Cuban National Urinal

Once Raúl Castro dies, they will cremate him and stick his ashes in the huge rock thate he should have crawled under while he was still alive.

The 130 ton rock was brought from the Sierra Maestra and placed in the Sierra Cristal’s mausoleum dedicated to the Second Eastern front revolutionaries which where under Raúl’s command during the armed upraising against Batista that was lead by his big brother.

Though it’s kind of a downer that no expense was spared to build Raúl’s final resting place, it’s good to know where his grave is so that someday we can all go piss on it.

We may not be so lucky with Fidel since they are hinting that he will be cremated and his ashes scattered over the Sierra Maestra after which the name of the fanous mountain range will probably need to changed to the Desierto Maestro or Loma Mocha or something like that.

Raúl Turns Milk To Water

I finally forced myself to read Raúl Castro’s July 26 speech.

No audacity of Hope there.

More like predictions of doom & gloom.

Raúl basically told the Cuban people that he would do whatever it takes to resist the good life of the neighbors to the North, the USA, and continue to work to make Cuba more like its neighbor to the West, Haiti.

Last year Raúl promised milk, this year he promised water.

But….like everything else in Cuba…it will be rationed:

A piece of advise: the more water that is distributed, the greater the need to save it. Water is a very valuable resource which is indispensable for everything; therefore, it should be used rationally.

Next year, he might promise some fresh air and then figure out a way to ration it…and blame the embargo.

Obama's H.O.A.'s

On Thursday of last week, I wrote about my shock at finding out that Senator Obama proposed a “civilian security force” in a speech that the MSM ignored.

I cross-posted my thoughts at Babalú which exposed it to many more people than would normally have it read it here.

I got some interesting comments.

Some of my friends suggested I might be suffering from a post traumatic stress induced paranoia .They think that I’m reading too much into Barry O.’s dream of funding an activist civilian army-a politically correct militia. They told me that it was a stretch to compare Barry O.’s utopian dream to the CDR’s (Committees for the defense of the (Cuban) Revolution) of my enslaved youth.


O.K. fair enough. Here’s an insight into my paranoia in terms that even those who have been fortunate enough to never have experienced totalitarianism in the flesh can understand:

“This could never happen in America,” they say. I hope not, but if somebody gives you fair warning that they imagine a society where there is a civilian security force that’s as well funded as the US’s armed forces and this person is no kooky blogger such as myself, but rather a respected, Harvard educated Senator who wants to put himself in a position where he would have the power to propose societal engineering plans that could transform American society as we know it-take him at his word. Because, as he says: “words mean something”

I’m sorry, my young Obamaniacal friends. You can’t have it both ways. Either he speaks in platitudes and non-specifics or he doesn’t. You can’t argue that he does have a message buried deep within his lofty speeches and then argue that his speeches can’t be parsed, analyzed and scrutinized.

Anyway, for those who say that the Obama imagined civil police could never materialize in the U S of A, I say, “HOA”- Home Owner’s Association.

If you have ever been dumb enough to sign your property rights away for the security that these Nazi-like associations of urban busybodies seem to promise, then you know what I’m talking about.

These creeps, who usually have the power to put a lien on your house, go around looking for dirty roofs, uncut hedges, dirty driveways, loose dogs. Etc, Etc with the same gleam in their eyes that the CDR snitches used to have when they were “checking up” on their gusano neighbors in Cuba.

Now, imagine a government funded network of urban commandoes with a politically correct axe to grind.

You can call me paranoid if you like, but I’m just saying …Do you want your life to be governed by a giant state run HOA?

D-Fence.

Raúl is out of change. Literally and figuratively.

Desperate Cubans waited with their still empty glasses of milk to see if their new leader would offer up a timetable to make good on the promised “structural changes” which he announced in his now famous glass of milk speech a year ago.

But no, Raúl did not announce any change or make any other assurances to the Cuban people other than warn them that things are going to change from bad to worse. Like with all thugs, warnings are really promises.

More sacrifice, more struggle, more of the same. Not a warning put a promise.

Like the much ridiculed exiles across the straights in Miami, Raúl looked back to the good ol’ hey days of the Cuban republic when sugar was king and Fidel wasn’t and reminisced about the day his brother started the bleeding and then promised more blood.

Raúl “warned:”

''We shall continue paying special attention to defense, regardless of the results of the next presidential elections in the United States,'' Raúl said.

Defense.

Raúl, of course, means defense of the revolution, of the status quo, of his regime.
And who exactly does he have to defend the revolution from?

Jamaica? The Dominican Republic? The Cayman Islands?

Those bitter exiles in Miami clinging to their nostalgia of Batista’s Cuba? Hardly, the United States government makes dam sure that will never happen.

The US-The Empire just 90 miles due North? If the US was serious about getting rid of the Castro Nostra, they would be gone in about 12 hours and they know it.

The real enemies of the so called Cuban revolution are its victims-the Cuban people. It is the Cuban people that Raúl was warning in his speech.

He wanted to assure them that his priorities have not changed. His number one priority is to stay in power come what may even if it’s the audacious Barry O.

The real estate market in South Florida is tanking, foreclosures are sky high, gasoline prices are in the stratosphere and the dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to, all of which is cutting into the regime’s remittance business.

Times are tough. It’s going to cost more to arm and train the regime’s goon squads. The price of surveillance equipment is going up. Ramiro needs cash to subdue the “wild colt” that is the internet. The Cuban armed forces need upgrades to defend the regime against the dangerous Ladies in White, the FLAMUR women, kids wearing “cambio” bracelets, assorted writers and poets and the 98 pound blogger Yoani Sanchez. Repression can’t be done on the cheap, you know.

Therefore, Cubans will have to be a little hungrier and a little more miserable so that Raúl can continue to defend them against freedom, happiness and prosperity.

Scary "Barry O."

On July 2nd, Barry O. gave his “Call To Service” speech.

I was taking a few days off for a little R,R&D around that time, so I didn’t pay too much attention because frankly, I would have expected nothing more from Barry O. than something along the lines of “ask not what your country can do for us, but what you can do for me.”

To my jaw dropping dismay, today, by coincidence I find out that Barry O. really laid out his socialist agenda for America in a sugar coated version of Stalinism a la John Lennon’s sugar coating of Marx’s communist manifesto in the song “Imagine.”

I read in passing that Senator Obama had issued a call for a “civilian security force” in the July 2nd speech. That phrase made the hair in the back of my neck stand up since I grew up being accosted by a “civilian security force” called the CDR, (committee for the defense of the revolution), in Cuba.

So I looked up the transcript of the speech and I read it, and re-read it and I could not find the quote which I had thought I had read. And, unfortunately, I could not remember where I had read it.

But I kept googling and I found this link Obama's 'Big Brother' vanishes from speech

Wow. What "Big Brother" idea did Barry O put forth that his campaign was so afraid that they omitted it from the transcript?

Here it is:

Democrat Sen. Barack Obama's stunning assertion in a recent speech that the U.S. needs a "civilian national security force" that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force is not included in published transcripts of his prepared remarks.

Actual Transcript:

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

VIDEO:

Basically, what Obama is talking about is creating a Committee for the Defense of Liberal Ideology and Political correctness funded by a half trillion taxpayer dollars.

National Security for this crowd is not about stopping terrorists from killing our children. National Security means to teach our children to understand the terrorists and their motivations so that our children can learn how to live their lives submissively so as not to offend the sensitivities of the very sensitive America haters.

Their version of National Security is to force you to act for the common good of society and not in your own best interest. Since this goes against human nature, the half trillion dollar “Civilian National Security Force” will have to force Americans to change their nature and create a new citizen that is self sacrificing and collective in nature-an ant-like new man, like Che's and Fidel's new man.

This concept is eerily similar to the Castroite CDR block snitch network that I grew up with only better funded and more ideologically pure. Next thing you know Barry O. will set up “field schools” where middle school children will have to go on month long stays to cultivate the bio fuels that will replace gasoline...

So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service

No wonder Fidel calls him the more "advanced" presidential candidate.

.

Be afraid, be very afraid. No, on second thought get angry.

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Offers That Could And Couldn't Be Refused

I keep getting alerts for two books about Cuba that must have just been published.

I’m weak. I clicked.

Apparently one is a novel about some Americans that were living the high life in the United Fruit Company’s “colonial” Cuba . Yes, before WalMart and Haliburton, there was the United Fruit Co. It all came to end when the Castro mob muscled the Americans out.

The other is about how the Cosa Nostra lost Cuba to the Castro Nostra. A turf war between mobs, basically. Only the Castro mob had and Army with planes and tanks and everything- no match for mafiosos with tommy guns, ‘45’s and shark skin suits.

These books are really, really, really, according to the reviews, good because they explain the historical events and the social injustices that fermented and justified the rise to power of Castro & co. Those other books written by Castro’s victims show the misery and pain that Cubans have had to endure since then, but lack the nuanced historical perspective that explain what led the young revolutionary to destroy a country in order to save it from itself. In other words, the heroics. Here we are fifty years and counting and we’re still trying to rationalize and justify the evil that befell Cuba.

I get the Mafia thing every so often… “Didn’t you see The Godfather II?”

Aside from the fact that it’s asinine to get your history from Hollywood movies, it’s even more stupid, naive and offensive to justify the thousands of deaths and the many years of oppression inflicted by the Castro mob because at least they got rid of Mayer Lansky.

Back during Prohibition, gangsters ran the big cities like Chicago and New York-Didn’t you see The Untouchables and The Godfather?

A mobster named Bugsy Siegel built Las Vegas… “Didn’t you see Bugsy?”

Jeez, maybe they should have declared martial law, suspended habeas corpus, rationed food and closed the borders for fifty years to eradicate the mob. It sounds, by some of the comments I get, that some Americans would have agreed with those courses of action. After all, it worked in Cuba and they make it sound like Castro’s actions were partly justified because there was gasp! Organized crime involvement in the casinos!

Then there’s the whole Cuba as colony of America and its corporations idea. Certainly America because of its wealth and proximity to Cuba, had a lot of influence on the island. But the American companies did employ Cubans directly and because of the free market, whose basic laws of Supply and Demand where the same as they are now even in the fifties, were forced to pay a fair wage and abide to Cuban law. Any unfair business practices would have been subject to those laws. And any employees of the large American corporations in Cuba were free to find another employer. They didn’t steal land, they had to buy it, you could refuse their offers. If the “Anglos” barricaded themselves in company enclaves where they didn’t have to deal with the local Cuban, perhaps that was more due to their prejudices and fears than to a way of life. All other immigrants in Cuba, and there were MILLIONS, became Cubans. They chose to segregate themselves and mimic the plantation lifestyle of old Dixie as was their right and choice in a relatively free Cuba.

Those days stand in stark contrast to Cuba under Castro where workers are only allowed to work for one employer who sets prices, wages and controls everything in society. A Cuba where there are no more immigrants, but one that lost over 10% of its population. A Cuba where foreign companies cannot pay the Cuban worker directly, but must pay the Castros who in turn make the Cubans and offer they can’t refuse.

I don’t see how getting rid of a rich, foreign aristocracy and a few thousand, rich powerful and influential families justifies enslaving a whole population, destroying the whole middle class by making everyone equally poor and destitute and ruled by one super rich, super powerful family and its minions.

cha-ching…..

The “Land Reform” articles continue.

My head hurts.

More land is being made available for farming.

Really?

What exactly did Raúl do to make this land “available”?

Did he grow the island?

Did he fill in a bay or two on the Cuban coastline and reclaim the ocean for farming? (Barry O.: take note)

The land has always been available for farming. It’s been sitting there going to waste because the regime, which up to now centrally planned and managed the agricultural programs failed, either by design or by default, to effectively manage the land.

This is yet another white flag of surrender-an admittance by the regime that another one of its policies, another one of their internationally accepted myths – the sustainable, eco friendly Cuban agriculture model- is nothing more than a failure wrapped in a veneer of lies and propaganda.

But now, raising food prices-slumping dollar-are cutting in the regime’s profits so they are forced to make a policy u-turn and with the help of the international press making it sound like another of Raúl’s, “reforms.” (by the way, have you noticed how Raúl’s “changes” have now turned to “reforms”?)

Please!

So far the regime is going to allow the Cuban guajiros to buy farming supplies from the regime…cha-ching….. They are going to allow the farmers the privilege of working harder so that they can produce more and the regime can import less…cha-ching…The farmers will have to clear the fallow land of the thorny Marabu to make it productive again, saving the regime the time, money and effort of having to do it themselves…cha-ching…The guajiros will then have to sell their produce to the regime at a price set by the regime…cha-ching…cha-ching…AND then the guajiros are going to pay taxes on the extra income that they make…cha-ching…

The Cuban guajiros may not be the most sophisticated people on the planet, but do have common sense, an uncommon sense of self reliance and pride. They are nobody's fools, especially Raúl’s.

Common Communist Miscommunications

I have to admit that I didn’t pay too much attention to the daily communist indoctrination while I was being rewarded with my free “education” in Fidel’s schools growing up.

But I did get the gist of it. The people this, and the people that. Everything was owned by the people, (el pueblo), and for the people. I remember being confused because “el pueblo” owned everything, but nobody had anything. Pueblo is one of those rare words in Spanish that can mean two things: the people and a town so in my 6 year old mind, I figured that there was a town, (pueblo), somewhere that owned everything and I wanted to go there. Badly.

My father set me straight like only a Cuban father would. He told me not to be an idiot-Castro owned everything. They didn’t teach “Building your child’s Self Esteem 101 at Cuban father school, but Lesson learned: People means Fidel. Substitute Fidel for people and you had the truth. It worked for other countries as well like Mao’s Republic of China.

Anyway, what reminded me of my first grade communist epiphany was an article in the AP, Associated Parrots, informing the world that Raúl Castro was allowing the people to farm some government land.

HAVANA (AP) — Communist officials decreed Friday that private farmers and cooperatives can use up to 100 acres (40 hectares) of idle government land, as president Raul Castro works to revive Cuba's floundering agricultural sector.

Government land? Hold the new cell phone…..

The people own the land. That was the point of that blessed “reforma agraria” that they wouldn’t stop telling us about in school. It was all about Fidel taking the land away from the rich exploiters of the people and giving it to the people.

I was confused yet again.

I was going to call the old man, but I didn’t want to get called an idiot. Besides, there’s a whole bunch of people waiting in line to call me an idiot these days without me having to go looking for it. So, I kept reading….

Ownership will stay with the state. Private farmers can get concessions of up to 10 years, renewable for another 10. Cooperatives and companies can have renewable 25-year terms. And all will have to pay taxes for the lands, though the decree gave no details

It certainly sounds like the land is owned by the “state”. So I guess that in Cuba’s communism, property isn’t really owned in common by the people, it’s owned by the state-the regime as I call them. Another epiphany. They had lied to me about common ownership in communism.

But the same general principle I learned in first grade still applies. All you have to do is substitute Castro with the “state” and it works.

Castro is the state and he owns everything.

All Over But The Crying?

Wow! Did you hear that splash?

Was that a Chinese or Brazilian drill exploring for $135 a barrel crude in the Cuban waters off the Florida coast? (Heaven knows it’s not Exxon-Mobil or Shell exploring the American waters, Congress forbid!).

Was it the just re-established US 4th Fleet hitting the waters?

Was it the much publicized and promised 500,000 refugee “mass exodus” out of Cuba all jumping off the Malecon simultaneously?

Was it The Miami Herald finally buckling under the weight of its own biases and sinking into Biscayne Bay?

Maybe it was just me getting out of my $400 a month habit, (my car), and sticking my leg-ankle deep-in a puddle.

No, I think it was the embargo, now slowly sinking into the Florida Straights. Glug, glug…

The Bush administration has declared open season on sanctions. First, the deal with North Korea, now the talks with Iran. The “Axis of Evil” demolished as quickly as it was constructed-by the same crew, even.

I can’t even begin to guess what this strategery is all about…

Maybe Dubya is trying out a new psy-ops operation to bring down the price of crude futures by easing tensions with Iran.

Maybe it’s an election year Morrisian triangulation strategery to help the Republicans keep the White House by “out-diplomatizing” the newly American flag lapel wearing “Barry O” and appeasing and pleasing every tyrant on the face of the ever warming planet and thus neutralizing the “not talking to your enemies” gripe that seems to strike a chord with so many of the “turn the other cheekers” in the American electorate. (try turning the other cheek on a rattle snake and see what happens)

Who knows? All I can do is shake my head in disgust and take another sip of my ice cold, All-American Budweiser. Not!

What I do know is that all these events will make it almost impossible for Washington to continue the silent treatment that it has given to the tyranny 90 miles due south of US1’s mile maker 1.

The Bush administration has decided to “negotiate” with the two remaining rogue nations on the “Axis of Evil”. Both are America hating, nuclear proliferating, terrorist financing, immoral tyrannies that haven’t made any real concessions to be allowed the right to join civilized and law abiding nations at a negotiating table. After all, I haven’t seen any reports of North Koreans being allowed to own computers or cell phones. Nor has the theocracy ruling Iran announced that it will provide free sex change operations to transgendered jihadists.

And so, what is Dubya planning on saying when the Castro fan club in Congress starts to pressure his administration to negotiate with Raúl and bring down the economic sanctions? What convincing logical reason can one come up with to justify negotiations, concessions and relations with Pyongyang and Tehran and not Havana?

As I sit here sipping on my InBev,(a company that also brews Bucanero beer in Cuba, by the way), brewed beer, I can’t think of a single solitary one.

So, I raise my bottle to toast the memory of my beloved embargo and say “This Bud was for you”

Raúl's U-Turn

For FIFTY long and painful years Cubans, lead by Fidel & Co., have traveled on a long, lonely and bumpy road where they have had to sacrifice their freedom and comfort supposedly to reach egalitarianism.

Now, those of us who where on that little red bus and have experienced the proletariat road trip in Cuba, know that Fidel’s shining path to egalitarianism was nothing but an excuse to starve and oppress the people into submission, but the reasons given for the misery, struggles and oppression was always reaching the Marxist Shangri-La of an egalitarian classless society.

Marxism is a materialistic vision of reality where classes struggle for limited resources. Only when no one owns anything can they own the same and be equal since Marxism measures man by what he owns rather than by what he is.

The regime had already been making noises that the orthodox Marxist, (and Fidel’s) path to equality was “inconvenient”, but in a speech to the Cuban “parliament” on Friday, Raúl himself came right out and said so:

Socialism means social justice and equality but equality of rights and opportunities, not salaries. Equality does not mean egalitarianism.

That’s interesting.

Basically, what little brother is telling the Cuban people, in his own pragmatic and sardonic way, is that the road they’ve been forced to travel on for the last FIFTY years was going the wrong way because the navigator was holding the map upside down.

Ooops! We’re Lost. The directions were wrong…make a U-turn!

Not only does Raúl say that egalitarianism is the wrong destination, he says that it is another form of exploitation:

This is, in the end, another form of exploitation, that of the exploitation of the responsible worker by the one who is not, or even worse, by the slothful.

So, let’s see: Egalitarianism was a destination imposed on the Cuban people by the revolution. So I guess is he saying that the revolution has been exploiting the Cuban people by leading down the wrong path. I mean Raúl didn’t just drop from outer space and find Cuba on its dismal Soviet-style command economy highway, he drove the bus and made the Cuban people get on –high jacked- AT GUNPOINT!

But now, he’s says the bridge is out and that the little red bus is heading towards the precipice and since it is a Marxist bus it’s difficult to steer and the brakes aren’t that good. All he can do is to tell the hostages to tighten their safety belts and hold on because he’s driving and he’s making a U-Turn.


So now that the bus has made a U-Turn, will Raúl “social justice and equality but equality of rights and opportunities” Castro lead the bus towards Democracy? Not likely. In the same speech, the new bus driver said as much in the same speech:

I reiterate that we will never make even the smallest decision as a result of pressure or extortion, whatever the source: whether a powerful country or an entire continent.

That’s his response to the EU’s decision to lift their symbolic sanctions on the regime and review the Cuban bus’ progress a year from now.

My guess is that the new direction will be to a new Putin style military dictatorship where the Red Mob runs everything with Raúl as the “capo de tutti capi” and all his made men live in luxury. Kindda like now-except the inequalities between citizens have now been officially legitimized.

The 4th.

My favorite holiday, really.

When I tell people that, I get a look. Well, I get lots of looks when I talk, but I really get a LOOK when I say that-followed by the inevitable why?

And I tell them, that if it weren’t for the 4th of July, we might not have any of the other great Holidays.

I’m not trying to be a super American or more patriotic than though.

You see, the circumstances of my childhood left me with some perspectives that really compel me to love and appreciate freedom.

When I was growing up in Cuba, one year, Fidel decided to outlaw Christmas. Just like that. Because he felt like it.

We instead got to celebrate July 26th. Because he felt like it.

On the 4th, we celebrate that all men are created equal and are endowed with their creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And that is worth celebrating. Take it from somebody who once wasn’t allowed to pursue any of these-even when the pursuit was as simple and innocuous as dangling a few treasured glass Christmas ornaments on an old metal and plastic Christmas tree.

Today, I will pursue happiness and celebrate these Red White and Blue ideals. One song, one plunge in the pool, one corn on the cob, one veggie burger, one beer and one fire cracker at a time – always keeping in mind another place, about 250 miles due South where another Red White and Blue flag waves and where happiness can only be pursued illegally.

And it will begin with this…



Happy 4th!

I’ve been taking some vacation time so I apologize for the infrequent posts.

Since my last post, our Compañero Fidel has penned a few more reflections.

He has now become a true blogger since his reflections appear only on the oxymoronically named Cubadebate. That means that Fidel pens his ideas, many of them dissenting from his little half brother’s policies, for the benefit of foreigners and free Cubans who live abroad since the overwhelming majority of Cubans have no access to the internet. Hmmm…..

Have the Fidelistas lost the power struggle that was not taking place within the Cuban Communist Party?

Who knows? Maybe Raúl is preparing the battle field for the looming wave of repression or for the return of Chairman Fidel, (what outfit would he wear? surely not the olive green commander in chief coustume...surely not the Adidas warm up...),to the Plaza Civica’s reviewing stand and podium to review the July 26 festivities.