Die Already!

Die Already! The Miami Herald needs the money. As Fidel rumors swirl, our newsroom plan awaits BY MANNY GARCIA Manny Garcia is The Miami Herald's Senior Editor/News. At Miami Herald Media Company, Fidel Castro is the journalistic equivalent of a kidney stone -- a constant pain who never seems to go away, and you pray that he passes, soon. Castro is part of our collective newsroom psyche, even outside One Herald Plaza. You could be on an African safari when Fidel dies and you gotta come home. Publisher's orders. Everywhere I travel, I take ''the Cuba plan,'' a three-ring binder with every possible scenario for when Fidel dies. Calling-tree diagrams. Bank accounts. Satellite phones. Fixers. Fast boats. The Cuba plan went on a Mediterranean cruise with my family. It's been to Barcelona, Rome, Vancouver, Disney World -- even down North Carolina's Nanthahala River -- safely tucked in a waterproof bag while my son and I rafted. Sad, huh? You've gotta understand that the Cadaver-in-Chief is our story and biggest challenge. The Cuban government will not give us a journalist's visa to report from there, claiming we are the exile's lapdogs, which is garbage. Meanwhile, some exiles call us Granma North. So we sneak reporters into Cuba to write about what's going on. We don't publish their bylines because it's dangerous, and you run the risk of getting caught and hassled by the authorities. While that's going on, we sit here at Mother Herald and prepare some more for the Big Day. We sit in meetings, long meetings, going over possible stories. Phrasing. Tone. Length. We got at least five different versions of Fidel's obit, pegged to the time of day or night he dies. We built a Web page for the big day -- dubbed the `Holy (bleep) page. We've got Castro plans in English and Spanish, as well as every conceivable photo of Fidel: young, old, fatigue-clad, pajama-clad, vegetative. We stare at his tinted eyebrows. You've seen them -- a hue possibly achieved only using abuela's Roux Fanci-Full rinse No. 52, Black Rage. So we keep training and waiting for him to die. You've heard that joke where Fidel outlives us all? Well, he's outlived journos involved in cobbling out the earliest Cuba plans. Others quit, retired or just figured they should enjoy life away from the Cuba plan. (On a positive note, Fidel was a great recruiting tool. ''Where would you rather be when Castro dies?'' It worked!) But we hang in there. WORD OF MOUTH On a recent night, the rumor mill kicked in full-throttle -- Fidel had had a heart attack. He'd had a stroke. He's in a coma. Fifo is dead. My friends call. My relatives call. ``Por fin se murió el hijo de la gran [prostituta]?'' ``Did the son of the great [prostitute] finally die?'' I've never understood the ''great'' part of that phrase. No, Fidel's apparently alive and in yet another track suit and slippers. The Cuban government releases a photo of Fidel, this time with Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is holding his hand. We stare at the photo. He looks no different from an abuelo you'd see at Hialeah Hospital wearing the silk pajamas his nietos got him at the Pembroke Lakes Mall -- except that this abuelo is a dictator. 'It's a friggin' wax dummy.'' ``No man, he's looking better.'' ``Please, it's Photoshopped! He's dead.'' FALSE ALARM The truth is we don't know squat. So we polish up the Cuba plan some more, send people to Cuba, call State Department sources who know even less than we do. At all times, we try to act super smart and prepared for Anders Gyllenhaal, our executive editor, who asks pointed questions. ``Is he dead?'' Not too long ago, Juan Tamayo, a long-suffering keeper of the Cuba plan, sat in a room with us to see if we needed to scale back our ambitious Cuba plan. Fidel had refused to suddenly die -- a wonderful scenario, in a journalistic sense, setting the stage for a fat Special Edition that could be on the streets within hours. You felt deflated. The kidney stone remained lodged. The old bastard would find a way to hurt even our single-copy sales on his way to Hades.

Every Picture Tells A Story, Don’t It?

Fidel’s revolution has always been about images. The picture perfect dictatorship.

And that image has been successfully sold to the unsuspecting consumers in the market for a Utopia for half a century.

Fidel’s one and only talent has been to lie and sell slavery as revolutionary martyrdom-Patria o Muerte. He was able to tap into the Cuban unconscious and push all the right emotional buttons with symbols. The beards and crucifixes of the early revolution, the fatigues, four hour speeches, the Korda Che picture on t-shirts and cigars later and now the tracksuit and blog have all been part of the symbolic look of his revolution’s marketing campaign.

Castro’s 50 year propaganda campaign has managed to convince the world that even after 50 years Cuba is still undergoing a revolution that was over on Jan 8 1959. The world’s longest going out of business sale.

Ironically, this week that picture perfect dictatorship wasn’t exactly all that picture perfect thanks to a couple of pictures.

Fist off, Newspapers in Argentina and Venezuela as well as most of Miami were questioning the authenticity of the picture that showed the Argentine president next to a “rejuvenated” and some would say a fake Castro. Yawn.

But, I did show the high resolution digital photograph to a friend who uses photoshop and other software to legitimately “fix” photographs. I also told her the story of how a Cuban official “handed” the photo to the Argentine in public. When she finished laughing-she swore she wasn’t laughing at me and my Cuba obsession-she said that the high resolution digital image was that of a scan. So if someone took a digital photo, doctored it, printed it than scanned into a high resolution image, unless they were really bad at “photoshopping” the image, she couldn’t tell if it had been altered. And she said, what difference does it make, anyway?

OK, so it caused me the price of a latte to find out what I already knew.

The other not so perfect picture that caused a stir, especially on the island, according to Yoani Sanchez, was the Cuban Flag Picture in Granma, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party.

In it, the white star on the Cuban flag was black. Doesn’t sound like a big deal in a country that’s been stuck in 1959 since well, 1959. But it was. It was such a big deal, The next day Granma printed an explanation. A translated Yoani comments:

There are errors that have much greater symbolic weight than hundreds of successes. Evasive stars and readers who interpret their escape; Islands that live dependent on prophesies and superstitions; days to remember the national hero and flags that dare to show what so many people keep silent about.

And all while the substitute dictator, who like the evasive star had left the scene of the crime and was in Moscow drinking Vodka, eating boar fat, (yuk), and nostalgically reliving the glory days of the USSR.

Every picture tells a story, don’t it?

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Even In Hindsight, Future Uncertain

Unlike others, I didn’t get a chance to “reflect” on the recent “changes” in the world this week.

Maybe that was a good thing because now I can do so with the benefit of hindsight.

But even looking back, things are a bit blurry and hard to make out in the distance. Hindsight is not always 20-20.

We started the week expecting the big announcement after the inauguration.

Did we get it?

I had a feeling that the latest rumors about the demise of Fidel, was the latest setup by the regime and that they were going to prop up the tracksuit tyrant for yet another gruesomely uncomfortable photo op. I figured they would have posed him next to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet because of her red pedigree, but in hindsight, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, made more sense because of her  bought and paid for- one $800k suitcase at a time-lack of pedigree.

The speculations all started with Chavez shooting of his mouth by delivering a eulogy for Fidel on his un-real(ity) TV show.

Chavez also compared Obama’s scent to that of Mr. Danger. And as repulsive and un-masculine as it is to compare the scents of your male enemies, it does give an insight into  Chavez’s very primal world. A world were where the big dogs mark their territory and he goes around sniffing the boundaries.

So, lo and behold, right after the inauguration, the brothers Castro decide to embrace President Obama, making Chavez the odd socialist new man out. Raúl wished President Obama luck and even said he “seemed like a good man.”

Then, President Fernandez de Kirchner, announces to the world that even Fidel is caught up in the Obamania sweeping the world and that he “believes” in Obama, all stenches aside. She also dispels the rumors, started by Chavez, that Fidel has one foot in the grave.

“Fidel” then gets reflexive in his blog and praises the “11^th” American President, saying that “no one could doubt the sincerity of his words” and that President Obama is “the living symbol of the American dream.”

 Talk about a stench. Something smells fishy-very fishy.

While I can see what Fidel sees in President Obama: a bit of himself, it is totally out of character for Fidel to talk about the American Dream.

Castro’s dream society is one where the individual is totally subjugated and the state, Castro, is omnipotent, His is the Nazi and Soviet dream, not the American Dream where individuals are free to pursue their own life, liberty and happiness. That is his nightmare, the  kryptonite to Che’s super new man, the holy water to his demon.

There was much talk of the announcement of Fidel’s death after President Obama’s inauguration.

I have no idea about Fidel’s health, but I doubt that Castro wrote this last reflection, where he embraces the embodiment of the American Dream.

Whoever wrote this reflection could be signaling the end of the revolution-which is like announcing the death of Fidel. Fidel is the revolution and the revolution was the antithesis to the American Dream.

In this online essay, Fidel has been cast aside as a an obstacle that “gets in the way of the comrades from the Party and the State as they are called to make constant decisions to tackle the objective difficulties derived from the world economic crisis.”

They could very well have just announced the end of an epic 50 years of “struggle” and “resistance” to an idea by embracing its embodiment-a truce in the “battle of ideas.” Or do they sense that America’s dream has been forever changed by its embodiment?

Time and hindsight will tell.

But it does seem that the regime has decided to embrace the embodiment of the American dream, President Obama, as the way to objectively tackle its economic difficulties. The embrace doesn’t have to be out of love, but in communist Cuba’s jineterismo tradition, out of necessity-American credit, American tourists and American dollars. This “reflection” attributed to Fidel and the full court press campaign against the embargo by the regime’s sympathizers, apologists, fellow travelers and all round useful idiots are definite clues to its goal.

This can only be achieved by burying Fidel.

I think they just might have.

 

 

… And the Devil says :

Do you believe in a God that satisfies
Do you believe in a God that opens eyes
Do you believe in a God that tells you lies
Or do you believe in me?

Do you believe in a God that brings you down
Do you believe in a God that wears a crown
Do you believe in a God that makes you bow
Or do you believe in me?



..the leap of faith...

An Arm, A Leg And A…

Freedom is expensive.

Historically, it has been literarily been paid for with blood.

Some would give an arm and a leg to be free and have.

And some men in Cuba are willing to part with a piece of something that’s very dear and near to them in order to have the opportunity to join a very exclusive club and leave Castro’s dungeon.

From the Wall Street Journal:

…
Like many young Cubans, 23-year-old Yosniel Castro wants an opportunity to leave this Communist-ruled island for a better life. Unlike many of his peers, he may have found a way out: Judaism.
…
The journey from Havana to Jerusalem, however, isn't easy. The process of converting to Judaism takes years and includes being approved by a council of elders at the synagogue and then an ordained rabbi. Since Cuba has none, usually converts have to wait for a visiting rabbi from Israel, Argentina or Chile. Last but not least, male converts have to submit to a ritual circumcision. In 2007, dozens of adult Cuban men underwent circumcision as part of their conversion process.
…
Since 1992, Bet Shalom has had a rotating troupe of mentors from Argentina, often rabbinical students, who usually commit to a two-year stint, instructing younger members of the congregation as well as conversos. The latest mentor, Fernando Lapiduz, hails from Rosario, in Argentina's grain belt.

.
In 2007, his first year in Havana, Mr. Lapiduz converted 71 Jews, including nearly two dozen adult men. They were required to submit to ritual circumcision by an ordained mohel whom Mr. Lapiduz imported from Argentina. "He did them all in one week," says Mr. Lapiduz proudly.

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Mr. Zabicki was lucky -- he was circumcised in Mexico a week after his birth. "For those older guys...Well, it was a pretty complicated operation," he says with a grimace.

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A complicated operation and an ironic situation to say the least.

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While Castro’s role model, Hitler, was persecuting, incarcerating and slaughtering Jews in Europe, many Jews either converted to or pretended to be Christian in order to escape the his concentration camps.

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And now in Cuba people convert to Judaism in order to escape Castro’s island concentration camp.

Some Socialists Are Better Than Others

I’ve got a wound in my soul. It’s called Elian.

I know its never going to heal, but it doesn’t hurt as much as when I was injured.

Elian was every Cuban. We were all a scared refugee at some point saved from the jaws of the sharks. Some figuratively, others all too literally.

I’m glad they didn’t throw me back into the shark tank, but would they have? Would they have been that blind, that cruel?

Obviously yes.

When the people, the system, the society you look up to let you down by doing something immoral it hurts, especially if they hurt a child in the process.

The mantra back in ‘00 was that “the boy belonged with his father.”

No argument, no explanation, no anecdote, no picture, no nothing could convince some people that to send a child back to some parents was child abuse. It was my hatred of Fidel blinding me. I could not see.

Indoctrinating a child into a cult of hate, lies and immorality even with their parent’s consent doesn’t make it right. It is still child abuse. Especially in a totalitarian country where everyone belongs to the state and Papa Fidel has parental rights over all the children, their parents and their pet dogs. Even in the child-welfare community where I worked at the time, this logic was rejected in favor of the “the boy belongs with his father” bumper sticker rationale.

So now I read that Adolf Hitler, the birthday cake boy from Jersey, has been taken away from his neo-nazi parents by the State. It seems that naming a child Adolph Hitler is considered child abuse or is it the environment of hate that the parents are instilling in this child that’s considered child abuse by the Garden State?

Now I’m confused. I thought children belonged with their parents.

Maybe Cuban children are to be measured by a different yardstick than the lily white supremacists?

What’s also troubling is that no ShopRite bakery employee would have batted an eyelash if it had been a birthday cake for a kid named Che or Fidel Castro or Mao Zedung or Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin. Much less would NJ’s DYFS have taken any child named after a communist away from their parents because of the environment of hate that the children may be exposed to in a communist household could be considered child abuse.

The same crowd that defends socialism and the communist murderers who have been responsible for the deaths of 100,000,000 people in socialist states, have turned on one of their own: Adolph Hitler.

Hitler is the pariah even though his body count is considerably less than Stalin’s or Mao’s. Nazis, you see, are far right, the opposite of a communist-or so they would have you believe.

But Hitler was one of them, a socialist. "Nazi" was an abbreviation for "der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei —the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Clearly in Nazi Germany, the individual interests were subjugated for the common good and Hitler and his thugs ran the German economy by deciding what would be produced at what price, etc. In a word: Socialism.

I guess some socialists are better than others.

The Rerun

The show is about to start.

The rerun.

They should call this movie Déjà vu … They should call this movie Déjà vu … They should call this movie Déjà vu …


They’re setting the stage and props, going over security. You know, the usual.

Fidel’s demise is the talk of the media. And yet it seems that in the place that would welcome that news the most the news, Miami, it’s being received with a shrug and a smile. And as much as the media would like to see Cuban youths banging on pots on the street, by chumming the waters, it just doesn’t seem to be happening.

My kids will probably celebrate Fidel’s death because they think that it will probably mark the end of the dinner time lectures on the evils of Fidel, communism, the left and baggy pants. Yes, baggy pants are a communist plot.

Dr. Mario thinks that they might make the announcement on the 20th to compete with Obama.

I think that once Chilean President Bachalet arrives in Cuba, she will get her chance to kiss Castro’s colostomy bag in front of the cameras. And the regime will have fooled those gusanos in Miami on last time.

But that’s a rerun too. And the emotional response the second or third time you see the movie isn’t the same.

And I've seen this movie before.

Fading

Apparently Fidel Castro hasn’t reflected on anything since December 15. And he hasn’t been reflected in a camera lens for even longer.

And not too many people have noticed.

I think if Hugo Chavez hadn’t opened his mouth about the world never being able to see Fidel walking around the countryside in his uniform again, no one would have really noticed.

I certainly didn’t. I did find it odd that his half brother Raúl was traveling around Latin America for the first time since he took over and there weren’t any comments from the colostomy gallery.

But now the speculation about his health and mortality are staring up again.

It’s amazing to see how much Fidel’s star has faded since he took ill.

Unlike his pal Che, who died young, his star burning out fast and bright, Fidel’s is fading.

Which of course reminds of……

My my, hey hey

Rock and roll is here to stay

It's better to burn out

Than to fade away

My my, hey hey.

Out of the blue and into the black

They give you this,

but you pay for that

And once you're gone,

you can never come back

When you're out of the blue

and into the black.

The king is gone but he's not forgotten

This is the story of a johnny rotten

It's better to burn out than it is to rust

The king is gone but he's not forgotten.

Hey hey, my my

Rock and roll can never die

There's more to the picture

Than meets the eye.

Hey hey, my my.

I had a few good head scratchers last week. No, no tengo piojos.

Cubans are now allowed to build shelters to protect themselves from the elements.

Now, if I were a cynic, I would say that what is really going on here is that the regime sees a money making opportunity. They can take all the construction material donations sent in from foreign countries after the hurricanes and sell them to Cubans at Castro Depot who will pay for them with the $300 a month they get from tia Cuca in Hialeah now and the even more they will get later when President Obama opens up the remittance faucet, as promised, once he takes office.

Or I could say that the regime has finally come to grips with the abject failure of their policies and are giving up trying to provide housing for the Cuban people-as if they ever intended to.

Or I could say that all that building “your little home with whatever you can” is just going to exacerbate Cuba’s third world status by turning it into one big giant shanty town.

But that’s not the kind of guy I am. I’m not that deep.

What I can’t get past is how the media reports the news without admitting just how enslaved Cubans are.

Not only that, they make it sound like allowing humans to build a structure to shelter themselves from the elements with their own money is some kind of grandiose gesture of magnanimous compassion by Generalissimo Raúl Castro!

Revolt

So I had a pretty hectic week and though I couldn’t update the blog, I was able to keep up with the “50th Anniversary” of the Revolution through news alert and Babalú.

At what point is a revolution over, anyway? Once you establish a new “order” the revolution is done-over. But they don’t celebrate that moment in Cuba, they celebrate a perpetual revolution that has struggled for 50 years to establish a new order and still hasn’t. I guess because they’re still revolting and according to Generalisimo Raúl they plan to continue revolting for at least another 50 years. Are they revolting against themselves or just revolting for the sake of revolt? I would argue that they are celebrating a perpetual failure, and although it sounds like I may be nit picking the semantics, a matter of linguistics, that is how they win the argument by dictating the words.

At the stroke of midnight every year, I usually revolt everyone by saying “another year down the tubes”. I say that because of the revolt in Cuba in 1959. This year I said “50 years down the tubes” bracing myself for the barrage of revolting hoopla, celebrations and parades.

Surprisingly, the celebrations on the island were pretty moot even by revolting revolutionary standards. I was more like a wake where nobody really liked the stiff. Let us pray.

The international free press, though, had to play homage to the revolting mythical barbudos who brought free education and healthcare to an island, that as they tell it, had one hospital, two schools, a million casinos and a million and one brothels-all run by mobsters and about 250 rich guys, who by the looks of it, owned about 500 ’57 Chevys apiece. That’s why it has taken 50 years to teach everyone how to read and write and set up a state-run HMO-that, and the embargo.

In next fifty years of revolt we will probably see the reintroduction of toilet paper into Cuban society.

Talk about fifty years down the tubes!

Miami 2009*

So last night, or rather early this morning, I was walking home from a neighbor's house and there were a few house parties still going on.

From somewhere in the dark, came an old melody that made us feel alright-an old Billy Joel song I hadn’t heard in years…

It was the song about the lights going out on Broadway. Only, I knew that’s not the name of the song. We knew it had a name that had nothing to do with the lyrics but couldn’t think of it.

I remembered to look it up tonight (What did we ever do before Google?).The name of the song is Miami 2017. That’s only a few miles and 8 years away.

And so here’s the last stanza Miami 2017-with an asterisk like Happy New Year* because it reminds me of Cuba and because I changed one of the words,

Miami 2017*

...You know those lights were bright on El Malecon
That was so many years ago
Before we all lived here in Florida
Before the Mafia took over Mexico
There are not many who rememberT
hey say a handful still survive
To tell the world about
The way the lights went out
And keep the memory alive...

Billy Singing in concert with great pictures of The City:

Embargo Schmargo

The chorus is deafening and in surround sound.

End the Embargo. Stop isolating Cuba. Now!

Well, on January 21.

The basic thrust of the end the embargo argument is that it hasn’t worked and that flooding the island with tourists and dollars will bring about freedom.

You see, according to this theory, the Cubans on the island are too stupid and brainwashed to know what freedom is. Their little Hispanic third world minds cannot understand such an advanced abstract concept. All the lives lost by Cubans either trying to achieve personal or national freedom must have been coincidences.

Material things like hard currency, fancy personal electronics and designer clothes- those are the kind of things that Cubans can understand and once they are exposed to these things through contact with Americans tourists who are visiting the land that the 20th century forgot so they can witness some primitives eek out an existence in quaint misery or take advantage of dark skinned, half starved teenager, they will demand them and the regime will crumble like a 50 year old fortune cookie.

Please!

I propose, that maybe, Cubans on the island, since they don’t have freedom, are the ones that actually understand and cherish a concept that is an abstract idea to those that have never, thank God, had to do with out it- to those that think that freedom is freedom to choose between Merlot and Pinot Noir, between a regular latte or a decaf latte or which island to get wasted on.

The “embargo” is not responsible with the suffering and the poverty that the Cuban people have been forced to endure. The TOTALITARIAN Castro regime is. The Castros are evil. They keep the Cubans hungry and destitute in order to control them.

Giving the regime credit and funds will only allow them to buy more up to date repression gear at the Tyrants Я Us mega store.

What is wrong in Cuba isn’t the Cuban people it is the regime. You don’t need to expose Cubans to anything in order for them to raise their social awareness. They know exactly what they are missing

When the regime in South Africa was broken, the world came together to choke that regime out of existence.

So why is it that when it comes to Cuba, that proven approach isn’t replicated?

Any tyranny is a minority rule, like South Africa had.

In Cuba’s case, however, its leader is world-renown for surviving ten US presidents while being an annoying thorn on their side. Because of this, he is idolized and revered by the international left. And so Cuba’s Anti-Yankee revolution must be preserved at all costs-even if the price is 50 more years of Cuban sweat, blood and tears.

And that’s just not me ranting, it’s exactly Raúl Castro has responded to his big brother’s statement that Cuba “could” talk to a President Obama and the ensuing orgasmic echoes of approval from all parts of the supposedly civilized world.

"we have learned to resist for half a century, and we are prepared to fight for Eanother half century."

That means in the Cuban Regime’s Newspeak that they will continue to hold the Cuban people hostage for as long as they are in power. The Regime isn’t interested in improving the lives of the Cuban people, but only in imposing its will, by force, on the Cuban people for as long as possible.

The only thing that easing the embargo and cozying up to the Cuban tyranny is going to accomplish is to perpetuate the oppression and violation of Human Rights for at least another generation.

.

Oh MY!

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My bud, TEP, with another perpective:

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Tomás Estrada-Palma said...

The embargo is a moot point if you have no money. Castro uses "embargo" as an excuse and will do anything to keep it in place. Exiles fear dropping the embargo will save the regime and argue that it will have to mean taxpayer backed credit for Castro.

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It doesn't have to be that way. Make a grand announcement that the embargo is lifted but no credit will be available to the regime until all debt is paid by the thieves in power. Here would be the results:

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1. There is no credit available for honest individuals outside of Cuba.

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2. Castro would lose the last leg keeping him standing - that it is the embargo making Cuba poor.

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3. Castro has no cash and could not buy one penny more than he already buys right now under the embargo. What kind of embargo allows food and medicine? With that kind of thinking we'd still be fighting the Trojan War.

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4. Cuba has very little to sell and that would be exacerbated by the worldwide commodity price deflation. Their commie production model is toast in this market loaded with stuff nobody is buying now anyway.

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Unfortunately, only Castro and Tomas Estrada-Palma understand we are in an information war. If you think you are a good information warrior ask yourself this:

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Have you ever said "I don't care what people think. I say the embargo stays." If you have you are shooting information arrows while Castro is lobbing information grenades into our front lines.

The Cuban "Race"

I remember sitting in Ms. Ryman’s homeroom in Union Hill High School one morning and having to fill out some kind of a form that asked what race I was. One race was white, another black, another “Hispanic” and so on.

That day, I realized that we Cubans were no longer white. All of us Cubans complained that just because we spoke Spanish, it didn’t mean that we weren’t white. Some of us where some of us weren’t, but “Hispanic” wasn’t a race, it was a language. Whatever. Cuban became my race that day. The best story that day was the confusion on the teachers face when a Chinese Cuban asked what she should put down.

So a few days ago, I get an e-mail from an Obamaniac acquaintance about an article in The Miami Herald by a Cuban author, Dr. Carlos Moore who believes that the Cuban regime is quaking in its boots because the newly elected President of the United States is black.

Dr. Carlos Moore-Cuban

Not only that, but when Mr. Obama makes good on rescinding the Bush restrictions on travel and remittances, the pressure put on the regime by the now black population, might just bring the regime crumbling down.

Now, I’m not going to argue with Dr. Moore that blacks in Cuba have it worst that the whites. I have been pointing that out for years. And one can’t argue that people of color throughout the world have been empowered by Obama’s election either. They have.

But will take issue with some of his points, Cuban to Cuban.

For example, Dr. Moore claims that the worst problem of the revolution is racism.

The bottom line is that racism is Cuba's most intractable problem.

That’s funny, I was under the impression that the worst problem Cuban have is that they're being opressed by a totalitarian regime. Would things be any better if the darker Cubans were being repressed just as bad as lighter Cubans? Forget that Cuba has been stuck in the fifties for fifty years. In America, where blacks weren’t even allowed to sit alongside of whites in the restaurants in some areas, a non white has been elected president. Why? Because of democracy.

Had Cuba remained a democratic republic like it was before Batista took it over, who knows what kind of advances in terms of race, it would have achieved. Contrary to Dr. Moore’s assertions, Cuba was not “segregated”

And it really serves no purpose to decry the historical exiles as bigots:

Many, especially the younger generation, have forsaken the racial bigotry of their parents and evinced a growing awareness that the predominantly white face (85 percent) of the Cuban-American community is a political liability in a Cuba that is predominantly black.

I have never in the many years I have been exiled heard any Cuban exile blame blacks for the revolution’s success or claim that the only reason that the regime is still in power is because it has the support of the majority of the non-white population.

Is it then fair to equate the Miami Cubans with Castro? Castro has had TOTAL control over Cuban society for 50 years. The prejudices that Cubans may have had 50 years have no bearing on reality today or are they the cause of the suffering of non-white Cubans under Fidel.

I really think that in his article, Dr.Moore, does a disservice to “our” race by throwing all exiles under the bus as “bigots”

Coño.

Dr. Moore should remember that here in the US none of us are considered white. If the post Obama America can move into a post racial era, it should be a cinch for us Cubans to do the same, even he could do it.

That said, it is important for Dr. Moore to continue to educate black America as to the economic apartheid and racism that the majority of non-white Cubans are forced to endure in addition to the run of the mill totalitarian oppression.

It is important to point out Fidel Castro’s bigotry, (as opposed to the prejudices of the 1950’s Cuban society), to all the black Americans who see Fidel as a sympathetic figure and his revolution as a model for social equality.

It is also important to tell the world that 85% of the incarcerated men in Cuba are not white. And although these men are considered common criminals, the economic conditions that caused them to turn to a life a crime to survive are political and caused by an illegitimate, corrupt and incompetent regime.

And it is imperative that blacks in America understand that many of the leading, bravest and most oppressed dissidents are what in America would be considered black, but are Cuban.

With respected black scholars like Dr. Moore telling the truth about Castro’s revolution, with the help of American civil rights leaders, like the Reverend Al Sharpton who is now advocating for black Cuban prisoners of conscience like Dr. Biscet, Castro and his thugs will lose a strong base of support within the USA-black America.

If their efforts are reinforced by President Obama the mask of the Cuban revolution’s racial equality might finally be taken off-once and for all.

Truthfully, I was ready to dismiss Dr. Moore’s theory asm well, racist, but in reading another article by non other than Guillermo Fariñas Hernández entitled “Thankful for Obama’s Arrival”, I had to reassess my position.

Guillermo Fariñas Hernández - Cuban

According to Fariñas, since Obama was elected, the old myth that Cuba was the model for a post racist society and the US was inherently a racist country, has been shattered. This has forced the regime to revisit the economic apartheid that kept Cuban blacks from getting the better jobs-those with access to hard currency-and they have decreed that 40% of the employees that work in the hard currency stores, the “shoppings”, be non-whites.

Fariñas claims that the non-whites know that they don’t owe their jobs to the revolution, but to President-Elect Obama.

Amazing!

Lighting A Candle...

...To The Ones We Can't Hold A Candle To.


I haven’t posted anything in a long time.

I haven’t really had anything to say, or, better said, I haven’t had anything to say that I thought anyone would want to read.

Not that this is worth reading or anything, but I thought I’d try something more personal to get back into the swing of things…

…Today is Saint Barbara’s feast day- a Cuban holiday of sorts.

I was going to light a candle and wait till midnight. The Saint Barbara vigil-“esperar a Santa Bárbara.”

I was sitting in the dark thinking about this Cuban custom and about the many December 3rds in my past when I had gone to parties to “wait for Saint Barbara.”

At one point in my life, I thought the tradition was primitive, pagan and so third world religiously superstitious. Now, it has become a cultured and a rich, sophisticated Cuban eccentricity. The Cuban people have progressed a lot in twenty years.

Anyway, I was sitting there thinking about the Cuban devotion to this Christian martyr and why the attraction.

I don’t know if I was asleep or dozing off or what, but I had a weird stream of consciousness flowing.

I was looking at the red Santa Bárbara velón that we had bought to use as a hurricane candle. Now, at the risk of being accused of “nada mas acordarme de Santa Bárbara cuando truena,” (only thinking of Saint Barabara when it thunders- a Cardinal Cuban Sin), there IS no better time to light a candle to Santa Bárbara then when you’re in the middle of a thunderstorm or hurricane and the power goes out. A modern mixture of practicality and third world religious superstitiousness and rich cultural eccentricity.

The candle was red- Santa Bárbara’s color. I thought of Cuban women wearing red on Dec. 4th. Then, came the association of red with communism and why I don’t like red.

And so in the cool, quiet dark as I lingered between reality and a dream, the red candle became Cuba and the tower at the foot of the virgin was “El morro.”

Saint Barbara was the captive Cuba, isolated from the rest of the world, tortured by a tyrannical father because she had chosen the truth and the light over pagan Godlessness.

Santa Bárbara, rebellious, had miraculously escaped the tower where her father locked her up for her beliefs just like many Cubans who were locked up in La Cabaña, next to the tower of El Morro. And she was persecuted and martyred for intransigently clinging to her principles.

And as I drifted further from reality, Santa Bárbara was there, sword in hand, only she had Yoani Sanchez’s face with her haunting dark eyes and Cuban Mona Lisa smile and she stood in front of El Morro with a tear running down her face.

I suddenly was startled back to the reality I had drifted from by my nodding head, and for a fleeting instant it was all so crystal clear- Santa Bárbara, Cuba and our devotion to red clad, sword wielding rebels. It was all so crystal clear until I drifted off again.

Like the Apostles in the garden of Gethsemane, I had been too weak to stay awake and light the candle for Santa Bárbara and Cuba and Yoani and the many that have been martyred for their beliefs-those that I could never hold a candle to.

This morning, imprisoned in three dimensions, my mind cannot make the connections and associations and the once crystal clear revelation is more like a foggy hallucination. But, it is clear that I should light that candle in admiration.

Coincidently, while looking for a picture of Santa Bárbara to go along with this meditation, I found I wasn’t the only son of a son of a sailor who’s mind had associated Santa Bárbara with freedom, exile…and a salty piece of land.




A Salty Piece Of Land ------Jimmy Buffett

I was listening for answers
That I could not really hear
When the words of a wise old Indian
Put a conch shell to my ear

And I took off for the ocean
I was searching for the coast
Painting pictures of my vision
With the words from grandma ghost

Hiding from the dragons
Riding for the sea
Singing ballads from my childhood
“A pirate’s life for me”

Survivors seem to function best
When peril is at hand
With a song of the ocean
Meets a salty piece of land

I was force-fed my religion
But I somehow saved my smile
Tapped into my instincts
As I headed to’ards exile

Cleopatra did not own a barge
But a schooner was her home
She has centuries of stories
And there’s wisdom in her bones

She was on a sacred mission
And she told me of a place
Where a man can hide forever
But never loose his face

So I saddled up my seahorse
With a fly-rod in my hand
I was not looking for salvation
Just a salty piece of land

Somedays Cayo Loco SHIMMERS
Like the stars up in the sky
And the seabirds they do touch and gos
As the world just tangos by

But there are times when she is hidden
Beneath the wild and crashing waves
And the patron saint of lightening
Keeps the sailors from their graves

Some say it is a blinding sword
Pointing out into the sea
While others say her guiding light
Leads to’ards eternity

Still I sit in contemplation
And I just don’t understand
This mysterious attraction
Of this salty piece of land

Still I search the constellations
And the tiny grains of sand
Where the song of the ocean
Meets the salty piece of land

Raul’s “Sing a Song”

My father always told me that it was easy being a communist, and the first thing you had to do was loose your shame.-“lo primero que se pierde es la vergüenza.”

When you have no shame, no principles, it’s easy to hate and to let the means justify the ends. Everything is relative in the Marxist philosophical heaven of dialectic materialism.

It is estimated, for example, that in Red China, the ends, absolute and total power, justified the means, the deaths of about 65,000,000 to 70,000,000 lives, give or take a few million, under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong.

That’s more deaths than are attributed to Stalin and Hitler combined!

Yet in Cuba, Mao Zedong is revered by the regime’s new leader, Raúl Castro.

While the “president” of China, Hu Jintao was visiting Havana, Raúl felt compelled to sing a song of praise and adulation to the Chinese mass murderer:

President Raul Castro was in such good spirits on Tuesday that he led 200 Chinese students learning Spanish at a Cuban school in an impromptu sing-along of a Chinese song about late China leader Mao Zedong.

He said he learned the song from a Chinese delegate at a youth rights conference in Austria in 1953.

"I don't have the memory that Fidel has, but I remember that song," he said.

Raúl can sing for his supper anytime he likes, but singing a song praising Chairman Mao is shameful.

Oh, that’s right communists have no shame. The only thing that matters is the millions that the Chinese are pouring into Cuba so that the Castro family can remain in power.

And yes, Raúl doesn’t seem to have as “the same memory” as Fidel, especially when it comes to Mao.

When the USSR and China had an ideological falling out, (probably on which was the best method to eradicate opposition, executions or starvation), Fidel, who knew where his bread was buttered and preferred Stalinism, sided with the USSR in the squabble.

Fidel began, like his Soviet masters, to openly criticize Mao’s policies. At one point, Fidel even accused Mao of murdering innocent people.

But, everything’s good now since the Chinese come bearing dollars and Fidel has never had had a problem with selling Cuba to the highest bidding tyranny.

Video of Raúl’s “sing a song” performance:

Maybe he’ll duet with singing tyrant Hugo Chavez and sing songs in praise of Hitler when he visits Venezuela on his first trip there.

Tremenda “sing a song” that would be.

Letting The Lying Corps Lie

The Cuban regime’s propaganda machine is working overtime these days.

The propaganda machine has always had two purposes. Internally, its role is to lie to the Cuban citizens. Externally, it lies to the world by marketing the “revolution” and its chief architect, Fidel. They have been very successful at both. Lying is to communists as hammers are to carpenters.

Right now the emphasis is being placed on the marketing.

They’re selling oil, tons of it. They’re not sure exactly where it is or if you can even get at it but they have lots. And for a fee, any country or company that wants to try their luck on the drill baby drill roulette can have a go at trying to find the coveted crude.

They’re also marketing a book by non other than Cuba’s blogger in chief, Fidel.

Yes.

The 81 year old, terminally ill, tracksuit clad, retired despot wrote a book about Columbia, “La Paz en Columbia”. Destroying Columbia has always been one of Fidel Castro’s obsessions. In fact, one of his first “revolutionary” acts was his participation in “El Bogotazo.” And ever since he took power he has been trying to export his revolutionary disease to the South American country which is finally on the verge of eradicating the progress destroying Castro-virus.

Talk about ghost writing.

Talk about an unbelievable sub plot.

The regime is selling a story that an 82 yr. old, terminally ill man who is reported to have undergone almost a dozen intestinal surgeries, who is too weak to appear in public and who, in his last interview, could not keep a train of thought, even though the interview was highly edited, (In the middle of the interview he starts to talk about Einstein and the theory of relativity and interrupts himself and says: “he was born in Germany, you know”), spent 400 hours penning the 259 page book. Amazing! Not only that, he also penned hundreds of “reflections” too. (in his spare time, between changing the colostomy bag, hurricane forecasting and bossing his little brother around.)

But it gets better. The book markets the idea that Castro and his regime are the good guys in Columbia’s struggle to fight the armed Marxist-narco-trafficking insurgency that has devastated Columbian society for nearly 50 years. You see, Castro in the book tells of his regime’s efforts in bringing about a political solution to the conflict.

That’s rich. Castro exports his Marxist revolution to democratic Columbia, he trains and arms the rebels in a guerrilla war that spans decades and kills thousands. Then, when it’s clear that the guerrillas will never win, Castro tries to force the Columbian government to negotiate and share power with a bunch of hostage taking, narco-trafficking, bomb throwing communist criminals and sink Columbia by using its democratic institutions, like he did Venezuela, against them. And he’s the good guy. Even more amazing!

If the regime can sell that one, well, then they can sell just about anything, like the idea that Cuba is a worker’s paradise or a vast underwater oil field.

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Oh well. Never mind.

More on Barry O.’s Barrio Watch…

About a week late and about a trillion dollars short, an American politician has called President –Elect Obama’s “plan” for a National Civilian Security Force” Marxist. No kidding.

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may—may not, I hope not—but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Rep. Broun, having never lived in a Marxist totalitarian dictatorship, cannot quite put his finger on it, but something in his gut tells him that a “national civilian security force” sounds, well, un-American and he’s right.

Over at the conservative web-site Hot Air, Ed Morissey contends that Rep. Broun’s statement hails the onset of ODS, Obama Derangement Syndrome. He also finds the Obama July 3, comments, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives 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,” rather innocuous:

In the context of Obama’s remarks above, though, he fairly clearly meant to at least include a volunteer force in outreach within and outside the US as some sort of Department of Peace-like indirect boost to national security…

…Nothing in that speech hints at a Gestapo-like organization at all.

Rep Broun’s remarks are likened to “hyperbole:”

If we plan to offer a rational alternative to the coming debacle of the next two years, then we’d better stick to facts and eschew hyperbole. We need to oppose the reality of the radical agenda proposed by Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress, not fantasies spun out of context-free snippets of speeches. The more critics invoke Hitler and Stalin instead of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson, the better the reality of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will seem in 2010.

Ok. Facts. I like Facts. I like jokes better: a Department of Peace?!? Very funny. We can call it the Ministry of Peace, the “minipeace” for short,-it has a certain familiar ring to it, no?

I agree with Rep. Broun that Obama’s proposal for a Civilian National Security Force has a Marxist ring to it, though I disagree with him that it will be Gestapo-like. You see, I had the misfortune of experiencing a “civilian national security force” in the flesh in Cuba. For the same reason, I also disagree with Morissey’s dismissal of the proposal as harmless.

The first Marxist red flags (hehehe...get it? red flags?) tactics can be found in the “official” script of the candidate Senator Obama’s speech on July 3. Back in July, I thought I had heard the Senator call for the civilian force in an audio of the speech and it made the hairs in the back of my neck stand at attention because of my Post Castro Stress Syndrome. I went to the Obama campaign website to make sure that I heard what I thought I heard and could not find the passage. Not thinking I was hearing things, I kept searching and thankfully, some intrepid citizens had preserved the given speech on a Youtube video. After the initial relief that I still had most of my marbles, I was shocked that the campaign had not included the potentially controversial passage in the “official” transcript. It seems like the Obama campaign already had a Department of Truth to go along with its proposed Department of Peace. The fact that the campaign tried to hide the words of the then presidential candidate by omitting them from the official transcript reeks of the kind of truth manipulation that occurs in Marxist regimes.

Obama, given his background as a community organizer, probably envisions a community based “security force”

Now, for folks that think like Senator Obama, National Security is a totally different thing than it is for folks with a more conservative mind set. Most lefties I know believe that the reason that America is being attacked by terrorists is because of our misguided and failed foreign policies. They keep telling me that the CIA created Bin Laden and that Saddam’s Iraq was our “client state.” They also argue that Iran had been our client state back in the days of the Shah and before the Islamic Revolution and that our backing of the despotic Shah caused the revolution and the ensuing hatred for America. They also tell me that our allegiance to Israel causes more problems than it is worth and that America’s insistence in holding despots to our standards of liberty and progress is antagonistic and counterproductive because it makes the rest of the world not “like” us. Evil manifests itself in the world not because it is inherently evil but because America causes it. It’s the Flip Wilson doctrine; the devil, America, The Great Satan, makes them do it.

Since these folks on the left are of the belief that America’s actions cause the security threats in the first place, In order for a civilian national security force to protect America, it has to change America so that it doesn’t offend any potential enemies out there and cause them to do evil things and so they “like” us. It also has to protect America from those who see the world in judgmental black and white and not in the enlightened relative shades of gray that the liberals do. It’s these people that believe in the antiquated notions of good and evil, right and wrong, that get us into these “security” messes in the first place.

You can see how the civilian national security force can morph and take on a different more ominous role. In order to protect America from these backward thinking, un-nuanced black and white type of folks, they would help protect the liberal ideals that would usher in a changed and transformed America.

They would “organize” the community in order to “educate” the citizenry into thinking less about themselves and more about the community, less about their individual happiness and more about collective purposes. What’s more secure than having everyone pull together as team towards a common goal?

Meetings at homes would be organized, community projects would be planned, neighborhood night watches would be instituted, T-shirts and hats would be distributed, programs for children would be started, workplace security details would be proposed.

These programs would, of course, all be coordinated through a national network funded by the Federal government with stipends, incentives and perks to the members of the “civilian national security force.” Perhaps even a new web-based group would be started.

The new community organization would then be responsible form promoting a mission and accomplishing a vision through different programs designed to keep people employed and busy-protecting an ideology and a cult of personality.

There would be voter registration and education drives along with massive get out the vote drives.

Those that are not interested in going to the meetings or volunteering or put posters up their homes would be shunned, ostracized, ridiculed and watched as potential “security” risks.

This is all very easy to organize when you have millions of “followers” who see a politician as the solution to all their problems and the answer to all their questions.

The "civilian security force" could be easily merged into existing non-profits and programs. No one would have to carry a gun or break your down in the middle of the night to make you comply with their programs. Their results are achieved much more subtly, by intimidation and peer pressure. You would not need thugs armed with night sticks or rifles to persuade you to tow the party line. But you would get neighborhood snitches with whistles, notepads and cell phones.
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I have seen this “civilian national security force” at work. In Cuba, they call it the CDR, Committees in Defense of the Revolution, and I know the kind of pressure that these kinds of organizations can put on citizens. They don’t have guns like the Gestapo, they just have a bunch of radical and committed individuals who have been organized to serve as the eyes and ears of the government and protect an ideology. I also know the kind of people that are attracted to it.

I know it sounds absurd and paranoid to the uninitiated, but it is not. And I’m not saying that it is going to happen in America, but I am saying that the idea of “civilian national security force” could have dangerous repercussions and detrimental effects on our constitutional rights, or “negative liberties” as our new president thinks of them.

And for those of you who say it cannot ever happen here, take a look at a homeowner's association. If people will agree to give up some of their property rights and freedom of expression as a trade off for some security, it is possible.

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UPDATE:

OK. So it's even a little more authoritarian than I thought. In Cuba, being a regime snitch is encouraged, but not compulsory. The Obama plan, according to Rahm Emmanuel, the incoming chief of staff, calls for a mandatory 3 month "Universal Civil Defense Training".

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UPDATE2:

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It seems I underestimated the Internet component of Obama's organizing plan. This article tells on how the Obama campaign plans to pioneer organizing the Presidents followers by using its vast e-mail phonebook to "convert his army of online activists into a viral lobbying and communications machine."

Stock Up On Toilet Paper ... (por si las moscas)

Wow. So like Obama kicked some Republican butt.

The left has entrenched itself into power in America.

The White House is about to get a tenant-a superhero- who is a deliberate stranger and whose secret identity has been protected from the public by a media that has willfully disregarded the powers entrusted to them by the Constitution- Their “negative liberties” in Barackspeak.

And so, I stay up real late to listen to the speeches. (Yawn). It occurs to me that McCain might have been working on this concession speech since March. The Caribou Barbie was there. She seemed to be holding back tears, like a woman who just found out her husband has been cheating on her and will not give him the satisfaction of crying in front of him. She doesn’t like to loose, this lady. She’s grown on me.

Finally, the President-elect of the United States comes out for his coronation speech. I’m listening intently for the Marxist code words that he tends to throw out in his speeches. I’m waiting for him to lay out his plans for a collective utopia and for the upcoming formation of his national civilian security force.

None of that, though, just the same ol’ “America is the best country on Earth so let’s change it” speech with some contrived “samplings” of Lincoln and King, sob stories and bumper sticker slogans -but in a new hopeful and changeful tone.

The only potentially collectivist words were in this passage:

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.

And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

I wonder if Peggy Joseph from South Florida was aware that President Obama, rather than write her a monthly check so she doesn’t have to worry about her mortgage and filling her gas tank, was expecting her to “work harder and look after not only after ourselves but each other” “with a new spirit of service and sacrifice.” In Barackspeak, that basically means that Peggy now gets to worry about her neighbor’s mortgage and gas tank as well. I bet she never thought that this day would ever happen, either.

I have no idea how far President Obama is willing to act on his obvious socialist instincts.
But, stock up on toilet paper just in case.

Socialist countries are notorious for toilet paper shortages. Toilet paper is practically non-existent in Cuba and its considered a luxury. Maybe Obama will institute a luxury "sin" tax on toilet paper. That's called "a Florio" after a New Jersey Governor who did started to tax toilet paper (and raised everything else) in the 80's and wound up getting kicked out of office.

Ecclesiastical "Negative Liberties?"

Barack Obama on the Issues of Importance to Catholics - Upload a Document to Scribd