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probably record 56 fatal shark attacks every few years,” says Matt Lawrence. “Probably every month during the early 90’s,” adds Arturo Cobo.
    Right off the southern Florida coast an estimated 70,000 people have perished since 1961 on the high seas, a large but unknown number of these at the hands (jaws, actually) of sharks. To this day, most airborne rescuers report seeing sharks in the vicinity of Cuban rafters. Many have observed attacks. Most survivors mention sharks and shark-attacks often during their terrible voyage.
    So here’s one of America’s most populous states and one bounded by beaches crammed with tourists. You’d really think this setting could provide the Discovery Channel with material much more dramatic and relevant (titillating) for its U.S. audience. So where’s the Discovery Channel on this?
    In Cuba, partnering with the Castro regime, that’s where.

    The Cuban press reports very little about rafters. In his tell-all about reporting from Cuba, long-time Havana correspondent for Spain’s Television Espanola Vicente Botin reports that he never saw a mention of rafters in the state-run media. It’s obviously embarrassing.
    And for the benefit of those who came of political age after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Communist regimes do not issue media, academic or scientific visas (as in the Discovery Channel’s) randomly. “The vetting procedure starts when the regime receives your visa application,” reports Chris Simmons, once the Defense Intelligence Agency’s top Cuban spycatcher, now retired. “When your smiling Cuban guide greets you at the airport he knows plenty about you, and from several angles.”
    Often they learn much more about you during your stay. “First thing I advised visiting Americans,” an official at the U.S. Interests Section told this writer, “was to check their rooms for bugs—the electronic surveillance type. One of these visitors later told me he’d just fallen asleep when he heard a loud thump from the closet. He opened the door and somebody ran out of the closet almost between his legs and scooted out of the room.”
    â€œMy job was to bug visiting Americans ’hotel rooms,” confirms high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez, “with both cameras and listening devices. And famous Americans are the priority objectives of Castro’s intelligence.” 5
    In brief, if you’re not there to help the regime’s image abroad, you’re not getting a visa, at least more than once. And if in the Stalinist regime’s estimation you helped their image insufficiently, a little “prodding” might be applied, via blackmail. Upon publishing his book, for instance, Spanish reporter Vicente Botin promptly lost his Cuban visa. The Discovery Channel, on the other hand, seems to have a perpetual red carpet into Castro’s fiefdom.
    â€œDiscovery Channel Returns From Underwater Scientific Expedition Off the Coast of Cuba,” read the Science Daily headline in January 1998. “Crew of scientists received a surprise visit from Cuban President Fidel Castro.... Castro has long been interested
in underwater expedition and he spent two hours on the boat talking with the scientists about their findings and about the issues of underwater conservation.” The Castro regime touts scuba diving as among Cuba’s top tourist attractions, in case the Discovery Channel hadn’t guessed.
    The Discovery Channel has also featured sport-fishing videos filmed in full partnership with the Stalinist regime’s ministry of tourism. The obvious purpose is to attract a large number of well-heeled sport fishermen from around the world to Cuba’s unspoiled and fish-filled coastal waters.
    By the simple expedient of banning boat-ownership under penalty of prison or firing squad for everyone except high-ranking government officials, many other nations could