31 May 2007

Why the Deathwish?

In his daily blog entry, the blogging comandate reflected on George Bush’s death wish for him saying that his ideas will live on. And yes, there will always be evil.

A good example of that evil is exposed in a new book by former Congressman Bill Hendon’s about American POWs in Southeast Asia.

"An Enormous Crime – The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia," Hendon and co-author Elizabeth Stewart disclose that Fidel Castro was a key adviser to the North Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War. They report that Castro gave Hanoi a strategy for capturing GIs and then trading them for postwar reconstruction aid from the U.S., just as Cuba had done with the Bay of Pigs prisoners.



The book also claims the current Cuban Education minister, Fernando Vecino Alegret, brutally tortured American POW’s in ways “aimed at converting or turning the POWs and to be used as propaganda by the international Communist effort. It was inhumane. It was incessant. It was barbaric”

Newsmax Article HERE

Buy Book HERE

30 May 2007

In God We Trust ...

... All Others Pay Cash....








Hey don't laugh.

I came over from Cuba, it used to be my favorite. Marinated in Cuban Mojo..and fried jelly and all.

Yummmmm.....

And, I couldn't understand why other people didn't share my passion for this decadent capitalist delicacy.

Recipe for Disaster


Videos from the “frontlines” in Caracas show that perhaps Chavez has overplayed his hand.

Venezuelan students out on the streets protesting, Rubber Bullets, Tear Gas, World condemnation and the tinhorn dictator wannabe threatening to close more TV stations:

He said the remaining opposition-sided channel Globovision had encouraged attempts on his life and warned that if it wants "to continue calling for disobedience, inciting assassination ... I'm going to warn them before the nation... I recommend they take a tranquilizer, that they slow down, because if not, I'm going to slow them down."

..And promising to sue CNN:

Venezuela says it will file charges against US cable network CNN for linking President Hugo Chavez to Al Qaeda.

Desperate acts, they seem to me. Hugo has deviated from Fidel’s proven recipe for cooking the frog - raising the heat very slowly, so that the frog doesn’t realize is getting cooked. Hugo is raising the heat a bit too quickly and the frogs are starting to jump out of his pot.

Meanwhile back in Havana the regime is forced to play nice with the imperialists in order to get American food for its visiting tourists and to be able to throw a few scraps at its slaves while they watch the Donkey that lays the golden eggs stubbornly spoil their frog leg supper from afar.

29 May 2007

Evil Genius?


There’s no doubt that Castro’s reign of terror has destroyed Cuba and its society.

Documentary after documentary, movie after movie, picture after picture all chronicle the crumbling of what once was a thriving and progressive country. The truth is out. And all the propaganda in the world is not going to get that wild colt back in barn.

The Cuban economy is virtually non-existent. The once fertile land no longer yields enough crops for self sufficiency. The infrastructure, neglected and overused, is crumbling.

And sometimes I wonder: Was this by design or by incompetence?

Certainly, Castro is the responsible party, but was plunging Cuba into a modern day Sparta an accident or deliberate?

Fidel was enamored with totalitarian fascism, copying the oratory styles of Hitler and Mussolini, but the brutality and economic deprivation that he found in Stalin gave him the tool to exert total control over the Cuban people.

By instituting the ration card, nationalizing all businesses and confiscating all private property, he found the vehicle to keep people both subdued and dependent on the state (him) for their survival.

That is why he has always fought any attempts at private property or private enterprise - Because he realizes that an economically independent Cuban has no use for his tyranny.

Why the diatribe?

Well, because I founf this article in the Palm Beach Post that highlights that even after 48 years of slavery, Cubans maintain the independent spirit of providing for themselves.

Entrepreneurial spirit alive for small minority in Cuba
By Mike Williams


HAVANA — It's nothing but a simple shed with a counter stuck in the front yard under a shade tree. The menu, a tiny chalkboard hung from a rusty nail on the wall, offers only two items: pizza and ice cream.

"Before this, my life was very difficult," she said. "My husband died and I had to face life. I had my disabled mother and my daughter to support. This business is not making us rich, but we are surviving."

Perez was part of a new wave of Cubans allowed to open private businesses in the 1990s, when Cuba's economy was devastated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of about $6 billion a year in subsidies.

The decision to allow privately owned enterprises was a dramatic departure from Cuba's long commitment to socialism, a doctrine adopted by Fidel Castro after his 1959 revolution.

But as Cuba's post-Soviet crisis eased in the late 1990s, Castro became uncomfortable with the threat posed by private profit in a state where riches are considered a sin.

Cuban officials in recent years have clamped down on the tiny private sector, raising fees, cutting back the number of licenses issued and increasing inspections.

The number of private entrepreneurs - called "cuenta propistas," or "people working on their own account" - dropped from around 200,000 in 1996 to about 150,000 today, according to news reports.

The question on many minds is whether Cuba will continue to rein in private opportunity or open its economy further.

Although Castro remains firmly committed to socialism, the 80-year-old leader has been sidelined the past nine months by a serious illness. He officially turned over power to his 75-year-old brother, Raul, in July.

Caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

That’s Raul’s predicament.

Just like the rest of the Cubans.

He cannot afford to continue to provide the meager rations the Cuban people get. Tourism is on the wane and Chavez will go bankrupt at some point subsidizing misery as did the USSR.

The only option Raul has is to open up the economy a bit to ease the pressure on the state but that means economic independence for people with fiercely independent souls. And his Big Brother the Blogger won’t let him.

You wouldn’t want to be in his “pumps”.

28 May 2007

Memorial Day 2007



I got up this morning sevenish and having a day off, I went back to bed. I haven’t got a care in the world. I don’t have to worry about terrorists trying to blow me up, the police coming to throw me in jail without cause or where my family’s next meal is going to come from.

Just about every single person who has access to this blog is in the same situation. If it weren’t for an American soilder, there would probably be no free world-at least not the way we know it.

So today, please take a few minutes to honor all those men and women who gave their lives so that today we are free to worry about Pelosi’s glacier hugging visit to Greenland, Rosie’s departure from The View, Hogzilla and Linsay Lohan’s DWI arrest. ... Oh and read my nonesense.



27 May 2007

Reflections of a Gusano

El Comandante is sounding more like a leftist American blogger everyday.

Perhaps he’s beginning to realize that he’s not needed nor wanted in his island prison and is hoping to be offered a job as a blooger at the Dality Kos or the Huffington Post. Perhaps he’s even a little worried that the Cuban information minister, Ramiro Valdez, may start to censor his reflections since lately his writings have contradicted the regime’s policies.

He needs to step up his anti-Bush anti-America rhetoric if he stands a chance.

In his latest reflections, Fidel calls W an

… apocalyptic person ... He only expresses emotions and constantly feigns rationality.

That's good, but he's boing to have to call him the village idiot and a liar, if he's going to have any success an American Left-Wing blogger.


He ponders the fate of humanity and the horrors of war:


Whom are they going to convince now that the thousands of nuclear weapons in their possession, the missiles and the precise and exact delivery systems they have developed are just to combat terrorism?

This from the guy who was ready to sacrifice every man woman and child in Cuba and most of the planet by plunging the world into a thermonuclear war between the US and the old USSR and who started “revolutionary” wars in Latin America and Africa causing thousands to loose their lives.

And yet as you read the faithful parroting of the Comandante’s reflections on the news wires and on pages of the nation’s newspapers, one never sees any mention of Castro’s own apocalyptic and war mongering past.
So I guess he doesn't really need to write for a leftist blog, since his "reflections" make it most of the nation's newspapers verbatim and unchallanged.

25 May 2007

Puerco para todo Marianao

Este Jabali le podria dar de comer a todo Marianao:


1,051 libras y 9-pies, 4 pulgadas

The Reflecting Tyrant

Granma’s chief blogger’s latest post has made quite a stir in the American press.

Fidel himself has confirmed what was reported about his delicate health situation and near death back in December of last year. So now it’s official. Now that one of the greatest B.S. Artists on the planet has said it, it is gospel.

Either Fidel or whoever wrote the latest post must have realized how ridiculous it is to claim that he is so recuperated, and not show his face in public. So they explain it away as Fidel being too busy “reflecting” to take care of his personal hygiene:

For the present, I do not have time for films and photos that require me to constantly trim my hair, beard and moustache, and to get dressed up every day.

This bit of BS isn’t too hard to swallow since the personal hygiene challenged tyrant was nicknamed “bola de churre” (dirt ball) in his days at the Belen prep-school. If you’re going to lie, better to make it somewhat plausible.

The Sun-Sentinel, trying to make a story out of a pile of bull crap, went out to interview the man on the street, Juan Q. Cuban , as it where. And bless them, they found a 33 year old construction worker named, get this ….., Ho Chi Ming Alvarez, (his brother Mao Tse Tung Alvarez wasn’t available), who had this to say:

"He will appear at some point if not this year, then the next. The important thing is that he has gotten through the worst."

Maybe at a funeral, who knows, Ho?

Castro is also quoted as writing this:

"For now, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, reflecting and writing about questions that I judge of certain importance and transcendence,"

Make no mistake, those are the reflexive words of a man worrying about meeting his maker.(or Ho Chi Ming)

Godspeed, Comandante.

Ho Chi Ming Alvarez…hahahahahahahaha

24 May 2007

Italy's Radical Party Lends a Hand

Remember the Italians who marched with the Ladies in White during the Black Spring commemorations?

Well, they were members of Italy's Radical Party. Italy's Radical Party is committed to a free Cuba.

This from their website:
It was difficult finding the little house where the Damas de Blanco - Women in White - were waiting for me. They had been protesting outside their church that day about their husbands’ and sons’ imprisonment in 2003 for crimes against the state. A token 75 political activists had been rounded up.

The Women were eager to talk, eager to know my opinion about what happens next in Cuba. I had come to find out, and to hear more of the conditions their menfolk were being kept in.

My visit to Cuba on a tourist visa was organised by Vaclav Havel’s committee for democracy. I had come to examine how the £100 million EU democracy fund I set up aimed at the transformation of the ex-Soviet bloc could help Cuba.

The Women told me of the unlit, fetid cells, the filthy food, the lack of medical care at prisons hundreds of miles from their families – and far from the remaining political activists in Havana.
Read the whole article here

Grazie

Crocodile Tears?

Spain to advocate for jailed

Trinidad Jiménez, who is in charge of Latin American affairs for Spain’s foreign ministry is in Washington meeting with US Diplomats.

She said that:

Madrid will press Cuba to allow the Red Cross to visit political prisoners.



And I am writing Spanish Prime Miniter Zapatero a letter urging him to stop supporting Castro.

I expect my letter to meet the same fate as the Spanish request.

At a press conference during Moratinos’ visit to Cuba, when asked about political prisoners, Felipe Perez Roque, the Cuban Foreign Minister, said that Cuba didn’t have any political prisoners, just US-paid mercenaries. That is the regime’s story. And if you know anything about the truth challenged Cuban regime, you know they’re sticking to it.

The Zapatero government’s role in this is to do everything possible to promote the stability of the Castro regime, mostly for business reasons, but also for ideological ones as well. Jiménez has admitted as much.

In the concern for stability Spain has much common ground with the US whose main concern is preventing another “Mariel”.

23 May 2007

The Blogging Comandante


It must have dawned on the brilliant minds running the revolution that none of Fidel's recent blog posts addressed the long suffering Cuban people.


So tonight they had the blogger in chief e-mail his latest post to the AP,(Associated Parrots), where he tells Cubans about his illness and convalescence.




I tell everyone simply that I am getting better and maintain a stable weight of about 80 kilograms (176 pounds)," he wrote. "It wasn't just one operation, but various. Initially it wasn't successful and had a bearing on my prolonged recuperation."


He added that the greatest dangers to him now are age and the effects of not taking care of his health for years.

Most people in Havana believe that he is dead and that the reason that there hasn't been any blackouts in Havana lately is because they're afraid his corpse will thaw out if the power goes.


The AP reports that the e-mailed statement "will likely appear tomorrow on newspaper front pages and be read on the TV news."


No doubt that the blogger-in-chief must not be doing that well since they can't even show one of the highly edited and scripted propaganda videos featuring the Adidas Tyrant.

The Green Revolution..

You never know with liars like Fidel.

They say one thing do the opposite, say something else.
The man once boasted that his revolution was as green as Cuba's palms only to turn it as red as the blood of its patriots.

But…..

For the first time since July 31, we may be seeing that the revo-reign of terror is going in the opposite direction of the ideas of its sage and architect.

Castro, now being relegated to being a blogger in Granma, (no offense meant to bloggers), wrote a series of posts ranting about the nefarious plan by the empire and Brazil to starve billions by turning food to ethanol fuel.

Ever the humanitarian, Castro had this to say on his blog:

"The dangers to the environment and the human species are topics on which I have been mediating for years," Castro wrote. "What I never imagined was the immense risk."

Now, we learn that:

The island plans to upgrade 11 of its 17 refineries, which produce up to 47 million gallons annually of ethanol from sugar cane, said Conrado Moreno, a member of Cuba's Academy of Sciences.

The refineries currently produce alcohol for use in rum and other spirits, as well as medications and cooking on the island. But the improvements will give Havana the capacity to one day produce fuel for cars, Moreno told reporters at a conference on renewable energy.

In the recent agreement between the USA and Brazil – the one that sparked Castro’s environmental and humanitarian concerns- both countries agreed to standardize ethanol production adhering to international standards so that it can be traded as a commodity like oil.

Cuba, after criticizing the agreement between the US and Brazil, is obviously gearing up to take full advantage of the emerging market for ethanol.

Unfortunately, Cuba’s ability to produce a cane crop diminishes by the year hampered by the inefficiencies of its socialist command economy and the corruption and ineptitude of its leaders.

In Cuba, it’s just like 1984. Both the book and the year.
It’s “Retro-Orwellian”.

22 May 2007

‘Ta Chupao,’Ta Chupao

Aya en la madre patria se ha formado tremendo lió por un anuncio de Iberia en el cual se representa a la hija patria de Cuba como un lugar donde un español se puede ir de vacaciones a gozar con mulatas bembonas y culonas, ósea, un prostíbulo tropical barato, pero con buena mercancía.

El anuncio insultó las sensibilidades de Federación de Consumidores en Acción (FACUA) que considera que el anuncio en el sitio de Iberia en el Internet representa "a las mujeres cubanas con tópicos denigrantes".

La verdad que el video es una asquerosidad, pero lo triste es, que es verídico. Y aunque todo el mundo sabe de que se trata el video, lo hicieron con un bebe para disimular un poco que es solamente un anuncio para el turismo sexual en Cuba.

¿Estarán los españoles enfadados por el anuncio o porque el vidiecito le enseña al mundo de que existe en España un mercado lleno de turistas listos de irse a aprovecharse de las necesidades que se están pasando en la joya de su antiguo imperio?

¿Será que a los españoles les da vergüenza de que el gobierno socialista de Zapatero no solo apoya a la tiranía castrista para que compañías españolas como Iberia y Sol Melia sigan haciendo dinero a cuestas de la mujer cubana, sino que también aboga por la tiranía como su representante en la Unión Europea?

En vez de ofenderse por unos muñequitos en el Internet, la sociedad española debe de ofenderse con el gobierno de Zapatero que es cómplice de la explotación de todos los cubanos. Esa seriá la verdadera manera de defender la honra de la mujer cubana.

Of Subs and Docs

Ever the imperialist exploiter, Granma op-ed. writer Fidel is upset with the UK spending $395 Billion to build a new fleet of Astute class submarines:

Castro said Cuba could train 75,000 doctors, treat 150 million people or build 3,000 polyclinics in poor countries for the cost of the four submarines Britain is building.

Of course Castro could get a lot of hard currency for these 75,000 doctors who he would send to work as indentured servants to poor countries which he’s trying to infect with the incurable virus of his ideology.

Castro never wishes to have money in order to make the lives of Cubans better, his priority is always to export his twisted world view and philosophy at the expense of the Cuban people.

Interestingly, Cuba just announced that it’s spending nearly half of that $385 Million to spruce up its sagging tourism industry. Again, it’s all about hard currency for the caudillo.

One wonders how much Cuba spends on its military- A military that exists only to subjugate and oppress the Cuban citizen and how many plates of rice and beans this monumental waste of money could provide.

21 May 2007

W talks Cuba

I send greetings to all those celebrating the 105th anniversary of Cuba's Independence.

The longing for justice, freedom, and human rights is a desire that can be delayed but never denied.

The United States remains committed to extending the full blessings of liberty around the world, and on this important milestone, we stand united with freedom-loving people of all nations in the conviction that Cuba s future must be one of dignity, liberty, and opportunity.

This day is also an opportunity to recognize the generations of Cuban Americans who have made contributions to our society.

Your hard work and high ideals reflect the best of America and enrich our Nation.Laura and I send our best wishes.

May God bless the people of Cuba and all the sons and daughters of Cuba who call America home.

GEORGE W.BUSH

I don't know, it brings a certain Gorki and Porno Para Ricardo song to mind.

20 May 2007

Everyone's Fool


I've spent quite a bit of time at Cuba Nostalgia this weekend.


I was warned by Prieto that at some point, the love, respect, and yes, nostalgia that the visitors to the event have for Cuba would eventually melt my cold, cold, heart and tears would flow. The day is still young.


It is touching to see second and third generation Cubans alongside those who knew Cuba, BC walking around with a sense of pride in their culture.


Leave it to the Miami Herald to go out to Cuba Nostalgia, describe the "Malecon" as a pier and find a family that is "nobody's fool" because they have "evolved" to the point where a royal palm tree is just tree. I guess I'm just everyone's fool.
UPDATE:
Maria Werlau from the Cuban Archives had dropped of some forms for relatives and friends of the Castro Tyranny victims to fill out to document their deaths.
A man and his mom stopped by the booth to buy some Miami Mafia shirts and the man asked about the forms. When I told them what they were the woman became very agitated out and started screaming no, no and backing away. The son told me that her brother had been killed.
It was very emotional and I was trying to tell the woman that even though it was painful, it needed to be documented.
They left.
A few hours later , the son came back and explained that she was visiting from Cuba.
How many more stories lay buried in the hearts of long suffering mothers, sisters, fathers, sons, brothers, etc..that will never get out?
It's enough to make you cry and I did.

19 May 2007

Green Cards Red Waters

Immigration reform: a la Charlie Bravo:

“a political compromise to provide both parties' honchos with a continuous supply of gardeners, maids, chauffeurs, cooks and nannies.”


That just about sums it up.

Well, now that there is a “path to citizenship” for those who are free to immigrate from their “imperfect” democracies…(brilliant, CB), it’s time to secure the borders.

And what does that mean for the infamous Wet Foot/Dry Foot policy?

Unfortunately, it means a crackdown on Cubans trying to escape tyranny disguised as a crackdown on human smuggling and border security.

"Somehow, because it's human smuggling, some individuals would like to think that this is something different, perhaps more altruistic or humanitarian. But it's not,"said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, chief federal prosecutor in Miami. "The reality is hat these human beings are being killed. They are being killed at the hands of smugglers who do this for profit, not for humanitarian reasons."


Actually, the Cuban refugees are harassed and mistreated by a Coast Guard that is bound and determined to stop Cubans from reaching the land of the free and the home of the brave at any cost - even to the point of cooperating with the Castro Regime:

Stopping human smugglers is one of the few areas in which Havana and Washington cooperate.


And the awful consequences from the persecuting of Cubans fleeing for their lives is, of course, the fault of a policy that rewards reaching dry land.

Critics of U.S. policy toward Cuba question whether stiffer penalties can help reduce human smuggling when those who evade the Coast Guard are rewarded with green cards.

So let’s get ready. In order to protect the oppressed Cubans from the inhumane treatment at the hands of the Castro forces and the American coast guard, the incentive; the reward for reaching freedom ; the unfair advantages that Cubans émigrés are given, have to be stopped by getting rid of the Dry Foot portion of the Wet Foot/ dry Foot portion of the law.

The push is going to be to get rid of the political asylum for Cuban refugees all together, now that the immigration problem has been "fixed"

The Left and Gorki




So now that Mr. Moore has decided to immerse himself into Cuban politics debate, when will he and the rest of the activist American left begin calling for the release of Gorki Aguila? The short answer is "never." Our elitist protesters are nothing more than self-serving narcissists who can only dream of having the courage of a Gorki Aguila.

Speaking out against America is cheap and easy but is far from courageous. America doesn’t have a secret police or nasty little military to anchor a leader’s repression regardless of the disturbed claims from an unhinged left to the contrary. Courage means facing consequences; real consequences not simply a dip in the popularity scale.





18 May 2007

Priorities

The Regime has just announced that it is going to spend $185 million to upgrade more than 200 resorts, golf courses, marinas and other amenities to try recapture some of the lost tourism.

It would probably be more beneficial for the regime to invest some of this money into paying the Cuban tourism workers a fair wage as an incentive for workers to provide better service so that the tourists would return.

But, given their “revolutionary” economic theories, they continue to treat the Cuban worker as a second class citizen in his own country catering to the needs of visiting foreigners who enjoy things that a Cuban, regardless of how hard he or she may work, has no hope of ever enjoying.

The regime's priority continues to be to exploit the Cuban worker, to squeeze every cent possible out of the tourist so that the corrupt nomenklatura that runs the tourist industry can continue to enrich themselves:

Many international visitors complain that Cuba is excessively expensive, especially because of a tax on required currency exchanges.

Most people who live in a free market system, will not return to a place where they feel they were being ripped off. Since in Cuba the ripping off is official, event more resistance exists.

Totalitarians do not understand the concept of voting, much less voting with your wallet.

17 May 2007

Free?!?

Free?!?!?

Is Gorki free?!?!

Gorgi's cell is a little bigger than it was last night when he was detained, but he's still not free.

Gorki is not free to express himself.

Gorki is not free to perform.

Gorki is not free to sign a contract.

Gorki and his band can't even rehearse.

Like his 11,ooo,ooo countrymen, Gorki is being held hostge by a tyranny whose only purpose is to squash free will.

Gorki is Not free.

Cuba is not free.


Que Viva Gorki

Que Viva Cuba Libre.

Overlooking Raul?

Overlooking Raul?

With big brother Fidel relegated to op-ed. Writer and greeter meter of deep pocketed dignitaries, the free market is already looking past Raul’s reign to a new land of market opportunities.

According to the Sun-Sentinel consumer surveys will now be conducted in Cuba quarterly to gage the average Cuban’s :



… ownership of household items, such as refrigerators, cars and phones. It will study awareness and use of products in 50 categories such as shampoos, detergents and pasta. It will look at buying habits, such as frequency of shopping trips. And it will study brand awareness…

"With this study, many U.S. companies will be able for the first time to attain a basic understanding of the average Cuban family," Gaither executive Beatriz Castro said.


Read it here.


Surely, these are good signs that change is coming to Cuba sooner rather than later, but I still think that looking past Raul as if he were some insignificant blip on the radar screen may be a little too optimistic. That bastard, has a few miles left on his tyranny tank.

..and not to sound too much like Charlie Bravo, but maybe the American companies should be more worried about what the free Cubans will manufacture and import to the US rather than what they’re going to import…….

16 May 2007

Light Blogging

I'm over at Cuba Nostalgia......helping set up the Babalu booth....

15 May 2007

Dios los Cria……

To some people the almighty buck is everything, to other people power is everything.

There are no ethics or boundaries to reach their goal for these people.

The ends justifies the means.

People like that understand each other.

Case in point:

Florida cattle rancher John Parke Wright who was in Cuba in March for the annual Boyeros Cattle Show.

His take on Raúl:


"Raúl Castro is a good businessman, a good manager.''


… Y el Diablo los junta

White Flags and Nike

Everything American is evil in Cuba. American goods and ideas are all signs of imperialism and consumerism and who knows what-else-ism.

The rat race, the chase for the almighty buck where all supposed to be things of a distant bourgeois past for the new man.

The new man would be a collective creature working in the common good of society and not his selfish interest.

…and yet in today’s Cuba, the regime is forced to kneel at the altar of the free market and sacrifice its ideals for the symbols of the free market, like Coke and Nike, in order to get enough paying customers to continue in its futile attempt to build a new man.

If that’s not a white flag in “the battle of ideas” , I don’t know what is.

14 May 2007

Ladies In White March on Mother's Day


More than fourty Cuban women wearing white and carrying a red gladiolus marched in Havana Yesterday to commemorate Mother's Day.

The Ladies in White, march in silence after mass at the Saint Rita Church every Sunday.

In comments to the press, Laura Pollán, wife of political prisoner Maseda, said that they were demanding the unconditional release of all political prisoners .

In another event this past Saturday, the ladies in white marched towards the Central Habana neighborhood and placed flowers by the “La India” fountain on the Prado.

Gorki Mania

Mothers Day in Exile has always been bittersweet with so many separated families.

Hope everyone’s Mother’s Day was as good as it could be.

I'm lucky enough that my mom lives just a few miles away. She came over for a barbeque and she asked me if I had ever heard of Gorki!

It’s Gorki mania.

When seventy year olds from Century Village know your name……

You're a celebrity

Ladies in white, Biscet and Gorki: The Eclectic Revolution

Gorki Sports His Own Design: Where Can Get One?

13 May 2007

Fidel Mato' a Dos Pajaros de un Tiro


En este video de Polos Opuestos Huber Matos habla de su arresto por Camilo Cienfuegos.

12 May 2007

Matos On Cuba's Future

Huber Matos fought along side the Castros agaisnt Batista. When he complained in a letter to Fidel about the hard left turn that the "revolution" seemed to be taking, they sent Camilo Cienfuegos, his good friend, to arrest him. Cienfuegos dissapeared and Matos wound up in jail.

He now believes that there's a ''command crisis'' in Cuba, pitting members of the ruling class against each other, and hopes that armed forces and interior ministry officials will step in to lead the island toward democracy.


Dissidents ''form the democratic . . . leadership inside Cuba [and] are called upon to play a future role next to those military people who, in due course, opt to follow the changeover,'' he added. ``The Castro model is exhausted and I have faith that democracy in Cuba has a future.''


Audio from The Miami Herald

Cine Contrarrevolucionario

Caso Ochoa
Norberto Fuentes

Publicado el domingo, 11 de julio de 1999 en El Nuevo Herald
En horas del amanecer del 13 de julio de 1989, fueron fusilados en Cuba el general de división Arnaldo Ochoa, el militar más condecorado de la historia cubana contemporánea, el coronel del Ministerio del Interior Antonio de la Guardia y los oficiales Amado Padrón y Jorge Trujillo. Fueron condenados por el llamado Tribunal Militar Especial en la Causa No. 1 de 1989, encausados por el delito de "alta traición a la patria y a la Revolución''. La sanción, respaldada por todos los integrantes del Consejo de Estado y por la alta oficialidad de las fuerzas armadas, alegaba que los
condenados habían traficado con grandes cantidades de cocaína.


Sin embargo, muchos analistas de la realidad cubana sostienen que los cargos de narcotráfico encubrían acusaciones más graves: según esta tesis, Ochoa y De la Guardia fueron fusilados porque eran vistos como los líderes en potencia de unas fuerzas que podrían disputarle el poder absoluto a Fidel Castro.




(Produccion de Radio Television italiana, regia de Orlando Jimenez-Leal)

11 May 2007

Spain's Shame: Cuba's Pain

Well, barring some unforeseen last minute miracle it seems that the socialist Zapatero government has succeeded in its mission to prop up the Cuban regime in the European Union for at least another six months.

These would-be egalitarian socialists have no problem with the Cuban “Creoles” being less equal than they are. As long as they continue to get tax revenues from the profits made by the Spanish companies that are exploiting the Cuban workers to subsidize their social programs, - As long as they can take their month vacation and go to Cuba and stay in Hotels that the “colonials” can never enjoy, As long as they can “buy” a Cuban girl for a few pesetas, everything’s cool with the Spanish Empire.

Thank Goodness that not all in Spain (PP) and most of Europe have decided to leave their colonialist and imperialist past behind and support freedom and democracy world-wide.

Spain derails EU pro-democracy strategy for Cuba

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The German EU presidency is likely to shelve an EU strategy paper on Cuba that was due to be published next month after a drive by the Czech Republic to insert new "operational ideas" on EU pro-democracy projects in the Caribbean dictatorship lead to Spanish blockage of the document.


"The most likely scenario is that the [EU] council will issue a note praising progress in the work so far. I don't think it will be dropped altogether but it will not be finished in time," an EU official said, with Berlin having planned to publish the Cuba paper at an EU foreign ministers meeting on 18 June.

Meanwhile, Prague-based group People in Need has accused Spain of protecting national commercial interests at the expense of EU values, with Spanish firm Repsol YPF bidding for Cuban oil contracts. Havana's hollow promise on human rights talks and the prisoners gesture is designed to help Madrid sell its ideas in Brussels, the NGO says.

"The EU should be a leading supporter of democracy and human rights in the world, so we wanted Europe to take political steps [on Cuba]," a diplomat from a member state that opposes Spain's position said. He added that the draft strategy paper, in the form acceptable to Madrid, was so devoid of content it became "unusable."



If the Zapatero government's policies infuriate you as much as they do me, do something about it!


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"Tres En Una"

Cuban Threesome

The previous post and comments on the dedicated Cuban health care professionals that make due with hardly any resources and a lot of dedication, made me think of an extremely moving and funny story that I came across a few months ago that illustrates the dismal reality of Cuba’s health care and the incredible ingenuity of the Cuban healthcare professionals.

This is my own crude translation and if you are fluent in Spanish, I strongly urge you to read the original in Spanish, as stories told in Cuban are much more entertaining then when they are butchered by someone who is a functioning illiterate in two languages.

“Three in One”
by Jose Luís Amiéiro Rodriguez

What I am about to tell you can be collaborated by just about any Cuban doctor, and it contains no exaggerations.

Doctors “on call” in Cuba do not get paid, not even a red cent.

In a month you may be on call, five or six times, depending; One weekly “on call”, plus one on a weekend.

In addition, once you go off call, there is no rest. On the following day, you continue working until completing your eight hour shift. Not an hour more or an hour less. There are hospitals and policlínicos that by an internal policy adjustment from management, allow the staff to leave one or two hours before the usual quitting time, but these sites are rare. Normally, you would have to work a full shift.

Some doctors, me included, would scheme to go home and leave our time card with a trusted coworker so that he would punch us out. It was a risk for both the coworker and the beneficiary, but we did it anyway.

Another disadvantage encountered by the medical professionals was that the material shortages and poor infrastructure made it difficult to provide the good service, that it was assumed we had to provide the population.

When the “On Call” shift began, we would be assigned a given amount of x-rays. They almost always gave us five or six, not more. They also counted the vials of each medication: salbutamol, aminofiline, two rolls of medical tape, five or six packets
with the sutures, three scalpels, a bottle with hydrogen-peroxide and half a liter of red aseptil, etc. Ah, also a liter of rubbing alcohol dyed with timerosal so that they wouldn’t drink it.

They took inventory at the beginning and at the end of each on call shift. If something whose use couldn't be justified was missing, you could find yourself in trouble. "The Holy Inquisition" was waiting for the slightest mistake to pounce and gut you. Heaven help you if you were considered a dangerous element to the nation: indifferent, apathetic, that you had asked to be allowed to leave the country or that somebody, an informer, had heard, by pure chance, that you liked the North American films or that you had a relative abroad who worked in stone quarries and who was doing better than to you, a doctor in socialist Cuba, land of Fidel.

Well, after this introduction, let me tell you an amusing anecdote. And just because
it happens to be amusing, it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

It was Sunday and I was on call for 24 hours in the” policlínico.” (neighborhood clinic)

The building was not that old, but it was falling apart in some areas: broken blinds, chipped walls, broken light bulbs and screeching stretchers.

The examining room was suffocating. A narrow room of four by five meters, ventilated by a very old "Orbit" fan, bolted to the wall, that only worked in the first speed, emitting a tenuous breeze that did not refresh my face, already contorted, sweaty and greasy by the effort I had made, just minutes before arriving at the center, because I had climbed, with bici (bicycle) in tow, the lofty hill of Jesus del Monte. Legendary slope in the neighborhood that shares its name.

In an “on call” shift, you could take care of up to 200 patients, in 24 hours. Virtually, without hardly eating anything.

Sometimes I brought something from my house, a bread with something and plastic bottle with instant beverage of an undefined color or flavor, on the yellowish side, that mitigated, subjectively, my thirst. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me. But, it was better than drinking the chlorine flavored tap water.

That Sunday, I began to diagnose rapidly: colds, tumors, syphilis, influenzas, infected boils, madness, paranoia and depression. There wasn’t much to prescribe, except for home remedies and infusions; as a guide I had my “vademécum of green medicine” handy. We were and are the vanguard of naturist medicine. Surely the abundance of flora and the shortage of fauna and of grey matter in the brains of our leaders has something to do with it.

That day they had assigned me only two (X-Ray) plates for my on-call shift. An exception, because the rest had gone to the “Dependiente” (Surgical Clinical Hospital Ten of October). Normally they left me five or six. “Shortage of supplies in the municipality”. That was the excuse that the doctor that had been on call at the policlinico from Saturday to Sunday had given me. Only two x-rays Only two! And the number resonated in my mind.

The morning passed without incident. By twelve noon we had taken care of 80 patients. A few minutes after one, a bicycle accident victim arrived. A taxi brought in a stunning blonde with what appeared to be a fracture of the escafoides bone on the right hand. Typical: pain in an injury where you fall with the palm of the hand extended.

Should I waste an X-Ray already? I thought. One? No, it could not afford that luxury. And I began to lucubrate. It was a state of emergency, I had to bet it all on one card. Patience, much patience. It could not waste X Ray plates, but neither could I misdiagnose the patient and let her leave without putting her hand in a cast, or vice versa, put a cast on her for no reason.

Then I decided what I should have never decided. I gave the to the woman an analgesic and laid her down it in the only stretcher that we had, with the excuse that it was to alleviate the pain before we performed the necessary radiografic examinations. The husband who accompanied her was thankful for the kind gesture.

In fact wanted to use one radiographic X-Ray plate for three patients (my specialty, a creation mine from the “special period”), I would wait for another victim to arrive, or two, depending on the injuries that they had, which was not uncommon on a summer Sunday in that part of the city. In a shift, you would see up to five or more seriously injured.

In effect, a half hour later they brought an enormous black man with a machete blow in the left shoulder. We canalized a route, we cured him, we sutured him, we vaccinated him and we stabilized him clinically. We only needed to take an x-ray to verify if his clavicle was injured and to assure us that the vascular-nervous package of the zone had not suffered damage, or he did not suffer a pneumotorax (air intake the pleura by breakage of the same), although the auscultation of the lung worked well. Good entrance and exit of air. But I had to make sure. In medicine it is better to sin by excess and not by defect. That Maxim has never failed to me, until the moment.

Happily, I rubbed my hands. Things were moving along quite nicely, with another injured patient we could put to play what I used to call "three in one". Thus it saved radiographic material for an urgency at dawn, where things, sometimes, got ugly. But it was getting complicated.

At four in the afternoon we got what we were missing. An old guy with a shot in the left buttock. A quarrel in Santa Catalina and Milagros. There little lost blood, but it had entrance hole, and no exit, where was the projectile lodged? Soon I would know it. For that it was the whole X-Ray plate.

I took to the three victims to the room of Rx. a euphemism. It was a dark tomb in the cellar of the building. The blonde walked down the stairs, the old guy limped down and black guy was lowered it by three of us, the nurse, the CVP and I.

We laid the black guy down it on the hard cold bed of the Rx – face up -, the hand of the blonde, opened, was placed under the right armpit of the black guy, since he could raise this arm leaving me a usable space, and to the old man I laid down on his side, next to the black guy, with is back towards the black guy and with his feet in the opposite direction and in a fetal position, that is, with his buttocks very near the face of the black man, not his armpit since he could not move that arm because of his injury, In this way I would have all three injuries: the one of the blonde, the one of the black man and the one of the old one.

While the nurse calibrated the equipment, I struggled to keep the old man on the stretcher, he would slip and fall to the ground if I wasn’t careful. The stunning blonde was obnoxious, all the while complaining the body odor coming from the armpit next to her delicate white little hand.


To honor the truth, the stench that emanated of the armpit of the brother was terrible, but he was calmest. He was sedated and the machete blow that he had was not funny. We had given 25 stitches.

When we had everything ready: BUM, the door to that cavern suddenly burst open. It was the director of the policlínico in one of his surprises rounds that he made once in a while to see how the things were going. The scene was like something out Max brothers film.

Thank heavens that we were all dressed and the husband of the blond one was a witness to our good intentions. He sat next to her calming her down: "Easy My Love, stay still, hold on just a little bit longer, the doctor is doing all this because he does not have a choice…... Easy…Stay Still...just a little more until he’s finished.. "


From that one ill-fated day on, they only left me two radiographic plates.

The director of the policlínico praised my good work, my boldness, using me as an example before an incredulous mass of fellow workers. Nobody gave credit to my resources, to my imagination to get out of the pothole.


I gained a few enemies, why? I only wanted to do good, don’t you think?

* For the curious: the blonde did not have a fracture, but just to make sure I had her take another X-Ray in fifteen days, not without before immobilizing her hand. The old man was sent to the “Dependiente” with the exact diagnosis of where the bullet was lodged and the black had a fractured clavicle, thus also I referred him to see the orthopedics. They both left with another five patients in one ambulance that carried the injured in groups to save gas. The driver, you see was as imaginative as me to convoy his load.

10 May 2007

Cuban Healthcare in Stitches

Upon reading CB’s sad yet erotic story about the Cuban health care system, I started to reminisce about my own brushes with the Cuban medical system.

Like most everything else in my life in Cuba, my story is pathetic funny.

I developed a cavity on one of my baby teeth, so I had to get it pulled. So, they dragged me to the “policlinico” to get the tooth yanked and they wound up pulling the wrong one.

After that, I kept getting horrible sore throats and the doctors told my parents that I needed to have my tonsils removed to which my father replied “Are you crazy? You may take out his appendix instead!”

But there was this one nurse…….

Anyway, check out this video of a tourist getting his stitches removed.





The lack of modern equipment and hygiene are astounding for the XXI century, but I really admire the professional attire on the nurse..

UPDATE:

A Short visual tour of Cuba's Free and Universal "Healthcare" System:

08 May 2007

Growing up to be like Che

Castro’s legendary “free education” amounts to nothing more that forced brainwashing with some math and science thrown in for future exploitative purposes.

The goal of Cuba’s educational system is to mass manufacture Che’s “New Man”:

Hate as a factor in the struggle, intransigent hatred for the enemy that takes one beyond the natural limitations of a human being and converts one into an effective, violent, selective, cold killing machine. (Guevara)





Building a "New Man" in Militaristic Cuba


Thank Godness most Cubans have built in BS detectors and it goes in one ear and out the other.

We've Got Mail!

The world leader of the “Blame America For Everything Cult” got a Yahoo account.

Rather than sending one of his epistles to his disciple Chavez, complete with signature so his disciple can show proof of life, Castro is now e-mailing his editorials straight to his foreign press service the Associated Parrots.

According to Castro’s Crystal Clear Revolutionary Logic, the United States is to blame for the attempted hijacking of a charter airliner to freedom by a few Cuban draftees last week.

And somehow, the fact that Posada-Carriles was released on bail triggered the hijacking which was:

"a consequence of freeing the monster of terror."



Castro is also quoted as saying these choice words:

"The impunity and the material benefits that have been rewarded for nearly half a century for all violent action against Cuba stimulate such acts,"

"It only takes the stunning liberation of a known terrorist and death again is visited upon our homes,"

Please read the words carefully. Did the reportedly mentally unstable bearded one attach a piece of his autobiography in his e-mail to reporters by mistake?

Because it did take a stunning liberation of a known terrorist, Castro, by Batista for death to visit our homeland and start a 50 year orgy of violence against Cuba by a gang of thugs that have been rewarded materially for their crimes.

….Just a thought….

06 May 2007

Join Him


A short and Simple Power Point Presentation asking YOU to support Dr. Biscet

Conservative US Friendly France? Mon Dieu!



Sarkozy takes French presidency

Mr Sarkozy said he would be president of all the French
Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy has won the hotly-contested French presidential election, according to early results.


Hmmmm.... And when are the Sapinish elections?......March 2008 10 months.....


Maybe this will be the beginning of a European trend to sweep the Castro loving apologists from power.

Spanish Conservative Youth Call Zapatero a Hypocrite

As the Zapatero government continues to shame itself and the Spanish Nation by propping up Cuba’s moribund regime, the opposition party continues to stand up for freedom and democracy in Cuba.

In Seville, youths of the conservative Partido Popular, main group of Spanish opposition, unveiled a campaign for democracy in Cuba.

The campaign consists of carrying a bracelet with the “Cuba Libre, Ya” motto, as a show of support of Spanish society to freedom in the island.

It was the first activity of the National Covención that is taking place this weekend more than 1.500 young people of the Popular Party, pertaining to the New Generations of this political organization.

According to Jorge Moragas, who heads the International Relations of the party, the campaign laims to show the Cuban people that Spain is not mistaken about Cuba.

Moragas criticized the foreign policy of the Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whom it accused of not being on the side of the Cuban youth, but on the side of those who resist change.

On the other hand, the president of New Generations, Ignacio Uriarte, denounced the demagoguery and hypocrisy of Zapatero, who in his opinion speaks in of defense of the liberties in Spain and does not denounce the lack of democracy in Cuba.

Hopefully the loud voice of our freedom loving Spanish relatives will force out the din of profiteering, exploitation and colonialism that has dominated current socialist government’s pro Castro policies.

04 May 2007

Children Become What's Expected of Them

Yesterday’s news about the attempted hijacking at Jose Marti International Airport is a symptom of Cuba’s dysfunctional society.

Cuba is a violent and militaristic society.

Cuban children are taught, from a very early age, to be like Che. They are taught to assemble AK-47’s in schools as part of the revolutionary curriculum. Cuban children are brought up to hate. They are taught that the ends justify the means. They are taught to lay down their lives for the revolution because the collective is what matters, not the individuals. They are taught to be revolutionaries. Only revolutionary values are accepted. God and family are bourgeois vestiges of the obsolete classes of mankind’s imperialist past.

This hate filled curriculum is not subtle; it’s all encompassing. It consists of 24/7 propaganda and indoctrination.

Revolutions are about violent, abrupt and instant social change.

The Cuban youth is taught to idolize men like Fidel, Raul and Che. These are men who solved their problems with guns, bombs, kidnappings and blackmail. As long as they achieved their ultimate end, power, any means was justified.

It should not surprise anyone that youths who are a product of this culture of hate and violence would rebel and lash out and act exactly like Cuba’s revolutionary heroes would under the same circumstances.

Cuban society teaches its youths to be “revolutionaries”, yet turns around and forbids any kind of rebelliousness whatsoever. Cuba is a country where the majority of the population is under 40. The majority in Cuba are young, trained revolutionaries with nothing to rebel against except the regime.

I am afraid that Cuba may be on the verge of more violent acts. After Fidel Castro temporarily stepped down nine months ago, most Cubans expected some changes towards making their everyday lives a little easier. Even Raul acknowledged that he was tired of excuses about the food and transportation situation on the island. Yet, the only perceivable changes so far have been more repression and tighter workplace rules; a move to Stalinist orthodoxy where the victims get blamed for the crimes.

The Cuban regime knows that it is sitting on a powder keg. The answer is not more repression or allowing the Spanish Reconquista of the island to continue. The answer must be a move towards democracy because the new regime’s grace period is starting to run out and there is an island full of angry young people who want change.

03 May 2007

World Press Freedom Day



In commemoration of World Press Freedom Day, on May 3rd, Freedom House has released several critical tools to highlight data from its annual survey of global press freedom, and to help explain the newest findings in their historical context.

Here is Freedom House’s Draft Report for Freedom of the Press 2007 on Cuba:




Cuba
Status:NotFree

Legal
Environment: 30
Political Environment: 39
Economic Environment: 27
Total Score: 96

Cuba has the most restrictive laws on free speech and press freedom in the hemisphere. The constitution prohibits rivate ownership of media and allows free speech and press only if they “conform to the aims of a socialist society.” Cuba’s legal and institutional structures are firmly under the control of the executive. The country’s criminal code provides the legal basis for the repression of dissent, and under the guise of protecting state security, laws criminalizing “enemy propaganda” and the dissemination of “unauthorized news” are used to restrict freedom of speech. Insult laws carry penalties of three months to one year in prison, with sentences of up to three years if the president or members of the Council of State or National Assembly are the objects of criticism. The 1997 Law of National Dignity, which provides for jail sentences of 3 to 10 years for “anyone who, in a direct or indirect form, collaborates with the enemy’s media,” is aimed at the independent news agencies that send their material abroad.


The few journalists who do work for independent news agencies, write articles for foreign websites, or publish underground newsletters are routinely monitored, harassed, detained, interrogated, or imprisoned. At best they are accused of giving the Cuban revolution a “bad name,” at worst of working as counterrevolutionaries for the United States government or Cuban exiles. During the year, two journalists were released from prison, but two more were imprisoned, leaving a total of 24 journalists in long-term detention. One of those released, Lamasiel Gutierrez Romero, correspondent for the website Nueva Prensa Cubana, was freed on March 22 after serving a seven month sentence for “civil disobedience and resistance.” She returned to her home on the Isle of Youth under heavy police surveillance and was forbidden to leave the island. The two journalists who received lengthy prison sentences in 2006 were Armando Betancourt, a freelance journalist and editor of a small underground magazine, and Raymundo Perdigon Brito, who together with his sister had recently established a small news agency. At the beginning of August, six foreign journalists hoping to enter the country to cover reactions to the temporary transfer of power from President Fidel Castro to his brother, Raul, were interrogated by agents of the Interior Ministry and required to return to their country of departure. They were told that they did not have the work visa needed to practice journalism in Cuba.


The Communist Party controls all national media, including all print and electronic media outlets, apart from one or two unauthorized Catholic Church newsletters. Cubans do not have access to foreign media, although some international papers are for sale in hotels. The government continues to jam transmissions of the U.S. government–sponsored Radio and Television Marti. Although Telecommunications Minister Ignacio Gonzalez Planas has repeatedly stated that the internet is essential for the country’s development, the government does its best to restrict access, and less than 2 percent of the population was online in 2006. An investigation carried out by Reporters Sans Frontieres revealed that the government has banned most private internet connections and has installed software in all internet cafes and
leading hotels that triggers an alert message whenever ‘subversive’ keywords are entered. This strict control is backed by the threat of 5 years in prison for connecting to the internet illegally, and 20 years for writing “counter-revolutionary” articles for foreign websites.




Cuba, of course, does not observe World Press Freedom Day, they observe Propaganda day on May 1.

02 May 2007

The Wailing Wall



CB's heartfelt ode to his beloved city.

Granpa Skips Parade to be on Granma

Granpa couldn’t make it to the May Day parade yesterday in Havana, but he was all over Granma.

As those who lived in Cuba will tell you, attendance to these political acts are “strongly recommended” by your employer, the regime, who graciously gives you time off so that you can show your support to your employer.

Folks who don’t have the revolutionary zeal , or blind faith in Cuba’s Cult of the Absurd, and don’t participate in the revolutionary events, are “counseled” and it could eventually lead to loss of employment.

Does that mean that Raul will now fire Fidel for skipping the parade? I mean he was well enough to write another op-ed piece in Granma.

01 May 2007

Independence Day


Well Papa go to bed now it's getting late
Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now
I'll be leaving in the morning from St. Mary's Gate
We wouldn't change this thing even if we could somehow
Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too
But they can't touch me now
And you can't touch me now
They ain't gonna do to me
What I watched them do to you

So say goodbye it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day
All down the line
Just say goodbye it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day this time
Now I don't know what it always was with us
We chose the words, and yeah, we drew the lines
There was just no way this house could hold the two of us
I guess that we were just too much of the same kind

Well say goodbye it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day all boys must run away
So say goodbye it's Independence Day
All men must make their way come Independence Day
Now the rooms are all empty down at Frankie's joint
And the highway she's deserted down to Breaker's Point
There's a lot of people leaving town now
Leaving their friends, their homes
At night they walk that dark and dusty highway all alone

Well Papa go to bed now it's getting late
Nothing we can say can change anything now
Because there's just different people coming down here now
and they see things in different ways
And soon everything we've known will just be swept away

So say goodbye it's Independence Day
Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say
But won't you just say goodbye it's Independence Day
I swear I never meant to take those things away



¿Y la Momia Donde Está?

¿Y la Momia Donde Está?

Support from Merkel


During a press conference within the frame of the annual summit of the United States and the block of 27 European nations on Monday, President George W. Bush and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel emphasized the support of the United States and the European Union to a free and democratic Cuba.


Bush emphasized that it is important that Cuba be a free society, that respects the human dignity and the rule of law.

Germany holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. The European Union will be discussing its common position on Cuba soon.