Havana at 500 still being crushed by US embargo at 60

While visiting Havana two years ago our tour guide informed us a half dozen or so dilapidated buildings collapse daily due to neglect, still largely due to the US embargo begun in 1959. Back then the newly empowered Castro revolution began dismantling the corporate and mafia welfare state benefiting its American protectors the US installed after stealing Cuba away from Spain in 1898. The irony of the building collapses is many were built by US infrastructure investment to make Cuba attractive for US exploitation over a hundred years ago. Another fact stood out: all new infrastructure building equipment trying to shore up impending collapse candidates and build 21st century versions bear company names from Russia, China, UK, France, Sweden, India, South Korea, Italy and others. None bear 'Made in USA'. That is tragic for Cuba and tragic for America, unable to shake off loss of its Cuban gravy train six decades ago.

I'm reminded of this truly sad and unending chapter in US - Cuba relations by Cuba's celebration of Havana's five hundredth birthday tomorrow. The current US president has reversed eight years of US - Cuba detente initiated by his predecessor, limiting the number of Americans who can enjoy the splendor of Havana amid the decay at its half millennium. Another cruel irony of this senseless, bullying policy of 327 million Americans against 11 million Cubans is that the embargo inhibits and degrades Cuba's inexorable march to a market economy initiated after the collapse of its Soviet benefactor in 1991.

With a little effort Americans can still visit Cuba in spite of current US spite. For my wife and I it was a trip of a lifetime. Those who haven't should do so while they still have one.

Peoria Street Riot largely ignored 70 years on

An ocean of ink and millions of pixels were expended to commemorate the 1919 Chicago Race Riot of a hundred years ago last July and rightly so. But virtually nothing has been noted about the infamous Peoria Street Riot that raged for four nights beginning 70 years ago November 8 around 5643 S. Peoria in then all white Englewood. Though inspired by white fear of encroaching black residents to the Irish community around Visitation Church at 56th and Peoria, the riot was directed at fellow whites, not blacks.

How could this be? Just three weeks earlier, two white couples, the Sennetts and the Bindmans moved into 5643 S. Peoria to begin its conversion into a two flat. Though white, both couples had communist connections, black acquaintances and no ties to the Irish neighborhood. Aaron Bindman was a union organizer for the International Longshoremen’s Union. On Tuesday, November 8th he invited 16 union stewards, eight of whom were black, over for a union meeting and party. When neighbors detected the unwanted strangers, a mob formed and begin pelting the house with rocks amid cries of “Burn them out.” The partygoers fled, leaving the Sennetts and Bindmans to hunker down for safety. Local police arrived but sided with the rioters, refusing to break up the mob and arrest ringleaders. The mayhem continued for three more nights before the beating of a single black pulled from a streetcar nearby on the fifth day finally prompted city officials to flood the area with police to prevent a full on race riot from developing. The other 12 injuries requiring hospitalization were progressive whites from nearby University of Chicago and other organizations who came to Peoria Street to provide support and protection to the beleaguered couples. Before or after being beaten by local thugs, those whites were then arrested by unhelpful police for disorderly conduct. Nearby Visitation Church supported the rioters; even negotiating a sale of the unwanted house to the parish within a year of the riot. The Sennetts stayed in Chicago till 1957; the Bindmans till 1959. Both left for more hospitable climes but were forever scared by hatred that nearly destroyed their home and lives over fear of blacks and communism. The riot prompted a city wide discussion of open housing which became more frequent with the Supreme Court decision banning restrictive covenants a year earlier that had keep homes exclusively for whites by contract.

Commemorate the bloody 1919 Chicago Race Riot a century on, but let’s not ignore the bizarre Peoria Street Riot that unfolded seventy years ago this month.

US needs to pivot away from murderous interference in Ukraine

Most Americans are aware of US regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and attempted regime change in Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Yemen and Iran. But too many are clueless about the 2013-14 US regime change project for Ukraine inspired by their election of pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych. The US became so obsessed with preventing Ukraine from tilting toward Russia, it helped inspire, promote and fund the February, 2014 coup that drove Yanukovych from office, igniting Russian involvement and a civil war in the eastern Donbass region that has killed over 15,000. Just three months before the coup, America's most prodigious warmonger, Sen. John McCain, stood next to Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of extreme right wing nationalist Svoboda Party, at a Kiev rally and proclaimed "America is with you". McCain should have said, "The American war party is with you." Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was then recorded discussing which pro-west Ukraine leader should replace Yanukovych. "Yats is the guy...." Nuland chortled, referring to preferred US tilting Ukraine puppet Arseniy Yatsenyuk. None of this had an iota of connection with America's national security interests. Never has, never will.

Five years on the Ukraine disaster boosted and bankrolled by Uncle Sam may bring down an unfit man functioning more like one of the corrupt Ukraine oligarchs he idolizes than a legitimate US president. But his saga of decline should not obscure the reality that we shouldn't be giving $4.00, much less $400,000,000 in weapons of war to continue the killing in the US instigated failed state of Ukraine.

US economic sanctions…a real killer

The US government tosses around the threat, then often implements economic sanctions with carefree abandon. The word ‘sanction’ itself is quite innocuous to most Americans, barely raising an eyebrow of concern for the helpless victims of its cruel, inhumane consequences. The people of Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran know full well those consequences. But every American should consider how they might react if a seriously ill loved one was denied life enhancing medicine because a foreign nation could cut off the supply of that drug. The resulting degraded health or even death might bring home what the folks of the aforementioned countries live with every day from US sanctions choking off crucial supplies of food and medicine.

Of course that would never happen to an American due to the power imbalance between the US and every nation it sanctions. Only the US has the power and the heartlessness to inflict such damage on innocent civilians. A year ago we re-imposed sanctions on Iran after recklessly pulling out of the 5+1 Nuclear Agreement, choking off Iran’s access to medicines including cancer treatment. Idriss Jazairy, UN special inspector on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures,s reports “The current system creates doubt and ambiguity which makes it all but impossible for Iran to import these urgently needed humanitarian goods. This causes a ‘chilling effect’ which likely leads to silent deaths in hospitals as medicines run out, while the international media fail to notice.” Iran’s universal health care policy, in effect since 1986, has been seriously degraded in what is essentially America’s regime change policy for Iran.

Everyone can understand the killing power of US bombs fired from planes and drones. Everyone should also understand the less dramatic but equally deadly power of those innocuous economic sanctions.

Turn Veteran's Day into Peace Day

Started 98 years ago today, Armistice Day was established in the UK to commemorate the armistice that ended WWI a year earlier. In 1926 Congress added it to the US to "perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations...a day dedicated to the cause of world peace." The war party, working through Congress, changed it to Veterans Day in 1954, the same year they put 'under god' in the Pledge. Since then it has largely become a commercial for American perpetual war around the world which today sees over 250,000 soldiers deployed in 140 countries. Every day we bomb innocents in at least 8 countries we know of. While every decent function of government loses funding, the annual increase in our $700 billion plus military budget alone dwarfs what most countries spend on their entire military. All vets but the near centenarians of WWII fought in undeclared wars which slaughtered millions while doing nothing to promote peace...and they know it. After 63 years it's time for another name change. How about Peace Day, to honor the peacemakers like Dr. Martin Luther King, Gandi and a true American hero, Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who spent seven years in prison for outing American war crimes in Iraq? As John Lennon famously sang, 'Give peace a chance.'