The son of a prominent member of Cuba's Ladies in White, Aliuska Gomez, has been disappeared to pressure her against peaceful dissent. https://t.co/FvUpkdcfhq
We hope that you had a very Happy Valentine’s Day.
We warn you that you will be seeing that Valentine’s Day card sent to Iran in your mailbox with a big “Return to sender” on the front.
Unfortunately, no girl got flowers in Iran or no wife made some Valentine’s Day cookies. No way! In fact, it is illegal:
Iranian news outlets reported the police directive Friday warning retailers against promoting “decadent Western culture through Valentine’s Day rituals.” Police informed Tehran’s coffee and ice cream shops trade union to avoid any gatherings in which boys and girls exchange Valentine’s Day gifts.
The annual Feb. 14 homage to romance, which tradition says is named after an early Christian martyr, has become popular in recent years in Iran and other Middle East countries.
The backlash in the Islamic Republic is part of a drive against the spread of Western culture.
Saudi Arabia has also sought to stamp out Valentine’s Day but it’s celebrated widely in nearby places like Dubai.
A country that doesn’t tolerate Valentine’s Day? Welcome to Iran, or the country that we gave billions to under the expectation that there were reformers in the horizon.
Years ago, we saw this same regime kill its own people for calling for free and honest elections. Just a few days, they marched with “Death to America” placards.
Five-star prices, without the service: Cuba’s hotel problem
Waiting for service at state-owned cafe (AFP Photo/YAMIL LAGE)
Rigoberto DIAZ Agence France-Presse•February 14, 2017 Havana (AFP) – Could anything be better than a winter getaway to Cuba, complete with a stay in one of the Caribbean island’s five-star luxury hotels?
Actually, yes, say many of the tourists flocking to the Caribbean’s new “it” destination, who complain the state-owned hotel industry is underwhelming and overpriced.
Tourists have been flooding Cuba ever since its historic rapprochement with the United States was announced in December 2014.
A record four million visited the communist-ruled island — population 11 million — last year, an increase of 13 percent from 2015.
That has sent prices soaring.
But, in a country where limited supply and years of underinvestment are hallmarks of the hotel industry, price doesn’t necessarily mean quality.
Jean Orsini, a French tourist, found his room had a rust-stained shower, and spent so long waiting for his dinner that he nearly gave up.
“At the travel agency in Marseille, they told us they were sending us to the best hotel. But you pay 175 euros a night, and you just know it’s not worth the price,” said the 82-year-old retiree.
Spanish tourist Pilar Esteras was appalled by the staff’s nonchalance at her hotel. Maria Teresa Gutierrez of Colombia had no running water at times and found her $250 a night room was less than clean.
Yet all three tourists stayed in four- and five-star hotels.
Their experiences are an indication of the industry’s problems in Cuba, even though the state now co-manages many hotels with foreign companies such as Accor of France, Iberostar of Spain and Blue Diamond of Canada.
In fact, 17 private companies operate two-thirds of the hotels in Cuba.
But they have little control over things like infrastructure maintenance and the availability of good staff in a country where hospitality training is scarce and wages are meager — less than $30 a month.
Orsini said his Cuba trip reminded him of traveling in the former Soviet Union in the 1960s.
“You spent three hours waiting to eat,” he said. “Since they were state restaurants, the staff could have cared less.”
This is what “education” is all about in the Castro Kingdom.
It’s “free,” say the Castronoids, but in fact, it’s not free, and it’s not “education” either.
Constant indoctrination, constant testing of one’s loyalty to the Castro dynasty are a fundamental component of the system.
And there is no intellectual freedom whatsoever.
Is the U.S. headed in the same direction? Most certainly. Leftist control of higher education is undeniable, and the silencing of those who dare to challenge leftist supremacy is constant.
In my own case, I just learned last night that my two Washington Post essays created a Twitter and Facebook storm here at my own institution, and that hundreds of students not only denounced what I had written but also called for a boycott of my courses.
This semester I have the lowest enrollment I’ve ever had in my twenty years here.
Could this be a result of my WaPo essays? Perhaps. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the messages posted after the essays were published are what they are: a call to censorship and a public humiliation ritual of those who express “irregularities.”
We do have our own budding brown shirts and would-be dictators here among us, who want to censor free speech and delight in punishing those who dare to disagree with them.
Maybe a more fitting name for New Haven would be New Havana?
Loosely translated from Marti Noticias
A first-year university student in Cienfugegos has been penalized for expressing his opinions about Fidel’s funeral in an exam essay.
David Mauri Cardoso, age 22, was summarily expelled from school by the rector of la Universidad Carlos Rafael Rodríguez de Cienfuegos .
His Spanish literature class had been asked to write an exam essay on how they felt during the procession of Fidel’s ashes along the length of the whole island, from Havana to Santiago.
David Mauri Cardoso said in an interview with RadioMartíthat the essay was a required part of the exam even though the question had absolutely nothing to do with the subjects being covered in the course.
His fatal mistake was to express his opinion freely: “I spoke about all our misery and injustice, I spoke about the destruction of our social foundations, the destruction of the family and its unity, and I employed the adjective “dictator” in referring to Fidel.”
That same day, a few hours later, he received a phone call from a university administrator who informed him that there were serious “irregularities” in his essay.
“She said my exam contained ideological irregularites.”
Although the university rules stipulate that he is entitled to appeal his expulsion, this brave student has decided to forego any such procedure.
He also had this to say about his self-immolation: “If I had to do it over again, I would still do it, though I’m fully aware of the lack of transparency and lack of justice in this process, including how unfair it is to insert a political question in a Spanish exam that has nothing to do with the class. As I see it, it’s not worth it to humiliate myself further by appealing this injustice.”
Read the whole thing HERE in Spanish (many more details and wonderful statements by David Mauri Cardoso not translated above).
Cubans stranded in freezing Serbia, mixed among refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria — you can imagine the cultural discomfort, the feelings of isolation and despair.
168 Cubans living in Serbian reception centres, stranded after below-freezing temperatures and closed borders halted their journeys
ADAŠEVCI, Serbia, Feb 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As snow falls outside a migrant centre along a highway near the Serbian town of Adaševci, a large Cuban family huddles together in their bedroom, idly playing with their mobile phones to pass the time.
With old photos dotting her walls and laundry hanging by her frosty windows, Tania Hernandez’s tiny room – which she shares with six family members – is a far cry from sunny Havana, the Caribbean island capital she left behind in August last year.
But living in these cramped conditions is nothing compared to the political repression Hernandez said she had to endure.
“We decided to leave because in Cuba there’s no freedom. We were very tired of so much repression upon our shoulders, it was too much,” the Spanish-speaking mother of three said through a translator.
The family is part of a small but growing number of Cubans travelling through the Balkans towards Spain, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.
The unlikely migrant route from Cuba to Spain via Russia and the Balkans became apparent at the height of the European migration crisis in 2015, said IOM’s Western Balkans coordinator Peter Van der Auweraert.
“The route is attractive because they don’t need a visa to go to Russia,” he said in a telephone interview. “So at least they can get close to the (European Union) without any visa issues.”
Around 7,700 migrants live in Serbia, the U.N.’s refugee agency (UNHCR) reports, with around 6,500 people housed in government-run camps, most of whom have fled conflicts and poverty in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
As of Jan. 25, there were 168 Cubans living in Serbian reception centres, according to IOM, stranded after below-freezing temperatures and closed borders halted their journeys.
CUBAN DREAM
While the “Cuban dream” was to get to the United States, which is geographically closer and where some of her relatives are, Hernandez said it was easier to travel to Europe.
Plagued by chronic economic problems, Cuba’s population of 11 million has endured decades of hardship, although not the deep poverty, violent crime and government neglect of many other developing countries.
Communist leader Fidel Castro, who died last November, swept away capitalism and won support for bringing schools and hospitals to the poor. But he also created legions of enemies and critics, concentrated among the exiles in Miami in the United States, who saw him as a ruthless tyrant.
Hernandez and her husband said they sold their house to fund the family’s flight to Moscow, where they could freely access the internet to plan their journey to Spain.
“It was divine. For me, just being at the airport was glorious. We couldn’t wait to leave Cuba,” the 46-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“YOU HAVE TO WAIT”
But having spent five months with more than 1,000 other migrants at this converted motel in western Serbia, the family’s initial enthusiasm has started to fade.
“Day to day life here is disheartening. People don’t treat us badly, they give us a roof and food … but the problem is the despair,” said the short-fringed Hernandez.
“We’ve been here for five months and no one ever gives us any information. They only tell us, ‘You have to wait, you have to wait, you have to wait,'” she said.
Since her family only speaks Spanish, Hernandez said she won’t seek asylum in Serbia, given the language barriers, preferring Spain over popular destinations like Germany, where most migrants apply for asylum.
In 2016, there were 80 Cuban asylum seekers in Spain, and 44 cases the year before, but no Cubans have been officially resettled in Spain since 2010, according to the UNHCR.
Once the weather improves, IOM’s Van der Auweraert said he expects more Cubans to continue their journey, but warned there was “no legal way” to get to Spain from Serbia.
Havana, 1/5/17 -Scott Gilbert Founder and CEO of Coabama Trading LLC, signing international selling-buying contract with Cuba. Gilbert will buy 40 tons charcoal made from the invasive woody plant marabou.
Mr. Gilbert, this indeed is the “Perfect Example.”
This article began with a simple mission, help put out the word on the forced labor camps producing charcoal from the marabou plant in Cuba. The inspiration for this piece came from Eliecer Bandera Barrera, a Cuban Human Rights Activist (with UNPACU) who was sentenced last September to four years in a Cuban prison for exposing the truth behind what has been touted as the first commercial export in a half century from Cuba to the U.S. As the article progressed, some connections appeared which further enlightened me about the true nature of US-Cuba engagement.
You see, the Castro Regime has been very busy spinning a tale of products coming from “privately run” or “cooperative farms” in Cuba. Take the case of the Marabou charcoal which was said to be produced by “hundreds of worker owned cooperatives” according to an article in the Chicago Tribune.
Barrera risked his own safety and freedom by filming an actual marabou camp. He captured the reality that those preaching “engagement” and “normalization” refuse to face:
This video which cost Barrera four years of liberty, shows the inhumane conditions these marabou Cuban workers are forced to endure. The cruel reality bares no resemblance whatsoever to what one would envision terms such as “privately owned” or “cooperative farms” would mean. Behind the smoke and mirrors one sees human beings who will sleep on a make shift mattress made of grass inside a dilapidated structure that is exposed to the elements and are not permitted to have blankets. The energy they will need to muster to start working the fields comes from one piece of bread and the sugar they will mix with water. They get are no safety-type gear of any kind and those hatchets they use to cut the marabou? Well, they are expected to pay those back. Working under the harsh tropical sun, they find themselves having to drink from a dirty water pond which they share with cows. Bathing takes place in a canal with muddied water from which they also occasionally have to drink from.
On the video workers declare being paid between $200-$300 Cuban pesos per ton of marabou charcoal they produce. This is equivalent to $10-$15 American dollars per ton.
Washington DC-based attorney Scott Gilbert has been the leading US proponent of the marabou deal with the Castro Regime. Upon signing the selling-buying contract for marabou charcoal with Cuba, Scott Gilbert stated “the deal “marks the beginning of a new era of trade between the United States and Cuba. This is a perfect example of a win-win for both our countries.” This deal brings the Castro Regime $420 American dollars per ton of marabou charcoal.
Gilbert owns a series of companies all dedicated to business with the Castro Regime. These include: Coabana Trading, which is is engaged in brokering a variety of import and export projects on behalf of U.S. and Cuban businesses, Coabana Development LLC, Coabana Holdings LLC, and Reneo Consulting which boasts on its website of having “built strong and lasting relationships with the Cuban government”.
What makes all of this of peculiar interest is that Scott Gilbert is the attorney that represented Alan Gross, the captured American contractor. The negotiations for Gross’ release was one of the justifications given by the Obama Administration for the engagement strategy with the Castro Regime.
While anti-Trumpers scream their lungs out over the Trumpinator’s immigration policies, a large group of would-be immigrants is being ignored.
And they’re being ignored because their plight is not Trump’s fault, but rather Obama’s.
In many ways what is happening to these individuals and families is worse than that of most “Muslims” temporarily banned from the U.S. or that of Latin Americans trying to sneak in illegally.
Of course, these forgotten — and widely despised “migrants” — are Cuban.
Obama’s abrupt cancellation of the refugee status granted to Cubans under the “Wet foot – Dry foot” policy established in the 90’s has left a large number of Cubans stranded in Mexico and other countries.
Those stranded in Mexico find themselves trapped in a dangerous limbo, in which they are prey to criminals and in constant danger of extortion, kidnapping, and all other sorts of abuse.
For many, their worst fear is deportation.
And deportation is the most likely end to their migratory hopes.
Yesterday, a Mexican newspaper reported that 79 Cubans had voluntarily returned to Nuevo Laredo from the U.S. after being chased away by threats from U.S. authorities.
Good luck finding news stories about the “discrimination,” “bigotry,” “racism,” and “xenophobia” that is preventing these migrants from entering the U.S.
Yes, Mildred, good luck.
But at least you can find something to read about these victims of leftist selective indignation HERE, at Marti Noticias, in Spanish, and HERE at Translating Cuba, in English.
“At 9:45 o’clock this evening a terrible explosion took place on board the United States battleship Maine in Havana Harbor.
Many persons were killed or wounded. All the boats of the Spanish cruiser Alfonso XII. are assisting.
As yet the cause of the explosion is not apparent. The wounded sailors of the Maine are unable to explain it. It is believed that the battleship is totally destroyed.
The explosion shook the whole city. The windows were broken in nearly all the houses.
The correspondent of the Associated Press says he has conversed with several of the wounded sailors and understands from them that the explosion took place while they were asleep, so that they can give no particulars as to the cause.”
The Maine explosion led to the US-Spanish War and the eventual independence of Cuba in 1902.
In 1976, a US Navy investigation concluded that the Maine explosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.
This provocative picture by photographer Erick Coll is a perfect example of art imitating life. In this case, Coll’s art imitates life in Castro’s Cuba. Here, the Cuban people not only wipe themselves with the daily state-run newspapers in a figurative sense, the decades-long shortage of toilet paper in this Workers’ Paradise means they wipe themselves with it literally as well.
The image so well illustrates the misery of life in Castro’s Cuba that the aparthed dictatorship banned it from the Havana Art Festival.
Cubanet, Roberto Jesus Quinones Haces, Guantanamo, 10 February 2017 – The Havana International Book fair and its provincial offshoots would be more important events if there were debates where all Cuban intellectuals could participate without exclusions. But they are walled prosceniums where there is only room for writers who never raise their voices against any internal injustices. The discriminated and persecuted find solidarity in other parts of the world; here, no.
So it is not news – nor will be – that these uncomfortable writers are excluded from debates and even the Fair itself, if they do not fit the established molds for “docile wage earners of official thought,” a phrase from the Argentine guerrilla with a happy trigger finger and fierce hatreds.
Beyond the characteristics of the Fair, where there are more people eating and getting drunk than buying books and participating in cultural activities, I want to dwell on the intolerance of Cuban publishing policy.
“We do not tell the people to believe, we say read”
This phrase is from Fidel Castro and belongs to the earliest days of his totalitarian state. When the National Printing Company of Cuba issued a massive printing of “Don Quixote,” our country inaugurated a luminous time for culture by making available to readers, at very cheap prices, innumerable classics of universal literature. That effort, which is maintained, was and is praiseworthy, although it has also been marked by prohibitions and notorious absences.
Disciplines such as Philosophy, Sociology, Law, Politics and History did not receive the same attention as literature, and today, after 58 years of Castroism, authors and works of international prestige still have not yet been published because the censors are the ones who decide what we can read, and what is published must be consistent with the policy imposed by the regime. To this is added the justification that Cuba cannot pay copyright fees to the affected writers.
Among these, are the Chileans Roberto Bolaño and Isabel Allende, while Nobel laureates Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa, have been published very little, although perhaps the exclusion of the latter is due to his criticism of Castroism. Gabriele D’Annunzio, Aldous Huxley, Milan Kundera, Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsin also appear in the waiting circle. William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury,” Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Attributes” and Vasili Grossman’s “Life and Destiny” have also not been published and still unknown in Cuban are Karl May, Enid Blyton, Albert Camus and Heinrich von Kleist while other authors are being re-published to exhaustion. And don’t even talk about contemporary European and American literature. I am writing from my declining memory, for if I consulted a book on the history of universal literature, the list would be immense.
Authors and texts with a strong democratic vocation remain unpublished here, although historical developments have proved them right. Within that extensive group are Simone Weil, Nikola Tesla and Wendell Berry. After little tirades made in 1960, not published again in Cuba are “The Great Scam” by Eudocio Ravines, “Anatomy of a Myth” by Arthur Koestler and “The New Class” by Milovan Djilas.
Castrogonia is one of the most virulently racist countries on earth.
The Castro regime claims it abolished racism back in 1959, but the sad truth is that the land once known as Cuba became increasingly more racist since then.
The Castronoids are so clueless about racism and racist stereotyping, in fact, that they have turned the portrayal of racist stereotypes into a profession.
And, oh, how tourists love seeing those racist stereotypes portrayed by living human beings on the streets of Havana!
It’s a racist’s paradise! Imagine, you can pose for photos with these Afro-Cubans dressed in the garb of their slave ancestors and every one of your friends back home will think it’s so cool.
However, if you’re brave enough, try this experiment.
Send any of those tourists who pose with noble-savage Cuban cigar ladies some of the Valentines below.
Wait for their reaction.
The hypocrites will most likely howl with indignation and accuse YOU of being a racist.
Nonviolent protests against regime imposed price controls in Havana by cabbies
Taxi drivers on strike in Havana following imposition of price controls
Taxi drivers in Havana, Cuba are protesting new onerous regulations by the Castro dictatorship that negatively impacts their livelihood by placing price controls against the cab drivers forcibly lowering their prices. It is a very old tactic by the regime to divide taxi drivers and their clients setting them against each other with regards to the costs of fares.
February 13th marked the fifth day of protests according to Cuban independent journalist Iván Hernández Carrillo over twitter. In a later tweet Carillo outlined the public threat made against taxi drivers by the Castro regime that threatened to cancel licenses, impose fines and confiscate means of transport if rules are violated.
International news coverage is reporting on this strike in Cuba that remains illegal but spontaneously emerges among Cuban workers who feel exploited.. Although a so-called “workers state” the communist dictatorship in on the island prohibits the freedom of workers to strike. Nevertheless there have been other nonviolent strikes in Cuba resisting oppressive edicts by the Castro dictatorship involving transportation in 2010 in Bayamo and 2012 in Banes.
Aaaaah, the perks of being a totalitarian dictator!
If someone offends you, poof, you make them disappear.
Relatives are not excluded, and distance doesn’t matter.
Yesterday Brotherhood of Dictators member Kim Jung Un did away with a half-brother who was living in exile.
The method of execution was identical to that employed by the Castro regime in many cases, including that of Lady in White Laura Pollan and other dissidents.
The “pinchazo” (needle prick) is a much cleaner nuisance removal method than fake auto “accidents,” but it does have its drawbacks.
Sometimes, the nuisances simply gets sick instead of dying, and you have to finish them off in the hospital or in prison.
The estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been murdered in Malaysia, a South Korean government source said on Tuesday.
Kim Jong Nam, the older half brother of the North Korean leader, was known to spend a significant amount of his time outside the country and had spoken out publicly against his family’s dynastic control of the isolated state.
He was confirmed dead by Malaysian police, and was believed to be in his mid-40s.
Police official Fadzil Ahmat said that the cause of Kim’s death had not been determined yet, but that a post mortem would be carried out on the body.
“So far there are no suspects, but we have started investigations and are looking at a few possibilities to get leads,” Fadzil told Reuters.
According to Fadzil, Kim had been planning to travel to Macau on Monday when he fell ill at the low-cost terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
“The deceased … felt like someone grabbed or held his face from behind,” Fadzil said. “He felt dizzy, so he asked for help at the … counter of KLIA.”
Kim was taken to an airport clinic where he still felt unwell, and it was decided to take him to hospital. He died in the ambulance on the way to Putrajaya Hospital, Fadzil added.
South Korea’s TV Chosun, a cable television network, reported that Kim had been poisoned with a needle by two women believed to be North Korean operatives who fled in a taxi and were at large, citing multiple South Korean government sources.
For the eight years of the Obama administration, Cuban American lawmakers who were against coddling Cuba’s murderously repressive Castro dictatorship were shut out of the White House. President Obama pushed through his agenda to abandon Cuba’s courageous dissidents and embrace the apartheid regime with zero input from the very people in congress who represent the majority of Cuban Americans. Under a Trump administration, however, that has all changed. Or as U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) says, “Everything is going to be very different.”
Anti-Castro Cuban-American lawmakers see a champion in Trump
Cuban-American lawmakers from Florida helped shape U.S. relations with the island for years until they found themselves on the outside during a historic thaw in relations.
But they could be getting the upper hand on Cuba policy again under President Donald Trump with a possible return to an earlier, more hard-line U.S. stance toward relations with Cuba’s government.
“We have had more conversations with high-level Trump officials than we had in eight years of the Obama administration,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, one of a handful of Republican members of Congress from Florida who long had an outsized role on U.S. foreign policy related to Cuba.
What Diaz-Balart and other Cuban-American lawmakers hope is that their renewed access to the U.S. government under Trump’s leadership will help them reverse the steps taken by President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro to normalize relations between the two countries.
“Everything is going to be very different,” predicted Rep. Carlos Curbelo, another Miami-area Republican who said he felt shut out under Obama.
The congressional delegation from South Florida, home to the largest number of Cuban-Americans in the nation, was long able to help craft U.S. policy toward the island. They had hoped to continue isolating the Castro government and both Democrat and Republican politicians went along, at least in part.
Diaz-Balart recalled that under President George W. Bush he and other Cuban-Americans persuaded the administration to grant travel visas and asylum to Cuban doctors working overseas, helping drive a brain drain from the island.
“When something came up, we could call and they responded to us immediately,” he said.
But that changed under Obama, who Diaz-Balart said refused to meet with him as the administration used executive orders to lift some restrictions on travel, trade and investment and ended the so-called “wet-foot, dry foot” policy that allowed Cubans to stay and apply for legal residency if they reached U.S. soil.
Diaz-Balart and other Cuban-American lawmakers want U.S. policy to return to where things were before December 2014, citing what he says is the Castro government’s “brutal oppression.” Curbelo agrees about the return to earlier policies but does not oppose the easing of restrictions on travel that allow Cuban-Americans to more easily visit family back home.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, another Florida delegation member, declined to speak to The Associated Press but recently forwarded a letter to the Trump administration calling for a policy focused on “freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights” that enforces sanctions written into U.S. law. Sen. Marco Rubio, who also declined an interview request, has criticized what he calls Obama’s “failed Cuba policy,” and recently said he expected Trump would reverse the previous administration’s order halting the asylum program for doctors.
