 was next, and while in the haughty halls of higher education, as most students will do, he gets caught up in the cacophony of political chaos that involved Cuban nationalism, anti-imperialism and of course, sassy socialism. This paved a rugged road of political thought and theory that would lead him down the garden path of revolution that began hacking it's way through the societal forest with a machete of military machismo in 1947 when he traveled to the Dominican Republic with others to overthrow the dicatator, Rafael Trujilla. Even though they failed to "vote him off the island" it did fuel inject Fidel's passion for social justice.

Castro soon joined an anti-communist political party called the Partido Ortodoxo. It's presidential candidate lost his bid for election in 1948 but set his sights on 1951 where he hoped to warn the populace that General Fulgncio Batista, former corrupt president was planing a return to power. The year 1948 also brought marriage to Fidel to a woman from a wealthy and powerful family that garnered strong political connections and he ran for election, but as prophesized, Batista overthrew the governemnt and cancelled the election. Now castro had no political platform and very little money to support a growing family. He eventually divorced in 1955.

Batista set himself up as dictator, and got his government recognized by the United States. By the Cold War Fab Fifties, American gangsters, led for the most part by the economic philosophies of Meyer Lansky, had dropped anchor in Cuba with a plethora of gambling casinos and bawdy bordellos that lined the streets of Havana with criminal activity.