JACK'S BLOG
|
|
CubaEVERY EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENT favored free trade with Cuba but steadfastly opposed Cuban independence. It was an attitude that would persist into the twentieth century and forever color Cuban-American relations. The reasons for American opposition would shift over the centuries, especially following the Spanish-American War, but the result would always be the same. Is it any wonder that the Cubans ultimately turned to the Soviet Union when they finally achieved true independence in the midst of the Cold War? The state of relations between the island nation and the Jefferson Administration is illustrative. Cuba seemed to have lost their taste for revolution prior to the American Revolution. In 1692 Don Francisco Manuel de Roca and 300 armed men captured the Spanish governor and established a short-lived island government. However, Spain quickly retaliated and tightened their control of the island. Other revolts in Santiago and Camaguey, Cuba, met similar fates. Spain finally clamped down after the Tobacco Revolts of 1721 and 1723. The Spanish crown decided that they couldn't trust the creoles – Spaniards born on the island. They vested all commercial interests in peninsulares – Spaniards born in Spain. Governors and key administrators were all peninsulares as well – and the creoles suffered. The smaller towns and cities were isolated, and Spanish merchants' ships visited at six-month intervals. Relief only came during the brief ten-month occupation of the island by the British in 1762, and during the American Revolution when Yankee traders descended on the island. One must wonder why revolution did not break out in Cuba when the islanders knew perfectly well that prosperity would not return so long as it was a Spanish colony. Several circumstances conspired to quash revolution in Cuba. Firstly, as other Spanish colonies won independence, loyalists emigrated to Cuba thereby greatly expanding that part of the population that favored Spanish rule. Secondly, the creole element in Cuba produced no Simon Bolivar or San Martin, revolutionary leaders who led other colonies to freedom. Finally, the lower clergy, an important element in revolutionary movements elsewhere, remained loyal to Spain. Their fortunes relied on the largess of their elder siblings who comprised the aristocracy in Spain. When Thomas Jefferson took office, his attention as chief diplomat was focused on the Barbary Pirates who were harrying American merchants in the Mediterranean. However, Jefferson still found time to send a message to the creoles in Cuba: There would be no support for any revolutionary movement on the island. He and his Secretary of State, Albert Gallatin, were concerned that any transfer of power from Spain in Cuba would open the door to either French or English annexation of the island, and the United States would not tolerate either of them occupying such a strategic foothold on America's “front porch.” Thus, Jefferson supported Spain's claim to the island as far preferable to having a stronger European power to contend with. Although these events played themselves out long before Castro's revolution in Cuba, the milieu of my novel, Rebels on the Mountain, they created the social, cultural, and economic environment in which the hero of my story, Nick Andrews, finds himself. I gave Nick a background in history so that he could help readers understand the circumstances of Castro's rise to power.
1 Comment
9/18/2012 2 Comments How could I write a novel about Cuba without mentioning the influence of racial prejudice?CubaTHE FREE TRADE that Yankee merchants enjoyed with Cuba during the American Revolution had been cut off abruptly when the United States won its independence. They petitioned their new government to plead their case with Spain. The Yankees saw no reason why they couldn't continue making vast fortunes in trade with the island, especially since the Cubans themselves were equally anxious for the Yankee trading ships to continue calling at their ports. Unfortunately for both the Yankees and the Cubans, Spain had opened the island's ports to the revolutionaries only to tweak the noses of their traditional enemies, the British. Once the revolution ended, the Americans appeared as nothing more than wayward Englishmen who would probably return to the British Empire once they discovered how dangerous the world could be without a well-endowed protector. Indeed, there were many among the Americans who had argued emphatically that the revolution was nothing more than a fight for Americans to gain representation in Parliament. Others sought to annex America to the French monarchy, again as a source of protection in a dangerous world. Only a few actually envisioned America becoming an independent nation. Fortunately for us, their opinion held sway. The suddenness of the closing of Cuba's ports caught many unaware. Oliver Pollack, America's commercial agent to Cuba discovered that his merchandise had been confiscated by the Spanish when two of his ships from New Orleans arrived at Havana, and he was accused of smuggling. If the capricious and moribund colonial rule of the island by Spain was the only thing getting in the way, an independent Cuba seemed to be the only answer. Unfortunately for the Yankee traders, their pleas to the new government of the United States to support revolution in Cuba fell on deaf ears. Presidents Washington and Adams surveyed the prospect of revolution in the Caribbean, and recoiled in horror when they considered that it would be fought primarily by slaves. There certainly weren't sufficient numbers of creoles – Spaniards born on the islands – to overcome the peninsulares – Spaniards born on the peninsula of Spain and loyal to its crown – and the might of the Spanish army. Such a revolution was fought in Haiti with slaves overthrowing the government of their French masters. The American presidents feared the social, economic, and political implications of the American slave South. Thus, they believed it in the best interests of the United States to discourage any other independence movement in Cuba. Unfortunately, race discrimination would continue to influence American foreign policy, especially as regards to Cuba, well into the Twentieth Century. I had to allow for this influence in my novel, Rebels on the Mountain. It reveals itself in several modes: in the relationship between the principle characters, Nick Andrews – a Caucasian American – and Lucia Comas – a Cuban mulata – as well as in the attitudes of American diplomats and businessmen who appear in the novel.
9/17/2012 2 Comments Not even a mountain of sugar could sweeten the bitterness of tyrannical rule in CubaCubaAS THE SPANISH came to dominate the interior of the Cuban island in the late sixteenth century, they shipped in livestock to provide protein to their armies of conquistadores and the new colonies in Mexico as well as Central and South America. They enslaved the native islanders to work their ranches, but these people quickly began to die off. They had never been exposed to herds of domesticated animals, and began contracting virulent diseases for which they had no immunity. The Spanish imported black African slaves to replace the Carib and Taino natives. They not only had the requisite immunities to survive the diseases spread from domesticated animals, but also, many had experience herding cattle. Cuba's cattle ranches grew and prospered. The meat went to the colonies. The hides went to Spain to be manufactured into boots, saddles, and every other conceivable product. Cuba was committed to a single product economy, a problem that would plague them even to this day. However, unrest grew, especially in those places where the Africans began to outnumber all other people in the islands. Slaves in Haiti mounted a successful revolution and achieved political independence from the French in 1804. The slaves in Cuba might have followed their lead except that Spain was loosing its colonies on the mainland, and was able to exert more control on the island. Another problem arose for the Spanish as their former colonies in Latin America won their independence. The market for the products of their cattle industry in Cuba began to diminish, and the island also was no longer as important as a link in Spain's lines of communication and logistics with their Latin American colonies. Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane cuttings to the Caribbean during one of his later voyages. They thrived in the lush soil and copious rainfall on Cuba. The demand for sugar was growing in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. Thus, Cuba's commitment to sugar was as natural as falling off a log. It would remain their dominant cash crop into modern times. Like cotton in the American south, growing and harvesting sugar cane is labor intensive, and Spain imported even more African slaves to the island to satisfy the demand. Unlike America, the slaves had nowhere to escape to. The nearest land was America, and slavery was dominant in that part of the new nation. Their only recourse to attain freedom was revolution. However, when Hidalgo mounted his successful revolution in Mexico in 1810, the Spanish retreated to Cuba and their rule became even more despotic. Ironically, as their empire crumbled on the mainland, the Spanish began referring to Cuba as their “ever faithful isle.” Yes, it remained faithful, but only under an iron-fisted rule. Iron-fisted tyrannies continued well after the Spanish ceded their hold on the island at the turn of the last century. Experiments in democratic rule repeatedly failed. The people were not prepared to rule themselves, and strong men rose as they always rise to fill a vacuum in politics. Even those with seemingly good intentions, such as Fidel Castro, are drawn into the web of despotism when people cede absolute power to them. It is in this climate that Nick Andrews, the hero of my novel, Rebels on the Mountain, finds himself. And, inasmuch as every tyrant rests uneasy, those in command in Cuba are suspicious of a capable soldier such as Nick, who is a U.S. Army Ranger.
9/16/2012 6 Comments Do you know how well your website/weblog is doing? Who's visiting it? How often?GOOGLE ANALYTICS PROVIDES a different point of view of your website/weblog traffic to help you create a better experience for your visitors and, thus, obtain a better return on your investment of time and money. It is not a mere replica of the same information that you get from your webserver logs. Those record activity at the computer that hosts your website/weblog. Google Analytics records activity as it occurs at the client workstations used by the people who visit your website/weblog. Did you catch that difference? It's important. Server logs record activity on your website at the computer that hosts your website. Every request for one of your webpages, received at the hosting computer, is recorded. Google Analytics collects information sent by a computer workstation when it receives one of your webpages and renders it on the screen in the user's web browser.
There's another important difference. Web servers log every request as they are received. Google Analytics records only a sample of the information sent by client computers when they receive your webpages. I know. This one confused me at first, too. I wondered why the total number of visits reported by Google Analytics was only about ten percent of those reported on my server logs. I began to suspect that my hosting service was reporting inflated numbers. They weren't. I suppose that the information that I've provided thus far begs a question: Do you need both? Well, yes. The server logs provide the raw data that you need to examine your website/weblog traffic in detail. Google Analytics provide you with information that the server couldn't possibly know. For example, how long did your webpage remain displayed on your visitor's screen. In other words, did they read it thoroughly or simply glance at it and move on to someone else's webpage. The server couldn't possibly provide this information. Once a webpage is returned in response to a user's request, the server loses track of it. Only the client computer can tell you and, since Google Analytics gets its information from the client computer, it provides this information. There's more than one level of service with Google Analytics: The kind you pay for and the kind that's free. I like free. All you have to do is register so that they can assign a unique identification code for your website/weblog. Remember, thousands, possibly millions, of web clients will be sending data to the Google Analytics computers almost simultaneously every day. They need a method of sorting the data for your webpages from all of the rest. You may need some help setting up Google Analytics. When you register you will be provided with a bit of computer code that must be embedded into every webpage on your site. This is the code that sends information to the Google Analytics computers. Fortunately for me, I have many years of experience writing code for websites, and architecting computer network systems and applications. Even more fortunately, my site is built using a simple drop-and-drag editor. It includes an Index page that is appended to the head of every webpage in my website/weblog. All I had to do was copy and paste the Google Analytics code into that page and I was done. I couldn't even begin to guess how your website is structured. (And, no, don't contact me for help. I retired from that business a couple of years ago and have conveniently forgotten everything I know.) However, you may have a child in the house who could help you. Next week we'll talk about the data and reports that Google Analytics provides as well as the informational services available to help you understand them. Election 2012WHAT ARE THE DUTIES of the President of the United States? When you vote in November, you will be choosing the person best qualified to perform the duties of that office. How can anyone choose well if they don't know what those duties are? Simply put, the President is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States and its chief diplomat as well as the Commander in Chief of its armed forces. Although that's just three basic duties, each entails tens of thousands of detailed tasks that require staffs of tens of thousands organized into departments and bureaus, and the President is responsible for supervising them all. Although there were far fewer laws to enforce when George Washington became the first President, he understood intuitively that he needed help. He fell back on his experience as a military commander and delegated his authority to a staff, a Cabinet of Secretaries. No, the Constitution didn't specify the President's Cabinet, it was Washington's own contrivance. However, inasmuch as the President was delegating executive authority to unelected individuals, who were, in effect officers of the United States, Congress held the right to evaluate and approve his appointments. Did you notice that I said that Washington delegated executive authority only. He did not, he could not delegate executive responsibility. Thus, all blame as well as all fault for the conduct of the Executive Branch of government falls on the shoulders of the President. Indeed, as Harry Truman discovered, all credit and all blame for virtually everything that happens in the United States, even things over which he has no responsibility or authority – such as the economy – fall on the President's shoulders. That is why he had a brass plate engraved and placed on his desk stating that “The Buck Stops Here.” Truman had broad shoulders. No President has ever ducked responsibility with as much alacrity as Barack Obama. He and his supporters have attempted to shift blame in almost every instance where things have gone wrong.
Notice, I did not say that Barack Obama is responsible for the failing economy, the rising debt, and persistent unemployment. I only mentioned that these problems have persisted and grown during his tenure in office. The truth is that the root causes of these issues go well beyond Executive authority and responsibility. Barack Obama has simply been absent as the elected leader in helping to resolve them. If anything, he has exacerbated these problems, but is not fully responsible for them In fairness to President Obama, these problems were thrust upon him, not by George Bush or Congress. We did it to him when we elected an unqualified individual to be President. If you must place blame, look into a mirror. Barack Obama was the least qualified individual ever to be elected President. He had no executive experience. His legislative credentials were sparse. Yes, he had served in the Illinois State Legislature and the United States Senate. However, he was not a sponsor of even one piece of legislation and was wont to vote “Present” when simple “Yes or No” decisions were required. Where did we expect that he might have learned leadership skills? He never owned, operated, or managed anything other than his own time. He never even served as a Boy Scout or a military leader. If you owned or were an executive in a business, and Barack Obama applied for a management position, would you have hired him after looking at his resume? Only a fool would answer yes. How then did we the people decide that he was qualified to be President? Of course, his resume has a little more meat to it now. He has served one term as President. Is there any indication that he learned anything on the job? Or, has he ducked his responsibilities in the same manner that he ducked them as a legislator and a senator when he voted “present”? Not only has he spent more time on the golf course (600 hours) than he has in security briefings (463 hours), he ducked the first security briefing following the attacks on U.S. Embassies and Consulates in the Middle East. Most importantly, he has never learned that “the buck stops with him.” He continues to deflect blame for every untoward occurrence. He threw Hillary Clinton under the bus for apologizing to Muslims for a film that inspired them to attack U.S. Missions and murder U.S. Diplomats, while he has set the gold standard for apologizing to Muslims. A recent statement by his Press Secretary would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. In it he averred that the Muslim attacks on U.S. Embassies and diplomats aren't attacks on the United States. Rather, they are attacks on a film. Really? So the buildings they burned weren't really sovereign institutions of the United States, they were Hollywood props? The persons they murdered weren't really American diplomats, they were simply actors? On November 21, 2007, then Senator Barack Obama, campaigning to be President, promised that Muslim violence would end if he were elected President. I didn't expect him to keep that promise, did you? It was just another campaign promise by a politician, or did you hope there was going to be a change and campaign promises would be kept? Can we survive another four years with an unqualified President?
CubaAMERICA'S OBSESSION WITH CUBA can be traced back to its Revolution for Independence from Britain. The island had been closed to all foreign commerce, especially the British, since the earliest days when Spain occupied it. Spain always treated the island as a Caribbean fortress protecting its lines of communication and logistics with its mainland colonies. They either did not see or did not care to see any commercial value in the island. However, when Britain's American colonies rebelled, Spain opened the harbor at La Habana to the Yankees as a refuge from patrolling British warships and a terminus for commerce. The Spanish saw this as an opportunity to thumb their noses at their traditional enemies. Yankee smugglers welcomed it. The Yankees had a long tradition of smuggling goods in and out of the colonies under the noses of British revenue agents. They built fast, lightweight sailing craft that could dash in and out of small inlets in all kinds of weather; inlets that British warships and revenue cutters would not dare to attempt in almost any weather. Unfortunately, their small size made them inappropriate for long ocean crossings. Thus, they served as lighters, exchanging cargo with larger merchant ships. Transferring cargo at sea is dangerous at best. The smugglers usually rendezvoused with the merchants at small islands or isolated coves along the Canadian coast. Although more distant, the harbor at La Habana suited their purposes even better. Firstly, it had the Spanish to enforce neutrality and keep the British warships at bay. Secondly, the prevailing winds in the Caribbean favored the smugglers' craft over the British warships patrolling just outside La Habana. The Baltimore Clipper was the archetype of smuggling craft. It's shallow draft allowed it to slip across bars at the mouths of small inlets. It's wide beam gave it the stability to carry much more canvas aloft than other vessels of its size. Finally, it was a topsail schooner; that is, it carried both square sails for running with the wind, and fore and aft sails (like a modern sailboat) for tacking into the wind. British warships were mostly square-rigged brigs and ships that could not sail into the wind efficiently. The tradewinds in the Caribbean blow from east to west. A sailing vessel attempting to run from La Habana to the tip of Florida must sail against them. Thus, the smugglers could easily outsail British warships. Conversely, when sailing with the wind towards La Habana, the smugglers spread their square sails and raced ahead of the warships to the Spanish sanctuary. Cubans welcomed the Yankees. To them, the Yankees brought the same kind of commercial success that they had enjoyed during the brief period when Britain occupied the island. Both peoples welcomed the profits and were equally disappointed when the American Revolution ended, and Spain once again closed La Habana to all foreign trade. The advent of commercial success in agriculture drew foreigners back to Cuba in the late nineteenth century and a new kind of imperialism, economic imperialism, replaced the moribund colonial imperialism exercised by the Spanish. A new revolution drove it from the island and replaced it with an even more insidious form of imperialism, Soviet imperialism. Rebels on the Mountain provides a unique insight into this period of Cuban history, as Castro helps his people jump from the frying pan into the Cold War.
CubaCUBA HELD NO great interest for Spain other than its location and its magnificent harbor. There were no cities of gold or any other treasures to attract the conquistadores. However, its strategic assets quickly became of great value to them when French and English raiders began preying upon their treasure fleets. In the beginning, Spain declared the Caribbean to be a “closed empire” and expected the French and English to quake at the might of the conquistadores. They didn't. Great prizes attract the boldest adventurers despite great risks. Buccaneers occupied the smallest islands of the Lesser Antilles that the Spanish had avoided, and used them as bases for raids on Spanish galleons and coastal towns. Spain complained to the governments of France and England who responded with appropriate remorse but secretly rejoiced at their share of the loot. Spain had no recourse but to fortify a base where the galleons could make repairs and assemble into fleets for the voyage home. They built a great castle at the entrance to La Habana Harbor – El Morro de la Habana. A fortified battery on the opposite shore completed the defenses. A chain was stretched between the castle and the fort on the opposite shore to prevent ships from passing before artillery could sink them. Officially named Castillo de los Tres Magos del Morro (Castle of the Three Magi – yes, the Three Kings of the Orient who visited the birth of Jesus – of the Rock), it was completed in 1589. Similar defenses were erected to guard the harbor of Santiago de Cuba at the opposite end of the island. These fortifications emphasized Spain's interest in the island as a strategic marshaling area for their conquests on the main lands surrounding the island. The Spaniards provided no such defenses for Cubans living elsewhere on the island. They were expected to provide their own militias. When pirates attacked, Cubans would retreat to either the city at La Habana or the one at Santiago. Retreating into the interior was foolish as it was still controlled by the natives. This lack of interest in the Cubans continued until the island won its independence from Spain. Cubans could not help but notice that they were neglected while Spain developed their mainland colonies, and they revolted several times during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus, the Cuban revolutionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Castro, had a rich heritage of hatred for imperial rule. The castle fell once, to the British, in 1762, and the island remained under their control for almost a year. Although Spain suffered a great loss – the British divvied up 750,000 pounds of treasure – the Cubans fared well under British rule. In that brief time, almost a thousand merchant ships visited the island's ports, and the streets of the cities were filled with merchandise. British tourists brought even more currency to the island's merchants. The Cubans had never known such commercial success under Spanish rule. The British ceded Cuba back to Spain as part of a trade for Florida and eastern Louisiana brokered at the Treaty of Paris. The Cubans were once again subjected to Spanish rule and commerce fled the island. Their markets would not recover again until the American Revolution. El Morro was the first sight of Havana that my hero, Nick Andrews, sees as he enters the harbor in my novel, Rebels on the Mountain. He sees the castle again in a painting that decorates the back bar at El Floridita, Ernest Hemingway's favorite bar and restaurant in Havana.
When El Morro ceased to be of value as a fortification to defend La Habana harbor, it became a prison. More accurately, it became a chamber of horrors. Many ghosts must stalk its bowels to this day, many murdered by Castro's most infamous executioner, Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. Was he eliminating Americans or imperialists? No, mostly his victims were Cubans who had the temerity to disagree with Che's vision for their homeland. In case you didn't know this, Ché was not a Cuban. CubaI WAS FORTUNATE in writing Rebels on the Mountain, to find a ghost story that fit well with my main character, Nick Andrews. A spook himself, in the modern sense of being a spy, Nick roams the same mountains of Cuba as the ghost of Hatuey. I stumbled upon the legend of Hatuey while reading Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause by Tom Gjelten. Bacardi, better known as the distillers of “the rum that made Cuba famous,” adopted the name to serve as the brand for its beer. Hatuey was a cacique (chief) of the Taino tribe on Hispaniola. He fled to Cuba in 1511, accompanied by four hundred canoes full of his warriors and their families. Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar followed with his forces to conquer the island known to the natives as Caobana (Cuba). Hatuey tried to warn the Caribs of Cuba about the cruelty and avarice of the Conquistadores. His descriptions were true but too lurid for the Caribs to believe. Hatuey then led his people into the interior and prepared to fight a guerrilla war against the Spaniards. The Tainos and the few Caribs who joined them succeeded in eluding the Conquistadores for about a year. When finally caught, Hatuey was burned at the stake. However, before his death, a Catholic priest offered to baptize Hatuey so that he could attain salvation and spend eternity in heaven. Hatuey thought about this offer for a moment, then asked, “Will there be Spaniards in this heaven?” When the priest responded in the affirmative, Hatuey declined the offer without hesitation stating that he preferred hell, where there would be no Spaniards. His ghost is purported to roam the Sierra Maestras to this day. Shortly after being commissioned as an officer in the United States Army, I met a friend of a friend, a Marine who had spent time skulking inside Communist China, observing military deployments, installations, and maneuvers. This was the first time that I learned that special forces of the United States performed long range reconnaissance missions inside the territory of belligerent nations. They were not James Bond-like spies. Their role was to infiltrate, observe, and exfiltrate without being detected. That is the role that I chose for my hero, Nick Andrews. Such a fictional person allowed me to narrate the events of the Cuban Revolution without interfering in them. I did not want to write alternative history. However, I couldn't resist the idea of Nick's presence in Cuba being noticed, even being mistaken for the ghost of Hatuey. Indeed, a scene wherein he rushes into a village to warn its inhabitants of an impending attack, and usher them to safety, fairly wrote itself. I couldn't help being amused that a well-tanned Caucasian, painted in camouflage as though wearing war paint, could be mistaken for the ghost of an ancient warrior.
9/10/2012 5 Comments What better use of your imagination than to dream of a voyage to an exotic land?CubaI GREW UP observing the events that led to the rise of Castro and the descent of Cuba into communism, albeit from a distance. Like all current events, news stories and opinions at that time were colored by popular conceptions. Communism bad. Democracy good. Interestingly, there was no evidence that Castro was leading a communist revolution. Indeed, the communists were well-established on the island, managing labor unions, with the tacit approval of the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and his American sponsors. Castro and his Fidelistas were not to be trusted, I suppose, because they wore beards. It was the badge of Beatniks, the precursors to Hippies. I might not have looked more closely at Cuba and the events there had I not been inspired by a broken dream. A member of the Baltimore Yacht Club wanted me to accompany him as he took delivery of a yacht in Galveston, Texas, and sail it back to the Chesapeake Bay. As a Sea Scout I had earned a reputation as an expert pilot and sailor. In preparation for the trip, I purchased charts and cruising guides, and began plotting the course. I studied weather patterns and sea conditions as well as the landfalls we expected to make along the way. I also began paying attention to the news from Cuba. I had some facility in Spanish and listened to broadcasts of Castro's speeches. Nothing prepared us for the sudden shift from the American-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, to the vitriolic temper of Castro's rise to power. There was no evidence that he was a communist, although there were communists among the Fidelistas, including his brother, Raul, and his friend, Che Guevara. As events in Cuba spiraled out of control, Havana became remote and forbidding. Writing Rebels on the Mountain forced me to throw away preconceptions and prejudices, and look again at the events in Cuba and America's role in them. I had to dig deep into the past to clear my vision, all the way back to the island's first inhabitants, the Caribs. Spanish galleons initially bypassed the greatest island of the Antilles in their lust to reach the fabled riches of Mexico as well as Central and South America. The island, later to be known as Cuba, simply didn't promise riches sufficient to justify the expense in treasure and lives for its subjugation. They focused on Santo Domino as a base of operations, much smaller, and thus, easier to subdue. Cuba's inhabitants were fierce fighters and cannibalistic. They had vast interior spaces in which to retreat and regroup, safe from marauding Conquistadores, then return and renew their attacks. In addition to bases from which to mount Spanish expeditions against the Aztec, Inca, and Mayan civilizations, Santo Domingo supported vast plantations that supplied provisions for the expeditions to the main land. Local natives were enslaved to provide cheap labor. The Spanish didn't take Cuba seriously until they discovered that the slaves were stealing away to the larger island. They had to conquer it to deny them this refuge. Cuba's conquest turned into a carnage. There was no reason to take native hostages. They had no treasure to ransom themselves. There was no reason to enslave them. They could not be tamed. The Spanish resorted to ethnic cleansing of the island. The Spanish conquest of Cuba began in 1503. By 1513, they dominated the periphery only. The island's interior was still untamed. From that time until the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898, Spain never seemed interested in Cuba as anything more than a gateway to their colonies in the Americas. Cuba lies in the center of the Americas. North, South, and Central America are arrayed around the island and its greatest natural asset, the harbor that the Spanish named La Habana. No other harbor in the region equals it. Accessible only via a narrow inlet, the harbor is easily defended from any naval excursion launched against it. Its broad, deep water interior, can shelter immense fleets from the most violent storms. Two lesser harbors at Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo Bay, were merely the icing on the cake. As for the Cubans themselves, the Spanish never evinced much interest in them. This may explain why several attempts were made following the American Revolution, to annex the island to the United States. Leaders in Cuba, as well as the United States, dreamed of adding a Cuban star to the American constellation. Even Castro, it seems, may have harbored some hopes for such an alliance inasmuch as he made the trek to Washington shortly after deposing Batista and taking control of the island. One can only wonder how things might have been different, had President Eisenhower not rebuffed him so rudely.
BloggingBLOGGERS ARE TRUSTING SOULS. We'll open the door to anyone. No charge. Come on in. We bare our souls and wait for the comments. More often than not, there aren't any. Visitors lurk in the shadows and we're left to wonder. Who's there? What are they thinking? Do they agree? Disagree? Maybe we scare them off with our perfect spelling and punctuation. They don't have my wife looking out for them. You don't need to know Internet technology to be a successful blogger. You don't need to know the difference between a modem and a router. You don't need to know that requests and responses are transmitted in packets. All you really need to know is that clients (the computers that people use to read your blog) send requests, and web servers (computers that host your website) return responses. This knowledge will help you understand how to read logs so that you can tell the difference between what drives traffic to your website/weblog and what doesn't. Obviously you want to do more of that which works, and stop wasting your time and money on that which doesn't.
I watch my website/weblog traffic using the logs provided by my web hosting service, and Google Analytics. I see that nearly 30,000 people visit every month. They wander from page to page. Every hit – that's a request from a client (computer workstation) for a web page – is recorded. Every visit – that's one or more hits from the same client – is recorded. Who referred them – that's the website that provided the link to my website – is recorded. Or, did they request a page from my website – a direct request – by typing its URL into their web browser or clicking on a bookmark that they saved during a previous visit. How does the web server know all this? Well, every request that it receives comes with a header that includes the identity of the client that requested it. How else is the web server going to know where to send the page that's been requested? No, that's not your name; it's the unique IP (Internet Protocol) Address of the computer where the request originated. Thus, if two or more people visit my website from the same computer, the web server will count them as two visits from the same visitor. If you visit my website from two different computers, the web server will count them as visits from two different visitors. Just as every client has a unique IP Address, every website has a unique IP Address. How else would your client know where to send the request? (Yes, that means there are a lot of unique addresses on the Internet. Each one consists of four sets of three numbers: e.g. 999.999.999.999. That's a pretty big number and yet, we're running out of them. The new Internet Protocol provides for even more.) If you click on a link to my website that you find in someone else's website, the IP Address of that web site is included in the request header. That is how my web server knows who referred you to my website. Not all requests are for webpages. One of my favorites is any request for a feed from my website. Currently, my web server receives about 100 requests for feeds every day, and responds with an XML document containing all postings in my blog. (Don't go! I'll explain it.) Webpages are HTML documents – a document written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) describing all the words and images on a webpage. Your client browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Fire Fox, Google Chrome, etc.) reads this document and “renders” my webpage on your screen. An Extended Mark Up Language (XML) document contains data as well as a template describing how the data is organized (structured). A special app in your computer can be configured to show you just the new postings or maybe, the four or five most recent ones. Some apps provide just a few lines as a summary, and a link to the blog so you can read more if you want. These readers are often referred to as news feeds. Thus, requests for feeds indicate that someone is looking at my blog regularly. I include feeds from other blogs on my website to help promote other bloggers who I feel have something worth reading. You can see them at Blogs to Follow on my website. Okay, take a deep breath. Yes, I trapped you into reading a lot of geeky computer terminology. Forgive me. You need to know it if you're ever going to make sense of the reports that come out of your web server and services such as Google Analytics. I'm going to introduce you to Google Analytics next week. If you don't already know about it, Google Analytics is a free service that samples the traffic at your website and provides simplified reports. including graphs and maps, to help you make sense of it. Until then, check out your website hosting service and, if you haven't already, begin studying the reports they provide. If they don't provide logs or analytics for your website, it might be a good idea to switch to another hosting service. You cannot manage your website/weblog effectively without them. You're flying blind without any feedback to help you understand what you're doing and how you might become more successful at it. |
More than 500 postings have accumulated since 2011. Some categories (listed below) are self explanatory, others require some explanation (see below):
CategoriesAll America Army Life Blogging Cuba Election 2012 Election 2014 Election 2016 Entrepreneurs Food Good Reads History Humor Infantry School In The News Korea Middle East Oh Dark Thirty Opinion Sea Scouts Short Story Sponsored Survey Technology Television Terrorism Today's Chuckle Veterans Vietnam Writing Explanations |
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 Jack Durish All rights reserved
|
Web Hosting by iPage
|