In 2013: Reasons to Stay
Someone has to be at the foot of the aircraft steps, to say goodbye, holding the handkerchief and wiping their eyes. Someone has to receives the letters, the brightly colored postcards, the long distance phone calls. Someone has to stay and look after the house that once was full of children and relatives, watering the plants they left and feeding the old dog that was so faithful to them. Someone has to keep the family memories, grandmother’s mahogany dresser, the wide mirror with the quicksilver coming loose in the corners. Someone has to preserve the jokes that no longer spark laughter, the negatives of the photographs never printed. Someone has to stay to stay.
This 2013, when so many await the implementation of Immigration and Travel Reform, could become a year where we say “goodby” many times. While I respect the decision of each person to settle here or there, it doesn’t fail to sadden me to see the constant bleeding of creativity and talent suffered by my country. It’s frightening to know the number of Cubans who no longer want to leave here, or raise their children on this Island, or realize their professional careers in the country. A tendency that in recent months has had me saying goodbye to colleagues and friends who leave for exile, neighbors who sell their homes to pay for a flight to some other place; acquaintances who I haven’t seen for some weeks whom I later learn are now living in Singapore or Argentina. People who are tired of waiting, of postponing their dreams.
But someone has to stay to close the door, turn the lights off and on again. Many have to stay because this country has to be reborn with fresh ideas, with young people and future proposals. At least the illusion has to stay, the regenerative capacity must remain here; the enthusiasm clings to this earth. In 2013, among the many who remain, one must definitely be hope.
Enero 20th, 2013 at 09:18
to Damir: and how many emigrants come to Cuba for living for economic reasons (and from where) ?
Enero 20th, 2013 at 09:13
to Damir: important is that you are reading this site and maybe once you or your children will understand how great work for Cuba and Cubanians Yoani and her friends have been done .
Enero 18th, 2013 at 15:49
Yoani Sanchez is a super star. All Cubans should thank her for STANDING UP for their Rights. The Castro Regime has caused more damage to the Island than all the tropical storms combined. 2013 promises to be an interesting year. Cheers everyone.
Enero 18th, 2013 at 02:14
I tried to read “Reasons to Stay,” but this is just empty blather. I’ve lost my patience for today. I’ll try reading some more on another day. In the mean time, you are invited to read my site, IAmMyOwnReporter, which is also partly about Cuba. If you do, please read the 56-page report of a random survey I made in 2002, asking 100 Cubans if and why they signed a petition to lock socialism into the Cuban Constitution.
Enero 14th, 2013 at 09:37
Yoani, te he admirado no se por que pues no le he puesto mucha atencion a tus escritos y un poco a tus luchas, quizas uno admira porque el espiritu lo siente y la conciencia no lo sabe. Pero ahora me ha tocado dirigir con otros amigos la revista El Camagueyano Libre aqui en Miami y me pidieron un articulo tuyo. En estos menesteres he leido cosas tuyas y me he dado cuenta por que te admiro. Ha sido una catarsis de la cual no salgo del asombro, lo que expresas, la profundidad de lo dicho y sobre todo la dulzura y a la vez rudeza conque lo dices. Cuentame entre tus humildes admiradores y espero algun dia saber de ti personalmente.
Enero 9th, 2013 at 21:28
A dumb “conserve”? LOL. That’s not a word, dummy, in the context that you are using it. You make yourself look dumber with every post.
Enero 9th, 2013 at 20:27
A dumb conserve will always remain a dumb conserve. I am refering at anonimo who is just too dumb to understand her own dumbness.
People like that complain about foreign countries and pretend to know everything and be the authority on people they have got nothing to do with and do not know a single thing about these people.
They are the authors of stupid web sites like this one.
Fortunately, as I said earlier, the web ranking tells the true story. An undeniable one. No amount of false “friends” and profiles on various “social media” sites (cia data gathering outlets) can change the facts:
the team “yoani” and their web site are fast sliding in oblivion. Despite all the propaganda efforts through usanian nazist media, the site has lost 100% of its’ populrity in the last year or so.
People sniff out liars and dumbos quickly.
You have been sniffed out. As long as we keep flushing the water, you WILL eventually go away.
Enero 9th, 2013 at 15:20
Not many. Cubans are one of the most financially successful immigrant groups in the US.
Nice try at backpedaling on what you said about Cubans going to Mexico on rafts and boats. Too few to mention, you said.
11,000 people “too few to mention”?
Again, dummy, they got to Mexico on “rafts and boat.” They were fleeing the island dictatorship for the chance at a better life, risking their lives in the process, many times at the hands of unscrupulous smugglers.
Enero 8th, 2013 at 23:39
Here, the stats from Australia’s own immigration dept:
http://www.immi.gov.au/media/f.....ration.htm
“The decision to leave Australia is usually based on a complex and varied set of reasons. Overseas-born emigrants may return to their country of birth because of feelings of homesickness or INSECURITY, especially those who leave within a year or two of arriving in Australia.
For Australian-born people, the decision to leave permanently is usually based on economic reasons, particularly employment.”
And that’s a country that is hailed as a shiny example of a successful “capitalist” surivor of the global financial crisis!!!! Aussies leaving for economic reasons, particularly employment!!!
No, that cannot be. Only Cubans are the people who are leaving their own country, for whatever the reason!!!
(majority of Cubans in the usa nazist gulag claim to have left for this particular reason too, strangely. Those who read my articles will remember the links to press articles and videos on the net, where Cubans when asked why did they leave Cuba all cited economic reasons as their primary reason. And how many of them were disappointed and disilusioned with the “some kind of pragmatic capitalism” and “freedom paradise on earth, once they saw its economic and criminal brutality in person.)
Enero 8th, 2013 at 23:29
The anonimously “friendly” translator shines her colours of stupidity with unduly pride.
THIS IS WHAT DAMIR WROTE:
There have been a few instances of Cubans going to Mexico by rafts and boats, but too few to mention.
And now have a look at the comment from the stupid, anonimous and what not else, in the post 96 below!!!!
WHERE ON EARTH did Damir say that Cubans are not trying to enter the usa through Mexico?
Damir said (let us SEE it again!!!):
“There have been a few instances of Cubans going to Mexico by RAFTS AND BOATS
Now, let me again mention another myth the liars and delusional losers the team “yoani” are peddling here daily: Cubans cannot leave Cuba. Not true. Cubans are massively traveling to Panama where they trade and buy goods that are missing in Cuba, to bring them back and sell on local markets.
Some go to Mexico. Even the team “yoani”, in their immense stupidity and ignorance confirmed that recently in post about spices, bananas etc. Most of Cubans caught being smuggled into Mexico are among those that travel between Cuba and some of the Central American countries freely.
I went to Panama with my casa particular owners twice in the past 8 years I am visiting Cuba. And my hosts are no Castro lovers. No political, party or otherwise preferences. Just regular people who work hard and have the passports, which allows them to travel.
There are many, many Cubans with passports and who travel every year in and out of Cuba. Since 2000 and until the 31 August 2012, 941 953 Cubans traveled abroad. According to the stats from Cuban ministry of immigration, only 120 705 did not return. These numbers, when you compare them with some “happy capitalist democracies” are nothing out of the ordinary.
Just look at your beloved Australia (since I am being accused of being an Australian often, let us look at their migratory stats):
EVERY YEAR OVER 120 000 PEOLE LEAVE AND NEVER RETURN.
Bloody Castros!!! Their reach and influence on the world is unbelievable…
Enero 8th, 2013 at 20:41
New Cuban escape route: via Mexico
ISLA MUJERES, MEXICO
Cubans have a new route to the US – and it goes through Cancún.
As the US Coast Guard has beefed up patrols off Miami, more Cubans are fleeing to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, 120 miles west of Cuba’s tip. From the Mexican resort area, smugglers take them north to the US border. Last year, more than 11,000 Cubans were caught crossing into the US from Mexico, twice the number caught in 2004.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World.....-woam.html
ELEVEN THOUSAND, ….too few to mention????
Dumbir…..dumber and dumber.
Enero 8th, 2013 at 20:16
Coming from the person who doesn’t know anything about apples, and still insults people with her/his stupid comments, I would question the comment 94, for just that reason if for nothing else.
There have been a few instances of Cubans going to Mexico by rafts and boats, but too few to mention.
As if that would stop the ignorant from vomiting her/his ignorance on people who happen to disagree with her/his ideology, which as we all know today, has proved itself to be a rubbish and a failure beyond anything else in history of humans.
There are no Cubans registered as asking asylum in Jamaica or any other Carribean island, that they had reached by raft.
And usanian nazist gulag, in their infinite hypocrisy had erected and electrified the fence around their illegal base in CUBA, in order to
STOP
Cubans from entering and asking for asylum.
Add to that their policy “wet feet-dry feet”, which was designed to
CATCH CUBANS BEFORE THEY MANAGE TO LAND ON us SOILAND RETURN THEM BACK TO CUBA
and let us talk about violation of human rights.
And hypocrisy!!!!!
If CUBA is so bad, then it would make perfect sense that you accept and protect Cubans that are trying to escape.
Yet the nazist gulag had created a policy that violates all human rights they claim to uphold, all international refugee treaties the usa is signatory of, and all international maritime laws that the usa nazist gulag is also a signatory of.
It doesn’t matter if refugees are found in international waters. If they request your assistance, and you
ARE
a country that had signed all these international treaties and laws, you
MUST
take them in and process them in accordance with the international law.
And what are the nazists doing?
If they catc Cubans 10 metres from the usanian nazist gulag beach, either in the boat or swimming, they
arrest them and send them back to CUBA
SO don’t talk about democracy and human rights you mor**ic hypocrites.
You and your dictatorship have got zero democracy and humanity sense in you.
Enero 7th, 2013 at 17:35
Re: #90,
Cuban’s do cross to Mexico. It’s a longer and more difficult trip running across the prevailing current, but there are fewer coast guard ships to intercept them. Cuban’s also travel by boat to Jamaica or any other island they happen to land on. Sometimes the refugees are allowed to stay and sometimes they’re sent back to Cuba.
Enero 7th, 2013 at 15:01
Of course he has proof Humberto, he read it on the internet.
The CIA is messing around with the weather again, rain is coming.
If I lived in Cuba, we’d never get rain, thanks to commander Fidel.
You know the CIA is up to its dirty tricks any time rain comes close to Cuba.
The leaders of Venezuela and Bolivia now have proof of the rainfall conspiracy, it’s the hottest news.
Enero 7th, 2013 at 13:08
The man!! THE CIA IS THE STANDARD BOOGEYMAN EXCUSE FOR THE FASCITS DICTATORS IN THE WORLD!! IF YOU HAVE PROOF, THEN PUT IT UP WITH A LINK DEAR! AS FAR AS WHAT I POST, THAT’S MY CHOICE NOT YOUR ORDER!
Enero 7th, 2013 at 09:39
Stoning of women for alleged “adultery” is practiced to this day in some muslim countries. Watch “The Stoning of Soraya M.”
Enero 7th, 2013 at 06:50
@Humberto…. now .. publish please the HOT news items where some of the Latin American presidents have concrete PROOF that the USA/CIA is looking to distabilise their emerging countries again… a situation Cuba has met with repeatedly… in your case suppose this makes you very very happy!
@Help, for the sake of my knowledge of Cuba can you the nice guy here enlighten me why Cubans do not cross the sea to Cancun or to Jamaica .. both seem easier destination that Miami… so stop selling us that the US is the only destination for Cubans… other myth debunked if one is to look closer at the sea route options!… I bet that most Cubans will sooner aim for Brasil where the future is happening than for the repossessed Florida!
Enero 7th, 2013 at 06:41
@68 Anonimo … stick to your tv programmes.. you have ‘better’ scheduled shootings and ‘dyanamically’ shot, than every one else. Shootings at the office, in schools, malls or in some driveway… Moreover you guys are not satisfied with just one kill… the bigger the better for tv news… and then you debate about ‘guns’ as if there is anything one normal person would debate about! And then when you are ready to see a parallel not just feel good about yourself that stoning is not allowed in the USA (but the starving of the red skins was policy), judge the ‘official’ stoning of women in some other place… I know you ‘care’ so much about others as long as they look more primitive than you do!
Enero 7th, 2013 at 00:24
An ignorant who does not know that there ARE apples that can and DO row in tropics is self-excluded from commenting on hte things other people write about.
The ignorant just doesn’t have the intellect to cope with the facts well above and beyond his/her stupidity and ignorance.
I am refering in this instance at the post 87 author.
Enero 7th, 2013 at 00:16
Re: # 86
Damir wrote: “I peed my pants repeatedly after reading this, the first “most stu**d answer in the istory of humanity”
So true. Your last post is the st*p!dest thing you’ve written yet, Damir.
Of course, Damir is a fake too. He’s puppet of the CIA, created to discredit Castro supporters by making them sound deranged, unhinged, paranoid and psychotic.
It’s a fiendish plot and it’s working perfectly.
Enero 6th, 2013 at 23:58
I peed my pants repeatedly after reading this, the first “most stu**d answer in the istory of humanity” this year (for there will be many, many, but MANY, more to come from the genius of the team “yoani” and their 1 and a half strong pioneer brigade:
“Hank
Enero 6th, 2013 at 20:33
Mayrolis, #80
Good question! Yoani can’t respond to questions on her own blog because internet access in Cuba is among the most restricted in the world.”
So how come “she” sends 200 sms per day and has been known to peak 700 daily!!!!
How come she tweets 24 hours a day 7 days per week since she cannot have the access to the internet!!!!!!
How come she writes nebulose things here every second day and she writes for the huffington post, the washington post, the time, the this’n'that at least once a week!!!!!!
How come “she” does all that with no internet and no mobile phone (she dreams of a boysenberry, being a woman… see her post about her cli**ris). (I have to edit for the filters do not allow me to post this)
“she” never answers any questions for the following reasons:
1. “she” is but a puppet in the cia/usa nazist gulag machinery of state terrorism that the usa is using in their attempt to destroy Cuba simply because Cubans dare to think for themselves instead have their thoughts stuck into their skulls, like much of the rest of the world
2. “she” does not really write any of that bull-shift anyway. It is all written somewhere in the usa, by cia and other nazist secret services that are working on destruction of Cuba. usa had admitted trying over fifty times to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro. They had failed miserably every time. They did kill hundreds of innocent Cubans instead. And many more tens of thousands through their economic embargo and blockade of the island country.
3. “she” is just a name and a face, incompetent and incapable of creating all this hype around “her”. Who on earth from Cuba gets the full access to the washington post, the huffington post, the cnn, the foxtv and other government-controlled “private” media organisations just like that? Out of the blue! Unknown and unheard of just yesterday and today “she” writes for these top media outlets just like that!!!??? I tried to contact these outlets of nazist propaganda and see if I can write articles for them to publish, and I never even received an answer
There are hundreds of “bloggers” and “dissidents” from Cuba. Some even have their own “blogs” on this site.
Have you ever heard of a single other one? Have you ever read any of the other people’s posts?
What is so significantly different here that this “she” is so much more publicised and able to write for those media outlets while the others are still dying in the shadows of anonimity and are just as poor as they were before?
The
ONLY
difference is that “she” is the product of the nazist gulag usa. “she” is not really a person behind this site and its’ blatant lies. “she” is just a volunteer who got chosen by her handlers to be turned into a prominent “voice” of “disenfranchised” Cuban people.
Do yourself a favour and read some of the other Cuban blogs and see what genuine Cubans write about, and then compare it with the stupidities and the nonsense here.
If you do, you will understand the difference and why “she” never answers the questions.
“she” “doesn’t have the internet and the telephone” as her little “helper” confirms here - in his/her enormous lack of ganglia in the head - , and so she never wrote a single letter of the material posted here in “her” name.
This is all just another fat lie of the nazist gulag usa and their secret terrorist services.
Remember how it all happened in the arab world? Through the “social media”. The only problem with that “truth” is the fact that even the stu**d usanian nazist dictators were repeatedly telling us that Egyptian governemnt is highly restrictive and prohibits the internet, and that what little was available was under strict governmental control, yet the “activists”
HAD FULL ACCESS TO THE INTERNET
in Egypt!!!!
How on earth was that possible?
The nazist usa gulag supplied the satellite phones and internet modems to their internal a**e-lickers, the same domestic traitors much like “she”. The nazist state terrorists were working in Egypt’s underground for decades, all the while kissing mubarack’s bottom and doing business with him, making him one of the richest people on earth.
And that is exactly what these criminals are doing here too.
There is no “yoani”. A person is lending her name and the face, but the dirty job is all done in obscure corridors of those nazist dictators up north - the usan nazist gulag’s “government” with its’ secret services.
That is why “she” never answers.
It is not “her” job to do so. “she” only sells her identity to the nazists so that they can destroy her own homeland, just as they have had done so in so many other countries around the world.
Enero 6th, 2013 at 23:55
MIAMI HERALD: Report: John Kerry held secret talks with Cuba to free Alan Gross - A published report describes steps the Massachusetts Democrat took in 2010 to negotiate the jailed subcontractor’s return.- By Juan O. Tamayo
A senior state department official also met in secret with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez to discuss the Gross case, but the foreign minister lectured the U.S. official for an hour, added the report in the respected magazine Foreign Affairs.
José Cardenas, a former top official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote that the article amounted to a “lesson on the folly of attempting to appease dictators.”
A knowledgeable Senate aide also challenged the article’s description of the role that Fulton Armstrong, a senior staffer in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former CIA analyst, played in the campaign to free Gross.
The report authored by R.M Schneiderman, an editor at Newsweek, includes previously unknown details of a U.S. effort to win Gross’ freedom by cutting back funding for the pro-democracy programs and making them less provocative to Cuba.
In September of 2010, Spanish government officials helped arrange a secret meeting between then-Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela and Rodríguez to discuss a possible release of Gross, according to Schneiderman.
“The Cubans were far less flexible than the Americans expected. The U.S. … wanted Cuba to release Gross, and only then would it press ahead on any other policy changes,” he wrote. “Rodríguez allegedly lectured Valenzuela for roughly an hour on Cuba’s history of grievances.”
A month later, at the request of Cuban diplomats in Washington and with State Department approval, Kerry met with Rodríguez at the home of Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York, according to the report.
“There was no quid pro quo, but the meeting seemed to reassure the Cubans that the democracy programs would change, and the Cubans expressed confidence” that Gross would be freed after his trial, which was held in March of 2011, the report noted.
President Barack Obama has nominated Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and backer of improving relations with Cuba, to succeed Hillary Clinton. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Kerry chairs, is expected to easily approve the nomination.
Schneiderman wrote that in early 2010, the State Department and USAID asked Armstrong, who had long criticized the programs as inefficient and wasteful, to help them make the programs less offensive to Havana — hoping Cuba might then free Gross.
And that summer, “at State’s behest,” Armstrong began meeting with officials at the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington to tell them about the changes that were being made to the programs, Schneiderman wrote.
“We said, ‘Look, message received,’ ” he quoted Armstrong as saying. “‘These [programs] are stupid. We’re cleaning them up. Just give us time, because politically we can’t kill them.’” The Cubans seemed appreciative. “We asked them, ‘Will this help you release Alan Gross?’ ” Armstrong went on. “And the answer was yes.’”
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....ecret.html
Enero 6th, 2013 at 23:15
International law and other considerations on the repatriation of Cuban balseros by the United States - By Maria C. Werlau - August 2004
In essence, these voyages “are inherently dangerous and regularly result in injuries and deaths during voyage attempts on both homemade vessels and boats used by migrant smugglers.”7 It has been estimated that in the last four decades over 70,000 Cubans of all ages may have perished at sea trying to escape
http://www.cubaarchive.org/downloads/CA10.pdf
Enero 6th, 2013 at 23:10
R.I.P.!
MIAMI HERALD: An empty Cuban raft turned up near Cutler Bay, sparking fears that the passengers died - An altar to a Santeria god and an ID card were found aboard the flimsy craft; the people it carried are presumed to be dead - BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
If you had landed in Miami from Cuba aboard a 12-foot Styrofoam raft, would you then leave on the raft your lucky altar to Eleguá, the god of Santeria that opens and closes all paths to mankind?
Would you also leave behind a Cuban national ID card that would have allowed you to stay in the United States without any question whatsoever under the U.S.’ wet-foot, dry-foot policy?
Those are the grim questions surrounding the discovery Saturday of the raft, with four rowing positions but no clear indication of how many passengers it once carried, that washed ashore near the Black Point Marina near Cutler Bay in South Miami-Dade.
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission agent at the scene said the passengers “apparently are dead,” said Nancy Perez, who was on a nature walk with her husband and dog when they spotted the raft and snapped several photos of it.
“No one abandons an Eleguá. If you believe in that and you put it in the raft, you don’t,” said Perez, referring to the clay plate, figure of a child, nails, screws and old colonial-type iron key that made up the altar.
Eleguá is the god in Afro-Cuban religions who is said to open and close paths for mankind. He is said to be the divider between heaven and earth and to walk along the seashores.
The wildlife agents who towed away the raft told Perez the Cuban ID card belongs to a young male. Cuban migrants intercepted at sea are usually returned to the island, but those who set foot on U.S. soil are allowed to stay.
U.S. Coast Guard spokesmen said no search was underway for the raft’s passengers.
The raft, made with blocks of Styrofoam held together with wood planks, had a sail made from an olive green tarp and four posts for oars, although only two home-made oars were found, Perez said.
On its floor were a five-gallon jug of water, several small bottles with sugared water and honey for energy, empty juice cans, some plastic bags with crumbled food, a blue lighter and what appeared to be a container of coffee.
Also on the floor, Perez said, were a pair of men’s socks, a green polo shirt and gray pants, as well as what appeared to be a tuft of long hair.
More than 350 Cuban rafters made it to U.S. shores and 1,275 were intercepted at sea during the 12 months that ended Sept. 30. The number of those who died trying to cross the perilous Florida Straits has never been known.
Information from Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS?4 is included in this report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....ed-up.html
Enero 6th, 2013 at 20:41
Mayrolis!! PLEASE READ!
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN CUBA- Amnesty International Publications 2010
CONTROL OF INTERNET ACCESS
In Cuba, access to the internet remains under state control. It is regulated by the Law of Security of Information, which prohibits access to internet services from private homes. Therefore, the internet in Cuba has a social vocation and remains accessible at education centres, work-places and other public institutions. Internet can also be accessed in hotels but at a high cost. In October 2009, the government adopted a new law allowing the Cuban Postal Services to establish cyber-cafés in its premises and offer internet access to the public. However, home connections are not yet allowed for the vast majority of Cubans and only those favoured by the government are able to access the internet from their own homes.
However, many blogs are not accessible from within Cuba because the Cuban authorities have put in place filters restricting access. The blogs affected are mainly those that openly criticize the Cuban government and its restrictions on freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly and movement. For example, Generation Y is one of the dozens of blogs that are filtered or intermittently blocked by the government and are not accessible inside Cuba.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/libr.....2010en.pdf
Enero 6th, 2013 at 20:33
Mayrolis, #80
Good question! Yoani can’t respond to questions on her own blog because internet access in Cuba is among the most restricted in the world. Comparable to North Korea, which is also known as the hermit kingdom.
Yoani can’t sit down in front of her computer as you and I do and simply log on. Internet access in Cuba is only available to a very privileged few in Cuba because the dictatorship ruling that unfortunate island is afraid that if it allows access to information from outside of Cuba to ordinary Cubans, their grip on power will disappear.
I’m sure there are others who contribute to the comments section here who can provide you with a more detailed explanation, but that’s the gist of it.
Enero 6th, 2013 at 19:57
Why is it that Yoani never replies to any questions?
Enero 6th, 2013 at 17:59
HAVANA TIMES: Unemployed at 25 in Cuba - Daisy Valera
I’ll turn 25 on January 7, but I’m not going to stop here to list my achievements or my frustrations.
Now I’m just another one of the unemployed.
They went through my emails — and my rare moments on the Internet — and managed to fire me based on trivial computer regulations.
I’m an “undisciplined”. They could forgive me if I spent five out of my eight hours a day watching movies, chatting or discovering what exercises to do to get rid of cellulite.
But looking for information about Cuba, or writing and discussing that topic is too much; it’s a serious act of “indiscipline.”
To get reassigned, I’ll have to deal with the same people who one year and nine months ago told me that, although I was a nuclear chemist, I couldn’t work in any research capacity given my “characteristics.”
Those “characteristics” are nothing other than writing on this webpage about thing of interest to me or that cause me to worry about my country. Unforgivable.
I expect perhaps months of unemployment, running from one ministry to another, noting how the functionaries avoid me and invent implausible excuses, repeated a hundred times: “Come back tomorrow to see if we can take care of your problem.”
I have a year and three months to complete my post-university social service obligation, and the Ministry of Science is obligated to assign me to a job.
But then what?
My work record says more than any employing supervisor wants to hear.
My current situation is a warning and a vision of the future.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=85460
Enero 6th, 2013 at 16:30
HUFFINGTON POST: “Una Noche”: In Lucy Mulloy’s Film About Cuba Art and Life Converge - by YOANI SANCHEZ
The British director has said that her intention was not to send a political message, but “to tell a story about emotions.” But in Cuba to narrate reality, to portray real life today, is worse than shouting protest slogans or composing hundreds of opposition documents.
So Una Noche is a sharp blow to illusion, to these vestiges of a paradise located in the Caribbean that still remain in the minds of many who do not live here. But it is also a kick in the pants for hope; so it is no wonder that the end of the story could be interpreted as an opportunity to begin anew, even though little has changed.
The film “Una Noche” — (One Night) — by the British director Lucy Mulloy, has come to be like that strange figure of geometry. It began inspired by a true story, later jumped to the big screen, and ended up getting away from its director and provoking a reality similar to the original.
The flesh-and-blood youngsters whose experiences are told in the film, are played in turn by two novice actors who ended up realizing, in real life, the dream of characters. The point of departure - again and again - of that peculiar Mobius Strip has been emigration.
The desire to escape from Cuba, though frustrated for so many people, became a concrete reality for those two actors. When Anailín de la Rua and Javier Nuñuz decided not to travel to the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, but rather to stay in Miami and take advantage of the Cuban Adjustment Act, they glued together that day the ends of two very different dimensions: fiction and reality. Thus converting them into a single continuous side of their own lives.
Despite the absence of some of its cast, Una Noche left the Tribeca Film Festival with three awards. Best film by a New Director, Best Actor — shared by the two male leads — and also the award for Best Cinematography. The latter was richly deserved given the true picture that is achieved with the interiors and exteriors framing the narrative.
The harshness and misery in a Havana with very little resemblance to the city depicted in tourist ads, which invariably show the Capitol building, the beautiful and tall Focsa Building, or the Plaza of the Revolution. Instead, in the film the visual background is of architectural decadence and urban slums, long forgotten by the restoration processes undertaken along the paths of our foreign visitors.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ESSAY!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....21300.html
Enero 6th, 2013 at 16:17
USA TODAY: Cuban rights abuses, jailings up in new repressive wave - Tracey Eaton
HAVANA — Political arrests in Cuba jumped to more than 6,600 in 2012, the highest in decades as authorities shifted their strategy for dealing with growing civic resistance, say dissident groups. Cuba’s communist government is using more short-term arbitrary arrests to disrupt and intimidate critics rather than slap them with long prison sentences like those used against dozens of Cubans in a 2003 crackdown on dissent. “The government has changed its tactics,” said Elizardo Sánchez, director of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a Havana group that tracks political arrests. Repression is “low-profile, low-intensity” but “reaches more people.” Political arrests in 2012 climbed to 6,602, from 4,123 in 2011 and 2,074 in 2010, Sánchez said. Most people are freed within a few hours or days. Former math professor Antonio Rodiles is among those subjected to the latest repressive tactics. Rodiles, founder of Estado de SATS, a group that encourages civic participation and debate, said he was beaten and punched in the eye Nov. 7 when he and others went to Cuban State Security headquarters in Havana to ask about a lawyer friend who had been arrested. Rodiles, 40, was then jailed for 19 days.
“Israel and Palestine have been able to at least sit down and talk. Cubans should be able to do that,” he said of his attempts to have a dialogue with the government.
Héctor Maseda, who served several years in prison for his political views, believes authorities are switching to short-term arrests to give the impression of tolerance.
“The government is trying to confuse public opinion. It is trying to show that repression has lessened,” said Maseda, 69, a former nuclear engineer. “But that is not happening. Repression is increasing.”
Cuba analyst José Cardenas said Cuban President Raúl Castro lacks the “outsized charismatic personality” of Fidel Castro, his retired older brother, so his government must use “harassment and hit-and-run tactics” to manage dissent.
“In 2013, they can’t put people in jail and throw away the key anymore. They have to act in a way that doesn’t draw international scrutiny,” said Cardenas, a former acting assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. “The turnstile jailing of perceived and real dissidents is really the next best way to keep the opposition from growing.”
U.S. reaches out to dissidents
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Americans are standing with the “courageous voices” in Cuba who wish to freely determine their own future.
“We are deeply concerned by the Cuban government’s repeated use of arbitrary detention to silence critics, disrupt peaceful assembly, and impede independent civil society,” Nuland said.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/.....s/1809345/
Enero 6th, 2013 at 11:49
Gone Bang Gong
I hate my language
as much as I love my language.
It is like a bulldozer, pushing the rock and brush into piles.
It tears down fences and poles and knocks down trees.
Plying a wide swath of bare earth, to be paved.
The words are not like water
flowing over earth and stone.
Seeking every crack and crevice.
In the hall I grasped my neighbor by the collar,
pressing him to the wall.
What does the word ‘gone’
mean to you, I asked, brandishing my cane.
Gone, he gasped, it means “you don’t have it anymore.’’
I released him, he stumbled away, he knows me well.
Gone, I think to myself,
the word should be used
to describe the sound of cacophony.
Like the word bang, like the word gong.
Gone, bang, gong, gone bang gong,
as if we were describing some kind of music!
Down the hall I run into another neighbor.
Standing in front of her door,
digging through her satchel.
My keys are gone, she says.
My god! I say, what a calamity!
The keys to the apartment, gone, the key to the mailbox, gone,
the keys to the car, gone.
What does the word ‘gone’ mean to you, I asked smugly.
She looked me in the eye and hurried away.
She also knows me well.
If I could get hold of this word
with a pair of pliers
and clamp it down.
I could open it with a hammer.
Then you would see what this word means.
My mother is gone.
My father is gone.
My wife is gone.
My child is gone.
My home is gone.
Later on the avenue, I pause,
heavy on my cane.
I think to myself.
When I lay down to die,
(should it happen that way).
I will use my last breath to say,
“My life is gone.“
One sentence.
Think.
What does this mean to you?
‘‘My Freedom is gone.”
Don’t tell me!
Don’t talk to me about it.
I don’t want to hear it.
I don’t need to know.
Enero 6th, 2013 at 10:47
Yoani, stories of emigration always have a sad side and you certainly point out very nicely how this sadness affects “who stays”. The “particular” political situation in Cuba makes these facts of life even more painful than in other places (at least in the so called “western world” which Cuba, despite all the efforts of the regime, belongs to). My family has a history of emigration from Italy since the 30’s as many millions of italians before and after, and you are quite right someone has to stay and actually in certain times it takes more courage and guts to stay than leaving, particularly when it is not that simple or possible to come back.
The future of Cuba (as many other countries in similar situations) relies on those who decide to stay but even more on those who decide to come back bringing their own experiences and fresh ideas, that’s the way changes happens and happened in history and this is way many regimes forbid people to leave or even more importantly to come back. Now with internet and globalization is more hard to maintain the “status quo” and even countries isolated for decades had to “open up” (i.e. Burma).
Enero 6th, 2013 at 09:23
Hank,
You’re right, Castro is largely responsible for the Cholera deaths and other deaths from plagues that have swept Cuba.
When you throw a doctor in jail for reporting a disease, when you throw a journalist in jail for reporting stolen medicine, when you outlaw private charity and all independent aid for the sick…
you must accept responsibility for all those people who died because you denied them proper medical aid.
He has quite a lot of death on his hands.
Enero 6th, 2013 at 07:09
I just went through some of the posts by those cre***ds bullshifting about Cuba, socialism and communism as if they actually knew anything about it.
Made me laugh.
The good news is that all you losers are old and wrinkly. Just like Castros.
The time to die is nigh.
Some have already gone down the sewerage pipes already, now is your turn.
But, let us turn our attention to more of the team “yoani’s” enormous stupidity.
See, the title of this delusional post is “In 2013: Reasons to Stay”.
And then the “reasons” are listed. But when yo look at them, they are all vague, generic, pointles. They could apply to any person from any conutry in the world.
In fact they do apply to the people in “some kind of pragmatic capitalism” countries currently defaulting on a daily basis. The people who are now leaving their paradises and going to South America in a search of opportunities and better life. Early in the last year I posted a number of links, many of them from Spanish press, showing tens of thousands of people leaving Spanish capitalist shores and going to countries like Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela and, but of course,
CUBA
In fact since the fall of capitalism, in 2007, over 30 000 Spaniards have left for
CUBA
alone!!!!!
Unlike a few delusional usanian cre((ns here, they at least
CAN
freely go to CUBA!!!
http://www.publico.es/espana/4.....-la-crisis
Such a beautiful thing that capitalism is that tens of thousands of people, predominantly young and highly qualified are leaving it and are going en masse to the countries the capitalist propaganda had flagged as “communist” countries of today!!!
The facts are speaking for themselves. The copy and paste geniuses are only capable of bullshifting about their antiquated and failed ideology.
And please continue. The more you defend it and vomit about it the more people see through your delusions.
Enero 6th, 2013 at 06:35
And STILL NO ANSWERS FROM THE TEAM “YOANI” LIES FACTORY!!!
Whassup “free speech and democracy” chimps??? Affraid to speak freely about your lies and ideological propaganda?
Why am I not surprised?
It is easy and simple to put up a domestic traitor and pretend to speak from a high moral point when criticising others, but when it comes to your own lies and deception, suddenly no speak spanish, eh !!!!???
Come on, explain to us how did you get the invitation letter for Deutchland?
How did you pay for your passport to go to Deutchland?
How did you end upin Switzerland?
Why did you go to Spain from Switzerland, and whose address is that Spanish address your domain, bought in Germany, is registered to?
And most of all, how on earth did you manage to return to Cuba being a self-declared “dissident”????
Cuba does not accept back “dissidents”.
Care to explain your family ties to the top level members of State Security, military and government?
How come the pin-up granny can bullshift so much and still be free, not even arrested, while - as you keep saying constantly - other people end up in prison for
MUCH LESS !!!!>/b>
What is the real truth you liars and manipulators, slaves of your white “gods”!!!
Enero 5th, 2013 at 23:41
Humberto,
Google Roy Lee Patterson. The poster is a fake.
Getting back to the topic at hand, exactly how many people have died from the cholera outbreak in Cuba?
Cholera infected feces in drinking water isn’t the best selling point for a vacation destination.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 21:16
Roy Lee Patterson !! I CAN GET A BAG OF APPLES AND/OR ORANGES IN THE BAD OLD U.S.A. FOR $1 AT THE 99c STORES 24/7 PRACTICALLY OR MAYBE DOUBLE THAT AT REGULAR STORES! WHERE ARE YOUR SHOPPING DEAR?? WHOLE PAYCHECK (Whole Foods)?? PLEASE! POR FAVOR CASTRO AGENT/APOLOGIST! BAD OLD U.S.A.! BAD OLD U.S.A.~
Enero 5th, 2013 at 21:11
The Man Comes Around!! ON #59, #60!! CAN WE TALK ABOUT CUBA AND CUBAN ISSUES FOR A BIG CHANGE! YOU CASTRO AGENTS ARE SOOO TRANSPARENT DEAR!
Enero 5th, 2013 at 20:35
Watch “the stoning of Soraya M” on netflix to see how the muslim scum treat their women. Oh, but they have “ethical” banking laws. Dummy.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 18:45
Death from a preventable disease sucks. Cholera is an epidemic in Cuba.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 18:19
Capitalism Sucks
Just puting things away in the kitchen from the grocery, (Wal Mart)!
A large bag of beautiful Oranges, 3.98 USD.
A large bag of beautiful Apples, 5.23 USD.
I can tell you what I think of Capitalism and it’s vagries.
What I can’t tell you is how sweet the orange taste
or how crisp the apple.
It is January and there is snow on the ground, yeah, Capitalism sucks bigtime.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 17:50
Life is defined by oppurtunity.
Young people realize this.
Many will not tolerate limitations, even of familial and traditional obligations.
You must know what this means to them.
You must know the precipice they face?
Is it about political ideaology?
Is it about shameles profiteers?
It is about people.
It is about the love of life
that well being brings.
The future that many Cuban people have imagined is “leaving”
though in fact they may stay.
I am not in the place of the Cuban people yet the plight of those without personal, political and economic freedom is known to people of the free world.
The current news of the world each day tells of the immense struggle that is so real for so many who must suffer for the things they need.
Should I provide the people of Cuba a box of guns and grenades?
Should I provide the people of Cuba a box of cash and credit cards?
Niether, they are not important.
I send only this; “the the world is watching and the future is bright”.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 17:24
So, what’s the latest on the cholera epidemic in Cuba?
Cholera is a horrible, miserable way to die. Not sure if I’d like to visit a country that hides such an epidemic from its own people and the outside world. Here’s some information on what it is like to contract cholera, which is a contagious disease, in case you’re planning a trip to Cuba:
Cholera is an infection in the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse, watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking water or eating food that has been contaminated by the feces (waste product) of an infected person, including one with no apparent symptoms. The severity of the diarrhea and vomiting can lead to rapid dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, and death. Worldwide, it affects 3–5 million people and causes 100,000–130,000 deaths a year.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 14:23
Help,
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the number of Castro-responsible deaths exceeds 1 million. Fifty-four years is a long time. His idol, Hitler, managed to kill at least six fold as many in just a few years. I hope to sponsor one day a Cuban Holocaust museum in Havana or Santiago so no one ever forgets the atrocities of the Castro brood.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 11:40
Hank,
He’s probably personally responsible for the deaths of a few hundred thousand Cubans. People who starved to death because he refused to allow farmers to sell their food to fellow Cubans, and people who died in the ocean trying to escape.
Measuring deaths from starvation is very difficult. They still can’t figure how many starved under Stalin.
As for the ones he simply murdered, that’s a guess too. Those buried at sea will never tell tales.
If the total goes above a million though, I won’t be shocked. Nobody believed Stalin and Mao killed millions either. I remember even in the 80s, some US journalists were writing the famines were all anti-Soviet propaganada and that nobody went hungry under Stalin.
Human stupidity never changes.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 11:15
_man comes around_
I still suspect you love the capitalist US Department of Defense invented internet and are using it to communicate with us capitalist mortals.
Am I wrong?
Enero 5th, 2013 at 07:00
Hank I think you are talking too about the American Pres who has just extended the right for Americans to be detained and killed without due process .not to mention they can monitor all your comms without a warrant … While Michelle is looking good on tv….
as seen what took Cuba ages it took America 5 to 15 years if you include the previous pres….
Enero 5th, 2013 at 06:52
Help according to you Americans invented the fire too and most likely the wheel … You are not far beyond the old soviet thinking… Luckily they have changed and I can live a marginally better life …you are too stuck-up to change…thats what being on top of the world does… Roman empire Spanish empire British Empire… All couldnt change and accept where they are wrong…
What you dont get is for some 4% or 8 % dont matter much …what matters and rightly should matter is the value added to society behind it…. Or the point you need a mortgage?? we all know and seen you would kill a small foreign country just for 1p less to a gallon of petrol… Exactly your thinking…
And yeah thank you for your American computer…produced by workers in China and which cost so much that I should feel I have achieved something in life when I can afford to pay you for it and not the worker that built it…. Thank you nice guy!
Enero 5th, 2013 at 01:40
What does a dictator like the one in Cuba do when he wakes up in the morning? What’s his plan for the day after he shaves and puts on his uniform? I wonder if he thinks about the individual human beings he personally killed or the dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions? of people he has caused to die. I wonder. Is this something that weighs on his conscience as he ages and sits alone at night? The answer must be “No,” those concerns are the last of a dictator’s worries.
The “banality of evil” is a phrase I think was first coined by Hannah Arendt in a book she wrote about the Holocaust. If I understand her premise correctly, repression; lack of freedom; control of the many by a few is achieved once a subject population has been systematically manipulated to accept an imposed reality of endless abuse, suffering and death. The oppressed population eventually accepts this new reality as simply the way things are. That existence becomes what is normal and it is propagated and maintained by ordinary people. Thus the banality of it all. It must be a nearly impossible yoke for a population to shake off. Fifty-four years of Castro insanity are a case in point. We are now in year fifty-five of the profane absurdity that is the dictatorship in Cuba. The dictator will wake up again tomorrow morning, shave, get dressed and go about his dictatorial chores. When does it end.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 00:47
Humberto #56,
Fascinating report. Thank you! Can you imagine if this were to happen in the United States, or anywhere else for that matter? What an amazing story, more bizarre than any telenovela I know of. The infirm president of Venezuela kidnapped in Cuba and the population of Venezuela held hostage by a foreign dictatorship, deprived of vital information about their own president. Just extraordinary.
Enero 5th, 2013 at 00:08
EL UNIVERSAL VENEZUELA: Ledezma: Cabello and Maduro are receiving instructions from Cuba
Caracas Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma said it was obvious that Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro and National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello are receiving instructions from the Cuban government. “They are getting (instructions) and what we want to know is who is giving such instructions, because according to the latest report of Communication Minister Ernesto Villegas, President Chávez is in a critical health status”
Caracas Metropolitan Mayor and opposition leader Antonio Ledezma reported that President Hugo Chávez is “kidnapped in Cuba” and that Venezuelans have a right to know what his condition is and who is giving instructions from Cuba.
Ledezma urged the Venezuelan Government to provide accurate information regarding Chávez’s state of health. “I am ratifying my stance: as Venezuelans, we have a right to know the real situation of the President. We can have different political views; we can have disagreements as persons and political leaders, but Chávez is the president of all Venezuelans and he has been in the hands of the Cuban government for more than 18 months.”
Ledezma believes the way the information on Chávez’s operation for cancer has been handled suggests that the president “is virtually kidnapped by a foreign government.”
“Enough disrespect for Venezuelans. I feel Venezuelans have been deceived and the good faith of President Hugo Chávez’s followers and relatives has been betrayed,” Ledezma said.
The opposition leader requested a clarification on who is giving instructions from Cuba to the officials currently in charge of the Venezuelan government.”
Ledezma said it was obvious that Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro and National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello are receiving instructions from the Cuban government. “They are getting (instructions) and what we want to know is who is giving the instructions, because according to the latest report of Communication Minister Ernesto Villegas, President Chávez is in a critical health status.”
http://www.eluniversal.com/nac.....-from-cuba
Enero 4th, 2013 at 21:18
N.Y. TIMES: A New Era’s Filmmakers Find Their Way in Cuba - By VICTORIA BURNETT
Mr. Miló is one of hundreds of Cuban filmmakers who, armed with digital technology, are laying the foundations of an independent movie industry outside the state apparatus that has defined Cuban cinema for much of the Castro era — and still, much to the frustration of some filmmakers, controls access to the island’s movie theaters. Around the country, Cubans are making features, shorts, documentaries and animated works, often with little more than a couple of friends and some inexpensive equipment — and little input from the state-supported Cuban Institute of Cinematic Art and Industry. Mr. Miló, who received about $10,000 in financing from a Spanish production company, Idunnu Music and Visual Arts, said that the crew and actors worked for next to nothing. “They said they felt strongly about what the film was saying,” he said. The global boom in digital filmmaking has rippled across Cuba over the past decade, letting filmmakers create their work beyond the oversight of state-financed institutions. Independent movies have become a new means of expression in a country where, despite freedoms and economic reforms introduced by President Raul Castro since 2006, the state still carefully controls national press, television and radio, and access to the Internet is very limited.
But even with the technology much more accessible, filmmakers must struggle to get their work seen. The film institute controls Cuba’s theaters; Internet access remains rare, expensive and too slow for downloading movies. Instead, Cubans pass around DVDs.
Karel Ducasse, for example, has made about 500 copies of his 2007 documentary, “Zone of Silence,” which is about censorship, to sell and hand out at festivals. He believes the problems with distribution are no accident.
“The state has become afraid of digital media,” he said. “They know anything can be passed around the island.”
Aside from longing for better distribution, Cuban producers are anxious for regulations that would let them establish private production companies and seek permits without going through the film institute, whose bureaucracy eats into meager budgets.
Dozens of small production companies have sprouted in recent years, offering camera-rental services and help with permits and logistics, but they have no legal status.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01.....wanted=all
Enero 4th, 2013 at 16:04
_man comes around_
Thanks for explaining capitalism, now I get it.
If my American bank lends me interest at 4 percent it’s a bad ole American capitalist bank.
If an Islamic bank charges me an 8 percent “borrowing fee” it’s a nice fair anti-capitalist bank trying to help us poor folk out.
But I still suspect you are in love with your capitalist American-invented computer running an American-invented operating system connected to your American-invented internet.
Just a hunch.
Enero 4th, 2013 at 15:31
SORRY C.L.!! LOOKS LIKE NOTHING YOU TRY WILL STOP ME FROM POSTING WHAT I WANT!
CHRISTIAN SOLIDARITY WORLDWIDE: Cuba: Dramatic increase in religious freedom violations in 2012 - 03/01/2013
CSW documented a dramatic increase in violations of freedom of religion or belief in Cuba in 2012.
CSW has called on the Cuban leader, Raul Castro, to ensure that significant improvements are made in upholding religious freedom in 2013 after recording a dramatic increase in violations across the country as the government cracked down on religious organisations and individuals.
Church leaders in different parts of the country reported ongoing violations in the final weeks of the year. An unregistered Protestant church affiliated with the Apostolic Movement in Camaguey was threatened with demolition on 29 December. The following day, nine women affiliated with the Ladies in White movement in Holguin were arrested in the early hours of the morning and held in prison until Sunday morning Mass had ended.
CSW documented 120 reported cases of religious freedom in 2012, up from a total of 30 in 2011, some of which involved entire churches and denominations and hundreds of people. The number does not include the men and women who were arrested and imprisoned for the duration of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit in March which local human rights groups estimate to be upwards of 200.
While Roman Catholic churches reported the highest number of violations, mostly involving the arrest and arbitrary detention of parishioners attempting to attend church activities, other denominations and religious groups were also affected. Baptist, Pentecostal and Methodist churches in different parts of the country reported consistent harassment and pressure from state security agents. Additionally, government officials continued to refuse to register some groups, including the fast-growing Protestant network the “Apostolic Movement”, threatening affiliated churches with closure, and shut down a Mormon church in Havana which had been denied official recognition. One of the most severe cases involved the violent beating of Pentecostal pastor, Reutilio Columbie, in Moa, early in the year. Pastor Columbie suffered permanent brain damage as a result of the beating which he believes to have been orchestrated by local Communist Party officials. To date, no investigation into the beating has been carried out.
There were some improvements in the exercise of religious freedom inside Cuban prisons, however, even these were marred by government interference. A number of Protestant members of the clergy, appointed by their respective denominations to carry out prison ministry, were arbitrarily denied permission to join prison ministry teams. In addition, in the Provincial Youth Prison in Santa Clara only fourteen prisoners were permitted to participate in Christmas services. Forty prisoners, all practicing Christians, had requested permission to do so.
Mervyn Thomas, Chief Executive of CSW, said: “We are deeply concerned by the rapid deterioration in religious freedom over the past year in Cuba. Despite promises of privileges to some religious groups, Sunday after Sunday the government continues to violate the most basic of rights: the right to freely participate in religious services and form part of a religious community without interference. Unregistered religious groups and registered groups that have resisted government pressure have come under intense pressure, been subjected to harassment and in the worst cases come under physical attack or seen their buildings confiscated. The Cuban government’s claims of reform and respect for human rights cannot be taken seriously unless these violations are addressed and real protections for religious freedom for all put in place. We urge Raul Castro to make this a priority of the government in 2013.”
CLICK LINK FOR MORE INFORMATION!
http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/arti.....mp;id=1472
Enero 4th, 2013 at 13:57
The Man! YOU REALLY SHOULD USE REVERSE PSYCOLOGY ON ME DEAR, MIGHT WORK! AND THE KEYWORD HERE IS “MIGHT”!!
MIAMI HERALD: Human rights activist says dissident arrests in Cuba up in 2012 - Human rights activist says that the number of dissident arrests was well above the 4,120 in 2011 and 2,070 in 2010.
Cuban security agents made a record 6,602 short-term detentions of political dissidents last year and the number of political prisoners on the island rose by about 30, Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz reported Thursday.
The figure of 6,602 confirmed detentions in 2012 compared to 4,123 for 2011 and 2,074 for 2010, according to a year-end report by Sánchez’ Cuban Committee for Human rights and National Reconciliation.
Sánchez also reported separately that the number of political prisoners, which dropped to about 40 after ruler Raúl Castro freed more than 120 in 2010-2011, climbed again last year with the trials and convictions of about 30 Cubans on political charges.
The increased repression, he said, is the result of the growing opposition among Cubans to a government that all but strangled the economy and human rights during more than half a century of communist rule.
“The regime has accumulated an enormous disaster, and the popular dissatisfaction increases by the day,” Sanchez told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Havana. “It has only one answer: repression, pure and harsh.”
In the absence of significant changes, the year-end report added, it “forecasts that during the year 2013 the situation for civil and political rights and other fundamental rights will continue to worsen in Cuba.”
“The totalitarian model continues intact, as the regime continues to perfect and expand its powerful machinery for repression and bureaucracy that … carries with it an unbearable and ruinous cost to the nation,”
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....ident.html
Enero 4th, 2013 at 11:59
and yeah… I doubt that Castro is a capitalist… if he was Cuba would be where you want it to be… he is a revolutionary deluded by his own past who failed to conquer the peace for many reasons including some who have nothing to do with him…
Where I agree with you is that the second gen, his kids and the kids of the apparatchiks who today play the commie game .. have capitalism at heart more than you think… they like discrepancies so much that they cannot live wiht the idea of being equal to the rest… so there you won your battle… Watch Mariella we already saw the teeth she has when it comes to dealing with ‘commoners’… probably she mixed pleasure with biz in the US put some money in the bank and invested where she should and reviewed her portfolio of assets! American banks are there to help her!…nice guy
Enero 4th, 2013 at 11:52
No actually I am not going to tell you that, but you told us that your banks are just lambs and that the wolves are somewhere else. So much so that Jamie and Lloyd are probably the Laurel and Hardy of the banking world when it comes to Muslim banking - which everybody knows helped a lot of people get homes at decent prices and did not fail them…
And much more, apparently to you an ‘individual’s hypocrisy’ amounts the same as a bank’s and a corporation’s in you view, in terms the damage it does. Wow you are really selling it now…American banks are lambs and the damage they do is about the same as every Tom Dick and Harry does when they hope for a few more bucks in their pocket.
You guys really suffer of a complex of ‘being too nice’… and that the rest are THE problem (as seen everyday with Cuba here or on the news etc)… but then why do you bring in the shared responsibility mantra and not stay nicely where you are with your nice people?…
Your society rewards ‘individualism’ and ‘to each his own merit’ as opposed to the ‘common denominator mantra’ socialism takes its cue from. So it should be fitting that in times of crisis banks should NOT be sharing their problems but seek who was responsible ‘individually’ and distribute responsibility according to ‘each his own’…!
You are right oil is not free… it cost 100000 people in Iraq in one year to get to it… plus some of your people! now I wonder which cost you see as ‘more worthy’, nice guy?
Lastly no I don’t have an iPhone but since I am a great believer our human nature makes us prone to judge and assume things and we should be aware of that, as opposed to sucking up ideas that suit the rich who own everything.. I would let you assume I have an iPhone and I bank with the banks you want me to…! Probably in your view even the Roman Empire was build by a good American capitalist bank… that’s what happens when you think, the world started with you nice guy!
Enero 4th, 2013 at 10:23
_man comes around_
Back to the real world. A local church I associate with lends money at no interest to worthy causes.
In the bad ole USA, anybody can pool their money and lend it out at no interest to worthy causes.
If we did that in “socialist” Cuba, we’d be arrested.
So yes, the reason your money is in your bank is because you are a capitalist banker who wants bigger capitalist profits.
Why do so many capitalist bankers shout anti-capitalist slogans and where Che t-shirts?
I guess the reason they love Fidel so much is because he’s the ultimate capitalist robber baron.
Enero 4th, 2013 at 10:13
_man comes around_
You’re losing it. That’s what happens when you watch Iranian TV.
All Islamic banks charge heavy interest, including the ones in the USA, they just call it “profit sharing” or “leasing” or “renting” or a “borrowing fee”.
I’d rather pay 50,000 interest on my mortgage and own my own home than pay an Islamic bank a 80,000 dollar surcharge “fee” to buy my home from them.
I suppose next you’ll tell us they give away their oil for free too.
Enero 4th, 2013 at 05:41
Humberto … still bad ol bad ol bad ol Chavez and dead old dead ol dead ol Castro.. I see your preemtive strike is like always, to drown this blog into miles of typical nonsense and media speak that serves a clique youSuck up to for peanuts, evidently!!!
You know the world has ended and there is a new year a foot… try something new than to promote American interests in Cuba, try to promote Cuban interests for Cubans that live in Cuba!! try something from a better book!
Enero 4th, 2013 at 05:36
Help… aren’t you ridiculous, should I keep my money in a sock just because you say so? wow … Well actually if in capitalism you would have Money Coops (which I bet they have in Cuba as there used to be in other socialist countries) that’s where I would keep my money… or if I could put my money in a Muslim Bank (all make a case they do not work to profit) I would put my money there…
Things being what they are I keep my money with a bank that makes a case to invest in ethical causes and is open to scrutiny not just to pretend it does so!
As for your American banking system (which I think you refer to), like you democracy IT is so muddled that IT couldn’t tell a druglord from an honest person!
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 22:55
TIME MAGAZINE: Hugo Chavez’s Constitution Is a Muddled Map Out of Venezuela’s Crisis - By Tim Padgett
Here’s what the Bolivarian Constitution is clear about: If Chávez dies before Jan. 10, then a new presidential election has to be held within 30 days, and during that time the National Assembly President “shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.” Should Chávez somehow be able to return to Venezuela to be sworn in on Jan. 10 but dies during the first four years of his new term, a new election still has to be held within 30 days but this time his Vice President becomes President during the interregnum. Should Chávez die during the last two years of the term, then the Vice President simply completes the term’s lame-duck remainder.
Venezuela’s 1999 Constitution is one of socialist President Hugo Chávez’s proudest political props. He likes to wave a pocket-size version of the charter, written shortly after he first took office 14 years ago, as often as Chinese communist leaders used to brandish Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. But now that the 58-year-old Chávez is, according to reports, fighting for his life in a Cuban hospital after difficult cancer surgery, Venezuelans are turning to his so-called Bolivarian Constitution for guidance—and what they’re finding instead is a murky map that could send the western hemisphere’s most oil-rich nation into precarious governmental limbo this year.
At the core of the confusion is one word: “permanently.” The Constitution says that Chávez, who in October won re-election to a new six-year term, is supposed to be sworn in a week from today on Jan. 10. But his condition would appear to preclude that happening. So here’s what Article 233 says: “When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election…shall be held within 30 consecutive days.” The article defines “permanently unavailable” as death, resignation, removal from office, certified permanent physical or mental disability or a recall. None of those—at least according to information from Vice President Nicolás Maduro, who visited Chavez in Havana this week—applies to Chávez’s current situation. What to do then?
Yet according to the letter of the Constitution Chávez displays so reverentially, his current presidential term ends on Jan. 10. The Constitution does tap the Vice President to fill in when the President “becomes temporarily unavailable to serve.” But that directive doesn’t apply after Jan. 10 if Chávez isn’t sworn in—if his presidency, in effect, isn’t rebooted—because technically there won’t be a President to fill in for. Still, the Chavistas, as Istúriz hints, are probably willing to ignore that inconvenient detail and let Maduro take the helm for as long as Chávez is incapacitated (or until Chávez dies, if his condition is as grave as some press reports this week have it).
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
world.time.com/2013/01/03/hugo-chavezs-constitution-is-a-muddled-map-out-of-venezuelas-crisis/
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 20:37
THE BAD OLD U.S.A. WILL BE PAYING CUBAN CITIZENS RETIREES WHO HAD BEEN WORKING IN GUANTANAMO, ALMOST 35 TIMES THE SALARY PAYED TO ORDINARY CUBANS BY THE CASTROFASCISTS! BAD OLD U.S.A.!!
MIAMI HERALD: Cuba helps U.S. Navy find a way to pay Guantánamo retirees - By CAROL ROSENBERG
The Navy has secured a solution to the problem of how to pay some $45,000 a month in pensions due to 67 elderly Cubans who once worked as day laborers at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale would not describe how the money would be delivered to the former Navy base workers, elderly Cubans who once commuted from the Cuban side of the minefields to the U.S. Navy base for such jobs as welders, machinists and bookkeepers.
But he said the U.S. and Cuban governments had found a fix to ensure that “we won’t skip” the January payouts of pensions to the Guantánamo retirees.
“Cuban officials have agreed to a workable, interim mechanism,” Breasseale said by email, declining to specify how the transfers would be made.
The issue came to a head last month with the retirements of Harry Henry, 82, and Luis La Rosa, 79 — the last two “commuters” who on weekdays came through Cuban and U.S. military checkpoints to work, respectively, in a Navy base office supply depot and at the motor pool.
The two men had powers of attorney for 65 other retirees, would cash their checks and then deliver their funds in the course of their commute.
Wiring the funds to the pensioners in Cuba was never permitted under the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba, so the courier system was developed as a legal workaround.
Now with their retirement, some 67 former base workers will receive pensions this month through the mechanism that Breasseale would not describe. The colonel was unable to provide a precise total for the January 2013 payout. But he said last month’s pension payout to the 65 retirees totaled $44,508.53, or an average of $684 each.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....a-way.html
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 20:07
YAHOO NEWS: Cuban group says political detentions rose dramatically in 2012
HAVANA (Reuters) - Political detentions rose dramatically in Cuba in 2012 and will likely increase again in 2013 because of a lack of “real reforms” on the communist island, a Cuban human rights group said on Thursday.
The independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights said in its annual report there were 6,602 detentions of government opponents last year, compared to 4,123 in 2011 and 2,074 in 2010.
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the group, said the rise reflected growing discontent among Cubans and the government’s attempts to keep a lid on dissent.
“Dissatisfaction is increasing because of the general poverty and the lack of hope,” he told Reuters.
Cuban leaders counter that their opponents are largely the creation of the United States and others who provide money and other aid to help foment dissent against the government.
Havana also questions the validity of the commission’s numbers, which cannot be independently verified.
Under President Raul Castro, who succeeded older brother Fidel Castro nearly five years ago, Cuba has launched market-oriented economic reforms aimed at increasing productivity and prosperity while assuring the continuance of the island’s socialist system.
But Sanchez said the changes are small and have not improved human rights or living conditions on the Caribbean island, which he believes will lead to more dissent and detentions in 2013.
“This prediction is based on the refusal of the island government to introduce real reforms, especially regarding the system of laws,” he said.
“The regime continues perfecting and increasing the size of its powerful machinery of repression and propaganda,” he said.
Most of the detentions last only a matter of hours, but Sanchez said the number of Cubans going to prison for political reasons is on the rise, after most political prisoners were released in a government accord with the Catholic Church in July 2010.
news.yahoo.com/cuban-group-says-political-detentions-rose-dramatically-2012-225508230.html
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 15:30
YES, THE TEST WILL COME SOON FOR VENEZUELA! OR SHOULD I SAY CUBAVENE OR VENECUBA!
QUARTZ: With Chávez in Cuba, who will be Venezuela’s president next week? - By Steve LeVine
In line with the Venezuelan constitution, Chávez transferred temporary power to Maduro while he is away in Cuba. But the law says that if Chávez cannot return to take the oath by Jan. 10, it must be determined whether his inability to do so is temporary or permanent. If it’s permanent, a new election must be held within 30 days. In other cases, the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, can assume temporary power for up to 90 days.
But even that framework is in doubt. On Jan. 5, Cabello will run for re-election to head the National Assembly, but given the current political stakes he could face opposition. In addition, some local analysts are suggesting that the country’s Supreme Court justices might fly to Havana and administer the presidential oath of office to Chávez at his bedside.
Cabello is thought by many analysts to be a natural rival to Maduro, whose supporters may run their own candidate for the National Assembly post. The two men are backed by different strong political factions, according to Stephen Johnson, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for western hemisphere affairs, and now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Johnson told me that Cabello is backed by the Venezuelan military, while Maduro is close to Cuba, which enjoys vast influence in the country.
Both Maduro and Cabello are rivals of Henrique Capriles, the opposition’s main leader and governor of Miranda state. Capriles lost the presidential election to Chávez by 10 percentage points in October, but held his seat as governor against a chavista candidate two months later. If Maduro were to stand for the presidency against Capriles, some think he would win, but analysts are divided (paywall). It looks likely that the test will come soon.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://qz.com/40404/with-chave.....next-week/
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 14:36
I HOPE THE VENEZUELAN OPOSITION DOES NOT ALLOW THE CUBAN “GOVERMENT” TO STOP THEM FROM SEEING HUGO CHAVEZ! IF THEY DO, THE WORLD COMMUNITY WILL CONTINUE TO SEE THRU THE CASTROFASCIST’S ATTEMPT TO GOVERN VENEZUELA VIA HAVANA!
EL UNIVERSAL VENEZUELA: Opposition leader proposes ad hoc team to travel to Cuba
“We have the right to go to Cuba to see the President (Hugo Chávez),” said Caracas Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who added that his proposed ad hoc team should include parliamentarians, opposition officials and renowned doctors
Caracas Metropolitan Mayor and opposition leader Antonio Ledezma on Thursday proposed to appoint an ad hoc team to travel to Cuba to ascertain first hand the real health status of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Ledezma believes that the group should be composed of parliamentarians, and elected officials such as Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles, Lara state governor Henry Falcon and himself, along with renowned physicians. The team would travel to Havana as soon as possible.
Ledezma reminded that he had asked Chávez to step down. “Two months ago, I even suggested the President to step down and focus on recovering from his illness, which he has been suffering for more than 18 months.”
“We have demanded authorities to handle this situation with utmost sincerity. We are talking about the Venezuelan president; he is responsible for the country’s foreign policy, financial affairs, as well as military and economic issues. Therefore, we have the right to know, with certainty, what is the present clinical condition of the president of our country.”
Ledezma stressed that this is a situation that affects all Venezuelans and should not be handled by a single sector.
“I’m not asking for permission to go to Cuba. I think we have a right to go there and see what happens. We must go, period. Enough with the mysteries, Venezuela is not a colony of Cuba. I am proposing this in the memory of (Independence heroes Simón) Bolívar, (Francisco de) Miranda, (José Félix) Ribas, (Antonio José) de Sucre, (José Antonio) Anzoátegui and many other heroes of our country.”
http://www.eluniversal.com/nac.....el-to-cuba
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 14:16
Humberto, the big “secret” is those Spanish and other imported doctors Cuba uses to treat nobility like Fidel and Hugo.
That’s the only possible reason he would have gone to Cuba, where these things can be hidden.
As Hugo likes to brag, there are no shortage of great Cuban doctors in Venezuela. So why doesn’t he want to be treated by one?
Actions speak louder than words.
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 13:38
IN CUBA THEY HAVE BEEN HIDING THE REAL STATE OF FIDEL CASTRO FOR YEARS! NOT SO EASY TO HIDE THE STATE OF HEALTH OF HUGO CHAVEZ THOUGH!
RAPPLER NEWS: Top Venezuelan officials gathered in Cuba
CARACAS, Venezuela - Top Venezuelan officials gathered in Cuba on Thursday amid growing demands for news about cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez’ condition, days before he is to be sworn in for another term.
The latest senior official reported to have arrived in Havana was Disodado Cabello, who as head of the National Assembly would be a key player in any succession plan should Chavez be unable to take the oath on January 10.
Ultimas Noticias, a newspaper that has generally been well connected to the government, said Cabello flew to Cuba on Wednesday to join Chavez’s handpicked successor Vice President Nicolas Maduro and other top officials.
Chavez is in Cuba, Venezuela’s close ally among leftist-led Latin American nations, for medical treatment.
Among his visitors have been son-in-law Science and Culture Minister Jorge Arreaza; Attorney General Cilia Flores, who is Maduro’s partner; and Chavez’s brother Barinas governor Adan Chavez.
The Venezuelan president has not been seen since he underwent a long and complicated surgery for a recurrence of cancer 23 days ago, and officials have acknowledged that his recovery has been difficult.
On Wednesday, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, a close Chavez friend and ally, said he had spoken to his family and that his condition was “very worrying.”
“Let’s hope our prayers will be effective in saving the life of brother President Chavez,” Morales said of Chavez, the longtime leader of OPEC member Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
Chavez, who was re-elected October 7 despite a long, debilitating battle with cancer and the strongest opposition challenge yet to his 14 year rule, is supposed to take office in a week for another six year term.
But it was still unclear whether he would be fit to take office.
Venezuela’s constitution calls for new elections to be held within 30 days if the president is unable to take the oath of office or dies during his first four years in office.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.rappler.com/world/1.....ed-in-cuba
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 13:32
_man_
All those words and you can’t admit you still have your money in the bank you own.
I’m not even asking you to share your money with the poor, like any good socialist would do.
Just take all your money out of your bank and stop collecting interest off the backs of others.
Then you can come here and preach against capitalism.
Until then you are just another capitalist banker spouting anti-capitalist anti-banker slogans.
Like most “socialists” who can’t face their greed in the mirror.
Oh, and while you’re at it, return your Iphone and all your other goodies made by non-union labor in China.
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 13:29
Damir said: “Shut up already and enjoy quietly your dirty money.”
Damir! YOU SHOULD USE REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY ON ME INSTEAD! NAH, I WILL POST AS BEFORE JUST TO “JODER A UN COMUNISTA” LIKE GORKI AGUILA FROM PORNO PARA RICARDO SINGS! JE JE JE!
YOUTUBE: Porno Para Ricardo “Como Joder a un Comunista”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XO6EwfmImY
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 10:27
Help … you should have noticed where you live or roundabouts that is not ALL capitalism but you manage very well to see just capitalism, so take you horse blinds off next time you walk into town and meet with other ‘ways of life’ i.e. not everything was is and will be build by capitalists or FOR capitalists …
but then again right wing capitalist apologetics believe it and repepat the mantra ad nauseum that all the wealth and good in the world came from the golden goose of capitalism and its free market eggs… and all the bad from straying from he pure doctrine of profit which led the goose to die of starvation…
However as seen by those without horse blinds the free market as we know it is not quite free i.e. the access to it is blocked and steep since presently it is (still) an USAnian monopoly and product… mostly… and according to merit some put a foot in the door… some are left out and starve under free market rules just as they starved under socialism…
So here’s a tasks for you in case you are a big powerful capitalist… make the markets free and open to little people, more ! and I would accept your pow… hypocrisy included !…. Prove at least that anyone can start a burger and cola business and not have to face up to free market supremes such as McD or similar… that eat everyone and everything in their path… The only change a burger bar has in the world to come up is in Cuba practically… In the US you have no chance!
With regards to your remarks about banks being owned by us… that is self-defeating as the fiscal bs cliff you just went through… and so apparently you saved the UK economy yesterday!
Work and Working or Toil and Toiling is ours - nothing else the rest is the profit which one makes from our work! In case you don’t know profit and only profit is central to capitalism hence opportunism at its core! More clearly without profit capitalism cannot exist… Well I am one who doesn’t believe in profit or wishes to profit from others as opposed to you and your clique which finds it ‘the natural law’ of things!
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 10:00
Help … you should have noticed where you live or roundabouts that is not ONLY capitalism but maybe you managed to see just capitalism so take you horse blinds off next time you walk into town and meet some other ‘ways of life’ i.e. not everything was is and will be build by capitalists or FOR capitalists …
but then again right wing capitalist apologetics believe it mmmmmoronically and repepat the mantra ad nauseum that all the wealth and good in the world came from the golden goose of capitalism and its free market eggs… and all the bad from straying from he pure doctrine of the free market where the goose dies starved… However as seen by those without horse blinds the free market as we know it is not free! it is an USAnian monopoly and product… mostly… and according to merit some put a foot in the door… some are left out and starve under free market rules…
So here’s a tasks for you… make the markets free and open to little people more and I would accept your pow… hypocrisy included!…. Prove that anyone can start a burger business and not have to face up to bs free market slock McD or similar… that eat everyone and everything…
With regards to your remarks about banks being us and owned by us… that is self-defeating mooooronic…as the fiscal bs cliff you just went through… and apparently saved the UK economy yesterday! Work and Working or Toil and Toiling is ours nothing else… rest is the profit which one makes from our work!!… In case you don’t know PROFIT is central to capitalism hence the opportunism at its core!
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 08:56
Griffin,
“daft” is a good term. They seem incapable of thought or observing their own hypocrisy.
What’s it been, 54 years, and not one socialist or communist has applied for a life as an average Cuban.
With all that great free health-care and great free education and mojitos, I would be the first one in line. If I believed it of course.
So they go stay in a Cuban hotel, hurry back to the capitalism they hate but love to live in, and tell us how great socialism is.
Daft indeed.
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 08:35
_man comes around_
What is obvious, but what you, like Nero, can’t comprehend, is that YOU are the banker.
It is the depositor who owns the bank and lives off the labor of others.
What you and the other wall street goofs are protesting against is the management of the bank that YOU own. YOUR profits go down so YOU protest against the management of YOUR bank.
Remove all your money from your bank and lend it to good causes at ZERO interest, then you can say you are a socialist. Until then you are a greedy capitalist BANKER.
Who wants special privileges so he can live off the labor of others.
You want to be the state, just like Fidel, getting fat while your serfs work your plantation.
Typical “socialist” hypocrite.
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 08:01
Funny not… we’re never told what actually happens to the ones that leave the island… it is like, they live happily ever after without a worry in the world… Even stranger considering that MsY lived in the West and could see that the West has its chronic problems whether is chooses to brush over or suppress them it is another matter…
It may be also that there is a rush now to leave the island since you still can get ‘asylum’ or at least a kind of status. Once the passport will be an option most nations would rather think first how to stop Cubans from coming to their country - unless they are in Mariella Castro’s or ‘talent drain’ league - as opposed to helping Cubans integrate into a new world they haven’t seen. So they are leaving to a place where they would be worked to the bone and primarily used by immigration sharks just as badly if not worse than Cuban officials do it now! Which looks like exchanging one oppressor for the other… and you can always be silence by being told why don’t you go back to your country if you don’t like it here!!!
MsY conveniently refuses to see there are two parts to every social ecuation… tge ecuation that drains a country of its ‘talent’ has one part that is not in Cuba… but then again MsY knows instinctively on what part her jurno bread is buttered…i.e. on the West side of bread!!
And finally MsY doesn’t realise it just yet, that the commies would be the first to stay and they actually like it that many would leave the island so they would have less problems selling the state assets… more opps for them since they would own everything and then re-sell it to the happy bankers in the West…
So who leaves the island now give us his place at the Cuban table, the rest who stay most likely would be cheated out of a place at the table when privatisation will happen by being offered peanuts.
@28… Hank - same paradigm in the US UK EU … where the bankers live off working people and NOT the people live off banks and bankers as we should, though those who ‘led us nowhere’ would still like to have us believe the banks should live off us !!
The day I hear you say down with banks parasitism everywhere that would be the day! but probably that is a syntagm too far, for you who doesn’t see far enough that opportunism has many clothes but one common purpose - to defraud societies and allow some to live beyond their dream by doing so!
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 03:42
Damir, how come a linguist married a lunatic like you???
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 00:29
Hey, kids!! I heard that Castros died! Both of them!!!
(come on, cr***ns, spread the rumour…)
It’s always the same old tune with you geriatrics, bad old Cuba.
Well, guess what! You will die tomorrow, but Cuba will continue.
Don’t you understand the size of futility of what you are so badly trying to do?
Your main problem is the lies and delusional ideology you are using.
None of that is working any more. And you are simply not smart at all to discover what would work.
Enero 3rd, 2013 at 00:25
The team “yoani”, you are so boring. Same old, same old. Give it a rest. Don’t you have anything else to do? Like enjoying your high life with the money so perfidly and perversely earned on the backs of your own people?
IS this apparent “rich” life style not enough? What more could you want? Communist Cuba made you rich (in Cuban terms) beyond your own belief.
Shut up already and enjoy quietly your dirty money.
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 22:28
Thanks, Humberto — excellent link with an excellent quote that succinctly recapitulates the last 50 plus years of Castro parasitism.
“In Cuba, it’s a great myth that we live off the state. In fact, it’s the state that lives off of us.”
How true and how sad.
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 22:27
LETS SEE HOW LONG THE CHAVEZ CAMP CAN CONTINUE THIS CHARADE!
WASHINGTON POST: Venezuela opposition: government not providing enough information about ailing Hugo Chavez
If Chavez dies or is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan Constitution says a new election should be held within 30 days.
With rumors swirling that Chavez had taken a turn for the worse, Maduro said on Tuesday that he had met with the president twice, had spoken with him and would return to Caracas on Wednesday.
“He’s totally conscious of the complexity of his post-operative state and he expressly asked us … to keep the nation informed always, always with the truth, as hard as it may be in certain circumstances,” Maduro said in the prerecorded interview in Havana, which was broadcast Tuesday night by the Caracas-based television network Telesur.
Both supporters and opponents of Chavez have been on edge in the past week amid shifting signals from the government about the president’s health. Officials have reported a series of ups and downs in his recovery — the most recent, on Sunday, announcing that he faced the new complications from a respiratory infection.
Maduro did not provide any new details about Chavez’s complications during Tuesday’s interview. But he joined other Chavez allies in urging Venezuelans to ignore gossip, saying rumors were being spread due to “the hatred of the enemies of Venezuela.”
He didn’t refer to any rumors in particular, though one circulating online had described Chavez as being in a coma.
Maduro said Chavez faces “a complex and delicate situation.” But Maduro also said that when he talked with the president and looked at his face, he seemed to have “the same strength as always.”
“All the time we’ve been hoping for his positive evolution. Sometimes he has had light improvements, sometimes stationary situations,” he said.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 21:45
BROOKINGS INSTITUTE: The New Cuban Economy: What Roles for Foreign Investment? - By: Richard Feinberg
For revolutionary Cuba, foreign investment has been about more than dollars and cents. It’s about cultural identity and national sovereignty. It’s also about a model of socialist planning, a hybrid of Marxist-Leninism and Fidelismo, which has jealously guarded its domination over all aspects of the economy. During its five decades of rule, the regime’s political and social goals always dominated economic policy; security of the revolution trumped productivity.
THE WORLD’S HEAVIEST TAX ON LABOR
The most unusual characteristic of the Cuban FDI regime is the labor contract system . FDI firms are not generally allowed to directly hire labor . Rather, a state employment agency—typically a dependency of the relevant sectoral ministry (e .g ., tourism, light industry)—hires, fires, settles labor disputes, establishes wage scales, and pays the wages directly to the workers . The FDI pays the wage bill to the state employment agency which in turn pays the workers . But there is a very special twist to the Cuban system: the FDI pays wages to the employment agency in hard currency and the employment agency turns around and compensates the workers in local currency, an effective devaluation or tax of 24-to-1 . Thus, if the firm pays the employment agency $500 a month and the employment agency pays the workers 500 pesos, over 90 percent of the wage payment disappears in the currency conversion; the effective compensation is instantly deflated to $21 per month . This could be the world’s heaviest labor tax . It provoked one Cuban worker to remark to the author: “In Cuba, it’s a great myth that we live off the state . In fact, it’s the state that lives off of us .”
This labor system, which also authorizes only one national union (the Confederation of Cuban Workers, which is closely allied with the Communist Party), violates many principles of the International Labor Organization, of which Cuba is a charter member . It also freezes Cuba into a low-wage, low-productivity trap .
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE REPORT!
http://www.brookings.edu/resea.....y-feinberg
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 20:52
If Cubans have always been free to come and go from the island as Damir & Ken suggest, then why is the Cuban gov’t making a big deal about the recently announced emigration reforms?
So Ken the lefty foreign tourist slipped a Cuban chambermaid a few pesos in exchange for the hotel WEP key to access the Internet? Is this supposed to prove the average Cuban has ready access to the Internet, when he blithely breaks the law to do so? Honestly Ken, you really are daft.
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 19:43
THE CASTROFASCISTS ONLY TRUST THEIR OWN FAMILY, THAT IS WHY MANY OF THE OTHERS WAITING IN LINE TO SUCCEED THE CASTRO BROTHERS HAVE BEEN KICKED OUT ON CONTENTION! MY GUESS IS THAT MARIELA CASTRO WILL BE THE NEXT CASTRO TO BE NAMED BUT NONE OF THEM HAVE THE CHARISMA AND THE LUCK OF FIDEL OF BEING AT THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME WITH HIS RUTHLESS PLAN! IT’S THE 21st CENTURY WITH INTERNET, MOBILE PHONES AND INSTANT TEXT MESSAGING! THIS IS NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S 1959!! AND Cuba Libre, Ken, Damir! WHEN YOU POST “THE TRUTH” YOU BETTER HAVE A LINK TO SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENTS AND ACCUSATIONS OTHERWISE PEOPLE WONT TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY!
FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE: Midnight in Havana - Will the Cuban government fall in 2013? - by YOANI SANCHEZ
It’s increasingly obvious that the biological clock of the Cuban government — a slow and agonizing journey of the hands that has lasted 54 years — is closing in on midnight. Every minute that passes brings obsolescence a little nearer. The existence of a political system should not be so closely linked to the youth or decrepitude of its leaders, but in the case of our island, both ages have come to be the same thing.
Like a creature made in the image and likeness of a man — who believes himself to be God — Cuba’s current political model will not outlive its creators. Every decision made over the past five decades, every step taken in one direction or another, has been marked by the personalities and decisions of a handful of human beings — two of them in particular. One, Fidel Castro, 86, has been convalescing for six long years in a place few Cubans could find on a map.
Although in the last five years Fidel’s brother Raúl, 81, has installed some younger faces in the administrative and governmental apparatus, the most important decisions remain concentrated in the hands of octogenarians. (Raúl’s successor, Jose Ramon Machado, is 82.) Like a voracious Saturn devouring his children, the principal leaders of the revolution have not allowed any favored sons to overshadow them.
The last to be ousted due to the paranoia of the Castro brothers were Vice President Carlos Lage, a figure who enjoyed popular sympathy, and the foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque. Both might have made promising successors, but were accused by Fidel Castro himself as having been “addicted to the honey of power” and removed from their positions in 2009.
Their own selfishness has left Cuban leaders without a plan for succession and time has run out to develop it, at least one not sincerely committed to continuing along the path set by old men dressed in olive green.
For Raúl, the picture is worrisome, and he has declared that “time is short” to ready the generation that will replace him and his comrades. In 2013, he will be forced to accelerate this process, and his obvious desperation about the future is contributing to the ideological weakening and the loss of whatever popular support the Castro regime still enjoys.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/a....._in_havana
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 17:50
Damir you are so boring. Same old same old. Give it a rest. Don’t you have anything else to do?
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 12:39
Cuba Libra, you’re still here?
A few years ago you said you were moving to Cuba. And the year after that. And the year after that. And last year too.
What happened?
For 2013 you should resolve to stop lying, don’t you think?
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 11:25
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE STARTING 2013 WITH SOME A.D.D.! A DASH OF DAMIR!
GLOBAL POST: Can Kerry make friends with Cuba? - Probably not. While he’s a critic of US policy toward Havana, he’ll have a hard time actually changing anything. - Nick Miroff
Regardless of Kerry’s record on Cuba policy in the Senate, analysts say he will face several obstacles to major change, not least of which will be the man likely to replace him as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), a Cuban American.
If Menendez becomes chairman, then the committees responsible for shaping US foreign policy in both branches of Congress will be led by Cuban Americans who want to ratchet up — not dial back — US pressure on Havana. The chair of the House Committee on Foreign Relations is Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen.
So while Kerry may have some latitude to adjust Cuba policy from inside the White House, Latin America experts don’t expect sweeping change — like an end to the Cuba Embargo — which requires Congressional action.
In 2011, Kerry delayed the release of nearly $20 million in federal funds for pro-democracy Cuba projects run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), questioning their effectiveness and insisting on greater oversight.
“There is no evidence that the ‘democracy promotion’ programs, which have cost the US taxpayer more than $150 million so far, are helping the Cuban people,” Kerry said at the time. “Nor have they achieved much more than provoking the Cuban government to arrest a US government contractor.”
The US government contractor is Alan Gross, jailed on the island since December 2009. Cuban authorities arrested Gross while he worked on a USAID project to set up satellite communications gear that would allow members of Cuba’s Jewish community to connect to the internet without going through government servers.
Cuba sentenced him to 15 years in prison, but now says its willing to work out a prisoner swap for the “Cuban Five,” a group of intelligence agents who have been serving time in a US federal prison.
The Obama administration has refused to negotiate, calling on Havana to release Gross unconditionally, and even US lawmakers who advocate greater engagement with Cuba say no change will be possible as long as he’s in jail.
The Castro government insists it’s not willing to give up Gross for nothing
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.globalpost.com/disp.....tate-obama
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 07:38
In previous post, 18, below this one, I posted Spanish residence’s address of the team “yoani” nad their pin-up granny, along with the registrar in Germany. These details prove what a liar and a terrorist the domestic traitor is.
If you cannot see it below this message, they nazist agents had it removed.
They are in panic, in dissarray and in total confusion.
Not for much longer. Soon the nazists will fall apart and their domestic useless “id**t” will lose the income stream.
ANd the site will be shut down by themselves.
It is long overdue.
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 07:34
Another post removed!!!
So much about the “freedom of speech”, liars and hypocrites!!!
What is so horrifying about the public information about the pin-up granny liar and her lies about Germany and Spain?
Here again, the cia-suplied residence to the liar:
Yoani Sanchez
Admin-C Address: Sta.Ma- Soledad Torres Acosta 2
Admin-C Postal Code: 28004
Admin-C City: Madrid
Admin-C Country: ES
Admin-C Phone: +34 918298497
And domain registrar in GERMANY:
Tech-C Name: Hostmaster Strato Rechenzentrum
Tech-C Address: Cronon AG Professional IT-Services
Tech-C Address: Emmy-Noether-Str. 10
Tech-C Postal Code: 76131
Tech-C City: Karlsruhe
Tech-C Country: DE
Tech-C Phone: +49 72166320305
Tech-C Fax: +49 72166320303
And my question that you liars are avoiding hysterically:
Why the registrar is in Germany when her address is in Spain? Domains are cheaper in Spain!!!
Yeah, as if cia would care about that detail…!!!
Oh, I am taking screenshots of all my posts so the more you remove, the more of liars and nazist criminals you show yourselves to be!!!
Delete this one and I’ll post it again anyway.
Bunch of nazist hypocrites.
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 06:24
And why do not you, domestic traitor and wannabe Castro after Castros, admit that it is the socialism that makes you live like a (drag)queen??
Why do not you admit and recognise that with the money you receive from your vomit and spitting on your own country you would not be able to live in your beloved “some kind of pragmatic capitalism”??? You’d still be a poor nobody.
Yet, in your hated socialism, you have a supermodern furniture, technology all over your home, laptops and desktops, three mobile phones just for you, and at least one more for the rest of your family.
In that same hated socialism you do NOT have to work and you are comfortable beyond the means of 99% of your compatriots, yet you are complaining and want to change that!!!
Talking about cutting the branch you are sitting on… I can only hope it is so high up that when you fall finally it will be the long-awaited end of your lies and bullshift.
And, seriously, why the hell are you
NOT
in some prison doing the time for your anti-Cuban activities?
Are the Cuban laws and authorities really that lenient?
And what if they are?
Why, then you
ARE JUST A LIAR
But that has been confirmed by yourself long time ago. Why prolonging this farce?
No one believes you any more. You are last decade’s bad news. History. Run over by the time and disdain.
No one really cares about your delusional hysteria.
Bye, bye…
Enero 2nd, 2013 at 06:09
If the silence is the only response to my questions, I’ll repeat them until the team “yoni” respond with the answers to my questions, although cowards are hard to get out in open.
I have asked many a question about many aspects of this team “yoani” that even to a superficially informed person they appear impossible. So far the feedback is zero.
The team “yoani” do not like to answer the questions that destroy their painstakingly built “profile”, whose foundations are pure bullshift.
Here’s one of my questions that the team “yoani” are keen to ignore:
why are all your “biographies” only saying that you have been 2 years in Switzerland and are omitting to say that you have actually traveled to
GERMANY FIRST and as a STUDENT
And that after Switzerland you went to Spain, and when even then you could not find any employment other than baby-sitting, YOU CAME BACK TO CUBA in order to survive for there was no life and future for you in “some kind of pragmatic capitalism”!!!
From this question MORE inevitably follow. See, there are multiple problems you cannot surpass on your own here:
Just to be able to travel abroad you needed a
LETTER OF INVITATION FROM GERMANY.
How did you get that letter?
Then the small question of passport. How did you get the passport? And how did you get the $500 CUCs to pay for it?
And what I really do not understand, is
H O W
did you re-enter the Cuba, being such a dissident and the “enemy” of the state?
See, Cuba does not accept the dissidents back in.
Were you really a student in Germany? If not, how did you get there? As a dissident who had received an invitation letter from Germany? And who wrote that letter?
And how did you get to know them?
And how did you get the permit to re-enter Cuba, if you were indeed a dissident? The official policy of Cuba is that if you leave as a self-declared “dissident”, you do not need to return hence you are banned from Cuba for life.
Yet, there you are. In Cuba, spewing vomit and garbage daily. Unhindered and undisturbed. You have never been arrested and jailed for your activities, despite a few brushes with police, which you yourself have caused anyway, by choosing to confront police, who then legally and completely justifiably arrested you, only to let you go after a day or so.
How come you do
N O T have a prison time to your name, like
ALL
other enemies of the state?
Explain now.
Enero 1st, 2013 at 23:46
THE CASTRO AGENTS AND/OR APOLOGISTS HATE IT WHEN I POST INFORMATION ON THESE COMMENT SECTIONS! GUESS WHAT IS ONE OF THE REASONS I DO IT! JE JE JE!
BLOOMBERG: Maduro to Return to Venezuela After Chavez Cuba Visit - By Charlie Devereux & Corina Pons
Venezuela’s Vice President Nicolas Maduro said he’ll return to Caracas tomorrow after spending time at Hugo Chavez’s bedside in Cuba where the socialist leader is recovering from his fourth operation for cancer.
Maduro, speaking in an interview broadcast on Telesur network from Havana, provided few details of the president’s health after revealing Dec. 30 that Chavez was suffering complications from a respiratory infection following the surgery three weeks ago.
Chavez’s vice president and chosen successor met with him twice during a three-day visit and also spoke with Fidel Castro and members of Chavez’s family at the CIMEQ hospital where the Venezuelan leader is being treated. Maduro chose to stay on some extra days after announcing the complications on Dec. 30. While the former paratrooper is aware of the setbacks, Maduro expressed confidence in his recovery.
“He squeezed my left hand with an immense strength while we spoke,” Maduro said. “If he is fighting with such strength, so we must have the same strength. We are confident and have faith in God and the doctors that our comandante will continue to evolve and sooner rather than later will come out of this delicate post-operative situation.”
In the 50-minute interview, Maduro, whom Chavez has urged Venezuelans to vote for should he lose his battle with the cancer, praised policies pursued by Chavez, while stressing the importance of ties between Cuba and Venezuela. Chavez’s illness, first announced in June 2011, is one of the most difficult challenges the so-called Bolivarian revolution has faced, Maduro said.
“The greatest adversity we’ve passed through is this adversity we’re experiencing now,” he said.
Maduro added that Chavez is fully aware that his recovery will be “complex” and he vowed to keep Venezuelans immediately informed of any change in the president’s health.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/.....visit.html
Enero 1st, 2013 at 23:37
CATO INSTITUTE: Hugo Chávez’s Last Days - By Juan Carlos Hidalgo
Unfortunately, Hugo Chávez has been the defining figure of Latin American politics in the last decade. His authoritarian populism doesn’t differ much from other Latin American leaders, but his influence on regional politics, buoyed by almost one trillion dollars in oil revenue, has been unparalleled. His permanent absence will have immediate ramifications not only for Venezuela, but for all Latin America.
Regionally speaking, Chávez’s death will have an important effect on Venezuela’s satellite countries. Cuba is certainly the most vulnerable. The Cuban economy would probably implode without the massive oil subsidy it receives from Venezuela. This would jeopardize the continuity of the Castro regime. This is why Havana is playing such an active role in deciding who will replace Chávez and how the succession should play out. Other regional allies such as Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia would also face cutbacks in economic assistance but not big enough to threaten their leaders’ hold on power.
It has long become clear that Chávez-style populism doesn’t work. Venezuela is in ruins. There are shortages of basic goods. Its infrastructure is literally falling apart. It’s the most corrupt country in the region. It has one of the world’s highest crime rates. Meanwhile, countries that have chosen democratic capitalism such as Chile and Peru are faring much better and represent a far more attractive model. Chávez’s death will only accelerate the demise of his so called “Socialism of the 21st Century.”
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.cato.org/blog/hugo-chavezs-last-days
Enero 1st, 2013 at 23:28
Thanks for the intelligent words Ken.
I notice you are incapable of answering a simple question, like why you won’t move to Cuba?
Why you criticize your own country but want all Cubans to suffer in silence?
Typical of the rich imperialist spouting socialist slogans who loves his capitalist luxuries and loves to lecture 15 dollar a month Cubans on how great socialism is, don’t you think?
Enero 1st, 2013 at 23:18
THE CHAVEZ CAMP AND THE CASTROFASCITS HAVE BEEN VERY SECRETIVE ABOUT HUGO CHAVE’Z HEALTH SO WHY ARE THEY COMPLAINING! THEY SHOULD BE MORE TRANSPARENT IF THEY WANT TO AVOID THE CHISMES AND SPECULATION! ITS A TENSE TIME IN CUBA BECAUSE THEY MIGHT JUST BE LOOSING THEIR SUGAR/OIL DADDY! I GET THE FEELING THAT THIS NEW WAVE OF DEFAMATION, INNUENDO AND PLANTING OF DOUBT ON YOANI SANCHEZ ON THESE COMMENT SECTION BY Cuba Libre AND Ken ARE DIRECTLY TIED TO THE ANXIETY THAT THE CASTROFASCISTS ARE SUFFERING AT THIS MOMENT!
THE TELEGRAPH UK: Venezuelans told to stop speculating over Hugo Chavez’s health
Venezuelans have been told to stop speculating over the health of President Hugo Chavez as the nation waited on tenterhooks for official news of his worsening condition.
Spain’s ABC newspaper, without citing its sources, claimed to have detailed knowledge of Mr Chavez’s condition and that he was being treated in intensive care at a Havana clinic.
It reported that he was breathing with the aid of a ventilator having undergone a tracheotomy and that he was suffering from an infection that had so far failed to respond to antibiotics.
It also said that he had suffered kidney failure and that his prognosis was very poor.
It looks increasingly unlikely that President Chavez, 58 will recover in time for his inauguration on January 10 having won re-election and a third six-year term last October. If he does not, the constitution states that a new election must be held within 30 days.
Before his latest operation he named Mr Maduro as his successor. Mr Maduro has flown to Cuba and is among close family of President Chavez at his bedside.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....ealth.html
Enero 1st, 2013 at 19:33
Thanks for the kind words, Cuba Libre, and I have noticed the same thing about these exile types: they think that repeating the same old bollocks time and time again will change people’s minds. And they never answer qiestions…
That the slapper has links to foreign interests is clear. I love that photo which showed her leaving the Polish embassy at dawn one day and trying to hide her face, but luckily a Cuban photographer got some good shots to entertain us.
That said, my favourite things are the downright idiocies that she expects us to believe. Lemme give you the example of the internet, as it’s one of my favourites. Now, she constantly tells us how difficult it is to access the web in Cuba and that is sort of true, but only sort of. Whenever I go over there Inever pay the high amounts of money that the hotel wants for a few hours of internet, I just pay the chambermaid to give me the WEP key for that floor. This woman is what is known in Mexico as “una vieja” and I think the word in Cuba is “Cubiche.” In English she is a tart, a slapper, a bird on the make. She has her foregin bank accounts and can well afford easy fast internet accerss in any hotel.
Or in her house… I know of any number of Cubans who make a nice little earner setting up irregular internet access - it is one of the reasons why the web runs so slowly on the island!
Not that the gusanos around here will care about what I write - they will just scream, but it is entertaining as I am sure you will agree.
Enero 1st, 2013 at 15:02
MIAMI HERALD: Defense Lawyer: Western standards not met in trial over death of Cuban dissident Payá - BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
An attorney for Angel Carromero, the Spanish politician convicted in the car crash that killed Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, said his trial was not fair by western standards, while his political mentor denied that Cuba was paid $3 million for his freedom.
One of Payá’s brothers, meanwhile, said another Spanish politician who visited Cuba prior to Carromero’s trip this summer told him that a car he believes was driven by security agents rammed his vehicle, just as security agents allegedly did to Carromero’s vehicle.
Carromero flew home Saturday under a 1998 pact that allows citizens of Cuba and Spain to serve prison sentences in their home countries. He was sentenced to four years for speeding and causing the July 22 car crash that killed Payá and fellow dissident Harold Cepero.
His arrival in Madrid unleashed a string of reports and details about the crash and the trial previously kept under wraps to avoid upsetting the Cuban government and perhaps aggravating the charges against him, his sentence or prison conditions.
“Everyone always said that when Carromero was out of Cuba the truth will be known. Well, it’s time to take off the gag,” Carlos Payá, a brother and physician who lives in Spain, told El Nuevo Herald on Monday in a telephone interview.
Carromero’s Spanish lawyer, José María Viñals Camallonga, asked about the allegation that another vehicle rammed his client’s car, replied, “I don’t have enough facts to reach any conclusion, and (Carromero) himself says during his trial that he does not recall.”
Viñals also told the ABC newspaper in Madrid on Sunday that he and the Cuban defense attorneys were not given access to the car or the stretch of road in eastern Cuba involved in the crash, and were not allowed to call independent accident investigators as witnesses.
Asked whether the half-day trial held behind closed doors — Payá’s widow and daughter were not allowed to attend — as fair, Viñals said it “scrupulously” followed Cuban law but did not meet the standards used in Spain and the European Union.
The Christian Liberation Movement that Payá founded, commenting on Viñals’ declarations, issued a statement calling the trial a “judicial farce.”
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....dards.html
Enero 1st, 2013 at 14:44
***
It seems pretty simple to me. Yoani Sanchez wants to improve the lives of the Cuban People. She loves her country, and her family there. And the evil Castro brothers can’t live forever. They are very old and sick now–like the Cuban “economy”.
***
Parece muy sencilla a mi. Yoanni Sanchez quire mejorar las vidas de la Gente Cubano. Ama su pais, y su familia alli. Y los malos hermanos Castros no puedan vivir para siempre! Son muy viejos y enfermos ahora–como la “economia” Cubana.
***
John Bibb
***
Enero 1st, 2013 at 14:31
HERE ARE MORE EVERYDAY CUBAN SPEAKING ABOUT “THE ISLAND PARADISE” DEAR Ken!
YOUTUBE: DOCUMENTARY: “Cuba and the Elephants” - Full version w / English Sub-titles: A Look at Cuba, in reality beyond its tourist attractions. A documentary that takes us to reflect on the achievements of the socialist system and how truly the common Cuban people live. A production of the Political Institute of Peru for Liberty. DOCUMENTAL: Cuba y los Elefantes - Versión completa w/ English Sub-titles :Una mirada a Cuba, a su realidad más allá de sus atractivos turísticos. Un documental que nos lleva a reflexionar sobre los logros que se pregonan del sistema socialista y lo que verdaderamente vive el pueblo cubano. Una producción del Instituto Político para la Libertad Peru.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ce=message
Enero 1st, 2013 at 14:27
Ken on #3 !! LETS HEAR FROM THE EVERYDAY CUBAN CITIZEN SHALL WE, SINCE YOU INSIST THAT YOANI IS NOT A GOOD REPRESENTATIVE OF THAT GROUP DEAR!
YOUTUBE ENTIRE DOCUMENTARY: “Grandchildren of the Cuban Revolution” - The Grandchildren of the Revolution gives the youth a voice to share their feelings of hope and despair. Some speak with humor, many do it in defiance. The film tries to capture the vibe of Cubas youth today. Featuring artists like: Los Aldeanos, Porno para Ricardo, Silvito El Libre and bloggers Claudia Cadelo, Yoani Sanchez and Laritza Diversent, the film was directed by Carlos Montaner with the help of young camera men and women who visited the island throughout a span of several
months. SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUB-TITLES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KVqUrOBiQQ
Enero 1st, 2013 at 14:24
Cuba Libre said: “Cubans who have lived elsewhere, they have realized that maybe life in Cuba wasn`t so bad after all.”
SO C.L.! CAN YOU PROVIDE INFORMATION ON HOW MANY CUBANS IN THE DIASPORA HAVE MOVED BACK PERMANENTLY TO THE ISLAND PRISON? LESS BLAH, BLAH, BLAH AND MORE LINKS IF YOU WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!
CUBAN IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES: Policy and Trends - Ruth Ellen Wasem - Specialist in Immigration Policy - June 2, 2009
The immigration of Cubans to the United States has increased since 1995, although the actual admission numbers have ebbed and flowed over this period. Cuba consistently ranks among the top 10 source countries for legal permanent residents (LPRs). Cuba ranked fifth as a top immigrant-sending country—after Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines—in FY2008. A total of 49,500 Cubans became LPRs in FY2008. U.S. Coast Guard interdictions of Cubans have fluctuated since the mid-1990s, yet the general trend has moved upward. Cuban interdictions reached a 12-year high of 2,868 in FY2007. In FY2008, the U.S. Coast Guard reported 2,199 Cuban interdictions. Similarly, U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions of Cubans peaked at 4,295 in FY2007 and slipped to 3,351 in FY2008. Cubans who arrived at ports of entry without documents exhibited a comparable pattern, reaching a high of 13,019 in FY2007 and falling slightly to 11,278 in FY2008.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40566.pdf