“Podcaster Joe Rogan has apologized to Spotify. While also addressing the controversy around his podcast. “I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much heat from it, “I’m not trying to promote misinformation, I’m not trying to be controversial,” Rogan added. “I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than to just talk to people…“I do all the scheduling myself, and I don’t always get it right.”
He certainly didn’t get it right when he scheduled author T.J. English, a notorious propagandist for the Stalinist, terror-sponsoring Castro regime, whose historic obsession is the destruction of the country that made Joe Rogan a multi-millionaire.
Astoundingly, Rogan did not even attempt any rebuttals against T.J. English’s allegations about pre-Castro Cuba, Cuban-Americans and the CIA. In case Rogan invites him again, I offer the following (free of charge) to correct English’s Castro regime-concocted allegations:
First off: much of English’s book Havana Nocturne was written in Cuba with the full collaboration of the Castro regime’s propaganda ministry. In fact, the primary source for English’s book, cited no fewer than 72 times in quotes and footnotes, is a propaganda apparatchik of Castro’s totalitarian regime named Enrique Cirules. (Who recently perished.)
The late Castro regime propaganda apparatchik Enrique Cirules, worked at the Castro-regime’s propaganda bureau known as “Casa de las Americas,” which essentially publishes and promotes the Castro regime’s propaganda in books and articles under the guise of “art.”
In 1983, a high-ranking Cuban intelligence officer named Jesus Perez Mendez defected to the U.S. and spilled his guts to the FBI. Among his spillings we encounter the following: “The Cuban DGI (Directorio General de Inteligencia, Castro’s KGB-trained Secret service) controls Casa de las Americas.”
Worse still, shortly before his death, Communist propaganda apparatchik Enrique Cirules accused TJ English of plagiarizing his propaganda screeds word for word! You know it’s bad when an official communist propagandist, whose very job it is to get “mainstream” authors and reporters to parrot his propaganda, gets ticked because one such author didn’t even bother to paraphrase or occasionally quote. Instead he lifted Cirules’ communist propaganda screed word for word! To wit:
“I have no intention of talking to Mr. T.J. English,” harrumphed Casa de Las Americas official Enrique Cirules. “Instead, I’m offering figures, data and clear evidence of his plagiarism. In his book Havana Nocturne (2008) T.J. English did not quote my work; instead, 72 times he mentioned the name of Cirules in an attempt to justify plagiarizing more than 260 pages from the novels El Imperio de La Habana and La vida Secreta de Meyer Lansky.”
Among the Cuban propaganda ministry memes parroted by TJ English in his book Havana Nocturne; "How the Mob Owned Cuba, and Lost it to the Revolution,”:
"The financial largesse that flooded Cuba (in the 1950's) could have been used to address the country's social problems" continues the bestselling author who (lest he disappoint his Cuban regime sources) proceeds to list them:
"High infant mortality"--(in fact, Cuba's infant mortality in 1958 was the 13 lowest--not in Latin America, not in the Hemisphere--but in the WORLD.)
"Subhuman housing" -- (in fact, Cuba's per capita income in 1958 was higher than half of Europe's.)
"Dispossession of small farmers"-- (in fact, Cuba's agricultural wages in 1958 were higher than half of Europe's. And--far from huge latifundia hogging the Cuban countryside-- the average Cuban farm in 1958 was SMALLER than the average in the U.S.)
'Illiteracy"-- (In fact, in a mere 50 years since a war of independence that cost Cuba almost a fifth of her population, Cuba managed 80 per cent literacy and budgeted the most( 23 % of national expenses) for public education of any Latin American countr. Better still, Cubans were not just literate but also educated, allowed to read George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson and not just the arresting wisdom and sparkling prose of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Unsurprisingly, English's sources (like Jon Lee Anderson's sources for "Che, A Revolutionary Life”) are primarily officials of Cuba's Stalinist regime which English visited often. Indeed, as mentioned, English dedicates his book to one such official, Enrique Cirules, who he calls a "Cuban author." Fine, I'll call Julius Streicher "a German author."
Several underlying facts get in the way of the books title and thesis. To wit: Cuba's Gross Domestic product in 1957 was $2.7 billion. Cuba's foreign receipts in 1957 were about $750 million--of which tourism made up only $60 million. Gambling was a small fraction of this $60 million. How could the beneficiaries of that tiny fraction of Cuba's income "own" the entire country, and "infiltrate its levers of power from top to bottom," as the book asserts?
Well, we have it on the good authority of Castro regime officials, primary sources for this book, which neglects to mention how "the Revolution" has made multiple times that few million cahoots with Colombia's cocaine cowboys.
"We lived like kings in Cuba," revealed Medellin Cartel bosses Carlos Lehder and Alejandro Bernal during their trials. "Fidel made sure nobody bothered us." The Cocaine cartel's deal with Castro made Meyer Lansky's with Batista look like a nickel and dime gratuity.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member