Beautiful Cuba
December 2, 2018JPEG
Though the United States and Cuba have operated in largely separate economic spheres for decades, they are only separated by 150 kilometers (90 miles). On December 2, 2018, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the narrow, watery boundaries that separate the United States, Cuba, and the Bahamas.
From space, the deep water of the Florida Strait appears dark blue in comparison to the shallower, turquoise water covering the Cay Sal Bank and Bahama Banks. Both of these platforms formed as carbonate minerals—produced by certain types of bacteria and sea organisms—were deposited on the ocean floor over millions of years.
Undeveloped ecosystems (forests and wetlands) cover 53 percent of Cuba, according to an analysis of recent Landsat imagery. About 40 percent of the island’s land surface is used for agriculture. Major crops include cassava, tobacco, grapefruit, and sugar. Reservoirs cover about 1 percent of the island’s land surface, and cities cover less than 1 percent.
Despite the patchwork of farmland and pastures, Cuba is known for having relatively large stretches of pristine mangrove forests and undisturbed coral reefs, beaches, and sea grass marshes.
More:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144390/beautiful-cuba
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The standard lie has always been that it was stolen from the owners, while anyone who bothers to do his/her research will learn the owners were offered the value for their land they used to appraise it for, on their property taxes. They were offered market prices for their property long ago. They declined. They wanted the U.S. to throw the people's revolution out and put the very violent, wildly corrupt, racist grifters right back in power, where they could resume their tortures, police-conducted kidnappings of dissidents, and murders, and hideous abuse and oppressive control and domination of the massive poor, uneducated, only seasonally employed population, which managed the tobacco and sugar cane, and rum, of course, for the lifestyles of US Americans and Europeans. Fresh vegetables, etc. were mostly imported, expensive, and available to the wealthy.
Poor people attempted to grow small gardens along the sides of the railroads, and the government always ripped them out.
Batista's police cut up protesters and hung their remains from trees, and lamp posts, after swiping them from the roads, or their homes.
Some mothers in Santiago de Cuba tried to reach the U.S. Ambassador to beg him to intercede, and Batista's police turned the fire hoses on them.
MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2009
1957: Mothers' Protest staged for US Ambassador
Cuba History Timeline Events
July 31, 1957
Castro’s M-26-7 operatives stage a phony “spontaneous protest” of Cuban mothers carrying sign: "Stop the murders of our sons" to coincide with the new US Ambassador’s visit to Santiago de Cuba. The protest is so clumsily organized that Smith recognizes it for what it is. In his own words:
“While I was receiving the keys to the city of Santiago […] you could hear a growing roar of voices outside. The mothers of Santiago were demonstrating in the square. A group of approximately 200 women—some quite young, and to all appearances, representatives of the upper middle class—staged a demonstration in Parque Céspedes in front of the Municipal Palace. The women were dressed completely in black. Many were too young to have been mothers of grown sons. They were obviously recruited for the occasion.”
A disturbance broke out when the women protesters tried to break through the police cordon. Batista suspended the Bill of Rights for a period of forty-five days. The suspension of constitutional guarantees meant the temporary loss of such rights as habeas corpus, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, free assembly and free speech.
After returning to Havana and holding interviews with many political leaders, pro- and anti-Castro, Smith correctly sized up Castro and his revolution and flew back to Washington to publicly warn the American people that Castro would not honor international obligations.
http://cuba1952-1959.blogspot.com/2009/08/1957-mothers-protest-staged-for-us.html