May 16 - On Tuesday of this week, the Venezuelan Communist party asked
visitors to its website to say if they were planning to vote for Hugo
Chávez or for the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.
A few hours later, with a total of 2,557 votes, Capriles had 91.7% of
the votes and Chávez 7.1%.
Minutes later, the page was changed and the possibility of casting a
vote disappeared.
But Venezuelan TV channel, Globovisión, was able to capture the page
before it was removed.
How the home page looked before, with the poll results, and after when
the poll disappeared.
Question: Who would you vote for if the presidential elections were held
tomorrow?
The final results shown before they were removed.
US tightens restrictions for Cuba trips
May 16 - The U.S. Treasury Department has tightened a few of its
restrictions on trips to Cuba by non-Cuban Americans on so-called
"people to people" visits, saying that the revisions will "help to deter
abuses."
Complaints of abuses of such trips - they must be for "educational"
purposes, never for tourism - have dogged the program since President
Barack Obama approved it last year in a bid to increase Americans'
engagement with regular Cubans.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., drew laughter during a speech in Washington
last year when he read the schedule for one such trip, showing salsa
dancing sessions every night. Other tours have met with Cuban government
ministers and even a daughter of ruler Raul Castro.
Rubio put a block on Roberta Jacobson's nomination as the top U.S.
diplomat for Latin American until the Obama administration addressed
some of the myriad complaints. Jacobson was sworn in earlier this month.
"I think it's progress ... because the changes require closer reviews of
the itineraries," Rubio said. "But I still have concerns about the
program in general, because it is difficult to manage and avoid abuses."
Treasury spokesman John Sullivan said the department's Office Foreign
Assets Controls which enforces sanctions on Cuba, revised the
regulations for those seeking OFAC licenses to organize trips "in part
because of reports we received."
He did not detail the "reports" but added that the changes "will provide
clarity to applicants and licensees seeking renewals, facilitate OFAC's
review of license applications and help to deter abuses by licensees."
Read more
Terrorist attack in Bogotá killed 2 injured 39
including a former Interior Minister
May 15 - A noon bombing in a busy commercial district of Colombia’s
capital has killed at least two and left 39 wounded, including former
interior minister Jose Londoño.
President Juan Manuel Santos condemned the attack and said Londoño, a
conservative radio host and columnist, was the target.
“We don’t understand the purpose of this bombing,” Santos said in a
brief televised address. “We are going to investigate until we find
those responsible for this act.”
Santos said Londoño’s driver and at least one of his bodyguards died in
the explosion. Local TV showed a bloodied Londoño being escorted from
the scene. Santos said Londoño is in stable condition.
The bombing came just hours after local media said police had
deactivated a car bomb in downtown Bogotá. The government has not
assigned blame for either incident, but analysts said the incidents have
the earmarks of the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Armed
Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
The rebels did not immediately take responsibility for the attack on the
websites or the Twitter account where they sometimes issues statements.
The Miami Herald
One step forward, five steps backward
May 15 - Cuba's reform plans to attract more overseas investment are off
to a slow start as the government focuses more on regulating existing
foreign joint ventures than encouraging new ones, businessmen and
diplomats say.
In fact, Cuba has closed more joint ventures than it has opened since
the ruling Communist Party adopted wide-ranging economic reforms a year
ago, and remains far off highs reached in the 1990s, according to
official reports.
The list of endangered or terminated joint ventures includes one big
name, Unilever PLC, the Anglo-Dutch consumer giant, and a number of
others that have operated in the country for 15 years or more.
Cuba's investment reform plan announced last year spoke positively of
foreign investment, promised a review of the cumbersome approval process
and stated that special economic zones, joint venture golf courses,
marinas and new manufacturing projects were planned.
Most experts believe large flows of direct investment will be needed for
development and to create jobs if the government follows through with
plans to lay off up to a million workers in an attempt to lift the
country out of its economic malaise.
It will be particularly critical given the health of cancer-stricken
ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has championed close
cooperation between Cuba and oil-rich Venezuela.
While the reform plan built up hopes of an opening to foreign capital,
it also made clear that existing and future investments would be subject
to "rigorous controls" on "regulations and procedures, as well as the
commitments assumed by foreign partners."
This part of the program has been vigorously carried out, according to
both business and Cuban sources, with a review of the country's
approximately 240 foreign investment projects recently concluded.
That number is a decline from the 258 projects Foreign Trade and
Investment Minister Rodrigo Malmierca reported at the close of 2009 and
way down from the 700 Cuba had a decade ago.
Read more
Five people dead several injured when a bus overturned
in Holguín
May 15 - Five people died and several others were injured Monday when a
bus turned over on a highway in the eastern Cuban province of Holguin,
official media said.
The accident occurred when the vehicle turned over on a slope at a place
called Sao Nuevo on the highway connecting the towns of Punto Fijo and
Melones, at some 730 kilometers (454 miles) east of Havana, the AIN
state news agency said.
Among the fatalities were the bus driver and a little girl, a police
official said, adding that traffic specialists are investigating the
cause of the accident.
Traffic accidents hold fifth place among the causes of death on the
island.
Cuba showed a “considerable” surge in the number of traffic accidents
during 2011, according to figures published in official media, with
10,553 crashes, 1,126 more than in 2010.
According to a recent official report, in April 2012 there was a drop in
the number of mass-transport accidents compared with the first months
the year.
Latin American Herald Tribune
Carlos Alberto Montaner: Cuba After Hugo Chávez
May 15 - The most complex part of the inheritance left by Hugo Chávez
are the relations between Venezuela and Cuba. The existing ones were
built on the strange emotional, political and ideological subordination
of the Bolivarian leader to Fidel Castro and do not respond to the
interests or preferences of the Venezuelans.
In survey after survey, more than 82 percent of Venezuelans (meaning
that many of them are pro-Chávez) responded that they don’t want the
installation of a political model based on Cuba. Presumably, a similar
percentage does not agree that Venezuela should continue to subsidize,
with billions of dollars, the pig-headed and unproductive collectivism
imposed by the Castro brothers.
Why did Chávez turn Venezuela into Cuba’s deep-pocketed financier? The
reasons are several, but the most important one is that the lieutenant
colonel found in Fidel Castro a sort of spiritual and political guide
who advised him what to do and how and when he should do it. Fidel was
his guru, his moral father, his protector against the dangers that
threatened him in Venezuela and almost took his power and life in April
2002.
In addition, Fidel endowed him with a vision compatible with Marxism and
an epic internationalist mission that would forever consign Chávez to
history: to defeat the United States and bury capitalism. Between
Fidel’s wisdom, enriched by three decades of training under the Holy
Soviet Mother, and Chávez’s impetuous youth, aided by his bountiful
river of petrodollars, the two would triumph in the task of saving the
world, traitorously abandoned by the USSR.
How much was that ideological, strategic, police-backed protectorate, so
different from the untrustworthy universe of his own corrupt
collaborators, worth to Chávez? It was worth whatever Fidel needed and
asked for. Chávez delivered himself completely to the comandante, his
only source of security.
There was a point where both leaders, united in the same delirium,
planned to federate both countries and even created a joint commission
of jurists who began to study how to carry out that process. On the way,
Chávez increasingly placed himself under the authority of the very
skilled Cuban intelligence service, an organization that fed him
information about his military brass, his ministers and close
collaborators.
Today, nobody around Chávez dares to speak, out of fear of Havana’s
microphones. True, the opposition is controlled or watched by “the
Cubans,” but the siege and humiliating harassment of the Chavistas is
much more intense.
When Chávez exits the stage, whoever replaces him in Miraflores Palace,
even if pro-Chávez, should question the sense of prolonging that sick
relationship, built on the emotional allegiance of a codependent leader
who no longer exists and worried most about controlling and spying on
his own ruling class. Why fear a poverty-stricken island that lives from
the handouts of a colony that’s infinitely richer, more powerful and
sophisticated?
Venezuelan political scientist Aníbal Romero usually says that Castro’s
internationalist efforts have always ended in failure. Castro-sponsored
guerrillas, sometimes led by the Cubans themselves, were defeated
throughout Latin America in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. They barely
succeeded in Nicaragua, paradoxically aided by the governments of
Venezuela and Costa Rica, but only to lose power one decade later in
democratic elections.
Peru’s Velasco Alvarado, Panama’s Manuel Noriega and Chile’s Salvador
Allende, rulers aligned with Havana, were evicted from power, something
Cuba could do nothing to prevent. Angola and Ethiopia today have regimes
that are nothing like the communist models that were originally imposed
at the cost of Cuban blood. Who says that Castro’s influence will be
preserved in Venezuela after Chávez’s death? What for?
Continue reading
Exchange of insults between a Norwegian politician and
Castro's ambassador to Norway
May 15 - An ongoing quarrel between a top Norwegian politician and the
Cuban ambassador in Oslo has grown so nasty that Jan Tore Sanner, a
Member of Parliament (MP) for the Conservatives, has asked Norway’s
foreign minister to intervene. Ambassador Rogerio Santana claims Sanner
started it all.
Newspaper Aftenposten reported over the weekend how both Sanner, who
also serves as deputy leader of Norway’s Conservative Party (Høyre), and
Santana have resorted to name-calling over the years. Sanner is guilty
of calling Santana Komiske Ali (Comical Ali), a reference to the former
minister of information for Saddam Hussein. Santana admits he responded
by calling Sanner the equivalent of a “banana politician” and little
more than an “insect.”
“I have to put up with some of that, especially after I called him what
I did,” Sanner admitted to Aftenposten. But now Sanner claims that
Santana has accused him of having ties to both terrorists and the mafia.
“I think that’s problematic,” Sanner said.
He’s thus turned to Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre from the Labour
Party, Sanner’s party’s biggest opponent within Norway, for help. Sanner
sent a letter to Støre late last week where he wonders whether Støre
thinks it’s okay for an ambassador in Norway to make such accusations
against a Norwegian politician.
Read more
The Castro regime unveils a new repressive method
against The Ladies in White
May 14 - The fascist regime in Cuba assembled 'dancers' in front of the
home of the late Laura Pollán, to prevent about 40 members of the Ladies
in White to leave the house where they had assembled to pay tribute to
the founder of the movement.
On Sunday, about 60 members of the Ladies defied the regime and attended
Mass and later marched as they have been doing on Sunday for several
years.
Here is a video of what happened on Saturday in front of the home of
Laura Pollán.
Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe: Hugo Chávez
is a murderer
May 14 - Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe accused Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez of covering up government impunity for the murder
of thousands of citizens via Twitter on Sunday.
In a post on his Twitter page, Uribe wrote that Chavez "wants to cover
up the unpunished murder of 19 thousand Venezuelans each year."
In another Uribe wrote that Chavez "wants to plug up that between 1998
and 2011 homicides increased from just over 4,000 to almost 19,000 per
year."
Uribe called Chavez a murderer and said that Chavez wants to "cover that
he has made Venezuela a haven for terrorists."
Uribe also gave his support for the presidential candidacy of Henrique
Capriles, saying "Venezuela will hopefully have decent private
investment without the Chavez dictatorship."
Colombia Reports
Brain Latell: How the assassination of JFK put Fidel
Castro in a delicate spot
May 13 - It was only about 30 hours after John F. Kennedy’s death in
Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when Fidel Castro took to the airwaves to deny
any knowledge of the president’s assassin. The Cuban leader was
unequivocal about Lee Harvey Oswald: “We never in our life heard of
him.”
Castro delivered another speech four days later at the University of
Havana. A CIA assessment described it as “a carefully prepared
refutation of charges of complicity . . . [with] Oswald.” Fidel insisted
that he had known nothing of the assassin.
Speaking of Oswald’s mysterious visits to the Cuban consulate in Mexico
City in late September, Castro issued a second critical denial. “We did
not know about it.” Then, he went further out on that limb. “We have no
other background for the accused . . . other than what has been
published in the press.”
But research I have conducted over the last five years for Castro’s
Secrets: The CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence Machine, my new book, reveals
that in all these respects, Castro lied. Evidence I have culled from
tens of thousands of pages of declassified U.S. government documents,
and from the reporting of two defectors from Cuba’s General Directorate
of Intelligence, the DGI, proves his duplicity beyond any doubt.
Fidel first spoke about Kennedy’s assassination for about two hours from
a Havana television studio. Oswald by then had been charged with the
president’s murder and also for killing a Dallas police officer less
than an hour later. Fidel had no idea what the young former Marine might
confess to as he was being interrogated at Dallas police headquarters,
or what he might say about his contacts in Mexico City with Cuban
intelligence officers. And, Castro could not be sure how much American
authorities had already learned about the gunman, a professed Marxist
who adored Castro and revolutionary Cuba.
The Cuban leader was profoundly worried. He warned his people to be
“cautious and vigilant and alert,” describing the assassination as a
“dangerous Machiavellian plot against Cuba.” The CIA reported that the
speech reflected his “apprehension that U.S. policy toward Cuba may now
become even tougher.”
It was known in Washington that “immediately after the news of President
Kennedy’s death,” Castro ordered an island-wide “defensive military
alert.” By nightfall, Cuban military units had been deployed to
strategic positions around Havana and on the north coast. American
intelligence had intercepted Cuban communications showing that Fidel
“was frightened” the United States “might invade.”
Che Guevara expressed acute alarm in a speech a day after Fidel first
spoke. He warned that “the peace of the world will be threatened for
years to come.” The Cuban Communist Party newspaper summed up the fear
festering at the highest levels of the regime: “A dirty maneuver was
afoot . . . making Cuba the perpetrator of the crime.” Read more
The Miami Herald
The US once again tell the Castros they will not
exchange spies for their hostage
May 11 - The United States criticized Cuba on Friday for denying
imprisoned American contractor Alan Gross permission to visit his ailing
mother as a humanitarian gesture.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland noted that the United
States had allowed a convicted Cuban spy to return to Cuba to visit a
sick relative.
"The Cuban government can't even grant that kind of humanity in a
totally unequivocal situation to begin with," she said.
Gross, 63, was arrested in December 2009 for distributing laptops and
communications equipment to members of Cuba's small Jewish community
under a State Department contract.
Cuban foreign ministry official Josefina Vidal told CNN on Thursday that
Gross could not leave the country because he began serving 2.5 years ago
a 15-year sentence for "acts against the independence or territorial
integrity" of Cuba.
The contractor has requested permission on repeated occasions to visit
his sick 90-year-old mother.
"The continuing imprisonment of Alan Gross is deplorable. It is wrong.
And it's an affront to human decency," Nuland said. "The Cuban
government needs to do the right thing."
Nuland said Washington would not consider a prisoner exchange of Gross,
who is reported to be in poor health, for five Cuban agents who were
tried and imprisoned for espionage by the United States.
One of the so-called "Cuban Five," Rene Gonzalez, who was released on
parole in October after serving 13 years in prison, was allowed to make
a two week visit to Cuba in March to visit his cancer-stricken brother.
Vidal said the Cuban government was willing to negotiate to find a
"humanitarian solution... on a basis of reciprocity," but offered no
specifics.
"There's no equivalency in these situations, and the Cuban government
knows that," said Nuland.
"On the one hand, you have convicted spies in the United States, and on
the other hand, you have an assistance worker who should never have been
locked up in the first place.
"So we are not contemplating any release of the Cuban Five and we are
not contemplating any trade," she said.
AFP
South Africans don't want to give more money to an
"anti-democratic nepotistic regime"
May 11 - Opposition parties have reacted angrily to the ratification of
an agreement between South Africa and Cuba that will see a R350-million
taxpayer-funded “economic assistance package” handed to the island
nation. They say the money would have been better spent at home, and
that public money should never be used to “prop up an anti-democratic
and nepotistic regime”.
The National Assembly’s committee on trade and industry voted this week
– by a single vote – to ratify the agreement, entered into after
President Jacob Zuma visited Cuba last year.
The deal offers Cuba a R100m “solidarity grant” – which will not have to
be repaid – and a credit line of R250m. Of the latter amount, Cuba will
be given R40m to buy seeds – of which R5m must be spent on South African
seeds – and a further R210m in tranched loans.
The latest aid package follows the government’s controversial decision
last year to write off R1.1 billion in Cuban debts. DA trade and
industry spokesman Geordin Hill-Lewis said on Thursday that the
government “should not use public money to maintain the political
friendship between the ANC and the Castro regime in Cuba”.
He also said the agreement came without any strings attached, placing no
conditions on the Cuban government to “respect human rights or
democratic governance”.
“We cannot afford to be throwing money away like this. It will not help
to improve our people’s lives, and will only help to prop up an
anti-democratic and nepotistic regime in Cuba. It cannot be justified,”
Hill-Lewis said.
FF Plus finance spokesman Anton Alberts also complained about the lack
of conditions attached to the deal, particularly the government’s
failure to insist that Cuba “reform its human rights record in order to
move towards democracy”.
“This deal appears to offer no real benefits to South Africa,” Alberts
said.
Read more
STASI records show Cuba deal included IKEA furniture,
antiques, rum and guns
May 10 - The controversial contract to use Cuban prison labor to build
IKEA furniture was part of a broader deal between firms run by the Cuban
and East German security services that also involved Cuban antiques,
cigars and guns, according to a researcher in Berlin.
Documents on the deal, found in the archives of East Germany’s notorious
STASI security agency, also refer to Cuban prison labor and indicate
that former Cuban leader Fidel Castro personally approved the overall
deal, said researcher Jorge Luis García.
Garcia told El Nuevo Herald on Wednesday he published an article about
the deal in 2006 that mentioned the Cuban manufacture of furniture “for
export to Sweden,” and posted a note about it in his blog, STASI-MININT
Connection, early last year.
But the deal blossomed into scandal last week after a German newspaper
reported that an IKEA subsidiary in Berlin and an East German company
had contracted for Cuban prison labor to build 45,000 tables and 4,000
sofa groupings in 1987.
The Berlin Wall fell two years later and East Germany — officially the
German Democratic Republic — disappeared in 1990 into the Federal
Republic of Germany, also sometimes called West Germany.
It remains unclear how much of the 1987 deal was carried out, said the
Cuban-born García, who was interrogated in the STASI’s underground cells
in East Berlin in 1987. He now guides tours of the cells and researches
the agency’s archives.
It was also unclear if prison labor was used to make Cuban products that
were not part of the IKEA contract.
One document Garcia found in the archives show the East German firms
involved in the deal were Delta GmbH and Art and Antiquities, known as
KuA, both controlled by the Interior Ministry, in charge of domestic
security. The STASI, which monitored and repressed domestic dissent, was
a much feared part of the ministry.
But the companies were officially branches of the government’s foreign
trading agency, Kommerzielle Koordinierung. The agency was led by the
notorious wheeler-dealer Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a STASI officer
who defected in 1989.
The document shows that the Havana side of the deal was EMIAT, and
described the company as owned by Cuba’s Interior Ministry, or MININT.
Like its East German counterpart, MININT is in charge of domestic
security and runs Cuba’s prisons as well as the General Directory of
State Security, which monitors and cracks down on dissidents.
Read more
Cuban athlete's incredible journey continues
May 8 - For most people, joining the Air Force means a quick trip to the
local recruiting office.
But for Geanny Hernandez Quiala, now with the 927th Air Refueling Wing
at MacDill Air Force Base, enlisting was far more complicated.
A former star of the Cuban National Judo team, he first had to escape
the island. Then he had to survive being in the open water in a small
boat buffeted by a nascent Hurricane Katrina, being blown off course to
Honduras and surviving a 15-day trek through the jungles of Central
America, only to be captured by a Mexican drug cartel and tortured for
five days.
When he finally arrived at the U.S. border, famished, weak and clad in
the same clothes he had been wearing for weeks, he was able to reach his
fiancée and hop a plane to her home in Miami.
A year later, he saw a military recruiting commercial on TV and found a
new path.
"I wanted to join the military," Hernandez said in a recent phone
interview. "I wanted to give back to this country."
For Hernandez, the journey to MacDill started with curiosity. And love.
Hernandez took an early interest in martial arts, first taking classes
when he was 5 in a school in his hometown of Camaguey. By the time he
was 7, Cuban government officials decided he was such a promising
athlete they shipped him off to a special academy.
At first, things were great.
"I felt good," he said. "I was proud."
But by the time he turned 13, things began to get a little confusing for
the judo star.
He would come in contact with athletes from other countries, where the
government did not dictate how they lived. And he fell into a
relationship with a fellow athlete, the daughter of a Cuban dissident.
The foreign athletes made him think about what he was missing. His
girlfriend, who eventually moved with her family to Miami, made him
begin to think about getting out.
Continue reading
Radio Martí editorial got it right: Cardinal Ortega is
a lackey of the Castros
May 6 - It seems that the Washington Post and some of the Castro
apologizers it quotes in the following article, are unhappy by a Radio
Martí editorial that refers to Cardinal Ortega as a 'lackey', but to
anyone who has been following the events in Cuba what the director of
Radio and TV Martí, Carlos García-Pérez said is nothing but the truth.
For some reason, the link to the Radio Martí editorial is not longer
working. I hope that the US government has not decided to censor it:
Here is the Post article:
Criticism of the leader of the Catholic Church in Cuba, who has been
negotiating with the communist government to expand religious and
political freedom, intensified last week when the head of Radio and TV
Marti called the archbishop of Havana a lackey who is colluding with an
oppressive regime.
The stinging editorial against Cardinal Jaime Ortega — signed by Radio
and TV Marti’s director, Carlos Garcia-Perez — is significant because
Marti is a U.S. government agency, with its board of directors appointed
by the White House and its policies coordinated with the State
Department to direct messages to Cubans.
Some analysts said the editorial could undermine Ortega’s position in
Cuba and they wondered whether it signaled a lack of support for the
Church’s delicate position on the communist-run island.
Marti broadcasts, according to spokeswoman Lynne Weil, “are editorially
independent, although supported by U.S. taxpayer dollars. Their
editorials, unless otherwise stated, represent the views of the
broadcasters only and not necessarily those of the U.S. government.”
Weil said she did not know when the State Department saw the editorial
or whether there was any discussion of its content.
“I would suggest that this is equivalent to a U.S. government statement
and that people may conclude, rightly or wrongly, that this is a U.S.
government position,” said Phil Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington
Institute.
The cardinal has been hailed by some for his role in the freeing of
political prisoners and for creating a small but relatively safe space
for citizens to complain about the Cuban government, including its tight
immigration and economic policies. Cuba’s Catholic magazines contain
some of the most lively, as well as pointed, criticism of the
government.
But Ortega has been hammered in the Cuban exile community and by members
of the South Florida congressional delegation, who say he is an appeaser
who enables the Castro brothers and prolongs their rule.
Continue reading
Wolf Blitzer interview with Alan Gross
The Pope sends a letter to Raul hoping that Cuba
"continue to move forward in the path of freedom"
May 4 - Incredible but true: Pope Benedict XVI called for "Cuba continue
to move forward with determination in the path of freedom" in a letter
to Cuban dictator Raul Castro, published Friday by the official daily
Granma.
Continue to move forward? Record numbers of arrests and beatings are
being reported every week and the Pope considers that Cuba is moving
forward in the path of freedom?
Is the Vatican located on another planet?
Benedict XVI also expressed his "deepest gratitude" for the hospitality
he received during his visit to the island from March 26 to 28, and he
said he prayed to God that "Cuba continue to advance decisively on the
roads of freedom, solidarity and harmony for the common good and the
right progress for all its sons and daughters."
Read more (Spanish)
Cuban prisoners were forced to build products for Ikea
in the late 1980s (UPDATED)
A report in The Daily Mail: Ikea is accused of
using Cuban political prisoners to make furniture
Allegations that Ikea used former communist East German
prisoners to make its furniture three decades ago have been followed by
new charges that Cuban dissidents were also unwilling members of the
workforce.
Germany's authoritative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that it
has accessed former Stasi secret police files detailing the deal struck
between Ikea in Sweden and President Castro's henchmen in Havana.
FAZ reports the deal was sealed in September 1987 after an East German
trade mission went to Havana for talks with the Cuban interior ministry.
Read more
May 3 - As Ikea investigates claims that East German prisoners were
forced to make its furniture in the 1980s, allegations emerged on
Thursday that Cuban prisoners were also made to build the furniture
giant’s products in the 1980s.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) said it has seen East German
files about a deal for Ikea furniture to be made in Cuban prisons.
The deal was struck in September 1987, after a delegation of East
Germans went to Havana for talks with the Cuban Interior Ministry. East
German documents show that they also spoke with Enrique Sanchez, who
headed the Cuban company Emiat – responsible for furnishing the holiday
and guest homes of the Cuban political elite.
The East German files say production sites were “incorporated in the
prison facilities of the Interior Ministry” in Cuba.
A contract was later signed with East Berlin-based “Ikea Trading
Berlin”, the paper said, for up to 4,000 “Falkenberg” three-piece suites
and then 10,000 tables for children and 35,000 dining tables, all to be
made in Cuba.
Problems arose in early 1988, when the first delivery of “Falkenberg”
sofas was halted because of poor quality, prompting the East Germans to
take another trip to Cuba to ensure production was up to Ikea quality
standards. Only then, the documents show, could, “a direct shipment from
Havana to Sweden be undertaken.”
The claims will increase pressure on the Swedish retail firm, which has
already said this week it will look into allegations that East German
prisoners were forced to make its products in the 1970s and 1980s. A
spokesman told the FAZ it knew nothing about the Cuban production
claims.
But this was also the initial response to the East German prison labor
claims – and early this week the company said it planned to examine
Stasi secret service files from the time to check for evidence.
“We take this matter extremely seriously,” said Ikea spokeswoman
Jeanette Skjelmose on Monday.
“We have requested documents from the old Stasi archive and are speaking
with people who were with us at that time.”
The FAZ said it was possible that political prisoners were made to build
Ikea furniture in East Germany without the company knowing about it. It
said many prisoners had to work for companies, without the prisoners
knowing where the stuff they made was destined for, nor the firms
themselves knowing who had been involved.
Read more
Cuban dissidents respond to Cardinal Ortega's lies
May 1 - Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega has said that the 13 dissidents who
occupied a Havana church days before Pope Benedict XVI visited the
island had criminal records, were largely uneducated, and that one had
mental problems.
But several members of the group contacted by El Nuevo Herald Monday
denied they had criminal records. One is an architect and others were
educated in a variety of jobs and professions, such as computer
technician, sports trainer, bookkeeper and forensic technician.
“I can only say that the 13 are a perfect reflection of Cuban society,
in which there is everything,” said Havana human rights activist
Elizardo Sánchez, who angrily called Ortega’s comments “incredible.”
Ortega, already branded by critics as too friendly with the Raúl Castro
government, sparked a firestorm of controversy last week when he
criticized the 13 dissidents during a speech at Harvard University.
“All were old delinquents,” he declared, adding that they “lacked a
level of culture.” He described one as suffering from mental problems
and another as having been returned to Cuba by U.S. authorities after
serving six years in a U.S. prison.
The U.S. “excludable” was Carlos Miguel López Santos, who has claimed
that U.S. authorities returned him after mistaking him for another man
accused of terrorism, said María López Báez, head of a Havana chapter of
the Cuban Human Rights Commission.
Another of the 13 suffers from mental problems, said López by phone from
Havana. She added that those problems were created by the government
repression.
Ortega’s office in Havana did not reply to an email asking if the
information about the group had come from the dissidents themselves or
from government officials.
López said 11 of the 13 were members of the little known Republican
Party of Cuba (PRC) and two of the Frank Pais November 30 Movement.
They occupied Our Lady of Charity Church in Havana March 13, and Ortega
asked the Cuban government to force them out the next day.
Read more information about each one of the dissidents
Opposition members inside and outside Cuba reject
Ortega's remarks
April 27 - Members of the opposition both inside and outside Cuba
rejected recent statements by Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Archbishop
of Havana, who described 13 oppositionists who occupied a church in
Havana just before Pope Benedict XVI’s visit as “delinquents.” The
demonstrators were removed violently from the church.
The demonstrators “were not removed by force,” Ortega said. “They were a
group that – this pains me a lot – all of them were former delinquents.
There was a former Cuban prisoner who had been returned to Cuba, he had
been in prison for six years and was one of the excludable people who
were sent to Cuba […] among them were people without any cultural level,
some with psychological disturbances.”
In Havana, Berta Soler, spokeswoman for the Ladies in White, and former
political prisoner Oscar Elias Biscet criticized Ortega’s words.
“To call those men ‘delinquents’ is to use words that the Cuban
government uses,” said Soler. “I am not in agreement and ask myself,
where did Ortega get the information that allowed him to call them that?
As to the releases, we spoke at the request of some prisoners, not all.”
Biscet said that he has a low opinion of Ortega and his work, because
the Church must always side with the downtrodden.
“I think that the Church leadership does not understand that the
government must be told that the changes are a person’s basic rights,”
Biscet said.
In Miami, Radio Mambí journalist Ninoska Pérez, a member of the Council
for the Liberty of Cuba, lamented that Ortega didn’t direct his
criticism at the Castro brothers.
“It seems to me vile that the severity of his criticism is always
directed at the exile community and the victims, not the oppressors,”
Perez said. “Worse yet, he uses Monsignor Román, who is dead, and talks
about reconciling with an enemy who has not repented and who continues
to repress” the Cuban people.
Silvia Iriondo, a member of the board of ARC and president and founder
of MAR for Cuba, railed against Ortega for his “despective” language.
“Clearly, the Church of Jesus Christ is not the same Church as the
cardinal’s,” Iriondo said. “Our exile is a show of solidarity and
capacity for reconciliation among Cubans. So, what reconciliation is the
cardinal talking about? A reconciliation with the oppressors who
continue to repress [Cubans] and committing crimes?”
The Miami Herald
Jaime Ortega: Cubans who occupied Havana's church were
"criminals" with no education
April 26 - Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega is in the United States and
during a speech and later responding questions from Harvard University
students, he followed to the letter the instructions given by his
bosses in Cuba.
Speaking about the Cubans who peacefully occupied a church in Havana to
ask for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Castro's cardinal said that
everything was planned here in Miami and that those who occupied the
church were "delincuentes comunes" (common criminals) others with
"mental problems" and all without any level of education.
Ortega, who called Castro's police to remove the Cubans, also said that
they were not "removed by force."
Regarding the role of the exile community, the Castros' personal
secretary spoke in favor of those Cubans who are willing to meet with
the slave masters in Cuba, "taking huge personal risks" according to
him.
According to Ortega, when he was first named cardinal and visited Miami,
Monsignor Agustín Román, who recently passed away after more than 50
years in exile, asked him to remove the words "reconciliation" from his
speeches and homilies in Miami.
Ortega, who has never criticized the brutal regime in Cuba, said that it
was "hard" for him to remove those words, but that he did so because
Roman "knew the territory" better than him.
Ortega complained of having been censored while in Miami. What a
hypocrite this bag of cow manure with a cardinal hat really is!
If you want to listen to the audio of Ortega's comments, in Spanish, to
the students at Harvard
Click here
Cuba: More protests and more repression
More than 1,100 people have
registered at CubanSearch looking for relatives and friends
If you haven't
visited or registered, click here for the
English Version Y aqui para
la versión en español.
You can register a name of a missing relative, or you can look through
the list of names to see if you have any information that you can
provide about any of them.
Dozens of people have already found their missing relatives thanks to
www.cubansearch.com
A repugnant video
March 31 - Fidel Castro at the apostolic nunciature in Havana to meet
with the pope.
The papal nuncio welcomes the dictator "Comandante, I am a student of a
very dear friend of yours, Monsignor Sacchi".
Sacchi was papal nuncio in the mid 60s and Cubans don't have very fond
memories of him, precisely because he was considered too friendly to the
regime.
The papal nuncio more than one time tells the murderer of thousands of
Cubans, including hundreds of Catholics: "God bless you comandante"
Iinside, the pope gives Castro the medals of his pontificate and then
pose for "family pictures."
And the last word from the papal nuncio to the dictator before leaving
was "Felicidades."
Remember this video next time you are at a Catholic Mass and they pass
the collection plate around.
Spanish television
interviews a priest, a journalist and a young Cuban "indignado"
The video is in Spanish
One archbishop with
dignity
March 30 - Watch this video taken inside the terminal at the José Martí
airport in Havana, minutes before Pope Benedict boarded the plane for
his return trip to Rome.
The farewell ceremony had to be moved inside the airport because of a
rain storm.
Cuban bishops were saying goodbye to the pope and also shaking the
bloody hands of Cuban dictator Raúl Castro.
But one of them, Monsignor Dionisio Garcia Ibañez, Achbishop of Santiago
de Cuba, left the dictator with his hand extended and walked away.
Look at the face of the dictator after Monsignor García Ibañez refused
to shake hands with him. He didn't know what to do.
Seconds later, it was the turn for Monsignor Carlos Manuel de
Cespedes Garcia Menocal, Vicar General of Havana, one of the most
repugnant members of Cuba's Catholic Church.
As you can see, he not only shook hands with the Cuban tyrant but also
embraced him and even after it was the turn for another two bishops to
salute the dictator, Céspedes didn't want to move from the side of his
idol. He came back one more time to joke with Raúl.
Céspedes used to always give Fidel Castro a military salute of "Mi
comandante."
Monsignor Dionisio García is the fourth one shaking the Pope's hand.
My interview with
Baseball PhD
March 29 - I was interviewed by Ed Kasputis, of Baseball PhD, about
baseball in Cuba before Castro and about the two Cubas, the one for
foreigners and the one for regular Cubans.
Ed did a previous program with Mr. Sports Travel of San Diego, CA, about
the five top international baseball destinations and was surprised to
find out that the #1 destination was Cuba.
He received some nice pictures of Cuba and was ready to book a trip when
he saw therealcuba.com and changed his mind.
He interviewed me as part of a program about the new Marlins Stadium and
I was able to talk about baseball in Cuba before Castro and then we had
a long chat about what is the reality of life in Cuba under Castro.
The program lasts 53 minutes, if you are not a baseball fan and just
want to hear my interview about Cuba use your mouse to move the dial to
minute 25:35
Click
here to listen
Castro needs help to get
in a car to go see the Pope
March 28 - The Cuban dictator needs the help of at least three people to
be able to get him inside a car.
UNIVISION video of the
man protesting at the mass in Santiago de Cuba
March 27 - You can hear the poor man yelling "No one paid me anything",
after being accused by Castro's thugs of being a mercenary paid by the
United States.
"They are going to beat me", he told the journalists that were nearby.
No one knows where he is at this hour, or even if he is dead or alive.
A member of the Cuban Red
Cross beating a peaceful dissident
March 27 - In normal countries, the Red Cross is a volunteer
organization that provides help to those in need.
The Red Cross provides shelter, food, and health and mental health
services to address basic human needs and support to those who have
suffered a disaster.
But not in Castro's Cuba.
As could be seen in the following video, a thug wearing the Cuban Red
Cross t-shirt, used a folded stretcher to hit from the back a poor Cuban
while he was being held by State Security agents, for protesting the
longer disaster in history: The 53 year long dictatorship of the Castro
brothers.
Even the Red Cross has become a tool for terrorizing the population
under the Castro brothers' tyranny.
Cubanos - life and death
of a revolution
Cubanos, a completely independent production, liberates itself from
television convention to draw an impressionist portrait of the Cuban
community. Sincere interviews and sequence shots reveal an identity
fragmented by more than 50 years of dictatorship, a people struggling to
leave the 20th century behind. While music may barely camouflage the
misery and corruption in Cuba, the sounds of engines and commercial
radio can’t mask the cultural gap between the island and the very active
community in Miami.
The main character, Catuey, a Cuban musician who has been living in
Québec for a number of years, brings to his journey and his songs the
image of an ideal Cuba hurt by the division in its people and the
group-think that prevails in Miami. Confronted with the contradictions
among his countrymen and his own demons, Catuey ends his odyssey drained
and disappointed not to have found a simple path to reconciliation. The
film steers clear of the pitfalls of sensationalist news, taking a more
holistic approach to the identity issues the Cuban community will face
upon the death of Fidel Castro.
Trees growing out on top of derelict buildings in Havana (make sure to
move the mouse down)
Click here
The entrance to La Cabaña Fortress, where thousands of cubans were
executed by che Guevara
Click here
The old Ambar Motors building on Calle 23 near the Malecon and a view of
the Hotel Nacional
Click here
This is how that same building and area looked when that street was
under construction before Castro:
Listen to Fidel Castro
For those who think that the Cuban people chose the system imposed by
the Castro brothers, here are some of the things that Fidel Castro said
and promised when he gained power
Click Here
Satellite
photos of Cuba's prisons, missile installations, military bases and
more
A look at
Havana before the Castro brothers destroyed it
July 16 - Today's El Nuevo Herald has an article and a video about my
new website, Cuban Search, that helps Cubans inside and outside the
island, find relatives with whom they have lost contact.
Cuban Search serves as the missing-link with their relatives and friends
between those millions of Cubans who are now spread all over the world
and who may be trying to find them.
El Nuevo Herald (Spanish)
Capitol Hill Cubans:
Finding lost Friends
June 25 - Nearly every Cuban exile has a harrowing story about how they
fled Castro's Cuba.
Each journey is full of tremendous risk, pain and sacrifice -- and
that's just to leave the island.
Then, there are the challenges of starting a new life in a foreign land.
To help ease this transition, a new website has been launched to help
Cubans find their friends and relatives abroad.
It's called Cuban Search.
According to its founder, George Utset (of the blog, The Real Cuba), the
response has been overwhelming -- parents looking for their children who
had left Cuba and they couldn't find, children looking for their
parents, brothers, cousins, friends and schoolmates.
You can either search for a particular name, or register and enter the
person that you are looking for.
You can search alphabetically, by city, or even by school.
Cuban Search has also teamed up with Cuba Archive Project to provide a
database of Cubans who have disappeared at sea trying to escape Castro's
Cuba.
It is estimated that as many as 70,000 Cubans have perished at sea in
search for freedom.
Thus far, 900 have been identified.
Capitol Hill Cubans
Socio-Economic Conditions in Pre-Castro
Cuba
Dec. 17 - Cuba Facts is an ongoing series of succinct
fact sheets on various topics, including, but not limited to, political
structure, health, economy, education, nutrition, labor, business,
foreign investment, and demographics, published and updated on a regular
basis by the Cuba Transition Project staff at the University of Miami.
Click here to learn the truth about Cuba's Health, Education,
Personal Consumption and much more in pre-Castro Cuba.
More photos showing how the Castro brothers
have destroyed one of the world's most beautiful cities
