President Barack Obama stands barefoot in front of the 368-foot Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, Nov. 19, 2012. All visitors must remove their shoes and socks while touring the pagoda. (White House photo by Pete Souza)

(Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series in which journalist Anthony C. LoBaido documents the recent maneuverings of Mainland China, along with her two erstwhile Asia allies, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and North Korea. From Korea to Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Namibia and even to Portugal, LoBaido has traveled the world in the footsteps of Zheng He, following the advancing global arc of China. LoBaido examines ancient versus modern diplomacy and alliances, trade and various other elements of low-intensity colonization. Read Part 1.)

While the cat’s away

When President Obama visited Myanmar in late 2012, a relaxation of tensions was in the air. This was Myanmar’s “Nelson Mandela Moment.” Aung Sung Suu Kyi was out of jail, ready to garner her Nobel Prize, and the future seemed limitless.

While Obama spoke at the University of Yangon, once the site of anti-British and anti-junta rallies as acknowledged by the president, in his line of sight was a 33-year-old former Buddhist monk named Ashin Gambira. He had been imprisoned for his role in the 2007 Saffron Revolution.

Ashin Gambira had also been sentenced to 60 years in prison for marching through the streets with 100,000 other monks and non-monks, asking for broad participation of the electorate via democracy and better prices on consumer staples. He was freed in 2012 as a part of political amnesty that saw others like him released. Many had been kept at the notorious Insein Prison.

Ashin had been tortured and kept in solitary confinement for at least part of his four years in prison. He came down with malaria and was struck by depression and migraine headaches.

Ashin Gambira

Then Ashin Gambira was taken into custody in March 2012 for visiting ethnic Kachin in their home state, where they have battled the Myanmar armed forces. He was involved in a protest at a copper mine owned in part by a People’s Liberation Army front company in conjunction with the Burmese army.

Then in April 2012, his status as a monk was repealed because other monks and monasteries were shy to take him in – he had become persona non grata with the Burmese army and political elites. Those elites realized the strategic planning that went into the Saffron Revolution (which began in the intellectual sense back in 2003, without the help given by U.S. professional democracy-creation experts to Serbians and Egyptians, amongst others) had made Ashin a very dangerous man. He was sent to Insein Prison on charges of trespassing into several monasteries, which at the time were under lock and key. How could they arrest a “former” monk for this?

Aung San Suu Kyi

Many now look to “Mother Suu,” a.k.a. Aung San Suu Kyi, to speak out for Ashin Gambira. Some say the Burmese opposition leader’s silence is troubling. Others allay she must be careful with the military regime, just as Nelson Mandela had to let genetically modified foods into South Africa, allow the Executive Outcomes mercenaries to destroy the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, and, over his objections, allow the African National Congress to switch recognition from Taiwan to Communist China.

A vain, misguided movement has already begun in Myanmar in Suu Kyi’s own party, the National League for Democracy, to question her leadership role. There are those who feel Mother Suu has gone soft on the junta.

Critics openly say that she does not speak up for the Kachin people, nor about events in the Kachin State, for the lost-at-sea boat people known as the “Rohingya,” or about China and the People’s Liberation Army controlling a good share of Myanmar’s natural resources. (It should be noted that Burma is a perversion of “Bama,” which is one tribe of the nation. “Myanmar” was selected to be inclusive of the many tribes.) A Nov. 29, 2012, crackdown at a facility owned by China’s Wanbao Mining Copper Limited led to scores of protesters being injured. There are those in Myanmar who feel Mother Suu should be taking a much stronger stand about such issues. Mother Suu counters that China, the People’s Liberation Army and the junta will be tamed by the rule of law.

Riot police brutally broke up an 11-day protest by activists and monks against copper mine (Photo: Burma Partnership)

Like Nelson Mandela, she is content to try to forgive and forget, use kindness, accept reality and humanize the same opponents who imprisoned her. Mandela said the Afrikaners were “decent people misled by their leaders.” Mother Suu knows that not every soldier in the Myanmar armed forces is a wicked criminal without morality. She has openly stated that the army must have a say in the future of the nation. That said, Suu Kyi will now have to battle the notion that the junta made a deal with her while she was under house arrest – that she would in fact “go easy on them.” Maybe a tacit understanding that she would go to Scandinavia to receive her Nobel Prize and somehow fail to speak out against the ongoing criminality of the militarists?

Yet Mother Suu is resilient and revered. She was elected to the leadership of her party with 100 percent of the vote amongst the 120 members of the Central Committee. While it’s true that our idols mock us when they fail to redeem us, Suu Kyi’s intelligence, staying power and political acumen, as well as help given to her by the U.K. and U.S., should not be underestimated. Yet for now, gem cutters, Burmese exiles languishing in Thai camps such as the beleaguered Karen, the Rohingya and others can’t count on Mother Suu to single-handedly address and fix their plight.

Many people forget that it was Suu Kyi’s father who brought the Burmese army to the country, where he and the “New Army” had been trained in Japan before the outbreak of World War II. Just as the new president of South Korea is the daughter of a former South Korean general, leader and quasi-dictator, Suu Kyi also has a strong tie to the man who first raised up Burma’s armed forces – albeit with the help of Imperial Japan. Truth is often stranger than fiction.

Sister Stefania (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Nun o’ that

Religious people in Myanmar do not have an easy go of it. For example, WND’s story on 11 brave nuns caring for 400 lepers and their children shows the commitment and faith of such people.

The reason why Ashin Gambira is back in prison rests in part on the fact that not much has changed in Myanmar since the release of “Mother Suu.” Yes, there is Internet available in a radically new way. Myanmar is not Cuba or North Korea in this regard. Myanmar wants tourists and is making plans to welcome millions of foreign nationals. But the fact remains that like post-apartheid South Africa, the power brokers behind the scenes remain the same.

In the case of Myanmar, the generals have taken off their fatigues and donned well-tailored business suits. This transformation has been ongoing since the 1990s. It’s nothing new, but its effects in terms of equality before the law, and the ability to understand an already frighteningly complex situation, cannot be overstated. From banking to beer, the junta is still in control of Myanmar’s economy.

Myanmar generals

In 2013, the Myanmar armed forces still make up only 1 percent of the population. But their power grows. Their front company for controlling the prices that Ashin Gambira protested rests in the power wielded by the Union of Myanmar Economic Holding Company and the Myanmar Economic Cooperative. These are military conglomerates run by former high-level Myanmar military elites. They have strong ties to the leadership in Mainland China as well as People’s Liberation Army front companies – the Wanbao Mining Company being just one of note.

Trade, high-tech, agriculture, mining, energy and hydropower are just a few of the areas of cooperation. One must not forget that Burma is rich in jade, uranium, rice, timber/teak wood, natural gas, oil (until World War II, Burma was one of the leading exporters of oil in all of Asia) and, of course, opium poppies. In fact, Burma’s gems and precious stones, along with the other resources, should make it one of the richest countries in the region, just as the fresh water and oil of Iraq should make it one of the richest nations in the Middle East.

Underwater natural gas deposits just off the coast of Rakhine state will continue to curry favor with investors from Beijing. Maday Island will be the rally point for a pipeline that will send the gas into Mainland China via Kunming and Nanning. Several of China’s state-led oil companies are taking the lead on this monumental project. This project will continue despite protests regarding eminent domain, forced labor, environmental degradation and the transfer of Myanmar’s natural riches to the politburo in China, rather than to the people of Myanmar.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Protesters can be hauled off to prison for a variety of reasons – mainly if they don’t have the right permit from the police or army to hold a public gathering. Then there are the laws so arcane it’s hard to believe the elites of Myanmar would dare read them, let alone cite and implement them. Consider Article 17/1 of the British India-era “Unlawful Associations Act” passed into law in 1908. This law – yes, even today – can land you in prison for several years. It can be so liberally applied that lawyers from as far away as Argentina (where a battle waged between 1976 and 1983 as the Argentines faced the hyper-militarized nexus of the Buenos Aires-based junta) have come to Myanmar to interpret such laws and fight against them on behalf of the local citizenry.

Myanmar is a country of understated beauty, charm and dignity. (Photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

Battalion 549

Another player wearing the black hat in the eye of many Myanmar watchers is Battalion 549, which has been displacing ethnic Karen in eastern Myanmar while engaging in logging, mining, agricultural endeavors and building hydroelectric dams, highways, industrial estates, railroads and much more. This can be seen in the broadest sense as a part of the “Greater Mekong Development Scheme” that will eventually link all of Southeast Asia together. Some of the displaced have been given very low compensation. Two hectares (a hectare equals 2.471 acres, and each acre is roughly the size of an American football field) of land might go for about US$ 450, according to the gorilla math of the leaders of Battalion 549. Many Karen wonder where they will go when their land is taken away from them. Some are forced to work as involuntary laborers. There are threats of bodily harm. Welcome to “The New Myanmar.”

Their options in the past might have included running away to camps in Thailand, but in Thailand the international donors are already planning to wind down those camps and send the Karen and others back to Myanmar. (Toxic waste has poisoned some Burmese refugees in Thailand, leading to a public outcry.) Some have been in the camps for decades, and like the Hmong refugees allowed into Thailand only to be sent back to Laos in 2010, the Karen in Thailand are shy to return. The teens want a modern lifestyle complete with social media. Others are too old to go back and farm. And still yet, others hear that their grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ land has been sold to or taken outright by Battalion 549.

Some projects, the very biggest ones of all, might lead to the relocation of 25,000 people. There’s barely time to address the smuggling of elephants from Myanmar across the river to Thailand, where they are given fake birth certificates. Without illegal elephants from Burma, Thailand’s elephant population would probably be down to zero.

Lek Chailert is the Mother Teresa of Thailand's elephants. She is concerned about the smuggling of elephants from Burma into Thailand. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Additionally, the illegal animal trade in Mong La is globally notorious – so much so that the entire town has been closed off from foreigners. It rests on the border of China not far from the Golden Triangle. When the British Empire ended, who could have predicted such chaos?

Many of the top local companies are owned by Myanmar’s military elites, who in turn employ militias or regular troops as muscle to back up their business ventures. While Mother Suu goes to Scandinavia – and the janitors at the college back in Yangon swept up the confetti after Mr. Obama’s most recent speech – things have actually gotten worse for groups like the ethnic Karen.

Myanmar is as corrupt as Nigeria, North Korea, Somalia and Russia. If there are about 200 countries in the world, then Myanmar would have to be listed in the top five in terms of being the most corrupt, maybe even the top three. Myanmar also might be the world’s top drug producer, causing untold hardship and horror for the parents and families around the world who must contend with methamphetamine and heroin-addicted loved ones.

Legal eagles should note Chapter 1, Article 37, of the Myanmar constitution basically states that the government owns all the land, the natural resources above and below the ground, as well as all of the water. Fallow land has been readily absorbed by Battalion 549. The narrative of American foreign policy on Myanmar is being spun to make it sound like a great success. But while Afghanistan and Iraq are tragic, epic failures even a child can grasp, Myanmar, because of the hype around the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, is terribly distorted.

The people of Myanmar hope to chart a new future (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

The parallels between apartheid South Africa and Myanmar are sketchy at best. The Afrikaners and Zulus were well-trained if not war-like, and even the ANC contains various Christian-minded elements and moral members. Apartheid featured tribal areas and tribal peoples, but they were better cared for and eagerly embraced the dismantlement of apartheid in 1994. The new constitution of South Africa is considered an excellent legal document. But the rule of law from paper to practice is not always an easy transition. “The New Myanmar” still relies on oral traditions and handshakes amongst the ethnics on the border regions for land conveyance. And just as in the case of the rape and murder of the ethnic European farmers in the former Rhodesia and the New South Africa, the rights of minorities in Myanmar receive scant attention from national or global leaders. The new Constitutions and re-founding documents of Myanmar and South Africa have, in effect, failed their most vulnerable members of society. This is no accident.

Worst of all is the fact that certain mines in Myanmar run by the Burmese army and/or owned by Mainland China dig out gems and jade until nothing is left. Workers are given drugs like heroin, and they work only to get more drugs. When the mountain has given up its last precious stone, the workers are sent home – and they will do anything to get more drugs.

“How can all of this be?” readers might ask. For one thing, Myanmar has always used the ethnics for its own purposes. Sometimes they’re seen as a “border force.” Tensions in the border areas can cause a flood of refugees to run across into China. This can, in turn, cause problems for the Chinese military. The ability to cause problems for the Chinese military might well please the Pentagon, and the junta knows this. Thus the Myanmar army is free to wage war, imprison and even torture ethnics in the Kachin state without even a whimper of protest from the West.

America is desperate to woo Myanmar out of China’s orbit. Look at a map of the world from Morocco to the Philippines and count how many allies the United States has. This is the realpolitik and the genesis of the “Mother Suu Myth,” which trumps the “Mandela Myth.”

Myanmar offers ports, access to a billion consumers in India, another billion in China, the ability to deny China one of its “String of Pearls” if it were to be so inclined, and a vast amount of uranium for Mother Russia to revamp the nuclear warheads on her submarines, bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Both Russia and China are the only two nations in the world that can wipe the United States off the face of the Earth in less than an hour. Myanmar also knows this.

Finally, there are two other cards Myanmar can play. First, denying uranium to Pyongyang, which has sent its special forces to train Myanmar’s elite troops, built tunnels to hide Burma’s best weapons and helped to streamline the operations to launder the drugs. Then there is the issue of the missing 730 U.S. airmen shot down during World War II while flying from northeast India to Western China over “The Hump,” meaning the Himalayas. The U.S. has been negotiating with both India and Myanmar for rights to search for those MIAs.

"The Hump" refers to the Himalayan missions flown by American pilots during World War II. Many are still missing in action. (Photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

The U.S. government has even run ads in various newspapers in Myanmar showing crashed World War II aircraft and posting a phone number (09-541-9569) where locals can call and share information, stories and coordinates. The World War II-MIA card will be played close to the vest by the ruling junta in the ensuing years, just has it has in the past. Last January, the Hawaii-based Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, sent a coordination team to Myanmar to pave the way for a visit by linguists and other experts seeking to recover some remains. JPAC diligently recovered the remains of seven MIA airmen back in 2003 and 2004 with the tacit approval of the Burmese junta, which already shows their willingness to cooperate, if not the painstaking pace of that needed cooperation.

Since the days of Solomon, gold has been an arbiter of wealth. In Myanmar, that’s doubly true. Until Myanmar’s economy becomes more normalized, ordinary citizens ranging from housewives to farmers or merchants will continue to buy and sell real, physical gold on Shwe Bontha Street, the center of Yangon’s gold market since its heady days of British India. The everyday Burmese citizen does not trust the banking system. Decades of sanctions have left them poor, and inflation has run up to 20 percent in the first decade of the 21st century. Since George Bush Sr. was elected president in 1988, gold has gone up 30 times over against the Myanmar currency. A third of the nation lives below the poverty level. The deadly cyclone a few years ago only made things worse. The printing of fiat money has led to inflation.

The ethnic peoples in Burma's outlying border areas are concerned that not much has changed in "The New Myanmar." (Photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

And just as Mainland China has stated that America’s printing of trillions of dollars out of thin air in the most recent episodes of quantitative easing counts as a “default,” the Burmese people will continue to wear gold around their necks in protest of the mass printing of fiat money. Even the sight of special undercover police on Shwe Bontha Street cannot deter them. Myanmar has hope, but it still very much lacks trust. (Gold is also much sought after in China and India).

For now, Buddhist riots targeting Muslims – including burning them alive, stoning them to death and other actions – have shaken Yangon and the Meiktila area to the core. For his part, Mr. Eric Schmidt of Google fame also paid a visit to Myanmar, promising to partner with its Internet-hungry public. As such, the cost of SIM cards will probably be lowered to about US$ 3 from the current prices, which hover between US$ 200 and 300 per SIM card. It’s a small step.

North Korea: In the mind of madness

China’s other main Asian ally, besides Myanmar, is North Korea. And that relationship is in a state of flux. Hopes that Kim Jong-un would be the next F.W. De Klerk and seek to normalize his country were cut asunder Feb. 12, 2013, when North Korea exploded a six-megaton nuclear weapon. This was the nation’s third such explosion following other scientific and military tests back in 2006 and again in 2009. The reason for this action, according to the North Korean state news service, was “to defend the country’s security and sovereignty in the face of the ferocious hostile act.” This “ferocious hostile act” was nothing more or less than the U.S. push for U.N. sanctions against the Hermit Kingdom. Getting the U.N. Security Council to go along with those sanctions, considering Mother Russia and Mainland China are two of North Korea’s best friends, was no easy task.

North Korea’s satellite launch on Dec. 12, 2012, also led to a tightening of sanctions – perhaps because the “satellite” is feared, rightly or wrongly, to be harbinger of a FOBS-type weapon that would set off an EMP burst over the continental 48 states. The U.S. called it, “a highly provocative act that threatens regional security.” Kim Sung-hwan, South Korea’s foreign minister, called it, “a threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula and around the world.” China officially said it was “concerned.”

In April of 2012, North Korea launched a rocket that blew up just after takeoff. But its latest launch went swimmingly well. The Unha-3 (Unha means “galaxy” in Korean), was a three-stage rocket. And a few of those stages splashed down in the Yellow Sea off the coast of the Philippines about 180 miles away. The satellite achieved orbit, according to the North American Aerospace Command. How’s that for a starving, backwater nation?

Will a nuclear exchange turn the Korean Peninsula into a wasteland? (Korean sunset photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

North Korea’s latest nuclear weapon is small and light. It probably used enriched uranium, and it will increase its stockpiles in comparison to using plutonium. It will also make sanctioning, controlling and eliminating North Korea’s nuclear program almost impossible. The miniaturized warhead designs compromised at the New Mexico labs during the Bill Clinton years bring an eerie reminder of what is possible. According to the CIA World Fact Book, Koreans have the highest average IQ of any people on Earth. North Koreans are excellent soldiers, expert hackers and skilled tunnel builders. Apparently, they are capable of launching missiles, rockets and other objects into outer space, as well as detonating a nuclear weapon.

The idea that China could sit by and watch North Korea implode and flood China with refugees is not a popular one in Beijing. China fears a reunited, pro-U.S., nominally Christian, capitalist Korea on its front door. On the other hand, China has stated that nuclear war between the Koreas is “not the end of the world.” China has more than a billion people. Korea rests in a neat little corner, tucked far away from the expanses of the mainland. China will survive the next Korean war untouched, just as she survived the last Korean War. In ancient times, invading hordes from the Chinese mainland conquered the Korean peninsula in only a few weeks. Even today, Korean school children study Chinese characters, carry some Chinese names and many advanced-aged teens and adults drink soju or Arak-ju – brought to Korea by the invaders, who in turn had “discovered” the drink in Persia.

This takes us back to Kim Jong-un. With China behind him, even in the most remote of ways, he will still feel emboldened. As the first secretary of the Revolutionary Worker’s Party of North Korea, the youngest Kim must uphold appearances: but he lets them down by appearing in public with his first lady, ordering McDonald’s, liberalizing the use of cell phones and even by crying in public at this father’s funeral. Yet he’s smart. His recent missile launch and nuclear detonation were well-timed so as to allow a reset of relations in both the U.S. and South Korea with regard to new regimes coming into power.

Lee Myung-bak is out in South Korea. Hillary Clinton is out in the U.S. They will take the “blame,” in Kim’s mind, for his recent rocket and the nuclear weapon. He feels he can start anew with Park Geun-hye in Seoul, as well and John Kerry and Chuck Hagel in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the youngest Kim will also make South Korea and Japan nervous and perhaps willing to build nuclear weapons of their own. This would strain their relations with the U.S. In the broadest sense, he has given his people something to cheer about in terms of weapons of mass destruction.

Kim will wonder if China will see North Korea as having a legitimate right to rockets and nuclear weapons in the same way that Pakistan and Israel might have such rights. Kim sees China as the ultimate winner in the Pacific Pivot game. He sees the relative decline of U.S. power and for now will use the nuclear blackmail card as a way to avoid the fate of Saddam Hussein and the miscreants in Afghanistan. His weapons of mass destruction – chemical, nuclear and biological – are huge cards with potentially massive payoffs for Kim Jong-un.

The increased U.S. missile defense posture in Alaska over Kim’s saber rattling must give him a great feeling of accomplishment. He has other rockets, cannons and ballistic missiles, and he has proven already that they are not merely for show. Recent American B-52 and B-2 flights over South Korea probably serve Kim as well, as they scare his people into thinking America might actually attack. Once again, the tail has wagged the dog. But the North Korean tail has been doing the wagging for decades. Consider that the variety of changes in the colors on American currency are due in large part to the North Koreans, who stole a U.S. Mint printing press and the formula for making American paper in Switzerland.

This is yet another ego massage for North Korea’s rulers, who have laundered money through Gold Star Bank in Austria, dug for uranium in the Congo, sent special forces to help carry out the Matabele Massacre in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and even bombed the South Korean embassy in Myanmar.

One must not forget that most of what North Korea says and does is for internal consumption. Korean boys are pampered and favored over girls. They are prone to tantrums and “look at me,” antics in both South Korea and North Korea. Martial law, prison camps, the execution of Christians, hatred of the God of the Bible and the Bible itself is linked to the total Korean cognitive profile. Baby Kim is a delusional megalomaniac, raised in Switzerland, estranged from his father, addicted to Jean-Claude Van Damme films and unable to function in the real world by showing love, kindness, courage, empathy, self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.

In essence, he is a typical man for our times: self-involved, filled with bluster, cruel, mean-spirited and a borderline – if not outright – sociopath. Legions continue to work and die in North Korean gulags because of his moral and mental sickness. These facts should be at the very top of any analysis of the “man” Jong-un as carried out by CIA and/or State Department. North Koreans are starving, and some are forced to eat their own babies and children. Some eat bark, roots and berries and are thankful to have even that much. Grand schemes to have gas and oil pipelines, along with railways running through North Korea to link Seoul with all of Eurasia as far away as Siberia and France, have no meaning to those barely trying to survive day by day.

This woman escaped from North Korea twice. She became a Christian through her exile and flight from North Korea. (Photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

The dictator of North Korea already has his own club. He has no need for the West’s clubhouse. Such facts are a priori. Indeed, the North Korean persecution of Christians is horrific and pales by a factor of 100 million what American Christians face from their fellow Christ-haters on U.S. soil. American Evangelical Christians are often seen as a nuisance, or perhaps members of a southern regional party, or even “End Times” obsessives. But that’s not the case in North Korea. For example, author Melanie Kirkpatrick, writing in her book, “Escape from North Korea,” recounts a tale that, “Five secret Christians were bound, laid on a highway and run over by a steamroller.”

Those fleeing North Korea often turn to Western and Korean Christians in Mainland China for help – the very same Christians they were taught to hate and fear since the day they were born by the regime in Pyongyang. Escape is not that different from the Underground Railroad in the U.S., which ran in part through St. Louis, Mo., and Alton, Ill. The “Sunshine Policy” between North and South Korea did not improve the lot of North Korean Christians. Carrots and sticks don’t seem to help. Nothing seems to help. But perhaps this persecution is a rite of passage for Christians, who according to the Gospel are “aliens in this world.” Escaping from North Korea and crossing the Tumen River may only be the beginning for those facing persecution, as the psychological assault on Christians in the Western world in the 21st century rivals the 1st century assault of the lions in Ancient Rome.

Yet it is here that Kim Jong-un shows his true colors. He’s was promoted to “general” by his late father, but not appointed to the National Defense Commission, which holds the true power in the military. North Koreans only saw his face for the first time in a photograph published on Sept. 30, 2010. Yet he has reviewed weeping female paratroopers at gala, national military parades. Mentoring from Ri Yong Ho has been a part of protecting him. A senior member of China’s politburo, Zhou Yongkang, came to Pyongyang to meet Kim Jong-un on Oct. 10, 2010, in a show of solidarity.

His father, the late Kim Jong-il, ordered the Nov. 23, 2010, shelling of Yeongpyeon, the South Korean island near the “Northern Limit Line,” which left two dead Marines, two dead civilians and 18 injured. Kim Jong-il’s torpedoing of the Cheonan killed 46 sailors. Were they the father’s departing messages or merely the son’s opening acts? These days, Obama’s “strategic patience” should inculcate the fact that Kim Jong-un understands what happened to Libya’s dictator after he gave up his nuclear program. One may only guess what his father’s departing advice was, or that of Kim Jong-un’s other mentors, namely Jang Sung Taek of the National Defense Commission, Kim Yong Chol, leader of the Reconnaissance General Bureau or, most important of all, Ri Su Yong, his mentor while a school boy in Europe. Ri Su Yong is the former North Korean ambassador to Switzerland.

This drawing was made by a survivor of the North Korean gulag system.

So considering all of these things, it should come as no surprise that Kim Jong-un actively hunts down Christians and other defectors fleeing the regime. It’s true that many defect for a better life in South Korea, choosing to run away about 6,000 miles to Thailand in a quest for freedom. Some North Koreans have admitted to leaving merely to buy and wear South Korean-designed fashions, or because they fell in love with the lifestyle of South Korean soap opera stars. (Such people are equally delusional, sophomoric, materialistic, craven and shallow as Kim Jong-un.)

Kim will watch Western DVDs himself but try to confiscate them at North Korea’s borders. He will also watch out for South Korea church groups seeking to help Northerners. They are his true enemies, just as Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania created an army of Christian enemies who, in the end, hunted him down without mercy. The 200,000 North Koreans languishing in kwan-il-so slave labor camps, as documented by Google Earth, are within themselves a powerful fighting force: morally, spiritually and physically. It is they who good men and women all over the world have begun to rally around. Camp 22 is one of the most brutal gulags.

North Koreans have fled their nation in search of freedom in South Korea. Thailand plays a role in the final destination. (Photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

For those who doubt China’s commitment to North Korea, the recent crackdown on North Koreans fleeing the Hermit Kingdom was carried out in concert between Chinese and North Korean authorities. After all, China is the same nation that went to war with Vietnam in 1979 in support of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In 1998, only 71 North Koreans escaped. By 2009, about 2,917 escaped to freedom in South Korea. Yet in 2012, only 1,509 made it out of the North safely to the South. Why is this number trending downward? Various media reports offer answers.

Kim has added more checkpoints, changed the surveillance patterns of border forces, watched over families of defectors and ordered them relocated, jammed Chinese cell phone communications (there are more than 200,000 cell phone subscribers inside North Korea, who are usually only permitted to make calls inside the nation) and thus raised the price of getting defectors from North Korea, through China and into Thailand by a large margin. More bribes are to be paid. North Korean border guards want cash, presents like CD players, the “greatest hits” of Korean singers from the 1970s and 1980s, and even rubber gloves for the dish-pan hands of their wives.

All of this had led to a lovely problem for the North Korean army. The “worse” things get in terms of defectors and their defections, the more highly desirable a border guard post becomes. These guards “serve the nation” at the same time as they enrich themselves with bribes from defectors. The guards protect themselves by getting cash and gifts for their superiors as well. As an aside, some defecting women merely cross over to China where they marry Chinese farmers, who in turn lack brides because of China’s gendercide against females and one-child policy.

As for the one-child policy, China’s new regime is now addressing the pitfalls of that paradigm. Every year from 2013 until 2025, China will lose 10 million workers from the workforce. By 2030, China will need to support 360 million retirees. Since Ronald Reagan finished his second term, China, through abortion, gendercide and other means, has prevented 400 million babies from being born. As such, population development strategies have now, under the new president, Mr. Jinping, been relocated from the National Population Family Planning Commission to China’s top strategic-economic planning organ: the National Development and Reform Commission. China’s population regimen will be micromanaged to meet the economic needs of the nation. In all of postmodern human history, has any new leader accomplished more in less time that Mr. Jinping?

Moreover, and in a page out of “The X-Files,” China has scoured the world to collect DNA from the 2,000 most intelligent people on Earth, and has been busy trying to set up a genetics program aimed at raising the IQ of China’s future babies each by 15 points. Obese, Taco Bell-eating, video-game addicted U.S. teens beware.

China is seeking to raise the IQ of its population. Will other Asian nations also follow this example? (Photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

Following, summarizing, documenting, studying and interpreting the news and events in Asia, including those involving China, Myanmar and North Korea, requires vigilance and continual effort. The situation is fluid and constantly changing, while Americans concentrate on their lost wars, the collapse of Wall Street, problems with BP in the Gulf of Mexico, the misdoings of the Secret Service, “American Idol” and the latest missteps of Hollywood “celebrities.” China, North Korea and Myanmar demand America’s attention – today, right now. Can Americans focus?

Considering all of these factors, one can only wonder when the ghosts of Zheng He will rise up and fully reclaim their place in this world. As Napoleon remarked, “Let China sleep, for when she awakes, let the nations tremble.”

With 100 million without a job, 50 million functional illiterates, almost 50 million on food stamps, more than 10 million illegal aliens, more than 50 million abortions, $16 trillion in unpayable debt, open borders, gangs, legal and illegal drugs, divorce, pornography and other problems, can America find the national strength to survive, let alone stand up to China?

In the meantime, how should Americans view Xi Jinping and China in the broadest strategic terms? What is the extent of China’s nuclear and Intercontinental Ballistic Missile potential? Is it “hiding” its nuclear weapons in deep underground tunnels and in the midst of non-nuclear ballistic missiles? How many American “experts” are actually assigned to study China’s nuclear weapons programs? What about Wen Ho Lee, espionage, computer hacking, LORAL and China’s new stealth bombers and aircraft carriers, as well as submarines? What about its claims on disputed waters around Asia?

Can peace be brokered between China and Japan? What about China’s public statement that America defaulted during the most recent round of “quantitative easing.” How many Chinese nationals work for NASA? Why did Australia and China work so hard to broker a deal in which they wish to use only one another’s currency for bilateral trade?

There are other Tarot card holders and players, too. For Myanmar, there’s the leverage it holds in its bilateral military alliance with North Korea, its supply of uranium to Mother Russia and the fact that many downed World War II American pilots are still missing in action on its soil – those who flew from India to China over “The Hump” of the Himalayas but never quite made it.

How should America view “The New Myanmar?” From junk food to gems, Aung San Suu Kyi is seen as getting soft on the Burmese military. Has Myanmar co-opted her simply by freeing her? Will Myanmar eventually have a foreign-owned central bank and adopt Western norms?

Kim Jong-un

Another key player is North Korea’s boy-dictator Kim Jong-un. Questions abound about this young man’s agenda: Can North Korea cripple South Korea with cyber-attacks? In the 1990s, a top North Korean hacker, “Kuji,” entered a back door through the Griffiss Air Force Base in upstate New York and was able to steal several launch codes for U.S. nuclear missiles. How far has North Korea come since then?

Can North Korea launch a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, or FOBS, weapon into orbit and explode an EMP device over Wichita, Kan., sending the United States back to 1812 in a matter of seconds? How seriously should we take North Korea’s war threats against the United States and Seoul?

Hoping to trump them all is the United States of America. Can America deploy next-generation fighters like the F-22 and F-35 after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on them? Will America’s “Pacific Pivot” after the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan yield fruit in terms of trade and prosperity for the U.S. and her allies? Or does America not have the collective seriousness, cultural ruggedness, financial, technological, engineering and political wealth to remain on top? Will America’s new-found energy wealth (oil fields of the Dakotas and California) help meet the needs of Asia’s – and the world’s – emerging 3 billion middle-class consumers by 2030?

Or is America in terminal decline? For those who believe America’s decline is irreversible, consider the effects of abortion in Russia. Under Soviet communism the average Russian woman had 13 abortions and its population went from 250 million to 150 million in short order. Gendercide and forced abortion, as well as the one-child policy in China, have made for demographic time bombs in those nations. There are other factors in America’s favor. China and Russia are not particularly attractive nations for expatriates. Super rich non-Americans from Pakistan, the U.K., Australia or Japan wishing to move overseas might well choose to take their wealth, smarts and kids to the U.S. (especially California), rather than to Russia or China.

Half Dome at Yosemite National Park in California (Photo by Anthony C. LoBaido)

If America is “an idea” and not a “place” with a universal language, culture and religion, then even the remaining watered-down “idea” of the nation may be superior to that of America’s strategic competitors and enemies. However, America’s “teen and youth culture” might lead one to suspect that teenagers in Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and South Korea are more rugged, less drugged and less “sexed up” than those in America. One can only wonder what the future direction of the world will be in this regard. Which nations will produce responsible adults, strong, educated, capable of critical thinking, super scientists, super soldiers, patriotic, lovers of what is good and haters of what is evil, respectful of life and respectful of parents?

Or will another key element emerge – perhaps another Tarot card that even the sharpest futurists have not considered? That being the British army’s 2035 A.D. projection that the emerging global middle class from many nations, cultures and religions will grow increasingly sick and tired of their self-serving elites and lead a global revolution against those entrenched elites as depicted in the infamous film “V For Vendetta?”

The report states:

“The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx,” says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.”

If the British army report is correct, when the middle classes of China, India and the rest of Asia emerge and find a unified direction, oppose pollution and their overall marginalization, then the real trembling will begin. The direction of that vast group of humanity may determine the future of mankind. Ultimately the greatest question revolves around the connecting points of America and the West’s eerie similarities to North Korea. Our political leaders and cultural elites are above criticism. They don’t like to be questioned, let alone challenged. Few, if any, sports and movie stars will dare to speak out about BP and the Gulf of Mexico, abortion, fetal tissue research, divorce, drugs, Wall Street bailouts, Iraq, Afghanistan and other societal ills, as critics are ruthlessly cowed into submission.

Perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that aspects of the North Korean ethos can also be found in our own society. Yet for now, the ghost of Zheng He is just a ghost, and we should remind ourselves it’s far more rational to fear the living instead of the dead. Certainly the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Post script

Those interested in following the movement to bring North Korea’s leaders to justice before an officially sanctioned United Nations inquiry should visit the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea. Jared Genser, managing director of Perseus Strategies, and Kristen Abrams, program manager of New Perimeter serve as pro bono counsel to the ICNK. Those wishing to make a donation to the ICNK can do so through its homepage. Click on the “Donation” tab.

(Editor’s note: Read Part 1 of this two-part series.)

Anthony C. LoBaido has published 448 articles for WND from 47 nations around the world. He also published “The Kurds of Asia” with Times-Lerner Ltd. of Singapore. Anthony has worked as a trainer with the South Korean armed forces and as a reporter with e-FM in Seoul. Since 1995, Anthony has studied the Korean language while making more than 20 trips to the Korean Peninsula.

Southeast Asian waters (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

(Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series in which journalist Anthony C. LoBaido documents the recent maneuverings of Mainland China, along with her two erstwhile Asia allies, Myanmar ­– formerly Burma – and North Korea. From Korea to Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Namibia and even to Portugal, LoBaido has traveled the world in the footsteps of Zheng He, following the advancing global arc of China. LoBaido examines ancient versus modern diplomacy and alliances, trade and various other elements of low-intensity colonization. Read Part 2.)

Prequel

Is history cyclical or linear? For the major leaders of the Pacific Rim nations in the second decade of the 21st century, the answers are elusive, ever-shifting and fluid. Like water, they always seem to find the path of least resistance. The right way of doing things is the hardest. The wrong way is the easiest. And so humanity must navigate not only crooked rivers, but also crooked men.

The great navigators in Asia these days are Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, who is now being likened to Nelson Mandela, and Park Geun-Hye, the first female president in South Korea’s history. (Her father was once the ruling general presiding over South Korea as a “benevolent” dictator.) They are following in the footsteps of Asia’s greatest navigator – mariner and explorer Gen. Zheng He.

Xi Jinping

Topping them all is Xi Jinping, China’s new leader, whose late father was one of the top leaders of the communist revolution in China back in the 1930s and 1940s. Xi Jinping is already demonstrating the acumen of Zheng He in a vast array of ways: Chinese-language training for American students, gas and oil projects in Southeast Africa, special forces training in China for Thailand’s most elite soldiers, proposing to have China’s elite young people work alongside Russia’s young elites, as well as trying to secure China’s first Atlantic military base in the Azores, which are owned by Portugal.

Xi Jinping’s bold actions clearly show there’s an unfolding plan for advancing China’s global reach so as to be commensurate with its rising economic power. There are various cards China can, and will, play. There’s the issue of China holding a share of America’s huge debt. There’s China’s ability to take out U.S. aircraft carriers with its DF 21-F ship-killing cruise missiles. Then there’s China’s desire to set up ports, and perhaps naval air stations, in the Burma Archipelago and off the coast of Pakistan in Gwadar as part of their “String of Pearls” to protect the Middle East oil shipping lanes.

Where will all of this lead humanity in the ensuing years and decades: Peace or World War III?

Ghosts of Zheng He

Long ago, Zheng He (1371-1433) and his renowned “Treasure Fleet” ruled the seas. In fact, before Christopher Columbus set sail in what would be considered tiny ships by comparison, Zheng He, a seven-foot-tall Muslim eunuch, commanded a naval empire spanning the seas from Southeast Asia to Sri Lanka, into Arabia and as far away as Africa.

The world was China’s for the taking. But then the emperor turned inward, burned the Treasure Fleet, and China sank into stagnation. The many innovations that had captivated Marco Polo during his visit to the Orient suddenly stopped.

Back then, Europe was relatively poor and possessed no maritime routes to the Orient. There was no Suez Canal, no British Empire and no British East India Company. Asia was rich. (Perhaps this is the natural order, and what we are seeing in the 21^st century is Asia’s reemergence as the preeminent demographic and economic powerhouse of the world.)

Zheng He

Zheng He’s Treasure Fleet featured ships that were up to 600 feet long, had nine masts, four decks and could hold between 500 and 1,000 sailors. The cargo hulls were massive. Marco Polo and Niccolo Da Conti described such ships in detail. Some weighed 2,000 tons. Manning the ships were cartographers, navigators, doctors, deckhands, sailors, soldiers, translators and other linguists, as well as journalist Gong Zhen. Every July 11 in China is “Maritime Day,” which celebrates Zheng He and his very first voyage. These days, a children’s cartoon about his adventures is broadcast to many countries around the world from Thailand to Cuba.

Zheng He left his mark in many parts of the world, including Galle, Sri Lanka, which had also been visited by King Solomon’s minions. Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is well known for its elephants, beautiful lush landscape, attractive women and gems. The totem markings Zheng He left behind in Sri Lanka praise the Buddha in three languages: Persian, Tamil and Chinese. Zheng He was fond of Persia because he was himself descended from a Persian – Sayyid Aijal Shams al-Din Omar – an administrator with the Mongol Empire. Zhen He’s grandfather and great-grandfather both made pilgrimages to Mecca and were bold travelers.

Elephants in Sri Lanka (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Before becoming a sailor, Zheng He had fought against the Mongols as a foot soldier. In fact, he was directly involved in a rout and surrender by the Mongols in 1390 under the command of China’s future emperor, Zhu Di. Eventually the emperor wished to enforce a Sino Empire of trade and tribute across the Indian Ocean that would be focused mainly on development and reciprocity, yet would be readily backed up by operational combat military forces if need be. The Indian Ocean Basin was to become a Chinese lake. (There are those historians who still claim these voyages were initially launched merely to track down the previous emperor, who had somehow escaped from China.)

Zheng He’s first voyage left port in July of 1405 with 317 ships and a crew of just less than 30,000 men. He sailed to Brunei, Thailand, India, Arabia, the Horn of Africa, Somalia and other outposts. He fought a war in Sri Lanka against the Kingdom of Kotte. On one of his returning voyages, he brought back diplomats from no less than 30 countries, each of whom would pay tribute to the Chinese emperor. King Vira Alakeshwara of Sri Lanka was one of those on board, and he had to apologize to the emperor in person for his martial actions back on Ceylon. The Treasure Fleet also returned with silver, silk, porcelain, gold, ivory, camels and giraffes.

Just how far did the Treasure Fleet get? Author Gavin Menzies has put forth a theory that Zheng He’s fleets made it around Cape Town, South Africa, and might have discovered America before Christopher Columbus. Menzies relies on information given by cartographer and Venetian monk Fra Mauro and a map dating back to 1459 as the basis of his maverick theories.

China coveting American air base

Lajes Air Base in the Azores

Whether that’s true or not, we do know the Ghost of Zheng He is indeed rising via control of the Panama Canal through a Chinese front company, the quest for ports in California and the Bahamas, a space-tracking facility in Namibia, another space-tracking facility in Australia and now by approaching Portugal about setting up China’s first Atlantic base. The latter is finally causing alarm in the West.

The resurrection of Zheng He in popular Chinese culture may hold relevance today, as China is expanding her influence into Africa – though checked by the U.S., NATO and the West in Libya and Mali – South America and elsewhere.

Chinese satellite-tracking station in Namibia (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

The most profound example of this is China’s rabid desire to take over the American Air Base at Lajes in the Azores. This is a concrete, strategic rationality that would give Mainland China her first Atlantic base on Terciera Island, which is controlled by Portugal. China’s leaders arrived with a delegation in the Azores as 2012 wound to a close, seeking to strike a deal. The runway at Lajes is almost 11,000 feet long. It is possible China could use this base to station bombers and strike at enemy targets in the U.S. and Europe, and as far away as Buenos Aires as the U.K. did with a daring bombing mission during the Falklands War.

Lajes is closer to New York (2,300 miles) than the distance from San Diego to the Hawaiian islands. If the U.S. closes the 65^th Air Base Wing, an important outpost during World War II that was used to hunt Nazi U-boats and a strategic base used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it may well be lost to China. One solution could be moving the headquarters of Africom to the island.

China has a space-tracking facility in Namibia (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Diplomacy and colonization

Yang Jiechi

Yet Zheng He did much more than merely set up military outposts. His diplomatic corps was first rate. Following in the steps of Zheng He’s foreign diplomacy acumen, China’s Xi Jinping will appoint two key leaders to help mend relations with Japan and the U.S. The first is Yang Jiechi, the state councilor in charge of China’s foreign ministry. The second is Wang Yi, the new foreign minister. Wang Yi’s job will be to keep America at bay, out of the Pacific region, and give China more time to cement her geostrategic position in Asia and around the world until China is ready to directly fight and win an all-out war with the United States – or until the time when America has experienced a “soft landing” like the old USSR and can’t stand up to China.

Yang Jeichi will try to mend fences with Japan, which has recently discovered a massive underwater cache of rare earth metals that has forced China to immediately reassess relations vis-à-vis the various territorial disputes between the two nations. As most people know, China and other nations in Asia have not forgiven Japan’s brutal occupation of their lands before and during World War II.

Wang Yi

For his part, Wang Yi has been in charge of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and made headway into forging better relations with Taiwan. For now, China will stay out of the way of the Middle East and North Africa follies, even though China imports half of its oil from that region. In theory, if China can import the lion’s share of its energy needs directly from Canada, California and the Dakotas (and via pipelines from Iran, Myanmar and Russia), regional posturing by China’s navy between the oil lanes of Middle East and the Malacca Straits will become muted.

The Treasure Fleet made it to Arabia (Photo of Bedouin woman by Anthony C. LoBaido)

America is approaching energy self-sufficiency, and this means the U.S. won’t have to remain as heavily involved in the Middle East as in previous decades. Yet China’s support for Shiite Iran means it cannot replace the United States in the Middle East as a friend of the Gulf State monarchies. Thus the “Malacca Dilemma” continues. India, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Turkey might have to form some kind of alliance to police the Middle East oil shipping lanes if the United States becomes unwilling or unable to do so.

The idea of China sending emissaries from the East to the West is not new. The very first was Raban Sauma. He was something akin to “Marco Polo in Reverse.” In 1288, Raban Sauma journeyed from China to the Vatican, where he met with the pope. He arrived 50 years after the Mongols had been turned back at the gates of Vienna in Austria. His mission to form an alliance with the Catholic Church and Europe in the Middle East with the Mongols failed. He was sent (in 1287) by the Mongol ruler of Iran to visit the kings of England and France. But when the pope and the other leaders would not sign on, Sauma returned to Baghdad. Had his mission succeeded, Europeans would have ruled the Holy Land and probably not been driven to find maritime routes to the New World, India, around Cape Town and other nether reaches of the world as defined by Columbus, Magellan’s crew and Capt. James Cook.

In terms of linguists, Zheng He’s Treasure Fleet had plenty of them. Apparently now China is prepared to send Chinese language teachers to the United States (especially to the broke school districts short of funds) for total immersion lessons. (In terms of sending the Chinese language teachers to the United States, are they planning on owning us?)

Additionally, wealthy Chinese women are now birthing their babies at a California hotel, as a new “elite” of overseas Chinese is taking root on U.S. shores and the low-intensity colonization accelerates.

Establishment of Chinese cities on U.S. soil in Idaho and the Rust Belt has also been widely reported. Mike Belle, the mayor of Toledo, Ohio, is one of the main cheerleaders for this endeavor, claiming Toledo is quite close, relatively speaking, to the major cities of the Rust Belt. This strategic location will not be lost on China’s strategic thinkers and de facto empire builders.

Delicate Arch in Moab, Utah: Author Gavin Menzies claims Zheng He discovered America before Columbus. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

A look inside China’s master plan

Buddha face carved in a tree in Ayutthaya (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Gathering more technology from the U.S. (military and dual-use), selling more goods to the U.S., gaining access to more territory, as well as establishing additional bilateral trade relations and influence overseas will be China’s plan for the next few decades. These aforementioned diplomats and technocrats will try to appease rising nationalism inside China, while at the same time addressing localized issues overseas like hiring more native African workers on China’s Africa-based projects (China already has a million Chinese workers on site in Africa), and launching a high-speed rail in Thailand that will run from Bangkok to Ayutthaya, just as a start.

This is a part of China’s “rope-a-dope” strategy in meeting the strategic challenge America’s “Pacific Pivot” has thrust upon Beijing. China’s ruling Communist Party must continue to foster national pride and meet expectations of China’s “rising arc to greatness.” This might include ancillary cultural preening through a Chinese space station, space-based weapons and financing the overseas adventures of America’s military so as to degrade the military capabilities of the U.S.

China is willing to sacrifice North Africa for advances in the Azores, South America and Southern Africa. Most recently, China has turned a hungry eye toward the natural gas deposits linked to Mozambique and Tanzania. As noted, as China is pushed out of North Africa by the West’s involvement in Libya and Mali, she’ll cement her alliance with the fellow BRICS nations and may eventually try to set up an alternate supranational institution to rival the IMF and World Bank. This could be accomplished with the help of Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa.

China will try to exploit the idea that America is trying to “contain” her ascendance. Alliances between America, South Korea, Japan, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand won’t be formally pressured. Yet China will exploit the vulgarity of American popular culture/soft power, the Iraq war, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the systemic failure of Wall Street to its advantage, as Asians are conservative and family oriented.

Culturally, Lindsey Lohan and Dennis Rodman terrify Asian parents, which is why North Korea allowed its leader to meet with Rodman in person – perhaps as a way to show off the very worst America has to offer. (Poor Dennis Rodman does have good qualities. He used to be a janitor at the Dallas/Fort Worth international Airport, where this writer met him in person. He also paid for the late James Byrd’s funeral as well. When he arrived in North Korea, some locals called him a “monster.”)

Another area North Korea and China covet is cyberspace. China has been accused of hacking into important American institutions.

Moreover, China has heard outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta offer a paean for “rule of law, open access for all to the global commons of sea, air, space and cyberspace, unimpeded economic development and commerce, and resolving conflict without the use of force.” Yet when Google chairman Eric Schmidt decided to embark upon a visit to North Korea as a private citizen, this attempt at cyber diplomacy was met with consternation by the U.S. State Department. America’s foreign policy elites felt a visit by Schmidt would confuse U.S. allies regarding the foreign policy stance of America in relation to North Korea.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, “We don’t think the timing of the visit is helpful and they are well aware of our views.” North Koreans need permission from the government to use the Internet, and even their elites are restricted. Only a tiny percentage of North Korea’s top echelon of leaders can go online. In terms of sanctions, importing goods from North Korea to the U.S. is prohibited, but Americans can visit North Korea and American goods, especially luxury goods, are allowed. North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests, drug running, missile exports, counterfeiting of U.S. currency and bellicose war threats to destroy New York and Washington, D.C., don’t help matters.

South Korea's young people face new choices concerning the rise of China, the fading power of the Unites States and reunification with North Korea. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

More specifically, any and all foibles of the United States government and its positions will be ruthlessly turned around against the U.S. to China’s advantage. China will probably try to disrupt America’s “Trans Pacific Partnership” and steer Taiwan and South Korea, as well as Japan, more into its own orbit. These are some of the largest economies on Earth. If Japan, South Korea and Taiwan don’t believe America can back up its “Pacific Pivot,” and that America is in terminal economic, cultural, spiritual, political and monetary decline, then chances are they will try to cut a better deal with Beijing.

China understands that domestic politics in South Korea, North Korea and Taiwan drive a great deal of the heated rhetoric in those countries. Working behind the scenes and offering access to her markets, investment capital and the third carrot of rapprochement will help China peddle her own soft power. While North Korea seeks to maintain an aura of permanent crisis in order to rally the masses, China will eventually demand more normalized behavior from the state actors on her borders, including Myanmar’s ruling elites and the hereditary Stalinist dictatorship in Pyongyang. For now, China will remain in North Korea’s corner and continue to use North Korea as a junkyard dog to distract and tie down American forces.

Hu Jintao will be remembered as a moderate leader in the face of what China will next unveil to the world. China’s current generation does not remember the Cultural Revolution (President Xi Jinping’s father was purged during the crackdowns of the 1960s), the Great Leap Forward, famine and the hard times of Mao. They have known only prosperity and thus harbor only grand ambitions. Meeting those ambitions, protecting the people from disasters like the SARS virus and even everyday pollution will be the greatest challenges, along with the gap between urban and rural dwellers. Will China become more open, cosmopolitan, outward looking and willing to compromise, or more xenophobic? These are salient questions worthy of great introspection.

Will the dearth of females because of the abortion genocide of baby girls upset the social and economic order in the future? China will also see that the falling populations in Japan, the high abortion rate and low birthrate in South Korea (the lowest birthrate of any industrialized nation), will eventually hurt the economies of those countries as fewer young people will be available to economically support retirees.

Regardless, Chinese Premier and Princeling Xi Jinping is no doubt formulating a strategy that is forward thinking and will contain plans for the next several generations as opposed to the next election cycle. Xi Jinping was named president by the Chinese parliament in a vote by 3,000 delegates held in the Great Hall of the People just four months after he was placed in charge of the Communist Party. In this “democratic vote,” Xi Jinping received 2,952 votes, with one vote against and three abstaining for a record 99.86 percent total. Xi has vowed to address corruption, continue economic reforms and increase the might of China’s armed forces.

Perhaps most vital of all, he claims to be willing to tackle China’s pollution problems, which are probably the greatest time bomb in terms of anti-Communist Party fervor. Before becoming president and the leader of the Communist Party, Xi was also the head of the Central Military Commission. Not since Chairman Mao has one man commanded such power in China. It is not surprising that Xi Jinping is the son of one of the most celebrated generals in the history of the nation. His relationship with the People’s Liberation Army is extremely close. He has openly told China’s armed forces to be “combat ready.” In terms of the broad strategic architecture of China re-emerging to once again capture the reach and grandeur of Zheng He, Xi Jinping is the driving architect.

China’s aforementioned “String of Pearls,” meaning the ports of call from Myanmar to Gwadar off the coast of Pakistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, are no doubt a part of trying to ease the “Malacca Dilemma” that China faces. They are too dependent on Middle Eastern oil coming through the Malacca Straits. On the other hand, China fears that Pakistan cannot control its own territory in the “Wild West” and other parts of that nation, and that Pakistan will merely try to use China as a counter-weight to its main rival, India. Oil and India occupy the Chinese mind.

Xi Jinping was a serving military officer from 1979 until 1982. He worked for the government in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, as well as in Shanghai. As noted, his father, Xi Zhongxun, was a top revolutionary leader during the Communists’ assent to power in China back in the 1930s and 1940s. His father also later served as China’s vice premier. Yet his father notably was purged during the 1960s, and during that time the son was sent away to the countryside. There, Xi Jinping lived out several brutal years before being “restored” to Beijing and studying at the elite Qinghua University. As the leader of the nation’s 2.3 million People’s Liberation Army, Xi Jinping has also either served on and or led various defense-industry committees. Wen Jibao and Hu Jintao probably didn’t see Xi Jinping as the favorite in the running to take over the country. Yet considering his many talents and pedigree, perhaps they should have.

Thailand special forces train in China

Thailand (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Another echo of Zheng He comes through the inroads China’s military forces have made in Thailand, one of the United States’ most important foreign allies since World War II. Although the U.S. military comes to Thailand for the “Cobra Gold” exercise and considers Thailand to be a trusted and valued ally, this did not stop Xi Jingping’s elite troops from training in Thailand. From Oct. 26, 2010, to Nov. 14, 2010, operation “Blue Assault” unfolded as a joint training exercise in Thailand’s Chon Buri Province. It was the first time ever that Chinese marines had trained overseas with foreign marines. “Blue Assault” came on the heels of Thailand’s special forces training in Guilin alongside Chinese special forces in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region of the PRC. In fact, almost every year since 2007, China’s special forces have been training alongside Thailand’s special forces, leading one to ask what kind of special bonds have been forged?

Yet China and Thailand have maintained long-standing military ties. For example, China used Thailand to resupply the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979. Soon after, China invaded Vietnam and was quickly routed and withdrew. In 1987, Thailand purchased 400 armored personnel carriers from Beijing and scores of tanks. Then Thailand ordered the bulk of its Royal Thai Navy fleet from China, including four frigates.

Echoing Zheng He, China’s naval grasp has once again reached Somalia in Africa, where it has carried out anti-piracy maneuvers. And in a parallel theme, China also conducted joint training operations with India’s navy in November 2003, as well as with Pakistan’s navy in October 2003.

It should also be mentioned that China does not want to antagonize India, as India and China have fought several border wars. The year 1962 brought one such battle to the forefront. On Jan. 26, 2013, at the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi, India rolled out a new Agni V intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 5,000 kilometers, meaning it can hit Mainland China, and even Europe for that matter. Agni I and II were created to hit Pakistan. But Agni V shows India has, indeed, traveled far since first exploding a nuclear weapon in the Rajasthan Desert in 1974. India also has plans for outer space – a mission to the moon. Xi Jinping will navigate such issues relating to India during the next 10 years of his rule. He has a five-year term. Yet barring a terrible turn of fortune, he will be rubber stamped for another five-year term for stability’s sake.

Spy games and nuclear war

While many around the world wish for peace, the cat-and-mouse games of spying and seeking an edge in war – even nuclear war – and the jockeying for strategic advantage, continue.

For example, the New York Post recently ran a Kafkaesque article from the AP detailing how a 59-year-old U.S. nuclear weapons expert was lured by an attractive female Chinese spy.

According to the March 19, 2013, article:

“A civilian defense contractor who works in intelligence at the U.S. Pacific Command has been charged with giving national security secrets to a 27-year-old Chinese woman he was dating, according to a criminal complaint. Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 59, is accused of sending the woman an email last May with information on existing war plans, nuclear weapons and U.S. relations with international partners, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu. The complaint alleged Bishop told the woman over the telephone in September about the deployment of U.S. strategic nuclear systems and about the ability of the U.S. to detect other nations’ low- and medium-range ballistic missiles.”

More troubling is the work of a Georgetown University professor and his students, who have studied China’s nuclear weapons program, albeit through the eyes of a Chinese TV drama about elite forces controlling that nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Only a handful of experts in the U.S. bother to study China’s nuclear weapons capability, underground bunkers and war preparations. Perhaps the U.S. Congress and Senate will hold hearings on this issue? For now, a top U.S. military leader has stated that the greatest threat to America is not the nuclear missiles and warheads of Russia and China, but climate change. Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III made world headlines with this notion.

In response to this ambiguity, the U.S. still wants to decrease its nuclear weapons stockpile. Already the U.S. relies on aging and decaying nuclear weapons. Without live tests, it must rely on computer modeling. But is it legal or illegal for President Obama to disarm and weaken the nuclear weapons stockpile without Senate approval? The Senate, if not greeted with a formal treaty on this issue as required by the U.S. Constitution, could tie it up in court. And pursuing additional nuclear reductions could violate the 1961 Arms Control and Disarmament Act, a piece of law that seeks resolute congressional approval for nuclear-weapons disarmament.

Chances are that the Democratic Party in the United States won’t allow the nuclear weapons deterrent to be renewed and reinvigorated – perhaps not. A robust national debate is required.

(Don’t miss Part 2 of Anthony C. LoBaido’s two-part series on the recent maneuverings of Mainland China, along with her two erstwhile Asia allies, Myanmar — formerly Burma — and North Korea.)

These stone towers, or "Dol Top" are set up by Koreans who believe that erecting them will help their wishes become reality. This photograph was taken in Songnisan, Korea. (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

(Editor’s note: Journalist and photographer Anthony C. LoBaido has lived and worked in South Korea for five years. He has studied the Korean language, worked as a radio reporter for e-FM and trained South Korean army officers up to the rank of brigadier general. This is Part 2 of a special two-part series on North and South Korea by LoBaido. Read Part 1.)

SEOUL, South Korea – Most Americans cannot fathom that South Koreans don’t hate North Koreans.

Keeping the Koreas apart (as a facet of America’s interim strategic paradigm) is a matter of stopping North and South Korea from reunifying and attacking Japan as a payback for Japan’s horrible actions in Korea a century ago. These acts included rape, pimping out comfort women, chopping down all the trees, as well as other environmental crimes while eating up all the kimchi.

Truth be known, North and South Koreans both hate Japan, and this hatred is still white hot in South Korea and might be even worse in the North. Postmodern Japanese cannot wish this away.

Many, if not most, Koreans hail from a handful of dynasties and share last names like Lee, Shin, Kim, Lim, Park and several others. They call one another (even total strangers) “Ajoshi,” or “Uncle,” or “Ajuma,” meaning “Aunt.” Koreans are kind, popular immigrants in America, family oriented, tough, smart, creative and capable. They are very adaptable. They were also considered some of the very best soldiers to fight alongside (and independent of) American troops in Vietnam. Just ask any Vietnam veteran you might encounter. (North Koreans, on the other hand, are the world’s leading tunnel experts and helped the North Vietnamese.)

Yet this is where the puzzle that forms Korean norms, mores and social values becomes complicated almost beyond imagination. For what the Japanese did to Korea, South Koreans continue on some level to do to themselves and to foreigners. Korean self-hatred is a complex animal. Arab self-hatred, black self-hatred and white self-hatred almost pale in comparison. Everything in Korea is a show. There are white lies at every level of casual and strategic communication.

It must be noted that prostitution is rampant in South Korea and semi-openly marketed in certain areas. Additionally, Korean men are well known for their cheating/affairs, alcohol abuse, being terribly controlling, mentally unstable, greedy and breaking the spirit of their women ­– both Korean and foreigners alike.

For example, a drop-dead gorgeous foreign woman married to a Korean man might find herself hearing she’s fat and has an ugly face. She won’t be allowed to go to church alone if he is a non-believer. A divorced Korean woman is considered a “dead leaf” and will find her social status and work options curtailed. Divorce is frowned upon because South Koreans correctly understand its devastating effects on the stability of children, teens, families and the nation as a whole. It should come as no surprise that divorce is on the rise in South Korea. One day Korean grandparents might wind up directly raising their grandchildren. Sadly, children will have multiple “fathers” and Westernized family breakdown.

North Koreans seek a guiding light on their 6,000-mile trek to freedom. (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

Traditionally speaking, women must carry the burden of holding bad marriages together. Life in South Korea is hard. It’s a grind. But Koreans have “jung,” or a tight bond of holistic and generic love. The women in South Korea remain strong and work to make society as wholesome as possible in the face of the latent cultural and sexist discrimination they face. Of course, there are good marriages anchored by excellent Korean men, fathers and husbands who adore their wives and children. “Jung”is the key. Again, there are godly Korean men. (As for white, male foreign teachers in South Korea, they are cruelly called “LBHs” or “Losers Back Home,” meaning they can’t find a “real” job or wife back in the U.S. They can be readily used by South Koreans as con men and front men for fraudulent academic programs featuring unqualified teachers, students driving drunk, falling off a four-story building while drunk, engaging in massive academic fraud and, in effect, stealing the hard-earned money of parents paying their children’s college tuition. In South Korea, only outward appearances count. LBHs are desperate, useful lackeys and glorified globalization prostitutes.)

More important to understanding the Korean mind is the fact that Koreans value their racial purity and disdain the idea of obese, gluttonous and unattractive white/non-Korean men polluting their gene pool. Rare is the Korean daughter who can introduce her foreign boyfriend to her parents. When a white man marries a Korean woman and her parents pass away, it is not uncommon to hear the words “we got lucky” coming from the white man in a sad tone. This kind of “racism-lite” is a fact of life. Racism is deplorable, yet it is quite natural to preserve one’s respective identity through family, nation, religion and race. However, more and more South Korean men are seeking brides in Southeast Asia, bringing them back home and enrolling mixed-race children in Korean schools. The birth of multiculturalism, depending on whom you listen to, will strengthen or weaken Korean society. The word “segehwa,” or “globalization,” is the new capstone.

How is South Korean society trending? Consider the Aug. 24, 2012, edition of the Korea Herald, which ran a shocking story summing up South Korea’s cultural fallout: “An unemployed man carried out a stabbing spree on Wednesday in Seoul, marking the fourth knife attack to take place in Korea in less than a week. While public anxiety grows, experts say dissent against society … [is] to be blamed.” South Koreans have fought off Japan and communism. Smoke-filled rooms and robber barons made South Korea prosper. Can they fight the effects of globalization, multiculturalism, prosperity and the loss of their cultural identity?

Will North Korean refugees fleeing an antichrist hell in Pyongyang make it to Seoul only to face a shallow, superficial consumer culture also at war with God?

Teddy Roosevelt’s betrayal of South Korea

Many South Koreans lament that Russia, China and Japan have all in their own way kept the two Koreas apart. Yet it is the United States, via the betrayal of President Theodore Roosevelt, who gave away Korea to Japan for total annexation at his summer White House on Oyster Bay, Long Island, at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Sadly it was the U.S. that first betrayed all Koreans (North/South) to the horrors of the emerging Japanese Empire. Helping South Korea during the Korean War and in all the years since was our payback for Teddy Roosevelt’s turn of the 20^th century betrayal.

A typical North Korean propaganda poster depicting an attack on Washington, D.C.

It could be fairly said that South Korea has outgrown America. Like a teenager ready to go away to college, South Korea is ready to stand on her own two feet.

During the George W. Bush years, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea was told to “shut up.” One shouldn’t get too carried away with this notion, as not so long ago South Koreans asked America for a written guarantee to remain under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. After all, at the end of the day, America is the nation that taught us to fight for freedom. South Koreans understand this. South Koreans also understand mainland China and Russia can utterly destroy the U.S. in a nuclear war. South Koreans understand North Koreans still live in 1950s war conditions.

South Koreans admire the historical ideals of America but can see the handwriting on the wall concerning America’s decline – with China acting as America’s bank, open borders, more than 12 million illegal immigrants/wandering nomads lacking a unified purpose, the reduced value of citizenship just as in Ancient Rome, delusional leaders, lost wars, debt, filthy entertainment, divorce, Marxist-oriented universities, gangs, AIDS, broken schools, weakened families, teen rebellion and the decline of spiritual values.

Many South Koreans now fear a similar decline is already gripping their society. Yet of the 20 largest Christian congregations in the world, 10 of them are in Seoul. (Seo means “capital” and ul means “place.”) There is still hope for South Korea –­ make no mistake. But only if righteous Korean men and women can stand up and fight off the globalist forces attacking their culture. (To be frank, it’s probably too late to save South Korea’s uniqueness and purity.) Many Korean businessmen use Christianity as a social networking tool purely to make money.

So when Koreans offer you the lamentation, “It’s not Korea anymore,” they’re talking about things like the new wave of teen sex, teen suicide, famous actresses killing themselves after being forced to have sex with the wealthy Korean businessmen who sponsored their careers (imagine Bill Gates sponsoring the career of Megan Fox), children now being given courses on how to identify strangers and foreigners who might hurt them, pornography, a “sexed-up culture” and the dilution of their traditional mores through “segewah,” the proliferation of the Internet and learning English. Sometimes it seems South Korea has gone mad all at once ­– as if a titanic tsunami of filth has washed over this 5,000-year-old civilization. The Korea you saw on M*A*S*H does not exist anymore, if it ever did.

By first understanding South Korea, readers can finally begin to understand the Wizard of Oz or “the man behind the curtain” in North Korea known as Kim Jong Un. One might liken this to how World War II helped white Americans to better understand American Indians, and how the Vietnam War helped black and white American soldiers to better understand each other in a clearer context.

An elderly man in North Korea tries to scratch out a living

 It’s not the ‘North’ in North Korea that’s the problem:­ It’s the ‘Korea’

In terms of cognition dissonance, Koreans (both North and South) are well known for their manipulation of events to create a stir that brings their own private agenda to the forefront. They are also well known as frauds in the business world, for misleading foreigners, secretive behavior, stubbornness, continually evaluating their personal position of age and status in comparison to others, putting up a false front, preying upon the weakness of others, leaving no time for negotiation, last-minute details, propaganda and bravado aimed at internal consumption, bad tempers, overworking to the point of  losing productivity, as well as an over-reliance and trust in large numbers. (For example, student groups, abortions and economic output/GDP.) Koreans tend to be very negative and tear you down when they first meet you. They keep you off balance by limiting email contact, passive-aggressive behavior, rope-a-dope and organizational bullying.

Just as South Koreans are adept at using Christianity as a pseudo-pious means to expand business and social influence, so too has Christianity in North Korea been perverted by “juche” or “self-reliance,” in which the Holy Trinity is comprised of the “father” and “son” from the ruling Kim family while the “Holy Spirit” is juche itself. (This was the “spiritual model” from 1950 to Jung Un, who might now be jokingly referred to as “The Fourth Member of the Holy Trinity.”)

As such, it is vital to remember that when the late Kim Jong Il (the father of Jung Un as popularized by Bobby Lee on MADtv) was “acting out” in terms of threats to “turn Seoul into a lake of fire,” or actually his launching missiles, exporting weapons and tunnel digging expertise to the Burmese junta, or showing off his budding nuclear arsenal, he was/is merely acting on a level consistent with the basest elements of the total Korean cognitive profile.

He is saying, in effect, “Look at me! Pay attention to me!” And he is also saying, “Put me at the very top of your list of worries and/or concerns.” Thus Koreans, North and South, are social drama queens jostling for attention, promotion and just about any type of social ladder climbing imaginable.

And treachery is not just a North Korean virtue. Recall and contemplate that while South African and Rhodesian pilots fought and died in the Korean War, South Korea still betrayed those countries at the United Nations through “pro” votes on sanctions. This even while North Korean mercenaries trained the 5th Brigade in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, which killed between 20,000 to 30,000 Matabele tribesmen who opposed the wicked rule of Robert Mugabe.

While South Korea has battled North Korean terrorism (the 2010 naval attack, the downing of the Korean Airliner and the bombing at the South Korean Embassy in Burma), South Korea had no problem throwing Rhodesia’s and South Africa’s anti-communist governments over to the terrorism and Marxism of the ANC and South African Communist Party. (Mugabe’s ZANU-PF is more Maoist than Marxist.)  North Korea also began digging for uranium in the Congo but was expelled after the CIA applied various forms of pressure. Got milk? No. Got uranium? Maybe.

More sobering is the fact that South Korea had no trouble torturing and murdering her own citizens as recently as 1980 during the infamous Gwangju Massacre. This massacre is well known to both historians and the Korean public and is deserving of a book or series of articles all its own. The Gwangju Biennale art show was a positive step in creating a new image for the city. (Gwangju used to be known as “Kwangju.”)

The ongoing (though reduced) abortion holocaust in South Korea, aimed at adorable female children, is beyond the pale and demonstrates an inhumanity North Korea can only emulate, if not surpass. South Korea, once ruled by autocratic generals, now has no problem doing business with the Burmese junta.

This is a criticism that many Westerners have of South Koreans – their businessman’s brand of Christianity that seems at times to be almost beyond comprehension. For example, in one of journalism’s all-time great ironic moments, the well-respected Irrawaddy Magazine, the Bible of Burma-watchers around the world, ran on Page 6 of the July 2009 edition a picture of Kim Dae-jung, the former South Korean president, and his quote, “Aung San Suu Kyi’s continued detention shames Asia.” The same page also featured a sidebar reading, “US$ 10 Billion is the expected profit for South Korean industrial giant Daewoo from its investment in Burma’s offshore gas field over the next 25 years.”

South Koreans have revisited Rhodesia through their relations with Myanmar’s junta and their self-involved generals. Not surprisingly, South Korean men relate well to patriarchal societies. On a related note, South Koreans seem terrified to ever mention China’s horrible human rights record, lest their profits be lessened.

(For example, when this writer asked to bring Harry Wu to a university to speak to the students, the administration was aghast that he might criticize China.)

At the border of the Mekong River between Laos and Thailand, near the town of Chiang Saen, North Korean refugees look to cross at the landmark of the giant golden Buddha (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

Alternative futures

In light of this, one must ask what the future will bring to the Korean peninsula: war or peaceful economic integration. One possible future for the entire region would involve a “soft landing” for North Korea, reunification with South Korea and a satellite-controlled high speed rail, or KTX, that would ostensibly run from Pusan to Seoul to Pyongyang to Vladivostok/Siberia, Beijing and Ulan Bator. That is the best possible outcome, but it seems a page out of a fantasy world.

But what would happen if and when North and South Korea undergo their long-awaited reunification? China would then be witness to a unified, highly patriotic, nominally Christian, capitalist society right at its doorstep. A reunified Korea would boast a well-trained, two million-man army complete with almost a quarter million Special Forces (North Korea also trains Burma’s Special Forces as attested to an agreement signed by North Korean Gen. Kim Kyok Sik on Nov. 27, 2008), as well as nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

While China and North Korea are both communistic, have spilled blood together, live/lived in varying kinds of police states, use slave labor and see America and Japan as enemies, ­there are probably unimaginable aspects to their relationship. It is doubtful China wants to be single-handedly responsible for fixing an imploded North Korea. China could welcome South Korea as a partner in rebuilding the North. South Korean “chaebols,” or “mega-corporations,” would be able to expand and grow in the North. Again, there’s money to be made.

China doesn’t want the North Korean regime to totally collapse and, thus, hand over a plethora of problems for the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, and Politburo to fix – especially after China’s successful hosting of the Olympic Games in 2008, the achievements of her maverick space program and other 21st century advances. Mishandling North Korea would be a black eye for China. These facts have not, and will not be, lost on the rulers in Beijing.

Reunification would also fix South Korea’s abortion issue, with females mostly being the victims, hospitals charging higher fees for abortion according to how far along in the pregnancy a woman is and abortion having been encouraged in the past ­– while still illegal –­ by the government in an effort to raise the GDP.

(Again, this demonstrates the South Korean spirituality and mindset for so many.) Reunification would allow South Korean boys to marry North Korean girls and strengthen (and or save) the Korean race.

Korean men want sons to carry on their family name. The fact that sons are favored has transformed South Korea’s (and China’s) social fabric. Many South Korean boys are unable to take criticism, are effeminate, infantilized, metrosexual in manner and dress, crave attention, spoiled and prone to emotional outbursts like punching walls. Luckily for South Korea, the army is the great leveler of manhood, as all able-bodied males must serve in the armed forces.

South Koreans can export racy, popular K-pop, and they can develop, change, mutate and reinvent themselves 100 times over, but they cannot undo certain aspects of their culture; thus abortion remains a vital battleground for the soul of Seoul. Along with Guatemala, South Korea is one of the leading providers of adopted children on Earth. Abortion will remain a key issue in Korean society for the foreseeable future. If China is seen by the Western transnational elite as the perfect autocratic model of the emerging world super state, then South Korea’s abortion craze is seen as a “positive” in the minds of the world’s population- reduction nihilists. Korean girls are especially adorable, and their murder is sickening. To her credit, Hillary Clinton has spoken out against Asian gendercide.

Would China allow really allow North and South Korea to reunite – maybe if the U.S. were to relinquish protected status over Taiwan? Perhaps as an olive branch, on the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, China officially rewrote the history of that conflict, no longer calling it an American war of imperialism but actually blaming North Korea. This is akin to Carmela Soprano blaming herself for Tony’s never-ending sexual misadventures.

One must also consider the fact that South Korea has invested billions of dollars in China. A reunited Korea would mean Seoul, like Germany, would have to recalculate its foreign investments to rebuild the house of its immediate neighbor.

China is already heavily invested in the most lucrative North Korean mining operations and would hesitate to give that up. A reunification of the Koreas would have to continue to allow China to profit from those mining ventures.

Plan 5029: Securing WMDs if North Korea implodes

Korean War monument on Bomunsan (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

What is going to happen if North Korea implodes before peaceful reunification can take place? Issues such as famine, starvation, crime and refugees would spill across China’s borders. North Korea is also well known as the finest counterfeiter of U.S. currency and as a drug trafficker in league with arms and drug merchants based in Burma. Thus, a total collapse of North Korea would unleash those smart, well-trained, well-funded and unscrupulous elements to run wild on China’s eastern border. Yet the weapons of mass destruction are paramount to all concerned. Again, as noted, North Korea sports nuclear, biological and biochemical weapons.

Toward that end, Gen. Walter Sharp, while acting as commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, organized drills for a joint Republic of South Korea and U.S. team (believed to be the 20th Support Command and known under its working name, “Plan 5029″) to train for removing North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction in the event that nation completely falls apart. Plan 5029 seeks to address issues such as civil war in North Korea, a North Korean coup, a revolt by the North Korean army and untold refugees fleeing North Korea into South Korea and perhaps China.

Why would North Koreans come in droves to South Korea? North Korean defectors living in South Korea are not exactly welcomed with open arms. They struggle to fit in and are viewed as outsiders. That is one of the reasons why the refugee WND interviewed chose to live her life in New York City.

Of course, one must remember North Koreans are the world’s best tunnel diggers, and their WMDs are heavily guarded by elite troops. It should be noted that one North Korean Special Forces soldier stranded in South Korea during a failed black op killed several South Korean troops attempting to capture him. He made it back across the border into North Korea with the relative ease of a Korean Rambo or 007.

Securing North Korea’s WMDs might be easier said than done. Would those guarding the WMDs in North Korea simply give them up? Would they be tempted to sell them to various Central Asian, Middle Eastern or North African state and/or non-state actors? Would they smuggle at least some of them to Iran, Syria, Burma or Zimbabwe? Would they give them to Russia’s FSB or China’s PLA?

The training to remove North Korea’s WMDs was held during Operation Key Resolve. If and when the U.S. fully turns over operational wartime control to South Korea’s armed forces (OPCON was slated for April 17, 2012) it has been agreed that U.S. troops would still spearhead “WMD removal operations elimination and site exploitation,” according to the March 12, 2010, edition of the Korea Herald.

Keep in mind this whole scenario comes from the same American establishment that gave you the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, BP, Af-Pak, the “cakewalk” of Iraq, fun times at Abu Ghraib, random rendition, GE/GM foods, the search for patents on the human genome, the Wall Street meltdown, epic and unpayable debt, errant predator drone strikes and open borders. Can America’s politically correct, feminized and sexually experimental military that celebrated the craven sniper assassination of a Somali teenage pirate, or lied about the events surrounding the death of Arizona State alum Pat Tillman, even begin to take on patriotic, hardened North Koreans guarding their WMDs? Americans invaded North Korea in the 1950s and when counter-attacked had to withdraw, if not run for their lives back to Seoul.

The previous regime in South Korea, under President Roh Moo-hyun, had wanted South Korea to lead such operations. It opposed the development of a contingency plan on North Korea, arguing it “could infringe on the country’s sovereignty and cause a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula should the U.S. military take unilateral action against North Korea.”

Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the U.S. has approached mainland China about working together to secure North Korea’s WMDs in the event North Korea implodes. This was done not long ago by acting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg during a visit to China. That notion has been flatly rejected by Beijing as “estate planning for Grandpa while he’s still living.” The U.S. has also asked China about setting up rules of engagement and other various ground rules to prevent the PLA and U.S. forces from shooting at one another as they did during the Korean War. Can America, which had to pay off the militias in Iraq not to fight and can’t seem to defeat the Taliban in 11 years of conflict, take on the PLA and/or North Korean army on North Korean soil and win? Korea is more than 80 percent mountains, so flat land is precious and expensive. Ice, freezing snow, bio-weapons, tunnels and more than 100 years of war privation make invading North Korea risky. North Korea is not Grenada, Panama, Iraq or Libya.

According to the AP, in an article by Charles Hutzler published on Aug. 4, 2009, “PLA researchers told a group of U.S. scholars in 2007 that contingency plans were in place for the Chinese military to handle North Korean refugees and even go in to secure nuclear weapons and clean up nuclear contamination.”

China has its own version of Plan 5029 but won’t share it with U.S. military or diplomatic officials. So much for “The Big Two” – America and China’s allegedly blooming friendship. The number of troops the U.S. built up in Afghanistan, in addition to forces already in South Korea (about 28,000) and Okinawa, would probably be needed to conquer, clear and hold the land area of North Korea. The 600,000-plus South Korean troops fighting along with the U.S. wouldn’t hurt.

Even then, nothing is certain. North Korea, for all intents and purposes, is still caught in the war-like scenario that gripped Korea during the Japanese colonization and Korean War. It can be fairly said that Brazilian kids play soccer, Dominican kids love baseball, Afghan children learn to fight wars and North Korean children are bred to live without bread. Icy, mountainous North Korea could conceivably win/survive an all-out ground war. Or it could wither and die.

South Korea is called "The Land of the Morning Calm." Songnisan, South Korea (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

On the border between North Korea and China

For now, North Korea teeters along like Frankenstein – powerful yet fragile, a product of the mad doctors who engineered a Stalinist, hereditary cult. North Korea is propped up by trade with China. Without help from China, North Korea would probably collapse in short order. North Korea gets almost all of its petroleum from China ($300 million per year) and much of its food stuffs (around $150 million).

About 250,000 North Koreans continue move back and forth across the border between China and North Korea. Cross-border trade along the 1,400 kilometer/840-mile border between the two states is about $1.6 billion, according to rough estimates. The route between Dandong –­ the cornerstone of the Great Wall’s eastern flank – in China and Sinuiju in North Korea across the Yalu River (where Gen. MacArthur had wanted to place nuclear waste in an effort to stop Chinese troops from reinforcing North Korean forces during the Korean War) being the most heavily trafficked path.

China has its own issues with which to contend, including keeping the ruling Communist Party together, elites versus populists and the urban versus rural dwellers conundrum. As noted, North Korea remains a headache for China on many levels, but in an all-out war scenario against America and the West, North Korea can play a vital role.

As for South Korea, it has the lowest birthrate in the industrialized world. This is due to its aforementioned abortion Holocaust, the high cost of living and other social factors. South Korea recently deployed robot soldiers along the DMZ (as reported in the U.K. media). Because of the falling birthrate in South Korea, robots and other forms of automation will probably be on the rise in the future. As noted, reunification with North Korea might be the key to securing the future of the Korean race. This fact cannot be denied. Abortion in South Korea, like abortion in mainland China and in Cuba, is a demographic time bomb.

In the final analysis, bringing Burma and a reunited Korea into the orbit of the U.S. seems to be a vital geopolitical endgame. For, along with her increasingly good relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Burma (and with troops and nuclear missiles in “occupied” Tibet), China is encircling India, expanding her “String of Pearls” and cementing her status as the leader of the Kings of the East. As Napoleon said, “Let China sleep, for when she awakes let the nations tremble.”

Americans should never forget that China actually invaded Vietnam in 1979 because Vietnam had, in turn, invaded Cambodia in an effort to save the Cambodian people from Pol Pot’s genocidal “Year Zero” of the Killing Fields. China lost that war against Vietnam. What kind of nation, leaders and people would fight a war in defense of the Khmer Rouge who had systematically killed off 25 percent of Cambodia’s population in just four years? Mao and Pol Pot are the true face of communism – and they are still emulated by North Korea.

China aims to overcome America’s “Pacific Pivot.” Can America prevail? Millions of South Koreans, North Koreans and the Burmese will help shape the outcome. The future awaits, unknown to all except the supreme architect of all things macro and micro in the universe. For now, we can rest in the assurance that the X-Band radar, Burma’s ability to send ethnic tribes across China’s border at will, and thus sew havoc, and Burma’s trump card of allowing China to build a naval air station complete with submarines in its archipelago and thus interdict the Western-protected Middle Eastern oil flow, are trump cards that can and will be played.

And while you sleep soundly tonight, North Korea, under Kim Jong Un, the “Fourth Member of the Holy Trinity,” after the late “Father” Kim Il Sung, the Jesus-like late “son” Kim Jong Il and their “Holy Spirit” of the “self-reliant” juche, will probably remain one of the hair triggers of Armageddon.

To help North Korean refugees:

Life Funds for North Korean Refugees
Representative: Kato Hiroshi
A-101 Nishi Kata Hyteru
2-2-8 Nishi Kata, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo, Japan 113-0024
Tel / Fax +81-3-3815-8127
NorthKoreanRefugees.com/donate

Related articles by Anthony LoBaido:

Harry Wu talks about China

North Korea made easy

Korea rising

Soldiers who care: Aki Ra land mine story in Cambodia

Leper Nation: Myanmar’s Sisters of Charity care for 400 lepers

Elephant nation: Meet Lek Chailert, Time magazine’s ‘Hero of Asia’

Thousands of Hmong exiles deported from Thailand

(Editor’s note: Journalist and photographer Anthony C. LoBaido has lived and worked in South Korea for five years. He has studied the Korean language, worked as a radio reporter for e-FM and trained South Korean army officers up to the rank of brigadier general. This is Part 2 of a special two-part series on North and South Korea by LoBaido. Read Part 1.)

A typical South Korean traditional structure. Inside is a large drum. In ancient times, villagers would bang on it to summon a local or regional leader who could help with large problems and emergencies. (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

(Editor’s note: Journalist and photographer Anthony C. LoBaido has lived and worked in South Korea for five years. He has studied the Korean language, worked as a radio reporter for e-FM and trained South Korean army officers up to the rank of brigadier general. This is Part 1 of a special two-part series on North and South Korea by LoBaido. Don’t miss Part 2. )

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea is problematic not so much because of the “North” but because of the “Korea.” North Koreans feature almost all of the same traits as South Koreans – brilliant, united, devoted and adaptable. Yet almost a century of apocalyptic events like the horrific occupation by Japan, the Korean War and three dynasties of archetype Stalinism have led the nation into famine, slave labor, religious persecution and war lust.

The New York Times recently reported Russia is forgiving North Korea’s $11 billion debt almost in full and is actually looking to make new investments in the Hermit Kingdom. Support of this magnitude will only embolden Pyongyang’s stance toward Seoul and Washington, D.C., hence understanding the North Korean mind and its bravado is both wise and prudent. Most of North Korea’s threatening language toward her real and perceived enemies is aimed at internal consumption and not at the outside world. This is but one of many keys to unlocking the most alien culture on planet Earth.

As the U.S. winds down the grueling wars in the so-called “Arc of Instability” and doubles down on the Pacific theater through the “Pacific Pivot” aimed at encircling and containing the political, economic and military emergence of mainland China, effectively dealing with North Korea remains an elusive piece of the West’s strategic, operational and tactical multidimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Most Americans understand North Korea is a slave-labor Stalinist cult armed with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Less understood is just how strong and dangerous North Korea remains.

According to the CIA World Fact Book, Koreans possess the highest average IQ of any people on Earth. North Korea’s soldiers are well-trained, devoted, fanatical and brave. But the safest countries in the world don’t merely deploy the bravest soldiers; rather, they have also cultivated the most innovative and brilliant scientists. North Korea’s scientists, rocket engineers and military strategists are not to be underestimated. North Korea has more than 200,000 soldiers in its Special Operations Force and has most likely perfected an EMP-burst weapon that could reach the outskirts of Miami, Fla.

Those who have failed to enhance North Korea’s missile program, such as Pak Se-il, former leader of the Missile Research Institute, and Lee Cha-bang, who not long ago was in charge of the nation’s science and technology division, have been sacked and sent to slave-labor gulags. Failure is a death sentence.

The distractions Westerners and South Koreans receive in the popular, establishment and social media about North Korea’s leaders (as typified by the MADtv skits of Bobby Lee. Caution: Skit contains vulgarity that may offend some readers) hide realities such as the fact that the late Kim Jong-il was a fully qualified Mig fighter pilot trained in East Germany. North Korea is poor, amongst many reasons, because money that would normally go for Corn Flakes, Hello Kitty and Gumby is diverted to nuclear, missile and biological weapons manufacture and testing. North Korea is your neighbor’s unfed pit bull.

The following video of a North Korean military parade reveals the reality of their discipline:

After the Korean War ended in 1953, North Korea received more aid from the ex-Soviet bloc than South Korea received from the West. Thus, North Korea was growing at a faster rate by the end of the Eisenhower administration. Mao’s son, Mao Anying, died in the Korean War, and this touched Mao deeply. North Korea was deemed a important piece of the Soviet Union’s and China’s international global communist community.

Since the fall of the Berlin War and the Soviet Union, much has changed. Both China and Russia have formally recognized South Korea. North Korea, like Cuba, has seen a reduction in subsidies. Still North Korea is used as an attack dog by both China and Russia to tie down American forces in South Korea and Japan. North Korea also gives China and Russia plausible deniability in any future stealthy war scenario versus the U.S.

In the 1990s, a North Korean pilot claimed Russia was selling North Korea sensitive satellite photos of U.S. troop logistics and deployments in South Korea. He defected to warn South Korea and America of North Korea's war plans.

 Dead like me

For example, in the 1990s, a defecting North Korean pilot claimed Russia was selling North Korea sensitive satellite photos of U.S. troop logistics and deployments in South Korea. His family was sent away to die in a North Korean gulag after he defected. He defected to warn South Korea and America of North Korea’s war plans. His wife feared millions would die, so she, in effect, sacrificed herself and her children for the greater good.

The North Korean pilot's family was sent away to die in a North Korean gulag after he defected.

In 1986, China and North Korea signed a bilateral agreement to repatriate one another’s fleeing refugees. In reality, no thinking Chinese person would cross into famine-stricken North Korea. Yet because of the abortion gendercide against female babies in China, as well as a lack of potential wives, North Korean women are smuggled into China to become mail-order brides or work in brothels. Korean women are pretty, often with high cheekbones and nice legs, and they are seen as attractive mates for Chinese men.

Yet the average Chinese citizen is now becoming alarmed at the treatment North Korean refugees receive inside mainland China. However, one must not confuse tens of thousands of refugees with an influx of millions of North Koreans across China’s borders if North Korea were to fully implode. Benign neglect in enforcing China’s bilateral repatriation agreement with North Korea is the order of the day.

WND had an opportunity to interview, through Durihana Church (meaning “from many – one”), the only woman to have escaped from North Korea twice. Speaking at Durihana (which was featured in the February 2003 edition of National Geographic) in Seoul, South Korea, this woman told her story in Korean through translator Yeseul Park.

“I grew up in North Korea,” she began. “When I left North Korea and fled to China the first time, I got caught by the authorities inside mainland China. And so I was sent back to North Korea. Back then I wasn’t a Christian. But I can see now that God made that happen so I could see my parents one last time. … And so I ran away again because now the North Korean officials were watching me very closely. I walked all the way from North Korea, through China and through Laos … and then finally we got to the river between Laos and Thailand – the final barrier to freedom.

“But the government in Laos is Stalinist and has an agreement with North Korea to send back the fleeing refugees … where they will be executed. But then, as we crossed the Mekong River on this beautiful clear day … a perfect day really … well, out of the blue an incredible storm swept down into the river valley. It was raining so hard that I couldn’t even see my own hand right in front of my face. But that meant that neither could the soldiers and border guards on the Laos side of the Mekong see us. God was protecting me the whole time.”

North Korean defector who escaped twice. (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

This woman had walked the equivalent of New York to San Diego and back.

About 75 percent of North Korean defectors are women. Some get caught up in the sex-slave trade. Some are sold as brides to Chinese farmers. Some make it to Thailand after a 6,000-mile journey. They get help from those working secretly with the Durihana Church in Seoul, which specializes in defections through Southeast Asia. They might also receive help from ex-smugglers of women, drugs and or exotic animal parts.

Some might be tricked into defecting and then they’ll be locked in a room in China selling sex for a year until they are allowed to leave.

Some are asked to carry money and drugs back and forth across the border between China and North Korea.

Some are caught and sent back to North Korea, where they will be executed or sentenced to a slave labor camp. (The defector WND interviewed was not executed after the first time she escaped, possibly because she is attractive.)

Additionally, there are also fake “defectors,” who are in reality highly trained North Korean agents (like the “Sarah Mason” character from TV’s “Jericho”) and hunt down and kill high-value North Korean defectors living in Seoul and elsewhere who have information on North Korea’s armed forces and WMDs.

Christians in North Korea can be summarily executed for carrying a Bible. One little girl was shot on the grounds of her primary school for telling the teacher that Jesus helped her do well on a spelling test after a series of prayers to Him.

These days, North Korea’s Christians and other dissidents must meet in secret or attempt to run away to Thailand, as noted, often with the help of ex-drug runners who know the backwaters of the Golden Triangle. There are many dangerous trails that lead to the end of the rainbow – the sleepy border town of Chiang Saen, Thailand. This trip can take many months to complete. In Chiang Saen, these North Koreans will be “arrested” by the Thai police for entering without a visa, ask for sanctuary, go to Bangkok for processing at the South Korean Embassy and then be reposted to Seoul.

The woman interviewed by WND was given the choice to go to New York. There she met other Koreans who hired her to work at a salon. She then met a Korean-American man, married him and journeyed to Seoul to meet his family. That is where and how WND met her. She agreed to have her photo taken and offer her story.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Kim Jong Un

The new star in North Korea is Kim Jong Un, who was groomed in Switzerland for his ascendant position while still a student by Ri Su-yong, the former North Korean ambassador to Switzerland. The pomp and celebrity of Kim Jong Un’s third generation dynasty status pales in comparison to other Asian rivals and friends. For example, Than Shwe, the leading general in Myanmar, used to work at the post office. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (known as “M.B.”) used to be a garbage man. Ri Su-yong, who is the director of the Workers Party’s secretary office, was Jong Un’s mentor in the Alps. He was in charge of Jong Un’s academic curricula. Strangely, he served for 18 years as the ambassador to Switzerland under a separate identity – that being Ri Chol. Ri Su-yong is well into his 70s now and has accumulated a great deal of power in North Korea. He recently went to China in an effort to pave the way for an official state visit to Beijing for Kim Jong Un. Su-yong slept at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing and met with Liu Hongcai, the Chinese ambassador to North Korea.

This was an important visit because the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, is a man North Koreans want Jong Un to meet first before any South Korean leader. Jong Un will be looking for his allowance of sorts. Each year, North Korea and China’s leaders hammer out an agreement on how much and what kind of aid China will give to North Korea. With China’s help, North Korea will continue to engage in its nuclear development and missile testing. North Korea’s elite weapons programs have links to Pakistan and Syria as well as Myanmar. Myanmar, once part of the British Empire, is home to some of the world’s most strategically vital uranium mines. Uranium is a cash cow for the Burmese junta and the elixir both Russia and North Korea require to build and enhance their nuclear weapons stockpiles.

To meet this challenge within the “Pacific Pivot,” America will continue to expand its X-Band Radar missile defense system, which is manufactured by Raytheon. According to the Aug. 23 issue of the Wall Street Journal, “One goal of the Pentagon is to reassure its anxious regional allies which are walking a fine line. Many want the U.S.’s backing but also don’t want to provoke China, and they aren’t sure Washington, given its fiscal constraints, can counter Beijing’s rapid military modernization. … U.S. officials say some of these allies have, until now, resisted sharing real-time intelligence, complicating U.S. efforts. … The U.S. has faced a similar problem building an integrated missile-defense in the Persian Gulf.”

The article continued, “In April, North Korea launched a multistage rocket that blew up less than two minutes into its flight. [That followed] launches in August 1998, July 2006 and April of 2009. The Pentagon sent a sea-based X-Band, normally docked in Pearl Harbor, to the Pacific to monitor that most recent launch as a precaution … A 2010 Pentagon report on ballistic missile defenses said the system can’t cope with large-scale Russian or Chinese missile attacks and isn’t intended to affect the strategic balance with those countries.”

China will see the X-Band system as a provocation in regard to the U.S. defending Taiwan. Yet America is more worried about Chinese Silkworm cruise missiles, which can hit and sink the Navy’s aircraft carriers from 1,500 kilometers, or roughly 700 miles away. Then there are worries about Chinese and Russian submarines off of the U.S. West Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.

This cat-and-mouse game continues with newly deployed military toys abounding. The main players in this contest are, of course, mainland China and the United States. The prizes they covet are the future direction of Burma/Myanmar and North and South Korea. Burma and North Korea are very different countries (it is “cool, hip and chic” to be against the regime in Burma), while North and South Koreans are all Koreans at the end of the day.

Burma/Myanmar has been able to play China against America because China wishes to build a naval air station off of the southern coast of Burma. This would enable China to interdict the oil flowing from the Middle East into Asia. And this is one of the major reasons why sanctions against Burma have been lifted.

Burma is the gateway to more than 2 billion people in India and China. Burma has oil, natural gas, jade and uranium. Russia is busy digging up major loads of uranium inside Burma. This uranium will eventually find its way into new intercontinental ballistic missiles.

One might consider the parallel between U.S.-Myanmar relations in 2011-2012 and that of the West’s delicate dance with Nelson Mandela and South Africa, which maintains titanium, zirconium oxide, gold, diamonds and other precious metals – not to mention its status as a GMO (genetically modified organism) experimental playground for American multinational corporations. The New South Africa agreed to preconditions so as to become an accepted player in the new global strategic order. Similarly, Myanmar now holds all of the cards – a potential arsenal and garrison for the U.S. and U.K., or for China and North Korea.

In the case of Burma and the Koreas, the puzzle pieces seem almost limitless, and the overall picture remains elusive at best. The kaleidoscopic mirage of archetype Oriental order, tradition, custom, language and respect finds itself overwhelmed by a mad cocktail of regional factionalism, fascism, cultic leadership, communism, racism, greed, abortion/female gendercide, drugs ranging from crystal meth to ecstasy and heroin, timber, the smuggling of exotic animal parts, elephant smuggling, trade (both legal and illegal), migrant workers, rice, oil, natural gas, jade, high technology, the war on monks seeking democracy, control of the Internet, tourist dollars, uranium and nuclear weapons, counterfeiting, arms dealing and even human trafficking.

To understand how this new arrangement is being played out, on various levels one must consider North Korea’s triangulation between Burma and China. Then there’s China’s one-on-one relationship with both Burma and North Korea – ­and, of course, cross-trade between those three nations. They all form a three-headed snake.

Add to that China’s contentious relationship with the U.S., as well as the often rocky U.S. relationship with an increasingly uppity South Korea, which is watching America’s rapid decline with fear, loathing and sadness. South Korea also must contend with North Korea’s new boy ruler, Kim Jong Un, who has tasted what the West has to offer during his time in Switzerland – mainly a steady dose of Jean-Claude Van Damme films like “The Quest,” uptight, white blond people, savory chocolates, lots of yodeling and Jason Bourne looking for his lost identity. Kim Jong Un’s wife is a former cheerleader who will most likely embrace the wearing of earrings and the use of cell phones while armies of committed North Korean Christians are locked away in concentration camps. South Koreans call North Korea “Pook Han” and view Kim Jong Un as Tony Soprano with weapons of mass destruction.

The youngest Kim seems more relaxed than his late father, yet he has already flexed his muscles by shelling the South. Jong Un has also reshuffled his generals, promoted Western junk food and made a paean for a holy and sacred war against America and South Korea – a plea that has been mostly met by his adversaries with a giant “whatever.”

Cherry blossoms in South Korea (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

Since South Koreans are some of the keenest gardeners on the face of planet Earth, it seems a great shame that North Korea languishes in agricultural privation. This has not been lost on Jong Un, whose words have been recently quoted in the Sept. 6, 2012, issue of the New York Times, saying, he wishes the North Korean people would “never have to tighten their belts again.” Some say their belts will only be used to hang themselves.

On Sept. 25, North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly will meet to work on vital domestic and foreign policies, including the agenda Jong Un and his Swiss mentor have honed over the past decades. Some of North Korea’s top leaders are as old as 87. Their vision of expanding North Korea’s nuclear arsenal “beyond imagination” was also recently reported by the New York Times. The game they are playing is as multi-generational as it is deadly. Again, North Korea, like China and Russia, is actively planning and seeking any and all advantages it can accumulate in a future strategic nuclear war scenario.

What about South Korean culture, in which traditional values are under assault from seedy, classless U.S. and U.K. archetype MTV values? How would South Korea react to a merger with North Korea, and how is this hypothetical future merger viewed by both China and the U.S.? What would happen to the balance of power in East Asia, and, in fact, all of Asia, if such a merger were to take place – especially since China has gone on record stating it no longer views North Korea as a “reliable partner” and more like a crazy aunt chained in the attic?

North Korea is a mutual headache for China, South Korea and the U.S. Yet the U.S. worries about China’s increasing influence in Africa and the Americas – her astounding economic growth, ability to poison America’s food supply, alleged currency manipulation, thirst for oil and various raw minerals, her de facto control of the critical Panama Canal, forced abortions and gendercide vs. females, cyber attacks, espionage, purchasing political influence and intellectual pirating of U.S. entertainment products – more than it does over China’s influence with Burma and North Korea. Yet China and North Korea fought the U.S. and her allies to a standstill during the Korean War. China, under the Khan, conquered the entire Korean peninsula in a matter of weeks, bringing soju (Korean vodka), which the invading Chinese had in turn discovered in Arak, Persia. Thus soju is also called “arak-ju” and is a gift from modern Iran.

To help North Korean refugees:

Life Funds for North Korean Refugees
Representative: Kato Hiroshi
A-101 Nishi Kata Hyteru
2-2-8 Nishi Kata, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo, Japan 113-0024
Tel / Fax +81-3-3815-8127
NorthKoreanRefugees.com/donate

Related articles by Anthony LoBaido:

Harry Wu talks about China

North Korea made easy

Korea rising

Soldiers who care: Aki Ra land mine story in Cambodia

Leper Nation: Myanmar’s Sisters of Charity care for 400 lepers

Elephant nation: Meet Lek Chailert, Time magazine’s ‘Hero of Asia’

Thousands of Hmong exiles deported from Thailand

(Editor’s note: Journalist and photographer Anthony C. LoBaido has lived and worked in South Korea for five years. He has studied the Korean language, worked as a radio reporter for e-FM and trained South Korean army officers up to the rank of brigadier general. This is Part 1 of a special two-part series on North and South Korea by LoBaido. Don’t miss Part 2. )

1. to mourn the loss or death of b: to miss very much
2. to be very sorry for

“Burn Notice” is my favorite TV series. It stars actor Jeffrey Donovan, a nice-looking blue-eyed man who plays the role of Michael Westen, the CIA’s top spy. Westen has been “burned” by the CIA, framed for crimes he did not commit and dumped back in his home town of Miami, Fla. While in Miami, he is hounded by assassins, current and ex-CIA operatives, rogue agents and sadistic killers. Westen, while cut off from his salary, access to credit and his job history, reconnects with his mother who stands by him, noting his career in the Special Forces fighting in Afghanistan. The CIA sends various people to defame Michael to his own mother, carrying with them fake files detailing claims he hurt children in Guatemala and Chechnya. There are photographs and testimonies galore. But Michael’s mother throws the CIA representative out of her house. She says, “I know my son. He is a good boy and he would never hurt anyone!”

You see, Michael, while back in Miami, has gone into business for himself, helping local people of many races battle and win their struggles against almost insurmountable odds. He fights their battles for very little or no money. He helps black teenagers, Cubans, an ex-drug dealer named Sugar, people from Haiti, Mexicans and many others. He even helps people to get baby formula, which has been blocked from them. Using his great skills honed in the Special Forces and the CIA, Michael, while having lost his money, status and career, gains something so much more. He has gained God’s approval. He is finally doing what he joined the CIA to do – save American lives. Still, his enemies will not relent, led by the sexy Tricia Helfer and “Simon,” another CIA operative whose actions of evil all over the world have been clipped into Michael’s file and even broadcast on TV all over Miami. Ultimately, it is Michael’s good heart and the love of his Irish girlfriend Fiona (played by Gabrielle Anwar) that help him overcome the vast forces arrayed against him. They are characters so good, kind, decent, honorable, noble, smart, intuitive and courageous that you can’t help but stand up and cheer for them.

Just a few days ago, I received my own “burn notice.” It came in the form of a digitized tape my parents had made not long before they passed away. This tape contained the answers to 50 themes, events and other questions I had left for them to answer. While “burning” a CD of their talk, I was able to listen to one of the questions I had put to them: Why didn’t I complete and earn the final requirement for my Eagle Scout Award?

Between the ages of 11 and 13, I had finished all of the requirements for my Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout ranking. I even passed through the Order of the Arrow with Scouts five years older than myself. But for some reason I did not finish my Service Project and dropped out of the Boy Scouts completely, bored with it all – scouting, like everything else, came so easy to me. The story I had told people in all the years since was that I quit the Boy Scouts because I wanted to play baseball and meet pretty blond girls. I was content with this story, since in truth I was lazy, took for granted my talents, did not think about the future and actually did play for a National Championship Sandy Koufax League team. I was ashamed of this story but content with it nevertheless.

But the other day while burning that CD I heard my mother, Viola, and my father, Anthony Sr., say something both liberating and astonishing. I had tried to get my Service Project mentor for the Eagle Scout Award to return my calls for over one year. My mother was furious with this man because I lost interest in the project over that period of time. Truth be told, I didn’t even remember what the project was. Yet once again, I received my notice from the burned CD. I had wanted to renovate housing projects for the elderly. My father was a gifted master carpenter. I wanted to be like him. He first took me to work with him when I was only 4 years old. On the days he left me behind I would grab his leg and plead with him not to leave.

Sometimes I think about missing out on that Eagle badge. To come so close and be left with nothing is a bitter pill to swallow. And truth be told, sometimes I think that my work with the Hmong in Laos, with the help of the late David Hackworth, the founder of Delta Force, and Col. Carl Bernard, the first Special Forces operator to train the Hmong through Operation White Star, should count as my Eagle Scout Service Project in retro. I even jokingly asked WND Vice President David Kupelian if my interaction in helping so many Hmong come to America on special visas might count. He laughed and said, “Yes … that just might.” (David was also one of the last people to speak in depth with my late mother before she slipped into her coma at the end of an 18-month old battle with liver cancer.)

The main revelation from my own “Burn Notice” is that I now know the truth about why I never finished that Eagle Scout Service Project. I was not lazy or disinterested. I wanted to build and repair and help others. I wanted to make my parents proud of me. That’s all that matters.

There aren’t many things I regret in my life. I’ve led an amazing life, and almost all of my dreams have come true – from athletics to university to writing to photography to teaching to travel. But there are a few things I truly regret.

I wish I could have learned to build as a carpenter like my father – but I could not. No one could. In later years, I saw that I was very good at creating custom-made designs with imported tile from Spain, Italy and Brazil. This was something I wish my father could have lived to see.

I wish I had not broken my ankle and tore a tendon when I was 15 – which led me to change over from baseball to playing wide receiver in football. But through that I caught a pass in the end zone during our senior year Homecoming Game. I played for the toughest and best coach in the world, J. Byrne Gamble. I met a pretty blond cheerleader named Colleen. And even to this very day I have reconnected with the Gamble family. All because I broke my ankle at baseball practice on a field in West Islip, Long Island. The worst thing became the best thing.

Not long before that day when I tore up my ankle, I had pitched three innings against Huntington and struck out 8 of 9 hitters. I had a great catcher name Craig Kiley, a nice-looking guy with a great arm who was signed by the New York Mets. I always felt that I was better pitching to him because, unlike others, he believed in me. People want to be inspired and not demoralized. It’s as though there is a good wolf and a bad wolf inside each of us, and we can choose to feed either of those two wolves but not both, as the conscious mind is the gardener of the unconscious.

Other regrets are ancillary and include my poor decisions on Syria, Djibouti, Ukraine and the Australian Outback. Sometimes I wish my photographs from 46 countries could have been displayed in a fine art gallery, but even then I realize we must not have false pride, because it was God who created all of the fine people and epically gorgeous places I photographed. The world is God’s museum. No one likes an arrogant person or a know-it-all.

Then there are the deeper regrets, like wishing that I could have taken away and personally carried the teenage leukemia which had sickened a girl I used to know in St. Louis. Wishing I could have done more to protect my older sister, Carol-Donna, who always has stood up and fought my battles as if they were her own. I once took $15 from her after she had worked at a diner all night as a waitress. Judas had his 30 pieces of silver. He hung himself instead of going into the Apostle Protection Program. And even though I probably paid her back with $1,000 in back-breaking labor in her yard, I will always be ashamed of that $15 theft. (Long ago I gave her 15 singles, and in response she told me to go to Carmel, Calif., find Clint Eastwood and try to turn my Hmong journalism stories into a Hollywood film.)

I wish I had not held onto so many bad girlfriends and let the good ones go. I wish I would have studied harder in Geometry and Spanish in high school, because Stanford University, which liked me as a wide receiver and left-handed pitcher, was genuinely unimpressed with my high school academic record and eschewed me. Despite my getting a full scholarship to Baylor, when I recently visited the campus at Stanford, I was reminded of my old lack of focus.

At the end of the day we don’t get to judge or punish others, nor ourselves. But our sins are like rattlesnakes that always come back to bite us and eat away at our sense of peace. That’s why God hates sin so much, because He knows how destructive it is. Still, no matter where we might make a wrong turn, God is right there, if we are humble, to show us a great destiny. Look at the biblical strongman Samson. He had a passion for freedom. He also had a passion for pretty girls and wine. He wound up in chains in Gaza, blinded with his eyes put out and doing the work of a Philistine slave or even a donkey. Yet when Samson called on God, his passion for freedom was rekindled, and Samson was able to fulfill his destiny of taking out the Philistine leadership occupying Israel in ancient times.

Ultimately, we must inculcate into our conscious minds that self-esteem is a lie. I know that I am weak, wicked and unworthy without the Lord – and actually not so great with Him. I also know that it is possible to recover the time-tested values inscribed to me by the Boy Scouts through my merit badges, reading Boys Life, the adventure outings and other facets of the program.

The Germans say, “Keine Reue, kein Bedauern,” which admonishes us not to live in a way that is overcome with regret. Maybe marching through the jungles of Laos with untreated malaria (literally, I could have died) in order to help the Hmong (as depicted in Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino”) is worthy of an Eagle Scout Service Project. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s silly to even care. But as Plato said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” I can’t help but wish that one day I’ll go to the mailbox and find the Boy Scouts of America sent me my Eagle Scout Award for having risked so much to help our old allies, the Hmong.

I suppose we might call such ambitions for the Postal Service a form of “wishful restoration.” Samson and Michael Westen were liberated by their respective “Burn Notices.” God has His special, unknowable ways of purifying our past, revealing important revelations to those who seek Him apart from the conspiracies of men, and using even our many failures to achieve our destinies. Only God’s opinion of us matters, and faithfulness is a victory in and of itself.

You can’t buy an Eagle Scout badge, not even for $15. To be an Eagle Scout is to be one in a million. It’s an honor money cannot buy – like all the best things in life. In the end, my parents’ “Burn Notice” left me this pearl from beyond the world: “Anthony, if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.” That’s something they don’t teach you at Baylor, Stanford or anywhere else for that matter. Even so, it wouldn’t hurt to check the mail for your own “Burn Notice,” for the keys to past, present and future all reside within its contents.

(Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

(Editor’s note: This is Part 4 of Anthony LoBaido’s in-depth exploration of Cuba. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

HAVANA, Cuba – Would closing the American military base at Guantanamo Bay bring change to Cuba and accelerate Cuba’s desire to reform her prison system and human rights record?

According to the Jan. 23, 2012, “Briefing” section of Time Magazine, “January 11 [2012] marked 10 years since the first detainees in the war against al-Qaeda were taken to the U.S. facility at Guantanamo, a slip of land held by the U.S. on the eastern tip of Cuba. Critics decry the murky legality under which hundreds of supposed ‘enemy combatants’ have been held without normal rights of due process. Inquiries found that few detainees have had concrete ties to al-Qaeda. Yet despite earlier promises to shutter the facility, the White House seems prepared to keep it open for years to come.”

The article reported the following numbers:

779: number of men imprisoned at Guantanamo since Jan. 11, 2002.

171: number of men still imprisoned there as of January 2012

92 percent of prisoners at Gitmo were never al-Qaida fighters, says U.S. govt. data.

5 percent were captured by U.S. troops

86 percent were handed over via a bounty

13: age of the youngest prisoner

98: age of the oldest prisoner

21: number of children held at Gitmo

Amendment of the Geneva Convention is a hot topic for both American and Cuban intellectuals. Many argue the Geneva Convention states combatants must be released or put on trial. Since al-Qaida is a supranational actor, once the war is over and a nation hosting terrorists is defeated (Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen/Somalia), the POWs must be let go, even though a threat will remain, according to the argument.

Cubans, who look back and forth between their own prison system and police state on one hand and Guantanamo Bay on the other, believe a new accord is needed to deal with the issue. They feel terrorism is a tactic and historically a police matter. Cubans fear both domestic and international terrorism and have a tremendous heart for the American people in this matter. They do find the existence and legal machinations of Guantanamo Bay to be funny, puzzling and somewhat horrifying, seeing it as an American case of “Do as I say and not as I do.”

 Guide on the side

(Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

Alex Gonzales was my guide during my most recent trip to Cuba. He is a kind and bright man, handsome with an average build and possessing a superb command of English. It was he who taught me so much about ordinary Cubans, their hopes, dreams and aspirations, which delicately fit together like a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle. Through Alex and many other Cubans, I was able to piece together the cognitive dissonance between how Americans and Cubans view one another. This was done through gathering intelligence and real facts on the ground in Cuba, and comparing those facts against what Americans believe to be true about the island nation. Added to that is the deconstruction of the many myths Cubans and Americans believe about each others’ peoples and nations.

I met Alex through Claudia, an attractive posada entrepreneur. She let me into her house and called no less than 15 different posadas trying to find a place for me to sleep – as her posada was full. She had a baby girl on her hip as she introduced me to her mother, who seemed to have an Internet database stored inside her head of various other posadas. Again, who lets a total stranger in their house, with a baby no less, to meet their grandmother, then makes 15 calls on their behalf for free?

“We are industrious … and because of the embargo, we need to recycle just about every item you can think of … like ‘Survivor’ or ‘The Beach’ or ‘Gilligan’s Island.’ We are in a siege mentality, and have not grown soft  … not our bodies nor our minds. All of the men and women have to serve in the military for two years and this is an important. It is a source of life-long friendships,” said Gonzales.

“Our operational capabilities are limited, but Cubans only need to defend an invasion of our island. Should Americans fear the Cuban military? It is not uncommon to see an Army colonel riding around on a bicycle. They don’t make much money. What is there to fear?”

Yet Raul Castro, who was the Cuban minister of defense (1959-2008), won’t let Cuba’s military forces go to pieces. Many key aides and ministers serving under Raul are ex-military officers whom he trusts and with whom he developed a relationship over the years.

Alex, a hard-working taxi driver and guide, explained how ordinary Cubans struggle to form a capitalist society in the face of their self-involved leaders. He detailed how Fidel Castro was more of a megalomaniac than Raul. Raul is less prone to calling meetings between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. and not as enchanted with the idea of seeing Cuba as a Shangri-La rather than as a troubled nation on poor economic footing.

Paying for the Cuban welfare state is no easy task. Massive hurricanes of biblical proportions and trouble on Wall Street and Fleet Street have hurt the tourism industry. The storms caused tremendous damage to housing infrastructure. Cuba is still tied into the global economy, no matter what anyone might say, do or think. In 2011, almost three million tourists came to Cuba on holiday. An 80-year-old man as we approach the middle of 2012, Raul is filled with notions of practicality. He cannot risk offending his brother, Fidel, but he must continue phasing out the cronies of the revolution. Raul understands that stripped of all the hype, deep down, Che is no different than Tony Soprano, and the blessed revolution cannot pay Cuba’s bills.

Speaking of the government, Gonzales said, “You will go to jail if you criticize the government in a radical way … Look at that man on the hunger strike, for example. And there are others. So whatever you say, you have to be careful.”

One can witness the disconnect here between the requirements of the U.S. for lifting the embargo and how Cubans feel about their own elites. There is fear and even loathing, but not hatred. There is thinly veiled contempt. In America, the politics are segregated into two rival camps who hate one another, and this hatred is filtered through comedy shows. In Cuba, the whole economy and the politics just skip right to the comedy show. Instead of a short, vulgar, Christ-hating man who smokes marijuana like Bill Maher orchestrating the dissent, in Cuba you get Alex Gonzales and his gentle smile and words.

Billboard for Radio Havana, the official, government-run broadcasting station. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

“As most people know, we have good schools and health care. People want those things. And it is safe to walk the streets of Havana, even at night. Of course, if you had a big camera and it was 3 a.m. … God forbid if you hurt a tourist. We have the death penalty, but the government must sign off on it. We could not go to a nice hotel while Fidel Castro was running the nation, but now we are able to go, legally speaking, but it is too expensive. The women, as you can see, are beautiful. We have good men … I try to be a good man. There are Christians in this nation – Catholics and evangelicals, and don’t underestimate their influence or ability to change this nation. I don’t mean just in a political sense, but in a way that transcends politics and culture. I mean living for God. I mean loving our enemies. I mean putting aside lust and pride. I mean establishing a society truly built upon the ideals of Jesus Christ, and the character of the saints in the Old Testament.”

Gonzales continued, “Still I must say that the elites take away everything in this nation. We can speak only according to expected social norms, more or less. Of course, many people have fled Cuba. If they go to Miami, I say, ‘Good for them.’ You never hear ordinary Cubans speak badly about them.”

It is not surprising that Gonzales veered again and again toward pelota, or baseball.

“We love baseball, and we are proud when our Cuban national team does well in the World Baseball Classic. You know about El Duque of the New York Yankees? [I assured him I did, indeed, know El Duque well.] We are proud of him. If your life depended on one game, wouldn’t you want him on the mound?”

Asked about Cubans’ national pride, my guide once again explained the sense of solidarity that makes Cuba so special: “Why are we Cubans so proud? In the EU people live for themselves, for their wallet or their cars. But we care for each other. You can pick up hitchhikers and give strangers a ride. There is no robbery or assault, even with eight million people.

“We have salsa, and we are welcoming to foreigners, who can learn much about our nation by coming here. Foreigners can teach here. On TV there is always baseball, Chinese programs, Russian shows, humorous shows … but in the future that will probably change. It is a strict society, and in the 1990s the government decided to eliminate 80 percent of the drugs in Havana. I have never been offered cocaine but marijuana, yes. If I had a DWI [Driving While Intoxicated] I would lose my license and lose my job.”

Echoing the aforementioned theme of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist who promoted the idea of cultural power as being the most important type of power, Gonzales said, “When I was young, I saw movies from Russia and Poland, the East Bloc. But now the movies I see are mostly from the U.S. There is no way to fight the power of Hollywood and American culture.”

Concerning his job and what shaped his work ethic, he said, “I was taught by monks at school. And a part of them is inside of me. I know that to be a good father a man must have love and put others in front of yourself and have a strong will to fight for what you want. If I see my son’s picture in my taxi (under the sun visor), I will work another two or three hours. This taxi is owned by the government, so I must pay them 70 CUC per day.”

The Cuban convertible peso, or CUC, is directly linked to the U.S. dollar, is used for foreign tourism and trade and is worth about 74 percent more than the Cuban peso, which foreigners are not allowed to use. This frustrates investigative reporters and foreign economists as everything in Cuba, for Cubans, has a price listed in Cuban pesos.

For the most part, the Cuban peso, which was first pegged to the U.S. dollar in 1881, is shunned. Like Cambodia, Cuba might be better off just adopting the U.S. dollar as the unofficial official currency. Some items in stores can only be bought with CUCs and, thus, are out of range for ordinary Cubans unless they work in industries that bring them into contact with foreigners. Cubans who live and work abroad in the U.S. and mail money home to the island are an important part of the economy.

“I have a ‘Movemiento’ sheet on this clipboard in the taxi every day, ‘Control de movimiento de pasajes,’ and I must record where every single passenger goes,” explained Gonzales. “In total, I pay the government 3,000 CUC per month … maybe I can keep 200 to 250 per month. This is my life. I am in business for the government.”

The average Cuban makes about 500 Cuban pesos per month, which is about $20. Alex grosses 75,000 Cuban pesos. But as a kind, moral, nice-looking, clean-cut man with a wife and child, tourists are more likely to give him tips. CUCs are 25 times more valuable. So Alex makes about 14,000 Cuban pesos per month. But he keeps less than 10 percent of his gross earnings and, in effect, pays 90 percent taxes to the Cuban government. This is no different than the highest tax bracket in the United States during the 1950s. And this is no different than the racket the mafia was running in Cuba before Fidel came to power. If there is anger in Cuba, it’s about one’s sweat and ingenuity wasted by the elites.

The Castillo de la Real Fuerza (the Castle of the Royal Force) is one of the main attractions in old Havana. It was built in 1555 by Spanish authorities to defend Havana from invasion from pirates or a rival European power. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Cuba has millionaires, and you can be sure they’re selling food in bulk, tapping into the island’s tourism industry or have government connections. Cubans have to save for their retirement because the average pension is $10 per month, and even that low amount will eat up about 10 percent of the Cuban gross national product between 2015 and 2020 – perhaps more. So many Cubans are leaving the island that the future economic imbalance of the nation might reach a crisis state. Demographics are causing Cuba to fall apart, just as demographics are hurting Japan and Russia. This is part of the reason why America does not view Japan, Russia or Cuba as a grave threat – their respective population problems.

Asked what is needed to change Cuban society, my guide added, “We need new ideas. In Cuban prison are the thinkers. But you know, I have never met anyone in prison. I have never had a problem in this country, and I am 35 years old. I am a Christian, and that is what matters. Not if I am a communist or a Marxist or a capitalist. Yes, I know about Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot. We cannot identify in any way with these murderers … Look at the famine [the Holdomor] in the Ukraine. There are many opinions in the newspapers, and you can criticize the government. In the newspapers there are journalists who offer suggestions and analysis about what needs to be fixed and how we can fix it. What I read in the newspaper – that is what I know. I am optimistic. Hope is the last thing people should lose.

“We have many races, and we all get along, grow up together, go to school together … the Russians helped with our schools. These days, we get help from China. But you know, China is very capitalistic – Vietnam as well.”

Concerning his feelings about Americans, he added, “It is one thing to talk about the United States government, another thing to talk about the people – like you, Anthony. There are no contrary feelings, and there is no reason to hate. But again, as many Cubans will tell you, we feel like there are those in America who demonize all Cubans, as if we are all Marxists and communists ready to launch nuclear weapons, or we wish to be in league with the Russians. You know the American mafia was here, and there was crime and drugs and prostitution. Bautista [the dictator before Fidel Castro] … he did many bad things.

“Between capitalism and socialism and communism, there are good and bad elements in all of them. But if you cannot stay in Cuba, then you must go to Miami. Go there if you need a new life. But don’t forget the old life – even if it was less than perfect. Getting a passport in Cuba is very complicated, and few travel overseas. But one day, if I could, I would like to visit Italy or France. Joan of Arc, the French Foreign Legion, the wine, the food … that I would like to experience. As for staying here, many say, ‘Why try when your efforts and abilities are taken by the government?’”

The UJC logo touts three things around which a young revolutionary’s life is expected to be centered: "estudio," "trabajo," "fusil," meaning "study," "work," "rifle." (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Final thoughts on leaving Cuba

Many Americans might ask, “Can and should I go to Cuba, and is this possible?” The answer is a resounding “Yes!” Journalists, religious missionaries and a few other categories are allowed to officially visit. You can fly from Miami or even via Cancun, Mexico. Usually Americans don’t get a stamp in their passport when entering or leaving Cuba, but this journalist asked for and received such a stamp from a Cuban woman reading a book by writer Josh McDowell. The woman asked me if I knew Josh McDowell. I affirmed this and recommended Dr. Charles Stanley and John MacArthur as well as Paul Washer. The woman was very agreeable and happy.

The airport in Havana is a place where you really come to understand that you are in a communist country with totalitarian aspects. The departure gates were totally closed off from the front part of the airport (the check-in area) through the enclosed security screening areas. Our party met with a few state functionaries who didn’t know what was going on with our flight, which was delayed by eight hours. We got to know Chris and Barbara, a nice-looking blonde couple from Austria, and talked about a pretty black prostitute who looked like Naomi Campbell and how the Russian men in the airport seemed so interested in her. I taught Chris how to say, “That’s how we roll,” and “Nom-sayin?” He was an eager student.

(One strange incident really bothered me. It was the way the prostitute resembling Naomi Campbell stared at me. It was as if she were trying to see into and through me, but she had been unable to do so. I thought of the novel, “The Stand,” where “The Antichrist” Randal Flag tried to see with this third traveling eye – Flag could turn into a Crow – and “see” his enemies. But there was one holy and anointed enemy, Tom Cullen, a big, strong blonde man who was retarded. Flag was unable to see the role Cullen would play in the demise of Flag and his post-apocalyptic kingdom. That’s the best way I can describe the way this woman looked at me. It was like voodoo meets the light, or the immovable object meeting the irresistible force.)

The security at the airport in Havana contained, unfortunately, various TSA elements in a Keystone Cops sort of way. The security personnel had “special training” and were fearful of real hijackings, one of which had actually happened some years before. They were stressed but professional, kind and happy to talk in Spanish about their lives and their views. I could not have been more impressed with their professionalism and genuine kindness and care for others.

The airport was filled with Russian and Ukrainian women who were angry and spoke poor Spanish. No one really respected the Cuban authorities after none of them wanted to take responsibility for our delays. Many travelers had babies and small children and didn’t even receive vouchers for food, or a way to exchange more money for CUCs. This was inexcusable and stained their honor. None of the airport officials sought to show initiative to fix our situation; rather, they performed as cogs in the state machine, seeing nothing and knowing even less. Other officials worked so hard to reschedule our flights, spoke perfect English and demonstrated amazing class and kindness. Passengers trapped in the airport formed a strange sort of bond that mirrored the multiculturalism of the Cuban people.

The José Martí Memorial is a memorial to José Martí, the national hero of Cuba, located on the northern side of the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

I was glad for our delay, as hard as it was to endure, because it brought out the best and the worst in both the Cuban officials and in the tourists. Prostitutes who were flying out of the country appeared in plain sight. Men who had come to Cuba particularly for the prostitutes were, of course, ogling them. The conversations we had with people from all over the world were intelligent, ranging from Angola to Guantanamo Bay and the need for an amendment to the Geneva Convention, currency exchange, Penelope Cruz, Russia, Wall Street, capitalists, American banks, the TSA, nuclear war, Myanmar, North Korea, Fidel Castro’s time as a left-handed baseball pitcher and the fact that peace in the Middle East or between the U.S. and Cuba should be negotiated by nurses, taxi drivers, garbage men and teachers.

Again and again, the same tome was uttered about American MTV culture and what it would eventually do to the youth of Cuba. There was mention of the “idiotic” “Good Morning America” TV show, with “retarded Americans” holding signs and jumping up and down while Justin Bieber grabbed his crotch during a singing rendition. There was talk of an Arctic gold rush for $200 trillion in oil and natural gas just waiting to be claimed – by Russia. There was mention that there are those in the West who envy the control Cuban and Beijing elites have over their own people. Finally, a handful of Russians spoke of the loss of 100 million from their population since World War II because (they claimed) of vodka and abortion.

When it comes to Cuba, one must seek to be understanding. Advancing without boundaries, Cuba watchers will then be able to pursue new realities without demonizing the enemy. Since the conscious mind is the gatekeeper of all things subconscious, Americans and Cubans who look at either nation with suspicion can move past a nomadic mythology that falsely erects walls and “keeps us safe” from what seems alien.

Cubans don’t want to be like Americans in so far as having ground water contaminated with pharmaceuticals, 30 million illegal aliens invading, 100 million people without jobs, 50 million people on food stamps and another 50 million who can’t read. They don’t want to be like the people holding signs and jumping up and down in the background during “Good Morning America.” They don’t want Bill Maher’s filthy talk, a “gay” Oreo cookie and commenting on Kirk Douglas’ 95-year-old sex organ on HBO. Cubans can see why they are demonized by the Yanks, but they also wonder what Monsanto is up to with its genetically modified foods in St. Louis, or the rape and murder inside the Superdome in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or that infamous late-term abortion clinic in Wichita, Kan.

Cuban Christians understand that American evangelicals have become materialistic, seeking prosperity through money-minded preachers while at the same time waving the flag to kill people overseas while spreading depleted uranium. Just as Cubans understand that the spiritual and cultural changes needed in America will come from those disgruntled and embarrassed by the right-wing evangelical excesses in America, so too will change in Cuba from those who can see through the bankrupt ethos of the ruling Stalinist elite. Chaos, confusion, secular humanism, violence, escapism, idolatry, spiritual blindness, hardened hearts and loss of faith reign, while abortion turns into a weapon of mass destruction. When the world came the closest it ever has to a nuclear holocaust, Cuba was in the middle of it. This is reality and historical fact, not sensationalism in regard to some futuristic end-time prophecy.

Cubans remain confused about America and about themselves. They are confused by sanctions and an embargo against them (like apartheid South Africa) while America grants “most favored nation” status to communist China. They are called murderers, but they see 50 million abortions in America and their own abortion issue and ask what happened to “the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” At the height of the Cuban missile crisis, the average Cuban woman had five babies. Today, that number is less than one-and-a-half per woman. About 30,000 Cubans leave the island for good every year, heading for the U.S., Spain and Venezuela. More than a few of the doctors in almost 80 countries around the world never come back.

Cubans and Americans continue to look at one another with distrust, most likely because both countries engage in many of the same types of behaviors in both the macro and micro spheres. Americans have a technocratic computer system, the TSA as a possible emerging civilian force and the faux pas of Elian Gonzalez. Cubans have a policeman on every street corner and citizen informants. Americans have rule by experts, be it vaccines or a privately owned central bank and “global warming” mania (in the 1970s Americans were told a global ice age was upon them), while Cuba has ministers who control most aspects of society as anointed “experts.”

America exports MTV, Hollywood and Madison Avenue values all over the world at great moral peril to normal, decent people everywhere, especially the youth from Asia to Africa to Australia, while Cuba has served as a springboard to broadcast Marxist ideology in Central America, the Caribbean, South America and South Africa. As it is said, “We hate most in others what we hate in ourselves.” Accusations, not missiles, are the weapon of choice.

In the end, one is left wondering: What form of societal organization is truly the most enlightened – one that is purely capitalist, or one that is socialist or communist – or some other unknown system? Undoubtedly, the very best society would be the one that gives the most people the best chance to go to heaven. And although America at its founding was the closest the world has ever come, it has fallen very far in recent decades. And for Cuba, long past the glory days of its communist revolution, the debate over which system is best is not only still open, it hasn’t even begun.

 Author signature and biography

Anthony C. LoBaido has published 339 articles from 46 nations around the world on WND. LoBaido received a full scholarship to Baylor University and also taught at Baylor while earning a master of international journalism. He has taught 42 university-level courses since 2006 in the fields of journalism, strategic communication, photojournalism, ESL, TEFL teacher-training, history of mass communication, advanced globalization studies and psychology of communication. Anthony worked as a radio reporter for e-FM in Seoul, South Korea, and was featured in a full-page article in the Korea Herald. He also appeared in a definitive South Korean documentary on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Anthony worked as a language trainer with the South Korean armed forces, training its highest level officers, including only the third woman to be named a general in the history of Korea. He was recently offered the head English-language teaching position with the South Korean Armed Forces Nursing Corps.

LoBaido’s WND articles have been cited in scores of books on Amazon. He is also author of “The Kurds of Asia,” published by Times-Lerner Ltd. of Singapore. LoBaido’s favorite journalism stories include his work with CNN “Hero” Aki Ra of land mine fame in Cambodia, Time magazine’s “Hero of Asia” Lek Chailert and her elephant park in Thailand, the leper colony in Myanmar run by the Sisters of Charity, a troika of articles with Harry Wu – the world’s leading human-rights dissident, Little Angels of South Africa who care for throw-away HIV-positive babies in Cape Town, Karen Russell and the Miss World Pageant in Nigeria, the Rhodesian mercenaries and blood diamonds in Sierra Leone, as well as the British army’s jungle warfare training in Belize.

LoBaido’s adventures and articles overseas include tales of the Yeti in the Himalayas, the biblical Noah’s ark in Turkey, Petra in Jordan, Tikal in Guatemala and retracing Lawrence of Arabia’s World War I trek through the Middle East. Anthony is also a photographer and filmmaker and was hired to direct the major fundraising video for the George H.W. Presidential Library at Texas A&M, where Anthony received a fellowship to begin his Ph.D. work and where he also taught. That video was featured on CNN. Anthony has studied foreign languages such as Korean, Afrikaans, Spanish and Thai. His motto is simple: “Real journalists take real risks to cover real people and real stories in real places – they don’t hide behind a desk.” You can follow LoBaido’s blog at TheWallsofJericho.multiply.com.

(Editor’s note: This is Part 4 of Anthony LoBaido’s in-depth exploration of Cuba. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

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]]> http://mobile.wnd.com/2012/08/gitmo-baseball-salsa-and-communism/feed/ 0 http://mobile.wnd.com/2012/07/abortion-cubas-bitter-harvest/ http://mobile.wnd.com/2012/07/abortion-cubas-bitter-harvest/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:46:18 +0000 Anthony C. LoBaido http://wp.wnd.com/?p=234205

Caribbean sunset (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

(Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a special in-depth series on Cuba by Anthony LoBaido. Read Part 1 and Part 2 . Don’t miss Part 4. )

HAVANA, Cuba – Abortion is a sensitive issue in Cuba. It is a terrible problem that has impacted the island’s demographics.

In 2005, Fidel Castro called upon the Catholic Church to help stem the “plague of abortion.” This was a 180-degree turn in that Castro had wanted Cuba to be an atheistic state. Fidel made this request to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the archbishop of Genoa.

Cardinal Bertone told La Stampa, an Italian newspaper, “The spread of abortion, as Fidel Castro emphasized, is among the causes of the country’s demographic crisis. And it is also a consequence of the plague of sexual tourism. It is natural that Castro is concerned, and that I am embarrassed by the behavior of some Italians abroad. The Church can make its contribution in the area of abortion and low birthrates in a country where openness is total.”

According the Cuban government statistics, 60.2 percent of all pregnancies on the island end in abortion. This is the highest number of any nation in the Western Hemisphere. Other attempts at an empirical analysis of Cuban abortion show 130,000 live births with just less than 85,000 abortions in a typical year. (South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the industrialized world, due to the government wishing to boost GDP figures, gendercide against females and the fact that abortion is a money maker for Korean hospitals.) Under Soviet communism, the average Russian woman might have had as many as 13 abortions in her lifetime.

In Cuba, abortions, like funerals, are actually funded by the government. (“The abortion is the baby’s funeral,” many Cubans say.) Those who have opposed abortion in Cuba have been mercilessly beat up by the state intelligence apparatus.

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is a Cuban doctor who taught obstetrics in Havana. He opposed chemical abortions carried out via a drug manufactured in Germany called Rivanol, an acidic product also known as ethacidrine lactate. Used in the second trimester, it is injected into the sac surrounding the baby and is 98.8 percent “effective” within 48 hours. Clinical trials for Rivanol were carried out in Vietnam, another communist country with links to Russia.

Dr. Biscet has taken on the vaunted Cuban national health care system as being in league with genocide. He penned a white paper titled, “Rivanol: A Method to Destroy Life.” After protesting the dispensing of the drug outside an abortion clinic, he was beaten by a mob. He was then given a three-year sentence and sent to jail. (As in the case of the Argentine Dirty War, Cubans who oppose the government and are subsequently carried away incognito are known as “the disappeared.”) Shortly before his arrest, Dr. Biscet had established the Lawton Foundation, which helps spread his pro-life message. Yet the dark sacrament of eliminating the souls of children remains a Cuban pastime.

Father Miguel Jorda is another pro-life advocate who dared to distribute pro-life literature in Cuba. He was expelled from the nation in 2000. Fr. Jorda issued a public statement saying, “The members of the National Health Service itself go to the schools and encourage girls to undergo abortions without further ado, without telling them about the trauma it causes, without discussing the moral and ethical point of view. Presenting [abortion] as if it were the normal way.”

Regardless of one’s position on the issue, abortion in Cuba – along with homosexuality, HIV/AIDS, foreign wars in Africa, poverty, anti-Christianity and anti-Americanism – is all part of the fallout still lingering from Havana’s involvement with the worldview of the former Soviet Union.

(Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Political change for Cuba?

Will change come to Cuba? If so, when, how and to what degree?

In January 2012, Raul Castro told Communist Party leaders corruption was a major problem Cuba must overcome. He offered no hope of change toward a multi-party system, instead declaring, “To renounce the principle of a one-party system would be the equivalent of legalizing a party, or parties, of imperialism on our soil.” (As if Cubans having multiple political parties that are run by, of and for the Cuban people is “imperialism.”)

His brother, Fidel, was unimpressed with the most recent American Republican presidential candidates. Fidel stated, “The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.” (Evidently Fidel missed the TV show, “The Bachelor.”)

These days, Cuba is a no-man’s land outside of NATO, the UK, the European Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other major bodies of influence. (Cuba does belong to several regional trade groupings.) In sporting terms, Cuba is a free agent able to chart a new destiny. That new destiny is ready to take shape.

As first evoked by Gorbachev in the late stages of the Soviet Union, the word “perestroika” (Russian for “restructuring”) is a dirty word to Cuban elites who fear changes in the way the island is run will hurt their prestige, control and purse strings. Raul Castro knows all of this all too well. Raul took control of the country in February 2008. He was named president at that time. Only three years later, in April 2011, he became the first secretary of the Communist Party. Then he began – either out of a new vision or pure desperation – to turn over chunks of the economy from state actors to privateers. The glacial pace of political and economic change has indeed been accelerated. Even Raul’s worst critics will admit some movement has transpired.

Raul has let more than 125 prisoners out of jail who had been imprisoned for political reasons. (Of course, in Cuba, whether it is the number of prisoners, the number of hunger strikers, the number of abortions and/or the HIV rate, no one can attest such numbers should be written in stone.) When Raul took over as the first secretary of the Communist Party, a white paper called the “313 Guidelines” was released containing macro and micro details of a purportedly new economic path. Yet market forces will continue to be eschewed for the usual central planning model long embraced by communist nations. However, as signs around Cuba exclaim, “Socialism or death!,” the new plan is in line with Raul’s vision that the one-party state still is king and that his vision of a sustainable socialism (reminiscent of the juche or “self-reliance” in North Korea) will never be reversed. For many, waiting for the end of economic communism in Cuba can be like waiting for the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series.

Cubans are true believers, emboldened by the discredited, American-led Western economic model. Cubans are leery of a 1 percent capitalist elite emerging to challenge their 1 percent communist elite. Yet elites emerge in all societies and have since ancient Greece. Financial titans, as a part of the aforementioned ancillary cultural products of mythologized Cuban national folklore, are the Henry Potter types found in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” on K Street, Fleet Street, in Tel Aviv, Switzerland and other outposts of transnational capitalism. In the Cuban mind, only capitalists are greedy and corrupt, not communists, Marxists and Stalinists. According to this mindset, communists, Marxists and Stalinists are like pink, fluffy bunnies; they would never, ever think to be greedy – not even for one second.

(Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Some might believe education is the answer to bringing change to Cuba. Yet Cuban schools are one of the critical insertion points for national patriotism. Despite being a truly multicultural nation, there are no identity politics in Cuba. Unlike many in the United States, Cubans see themselves as citizens and not victims (from real or imagined racism, slavery that ended in the 1860s, a lack of civil rights, anti-white affirmative action, racial quotas, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish hatred) entitled to things a lack of class, character, work ethic and intelligence prevent them from attaining on their own. In America, money and merit are redistributed to those who often do not deserve it. In Cuba, poverty is equally distributed, along with national unity.

There is little of the anti-intellectualism and self-hatred to be found in Cuba that is inculcated into various races and cultures in the United States. Smart people are not hated in Cuba. Schools seek deep-thinkers who can tackle difficult problems. The model for the public school system in the West comes from a militarized Prussia. This is meant to instill feelings of patriotism and rugged militarism. Cuba feeds off that model. What Cubans are not taught is the ancient Greek political model of Solon, who established the idea of the revocability of political power, meaning rulers voluntarily leave office after a season – and of their own volition.

As for educational curricula, Cubans now study English as a mandatory language. They learn about hard sciences, their government’s patriotic indoctrination, math, history, agriculture and social studies. They can choose three paths in high school, ranging from general studies to vocational studies to teacher training. However, the best English teachers move on to the tourist industry to get tips from foreigners, deal in hard currency (euros, U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars) and increase their earnings. There is no war over English versus Spanish in Cuba, as there is in the U.S.

As in America, where the stock, tech, housing and education bubbles have all burst in the last 12 years, Cubans with higher-education degrees are finding their studies increasingly worthless. Experts in agriculture, science, technology, engineering and math fields are becoming more rare. For some reason, people want to study art and sports communication, literature, sociology and other similar degrees at a time when Cuba needs scientific farmers and geologists – just as the Israelis do. Medicine is another ball game: Cuba exports thousands of doctors on several continents and allows many medical students to come to Cuba to study medicine. But a doctor in Cuba earns 75 cents per day.

The truth is, Cuba has been radically changing for more than two decades. When the Soviet Union fell, Cuba, cut adrift like Angola, the “Stans” and Eastern Europe, considered the loss of Soviet subsidies to be something of a national emergency. To counter this economic hole, tourism poured in, along with the “legal” use of the U.S. dollar. Businesses, in the micro sense, began to thrive. But with Venezuela and mainland China offering to help Cuba replace the former Soviet Union, Fidel Castro ended his “Special Period in Peacetime” (1991–2004), re-established the anti-business climate and once again made use of the dollar illegal.

Caracas and Beijing became the new Cuban sugar daddies. The good times were back again, as they were in 1959 when Cuba was a top Latin American nation with more doctors per citizen than France, a life expectancy to be envied and optimism for the future. Literacy levels were excellent, and child hunger was stamped out. Socialism, Fidel style, would take Cubans from the cradle to the grave. All Cubans also receive what amounts to glorified food stamps in the form of the libreta, which offers “free” yet small quantities of food and goods that might allow a typical person to subsist. Fulgencio Batista was a dictator, but he was America’s dictator. He did not hand out socialist-style freebies to the people, giving them gifts out of their own piggy bank. He could not outlast Fidel’s revolutionary onslaught (1953-1959). And as for reform, Raul Castro has found the libreta, like the national health care system in the UK, is beloved by Cubans. Any attempt to remove it will be openly opposed without any fear.

Some believe discrediting the Soviet model would bring change to Cuba. After the fall of the USSR, inflation in Havana roared. Cuban wages lost 75 percent of their buying power, social spending per person decreased by about 75 percent per citizen and the deficit increased by one-third. Cubans had given up their notions of freedom and privacy for a bowl of porridge, and now that bowl was in jeopardy of running dry. Today, at least one in five Cubans is poor.

At a local fair in a gentrified section of Havana (Parque Central) were several doctors who left medicine to sell candy and magazines, become high-end call girls or open food stalls. So if someone wishes to buy a hot dog and discuss the most effective treatment for idiopathic (unknown cause) cytopenia (low blood counts) from the same vendor, they’re covered in Cuba as in no other place on earth. Yet Cuban doctors are found working in almost 80 countries around the world – nearly 40,000 of them. The reason why medicine is so popular in Cuba may harken to the Soviet Union’s rubric of public life. In the USSR, academics were the one “free” area where students could excel and find a semblance of freedom outside the control of the state. Also, there is the ideal of solidarity and the Catholic and evangelical Christian view of Jesus Christ as a healer helping children, Roman soldiers and others find freedom from disease and bad health. There are many motivations for Cubans to become doctors, but none of those motivations is economic.

Many would argue Cubans don’t need hope, which focuses on the future – they need change right now. The island needs agricultural experts, scientific farmers, better agricultural teachers, something like the 4-H Club, technical know-how and elimination or reform of Acopio, which is a grossly mismanaged Cuban governmental entity controlling marketing. The sugar crop yields are down. Oil, nickel and gas are the new staples. Like Israel or Myanmar, Cuba has all of the elements that can make society work and flourish. But the problem is that Israel has bloomed while Cuba and Myanmar’s leaders limit freedom, destroy market forces, discourage hard work, waste money on the military, oppress dissent, persecute those who speak out and purposefully mismanage the economy to enrich the ruling elites.

While the island nation is not a city-state like Sparta, London, D.C. or even Singapore, Cuba’s communist elite do represent an enclosed system all their own. They have aligned themselves with the men who run Moscow, Beijing and Caracas. They speak about the needs of the people on one hand, but deep down they fixate on power and money. They see America embrace the African National Congress and give “most favored nation” status to China and wonder why a nation like Vietnam will have relations with the U.S. normalized, while Cuba remains a pariah. Jesse Helms, amongst others, worked in D.C. to stop Cuba from gaining access to IMF largess during the Bill Clinton years. American presidents can no longer create an embargo or lift it by whim, as JFK did. The U.S. Congress has set forth conditions for lifting the embargo – a free Cuba, free of the Castros with free elections and a free everything else.

Monument to Antonio Maceo in Havana (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Cuba imports around 80 percent of all of the food its citizens eat. This costs the island just less than $2 billion per year. Compare this to the $5 billion per month the U.S. spent in Iraq and Afghanistan at the height of the wars in those nations. Cuba has defaulted on the debt it owes to foreigners. It is outside the “rescue” mechanism of the IMF. Cuba, in effect, has zero access to credit aside from exchanges it can organize with China, Russia, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Venezuela, Iran or North Korea. It is outside of the transnational financial matrix. Cubans have little incentive to work hard. Many steal at work and waste time on idle chit-chat.

How can this be fixed? In effect, Cubans need their own Donald Trump. They need business courses, to transfer workers from the public to private sector, transfer government-owned farmland to hardworking farmers who possess the skills and knowledge one might find in the old Rhodesia – the breadbasket of Africa – and allow the growth of more small businesses. More than 300,000 Cubans applied for a license last year to open a business. Only 25 percent of Cuba’s farmland is under private development. As in India, killing a cow is a capital offense in Cuba and doing that can actually send you to prison. (“See that guy over there? He killed a cow to make a cheeseburger. You’d better stay far away from him!”) Cooperative farms are a possible solution. Cuban farmers must avoid the cul de sac that held back American cotton pickers and share croppers after the Civil War. Genetically modified and genetically engineered foods are eschewed in Cuba, but seeds, fertilizer, irrigation equipment, barns and infrastructure and other items are expensive. Cuba’s economy is agrarian-based, which is why reforming agriculture must be the capstone of the new Cuba.

Will ending the U.S. embargo against Cuba bring change to the island? Does it matter anymore, and is it necessary? John F. Kennedy purchased more than 1,000 Cuban cigars before the presidential order for the embargo was signed. Today, Cuba has stood defiant against the embargo and carries out trade with Canada, China, Spain and other nations. The embargo, politically and ideologically, “works” for the Cuban elites: They are a citadel holding out against Goliath. They are Samson, capable of hosting Russian nuclear bombers. They can’t provide fully for the Cuban people because of American sanctions. Like Robert Mugabe in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, who used the white farmers to hide his own economic and moral disasters, Cuba’s elites hold up the American boogeyman as a shield from honest introspection. They actually need the embargo.

Can the pope in the Vatican bring change to Cuba? In an article titled, “Pope says he feels for Cubans in his heart,” published in USA Today on March 27, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his support for the “just aspirations and legitimate desires” of all Cubans, including prisoners, shortly after his arrival to [the] communist-run island … in China it is, according to the Pope, “evident that Marxist ideology as it was conceived no longer responds to reality.” He urged Cubans to “find new models, with patience and in a constructive way.”

The article then explained the change in the role of Christianity in Cuba, stating, “Fidel Castro expelled priests and closed religious schools after his takeover. The government removed the reference to atheism in the constitution in the 1990s and a 1998 visit by Pope John Paul II eased relations between Cuba and the church. Even so the church has nearly no access to state-run radio or TV, is not allowed to open schools and has been barred from building churches.”

The church has been a critic of the regime’s repression. Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the archbishop of Havana, has negotiated with Raul Castro for the release of political prisoners. If there is to be a soft landing for Cuba, just as there was for apartheid South Africa, the Catholic Church will mostly likely have to play a prominent role as it is now playing in regard to HIV/AIDS, abortion, conducting small business classes and fostering a positive national Cuban ethos.

(Editor’s note: Read Part 1 and Part 2. Don’t miss Part 4 of Anthony LoBaido’s in-depth series on Cuba.)

Trendy artwork proliferates around Havana and can be found for sale at decent prices. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

(Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of Anthony LoBaido’s four-part exploration of Cuba. Part 1 can be read here. Don’t miss Parts 3 and 4 of LoBaido’s in-depth series.)

HAVANA, Cuba – Cubans are proud of standing up to America, and they gleefully rally behind the never-ending stream of signs spouting “Socialism or death!” (Many foreigners, upon viewing these signs, simply say, “Whatever.”)

Money is always an issue in Cuba because of the leveling effects of Sovietized socialism. Money spooks the people as some kind of unknowable boogeyman. Cubans are actually proud to be poor, it seems – because, no matter how hard they work, the government will find a way to bring them back to earth.

Then there is paranoia. When changing money at the bank, foreigners must stand at the window in a single-file line to prevent what the Cuban officials fear will be “Bonnie and Clyde” shenanigans. If a couple approaches the teller standing side-by-side, the police will respond like they are mobilizing for Iwo Jima. No country is more disdaining of American capitalism yet so obsessed with dinero. Cubans both fear and love money, for they need it to live.

Cuba is a hardcore place, like South Africa, Lebanon, Cambodia and Laos. Every once in a while, a visitor is given a literal, experiential sign they are only a few steps away from North Korea. Yet when they let down their guard, Cubans can be articulate and insightful. There are always things to talk about: baseball, Afrikaners and the war in Angola, Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, American culture, learning Spanish, Gitmo, God and nuclear war. Cubans will also grudgingly admit they dutifully follow Cuban-born baseball players/defectors (like “El Duque” of erstwhile New York Yankees fame) and offer good wishes to Cuban exiles in Miami. Cubans seem annoyed and occasionally angry but never truly bitter. They are opinionated people eager to point out the hypocrisy of others while wallowing in it themselves. It is perhaps their only major collective flaw as a people.

Many Cubans are Catholics and evangelical Christians who lament what they see as human-rights abuses in mainland China or even Guantanamo Bay. They often point to the Elian Gonzales affair as an example of people who live in glass houses throwing stones, if not boulders – on Easter Sunday, no less. They say they’re not invading other nations, stealing natural resources, exporting a revolting anti-Judeo-Christian ideology, moving borders, ordering austerity and sucking up productive potential through never-ending wars and Wall Street and bank bailouts. The truth, however, is that the Soviet-Cuban element has provided a mirror image of all of these things and perhaps many more. Again, it was Cuba that nearly brought the world into a nuclear holocaust. And it was Cuba that served as the launching pad for Soviet-style Marxism in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

When Cubans standing in front of a Che poster in Havana were informed that the revolutionary had been a doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath “to do no harm” yet murdered innocent people in cold blood, they smiled pensively. They “know” this deep down – but they don’t really want to know their hero is a mass murderer. Like Nelson Mandela and the Church Street bombing in South Africa, or Bill Clinton, Loral and nuclear technology for mainland China, some mythical bubbles must remain forever inflated. Nothing ruins a great myth more than the pinprick of cold, hard truth. Such truths are too much for Cubans and aficionados of Che the world over.

Cubans will continue to focus their attention on America rather than themselves. Cubans will almost joyfully explain to visitors that the American economic model has been discredited by exotic financial products like synthetic derivatives. Although they may not understand the nuts and bolts of that complex issue, Cubans do understand the consequences of fake Monopoly money, which is not worth the digital paper it is printed on. One hears in Spanish, again and again, the axiom of Saint Paul: “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Dancers and festive outfits spice up everyday life in Cuba. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

How poor is Cuba? To quote a Feb. 15, 2001, Associated Press article on then-New York Mets shortstop Rey Ordonez: “More than seven years after their divorce in Cuba, Hilda Maria Fillao, the ex-wife of New York Mets shortstop Rey Ordonez is asking a Florida court for nearly $8,000 a month in child support. That would be a huge increase from the $1.50-a-month payments a Cuban court granted her.”

The article continued, “‘He [Ordonez] basically did not provide any support while she and the child were living in Cuba,’ her attorney, Javier Perez-Abreu, said. He said he believed about $1.50 a month, or 30 pesos, was standard child support payment in Cuba. Ordonez defected during the Pan American Games in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1993, four days after his divorce was granted in Cuba. He signed a $19 million, four-year contact with the Mets in January 2000. He made $2 million last year and received a $1 million signing bonus under the new contract. He will make $3.75 million this year, $6 million in 2002 and $6.25 million in 2003.”

The loss of America as a financial and cultural touchstone for the world to emulate is deeply felt in Cuba. Cubans may disdain their own national police state, but they boldly claim the Transportation Security Administration in America is a fledgling national police force ready to crush the Yankees. Cubans don’t trust in Goldman Sachs or AIG. They say U.S. federal regulators were in bed with the worst of the financial criminals. Cubans have seen this all before – 20 years ago when they watched the USSR die. They understand Tiananmen Square. They saw their soldiers return from fighting the apartheid regime in Angola, some stricken with HIV/AIDS and dumped into camps along with evangelical Christians, Catholics and homosexuals, free only to “work out their problems together.” Cubans, like Sicilians, are loyal, passionate and family oriented. But they are not fools. They wave their flag as all patriots do – as a fig leaf – knowing that kings and presidents are a poor substitute for Moses, the pillar of fire and direct revelation from the Almighty.

(Such camps are nothing new to Cuban soil. In fact, they are part of long-standing tradition. During the era of Marti, the Spanish Empire liquidated 400,000 Cubans in fortified towns or “camps” known as “reconcentrados.” These camps, like those in South Africa that saw 26,000 Afrikaner women and children die of disease and starvation during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, are regarded as the first modern concentration centers that became so popular during the 20^th century. )

Marco Robinson, a Cuban artist, said, “We can see why Americans look at us with one eye askew. But many Cubans also wonder if American Christians and conservatives hate Cubans because the idea of continuing to fight the Cold War makes up for losing the culture war and their fight to end abortion. We Cubans are demonized. The ‘American Cowboy’ sees the Cuban people as an easy target. Cuba is not free – sure. But honestly, how free are you Americans? How many children can you afford to have? How many details of your daily life are tracked by computers? Can you walk the streets of your cities at night in safety as you can in Havana? What about insurance if you get sick? Fidel made Cuba an atheistic state – but has the Bible not also been banned from American public schools? What about America’s secular state religion promoting Darwin’s ape man with no soul, no spirit, no intellectual and moral life? Do you fight wars with big countries like Russia or China or pick on smaller countries like Cuba? Instead of criticizing Cuba, America and Americans should take a long look in the mirror.”

Robinson continued, “Why do you have sanctions against us [Cuba] but give China ‘most favored nation’ trade status? Is China free? Is China not communist? Does China not have far worse human rights abuses than we have in Cuba? I am sorry to say there is a loss of respect for American institutions. What’s really saddest of all is that most Americans can’t even begin to see this. Do you have racial and cultural harmony? Are your minorities ‘citizens,’ or do they view themselves as ‘victims’? South Korea has high-speed rail – does America? South Korea has national dental and medical insurance at very low cost – why doesn’t America? You have the one percent capitalist elite. We have the one percent communist elite. Is one really better than the other in terms of providing optimized chances for realizing the human potential of all?”

Yet Cubans do understand why Americans still view them as a strategic threat. They also understand why Americans, while admiring certain talents of the Russian people, do not fully trust Russia’s leadership, linked as it is to the former KGB and Stasi and, yes, to Cuba. Cubans have been permanently marked, stained and tainted for embracing the values of the Soviet Union. Again and again one hears the phrase, from Russians in the U.S. and from Cubans themselves, “Cuba is Russia’s little monster baby.” Cubans know Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot are malo.

Cubans will also begrudgingly admit that some of the very best freedom-loving Cubans left the country on rafts because of the police state shackling their nation. Those who stayed behind enjoy the benefits of socialism, including free rations of salt, sugar and other items from the government. These people like being taken care of. They are the ranks of the unambitious. Yet others are fiercely independent, industrious and ready to cannibalize items for spare parts needed to fix whatever is broken. The national interest in do-it-yourself repairs and ingenuity comes from Fidel Castro’s “Book for the Family,” which asked Cubans to overcome the American embargo by making do with the technology and machinery on hand.

Cuban-American artist and designer Ernesto Oroza wrote a book titled, “Technological Disobedience,” which explains how innovation, combined with a spirit of working together, helped Cubans survive the U.S. embargo. This became especially vital after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Cuba was cut off from Soviet subsidies. It is known as the “Special Period in Time of Peace” in the Castro timeline. It should be known as “Fix what’s broken – because we’re dead broke.”

The Malecón runs along the sea wall in Havana. Sometimes rogue waves from the ocean splash cars and pedestrians. (Photo: Anthony LoBaido)

 Around Havana

The Malecón, a long stretch of road built by the American colonialists around 1900, is the signature motorway of Havana. It is a sun-drenched and occasionally water-drenched road where random waves sometimes bathe pedestrians. The Malecón winds along the sea wall in Havana. Here one can observe automobiles from the 1950s and 1960s still running in pristine, perfect condition. This is because the Cuban people are smart and unafraid of a little elbow grease – the heart of the message in Oroza’s book. Those vintage cars seem to define Cuba as set apart from the 21^st century, a harbinger of a simpler time denoted in “The Good Shepherd.” The idea of a wall around Havana is not new. The first wall was constructed between 1674 and 1740.

Cubans and foreign tourists alike fear an invasion of Starbucks and McDonald’s. Havana (minus her slums) is beautiful beyond belief, gentrified, clean and even features cobbled stone streets in some quarters. There are brand new signs in English demarcating the treasures to be beholden by the interloper – including the oldest fort in the Western Hemisphere. The sweet smells of Cuban food, including the infamous Cuban sandwiches of ham and cheese, fill the street stalls.

The parks are immaculate, and people often congregate on the sidewalks while sipping tea and coffee. Coffee is important in Cuba and has a long history dating back to 1790, when the revolt in Haiti against the French sent thousands of French coffee planters from Haiti to Cuba seeking sanctuary. (Arabica coffee, which grows on the rolling hillsides in the city of Trinidad, is also quite popular.) The most impressive structure in Havana might be the statue of Fernando Marti, one of the pillars if Cuban identity. Marti, an exile writing in New York, penned his “Manifesto of Montecristi” and fought against the Spanish army in Cuba. He died in battle in 1895, which designated him a patriotic hero. The Catedral de San Cristobal was famously described by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier as “music set in stone.” It was built in 1748.

Everywhere, it seems, one can find song, wine, food and women. If good wine is sunlight captured in water, then Cuban music is moonlight caught in a flame.

Havana is rising in 2012. The city was founded in 1514 by conquistador Panfilo de Narvaez. Havana became a major trading hub because of the brief period of British rule. The British in Havana were led by the Earl of Albemarle, who landed from the sea on June 6, 1762, marched inland with a column of soldiers and eventually surrounded the defensive Spanish positions. While the French were busy losing their colonies in Louisiana and Quebec, the British strengthened their position in the New World. In the 11 months they ruled Havana, the British, rather than going on a killing spree, told the Spanish free trade all around the world centered on Cuba’s coffee, rum, sugar and tobacco and would be of advantage to the Spanish Empire. These days, Habana Vieja is being rebuilt, reclaimed and restored. Sites like the Castillo de la Real Fuerza, the oldest fort in the Western Hemisphere built around 1558, are the main attractions in the Plaza de Armas. It is here the first outdoor Catholic Mass was said in Cuba – under a cieba tree in the humblest of settings possible.

Of course, Havana is not without its dangers and always has been filled with romance and uncertainty. Local slaves encouraged by French corsairs (“course or journey,” as derived from the Latin “cursus”) attacked and burned Havana in 1538. Havana has been attacked by the Spanish, the French, the British, Americans and the communists. It’s as if Cubans have a sign on their heads that says, “Come colonize us!”

Today, the police force is vigilant, ever present and careful to watch out for foreigners. Crimes against tourists are punished with heavy sentences. Prostitution is legendary and, although it is not at the level it was in the 1940s and 1950s when the mafia was involved, a bevy of Cuban Naomi Campbell look-a-likes patrols the streets, often searching out Russian men. Sometimes the prostitutes are caught soliciting these men and then immediately released by the police right then and there as if nothing happened. Witnessing this spectacle calls to mind my first-grade Catholic school teacher, Sister Marilyn, who often told our class, “You reap what you sow … if you can get any.”

The nightlife of Havana is legendary, hot, sweaty and punctuated with salsa dancing and rum. But there is something even spicier that comes out when the sun goes down. In Cuba, the Internet is something that is to be used late at night – an idea not to be uttered above a whisper. Like the intrepid South Koreans who dare to log onto KCNA, the North Korean official government website, owners of “posadas” (the quaint, tidy guest houses where Westerners pay about $30 per night to stay in the homes of Cubans) speak in hushed tones about the Internet and its transformative powers. They wait until nightfall to log on, when the Russian satellite flies overhead like some kind of space cowboy bringing the Internet to life. Here, Sputnik, DARPA, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Internet all come full circle in a cosmic tango between irony and karma.

The power of the Internet to connect and inspire while, at the same time, hide the truth under an insurmountable amount of information is a conundrum Cubans are only beginning to inculcate. Cubans who run guesthouses are often required to open up their books to police and other government officials. The Internet is a forbidden pleasure – a weekend in Rio with Megan Fox. As for the posadas, they are charming places that remind one of Forrest Gump’s own mother entertaining Elvis. Can you imagine the typical American allowing Cuban tourists to just show up and sleep in their homes? Can you imagine being afraid to log on to the Internet?

Much worse than the fear of the Cuban Internet cops is the worry of being locked up without legal recourse in a manner that eschews Western norms and takes mankind back to the pre-Magna Carta era. There are, of course, the Cuban hunger strikers, most notable being dissident Wilmar Villar Mendoza, who died last winter in Santiago after a strike of 50 days. He had been on a hunger strike to protest a four-year sentence for “contempt” against the government. Cuba is estimated to have about 60 such similar political prisoners. The Cuban government claims Mendoza was an ordinary criminal sent to prison for domestic violence. Amnesty International stood by Mendoza, as did President Barack Obama. Cubans are sensitive to such issues because deep down the people believe all forms of unfairness should be eliminated.

Yet unfairness is not new to Cuba. By 1840, Spain had brought 400,000 black slaves to Cuba, mostly from the western coast of Africa. (As noted, ex-slaves came from Curacao.) This legacy is still alive amongst black Cubans today, who feel at times they are victims of discrimination. Blacks in Cuba also have higher rates of crime and gang membership than other races. Although racism in Cuba is in retreat, the white-skinned Cubans (who consider themselves to be purely European) are viewed as either running the country or having advantages over others in society. Such notions of the desirability of whiter skin are found in nations as far away as Thailand and do not detract from the sense of solidarity Cubans of all races share in a robust way. But it is there, nevertheless. Thankfully, black Cuban teens don’t walk around with their pants hanging halfway down their thighs with their names tattooed on their necks.

The highways linking Cuba’s towns and cities are clean, wide and in good shape, but they are bereft of cars. There are only 600,000 cars in all of Cuba, but they stay 99 percent local. In fact, almost all that is tranquil in the Cuban lifestyle is local – playing chess and dominoes, sipping rum, dancing. These things make Cubans happy, as they are things that can be done near one’s home. Cubans don’t really go anywhere, since travel is expensive. When hurricanes hit, the civil defense machine is quickly up and running. Crime, especially violent crime, is unknown. This is mostly because of harsh penalties and the fact that to be a criminal in Cuba is a disgrace, in the way that being a poor student in South Korea is a disgrace to one’s self and one’s family. Cubans genuinely love one another in generic terms. There is solidarity, something you might see between the Hmong in Laos, the Karen in Myanmar, Afrikaner farmers or black evangelical Christians in the United States. There is a human bond, a belief in a higher and self-imposed law – a true sense of community.

To be a racist in Cuba is to be a disgrace and an affront to national unity. Blonde people from Russia are routinely carted out in government propaganda films to emphasize that all Cuba’s people are welcomed by the society at large. Cubans are a real multicultural society, while America’s melting pot is more of a salad bar, with American Indians living in abject poverty on reservations, the KKK, poverty in Appalachia and the Ozarks, La Raza, the Black Panthers, affirmative-action quotas springing from hopes that new racism and discrimination can heal old racism and discrimination, race-oriented killings (James Byrd, Channon Christian, Abeer Hamza) and similar evidences of a racially dysfunctional society. Cuba doesn’t have this mess of regional tribalism. It doesn’t have homeless people in wheelchairs panhandling for spare change in the middle of rush hour, as on the streets of San Francisco. Cubans don’t have armies of illegal aliens or homeless people camped out in tents and trying to jones the broken electric toaster you’re dropping off at the Salvation Army. Cuba doesn’t have 30 million people on anti-psychotic medications. The reason? There’s no money for such medicines, and if your toaster is broken in Cuba then you’ll find a way to fix it rather than buying a new one at the Great Wall of China Mart.

Of all the great achievements of which Cubans can boast, their devotion to the nation, their sense of patriotism and aversion to racial hatred as a national distraction may be their finest attributes of all. Havana’s parks are filled in the after-school hours with children of many races playing together in harmony. Like it or not, it is family, nation, Christianity, socialism, patriotism and the French ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity that make Cuba work despite the embargo and economic stagnation, waste, fraud and mismanagement. While human creativity and business entrepreneurship are stifled, Cubans still are rich in many of the things money cannot buy: honor, kindness, friendliness, ingenuity, humility and compassion.

Ancillary cultural products

The policewomen were omnipresent around Havana. In fact, every single policewoman was relatively tall and slim and looked like Zuleikha Robinson (of “Hidalgo” and “The X-Files” fame) or Penelope Cruz. Posters of Penelope Cruz were ever-preset (rivaling Che and Fidel) and were especially prominent near the Spanish embassy. American products like Sprite, Coca-Cola, Nestle and AT&T were on display, along with a Cuban version of Coca-Cola that isn’t really “the real thing.” Santeria dolls wearing immaculately clean white dresses were for sale on every street corner. VH1 Classics featured videos of Billy Joel and the always annoying Christie Brinkley, as well as other retro acts. The Ministry of the Interior had soldiers on display in 1950s-style uniforms, which made them appear to be better-looking versions of Forrest Gump. America’s holy trinity of state ideology (abortion, homosexuality, multiculturalism) is matched by Cuba’s own statist holy trinity of poverty, Soviet communism and ancillary American cultural products that would make even the Dukes of Hazzard cringe.

The women dressed sexy. More than a few had “tramp stamp” tattoos. Closed-circuit TV from communist China was widely available – boring and uninviting. Unemployment was rampant. The buses are made in China, featured no working bathrooms (they were locked), rarely stopped (even on the direct route from Havana to Trinidad) and played Cuban propaganda movies showing a North Korean-style “Workers’ Paradise.” There was no litter. One was reminded of the film “American Graffiti,” due to all of the 1950s archetype vehicles emanating a special ambiance.

Everything in Havana is done by the book, and if you wish to stop to take a photo of a statue of Fernando Marti while en route to the city from the airport – that is severely frowned upon – as if there is some anointed order of where everyone should go or shouldn’t go. There was also a lot of dog excrement everywhere. The city looked like Beirut, Lebanon, when it was being rebuilt – again. The Seville Square was the loveliest place of all – an epic piece of Spanish civilization in the Caribbean. The live music was as free as the air itself. The aforementioned posadas were clean, cheap and filled with friendly New Yorkers and Canadians ready to tell you their life story at the drop of a hat over breakfast. Of course, normal people don’t tell total strangers their whole life story over a bowl of Corn Flakes, but Americans in general are insecure, unable to form deep, logical thoughts because of the sub-moronic, superficial, self-involved culture of “Dancing with the Stars” and “American Idol,” as well as the never-ending mass media and technological stimuli, so such conversations are sadly a part of life when meeting other Americans in Cuba. Cubans understand this and are fascinated by the American cultural train wreck.

There were no fat Cubans. Food is expensive in Cuba, and much of the food they do have has been imported from America. The men were handsome, and the women were attractive as well. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, of the 3 million men in Cuba aged 16 to 49, more than 2.4 million are fit for active combat duty – this as opposed to the American male youth, which is so troubled by obesity, video games and pornographic addictions. Cubans, both male and female, are required to undergo military training and serve in the armed forces. This is a social leveler.

Fidel Castro, perhaps emboldened by the lack of fat Cuban youths wearing their baseball hats sideways and their pants hanging half off, took down the anti-American graffiti at the Arch of Anti Imperialism. A few black women stopped on the Malecón to tell me how President George W. Bush had been given a good going over by the Cuban regime in regard to street art. The people I encountered cursed the BP oil spill, praised the pope (“El Papa!”), hissed at the attractive women (well-built, no tattoos of the symbols of a deck of cards on their arms, nor their names on their necks) and wondered about actually using emissions testing for their vintage automobiles. Everywhere there were the signs touting Fidel and Che and their war.

Cubans were shocked to learn that Americans don’t have posters of George Washington crossing the Delaware, celebrating the Battle of Long Island, Redcoats being shot down in the swamps of South Carolina or captured Seminole Indians in the Everglades splattered on every street corner. Americans don’t celebrate 1776 or Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Dresden or D-Day or Fallujah. Cubans do. Americans don’t have and don’t want signs declaring, “Capitalism or death!”

There were oil derricks, sublime and tacky truck stops, few if any Internet cafes, separate buses for tourists and locals, a cost of 1 Cuban convertible peso for a pork sandwich and $5 for a small bag of popcorn shrimp without the shrimp. There was the feeling that American culture, via Starbucks and Burger King, will one day soon wash over Cuba and ruin it. One billboard read, “I am the revolution!” which is about as inspiring as “A walk is as good as a hit.” Communism still unites Cubans the way the economic draft in American turns fat, white men into latter-day John Rambos ready to take the diaper off of a 90-year-old granny going through security at Los Angeles International Airport.

Everywhere I traveled in Cuba, I heard praise for El Duque, the ex-pitcher for the New York Yankees, especially for “having ice in his veins,” a shark biting his baseball glove while floating on his raft for Miami, strong baseball intelligence by understanding how to pitch to a certain hitter based on his batting stance or how he fouled off a certain type of pitch. Cubans know baseball: hitting behind the runner, fouling off a pitch when you have two strikes, swinging and missing to protect the runner trying to steal, the right sequence for a relay throw from the outfield – real nuanced fundamentals. If you know your baseball, Cubans will take to you. After five days passed, one might learn that El Duque’s real name was “Orlando Hernandez.” Who knew?

(Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Everywhere, Cubans were obsessed about the Internet, worrying that such an influx of technology might distract them or unleash Internet stalkers or other assorted losers. Cubans would sometimes ask, “If we had unlimited high-speed Internet, would it take over and waste our lives?” They noted how, in the old USSR, photocopy machines were made illegal to suppress information, but they heard the Internet had so much information that you could also hide things under “TMI.” They well understood that the Cuban Missile Crisis was the first mega-important news event ever covered live on TV, about DARPA and how that group had helped launch the Internet, as well as just how close the world had come to nuclear war.

They wondered if Americans have the freedom to be heard or understood. They wondered why American children were so obese and why they needed a pill for every mood, or to wear a helmet and elbow pads while rollerblading on their own driveways. Cubans, trapped in so many ways in the 1950s, think Americans also share the rugged traits of the 1950s – when communism in America and around the world was opposed. But like Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future,” Cubans would see a vast disconnect between 1950s Americans and modern Yanks.

Finally, there was the need to confront and interact with Santeria, a pseudo-religion of black Cubans that is a mixture of African paganism and Catholic saints who can still be found around the island. Cubans who practice this religion feel they are demonized as Satan worshipers, a charge they reject. They believe Santeria is linked with their black skin and that this further marginalizes black Cubans. When a few black Cuban Santeria practitioners in Trinidad were told that black Americans have eight abortions for every one white abortion, and that many actually view this as a key “civil right,” they responded, “And they call us Satanists?!”

Adherents to Santeria in Cuba believe their tribal knowledge is persecuted in the same manner and for the same reasons as American Indians, Afrikaners, Libyans, people living in the tribal areas of Western Pakistan, Aborigines in the Australian outback, Eskimos and various shamans around the world. They believe this persecution takes place in the broadest sense because tribal peoples have a special, ancient and sacred knowledge that can somehow defeat the 21st century technocratic model of genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, finance capitalism and a reliance on pharmaceuticals in everyday life.

Such notions are important because Cubans truly believe they have power to reform society, when in reality they have very little power to do so. This belief system stands opposed to that of everyday Americans, who actually have the power to reclaim a government truly by, of and for the people, yet may feel helpless and impotent to do so.

(Editor’s note: Read Part 1. Don’t miss Parts 3 and 4 of Anthony LoBaido’s in-depth series on Cuba.)

Architectural marvels abound in Havana as the Old World style of colonial Spain graces the city's skyline. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

 ”Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

– German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: 1844-1900

“If the light in thine eye be darkness, how great is that darkness.”

– Jesus Christ, Gospel of Matthew 6:23

HAVANA, Cuba – “Nobody has ever taken a boat from Miami to Cuba,” so the saying goes when speaking of “los balseros” or “the rafters.” Simply put, there is a plethora of reasons why Americans don’t defect to the Caribbean nation, just as South Koreans don’t defect to North Korea and West Germans didn’t defect to East Germany.

Yet in past centuries people have defected to Cuba – white French agriculturalists fleeing the slave rebellion in nearby Haiti and black sugar cane cutters from Curacao searching for a post-slavery future. Several covetous American presidents tried to buy Cuba outright in cash. Former Soviets and modern Russians come to Cuba, as do millions of foreign tourists. The reasons for coming are legion, as are the recriminations and accusations Cubans and Americans lob at one another like errant missiles.

Despite the rhetoric of a socialist paradise, complete with unrelenting sunshine, pristine white sandy beaches, exotic women, first-rate nationalized health care, universal education, racial harmony, sweet cigars and lively music, Cuba is only now coming to terms with her 21st century identity crisis. How can the island become a true utopia to which the best and the brightest people around the world permanently defect? How does it escape the shadow of the giants that have fought over Cuba for the past four centuries – meaning the Spanish, French, British, Soviet and American empires?

Cuba’s exports include coffee, sugar, oil, nickel, medical doctors, Olympic athletes and Major League Baseball stars. Yet Cubans living on the island these days are struggling to understand the direction its national soul should plot and follow. How can Americans, Westerners and others around the world understand Cuba if Cubans don’t even understand themselves? Where does this confusion come from, and how can it be circumvented?

The answer must begin with a re-examination of the national and transnational hero worship relating to Che Guevara and Fidel Castro that has long since been synthesized within the hyper-militarized, Marxist nexus dominating daily life in Cuba for six decades. This ethos has resulted in a mythologized series of ancillary cultural products which limit intelligent discourse and analysis of the island nation. The real Cuba is something unimaginable, undefinable and ever-changing – a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle where multiple realities are all simultaneously coexisting.

Che was once a medical doctor as popularized in the film, "The Motorcycle Diaries." His image is prominent all around Cuba. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

On one hand, Cuba is an amazing place filled with lovely people who simply want the best for their children. On the other hand, Cuba is an unmitigated disaster – facing agricultural problems, failed central planning, an inflexible one-party system, world condemnation for human rights abuses, an education bubble producing many (but not all) worthless degrees, a lack of entrepreneurial courses and business schools, few market-oriented mechanisms, a reliance on domestic and international subsidies, a lack of foreign investment, temperamental policy shifts that remind one of a drunken teenaged cheerleader on a Friday night binge, defaulting on its national debt, cut off from credit, the bane of the IMF and World Bank, set adrift by the old Soviet Union, kangaroo courts and show trials, local snitches and informants, beholden to mainland China and Venezuela to run international interference, faced with an aging and declining population, brain drain and an exodus of 30,000 people every year. This is the reality.

Cubans are, of course, quite confused about how all of these factors will impact their individual and collective futures. Money, the search for meaning and the next extrapolation of the Cuban matrix form a fluid and ethereal triangulation. As Mark Steyn wrote in his book, “After America,” “What is life for? What gives it meaning? Post-Christian, post-nationalist, postmodern Europe has no answer to this question, and so it has 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees, and wonders why the small band of workers in between them can’t make the math add up.” Similarly, Cuba has its own work and age gap. Cuba also features a severe form of cognitive dissonance as Cuba’s citizens are willing to fight and die for a system that both enslaves and impoverishes them. Why is this so?

 Beyond the hyper-militarized, socialist nexus

More than a million state workers will need to be retrenched over the next few years. Cuba’s total workforce is only about 4 million, and giving each one a modest pension of $10 per month is a huge drain on the national coffers. How could Fidel Castro’s paradise have come to this? Cuba could be a Caribbean version of Israel, or it could be another North Korea or Myanmar.

The question is simple: Will the Cubans embrace the Spirit of 1776 or cling to the revolution of 1959? Communism has killed hundreds of millions while enslaving much of the world. It need not enslave Cuba even one more day. “Don’t tread on me” and “Live free or die” are not only slogans for Americans. Like the stories of Noah, Lot, Samson, Daniel, King David and Ruth in the Old Testament, they are for all people, everywhere, all the time, right now, today and forever.

Help for Cuba could come from better access to technology, dialogue with the U.S. State Department, greater largess from China, more food aid (almost a $1 billion in foodstuffs is sold to Cuba each year) free cell phones, a “Cuban Spring” in line with the “Arab Spring” and/or Cubans finding the initiative to throw off the shackles of the welfare state. Cubans need America to lift the long-standing embargo against the island enacted 50 years ago by JFK. America and Cuba work together as equals on issues such as drug interdiction, keeping Guantanamo Bay from blowing up into a military conflict, hurricanes and the back-and-forth travels of Cuban exiles who live and work in Miami, yet like to send money home and bring along American goods when returning to Cuba as staples of their dualistic existence.

Then there is the issue of the Internet and its vast, heady potential to transform totalitarian societies and challenge statist ideologies. Cubans are cut off from high-speed Internet. A Russian satellite echoing Sputnik gives Cubans a very slow connection to the Internet. Blogging, Twitter, YouTube and WikiLeaks, along with other social media, are virtually unknown to Cubans. Yet there is no great national longing to embrace the digital world in a Bill Gates-Harvard-Steve Jobs-Stanford sense of the term.

Claudia Mendez, a Cuban posada (guest house) owner, said, “It is well-known that the Internet is a rare luxury in Cuba. But we don’t have to worry about stalkers on the Internet, or cyber parasites who never go anywhere, contribute nothing to society, have no talent, courage or wisdom yet launch cowardly attacks from the shadows. We don’t have people addicted to Internet pornography or wasting their lives online. Is there anything more pathetic than someone trolling around the Internet desperately trying to be relevant? I say, ‘Grow up, be a real man or a real woman.’ But Cubans, like Americans, do in fact slander others over the Internet … especially those using the Internet as a tool in the cause of freedom.” (A few Cuban bloggers have gained a massive following through postings distributed through Spain.)

Cubans also have an “Intranet.” They can use email, but the cost is prohibitive at about $2 for an hour at participating post office locations that actually do have computers. This leads directly to another problem in that there aren’t many computers on the island – less than half a million. If you think you can hook up on the sly to a high-speed satellite link, you might well find yourself in prison. The government of Cuba seeks to control information in a USSR kind of a way. It tolerates diverse opinions, but there is no question of who is boss. There are loose yet definitive boundaries to dissent, as politically correct people don’t like to be challenged or even questioned with facts. Clinically, this is a form of mental illness that is not unique to Cuba but, rather, permeates all societies controlled by forms of political correctness that warp reality. The “reality” that held Cuba together since 1959 has been under siege since 1991 due to the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of its tremendous influence over satellite outposts ranging from Angola to Cuba. The Soviet Union was Cuba’s progenitor and touchstone.

Marxist-Leninism was officially dropped from the Cuban national constitution after the Soviet empire disintegrated, leaving an ideological vacuum waiting to be filled. What remain steadfast are the myths surrounding Cuba, the feelings of ordinary Cubans toward Cuban defectors, latent animosity toward ordinary Americans and, of course, their own government – all of which persist, mutate and extrapolate.

Cubans are a proud people who genuinely believe in and love their country. The Soviet Union is gone, but the Cuban Communist Party rolls on. (“How big is the Party? Huge, 50 kegs of beer,” young Cubans like to say.) The state-directed ebb and flow of life, Communist Youth Movement (numbering almost three-quarters of a million, with many more unofficial fringe sympathizers) is strong. Changes in the one-party system are discussed in a nuanced way. Stalinism is still fashionable, a personality cult not unlike North Korea. The Politburo needs new blood. Women’s rights, gay rights and even the rights of Catholics and evangelical Christians are emerging issues. Censorship is rife – magazines, books and the arts. Still, there is that strange yearning to be free in Cuba, busy percolating like a vector with both speed and direction.

Jaime Ortega, the well-known Catholic cardinal towering over the Church in Havana, is a key figure holding Cuban society together and moving it forward into a new paradigm. He has access to top leaders in Cuba, including el jefe Raul Castro. But only one in 20 Cuban Catholics is an ardent churchgoer who uses the Bible as a guide to life. Many are social or cultural Christians for the purposes of establishing a social identity or celebrating various festivals. There are Cubans who see all religion as merely “guilt with different holidays.” Still, Cuban Catholics are a potent force because roughly 66 percent of Cubans have been formally and ritually baptized into the Church. Events in Poland under Solidarity have not been lost on Cuba’s elites, nor has the role of evangelical Christians in overthrowing and efficiently executing Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania. Cuba’s top leaders understand Christians are difficult to control because of their long-term view of eternity, a willingness to die for something greater than themselves, disdain for worshiping the state, adherence to the sanctity of life as well as opposition to abortion, drugs and other vices that cause various addictions and enslavement and destroy both human and spiritual potential. In the past, Christians in Cuba could be sent to camps – but no longer.

If change does come to Cuba – political, economic, moral, spiritual, technological – the Catholic and evangelical churches will provide key linkages comforting Cuba’s communist elites that such change is to be embraced and not feared, and that there will be a place for them in “The New Cuba” free of recrimination, blame and demonization. The Cuban Communist Party itself is the battleground where this war will be fought and won or lost for the sake of ordinary Cubans.

People who doubt such a change can happen should look no further than the power of the Cuban-American lobby in Washington, D.C. Cuba has more than 180 foreign embassies overseas. Then there are Spain and other Asian allies, which have assisted in offshore oil exploration via Cuba’s “Scarabeo 9.” Add to that Brazil – whose regime sympathetic to Marxist ideals mutes any criticism of Cuba. Even the Vatican and Cuban-Americans with a heart for Cuba’s people can be allies. Cuba is building a new port near Mariel, which will give it better access to the shipping benefits offered by the Panama Canal. (It is influenced by the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, which has links to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.) Cuba is no longer interested in bringing communism to the entire world – a world more interested in “Bay Watch,” pornography, beer and sports than it is in the writings of Lenin and Karl Marx.

The UJC logo touts three things around which a young revolutionary’s life is expected to be centered: "estudio," "trabajo," "fusil," meaning "study," "work," "rifle." (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

The future is wide open. Cuba could turn out like Mexico – for so long a one-party state. Or Cuba could stumble along and become an economic colony of China and/or a micro-version of 2012 Argentina. A Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi could emerge, or even someone like an ascetic Vladimir Putin. Cuba’s multicultural melting pot could, in theory, turn on itself or bring humanity a new example of racial love, cooperation, admiration and achievement.

Cubans, like their Russian big brothers, know autocracy rather than democracy.  They can plainly see the American dream has decayed into the American nightmare of Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Dennis Rodman, MTV values, racial discord, financial ruination, the trade gap, political dysfunction, selfishness and indulgence, gangs, poor public education, pornographic habits, video-game obsession, pharmaceutical addictions and homelessness. But just as the ability of America to slowly change course like a massive cruise ship should not be underestimated, neither should people underestimate the flexibility and ingenuity of the Cuban people. They want change.

Cuba requires a way forward. And this new arc could emulate Sweden as a capitalist-funded, social-welfare state, an economy with elements of central control such as the chaebols in South Korea or the Chinese model. Regardless, Cuba could be a gateway to the Caribbean, much in the way Panama is a gateway to the world and Egypt as well because of the Suez Canal. Cuba could be an American ally in an uncertain region, in the way that Thailand has checked Islamic radicalism, the Burmese junta, the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge. Ordinary Americans are ready to embrace Cuba as a friend, not to be demonized or lectured, but as a country that can embrace the best of what America can offer while somehow escaping the worst.

Cuba must decide if it wants to go its own way like Malaysia under Dr. Mahathir, join forces with the elites setting up the emerging world government, stay Stalinist and navigate a post-communist world while maintaining outright and/or nuanced Marxist features or become a rogue nation like Zimbabwe or Myanmar. All of these scenarios are possible. Raul Castro’s son, Alejandro, is his top adviser on national security issues, so astute Cuba watchers can be assured family discussions about Cuba’s future direction are commonplace. A billion Catholics around the world also will keep a close eye on Cuba. Like Vietnam, a country split into 13 economic zones each controlled by the military, Cuba’s armed forces have a stake in the economy. This stake is managed by Col. Luis Rodriguez, Raul’s son-in-law.

Raul’s daughter, Mariela, is a champion of gay rights in Cuba and represents another coalition in waiting – homosexual people around the world interested in Cuba’s treatment of gays – which involved, at one point, Cuba’s gays being put into re-education camps. As a communist and Stalinist nation, Cuba struggled to follow the Bolshevik line of legalizing both homosexuality and abortion. Joseph Stalin recriminalized abortion and homosexuality during the 1930s under his “Article 121,” which included prison time with brutal hard labor. Article 121 remained on the books in the USSR until 1993. Sodomy laws were repealed in Cuba back in 1979. Mariela Castro has pushed for civil-union legislation in Cuba, thus elevating her profile.

Today, homosexuals and transgender people live mostly at peace and can be seen around Havana in a low-key way. No overt harassment in the public sphere is readily apparent. One reason may be that Cuba, according to the United Nations, has a 0.1 HIV-positive infection rate, the lowest in the world. The U.S. rate is six times more prevalent. After the 1959 revolution, the Cuban government was anti-gay, but with the increase of AIDS and the return of Cuban soldiers from the Angolan war in Africa (many were infected with HIV/AIDS after sleeping with Angolan prostitutes) the government’s position changed to endorsement of various programs aimed at helping homosexuals and people with the disease. Cardinal Ortega of Havana has condemned homophobia but officially deplores the “First World ideologies of ‘anything goes.’”

One of Cuba’s most famous homosexuals was Rienaldo Arenas. He wrote a novel titled, “Singing from the Well.” Arenas fled Cuba in the Mariel Harbor boatlift and later contracted HIV/AIDS. He committed suicide in New York in 1990. Fidel Castro had once proclaimed, “In this country of Cuba, there are no homosexuals.” Echoing the anti-gay death squads that roamed around Bogota, Colombia, Castro embraced Latin Catholic and Latin machismo attitudes, while in the fashion of Mao and Pol Pot proclaimed agrarianism as the ideal way of life. Arenas paid a great price fleeing Fidel’s gay persecution. He tried to escape Cuba on a raft but was recaptured and sent to the horrific El Morro prison. Arenas was then made to sign an affidavit claiming his own writings were “deviant.” Ironically, many Cuban homosexuals had backed Castro’s Revolution, believing he would bring cultural, sexual and artistic freedom to all Cubans. How sadly mistaken they were. The reality was that a dark chapter in Cuba’s history was about to unfold.

Under Fidel, gays in Cuba were rounded up in nighttime raids. Children perceived to be homosexual were to be reported to the government by their own parents. Gay sex was criminalized. One prominent re-education camp for homosexuals was the barbwire and machine gun-laden outpost called Camagüey. Gays in positions to influence the youth and the culture through universities, TV, radio, theater, plays, novels and other areas echoed by the Antonio Gramsci philosophy of cultural power were chastised, stripped of their titles, made to dig graves, murdered or driven to suicide. They were called “pathological” and “unsuitable for the ideal socialist family.”

Still, homosexuals cannot (at least openly) join the Communist Party of Cuba. Gay nightclubs can still be raided, moderately harassed and the owners fined. But homosexuals are thankful for the help they’ve received from international organizations, thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and East German doctors who came to Cuba during the Cold War and helped the Cuban elites in government and medicine to see their lifestyle in less severe terms. Additionally, the “ultimate male Cuban warriors” who returned to Cuba with AIDS after fighting the apartheid South African regime in Angola, rotated AIDS from a homosexual issue into a human-oriented issue that could affect any Cuban regardless of sexual orientation. The proliferation of prostitution in Cuba will no doubt influence the HIV infection rate and attitudes about the disease in the island nation.

Regardless, Alejandro, Luis and Mariela all lack officially authorized posts in the Cuban government. They lack the prestige a Politburo member in North Korea or Beijing might hold. Still they form a troika of power and control, for better or for worse, in which Raul Castro trusts. But is this really a position of strength? Or does this represent another form of political correctness, dysfunction and nepotism? As in Soviet times, when many of the USSR’s officials were viewed as rude and swinish in their behavior, the system in Cuba is not producing trustworthy officials. Corruption is endemic, and Raul Castro is forced to use his family and army friends in some of the most important positions in the nation. This is troubling. In America, a trade official negotiating with China may well have their place at the table because of race or gender. A Communist Party official in China leading that same trade negotiation will have won a ruthless competition of academic and tactical brilliance to sit across from the American trade official. An official sitting in the same position in Cuba might be Raul Castro’s beer-drinking buddy or his crazy aunt Judy normally chained up in the basement.

The Catedral de la Virgen María de la Concepción Inmaculada de La Habana (Cathedral of The Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception), a Roman Catholic cathedral and the seat of Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, the cardinal archbishop of Havana. It is also called Cathedral of Saint Christopher. (Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Sugar daddies: New lies for old

Since the colonial era of the Spanish Empire, Cuba has relied on sugar for its income. And Cuba has seen a series of sugar daddies come and go. There was, of course, the Soviet Union, then Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and, more recently, mainland China. The Soviet Union knew it could use Cuba as an unsinkable aircraft carrier and strategic weapon against America – and also as a listening post (based at Lourdes) before (some say) the NSA, CIA and FBI became so infiltrated by the KGB/FSB that Lourdes was no longer needed. Venezuela has received sports advisers, thousands of well-trained doctors and military experts in exchange for Caracas’ oil. China, through infrastructure development, TV programming and the brotherhood of anti-Americanism, is trying to gain a foothold in Cuba and continue making inroads in the Western Hemisphere from Canada to Argentina, just as it has in Africa and elsewhere in the world.

Cuba positions itself accordingly. Unlike Afghanistan, Cuba has no rare earth metals (such as lithium) and few natural resources. But like Myanmar, wedged in between China and India, Cuba offers the three keys to real estate: location, location, location. Both Russia and China could wipe America off the face of the earth with nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. Both Russia and China could use Cuba (and/or Venezuela) as a forward operating base for strategic nuclear bombers, submarines or theater-based missiles. Yet America has openly stated in recent years that this is a “red line” not to be crossed. As a tactical entity, Cuba is still a major strategic player. This fact shouldn’t be discounted or minimized. It was not that long ago when Americans actually built bomb shelters because of Cuba’s communist affiliations and affections.

In an Associated Press report dated March 14, 2009, the triangulation of Russia, Cuba and Venezuela was detailed thusly: “Russia can ‘possibly’ use Cuba to station its strategic bombers, while Venezuela has offered Moscow to do the same on its territory, said a senior Russian strategic air force commander. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also offered to let Russia use his country’s territory to station Russian strategic bombers, Major General Anatoly Zhikharev told Interfax. ‘Yes, such a proposal from the president of Venezuela exists. If there is an appropriate political decision it is possible … [and] it is possible with Cuba. There are four or five airfields with runways 4,000 meters long which suits us quite well. If there is a will of heads of the two states, a political will, we are ready to fly there,’ he said.”

Those who thought the Cold War was over and that nuclear war has become unthinkable might want to think again. Not much is known about the nuclear capabilities of mainland China. Only a handful of American experts even bother to study China’s nuclear weapons capability (this analysis was given a jolt last year by students at Georgetown University), but the threat remains because of Cuba’s proximity and its kinship with America’s mortal enemies – the central power base in Moscow and Beijing, as well as the outposts in Harare, Pyongyang, Rangoon and Tehran. This analysis should be sober, poignant and not hyperbolic. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot murdered more than 100 million people. Would those who embraced their vision of the world hesitate to annihilate America, long seen as a bastion of freedom and anti-communism? Whether one speaks of realpolitik or wildly sensational biblical prophecies, the issue of Armageddon and nuclear war is quite real. And Cuba is still a focal point.

There are still those alive today who recall the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when a Soviet submarine captain named Vasili Arkapov saved the world by preventing a rogue nuclear weapons launch against Fortress America. Yet Armageddon and nuclear war took a backseat to Fidel Castro, the mafia, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Bay of Pigs. These elements combine to form a rubric of an unknowable black hole in recent history. Films like “The Good Shepherd” with Matt Damon, as well as Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” gloss over Cuba yet present the nation as a bête noire. Does such an amateur view of history provide a telescope, a microscope or a kaleidoscope?

The loss of Cuba, from the American perspective, was a major strategic blunder and equals the loss of mainland China to Mao, Eastern Europe to Stalin after World War II, Nicaragua, Rhodesia, the morally flawed Old South Africa and the more recent debacles in the Middle East and Central Asia. Yet as previously inferred, Cuba could once again become a part of America’s orbit, which would be a more natural existence considering the Catholic and evangelical population, geography and the Cuban-American beachhead in Miami, Fla.

(Photo: Anthony C. LoBaido)

Oh my Lourdes

In a reminder of the importance Cuba played in the espionage capabilities of Russia, even after the fall of the Soviet Union, one might study a Novosti article published on Feb. 8, 2008, which states, “The electronic monitoring and surveillance facility near Havana at Torrens, also known as the Lourdes facility, the largest Russian SIGINT [signals intelligence] site abroad, was shut down in October 2001 by then-president Vladimir Putin. The Lourdes facility reportedly covered a 28 square-mile area, with 1,000-1,500 Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base. The complex was capable of monitoring a wide array of commercial and government communications throughout the southeastern United States, and between the United States and Europe. Lourdes intercepted transmissions from microwave towers in the United States, communication satellite downlinks, and a wide range of shortwave and high-frequency radio transmissions.”

Russia claimed it shut down the facility because the $200 million Moscow paid in rent could buy and launch 20 satellites into outer space. Some say the Russians were spending more than $300-$350 million on Lourdes. Still, others say Putin and Castro simply don’t get along and that’s why Lourdes was shut down. The base was closed in back in 2001 just 10 months after Putin visited Cuba and promised to keep Lourdes open.

America pressured Russia to close the base, and this had a rippling effect on Russia’s relations with Cuba. The Security Council of Russia cooperates with Cuba in regard to oil production, tourism, health care, nickel production, telecommunications and even nanotechnology – but for now, Lourdes is a relic of the Cold War. Tangential reports on the issue state, “China would like to expand its electronic intelligence capability on the island. China is reported to operate at least one small listening post and ties between the Cuban and Chinese militaries have been expanding.”

Cuban identity

Cubans cannot seem to “get over” the revolution of Fidel Castro. His photo, along with Che’s, is everywhere, the ubiquitous “Big Brothers” peering down at the interloper every 10 feet in Havana and elsewhere on the island. There is a latent undercurrent of anti-Americanism lurking amid the redacted deep structure of Cuban lexis and dialogue concerning the American government’s policies toward Cuba. The U.S. dollar gets a 10 percent penalty during arbitrage. The moneda nacional (Cuban pesos, or CUP, which are rarely used) and convertible Cuban currency, or CUC, are weak. It is better to have Canadian dollars or euros. America has no embassy in Cuba and uses a section of the Swiss embassy to carry out its operations.

The nation of Cuba is about the size of Pennsylvania and has no long rivers. This is problematic in terms of generating hydroelectric power. Cuba does have the world’s third largest supply of nickel, and there is also the new jewel of offshore oil. It is a large island, which makes it militarily difficult to defend. Friendly nations like China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and other trading partners, such as Canada and Spain, cannot create a normalized economy. The poverty is real and tangible.

When visiting Cuba, it can be reminiscent of Myanmar or North Korea. There are rich enclaves for elites, both domestic and international, like Miramar and Siboney. But there is no utopia or anything remotely like it. Havana has its unattractive slums. Yet most of the beaches are pristine (the BP oil spill notwithstanding), filled with white sand and jade green water (like Veradero, where armies of Canadians fly in directly from the Great White North). Other beaches have more rocks than an archetype high-school baseball field.

The idea of Cuba as a utopia is more than half a millennium old. When Columbus approached Cuba in the fall of 1492, he called it, “the most beautiful land human eyes have ever seen.” Columbus named Cuba “Juana” after a rich heiress back in Spain. Finding no gold or silver, he abandoned Cuba quickly for what is today known as Haiti. Still, the oldest statue of Columbus in the Western Hemisphere can be found in the sleepy city of Cardenas, right in front of the Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepcion. The statue dates back to the early 1860s and refers to Columbus as “Colon,” who stands astride a globe.

Down the street from that statue is a gigantic flagpole, which commemorates the exact spot where a group of American mercenaries (foreshadowing Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders) led by Naricso Lopez, a flamboyant adventure-seeking soldier from Venezuela, first raised the Cuban flag in 1850 in a failed attempt to free the colony from the dominion of the Spanish Empire. Flags are all the rage in Cuba. A visitor can find more flags in Cuba’s history than at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York – the flags of the British Empire, Spanish Empire, American colonialists, Soviet Empire and, finally, an independent Cuba. Flags show ownership – and just who has owned Cuba over the last 500 years is about as confusing as can be imagined.

The Cuban identity goes back to the time when the island was controlled by Spain. Of course,  that’s the reason Spanish is spoken. But then came the British, who entered in the summer of 1762 with 20,000 troops and occupied the island for almost a year, before trading Cuba like a baseball card to the French in exchange for Florida in 1763 at the Treaty of Paris (thus saving the Cuban people from 250 years of bad food, including cholesterol-laden breakfasts after which even 7-year-olds have been known to have heart attacks). Cuban sugar and tobacco are legendary commodities, and this was not lost on the fledgling American nation after the War of Independence in 1776. By the 1820s, Cuba had become the largest sugar-producing nation in the entire world – everyone else’s “sugar daddy” in the most literal sense. America approached Spain several times about buying the island outright. Thomas Jefferson and James Polk tried to purchase the island – the latter even put down a deposit of $100 million – about the same amount the New York Yankees will pay Alex Rodriquez to play third base for the next four seasons.

Cardenas’ most famous citizen, however, is Elian Gonzales, who sparked a horrendous battle between then-Attorney General Janet Reno, anti-Castro Cubans in the U.S. and the Cuban government back in 1999. This occurred when the 5-year-old child was taken from his home by militarized police at gunpoint on Easter Sunday. (The “South Park” episode depicting Janet Reno as the Easter bunny is considered one of the definitive moments in cartoon history.) As an aside, Cardenas also hosts sandlot baseball pickup games (held near the aforementioned flagpole) featuring perhaps the single worst collection of baseball players in the history of human civilization.

(Editor’s note: Don’t miss Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of Anthony LoBaido’s in-depth series on Cuba.)

“Sisters are doing it for themselves.
Standing on their own two feet,
And bringing home their own bread.”
– Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox

NUANG KAN LEPER COLONY, Kengtung, Burma – It is an ancient disease shrouded in a deep fog of mystery and confusion. It would seem the more things change for lepers between biblical and postmodern times, the more they remain the same. Lepers are synonymous with the darkest emotions of the human condition – fear, pity, isolation, abandonment and despair.

By clinical definition, leprosy is a “chronic, mildly contagious disease of tropical and subtropical regions, caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium leprae, characterized by ulcers of the skin, bone, and viscera and leading to loss of sensation, paralysis, gangrene, and deformation.” Leprosy is also known as “Hansen’s disease.”

In New Testament times, lepers were ritually pronounced unclean and could not expect medical care, love and compassion from society. These days leprosy has turned the corner. It is highly treatable with drugs such as dapsone, and its transmission is seen as remote.

Over 90 percent of the world’s population is immune to leprosy, and there are only 400,000 lepers left in the entire world. Most of them can be found in countries such as Madagascar, Brazil, Mozambique, Nepal, India and surprisingly, even Japan. The stigma of the disease in the social sense does, however, remain. The plight of the leper still is seen in some quarters as a sort of divine punishment from Almighty God.

Watch a video report on the plight of lepers:

As such, the quest of the
Sisters of Charity
to maintain a leper colony of healing and acceptance in Burma rivals in its own way the struggle to build both the Burma Road and the Burma Railway or “Bridge Over the River Kwai.” To be a leper anywhere is to be a disgrace. To be a leper in Burma, a pariah nation eschewed by the international community is doubly hard, for the ruling Burmese junta only provides each handicapped leper with 2 cents per month in assistance.

Time machine

While the British East India Company looted India, plundered an untold fortune in rubies and other gems, and caused famines which starved countless millions to death under private warlords such as Lord Clive and other common ex-street hooligans, the modern image (real or imagined) of the colonial scene in Burma was dominated by the likes of writers such as Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell.

They described Burma (which is a perversion of one of the country’s many tribes, the “Bama”) as a place of almost limitless beauty, charm and riches.

Burma was administered as a province of India through the year 1937. Thus Kengtung, the home of Nuang Kan, would be the final town in the eastern-most reaches of what was then the British Empire – stretching from Pakistan to India through Bangladesh and into Burma today.

Burma became independent from Britain in 1948 just after World War II. The British Empire had subsumed the nation/colony/province between 1824 and 1886. In 1948, a bright and talented journalist and teacher named U Thant was promoted to the position of director of broadcasting by the government of Burma. Then in 1961, this same man, U Thant, became the United Nations Secretary General when U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold died in an airplane crash in the autumn of that year. U Thant would serve in that post until 1971. This bolt from the blue provided Burma with cover at the United Nations, much in the same way the People’s Republic of China provides international cover for Burma today.

Ne Win took over the government and ruled between 1962 and 1988, when he was deposed by the current ruling military junta. For most of the time between 1989 and November 2010, Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was either in prison or under house arrest while her National League of Democracy, the winner in a national, popular election, was kept out of power.

Ironically, in a twist of “truth is stranger than fiction,” Aung San, the father of Suu Kyi, created the Army of Burma during World War II with the help of the occupying Japanese military. Aung San was assassinated in 1947 at the age of 32. He had studied to be a lawyer before entering politics. Even today the British Army remembers Aung San as the man who fought alongside the Japanese Imperial forces against Great Britain and the Allies during the darkest hours of World War II. At this same time, the Karen hill tribes fought against Nazi-like, slave-labor barbarism of the Japanese, and assisted Allied POWs and downed pilots. Aung San’s British National Army arrived in Burma alongside the invading Japanese in 1941. The BNA had been receiving training in Japan. But after seeing how cruel the Japanese were to his countrymen, Aung San switched sides and helped the British and the Allies. Over 200,000 Japanse soldiers died in Burma during World War II.

The outsiders

Burma, a leper-like nation in the transnational sense on a par with North Korea, Iran, Cuba or even the defunct apartheid regime of South Africa, seems to embody the macro and the micro of the horrendous disease of leprosy. Amid this background the Sisters of Charity must operate.

To see more information about leprosy, click here.

They are the first, last, best and only defense for the lepers and their families.

Yet as the diminutive and seemingly indomitable 63-year-old Sister Stefania walks through the wide, unpaved streets of the leper colony of Saint Peter’s Parish, nestled in this remote hidden corner of Burma between Thailand and the People’s Republic of China, the sun breaks out through the clouds of the rainy season like the parting of the Red Sea. The nun’s smile is resplendent, perhaps even ebullient. Stefania’s personal brand of joy is a joy few will ever know – the joy of being a human angel carrying out a mission that defies the limits of both heaven and Earth. Global sanctions, geopolitics and resource wars are meaningless here.

The air is still until a lilting breeze sweeps across the colony as we walk past the simple bricks of the new church under construction. It is to be named after Saint Peter. When will it be finished?

“Who knows? But for now we have a temporary building where we can hold Mass and pray,” says the sister without pretense or worry in her voice. It is the voice of calm which has made a habit of knowing the unknowable. The voice of reason and sanity in a world of sickness run wild. It is the voice echoing the conscience, heart and soul of this leper colony – a colony in the truest sense of the word. A colony built inside an erstwhile colonial backwater of the British Empire. A riddle wrapped up inside an enigma hidden within a conundrum. Most sane people run away from lepers. The Sisters of Charity instead willingly choose to run towards them with an embrace.

Under construction, the church at the colony

Sister Stefania readily points to her faith, which believes Saint Peter was the rock upon which Jesus Christ would build His church, “And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

While you might think this leper colony would be a page out of hell, it’s not. There are gates however, and they are surrounded by what seems like a peaceful forest where birds fly and chirp and do all the things birds are likely to do. “Not a sparrow falls that God doesn’t know about it. How much more valuable are you, or these lepers?” Sister Stefania might say.

So it should come as no surprise to those who truly believe in the quantum power of a Supreme Being, that at Nuang Kan, scores of children run about, playing childish games as children are wont to do; happy, shouting, shrieking and even outright leaping at times as though in possession of some grand secret. The secret only a child can truly know. The secret of children who have not yet learned to watch the clock ticking away. There are 200 such children living here in what is sometimes called “The Happy City.”

“I know most of them by name,” says Sister Stefania.

She also knows that by some grace, they are healthy children for the most part. The most famous leprosy stories of the New Testament, Luke 17:11-19 and Mark 1:40-45, find reaffirmation at the colony on an almost daily basis. This is because of the love, faith and good works of the Sisters of Charity.

Stefania is one of seven “Top Nuns” who provide education, housing, food, jobs and health care services for the 400 lepers and their children living in the colony and at points beyond. The Sisters of Charity, who have taken a vow of chastity, obedience and poverty, are nevertheless rich in all of the things money cannot buy in the postmodern 21st century. Things like love, kindness, honor, courage and mercy. It is their sincere belief that God and Jesus Christ have called out to them from a place beyond the invisible to meet the challenges of this almost incomprehensible task. That task is to bring dignity and health to lepers suffering through a life of hardship that when properly contemplated would stupefy the human mind.

Sister Stefania

As the 100th anniversary of the Sisters of Charity approaches in Burma (in 2016 they will celebrate), the sisters have ample reason to reflect on their great commission and their anointing in helping those whom society would rather pretend simply do not exist.

In this wild, untamed place where few if any journalists have ever dared to tread, perhaps the time has come to ask exactly why these Sisters of Charity do what they do? What is their driving spiritual, mental, moral and emotional touchtone? What do they hope to gain from their work? What is their view of God and Jesus Christ? Have they ever encountered anything miraculous?

How is it that they have brought to life a seemingly immaculately clean colony free of litter, graffiti and methamphetamine labs? It is a community in the truest sense, a place without locks or alarms nor keys. It is a place where adults stricken with leprosy allow their children to roam freely without a care in the world. While they are poor, there can be no doubt that in some strange way they are rich in other things like peace of mind.

How is it that the Sisters of Charity have invented the world’s first time travel machine and turned back the clock of the Western world to the 1950s? While the British Army and British Empire have long ago faded, leaving behind a dilapidated Hill Station not far from the colony, the wooden crosses of the Christian faith remain standing in a region best known for the communism, mass murder and suffering brought to mankind by Mao, the Pathet Lao, the Vietcong and the Khmer Rouge. The name of this place may change from “British Empire” to “Burma” to “Myanmar” but the message of the Cross never changes one bit.

Top nun

One need not be criticized for asking about the chain of command, philosophy of leadership and support structure of such an organization. It is an enterprise which functions as a seamless machine of nursing, education, job training and spiritual discipleship. Not surprisingly, at the head of the Sisters of Charity stands 88-year-old Sister Elizabeth Cavagna, who grew up during the Nazi occupation of Italy during World War II.

It is she who actually volunteered to come to Burma in 1952. It is she who runs a school where 1,600 Thai and local hill tribe children receive an education just across the Burma border outside the city Chiang Rai, Thailand. It is she who faced down communist soldiers who surrounded her mission, church and school in Burma with a plethora of machine guns back in 1964. They were simply no match for her wiles, faith and decency. Nor were they any match for the strength of her heart for God and the vow she made to serve the least of brethren no matter what it might cost her – for the doing of such things “brings God glory and makes Him happy.”

“It was my mommy who first taught me about God and about Jesus,” says Sister Elizabeth, whose given name is Teresa.

She is at ease when talking about her life, which has been an amazing adventure, including contact with both the late Pope Jean-Paul II and Mother Teresa.

Speaking with a steady tone of Italian-accented English, and still displaying both her keen mind and cooking skills over a plate of spaghetti at her convent, Sister Elizabeth explained how an isolated group of nuns can out-smart and out-faith all comers, and defeat enemies both terrestrial and spiritual.

“It was long ago … the Nazi Army, the Wehrmacht, had invaded Italy. I was young then and of course I was very afraid at times. There were the aerial bombing raids and when they came my mother would grab me and hold me tight to her bosom. We couldn’t go outside and play. The Nazis came to our village and then eventually found our house. They took everything they could carry off … food, medicine and blankets. They even took away our mattresses. But as you know, people adapt when facing a cruel and evil enemy and so too did we partisans adapt,” explained Sister Elizabeth.

Two women walk near the leper colony

“What we did to throw off the Nazi army was to choke off their supplies from the local community. We learned to hide things. For example, we would hide food, medicine, wine, cheese, blankets and bedding in a certain room while posting on the door a warning for ‘Typhoid.’ When the German soldiers saw this they went running off.”

Sister Elizabeth then added, “Eventually the American soldiers liberated Italy and they tore down the statues of Mussolini … he was a very bad man. The Americans did a great thing for Italy. When they arrived it was a festive occasion and people threw confetti from the balconies. Today however, American culture through Hollywood and TV has brought a disaster to the whole world. The youth are particularly at-risk to this … and so we have to teach the children the right way which leads to God.”

Asked about her prayer for the peoples of Burma, Sister Elizabeth said, “That the people increase their faith. How many are Christians outside of the Karen? Perhaps 1 percent? I love Burma … it should be a very, very rich country. Look at all of the natural resources. Look at how it is located right next to both China and India … all of those people surrounding Burma. Burma is the road to both those giant nations. For me, I pray that the people of Burma will place their hope in God and in Jesus. The providence of God is always ready … On January 4th the Burmese government wanted everyone to celebrate the date the British Empire left. For us, every day we celebrate the arrival of God’s providence in our lives.”

Another nun, Sister Anita, who hails from India, spoke of the Sisters of Charity’s outreaches to the hill tribes of the region. Sister Anita is a real life nurse who takes medicines directly to the poor.

“Gastro issues, joint pain, wide spectrum antibiotics, inflammatory medicine … they are things the people need. They are poor. They have no Thai National ID Card. I speak of the Karen and Lahu and Ahka peoples. When the poor suffer and respond to our love and kindness, this fills me with joy. I feel like we can demonstrate the passionate love of Jesus for humankind. We can spread His Kingdom. This is what matters most.”

Asked about how someone from India, a predominantly Hindu nation, becomes a Catholic nun, Sister Anita explained that, “Around 1860, Italian nuns traveled to India and set up a mission in Calcutta. Many of these nuns died from the heat and from the food … their spirit was strong but they were overcome by the climate … such things we willingly face.”

While Sister Anita speaks with her own purposeful prose of passion, behind her seat at the kitchen table of the convent outside of Chiang Rai, one can see a photograph on a bulletin board. It features Sister Vincenza, one of the two founders of the Sisters of Charity (along with Bartolomea) at the Lovere back in 1832.

Just below Vincenza’s photo is the credo of the Sisters of Charity, which reads, “Radically follow Jesus the Redeemer … Chaste, poor, obedient in the common life in order to serve our neighbor with the vigor and demands of the vow of charity.” (Acts 14:3.)

The beauty of those words is personified through Sister Jesilyn, also of India, a young nun who is just flat-out beautiful. Sister Jesilyn smiles her unparalleled smile – a supermodel’s smile – while saying, “We serve Jesus. We serve children. We are here to serve.”

Her life is not a life spent in a search for meaning and purpose. Rather Sister Jesilyn’s existence, like the other nuns she is bonded to, is a life whose searching ended the very day she realized she would never tire of seeking out those she might give meaning and purpose to.

Between Heaven and Earth

While Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military philosopher long ago wrote that “all warfare is based on deception,” the Sisters of Charity rely on their sword of truth – God’s Holy Word, and the light that tells them to walk along the narrow path of honor, service and love. The disastrous world of BP and the Gulf of Mexico, depleted uranium munitions, Abu Ghraib, Fukushima, Katrina, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, the neverending and unwinnable wars, financial disaster and the collapse of Western civilization, all seem meaningless and even trite when compared with the physical, mental, moral, spiritual and financial struggle the Sisters of Charity face at the leper colony on a daily basis.

Leper woman. The government allows her 2 cents per month

They are the tip of the spear of the Christian ideal. They have taken up the ministry of Jesus Christ in an attempt to make the miraculous ordinary. They are truly the light of the world. If they don’t shine, it can be safely assumed it will indeed be dark.

“The Myanmar government only provides 15 Kyat (pronounced “Chet”) per month for each of the handicapped lepers,” explains Sister Stefania, while flashing her electrifying white smile. When she says “15 Kyat” she is saying “U.S. 2 cents.”

Asked about the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars the Burmese junta could marshal from jade, rubies, rice, teak wood, pink marble, oil (until World War II Burma was Asia’s third leading exporter of oil) natural gas, uranium (several major mines run by the Russians) not to mention the illegal opium trade of the fabled Golden Triangle, the Sister simply waves her hand like a magic wand and says, “Oh … I wouldn’t know about any of that.”

Her brand of Christianity does not involve envy or judging or punishing others. “It is what it is.” There is the economy of man, the flesh, the world and the pride of life. Instead of lamenting the lack of social justice in a world where giving must come from the heart rather than judicial fiat, the Sisters of Charity are busy building a new world under the worst conditions possible.

In Burma, Caesar has already been rendered to in a way the Praetorian Guard could only dream about. So instead of rubies and jade and gold bullion, ink and paper and electrons shuttling about on the computers of the Federal Reserve Bank and IMF, the sisters are busy issuing a currency all their own.

It is the currency of sweat, labor, pride, morality, security, safety, of teaching children the right way concerning prioritizing actions, adaptability, perseverance, chasteness avoiding all impurity, honesty, truth, courage and kindness. At the leper colony, all of these traits are fully redeemable for the shunned lepers driven to the fringes of society.

Sister Stefania points to the statue of Father Caesar Colombo, the founder of the leper colony. The Italian missionary founded this place long ago. It was called “The Happy City.” Father Colombo was a Caesar who rendered unto others, not a Caesar to be rendered unto. He was a surgeon, bricklayer and priest. At the height of terrorist attacks and communist infiltration of the Shan Region bordering China and Thailand, Father Colombo would organize 100 leper men into an asymmetrical counter-insurgency militia in order to protect the colony from attacks.

Aided by eight soldiers sent by the Burmese government, the rag tag militia did its best to defend the lepers. Some of those leper soldiers died in combat, probably wondering to their last breath how a luckless people so ravaged internally by a disease they could not even begin to understand could actually be attacked by the outside world.

“Father Colombo took in lepers who walked to the colony from all over Myanmar, and from China too,” says Sister Stefania. Those tribes marched through the jungle, subsisting on whatever they could pick or catch. He built a hospital brick by brick (the bricks were fashioned with mud from a local lake) complete with a surgical bay. He cared for many lepers from various tribes and other religions as well.

Asked how she herself came to be a pillar at Nuang Kan, Sister Stefania explained, “I was orphaned and grew up in a convent since the age of 2 … I lived in a long neck area of Karen (who wear rings of metal around the neck and wrists to avoid, they believe, the mortal bites of a tiger.) At the age of 11 I was sent to Mandalay to study. During World War II the Japanese drove out the British and occupied this nation. The Japanese burned churches and missions and schools and convents. The year 1943 particularly stands out in my mind. …

“I remember that the Karen were fighting back then (The British considered them good soldiers.) This is the background of my youth – the convent and World War II. I know I am 63 but don’t know my exact date of birth. But I do know that the best education available was in the church.”

The lepers emerge

The sight of the lepers themselves is something out of a Cecil B. DeMille film like “Ben Hur.” They are segregated into male and female quarters. The women in particular actually seem happy. They bow and greet their visiting journalist with folded hands. I turn away from them, about to cry, but I soon turn back again as though pulled by an irresistible force. I see missing fingers and black feet. And then their reality begins to sink in. They are lepers inside a leper country. They are the ultimate outsiders, unwelcomed inside a nation unwelcomed by the so-called civilized world.

They smile at me as if alien beings who know that this world, the flesh and the pride of life is all passing away – molecules and quarks of radioactive decay. The lepers to a man and to a woman could be described as content. The handicapped amongst them have been abandoned by their families. Those with land holdings can and do hire others to subcontract a farming detail in order to assist their financial situation. The lepers who I meet have no land and have been abandoned by the children they gave life to. Can there be any crueler fate in this world?

There are others the world would call victims that the nuns of Nuang Kan also meticulously serve, including those residing in town at St. Mary’s Convent at Kengtung. Some are stricken with polio and blindness, while others are simply crippled. The Mother Superior at St. Mary’s, Sister Rose Mary, guides me through the convent and the surrounding area. She is a stately woman yet humble. She reminds me of what St. Peter must be like in guarding the Gates of Heaven – strong, filled with wisdom, kind and singular of mind while beholden solely to God.

“Why do you do what you do?” she is asked, again and again. (Weeks later the sister would e-mail me, saying that my question is almost haunting her mind.) “Based on my personal experience … in time of helplessness and in time of difficulties I feel strongly that God loves me as I am. So, too, He loves each person as they are. So it makes me strong to serve those who are under our care and to build up [the sense of] community. I think and think of your question now and then. Your question is so helpful for my spiritual strength and encouragement [during] my spiritual journey.”

Pressed for a definitive answer, Sister Rose Mary says only this; “What we do here … the dispensary … handing out the medicines to the poor in this city of Kengtung … caring for the sick … did you see that boy in bed with polio? He is smiling even though he can never get out of the bed – ever … did you see the blind woman doing gardening on the side of the road? Did you see that other pretty blind girl grinding up all the peanuts? We give them hope you might say. We trained them to do a job you might say … what I would say is that what we do here, what happens here … none of it could possibly happen without the power of Jesus Christ.”

The Sisters of Charity are careful not to move even a micro-millimeter out of their prized zone of humility. Their ultimate prize is that they have no false pride and hand out zero prizes to their select group of nuns. They realize they are the Super Bowl, the World Series and the World Cup of the purest form of Christianity left on Earth. They are holy and godly and God is with them. And so there can be no doubt that in such a place as this, where godly women who have spent a combined centuries of time on this planet, would have seen their share of outright miracles.

Asking them to detail even one miracle is no easy task. They are not used to such questions, or any questions for that matter. As far as anyone knows, no print journalist has ever been here before. There is no Internet or Google record of any published stories on the leper colony from the major mass media.

But these kinds of signs – a peaceful community living in harmony and safety, the love of Christ, service to others, the restoration of dignity – are not the signs many Christians want to see these days, for they are hooked on the appeals of the flesh. The Middle East, so-called “End Times” events, the Antichrist and superstorms are considered the “real signs.” Two thousand years ago the miracles of Jesus Christ, which included healing lepers and children with blood disorders, were not enough for the religious leaders of that era. According the Sisters of Charity, Jesus told them, “Wicked and perverse generation, you seek a sign but none shall be given unto you.” (Matt 16:4.)

Fully comprehending the meaning of true spiritual power, the sisters gather to reveal one of their special stories of God’s miracles they’ve witnessed. This is not some fantastical event you might see on an HBO series such as “Carnivale.” This is hard core, this is an NFL training camp and the landing of the Marines at Iwo Jima in the spiritual sense. This is the Rosetta Stone of what it means to dwell inside the tent of God. These are the kind of nuns who face down Nazis and juntas with the aplomb of a fat king tossing aside a drumstick at a Thanksgiving feast.

If nuns had baseball cards, this would be the All Star Team. The Sisters of Charity are Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays and Tom Seaver and Ted Williams dressed in blue tunics with white habits. Their Field of Dreams are Nuang Kan and its sister colony at Loi Mooi not far away. They are catechists who are good with languages. They are nurses, missionaries and helpers. They are also witnesses to the odd miracle. They won’t care if you don’t believe in miracles or even believe in God. They’ll simply say, “Don’t worry my child, God believes in you .”

Feeling God’s power

And so after a quick huddle, the nuns of Nuang Kan agree to a sit-down meeting. This is their debut in the world of the media and of status and personal consideration. No one has ever bothered to ask people like them why they do what they do. No one has come to ask them the “who, what, why, where and when.” They have been called out of this world, so it shocks them to learn they are spiritual superstars. They simply cannot fathom why anyone, any journalist, would travel all this way, and spend all that money, and brave the food and stomach problems and the Burmese military junta and the constant rain and the mud just to bask in their presence.

Somehow again, the nuns realize that in a small way, this is their moment in the sun. This is their chance to offer lexis to their secret cognitive and spiritual motivations. They are children at the carnival. They are spiritual superstars. They are Cindy Crawford on the cover of Vogue. They are Michael Jordan hitting the game-winning shot at the buzzer for the NBA championship. They are Megan Fox and Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman and Lilly Aldridge and Tom Brady.

They are a weekend in Rio and a Dove chocolate bar and a home run at Yankee Stadium. They are cotton candy and a well-lit Christmas tree. Suddenly for a brief moment, they are no longer toiling for decades in complete anonymity. This shocks the Sisters of Charity, almost to the core. The fact that they are in possession of something money cannot capture or even touch.

Children whose parents are afflicted

In 2011, the average person will receive more messages in one year than a person in 1900 would have received in their entire lifetime. These Sisters are caught between both of those worlds in an information technology sense, for they have a once-in-a-lifetime message.

The world, that world “out there,” desperately wants and needs a sign of God’s power on this green Earth. That same world that wonders how the Sisters of Charity make due with 2 cents per month for each handicapped leper in their colony? The world which longs to realize Revelation 21:4; “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

While the nuns debate what they wish to say, on my I-Pod the music group Train sings, “I need a sign to let me know You’re here. All of these lines crossing over the atmosphere. My TV set just keeps it all from being clear. I need a reason to build up some kind of hope inside of me. I’m calling all angels …”

Sister Stefania is the first to speak, as if recounting an alien abduction in which she had been given the chance to pilot the UFO. Stefania is a stranger to this world – a world of violence and lust and envy and slander and covetousness. She is the real alien, the real E.T.

“When do I feel God’s power most strongly? When I am helping and not forgetting many thousands of the poor or orphans … when I return to the poor and to the orphans what I myself received as an orphan since I was 2 years old … that’s when I feel God close to me. The church is my house … it is my home … I am happy when I can help at a clinic … I am happy when I see the children at this colony are happy … that is my joy …”

Sister Assumpta, a bright-faced woman with loving eyes, then wishes to explain a first-hand, real-life miracle she herself witnessed. She speaks happily, positively, telling an unbelieving world what holiness and godliness and service to others can bring about.

“There was one man, a leper who sought a cure … would he get better? He nearly gave up. The parents of this patient came to us seeking to try a new drug … What they got was a small amount of penicillin … They paid 5000 Chet ($ 7.14) but it did not work … We tried and tried to help this particular leper. So I prayed to St. Anthony … I decided to use Holy Water … I put the Holy Water on my hand while administering the medicine … St. Anthony imparted the knowledge that we should not to use so much medicine … I can tell you that after one year the leper got better … Feeling God’s power in helping the lepers … that is the most satisfying part of my work.”

Sister Teresina is a Chinese nun from the Yunan Region. She once lived around the border of Burma on the Chinese side. For her, just the idea of becoming a nun in the first place was something of a miracle in its own right.

“I tended buffalos and cows and walked along the slope of the mountains in extreme southern China,” she said. “At the age of 16 I was engaged by my parents in some kind of an arranged marriage … There were Kumingtang rebels all around our area … I thought of my future, carrying a baby up and down those slopes … but on the day I was supposed to get married I ran away to Myanmar …”

“I was the ‘Runaway Bride …’ I met a monk and explained to him my situation … my parents wanted to take me back to the man I was supposed to marry … they had paid a dowry already … but I was able to get out of this arranged marriage. Instead I have found my calling here, in this place …”

Sister Bambina has been a nun for 25 years.

“In my family there are three nuns and one priest. If I were to marry I would have only two or three children, but here I can care for many, many children,” she says while taking me on yet another tour of St. Mary’s facilities for lepers, the blind and others whom they care for.

“Why did I become a nun and choose this life? Honestly and first of all I can tell you that I want my salvation. I want to go to heaven. Here at St. Mary’s we have 11 nuns caring for about 150 people. This is not easy of course. So the first thing in the morning we do is our meditation upon God, and that is when feel most strong in Lord.”

Union of repression

The term “Union of Myanmar” means that the country is attempting to unite all of her disparate tribes, including the Karen, who are broken into Buddhist and Christian factions. The new flag of the Burmese junta symbolizes unity and agriculture. “Burma,” again, is a perversion of the world “Bama” which is merely one of Burma’s many tribes. The truth is that the junta has fought the various hill tribes on occasion and now seeks to turn them into a unified border force that illegal aliens would not want to encounter on the roads to Arizona, California or Texas.

Children whose parents are afflicted with leprosy

Burma is a place of repression, brutality, haves and have-nots. The army has been known to run wild with systematic rape and clear land mine fields with civilians. Never mind civilian slave labor on the various infrastructure projects that will enrich the elites in Rangoon and the brand new capital of Naypyidaw. As previously mentioned, this should be one of the richest countries in the world. Instead it is a county whose special forces are trained by the North Korean Army. It is a country where Typhoon Nargis wound up as the largest natural disaster in the nation’s history, with enough dead bodies to fill the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day and then some. (138,000-plus) It is a country with an internal passport system for foreigners and locals alike. A country where only the well-connected can get a passport to travel overseas, perhaps for religious purposes to see the Dalai Lama or to carryout business on behalf of the armed forces.

According to my guide, Sai Leng, a pleasant, intelligent fellow with a nice face, the Burmese army commandeers 30 percent of everyone’s rice crop, and pays them a low price for it. Sai Leng should know as he is a farmer when not guiding the random tourist through these parts. Some of this rice is shipped across the border to a hungry China. The main border outpost with China in this province is called Mong La. This is the Mecca of the illegal animal trade, including elephant ivory, bears, animal body parts used in Oriental aphrodisiacs and more. Ask the Burmese army why the road between Kengtung and Mong La is closed and you will hear things like: “We’re not sure … there’s a lot of debate about that … there’s trouble up there.” The truth is that visitors are not allowed to see what’s going on with the exotic animal trade. This is an open secret.

As a writer, I have personally interviewed some of the last people to visit Mong La (Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Global Initiative” protégé Lek Chailert’s husband Darrick Thomson and filmmaker Tim Gorski of “How I Became An Elephant” fame.)

Gorski said he and Thomson were the “first white people in years to visit Mong La … we stayed on Christmas some time ago and over 100 Burmese children, orphans, came to our hotel to sing us Christmas carols. When we went to the animal market and took photos of the rare bears in cages, the cell phones of the intelligence officials came out and we were whisked out of town.”

“They control everything and people are afraid to speak,” adds a man named Joe Wynn, a retired teacher and lay Catholic volunteer who lives literally in the shadows of the church nearest to St. Mary’s Convent in Kengtung. Sai Leng introduces me to his former teacher. He is a pleasant man who makes a perfect cup of tea. The walls of his quaint, sturdy home are decorated with the Immaculate Heart of Jesus and pretty, but conservatively dressed Burmese women.

Sai Leng and Wynn hold court, mixing hot tea with tepid tones, knowing full well that our first guide, Sai Moon, whom we met at the Mai Sai border in Thailand, had his teeth knocked out by Burmese soldiers. I refer to him as “Simon from American Idol who is now ‘Idle’ and has been ‘voted off the Island of Misfit Toys.’” Neither Sai Moon or Sai Leng ever knew I was a journalist, or that I had been blacklisted from Burma by their embassy in Bangkok.

Next we discuss our “Myanmar Junta Spy.” All foreign tourists traveling to Burma will have a government “spy” come to their hotel to file a report on them each and every night. All along the roads where foreigners are permitted to travel, you must show up to 25 copies of your internal, temporary Myanmar passport and other documents at a never-ending series of military checkpoints. The soldiers are innocuous, kind and almost sweet. Some have their wives and babies dressed in Hello Kitty outfits standing nearby. That much is surreal. Even more surreal is the sight of Burmese children sporting masks, outfits and T-shirts from the Neve Campbell Hollywood film series “Scream.” As if real life wasn’t enough of a scream already.

“There are 5,000 soldiers from the junta garrisoned in this province,” says Sai Leng. “They are hated … the people do not like them so they are hidden away, like the lepers. The Burmese junta will only call them out if the people begin to rise up. The soldiers know this and we know this.”

People tend to vanish in Burma … into prison or worse places like the ground, where they put you in a box and don’t let you out – not even on the weekends. Take the husband of the woman who owned the guesthouse where we stayed in Kengtung. His name was Harry. Harry’s Trekking House and Adventure Tours is well known among the Lonely Planet guide book circuit.

“Harry was put in prison by the military for complaining that the junta did not do anything for the homeless people of this region,” says Sai Leng.

Shutting up is always seen as the best option. You can get in a lot of trouble in Burma, even for your hair style or musical tastes.

Sai Leng explains that the beautiful lake in the center of Kengtung once featured a long pier which led out, believe it or not, to a discotheque right on the water. “It was taken down though … too much noise. People were arrested as recently as 1998-1999 for things like … well, men with long hair and earrings. The junta is concerned for Burma’s youth and the MTV-style music with its impact on the culture.”

Arresting Burmese men for having long hair should come as no surprise, for as King Solomon wrote, in Burma, “A woman’s long hair is her glory.”

“Long hair on a woman shows her status and place in society,” says Sai Leng while Wynn nods in the affirmative. This is one of the problems the Burmese junta has with Aung San Suu Kyi of Nobel Prize and democracy fame.

“She does not, at least in their eyes, know her place as a Burmese woman should recognize it,” says Wynn. Of course this is all a not-so-clever ruse. For in Burma what we see are industrious women, including nuns, doing the tough jobs that men cannot or will not do.

Yet talk about the hair of women persists. I learn from Sai Leng and Wynn that long hair on a Burmese woman is considered, “lah-day” or “pretty.” “Long hair put into two braids” in Thai is “pom bia,” and “Sah bin cheetah” in Burmese. “San Tong” means, in Burmese, that a woman’s hair has already been tied up. But there is really only one woman people in Burma want to talk about – Aung San Suu Kyi.

Speaking of Aung San Suu Kyi at her Chiang Mai office for the Elephant Nature Foundation, Time Magazine’s Woman of the Year and Hero of Asia Lek Chailert of Save the Elephant fame, says, “I support her. I don’t even like to use the word ‘Myanmar.’ The people of Burma have been through so much. It is a country with so many problems as most people are aware.

“They also have no problem with illegally smuggling elephants across the border into Thailand. Everyone knows about the abuse of elephants in Burma … the penises of male elephants are cut off for example for use in China. Then there is the ivory. There is no ecological movement in Burma now but there are a few parks.”

The Burmese language lessons continue. “Tah kah knee” is the face cream Burmese women wear as sunscreen. It has a greenish tint. I drink even more tea. When it is offered I say “Chay zoo tim bah day” or “Thank You.” I eat “Bo sic ho,” which is chick peas and rice paste deep fried into something that might make the menu someday at KFC. I even learn to count … “1″ is “Teet,” “2″ is “Nit,” “3″ is “Dawng,” “4″ is “Lee,” “5″ is “Nah” and “6″ is “Chow.” We stop at six because there are only six people in the room.

The conversation drifts back to the nuns at the Leper Colony. Wynn says, “In the Burmese language we say ‘Ahnhoo’ for ‘skin’ and ‘Yorka’ for ‘disease.’ We speak of lepers in a polite way.” He’s been a part of this local Catholic community for 35 years but honestly does not know the name of the church just outside his door, nor the order of the nuns who run Nuang Kan. Sai Leng jokingly calls him “forgetful.” For the record, it is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Wynn pours me yet another cup of tea. We speak about the Karen, who have been split into Buddhist and Christian factions. The Karen National Union or KNU have made overtures to the junta about a peace deal after decades of fighting.

Time and time again the conversation turns back to North Korea’s relationship with Burma.

Wynn says North Korea is busy training Burmese troops at various secret locations around the country. He says North Korea has sent elite technicians to work with the Burmese government on issues involving uranium, missiles and nuclear research. We talk about how hard (not very) it would be for the junta to put together a series of atomic bombs with the help of the North Koreans. They certainly have the uranium in abundance.

North Koreans are smart and have detonated a small-yield EMP type weapon. They are the junta’s new best friend since China told the United States North Korea is “no longer a reliable partner.” This will allow Burma to play off China, India and the U.S. against one another.

Will China be allowed to construct a naval air station in the Burmese archipelago? Or will America sweeten relations with Burma to stop that from happening? Can Burma help rein in North Korea for America’s liking? What about the uranium mines? Will China use Burma as another stop on its “String of Pearls” base building adventure, recreating the naval empire of Zheng He, which spread from China to Sri Lanka and all the way to Somalia before Columbus and Magellan?

And what about Burma’s oil (estimated reserves of 3.2 billion barrels) and natural gas holdings, her pipelines and proximity to the billions of consumers in China and India? It appears the junta is still holding all the cards, in addition to jade, rice, teak wood, marble, opium, gems, rubies and the three keys of real estate – location, location, location.

Super duper karma

Back at Nuchanat Anusorn School, in Wiang Pa Pao, a tiny city just south of Chiang Rai, Thailand, Sister Elizabeth is busy reviewing the 1,600 students flowing past her in perfect formation on their way to class. They fold their hands in the traditional “wai” and bow, almost in awe of this godly woman. Once she stood by helplessly as Nazi troops marched through the streets of her hometown in Italy. Now she is the one being feted by the plethora of marchers. If you believe in karma, this is super duper karma. The kind of upside down karma that saw Aung San conjure up the Burmese army, only to see it imprison his own daughter Suu Kyi, the ex-con.

Burmese girl wears traditional sunscreen

On these school grounds, there are no signs touting a mythical, insane and non-existent “Global Elite,” no Baylor Bear cubs, no Texas A&M football stadium or nuclear reactor. There’s just a Golden Horde of 150 students who only moments before had been sitting silently in church at mass with communion wafers sticking to the roof of their mouths. Children in uniforms, girls with ribbons and ironed blouses. There is order. There is meaning. There is reason. Perhaps with good luck there will even be food.

“Some of our students will be sent to the Don Bosco School in Chiang Mai to study trades like computers or becoming an electrician. The Akha are very clever,” continues St. Elizabeth. “We want them to speak the language, to learn skills and to be a part of the culture,” she explains.

A pretty blonde woman, an art curator from San Francisco named Jennifer Lynne, is standing at the sister’s side. Elizabeth holds onto Jennifer for balance. I smile as I watch the both of them. I think back to a group of nuns I met long ago in Zululand in South Africa. Those nuns prayed even before drinking a glass of water.

“Feeding rice to the students who live here on a permanent basis costs 7,000 Euros per year (most recently the Euro was trading at $1.43.) So we are feeding 150 kids (only 150 of the 1600 live at the facility full-time) … the money came from my cousin back in Italy. Isn’t God amazing? We can feed the children and offer them moral instruction. On Sundays we can also teach groups of adults and children.”

Sister Elizabeth stops the procession of students and pulls out a pair of twin girls who are adorable and shy. They look to be about 8 years old.

“Their father is in jail for drug trafficking … can you imagine?” Then she pulls another girl out from the front of the line, equally as adorable. “Her mother just pulled up here one day and dropped her off … she didn’t want her anymore … so we took her in.”

And so, this is the reality show at the tactical and spiritual headquarters of the Sisters of Charity. Strings of Pearls, uranium mines, special forces, ethnic and tribal border militias, sanctions, natural gas pipelines, atomic bombs, juntas, jade and Japanese World War II invaders are all just background noise to a wooden cross chained around the necks of the nuns. The same cross which changed the world forever.

Sister Anita hands me an envelope. Inside is the SWIFT banking code for the Sisters of Charity. It is the bank code I have long been searching for, even before I crossed into Burma at the very beginning of this long journey.

Written on a paper that has also been stuffed inside the envelope is the following verse of Scripture:

“How long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! Even cry out unto the day of violence, and thou wilt not save? Why dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? For spoiling and violence are before me: and there are those that raise up strife and contention. Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceeds. Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days which ye will not believe, though it be told you.” – Habakkuk Chapter 1: 2-5

For those wishing to make a donation:

Sisters of Charity
Nuang Kan Leper Colony
The Siam Commercial Bank Public Company Limited
Wiang Pa Pao Branch
337 MU 6 TB. Wiang AP, Wiangpapao
Chiang Rai, Thailand
57170
Account Number: 545-2-14480-8
Mission Catholic Wiang Pa Pao
SWIFT Code: SICO THBK