You heard that news here first, folks. Val reported on this yesterday, one full day before the media--Bloomberg in this case--was able to break the story.

Via Bloomberg News today:

Obama Said to Consider Easing Educational Travel to Cuba

President Barack Obama may ease travel restrictions on Cuba, allowing more Americans to visit the island on educational and cultural trips, said a U.S. official who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak on the subject.

I won't link to Peggy Noonan's latest Wall Street Journal column titled "America is at risk of boiling over." I swore I'd never do it again and I want to keep my word. That said, I urge you all to find it on OpinionJournal and read it. Then, read all the comments, a lot of them in the vein of these with which I agree:

So, Peggy, honey, when are you going to apologize for your role in the elevation of Obama, the central character ushering in this dystopia? Until then, I can't get through an entire article of yours. While you complain incessantly within your Friday column, I'm thinking "Peggy was one of the rubes fooled by this guy." At that point, I have to stop reading.

*

Well why hasn't your man Obama, Mr. "We're all Americans" been able to remedy this "....pessimism and powerlessness"? His administration has gone a long way in a short amount of time to speed up this sad process you describe and "journalists" such as yourself have made your own contributions to help bring it about. Now you can not only comment about America's decline, but you can also take some small amount of credit in helping to bring it about.

*

Unfortunately Ms Noonan, by admitting defeat, is now part of the problem. Of course, that issue first appeared when she embraced the illusion of candidate Obama. I wonder how she can even write a column when she no longer seems to stand for much of anything at all.

*

But wait Peg, you were the one crowing just 20 months ago about the historic wonderfulness we were experiencing with the election of the anointed one. You and the rest of the ruling class in the media, government and big business - that unholy triumvirate are at the core of the rot this nation faces. Sorry, you seem like a really nice person, and I read all your books a few years back - but now your words ring hollow because they read like those of a weatherman telling me what I can know by looking out my window.

*

Boo hoo, Peggy Noonan. Didn't you use your voice to put the Obama Wrecking Crew in power? Both you and we are eating the bitter fruit that was foisted upon us by the media, and Hollywood, and Academia. Conservatives have been fighting the battle for decades. We are tired. We are weary of fighting the battle with the insane, and the selfish, and the immature, who lack wisdom and understanding, and have substituted their credentials of indoctrination from a prestigous university for sound reason.

All of your articles about the sad state of affairs are just that "sad." But, I have no sympathy for YOU personally, because YOU are/were part of the problem. Go console yourself that you have seen the light and are a "redeemed" woman. The consequences of your choice to support Obama, linger for all of us to endure. Maybe the "children on the Left" will actually suffer enough to "grow up" and act like adults. But, don't count on it.

Her, David Frum, and the David "I admire the crease in Obama's Pants" Brooks from The New York Times are nothing more than elitist idiots and pretend conservatives.

Crackdowns on dissidents; Ladies in White marching through the streets while mobs shouted obscenities at them; the arrest and detainment of opposition leaders; all of these things and more were causing instability for the Cuban dictatorship. And if it were not for an unlikely hero, the regime may have found itself right now hanging by a string or even perhaps on the verge of being toppled.

Sometimes help comes from where you least expect it, and sometimes someone who you once perceived as your enemy, ends up being your savior.

Meet the self-proclaimed savior of the Cuban regime, Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino. Although his modesty precludes him from describing himself as the savior of Cuba's murderous dictatorship, his own words tell the story of his brave and courageous struggle to help the Castro family maintain its enslavement of the Cuban people:

He [Ortega] said before he and the president of the Cuban bishops; conference, Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez of Santiago met with President Raul Castro in May, tensions in Havana were threatening to become as volatile as they were around the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Then, at a time of economic downturn, the government opened the port of Mariel to all who wanted to leave Cuba, and boats from the United States quickly arrived to help them. About 125,000 Cubans ultimately resettled in the United States as a result of the Mariel releases.

Cardinal Ortega explained that he asked to meet with Castro amid a crackdown this spring on weekly silent marches by wives and mothers of political prisoners, known as the Ladies in White, who want freedom for their relatives. The usually quiet marches that begin after Sunday Mass were met by counter-protesters -- allegedly brought in by the government -- who shouted and blocked the women, harassing the group for hours.

"It was beginning to look like the time of Mariel," said Cardinal Ortega. "It was causing instability."

Thanks to the intrepid intervention of the Cardinal, the Cuban regime averted instability and its possible demise. Without Ortega's hard work and selfless determination, the regime would have risked losing 11-million slaves and the billions of dollars they produce. It was Cardinal Ortega's quick thinking that thankfully averted the most remote possibility that the Cuban people would achieve freedom from the tyrannical Castro dictatorship.

Thank you, Cardinal.

Wait a second! Aren't we trying to remove sanctions against the Cuban dictatorship to promote democracy in Cuba?

“Relaxing trade and travel restrictions with Cuba would nearly double the amount we currently export annually and generate increased business activity valued at $1.1 billion, creating 6,000 new jobs,” Lincoln said. “I currently have a bill that will do just this. It will open this market once and for all, providing a boon to Arkansas’s agricultural exporters like rice and poultry producers, who are poised to prosper and profit significantly, with fewer trade restrictions. I will continue to fight to see Congress take it up this year.”

“Increased travel to Cuba will boost food demand in the country and provide the funds to purchase U.S. commodities,” said Board Member of USA Rice Federation, USA Rice Producers’ Group, and Arkansas Rice Producers’ Group Joe Mencer, of Lake Village, Arkansas. “U.S. producers and the agriculture industry would expect to meet the increased food needs … We urge support and passage of legislation that would allow for open agricultural trade and travel to Cuba.”

Do you mean to tell me all of this is just a play by certain lawmakers in Washington to cash in on the misery of the Cuban people?

Please say it ain't so!

It is funny that while the Spanish government, the Cuban Catholic Church, and the "Cuba Experts" all say we should give thanks to the Cuban dictatorship for the forced exile of Cuban prisoners of conscience, the actual so-called "beneficiaries" of the regime's magnanimity are not so thankful.

Cuban defector criticizes Castro and Chávez in Chile

Then again, these "beneficiaries," like the rest of us, are all Cuban; what the hell do they know about Cuba and its magnanimous slave master?

Spain's foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos says the Cuban dictatorship wants to reform. Raul's b*tch and part-time Catholic Archbishop Jaime Ortega says real change is happening in Cuba thanks to Raul. The "Cuba Experts" say Raul is a pragmatist, willing to negotiate and allow reforms in order to save an economy that has been on life support for the past five decades.

Raul the reformer says:

Human rights campaigners attacked in Cuba

Once more, State Security officials of the Cuban government attacked members of the Information Center of the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs in Cuba on July 31, 2010.

Juan Carlos González Leiva, executive secretary of this NGO stated:

Since the afternoon of August 1, 2010, our telephone service was interrupted once again and it has not been restored yet. Just minutes after this happened the wife of a delegate of the National Assembly of People's Power appeared in our center and told us that Sergio Diaz Larrastegui, the blind owner of our dwelling, was summoned by authorities. These are the continous acts of terror by the Cuban government so that Díaz Larrastegui is forced to evicts us from his home.

On July 31, 2010, agents of the political police violently assaulted the car in which we traveled: Tania Maceda Guerra, Lázara Bárbara Cendiña Recarde, Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco, Carlos Alexánder Borrero Galardi and myself, Juan Carlos González Leiva. Without identifying themselves, military officials in plainclothes suddenly intercepted our car and forced Hugo Damián Prieto to get off and, as he did, he was kicked and punched.

The rest of us followed the political police in spite of the fact that they threatened to destroy our car and to imprison us as they drove off, taking Hugo Damián away. After a relentless persecution, they stopped and arrested us all. Galardi, the driver, was handcuffed, and beaten as he was dragged off. Maceda, Recarde and myself were taken to the detention center of Villa Marista and, without getting us off their Lada automobile we were locked in the car during an hour of intense and suffocating heat. After two hours we were released.

Newsflash for Moratinos, the B*tch, and the "Cuba Experts": We've seen this reform before.

Those damn Cuban dissidents; give them an inch and they want to take a mile!

Cuba group wants parole for 69 'political' inmates

Four Cuban American lawmakers are questioning suspicious language in the latest RFA (Request for Applications) from the USAID in regards to promoting democracy in Cuba. The RFA states that since Civil Society Organizations are illegal in Cuba, any funding from USAID must be used with Civil Society Groups, which are part of and run by the Cuban regime.

If this is the case, it seems that the USAID believes that the best way to promote democracy in Cuba is to provide funding and support for the same regime that ensures there is no democracy in Cuba.

For a group that loves to be put on lists, Cuba's communist dictatorship is squealing like a stuck pig after the US decided to keep them on the list of state sponsors of terror.

Here's another heartwarming story from the frozen North.

It's about a guy who falls for a Cuban girl in Cuba, marries her, "buys" property and builds "her" dream house, in Cuba, and then, when he discovers she's watering her lawn with another gardener, in "his" house in Cuba, demands she leave "his" house. The slaveowners, of course, chuckling to themselves -- and probably thinking "¡que clase de comemierda! -- said "no," since anybody with half a fucking brain knows there is no private property in Cuba and that the state owns everything, including its people.

This is what happens when you have your head firmly planted in your ass and you have not a single, solitary fucking clue about the real world. Kinda like being a "progressive," I guess:

Continue reading Not one atom of pity for this guy

Sixty five years ago today Imperial Japan suffered the first of what were to be two atomic bombs dropped on its cities: Hiroshima, the first city ever attacked with a nuclear weapon, and three days later, Nagasaki. Many feel that what we did was contrary to the American spirit and that it was barbarous in the extreme. I do not.

The dropping of the two "special weapons," as the Japanese Imperial Military council called them, hastened the end of World War II and convinced an utterly ruthless and implacable enemy that the United States and its allies would do whatever was needed to achieve the goal of the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. After the second atomic bomb decimated Nagasaki on August 9, a command from His Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito (the "Voice of the Crane") overrode his war council and he agreed to accept the Allied ultimatum that had been spelled out in the Potsdam Proclamation of July 26, 1945.

Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, was adamant that the decision to drop the bomb as the correct one. In a 1994 statement, he wrote about the rampant historical revisionism that had clouded (and still is) one the last decisions made by American leaders in the Second World War:

Continue reading August 6, 1945

"But...but...but all "Cuba Experts" say you Cuban-Americans overwhelmingly support everyone and anyone vacationing in Cuba?...RIGHT?!"

Then why all the hoopla? Why is Jeff Greene backtracking, and crawfishing and meele-mouthing and flip-flopping regarding his obvious vacation trip to Cuba?

"Travel to Cuba is an explosive issue in Miami's Cuban American community. Some exiles view visiting the island run by a repressive regime as tantamount to treason," explains the Miami Herald.

Well, not according to "Cuba-Experts," and the MSM who recently reported (gloated) that 65 per cent of Cuban-Americans (in all age groups) FAVOR unfettered travel to Cuba for whatever whim. Remember?

WELL, if this is actually so--and if Greene is running for office in a heavily Cuban-Americans district --then shouldn't he be GLOATING about his Cuba vacation?.... Most of his constituents--we're given to understand by the MSM and Cuba Experts--should be cheering him on? And thus his electoral support (on this issue) should be overwhelming...RIGHT?

Right

"I was anti-Castro before Anti-Castroism was cool (among Cubans) " Roberto Martin-Perez

51 years ago this very week the first Cubans to put their lives on the line against the Castro regime were ratted out and arrested. A 19 year-old Roberto Martin-Perez was among them. "Go ahead and shoot me" he snapped at Castro and (the sainted by many imbeciles) Camilo Cienfuegos who were toying with him just after his arrest. "I came here to try and kill you and would if I had a gun in my hand. So go ahead. Shoot me. It's only fair."

Instead he suffered 28 years in Castro's dungeons and torture chambers. Martin-Perez' attitude never changed-- and accounted for his serving three times as long in Castro's gulag as most victims suffered in Stalin's.

The Aug. 1959 plot was foiled by treachery. Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo and William Morgan claimed to be part of it while secretly working for Castro. But this being a Cuban issue, Cuban exiles hold ninety gazillion different opinions on whether the pair were Castro agents all along or ratted out their "compadres" (to save their own butts) only when they heard Castro was on to the plot.

No matter, because U.S. State dept documents show that U.S. ambassador Phil Bonsal had also gotten wind of the plot and promptly alerted Castro officials to this threat against their Stalinist regime. During the "U.S.-backed dictatorship" of Batista, U.S. diplomats and CIA agents--not only kept mum on plots against Batista--but actually gave refuge in their very offices and homes to anti-Batista plotters (who often placed bombs in crowded public places.) Former U.S. Ambasador to Cuba, Earl Smith (fired for repeating and repeating that helping Castro into power was not an immensely shrewd U.S. policy) documents all these shenanigans in his book.

More insufferable intransigence here on the early reign of a (genuinely) U.S.-backed (and genuine) Cuban dictator.

Unreal: Eloy Menoyo (a Spaniard), William Morgan (an American ex-con) and the U.S. ambassador to Cuba help foil a plot by Cubans to topple the Soviet-mentored regime of Fidel Castro (the son of a Spanish soldeir who helped murder Cubans under Spanish general Valeriano Weyler) and Che Guevara (an Argentine vagabond-psychopath.)...Needless to say "enlightened" opinion worldwide regards the Castro regime as fervently "nationalist" and it's enemies as "foreign mercenaries" or "lackeys".....Orwell coined a term for such terminology. And Alice found it through the Looking Glass.

(HT to our friend prof. Tony de la Cova for link pics)

The Real Cuba has Dr. Darsi Ferrer answering questions from Cuba.

Here's an excerpt:

Does the gradual release of all political prisoners mean a real change in the events in Cuba?
Will the government free those prisoners who refuse to leave the country, as in the case of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet?

The first thing I want to do is to thank my dear friend Jorge Utset, for giving me an opportunity to exchange views on current issues with the readers of his website, therealcuba.com. I also want to thank his readers for allowing me to express my opinion regarding the questions that they have.
I confess that I hope this experience will be just the beginning of a regular interchange of ideas, which will help all of us to deepen our arguments in matters of common interest, in which we may have similar or diverse opinions.
The gradual release of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, taking place as a result of the dialogue process between the Church and the government with the participation of the Spanish government, has similar elements to those that have occurred in previous mass releases, but at the same time it contains new elements that are of significant importance with regard to national issues.
The forced exile is one of the conditions that are part of the current release of prisoners, as it happened, for example, when prisoners were released through the efforts of former President Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II.
The release of prisoners also coincides with the need of the regime to improve its deteriorated international image and to try to obtain benefits that would improve its terrible economic situation.

Clearly political prisoners are used by the power elite as “exchange coins,” which can be used for blackmail or manipulate the international community, in a similar fashion to what the FARC narco-guerrillas does with the people that they have kidnapped and are keeping in the jungle. In extreme circumstances, to take these type of measures which carry little real cost for the authorities, as is the release of persons unfairly and arbitrarily convicted for simply having tried to exercise fundamental rights, have the effect of being welcomed as humanitarian gestures or indicative of changes in certain political circles or the international press. Such a practice has always borne fruits to the Government in all occasions that it has used them.
The absolute lack of good will on the part of the current rulers is evident, since these current measures, announced with bells and whistles, allowing the gradual departure of all prison inmates, is not being accompanied by any legal action that would prevent a future recurrence of new waves of repressive measures for political reasons.

You can read the rest of Dr. Ferrer's answers HERE.

If any of you have any questions you would like to ask Darsi Ferrer, contact George Utset from the Real Cuba HERE and he will forward them to him.

Sixteen years ago today the Cuban people came as close as they had been in a long time to finally ridding themselves of the tyrannical Castro dictatorship. What started as a shoving match on Havana's famed Malecón on August 5, 1994, quickly escalated into a riot with thousands of Cubans streaming onto the seaside boulevard and chanting for freedom.

The situation deteriorated with every second that passed, and the regime's state security soon found themselves losing control of the crowd. There was no other choice but to use deadly force and they began beating and arresting protesters they could safely get their hands on, and shooting those they could not. Wounded protesters began arriving at the hospitals with bullet holes in their buttocks and eyes missing from their sockets, and fearing the mayhem would spread, civilian doctors were sent home and military doctors were brought in to treat the wounded.

With no help from the outside, the protest was finally quelled by the regime's use of sheer force and violence. It was then, when things had been calmed, that Fidel Castro showed up at the Malecon and entered at a point his security detail had already secured.

Journalist would go on to report how Fidel fearlessly faced down the throngs of protesters and brought calm back to the seaside boulevard, ignoring his cowardly appearance long after the crowd had been subdued. But tales of cowards don't sell newspapers or magazines, and just like 36 years earlier when the media had taken a gutless criminal and made him into a courageous revolutionary, on August 5, 1994, they took a cowardly dictator and made him into a fearless leader.

The real story was how close the Cuban people came to freedom that day. The media, however, was more interested in telling the world how far the Cuban people were from it.

Zoé Valdés lived through this day in Havana, and she has an excellent post on El Maleconzo that is today's must read.

We have seen the enemy and it is us:

It is the terminal curse of apathy and disconnect that got us into this shameless mess we find America in today, and in all honesty, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

We all saw it coming, but political correctness caused most of us to clam up in the ridiculous mindset that it was more important to avoid hurting feelings than to stand up for what we knew in our hearts was being trampled underfoot. Sadly, America has become a nation of ultra-thin-skinned, whining little girls, afraid of our own shadows and so cowardly as to back away from the simple solution of speaking the truth when we know we are supposed to do so.

I have been damned as being a radical extremist my entire adult life for simply standing up and relentlessly promoting and celebrating self-evident truth, logic and common sense. The devil brigade acting upon the Saul Alinsky deception playbook has made its mark by lying, cheating and attacking with the very hate that it accuses everybody else of harboring. With an overall complicit media to bullhorn the brigade's agenda, a nation of sheep has taken the pill and swallowed it whole.

Welcome to the new fat, soft, cowardly nation of wimps with the perfectly corrupt president and pack of soulless hounds in government that they deserve.

Thank you, Ted. I needed that breath of fresh, clean air.

I've mentioned numerous times lately that the castro-friendly lobbies and entities have pulled out all the stops with respect to the lifting of restrictions and changing US/Cuba policy.

Not only is there a probability of change in the Congressional makeup come November, but even with a Democrat majority in Congress and the most liberal President ever in office, the castro-friendly lobby has not been able to get their much anticipated changes to US/Cuba policy ratified. Try as they might, all US/Cuba policy legislation is dead in the water, congressionally speaking.

The baddies are in desperation mode. This includes the castro regime as well, obviously, as they were not only forced to admit Cuba had political prisoners, but they were forced to actually release them.

Not only is the castro-friendly lobby frustrated, - just imagine all those anti-embargo and anti-restrictions groups and Cuba experts who depend on "funding" for their very existence - but they're finding themselves forced to explore other avenues even for the slightest of concessions.

Reliable sources in DC tell me, perhaps as a result of the meetings between Obama administration officials and Cuban Cardinal Ortega, among other things, there may be some "minor changes" to US/Cuba policy coming down the pike. While any actual change to Cuba policy must still be ratified via Congress, the President has the authority to make certain amendments to same via executive order. What I'm being told is that there may be a loosening of travel restrictions to Cuba for Americans - not "officially" allowing "tourism", mind you - via provisions to travel licensing under certain categories as allowed by the Cuba Democracy Act.

This is Obama pulling a Clinton and allowing - via executive order - more "people to people" contacts just like we had back in 2003, prior to the arrests of the 75.

I'm also told that there would be provisions in said order not only for increasing "people to people" contacts via the licensing provisions, but that new markets for travel to Cuba might be opened up. I was told the number of cities being allowed travel to and from Cuba would be increased to thirty-five. A number that seems unlikely, but, nonetheless that's the number I was told.

There's been a lot of conjecture as to how the Obama administration would make concessions to the castro regime for the "release' of political prisoners, but this move seems like the most logical, if not the most likely. I hardly think that Obama would pardon five convicted spies and trade them to the castro regime for a USAID contractor. (Although, with this administration, one never knows.)

So there you have it. The End Game. All that money spent and all those lobbying efforts wasted by castro friendly groups and think tanks and businesses and non-profits and in the end they get a "policy" that is almost a decade old and probably worthless to a cash-strapped castro regime, whom the aforementioned groups desperately need and must work closely with.

More hand-wringing from the testicularly-challenged America haters:

EXCLUSIVE: The son of the U.S. Air Force pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare says the Obama administration's decision to send a U.S. delegation to a ceremony in Japan to mark the 65th anniversary of the attack on Hiroshima is an "unsaid apology" and appears to be an attempt to "rewrite history."

Gene Tibbets, son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., says Friday's visit to Hiroshima by U.S. Ambassador John Roos is an act of contrition that his late father would never have approved.

"It's an unsaid apology," Tibbets, 66, told FoxNews.com from his home in Georgiana, Ala. "Why wouldn't it be? Why would [Roos] go? It doesn't make any sense.

"I know it's the anniversary, but I don't know what the hell they're trying to do. It needs to be left alone. The war is over."

Tibbets, whose father died in 2007 at the age of 92, said he receives dozens of calls from veterans every year around this time thanking him for his father's service.

"'If it wasn't for your dad, I wouldn't be here,'" Tibbets said many veterans tell him. "This has been going on since he dropped that bomb."

Tibbets said he sees Roos' impending visit -- it will be the first time the U.S. has sent a delegation to the anniversary commemoration in Hiroshima -- as an attempt to revise history.

"It's making the Japanese look like they're the poor people, like they didn't do anything," he said. "They hit Pearl Harbor, they struck us. We didn't slaughter the Japanese -- we stopped the war."

[...]

President Obama is expected to visit Japan in November, and calls have been growing there for him to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, since he has spoken of his vision of a nuclear-free world.

Tibbets said he hopes Obama will decide to forgo visiting to the two cities.

"What's his purpose? I don't know what it'd do," Tibbet said. "History is history, the past is the past. You can't change it and I don't know why he'd visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"This all sounds like, 'Oh, we did you wrong.' That's what it sounds like."

Ryan Gallucci, a spokesman for AMVETS, an organization representing more than 180,000 veterans, said his organization supports the decision to send Roos, but he said the visit should not be seen as a conciliatory act.

"Considering how our relationship with Japan has evolved into a peaceful partnership over the years, we support the U.S. decision to send an envoy acknowledging the human toll of WWII," Gallucci said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "To AMVETS, the U.S. visit is an appropriate act of reciprocation for Japan's solidarity over the years, such as last summer's visit to the Punch Bowl National Cemetery (the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific) by Emperor Akihito, where he laid a wreath in honor of America's sacrifices in WWII.

"However, in no way should the United States be expected to apologize for its actions, and we hope that this visit will not be misconstrued as an act of contrition."

Paul Schalow, a professor of Japanese at Rutgers University, told FoxNews.com that Japanese media outlets are linking Roos' visit to Obama's desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Tomorrow, the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, I'll publish Tibbet's 1994 statement regarding this historical watershed.

An August surprise?

Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help. The actual vehicle for the bailout could be the Bush-era Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a sister program to Obama’s loan modification effort. HARP was just extended through June 30, 2011.

The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie.[...]

Read the entire scary, cynical thing.

Check out the Batistiano propaganda film our friend Zoe Valdes posted today.

Who woulda guessed movie special effects were so advanced in the 1950's? To make a third-world shanty-town look like the place shown above obviously required the type of computerized film ingenuity most of us associate with Avatar. Along with all the trick photography, the film's credits were also obviously altered. Originally they read:

Directed by
Meyer Lansky

Screenplay adaptation by:
Rolando Masferrer

Executive Producers:
Col. Esteban Ventura
Rafael Salas Canizares
Eleuterio Pedraza

Special thanks to United Fruit Co. and The Lucky Luciano Foundation.

Unreal