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

It also lined the pockets of Batista and his Cuban cronies with wealth at the expense of the Cuban population. Add to this the exploitation of the islands natural resources at the hands of American big business, and you had a capitalist tag team to be reckoned with. The island was having it's economic blood sucked dry by a new breed of American Vampire...the Miltary Industrial Complex...and it was only a matter of time before the victim would strike back at the perpetrator, coiled like a cobra and ready to strike with the vengeful venom of viva la revolution! Never mind Viva Las Vegas! (Insert Elvis Here!)

On July 26, 1953, Castroites attacked the Moncada military barracks in an attempt to sink the Batista barrio battleship. It failed. Castro was captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released in 1955. Once free, he went to Mexico, where he met Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Che (the face that is the darling of tee-shirts and posters on college campuses everywhere today!) devised a new strategy to topple the Batista regime...based on an old tactic that the patriots (To the British Crown, they were regarded as terrorsists much as we think of the Taliban today) of the American Revolution initiated...guerrilla warfare. Guevara believed that the plight of Latin America's poor could be rectified, but only through violent revolution. Bullets before Ballots! He joined Castro's group and became an important confidante, helping to shape Castro's political beliefs and started inadvertently a stylish, trendy interest in sporting great amounts of facial hair that was quickly copied thoughout the Caribbean.

In December of 1956, Castro returned to Cuba with a boatload of insurgents near the city of Manzanillo. Batista was prepared for them and killed or captured most of the attackers. Castro, along with his brother Raul, and Guevara were able to bootscoot high and deep into the Sierra Maestra mountain range along the island's southeastern coast. From there the bearded battalions of revolutionaries waged guerrilla war over the course of the next two years and aimed bullseye dead on against the Batista government. They organizing resistance groups in cities and small towns across Cuba. He was also able to organize a parallel government, kind of like Supermans Bizzaro World, and to carry out some communal agrarian reform, along with the control of provinces with agricultural and manufacturing production.

The political and military fabric of the Batista regime began to unravel like a cheap suit off the rack at Montgomery Wards in 1958. Along with the loss of popular support and massive desertions in the military, Batista's government collapsed like a cancerous lung due to Castro's efforts. In January of 1959, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, (what the hell..it was good enough for Trujillo!) and at the ripe old revolutionary age of 32, Castro concluded a classic check mate guerrilla campaign allowing him to take control of Cuba where he implemented reforms by nationalizing factories and plantations in an effort to end U.S. economic dominance on the island. Strangulation was more like it, and American companies felt the negative effects of the reforms, causing friction between Cuba and the United States. For example, the Castro government announced it was going to base compensation to foreign companies on the artificially low property values that the companies themselves had negotiated with past Cuban governments in order to keep their taxes low. Of course capitalist arms were up in a rage.

Then in April of 1959, Castro hopped a plane to the United States (later, planes were usually highjacked to Cuba!) as guests of the National Press Club. President Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of Normandy, avid golfer and downhome yokel refused to meet with him which is typical of American conduct when her nose is out of joint and it's ass isn't kissed properly. So what's a feller to do? Screw You, Uncle Sam, and he began to establish relations with the Soviet Union and asked the Commie Princess if she'd go to the prom with him..she said "Si!" The USSR sent more than 100 Spanish-speaking advisers to help organize Cuba's defense committee. In February 1960, Cuba signed a trade agreement to buy oil from the Soviet Union and established diplomatic relations. U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, so Castro expropriated the refineries. The United States retaliated by cutting Cuba's import quota on sugar. This began a decades-long contentious relationship between the two countries.

On January 3, 1961, outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with the Cuban government leaving that mess for the next guy and the next guys after that to clena up...Yikes Ike! On April 16, Castro had the equivalient of a coming out ball, a scene right out of Gone with the Wind where Tara was host to a debutantes ball of societies finest sicialists in rag to riches to rags formals. He declared Cuba a socialist state.

The following day 1,400 US backed, badly trained and inept Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow the Castro regime. The incursion ended in disaster with hundreds of the insurgents killed and nearly 1,000 captured. Though the United States denied any involvement, it was revealed that the Cuban exiles were trained by the Central Intelligence (Intelligence is a misnomer) Agency and armed with U.S. weapons. (but no air support! and remember the US had lost in Korea, and most recently in Vietnam, and had it's first "solo" victory in Grenada! Grenada? C'mon! Hell, we're still getting our ass kicked in Iraq and Afghanistan!) Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and announced the Cuban government was adopting communist economic and political policies. On February 7, 1962, the United States imposed a full economic embargo on Cuba, a policy that continues to this day.

Castro intensified his relations with the Soviet Union by accepting further economic and military aid. In October 1962, his increasing reliance on Soviet aid brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Wanting to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived an idea of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. He justified the move as a response to U.S. Jupiter missiles deployed in Turkey. An American U2 reconnaissance plane discovered the missile base construction before the missiles were installed. President Kennedy responded by demanding the removal of the missiles with orders for the U.S. Navy to search any vessels headed for the island.

Over the course of several anxious days of secret communications between Khrushchev, Kennedy, and their agents, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the United States' public agreement not to invade Cuba. The Kennedy administration also agreed to secretly remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Both leaders saved face and gained some admiration for restraint. The soviet system fell apart in the Eighties like a second hand Yugo. "Bring that wall down Mr. Gorbechev" and all that, and today Havana is an idyllic island wide classic car show on post cold war cruise control, where aging Chevy's have replaced fading murals of Che, although they still stand, proud but peeling, and watching over the Cuban populace. Bicycles are a basic mode of transportation, and Guantanamo, the US marine base at the end of an island, a constant reminder to Castro that there is an American suppository ready to race up the commie colon at a moments notice...

The Castro mystique has not only survived to this day, but the mythology has grown deeper than the six foot deep hole the conspiracy theorists have dug..dig it..he was behind the Kennedy assassination...the CIA had exploding cigars to kill him, chemicals to make his beard fall off his face, yadda, yadda, and more yadda...49 years later...he is the last man standing. Kruschev and Kennedy are mere cold war footprints in history. Castro, on the other hand is a living dinosaur of a politically Jurassic period that defies logic. From Che to Chevy's on the cold war dragstrip....but...he is the last man standing!

When Sockmonkeys Ruled the Earth!

No such thing, you say? Big furry things that go barefootin' and big footin' in the Left Coast Peoples Republic of the Pacific Northwest? Too many better living through chemistry hallucinagenic drugs over the years have created cretinous creatures of immense mythical stature, more so than those peskly little green angry red planet Roswellian aliens or a Jurassic Scot Nessie that only grainy film will attest too? Who'se been smoking the redwoods anway?

When it comes to "The Ugly American" Bigfoot has that contest won in spades, but is he or she or it an American original? Is Big Foot a guy...or a girl? Damn ugly either gender, are there Pink Big Foot's..homosexual Sasquatchs...the term Sasquatch does conjur up some weird sexual configurations. Is it religious?

No doubt about it..there ain't no pussyfootin' when your Bigfootin' and try, just try to squash the Sasquatch legend. It's a realm of myth guarded by the Keepers and Creepers of the unexplained...the more unexplained..the better. Leaves room for desert in the form of conspiracy. The Northwest is particularly susceptible to Bigfoot brainscan bravado. Remember in the Northwest they have given us Randy Weaver and Ted Kascinski..two people who spent too much time foraging and hallucinating in the Northwoods of the Northwest. Nazis, Uni-Bombers and Bigfoot...the Larry, Moe and Curly of Northwest pop culture.

Don't forget D.B. Cooper who parachuted into physical oblivion but certainly not local legend as his face adorns many a tee-shirt in Seattle and Portland to this day. A Highjacking High Priest who set sail over the Northwest forests with a parachute and a bag o' cash. He actually was met on the ground by a tribe of Bigfoots or Bigfeet as Oregonians refer to them, and is now their tribal leader leading a hidden underground life in the pine trees emulating the late, great Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now..the horror...the horror.

The land of yaks and yurts and all things that begin with "Y" have given us the legendary Yeti. a purely Tibetan incarnation. Is it real, or just a happy holy hoax of Bhuddist monks with an unholy sense of humour? The Dali Lama alone knows the truth..and he aint giving it up! Yoga to Yeti, Yoga Bear, Yogi Bear, Yogi Yeti, Yoga Bear, Yoga Yeti..the fictional beast that guards the gates to Shangri-la where the elusive monks of Bhuddism conceal the secret of remaining young to keep the Yeti legend alive for decades. Yeti on the other hand is pure speculation as to it's source of myth and legend. Hallucinating monasticians looking too deeply for the meaning of life, stumbling across and large furry prescence they couldn't explain...something that needed no explanation and any student of zen could have explained simply by not saying a word? "Holy Tao Batman, it's Yeti!"

Unlike the Loch Ness Monster, which is only seen by tipsy Scots who'se kilts are wrapped too tight, Big Foot is seen everywhere from New York to Michigan to Texas to California to Oregon-Washington..(both states are the same, Siamese Twins joined at the hip...the only difference is that one of them thinks they're hip, the other actually is!) Canada is probably the root of all Big Foot evil, the land where the legend was born...probably around a lumberjack campfire, as was Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox...these loggers were sitting around with a Mershcaum full of fine Quebec marijuana or Halifax Hashish when these tall tales were hewn from the experience of the great outdoors.

Sooner or later, yet another Yeti had to surface on The Trail of Fears and all roads to this myth vs. reality adventure leads to the doorstep of Canada where smoking dried beaver tail has taken it's toll over the years in creating and