Fish Eyes
They are there to watch and record us. Dozens, hundreds of cameras scattered throughout the city, as if it were not enough that there are vans filled with police, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) on every block, and the security forces in their checked shirts. They have been installed with an efficiency rarely seen in the execution of any project of public benefit. Their sophisticated structure is the same on streets where half the houses are on the verge of falling down, as in the modern tourist enclaves and on the sumptuous Fifth Avenue. They capture those who traffic in beef, sell drugs, or steal a gold chain; but they also monitor those who don’t keep guns under their beds, but rather opinions in their heads.
When these “fish eyes” began to be installed everywhere, they generated a sense of paralysis among Havanans. I remember looking for blind spots where the crystal globes couldn’t see me. Then I relaxed a little and learned to live with them, though I still felt the itch on the back of my neck of a person who knows they are being observed. Among the speculations about these filming devices is one that they have face-detection programs – including a data base – that read anthropometric measurements. But comments of this kind may well belong to the fantasy catalog generated by everything new.
These public cameras – the embodiment of the Orwellian “telescreen” – have ushered in a new cinematography. Although they basically operate automatically, some hands have leaked their contents to the alternative information networks. Dozens of images are emerging from the police archives and circulating right now, by flash memory. Videos where we see ourselves committing crimes, surviving, stealing and rebelling. Minutes of police beatings, car crashes and images of prostitution between young boys and tourists twice their age. One is a complete and shocking snuff movie, which for weeks jumped from one screen to another, from cell phones to DVD players.
Without intending it, the police have given us the crudest testimony they could about our present reality. A succession of scenes that, no doubt, will be stored in the visual memory of this country.
Julio 3rd, 2010 at 09:33
And be it noted that he actually said ACCOUNT…
My fricken goodnes…and you want to be a voice of some imaginary “freedom-fighting” “revolutionary” Cuba libre crap?
Companero, you can only be a voice of crap.
That’s ALL you can be.
Guess why…
Julio 3rd, 2010 at 09:30
Post 67, it ALwWAYS amazes me how much nonsense can this poster come up with, given how little brain he has.
“Americans doesn’t count…”
I’ll skip the grammar, what to expect from an illiterate immigrant with a grudge from the last century?
Nothing.
But this poster goes further in showing of his absolute and overarching ignorance in the same statement!!!
America is NOT a country where you live, you dumbo!!
America is a continent. Cubans are Americans too. So are Mexicans, Colombians, Argentinians, etc.
So, contrary to your stupid statement, Americans actually DO COUNT.
As if you would actually be able to understand that…
Junio 30th, 2010 at 23:29
66Barbara Curbelo
Junio 30th, 2010 at 22:16
#65 - FREUD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Castrofascism has spents billions of dollars in the last 5-6 elections in Florida trying to get rid the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ileana Ross, same amount in New Jersey to take out Mel martinez, Albio Sires and the other cuban american in senate and congress……… the team that keeps the restriction in place…… it is very funny the way the opposers loses……… many time with 40-50% of diference………
Junio 30th, 2010 at 23:23
66Barbara Curbelo
Junio 30th, 2010 at 22:16
#65 - FREUD
“We don’t want!!!!!….. that’s it…..”
——
In a 2009 surbey, 59% of Cuban Americans favored lifting the travel ban.
70% of AMERICANS surveyed want the travel ban lifted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Americans doesn’t account in this fight…… the problem is not between castrofascism and Americans but between castrofascism and Cuban people….. so…….. the only numbers you can bring here are about Cuban Americans……. and you are right….. surveys showed such ciphers……. but everyone knows that surveys companies in this city works for special interests that make business with castrofascism……… so surveys can’t be accounts neither……. because…… surveys are tricky and this trickery is shown in a very funny way when it is time for Cuban Americans to elect congressman and senators……… always, always Cuban American votes by an overwhelming major the same group of politicians that works hard to keep restrictions in place…….. in democracy, the real survey is the voting, the elections……….. you can make a survey in Coral Ridge or Homestead and you will get as result 70% against the embargo….. because there lives Americans or Latin-Americans……… you can make a survey in Coral Gables or Hialeah and you will get 90% for embargo……. because there lives just Cubans……….. surveys can be manipulated in such way……. elections can not!!!!
Junio 30th, 2010 at 22:16
#65 - FREUD
“We don’t want!!!!!….. that’s it…..”
——
In a 2009 surbey, 59% of Cuban Americans favored lifting the travel ban.
70% of AMERICANS surveyed want the travel ban lifted.
But the majority doesn’t count when they don’t spouse your narrow-minded views
In the name of truth, justice, and the American way; you’d rather be the self-appointed voice for ALL Americans.
Junio 30th, 2010 at 21:26
64Barbara Curbelo
Junio 30th, 2010 at 11:36
#63 - Let Americans see for themselves. If Cuban-Americans go to Cuba daily, why can’t they?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We don’t want!!!!!….. that’s it…..
Junio 30th, 2010 at 11:36
#63 - Let Americans see for themselves. If Cuban-Americans go to Cuba daily, why can’t they?
Junio 28th, 2010 at 02:27
61Barbara Curbelo
Junio 27th, 2010 at 02:48
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, I know that about all issues I wrote the only one that interest you is the lifting of travel ban to americans…….. for you is not longer important is the tyrant is a fake antimperialist, for you is n longer important if castrofascim has delivered Cuba bit by bit to the empire this scrap simulated fight, for you is no longer important if castro is a hiden allied of the empire, etc, etc…… it is not important for you because anyway all these things are undeniable facts nowadays and you can’t do nothing to change it……… so now you recieve new orders:
- Agent culero, forget to talk now on about imperialism and commandant’s fight on empire…… now on you will be repetitive about lifting travel ban on americans……. don’t get our dear elite wrong….. we are not interested in trave ban lifting or embargo lifting but we have to give the impresion that we want it. Don’t worry about the possibility that americans get confused and lifts the embargo and ban for real, we always will take proper mesurements to avoid such a disgrace to accur; we will kill some children for example or get in jail 2 or 3 hundreds of oppositors or get in jail some americans or shut down unarmed civil plans. So, it never will happen, our beloved elite can’t afford to lose such a convenient friendly enemy. End of transmission.
Junio 27th, 2010 at 18:27
BARABA CULERADEFIDEL, you must be on drugs. American will be upset about how the Cuban Government has failed its own people. The falling buildings, pot hole line streets, Oxe carts on Public highways, flat bed trucks used to transport people as if cattle. Barbara you are a REGIME Apologist. The Cuban Government sponsors terrorism and the reason they don’t stamp passports. Why whould anyone support a nation that promotes Terrorism? The Cuban people are Nice, its the government that are manipulative PIGS.. Cuba is the HELL HOLE that it is cause of FIDEL.
Junio 27th, 2010 at 02:48
#60 - You are the one deathly afraid of the real facts, in the hopes that the anti-castro industry will continue to receive US tax dollars from politicians in the pockets of extremists in Miami.
When Americans get to travel to Cuba they will understand how their government squandered their tax dollars on stupidity, and denied them for 5 decades their constitutional right to travel there. They’ll see how sweet Cubans generally are, and what a nice deal they’ve got going for themselves, and with little stress to show for it.
Junio 27th, 2010 at 00:45
How can an impoverished country to fight “imperialism????……. Castro neither the Empire and neither the little castros in South America are unaware this paradox. They know they lie when declares themselves anti-imperialists, revolutionaries and a lot else false medals they hang on their necks with the applaud and complicity of scammers and useful fools. Castrofascism knows very well that to control the Cuban people has to maintain it at the border of the misery, regimen knows very well that maintaining a country in misery is not possible to fight any Empire. Their objective is not then to fight imperialism but control the own people in order to keep the power and get rich living of the anti-imperialism story while behind the scene get fixed secrets deals with Imperial executives or, better yet, with people that pays those Imperial executives. The Empire guess the game and decides play same game these ‘revolutionaries” scrap plays just because these scrap makes very easy for the Empire the task of controlling a whole continent with no need of firing a shoot or spent a cent by transforming castrofascism in a political fashion stream among all candidates to multimillionaire tyrant south of Bravo river. In this way this horde of traitors promises to the Empire a Continent at the border of absolute misery for the next 50 years with the control over Latin America’s destinies and richness this implies for the Empire that these scammers simulates to fight.
Anti castrofascism fighter wants, like the apostle J. Marti, “ to avoid, with Cuba’s independence and richness, that USA expands over our Latin American countries with that huge force…….”
Castrofascism followers wants dictatorships that impoverishes our countries in same way Cuba has been impoverished by castro so in such way can serve better to Empires interests. You know very well it is not possible to fight the Empire with poverty. That’s why you sing slogans and proclaims fidelity to a regimen that only can (maybe) give you a tip…. Empire looks at you and smile because it knows there are no better allies than you. However, to us, the Empire put us in jail, it watch us, repress us and get allied with the tyrant because Empire knows our dreams and goals are very inconvenient to its hemispheric hegemony.
That’s why we have all rights to call castrofascism and its followers, Empire’s lackeys!!!!!
Junio 27th, 2010 at 00:43
55Barbara Curbelo
Junio 24th, 2010 at 00:23
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not for repeating your lies time after time you will get readers to believe it….. you can repeat thousand times your fabules about mafia, brothels and sugar barons in Cuba precastrofacism but it will never hide facts about mass destruction, mass prostitution, mass monopolization, mass industrial enagenation, mass elite apropiation of Cuba’s richness, mass delivering of Cuba’s richness to international capital and capitalist caused by castrofascism.
Junio 27th, 2010 at 00:31
DAMIR
Sadly, the entire existence of some of my countrymen has been based upon lies. That is what they have done best, because they have no shame about anything; and because it has been lucrative. What can one say about people that live in denial about their own history, except that to them their history is scat? All they worry about is #1 - themselves; how much money or prestige, or revenge they can get.
Of-course they are angry!
How can they understand that some of the mansions in Havana are today educational centers, for instance? How can they understand that instead of many luxuries for a few, there are today clinics and universities in Cuba’s countryside?
How can they understand that there are 89 schools throughout the nation with just one student each, or that there are 200 schools with just 2 students each? How can they understand that mothers of the one child schools receive training, resources (including a computer), and a salary so that they can train their child in the remotest hills of the countryside.
When Batista ran off with more than $700 million from Cuba‘s National Bank, the poor in rural areas lived infested with tapeworms, without electricity or running water, without clinics or schools, and enduring great hardships. Poor people in cities, could never get from underneath the boot of some egotistical self-serving powerful businessman who expected them to go out and get votes on election day; and only then might they get a little work here or there to put food on the table.
Sometimes I actually think that some of them really believe that that Cuba never existed. I prefer to think that, than to think that they are so cynical and have learned so little in 5 decades.
Junio 26th, 2010 at 06:54
Hi John, good to see you around.
Barbara, post 55 how strange that a relentless poster of other people’s articles with no corelation to team Yoani’s posts whatsoever is asking you to comment on their messages…!!!!
And they have got absolutely nothing to say about team Yoani’s posts anyway. If they did, they would not need to steal articles from the internet to appear to be saying something smart.
But, when someone has to steal other people’s intellectual work, he or she is telling us a lot about themselves, don’t they?
: )
Junio 24th, 2010 at 05:37
Post 52, that was one rather stupid comment. Congratulations. Now you are officially in the company of other idiots around here.
Was it worth it…?
Junio 24th, 2010 at 00:23
#54
- FREUD -
“not a single argument to oppose the message delivered by Yoani…..“
Are you serious? What message of Yoani’s,
That somehow the best prospect for the future lies in an abstract treasure hunt through the ignominious past of brothels, mafia run casinos, sugar barons, foreign bankers, industry, and silly “novelas“? Not to mention her inept attempt to shock the conscience of some of the most monitored people on planet earth, albeit poor translations; with footage that makes our police forces look like Kashmir paramilitaries in comparison; or her conspicuous lack of decorum in a disgraceful attempt to dissuade us about Marti’s eminence of character, and indispensable contribution in defining what is and what is not Cuban independence.
Junio 23rd, 2010 at 21:48
53Barbara Curbelo
Junio 23rd, 2010 at 16:12
#50
“…you believe the world atittude on Sudafrica regime was wrong???”
—
Do you believe in the US attitude toward First Nations people?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No I don’t….. castrofascism is a result of this US attitude……. I am talking about the world not USA…….. you have a fixation with USA that is insane……. it is maybe the result of being a “culero” of fidel!!!!!
Junio 23rd, 2010 at 16:12
#50
“…you believe the world atittude on Sudafrica regime was wrong???”
—
Do you believe in the US attitude toward First Nations people?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
Junio 23rd, 2010 at 08:57
To #51
If what you are saying is true about the data base, etc.. then you should worry about your anti- american comments all the time, easy, if you don’t like this country, get the f—k out. And I don’t mean freak.
Junio 23rd, 2010 at 06:56
Post 47, yes there is. It is called the Patriot Act. You better read it because your ignorance is clearly enormous.
Pay particular attention to neighbour watch and “be alert” sections, where citizens are encouraged to spy on each other and report ANYTHING suspicious to the police.
That is your anti social danger law there.
And there are many US of A states which have their own versions of the Act that are even more intrusive. In fact all your internet traffic is recorded and analysed in FBI, CIA, NSA and Defense. So if you are using your own, home inernet connection to post here, you are in all above agencies’ databases, your name, address, full personal and financial details, your myspace and/or facebook pages, all your freinds are analysed and connected, everything to know about you is recorded and scrutinised 6 to 12 times a day.
There are certain algorithms which are looking for “key” words that you my use, even if the context is completely benign. Like terrorist, muslim, bomb, etc. i any of the language you claim or are registered to be able to understand to any level.
Every time you use these words, and i have only mentioned a few examples, the whole converation is recorded, and every participant monitored for connections and communications in their own circles of family and friends.
There are some supercomputers and servers that are working 24/7 on conecting the dots in determining whether you are a socially dangerous or not.
To stand here, or anywhere, and say that in the US of A there is no such thing is absolute and complete stupidity. Take that as you will, but you are hearing that from an ex policeman of 20 years of experience in crime fighting in the US of A. While yours is probably experience in evading people like me.
That is why I come here and shake my head when I read bullshit supporters of this blog muster up. You poor wretched souls are full of naive and ignorance fuelled enthusiasm which is so misplaced and is so 19th century, you all just look pathetic.
Your is a lost battle, despite the fact that Castro team has nothing to work with. The are imploding and it is just a matter of time before they are gone, but so are you few hatred fuelled Don Quijotes.
And my bet is that you will burn out much earlier than them because you do not what to do about your own political ideology.
How could you? The only thing you display here is ignorance and hatred. Cubans only need to get rid of the brothers and continue the socialism. And they will flourish like no one on earth. They are not party to any economic “free trading acts”, do not own money to anyone, and a re capable of surviving on what they have.
That is a winning combination whichever way you look at it.
Junio 22nd, 2010 at 18:40
49matia
Junio 22nd, 2010 at 12:48
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So you believe other countries can not help????…… you believe the world atittude on Sudafrica regime was wrong???
Junio 22nd, 2010 at 12:48
>>post #41
>>sandokan
how exactly would you like “the world” and “the heads of State of every civilized nation” to react? and to achieve what?
these seem to be extremely difficult questions in the case of cuba
ultimately seems that only what cuban authorities on the one hand and cuban people on the other do can bring any viable changes
Junio 22nd, 2010 at 12:22
JohnTheOne said (#47)
Junio 22nd, 2010 at 08:28
“Yours is a country north of Cuba, that applies these laws and these practices in treating free citizens.”
Sorry JohnTheOne, in the USA there is no “Social Dangerouness” law!
Social dangerousness or Pre-criminal danger to society is a legal charge under Cuban law which allows the authorities to detain people whom they think they are likely to commit crimes. The charge carries a penalty of up to four years in prison.[1] The Cuban government has been accused by Amnesty International of using the charge almost exclusively against critics of the government.
Junio 22nd, 2010 at 08:28
Post 39, that’s simpel and easy to explain. That is what “democracy” is. Just look up the US of A, and the incredible laws we have here. Still, today.
Yours is a country north of Cuba, that applies these laws and these practices in treating free citizens.
As a policeman, I have seen this in practice just about every day.
The only difference between Cuba and the US of A is that here you can rob people legally and get rich legally from proceedings of crime. It is called “free enterprise”. Whole cities are built on it. Las Vegas for example…
Junio 22nd, 2010 at 03:04
43Barbara Curbelo
Junio 21st, 2010 at 22:16
#37 - Cato Institute:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This comment is the classical comment of an ideological lost person……… a lot of effort to kill the messager (Cato) but not a single argument to oppose the message delivered by Yoani….. the reason????….. there is no arguments to oppose…… there is only discreditation intents.
Junio 21st, 2010 at 23:52
SOURCE WATCH: The Cato Institute is a non-partisan libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute states that it favors policies “that are consistent with the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, and peace.” [1] Cato scholars conduct policy research on a broad range of public policy issues, and produce books, studies, op-eds, and blog posts. They are also frequent guests in the media.
Cato was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane and Charles Koch, [2] the billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries; the largest privately owned company in the United States. Though diversified, the company amassed most of its fortune in oil trading and refining. [3]
Cato argues for the abolition of the welfare system, against the U.S. government pursuing an interventionist foreign policy, in favor of civil liberties and limits on executive power, and in favor of more relaxed immigration policies and for a more deregulated healthcare system.[4] The Cato Institute is named after Cato’s Letters, a series of libertarian pamphlets that Cato’s founders claim “helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution.”[5] Its stated mission is “to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace” by seeking greater involvement of the “lay public in questions of public policy and the role of government.”[5]
Funding
Cato is a non-profit group established under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and states on its website Cato states that “in order to maintain its independence, the Cato Institute accepts no government funding.”[70] According to its 2006 annual report, which cover the year to the end of March 2007, the Cato Institute had 2006 expenses of approximately $19.4 million and revenue of $20.4 million. (Expenses, the report states, “have not been finalized as of the annual report’s printing.”)[71] The report notes that 74% of Cato’s income that year came from individual contributions, 15% from foundations, 3% from corporations, and 8% from “programs and other income” (e.g., publication sales, program fees). (It is worth nothing that some of the foundations are corporate foundations).
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind....._Institute
Junio 21st, 2010 at 23:41
Show the proof Culero? Where is the link please?
Junio 21st, 2010 at 22:16
#37 - Cato Institute:
Their $24 million annual income is financed by Rupert Murdoch (Fox News), the tobacco industry, insurance and financial services, retirement accounts, oil, pharmeceuticals and media conglomerates.
Their main objective now is pushing for privatization of Social Security. When President Bush toured the country appealing to allow partial privatization of your Social Security money in 2003, most of those savings would have been wiped out in the present financial meltdown. McCain began his campaign by pushing the same agenda, but found it dead in the water after the financial crises.
The Cato Institute, working under a pseudonym, representing the tobacco companies, masqueraded as facts, a research paper that attempted to prove that smoking does not cause death.
Junio 21st, 2010 at 21:20
TIMES LIVE: Cuban dissident granted US visa -Jun 21, 2010- By Sapa-dpa
The Cuban dissident Ariel Sigler has been awarded a US visa on humanitarian grounds one week after his release from prison, opposition sources in Havana said.
Sigler, a 47-year-old paraplegic, must now complete the Cuban formalities required for emigration, the sources said on Sunday.
“If it were up to the US government, he could go tomorrow,” said Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation. “But first, the Cuban government needs to give him permission to leave the country.”
Sigler was among 75 dissidents who were arrested in 2003 and have been behind bars since. He was freed on Saturday after mediation by the Catholic Church to win the release of the jailed activists.
Six others in the group were moved to prisons closer to their families.
In the so-called Black Spring of 2003, the 75 activists received prison sentences of up to 28 years on charges of being mercenaries in the pay of the United States.
The news of Sigler’s visa came as the Vatican’s top diplomat concluded a five-day visit to Cuba.
Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, met Sunday with President Raul Castro.
Mamberti had been invited by the Cuban government and the local church to mark the 75th anniversary of Vatican-Cuban relations.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/wor.....ed-US-visa
Junio 21st, 2010 at 19:59
How much longer will the inhumane treatment of political prisoners be condoned in Cuba by the world’s civilized nations?
The United Nations “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” which the Castro regime signed and agreed to uphold just violates that document daily with absolute impunity as the world simply looks on.
This is the injustice of our day and it must be dealt with by the heads of State of every civilized nation. Cuba must be pressure to abide by the UN’s rule of international law.
Junio 21st, 2010 at 15:36
What’s the punishment for killing a donkey-ass ( aka head of the state) ? I guess a Nobel Prize
Junio 21st, 2010 at 15:16
30Barbara Curbelo
Junio 21st, 2010 at 10:29
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lies, lies, lies…….. but very easy to dismantle…… tell the readers silly thug…… if the defendant is so protected under castrofascism laws please explain why then:
- people can be killed in fire squads in sumarized process where in just 24 hours the deffendant is judged and killed with no right to due process with no possibility to appeal the primary sentence, no right to habeas corpus, no right to second appeal and no right to chose the defenders….. like the thousand of cases where people has been executed in fire squads for charges that goes from “intent” of rebelion, “ilegal escape” (people leaving the country in rafts or getting in ambassades), or people like the 3 black young people that hijacked a boat in Havana’s port where no body got hurt, or people like Ochoa, de la Guardia end company that were found “guilty” of drug traffiking and got killed for this reason????…….. how you can justify all this killing that summes thousands of persons?????
- How you can explain the fatal “penal” figure called “Predelective Satatus” where a person can be condemned up till 4 years in prison just because someone think the guy will commint a crime!!!!!?????…… How can be explained a person can be jailed because someone believe this person can commint a crime in the future?????
- Can you explain, after reading all this extreme punishment system shown in the above 2 points, why then to kill a child can be punished by castrofascists laws with 8 years in prison and to kill a cow can be punished with 14 years??????
Junio 21st, 2010 at 14:38
#30 Cubero
More of the usual misinformation and outright lies from the Castro apologist based on those FBI statistics for 2002 the Miami Metropolitan area which includes all of Miami-Dade County is ranked twenty-first most dangerous among all U.S. metropolitan areas for the year 2002. The constant repetition of her lies does not change the veracity of the fact that the Castro regime is a failed, despotic and repressive Communist state.
America’s Safest (and Most Dangerous) Cities
http://www.morganquitno.com/cit03pop.htm
Junio 21st, 2010 at 14:12
The Cato institute has published Yoani’s assay
Freedom as a form of payment!
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11897
Junio 21st, 2010 at 13:58
Barbara, Culerodefidel, how does the crime rate in Miami, the price of sugar in Sao Paolo or the temperature in Siberia have anything to do with the retched criminal-justice system in cuba? Everytime you post your irrelevant, self-serving and clueless comments you serve our interests, the interests of those looking for justice and democracy for Cuba. You are a witless idiot, but keep posting, we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Junio 21st, 2010 at 13:50
America’s Most Dangerous Cities
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #1: Camden, New Jersey
Earning the crown of being the most dangerous city in America is Camden situated in the state of New Jersey. It is located right across the Delaware river from Philadelphia. In 2009, Camden recorded the highest crime rate in the country, which was 2,333 violent crimes per 100,000 people, when the national average crime rate was 455 violent crimes per 100,000. The economical condition has not been good as 20% of the population is below poverty line. It ranked high on all the six categories of murder, rape, robbery, burglary, assault and auto theft.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #2: St. Louis, Missouri
The city of St.Louis, the largest urban area in Missouri, has earned the title of being the second most dangerous city in United States due to the rampant crime cases it recorded in 2009. It ranks very high on all crime categories.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #3: Oakland, California
The eight largest city in California, Oakland has earned the third rank as its has been struggling with high unemployment and increasing rate of violent crimes in 2009.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #4: Detroit, Michigan
The world’s automotive hub, Detroit is also one of the most crime ridden cities in America. Although the crime rate in terms of violent crimes has dropped in recent years, it still remains one of the most dangerous cities in America.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #5: Flint, Michigan
The seventh largest city in Michigan, with a population of 112,900 in 2008, is the fifth dangerous city in America. Although there has been a significant drop in sexual assault, larceny and homicide cases, there still remains one of the most unsafe cities in the country.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #6: New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, situated in southeastern Louisiana, is the sixth worst city when it comes to crimes in USA, as of 2009. The city recorded the highest rate of homicide in 2002 and 2003. The low income neighborhoods in New Orleans are particularly notorious for their high crime rate.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #7: Birmingham, Alabama
The largest city in the state of Alabama, Birmingham records seventh on the list, due to the high homicide rate in this city over the years. It has seventh highest rank in homicide.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #8: Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland in Ohio has stayed in the listing of most dangerous cities in US for a while now. It ranks high on rape, robbery and and burglary cases.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #9: Jackson, Mississippi
The city of Jackson, Mississippi is the ninth most dangerous city in America. It ranks high in burglary cases, homicide, rape and auto theft cases.
America’s Most Dangerous Cities #10: Memphis, Tennessee
The city of Memphis ranks tenth in the listing of the most dangerous cities in America. It ranks high on burglary, assault, robbery and motor theft cases.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles.....ities.html
Junio 21st, 2010 at 13:05
#30
lol @ Agent Barbie deflecting again
Having a hard time sticking to the subject hun????
Junio 21st, 2010 at 12:52
I NEVER KNEW THIS!HOW TOTALLY COOL!!!!
MIAMI HERALD: Son joins dad in anti-Castro fight-A father and son are fighting against the Castro regime in Cuba using very different weapons-BY VANESSA GARCIA
More than 40 years ago, Raúl C. García fought Fidel Castro’s regime by joining a guerrilla force against the communist government he so adamantly opposed. Today, his 22-year-old son — also named Raúl García — is fighting the same enemy by very different means: the Internet.
García Jr., who grew up in Miami and has never set foot in Cuba, was reared on the stories he heard his father tell — stories of his capture by Fidel Castro’s soldiers when he was only 17 years old — his father’s 16-year detention as a political prisoner and the dark days he endured behind bars.
“I always felt like I had to do something about Cuba. I was desperate to do something,” says García Jr. “Deep down I know it has to do with my father and the stories he tells us.”
DISCOVERED WEBSITE
So in 2008, when García Jr. founded a website called Generación Y, written by the now globally recognized Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, García Jr. became a fan.
On Sánchez’s blog there are links to other blogs from Cuba, including Voces tras las Rejas (Voices Behind Bars). The blog, written by Cuban prisoners of conscience inside Castro’s prisons, needed an English translator.
García Jr. said he quickly responded to the help wanted ad and got the job.
And although these voices echoed his father’s, he was afraid to tell his father what he was doing.
“I had to make sure it was legitimate first,” said García Jr., “that they weren’t all spies or something. I also didn’t know how he would react.”
García Sr., 64, was proud. “The relay continues. It’s the same struggle, with different methods,” García Sr. said. “I think what these bloggers are doing is incredibly brave. They are unveiling the truth.”
Garcia Jr. said the translation occurs after Sánchez and fellow Cuban blogger Claudia Cadelo receive telephone calls from prisoners. Sánchez and Cadelo then record the conversations and either transcribe them or pass an audio file to a friend abroad. The friend then sends the transcriptions to García Jr., who translates and posts them in English.
BLACK SPRING
The prisoners were arrested during the so-called Black Spring of 2003, when 75 dissidents were imprisoned. They included Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who in February died after an 85-day hunger strike within the prison walls.
“They [the prisoners] blog a lot about what they can’t do in Cuba, and from what I understand inside prison they mix the political prisoners with common criminals,” García Jr. said. “The guards take things away from them, they move them around, they leave them with nothing.”
Adds García Sr: “They used to do that to us too. They moved me from prison to prison,” said García Sr. “From la Alambrada to Remedios to Sagua la Grande and Camaguey. The list goes on.”
When García Sr. was captured, he was shot three times in the leg. He suffered a fractured femur and significant wounds to his ankle and thigh.
“They were open wounds for years and years. I was in a prison cell with these festering wounds and no one to help me,” he said. “I really don’t know how I didn’t lose my leg.”
García Jr. translates similar stories, which are transmitted at risk to bloggers inside Cuba.
“I don’t think that Yoani is at such risk as the lesser-known bloggers because of how known she is,” García Jr. said.
Sánchez says people like García are her shield. It is her international reach that made her one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People of the Year in 2008.
When asked whether she was afraid, Sánchez answered: “Afraid? I’m afraid every day. Fear of the police, of the government, of the regime, of the loops in our laws, of everything. This is a system that can kill me, both socially, and physically. But I have a responsibility.”
`DESPERATION’
It’s a responsibility that García Jr. said he also felt in his “desperation” to do something for Cuba. A responsibility that, though he has never set foot on the island, he seems to have inherited from his father.
“I will never forget what I fought for,” says García Sr. “We were fighting for a Cuba Libre. That never leaves my mind. We were fighting for the opposite of what exists now.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....fight.html
Junio 21st, 2010 at 12:33
Social dangerousness or Pre-criminal danger to society is a legal charge under Cuban law which allows the authorities to detain people whom they think they are likely to commit crimes. The charge carries a penalty of up to four years in prison.[1] The Cuban government has been accused by Amnesty International of using the charge almost exclusively against critics of the government.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Imprisoned for ‘Dangerousness’ in Cuba by Nik Steinberg
Published in: The Washington Post-February 27, 2010
“Under Cuba’s “dangerousness” law, authorities can imprison people who have not committed a crime on the suspicion that they might commit one in the future. “Dangerous” activities include handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, writing articles critical of the government and trying to start an independent union.”
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/201.....sness-cuba
Junio 21st, 2010 at 12:32
CUBA’S Constitution, Government & Legislation
According to the Cuban Constitution, the National Assembly of People’s Power, and its Council of State when the body is not in session, has supreme authority in the Cuban system. Since the National Assembly meets only twice a year for a few days each time, the 31-member Council of State wields power. The Council of Ministers, through its nine-member executive committee, handles the administration of the of the state-controlled economy. Fidel Castro is President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers and his brother Raul serves as First Vice President of both bodies in addition to being Minister of Defense.
The Communist Party is constitutionally recognized as Cuba’s only legal political party. The party monopolizes all government positions, including judicial offices. Though not a formal requirement, party membership is virtually a de facto prerequisite for high-level official positions and professional advancement in most areas, although non-party members are sometimes allowed to serve in the National Assembly.
Source: U.S. Department of State
Courts & Judgments
The Cuban Constitution provides for independent courts; however, it explicitly subordinates the courts to the National Assembly and the Council of State. The National Assembly and its lower level counterparts choose all judges.
Civil courts exist at municipal, provincial, and supreme court levels. Panels composed of a mix of professionally certified and lay judges preside over them. Military tribunals assume jurisdiction for certain counterrevolutionary cases. The People’s Supreme Court is the highest judicial body.
Source: U.S. Department of State
Human Rights
Amnesty International - Report 2001
Comité Cubano Pro Derechos Humanos
Human Rights Watch Report - 2002
Report on Human Rights Practices - 2001 (US Department of State)
The Cuban Government’s human rights record remained poor in 2001. The Government continued to violate systematically the fundamental civil and political rights of its citizens. Citizens do not have the right to change their government peacefully. Prisoners died in jail due to lack of medical care. Members of the security forces and prison officials continued to beat and otherwise abuse detainees and prisoners, including human rights activists. The Government failed to prosecute or sanction adequately members of the security forces and prison guards who committed abuses. Prison conditions remained harsh and life threatening. The authorities routinely continued to harass, threaten, arbitrarily arrest, detain, imprison, and defame human rights advocates and members of independent professional associations, including journalists, economists, doctors, and lawyers, often with the goal of coercing them into leaving the country. The Government used internal and external exile against such persons, and it offered political prisoners the choice of exile or continued imprisonment. The Government denied political dissidents and human rights advocates due process and subjected them to unfair trials. The Government infringed on citizens’ privacy rights. The Government denied citizens the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association. It limited the distribution of foreign publications and news, reserving them for selected faithful party members, and maintained strict censorship of news and information to the public. The Government restricted some religious activities but permitted others. The Government limited the entry of religious workers to the country. The Government maintained tight restrictions on freedom of movement, including foreign travel and did not allow some citizens to leave the country. The Government was sharply and publicly antagonistic to all criticism of its human rights practices and discouraged foreign contacts with human rights activists. Violence against women, especially domestic violence, and child prostitution were problems. Racial discrimination was a problem. The Government severely restricted worker rights, including the right to form independent unions. The Government prohibits forced and bonded labor by children; however, it required children to do farm work without compensation.
Source: U.S. Department of State
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/world/cuba.htm
Junio 21st, 2010 at 10:29
#26 - SANDOKAN -
There are 3 distinct branches of government in Cuba; judicial, legislative and executive.
There is however, a notable difference in the judicial branch from that of the US; a defendant in a criminal matter is protected from committing perjury since they are not ministered an oath when testifying on their own behalf. All other witnesses are ministered oaths.
You stated:
“Defendants don’t have the right to remain silent, to have an attorney present with them during an interrogation, and can be held for up to two years, without charge, on mere suspicion without evidence.”
You are confused as to where in Cuba that happens; on the illegal US Military Base in Guantanamo.
In your mind Cuban nationals are a bunch of criminals, but that’s only true because they are forced to commit crimes in order to survive. How do you then explain that Miami has been called the ‘crime capital of America‘, based on the 2002 Federal Bureau of investigation Crime Reports? The crimes include murders, robberies, aggravated assault, burglaries, larceny/thefts, and motor vehicle thefts. In some of these categories, Miami’s score is more than double the national average.
Junio 21st, 2010 at 07:05
@#16
You must give something … since you read & answer otherwaise you could ignore yet … here you are
Doesn’t strike you as peculiar how you are the one stridently calling cowardice & ignorance, impotence & panic w/your predictable primitive way?
Is it perhaps that you know yourself as such & so you adscribe it to others?
Junio 20th, 2010 at 23:03
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Raul Castro suits up for Vatican envoy in Havana-ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
HAVANA — A meeting between the Vatican’s foreign minister and President Raul Castro sparked hopes Sunday that more of the island’s political prisoners may be released or transferred to jails closer to home.
State television showed Castro dressed in a suit instead of his usual olive-green fatigues for the meeting with Archbishop Dominique Mamberti.
A statement read during the official nightly newscast said both men discussed an “international agenda.” It called relations between the Vatican and Cuba “cordial, respectful and continuous,” and applauded the “favorable level of relations between the state and the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba.”
Heading to the airport at the end of his five-day stay, Mamberti told reporters only that “it was a very positive meeting.”
During the visit, Mamberti led discussions among religious and academic leaders, including three visiting U.S. researchers, that encouraged dialogue and reconciliation between Cubans and Cuban-Americans.
Human rights groups have said they hope Mamberti’s trip will spark a new round of prisoner transfers or even the outright release of some dissidents, given the political role the Catholic Church has played recently on the island.
In May, Cuba Cardinal Jaime Ortega negotiated an end to a state ban on marches by a small group of wives and mothers of political prisoners known as the Ladies in White.
The cardinal and another church leader subsequently met with Castro for hours. Church officials then announced the government would allow transfers for prisoners held far from their families and give better access to medical care for inmates who need it.
So far, a dozen inmates have been moved to jails closer to home, and officials granted freedom on health grounds for prisoner Ariel Sigler in Matanzas province. Sigler must use a wheelchair.
No prisoners were transferred or released during Mamberti’s visit, but human rights leaders are hoping more improvements for dissidents are in the works.
The independent, Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation puts the total number of political prisoners in Cuba at 180, although that list includes some who were convicted of violent acts.
Cuba’s government denies it holds any political prisoners and says those listed by the rights group are common criminals and mercenaries sent by Washington to destabilize the government.
While Mamberti was in Havana, Emilio Aranguren, bishop of the eastern province of Holguin, said island church officials hope Pope Benedict XVI can come to Cuba in 2012, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint.
The last papal visit to the communist-run island was made by John Paul II in 1998.
Mamberti was the first top Vatican official to come since Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope’s secretary of state, visited Cuba in February 2008.
Though Cuba never severed ties with the Vatican, relations between the communist government and the church were strained for decades. Tensions eased in the early 1990s, however, when the government removed references to atheism in the constitution and allowed believers of all faiths to join the Communist Party.
http://www.google.com/hostedne.....wD9GFCH2G2
Junio 20th, 2010 at 20:17
KNIGHT FOUNDATION: Havana-Miami: Documentary project explores cultural connection between two cities
filed under: Journalism Program, Miami — Lori Todd @ 12:21 pm
Living just 90 miles apart, the lives of a dozen young Cuban women and men, six in Havana and six in Miami, are being chronicled in an online documentary project, Havana-Miami.
In an article in the Miami Herald, Ilan Ziv, executive producer of the project, says:
The idea behind Havana-Miami is to use human experiences that are very similar to help connect audiences and overcome their political alienation … The stories from Havana are very similar to the Miami stories: People trying to survive and dreaming about their future. When you explore the huge cultural and human connection that exists between Miami and Havana, the commonality of people’s experiences outweighs their political differences.
The project is being produced by University of Miami School of Communication graduate students Mark Shumow and Mark Mocahbee, with the help of undergraduate students who are filming the Miami participants and a Cuban film making team in Havana. The project is funded by Arte, a French-German TV network, and in association with the Knight Center for International Media at the University of Miami.
This three-month web series is comprised of six short (2-minute long) video updates each week and will be completed in May. Viewers can watch the web series as it unfolds at http://www.havana-miami.tv. A stand-alone documentary will be produced upon completion of the series.
http://www.knightblog.org/hava.....two-cities
Junio 20th, 2010 at 16:45
The judicial branch in Cuba isn’t independent from the executive and legislative branches of the government. Defendants don’t have the right to remain silent, to have an attorney present with them during an interrogation, and can be held for up to two years, without charge, on mere suspicion without evidence. They don’t have the right to appeal a conviction. In this type of system, the arrest, conviction and sentencing of dissidents are based on political vendetta.
Castro brothers’ tyranny has turned the majority of Cubans into criminals. The reason of course is that Cubans are survivors, and in order to survive, you have to do what you have to do to survive. Cubans break Castros ’ laws each and every day, they find ways around the tyranny. Therefore, the island is an island of criminals. Many are caught, imprisoned or shot. Nothing stops them as they attempt to remain in power upon a foundation of lies and infamies.
Junio 20th, 2010 at 07:18
PlEASE SEE THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT SECRET INOCENT POLITICAL PRISONERS SENT BY CHAVEZ TO CUBA WITH CASTROS AGREEMENT< PLEASE THIS HAs been reported to human rights watch and they do not believe, PLEASE TRY to find this family and many inocent members are in cuba and slave farms as prostitutes, the MAFIA organized crime is CUBA and this is desperate attempt to fight USA with crime with comunist loving blacks selling drugs and in gangs..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxOWgaY8M4
please RESCUE THIS FAMILY FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY, RAPED REPEATEDLY, DEPRIVED OF FOOD, WATER SLEEP, FORCED TO PROSTITUTION, HUGO CHAVEZ ORDERS…THEY BELONG TO OPOSITION, THEY WERE RICH, CHAVEZ/CUBA STRIPPED THEM OF MONEY.PROPERTIES
Junio 20th, 2010 at 07:13
Oigan en cuba hay prisioneros politicos y TAMBIEN OIGAN EL PALO, hay presos secretos INOCENTES enviados por chavez, Busken esa familia pa ke haiga guerra mundial aunke economica contra el regimen malvado de los castros mediocres pasmaos..vean el video pa ke lo vean…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxOWgaY8M4
Junio 19th, 2010 at 13:16
Thanks John Two! Will order it for my aunt Kelo, she is getting to know Yoani now and respects her a great deal.
Junio 19th, 2010 at 12:59
Re Humberto #20, Cuba Libre can be ordered through Amazon though it is listed as being temporarily out of stock. Only a Spanish language version can be ordered at present. This is a shame since so much of Yoani’s writings have been translated into English and other languages.
Here’s the Amazon listing:
http://www.amazon.com/Cuba-lib.....8483069067
Does anyone know if the publisher is planning to release a English language version or sell it through bookstores?
Junio 19th, 2010 at 12:26
Montreal Gazette Cuban political prisoners turning more to hunger strikes -By Frances Robles, June 19, 2010
MIAMI — Egberto Angel Escobedo completed his 17th year in a Cuban prison on June 11, and his 56th day of a hunger strike.
He’s at a penitentiary called “Red Ceramic” in Camaguey, where the military keeps him in isolation to prevent other inmates from spreading word of his failing health.
Escobedo is one of at least five cases of political prisoners — down from seven — who are refusing food, in what experts say is an extraordinary surge of inmates at different Cuban lockups fighting over different causes. Protesting everything from medical care to prison uniforms, they are using an age-old technique that over the years has met with mixed results.
“I don’t recall at least in the last decade seeing so many people in jail on a hunger strike,” said former political prisoner Ricardo Bofill, who served two stints totaling 15 years. “There is a political context that contributes to all this. They perceive that this is the moment to pressure the government, that there is momentum.”
Some protesters, like prisoner Diosdado Gonzalez, quickly have their demands met. His wife’s sympathy hunger strike lasted just a day. A dozen other prisoners over the decades, such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo four months ago, died.
Experts say the current strikes, likely fueled by Zapata’s death, were uncoordinated, spontaneous and far from unprecedented.
From the fight for independence against the Spanish to the battle against the dictators who came before the Castros, Cuban activists have refused food in a quest to have a spotlight shone on their causes.
In the late 1960s, entire prisons would go on collective hunger strikes to protest conditions. Before 1959, intense media coverage turned hunger strikers into overnight national cause celebres, said former prisoner Jose Albertini, who wrote the 2007 Spanish-language book, “Cuba and Castroism: Hunger Strikes in Political Prisons.”
Albertini’s great-grandmother died in the late 1800s while imprisoned for struggling for Cuba’s independence. She refused to eat or to feed two of her children, and all three died.
“The hunger striker is political and largely does this for press attention to their cause,” Albertini said. “In the 1960s and ’70s, they did it out of dignity, because they knew nobody would listen.”
And while journalists are shut out of Cuba’s prisons, the proliferation of cell phones and the Internet have helped spread information about hunger strikes that in the past the Cuban government could have kept secret.
“The international community around the world should be up to date on the political prisoners and Cuban citizens who oppose” the Castro regime, Escobedo said in a message distributed by the Democratic Directorate human rights organization. “I will continue carrying out Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s call to resistance, which cannot be extinguished.”
Janisset Rivero, who heads the Democratic Directorate, said Escobedo is having trouble breathing, and is suffering from a kidney stone. He pleaded to be taken to a hospital but was returned to his cell block, she said.
“This is urgent,” Rivero said.
Escobedo, 43, was jailed in 1994 for sending human rights complaints to Amnesty International and the United Nations. Caught with a confidential police memo about how to organize, he was charged with enemy propaganda and espionage. His nine-year sentence has been bumped up to 26.
His hunger strike is to protest inhumane prison conditions.
“I can’t recall a moment with so many people on strike in different places and over different causes,” Rivero said. “It’s a unique and special time.”
She acknowledged that sometimes the Cuban government cedes to hunger strikers’ demands. When the plea is for something minor and tangible, such as over a refusal to wear a certain prison uniform, the Cuban government is likely to give in, she and other experts said.
But the government response is inconsistent and often depends on the international attention given to the case.
“In general, it’s not a strategy that works,” said Pedro Corzo, who heads the Institute of Historic Cuban Memory. “It’s a Pyrrhic victory, where you win the war but suffer many losses.”
Experts agree that the Cuban government is torn. It does not want to create martyrs by letting hunger strikers die but also is loath to show weakness by giving in to their demands, particularly since dozens of dissidents have taken up the technique in the past months.
Some Cuba watchers privately criticize the method as one that has been abused and is often not taken seriously by authorities: most hunger strikers eventually give up.
In the weeks after Zapata’s death, at least 20 dissidents declared hunger strikes.
Still among them is Santa Clara dissident Guillermo Farinas, who became known worldwide after a successful 2006 hunger strike to demand Internet access.
He is now hospitalized and being fed intravenously. He has not eaten in more than 100 days. In a recent article, the Cuban government-run newspaper Granma warned that he could die.
“There are bio-ethical principles that require a physician to respect a person’s decision to start a hunger strike,” Granma said. “Doctors can only act when the patient has gone into shock, a stage at which this is usually too late.”
Farinas’ condition is notably deteriorating, the paper reported, placing the blame on Farinas himself, foreign diplomats and the news media that “manipulate him.”
“Now the Cuban government is more careful and keeps Guillermo Farinas alive,” Albertini said. “But really they want him to die, so they can say, ‘Look, we did all we could.’ ”
© Copyright (c) McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
http://www.montrealgazette.com.....story.html
Junio 19th, 2010 at 12:08
LATIN AMERICAN HERALD TRIBUNE: Cuban Blogger’s Online Articles Compiled for New Book- 6 -19,2010
MADRID – Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, an icon of human rights in the Caribbean country, has compiled in a book more than 300 articles published on her Generacion Y blog, a venture she undertook fully aware that it was the quickest way to “attract problems.”
Sanchez, named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, says in the introduction to the book, published in Spain under the title “Cuba Libre,” that since she began in April 2007 writing “disillusioned vignettes of reality,” she has “not been bored for a minute.”
The strength of the Generacion Y blog and Sanchez’s character so different from the classic dissident against the Cuban regime – since what she sets out to do is “talk about her life” and about the everyday routine of the ordinary Cuban in the street – made her blog into a showcase of her view of daily life on the island.
The Debate publishing house has compiled 356 of the blogger’s articles, dating from 2007 to 2009, for which she was honored with the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Prize, among other awards.
Sanchez confesses in the book’s introduction that she would have liked to engage “more peacefully in the business of writing,” but says that “in Cuba there is no choice, there is no place for the kind of hybrid, ingenious invention that a blog can be.”
The attraction of Sanchez’s blog, which receives thousands of responses to each of her articles, was such that Cuban authorities decided to close down her access to the Internet.
But thanks to a citizens’ virtual network woven around GY, Sanchez says that she has been able to continue updating her blog every week.
The blogger reveals that Generacion Y was born of an “old laptop” that “a boatman needing a Chevrolet motor sold me the year before,” and that she posted her first articles from “those hotels that I couldn’t legally enter.”
Born in Havana in 1975, Sanchez is a graduate in Hispanic Philology from the Faculty of Arts and Letters, but acknowledges that her way of getting into writing was not “the linear path one might expect of a philology graduate who spent most of her life reading the works of others.”
She also recalls that her graduation thesis was entitled “Words under Pressure: A Study of the Literature of Dictatorship in Latin America.”
“Putting into writing,” she says, “the characteristics of the leaders, satraps and dictators in this part of the world stimulated – in part thanks to the board that judged my analysis – the feeling that I was drawing a provocative parallel between those figures in literature and the autocrat who was governing us.”
Aware that she lacks “the objectivity of an analyst, the tools of a journalist and the gentle moderation of an academician,” she sees her writing as “impulsive and subjective.”
“I commit the sacrilege,” she says, “of writing in the first person singular, and my readers have understood that I’m only talking about things I have experienced personally.”
Her work has brought her “enemies and fans, insomnia and peace, the perennial anxiety of feeling that I am being watched,” she says, “and the calm of a person who has nothing to hide.”
And she is convinced that everyone who reads her protects her: “Only their custody has allowed me to get where I am,” she says, adding that there is no “return to silence,” despite remembering that in a sordid police station she was warned that “I have broken all the limits.” EFE
http://www.laht.com/article.as.....ryId=14510
Junio 19th, 2010 at 09:16
Barbara Curbelo,
It’s always bait and switch, isn’t it? Give me a reason why Cuba is the only country in the Americas to deny the Red Cross access to it prisons ? Remember: the answer has nothing to do with the Miami Five. See if you can dig up some dirt on the Red Cross, which the most scrupulously neutral organization in the world.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 20:21
WOW CULERO! I MUST OF TOUCHED A SENSITIVE SUBJECT IN OSWALDO PAYA!!GUESS OSWALDO WINNING THE 2002 SAKHAROV PRIZE DOES THAT TO ALL YOU “REVOLUTIONARY RATS”!! WHERE ARE THE LINKS TO ALL YOUR DIAREAH INFORMATION?
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was established in December 1988 by the European Parliament as a means to honour individuals or organizations who had dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedoms.
The Sakharov Prize is awarded annually on or around 10 December, the day on which the United Nations General Assembly ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, also celebrated as Human Rights Day.
Past recipients of the prize have been the following:
1988: Nelson Mandela (South Africa) and Anatoly Marchenko (Soviet Union; posthumously)
1989: Alexander Dubček (Czechoslovakia)
1990: Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar)
1991: Adem Demaçi (Kosovo)
1992: Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Argentina)
1993: Oslobođenje (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
1994: Taslima Nasrin (Bangladesh)
1995: Leyla Zana (Turkey)
1996: Wei Jingsheng (China)
1997: Salima Ghezali (Algeria)
1998: Ibrahim Rugova (Kosovo)
1999: Xanana Gusmão (East Timor)
2000: ¡Basta Ya! (Spain)
2001: Nurit Peled-Elhanan (Israel), Izzat Ghazzawi (Palestine), Zacarias Kamwenho (Angola)
2002: Oswaldo Payá (Cuba)
2003: United Nations
2004: Belarusian Association of Journalists
2005: Ladies in White (Cuba), Reporters Without Borders and Hauwa Ibrahim (Nigeria; ex-aequo)
2006: Alexander Milinkevich (Belarus)
2007: Salih Mahmoud Osman (Sudan)
2008: Hu Jia (China)
2009: Memorial (Russia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakharov_Prize
Junio 18th, 2010 at 20:13
Dumbir what tipped you off to my terrorist background? Did you use a bosnian devining rod or as you suggested before, the Freedom of Information Act? What document did you dig up that had Yubano on a list of terrorists? You are such a schmuck (yiddish for moron). Your attempts at insulting remind me of my days at the elementary school playground. I can just see you spitting all over yourself as you strain your limited gray matter to come up with some semi-coherent 9 year-old insult, don’t herniate yourself. We’ve seen quite a few trained idiots sent here to misinform and lie but you take the cake. You are hopeless as a propagandist, an incompetent lier and an inane story teller. Warn your buddy fidel about my plot to booby-trap his colostomy bag…
Junio 18th, 2010 at 19:52
I must correct myself. Cuban WANNABE terrorists…
And their insults are only demonstrating their impotence and panic before the fact no one gives a a shit about their retarded ideologies.
That too MUST hurt teir petty little primitive egoes.
Just watch more insults to come. They are predictadble, those insignificant nobodies hiding in Miami and selling drugs to their own kids.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 19:47
A moron trying to play with words he can hardly grasp.
Cuban terrorists like himself need no introduction. They do that themselves with their thorny disposition and stupid remarks intended to uotsmart smarter people. As always they only manage to bite their own arses with their own stupidity. That in turn hurts a lot so the only thing left is to keep insulting (intelligent debate is of course far beyond their simpleton brains).
Insults do nothing to change the fact about their bleeding arses and hollow “comments” with no sense whatsoever.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 19:25
An oxymoron from the moron dumbir: “cuban terrorists planing to assasinate Castro”. That would be like calling Claus Von Stauffenberg a terrorsist for attempting to kill Hitler.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 19:20
Dumbir you wouldn’t know a fact if it walked up to you and whacked you on your two dimensional nose. You’re like a cartoon character from Rocky and Bullwinkle, a coldwar anachronism still spouting soviet era nonsense.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 19:20
ANd here’s a french page (fear not ignorants, there’s english transltion too) which lists all the crimes in recent history by popes, christians, mafia, cuban terrorists planing to assasinate Castro, their usanian owners and lords, masonery, you name it.
The terrorists in this “forum” will recognise themselves there.
All two still alive and posting under tens of different nicks to make themselves feel loved by “others”.
Not working.
http://www.the-savoisien.com/w.....hp?pid=691
Junio 18th, 2010 at 19:16
ere’s an exaustive list of what latinos are really doing in the “democratic capitalism”. The page is aptly named Corruption: Fairly civilised.
There are short videos of crimes latino mafia (led by Cubans and Mexicans) is doing in a “democratic” way to their victims. Not for fainthearted. In the spirit of the idiot (poster from 8) who asked Barbara Curbelo to send him her photo so that he and his “boys” can “PARTY” with her.
http://tomdiaz.wordpress.com/category/corruption/
What a retard.
Terrorists easily run to violent words when they are confronted with simple and clear facts.
Violence starts where the words fail to convince the audience that the speaker is telling the truth.
Violence is then used to pull the audience in line and submit themselves to the control of the speaker who could not convince anyone in his/her bullshit.
Much like the loser below.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 19:14
OSWALDO PAYÁ
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD
The dirty war of US Administration against Cuba always has been a pretext to set aside tens of millions of US taxpayers’ dollars in favor of ringleaders of Cuban American Mafia with ties Bush clan. That gigantic and sterile fraud has as of lately found a new manifestation in a strange operation that ties it to the diva of the so called Cuban dissidents with a partnership of training centers in Mississippi and a Miami counter-revolutionary of questionable fame.
She was journalist Arleen Rodriguez who, during a Round Table program on Cuban Television, indicated that dissident Oswaldo Payá, who has been presented by certain media as a freedom fighter and human rights defender, was a servile collaborator, as of lately, in a project by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Payá has been the nexus and soon to be the national coordinator for oriented courses to develop leadership with a view toward annexation in Cuba, explained Arleen Rodriguez. From 2002 two representatives of the Partnership of Mississippi for the Development the International (MCID, abbreviations in English), came to Cuba disguised as tourists under the names of Patricia Jernigan and Carrine Bishop.
In February of the 2004, Jernigan and Bishop met with Payá for four hours and agreed on a course of action to occur in Cuba, and of which he will be the coordinator.
The US would contribute $2, 650 for each semester cycle of the course, in addition to $3, 650 to professors who will come from the US and $2, 666 to cover airfares and hotel costs.
Payá himself would receive $1, 000 salary for 8 courses.
Between April 1, 2004 and June 21, 2005, the first courses took place in which two professors and the Chair of Political Sciences Department of the University of Jackson , Mississippi that, also, traveling like tourists, took place.
Oswaldo Payá is a mercenary that has always refused to pronounce himself against the US blockade against Cuba, yet applauded Pedro Carmona in his attempted coup in 2004 in Venezuela against President Hugo Chavez, in an open letter.
The style n which the remunerated collaboration between Payá and the MCID was developed shows all the tracks of a Central Intelligence Agency operative: the use of false identities, camouflage and clandestine meetings.
Aly Mack, Executive director of the MCID, and Enrique Maradiaga Fort, program manager of that organization, also visited Cuba during that time.
The subjects studied do not leave any doubts as to the characteristics and intentions of the promoters: to obtain a mobilization against the Cuban Revolution; to look for a change of mentality in the population, and how to manipulate the foreign press.
A GLOBAL OPERATION OF IDEOLOGICAL RECOVERY
Established in 1989, the MCID is theoretically composed of four institutions of US Universities: the Alcorn State University, the State University of Jackson, the State University of the Valley of Mississippi and the University of Tougaloo.
According to its publications, the institution leader of the Partnership is the State University of Jackson. Officially, the MCID designs and implements projects of international development and programs of interchange.
On millionaire budgets, way over the emager crumbs offered to Payá the organization has main offices in Jackson, Mississippi, and others in Washington, D.C.; Luanda, Angola; Dohuk, Iraq; and Abuja, Nigeria, besides representatives in South Africa, Russia, the Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Rumania.
Cuba does not appear in the official nomenclature of the group.
In fact, the MCID develops its activities for Washington in politically sensitive zones.
In Iraq, nation where the Administration of George W. Bush waters to all partners, the MCID has substantially used its contract of more than $4, 990, 364 to help the University of Mosul to develop its leadership in Iraq and in the Middle East.
RAMON HUMBERTO TAILS, FROM FLORIDA TO THE MISSISSIPPI
By all means, the presence of Cuba in this specific program of the company consecrated to Africa, Russia, the Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Rumania is of no surprise.
Nevertheless, in the same indicated Round Table, journalist Reynaldo Taladrid touched upon a key factor in its apparent distortion when he raised the issue of the sudden disappearance of another patented dissident, Ramon Humberto, and of his position as civil servant of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).
The self-proclaimed founder of an imaginary network of “independent” libraries in Cuba, better known in Cuba’s eastern city of the Big-eye tunas as a playboy who was more interested in cabarets than in reading left for Miami in December 2001.
There in CANF he occupied several confidential positions, administering funds granted by the USAID and the National for Endowment for Democracy. Nevertheless, he had to leave his position and move to another city after audits revealed he had apportioned large amounts of the monies to himself.
USAID liked his style so much so, that it found a new task for him immediately.
He quickly reappeared as a civil servant of the MCID, in Mississippi, far from South Florida and near to millions of Federal Government dollars. This time, the versatile swindler shows up as “investigator”.
His partner in Washington was none other than Frank Adolph, Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of that federal agency.
Cuban born, in Cardenal City, Matanzas, Frank Adolph belongs to the Miami clan of advisers to the Administration of President Bush, on Cuba. Integrated well to the wealthiest class of his new mother country, he has studied in Iowa and has worked in Missouri before he married Cuban-American congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
He is from the same extreme rightwing lines as Otto Reich and Roger Noriega, Franc confessed before a Foreign Relations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives, which has given more than $20 million dollars to its Mafioso friends in Miami over a period of three years. Most of this money was designated to the different Miami organizations dedicated to churning up “dissidents” generously remunerated.
Franc met, once again, with Tails in his room at the Hesperia hotel of Madrid, on October 26, where they put on a media show coordinated by Caleb McCarry, the ex- civil servant of the Republican Party ordered recently by Bush of the Cuban dossier, and by Jaime Suchlicki, an ex- freelance analyst of the company turned into director of a training center of the University of Miami subsidized by Bacardi.
The characteristics of the forum of Madrid and the presence of investigator of the MCID, still further confirm the entailment with the company of the MCID. Attending the same event were Javier Fernandez Lasquetty, Secretary General of Foundation FAES of Spain and intimate partner of the Aznar-Moragas pair, and writer and Cuban journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner,.who had begun promoting his agenda in commercial centers.
The Cuban course of the MCID, coordinated by Oswaldo Payá is only one of many activities that the US Administration carries out, thanks to a public budget of more than $60 million dollars to be spent against Cuba.
While Payá, in Cuba, gathers the breadcrumbs of the banquet of the USAID, in Miami and Mississippi the money of US taxpayers, which eventually finds its way to new Orleans disappears in the pockets of the true actors of the show of the dissidence.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 18:45
Dumbir are you into the croatian mushrooms again or do you come by your delusions naturally?
Junio 18th, 2010 at 18:23
In her stupidity, team Yoani pretends she knows something about “orwellian telescreen”.
Laughable comparison. What on earth Yoani knows about Orwel’s 1984? Common propaganda is that it refers to communism, when the true point of the book was that CAPITALISM (rich pigs rulling the world, what more of a hint one needs?) would be the ultimate nazist society.
One just needs to look at the usa to see how insightful was Orwell. In wanting capitalism ruling in Cuba Yoani shows her true face. She is just looking for a slice of action and violence of her own.
Pathetic all the way in her inept and clumsy “fight for democracy”.
A terrorist is a terrorist, no matter what they say.
It’s what they do that makes them terrorists.
And Yoani, as much as she is an enemy of her own country, is just a poor terrorist.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 18:15
Given the number of enemies, brewing in this site, for example, and hell-bent on killing both Cubans and foreigners, as demonstrated many times in the past, the country is obviously forced to install video cameras, in order to fight the terrorism.
Of course, the resident hypocrites are quick to justify the same when it is done in a capitalist country. In capitalism anything goes, but Marx forbid Cuban government installs cameras, after terrorist attacks on hotels killing and injuring people.
They have no right to do that. How dare they?
As if those terrorists are bad people? Bloody government.
Sense and intelligence is not what one should expect from terrorists, but when someone who, like team Yoani, pretending to be the “demcoracy fighters” (read pathetic bullshiters), then some sense is expected.
Unfortunately, team Yoani is just a different colour of terrorism. It is still a terrorism.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 15:49
CBS NEWS: Detained American a Sticking Point in Cuba Talks-by Portia Siegelbaum -June 18, 2010
The case of Alan Gross, an American contractor imprisoned for more than six months in Cuba on suspicion of espionage, is expected to torpedo today’s round of migration talks between Washington and Havana.
The latest round of talks — the third since President Obama took office — should monitor compliance with the 16-year accord intended to maintain orderly migration from Cuba to the United States. Other issues on the table include a U.S. request for restrictions on diplomatic travel in the respective countries to be lifted; and Cuba wants to increase the number of persons on its consular staff in the U.S.
However, after meeting with Gross wife and other family members on Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton renewed calls for the contractor’s release. Clinton said U.S. officials would raise his case during today’s talks in Washington, and tell the Cubans attending that his release would help improve bilateral relations.
“We will underscore that the continued detention of Alan Gross is harming U.S.-Cuba relations,” she said in a statement released after her meeting.
Gross’ detention upset the second round of migration talks last February in Havana. The talks were further undermined when the U.S. delegation met with Cuban dissidents at Farrar’s residence, provoking a sharp reaction from the Cuban Government.
Gross is accused of providing prohibited satellite communications equipment (known as a B-gan) to Cuban dissidents. U.S. officials have said he was only providing Internet access to Jewish groups, but admit that Gross was employed by a U.S.-funded program to promote democracy on the island. The head of the Jewish community in Havana, Adela Dworin, denies any knowledge of Gross and says that recognized international Jewish organizations have provided them with legal Internet connections.
In a press conference this week, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Gross was arrested for “committing grave crimes in our country at the service of the subversive policy of the United States against Cuba.” He indicated that Gross was still under investigation and that his legal status was in strict conformity “with Cuban legal procedures.” U.S. consular officials have had repeated access to him, and he was offered legal representation and allowed to speak with his family, said Rodriguez.
The migration talks began after the two countries hammered out an accord to end the 1994 mass exodus by rafters. Under the accord, Washington agreed to issue 20,000 visas annually for Cubans to migrate to the U.S.
President George W. Bush unilaterally cancelled these talks in 2004, but they were resumed by the Obama administration, along with its lifting of severe restrictions on Cuban-Americans’ travel to the island.
In a recent informal conversation with CBS News, the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, expressed satisfaction with the fact that not only is the U.S. issuing these visas but that the number of temporary visas being issued was up, from 9,000 in 2008 to 20,000 in 2009.
Another thorny issue that has come up repeatedly in these talks is Cuba’s demand that Washington abolish its “wet foot, dry foot” policy that gives preferential treatment to any Cuban who makes it illegally to U.S. soil. The Cubans charge that this law encourages people to undertake the dangerous voyage across the Florida Straits in flimsy crafts. However, the law has strong support among the Cuban-American community in Miami and can be expected to remain a sticking point in negotiations.
CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum reported from Havana.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-50.....03543.html
Junio 18th, 2010 at 15:39
Culero! There is a BIG DIFFERENCE of having cameras in the UK versus in Cuba! In the UK, they dont put you in jail because the THINK you will commit a “CRIME”!!! “LA CHINA” & “THE MUMMY” use the “Social Dangerousness” law at their whim!! ITS CALLED DICTATORSHIP!!
Social dangerousness or Pre-criminal danger to society is a legal charge under Cuban law which allows the authorities to detain people whom they think they are likely to commit crimes. The charge carries a penalty of up to four years in prison.[1] The Cuban government has been accused by Amnesty International of using the charge almost exclusively against critics of the government.[2]
Imprisoned for ‘Dangerousness’ in Cuba by Nik Steinberg
Published in: The Washington Post-February 27, 2010
Under Cuba’s “dangerousness” law, authorities can imprison people who have not committed a crime on the suspicion that they might commit one in the future. “Dangerous” activities include handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, writing articles critical of the government and trying to start an independent union.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/201.....sness-cuba
Junio 18th, 2010 at 14:22
I am including this link for poster no 3, whose sole tactic is to try to find problems anywhere but Cuba, which also seems to be the editorial policy of Granma. In one post to a Canadian, she dwelt upon the tasering of a Polish visitor to Canada. Here is the story of the report of that incident, which squarely blames the RCMP officers involved:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/the-mountie-who-tasered-robert-dziekanski-was-not-justified-in-using-his-weapon-report/article1608582/
My point, of course, is that this could never have happened in Cuba, where the idea of an independent report simply does not exist. It is a country of show trials and rough justice. Can she explain to me why Cuba is the only country in the Americas that does not allow the Red Cross into their prisons ? A simple question. Don’t talk to me about CCTV in London. We know about that, and unlike Cuba, the British can debate the problem openly. Remember : Why no Red Cross Visits ?
Junio 18th, 2010 at 13:52
Big Brother is watching us all
By Humphrey Hawksley
BBC News, Washington
The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game.
“Five nine, five ten,” said the research student, pushing down a laptop button to seal the measurement. “That’s your height.”
“Spot on,” I said.
“OK, we’re freezing you now,” interjected another student, studying his computer screen. “So we have height and tracking and your gait DNA”.
“Gait DNA?” I interrupted, raising my head, so inadvertently my full face was caught on a video camera.
“Have we got that?” asked their teacher Professor Rama Chellappa. “We rely on just 30 frames - about one second - to get a picture we can work with,” he explained.
Tracking individuals
I was at the University of Maryland just outside Washington DC, where Professor Chellappa and his team are inventing the next generation of citizen surveillance.
They had pushed back furniture in the conference room for me to walk back and forth and set up cameras to feed my individual data back to their laptops.
Gait DNA, for example, is creating an individual code for the way I walk. Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are.
“As you walk through a crowd, we’ll be able to track you”, said Professor Challappa. “These are all things that don’t need the cooperation of individual.”
Since 9/11, some of the best scientific minds in the defense industry have switched their concentration from tracking nuclear missiles to tracking individuals such as suicide bombers.
Surveillance society
My next stop was a Pentagon agency whose headquarters is a drab suburban building in Virginia. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) had one specific mission - to ensure that when it comes to technology America is always ahead of the game.
Its track record is impressive. Back in the 70s, while we were working with typewriters and carbon paper, Darpa was developing the internet. In the 90s, while we pored over maps, Darpa invented satellite navigation that many of us now have in our cars.
“We ask the top people what keeps them awake at night,” said its enthusiastic and forthright director Dr Tony Tether, “what problems they see long after they have left their posts.”
“And what are they?” I asked.
He paused, hand on chin. “I’d prefer not to say. It’s classified.”
“All right then, can you say what you’re actually working on now.”
“Oh, language,” he answered enthusiastically, clasping his fingers together. “Unless we’re going to train every American citizen and soldier in 16 different languages we have to develop a technology that allows them to understand - whatever country they are in - what’s going on around them.
“I hope in the future we’ll be able to have conversations, if say you’re speaking in French and I’m speaking in English, and it will be natural.”
“And the computer will do the translation?”
“Yep. All by computer,” he said.
“And this idea about a total surveillance society,” I asked. “Is that science fiction?”
“No, that’s not science fiction. We’re developing an unmanned airplane - a UAV - which may be able to stay up five years with cameras on it, constantly being cued to look here and there. This is done today to a limited amount in Baghdad. But it’s the way to go.”
In Britain we are monitored 24/7 by four million CCTV cameras
Smarter technology
Interestingly, we, the public, don’t seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance. Some American cities like New York and Chicago are thinking of taking a lead from Britain where our movements are monitored round the clock by four million CCTV cameras.
So far there is no gadget that can actually see inside our houses, but even that’s about to change.
Ian Kitajima flew to Washington from his laboratories in Hawaii to show me sense-through-the-wall technology.
“Each individual has a characteristic profile,” explained Ian, holding a green rectangular box that looked like a TV remote control.
Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due to test it with the Hawaii National Guard in Iraq next year, and it turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals, that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates.
“First, you can tell whether someone is dead or alive on the battlefield,” said Ian.
“But it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We’ll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they’re actually thinking.”
He glanced at me quizzically, noticing my apprehension.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It sounds very Star Trekkish, but that’s what’s ahead.”
Junio 18th, 2010 at 10:19
I am always struck by the massive police presence in Havana — the walkie-talkies, the constant checking of the papers of young males, the questioning of young women simply for walking around. My friends are upset about the installation of bright lights at the corner of G and La Rampa, where the kids hang out at night. The rest of the city is close to a blackout. Anyway, this is how the regime keeps everyone in line. You can go to jail for three years for illegally buying cement. But you can’t buy it legally, so you are forced into “crime” simply to save your habitation. Control, control,control. I find the comportment of ordinary Habaneros in this situation nothing short of heroic.
Junio 18th, 2010 at 10:06
Since the topic is fish I would like to ask BACALAO’ CULERO what kind of LIE does she think about this post?
I know.. every major city in the world has this kind of device and blah blah blah….