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Another great "reform": Cubans will be allowed to build their own homes Jan. 5 - Cubans will be permitted to build their own homes and do so using private funds, Raul Castro announced on Sunday, in the latest reforms to back off the hard line communism of the past five decades. But Cubans cannot build whatever house they want, it has to be one that is approved by their slave masters. Raul Castro said that Cubans will be given clear guidelines about the dimensions of a proposed new dwelling, Castro explained on a local television program. They will be told "OK, here you can build. I've given you this amount of space, that amount of room for a street, and that amount for a sidewalk. Now build your little home with whatever you can," he said. More
The Real Cuba in 2008 929,400 Visits from 143 different countries; 2,375,300 Pages; 44 million hits. Thank you for your continued support!
A video of Havana in the 1930s, long before the Castro gang came in and destroyed it A tour of the city of Havana, in the 1930s filmed by Andre de la Varre. Compare it with the Havana of today, 50 years after the Castro brothers and their gang of human termites came in ad destroyed everything.
Telemadrid's documentary about the 50 years of the Cuban "robolution" Telemadrid, the first autonomous television station of Madrid, Spain, showed this documentary last week on the 50th. anniversary of the beginning of the destruction of Cuba by the Castro brothers. The station sent two journalists to Cuba posing as tourists and they were able to film the reality of life in Cuba under the Castro regime.
The fire at La Puntilla was the third to affect a CIMEX store in 2008 (UPDATED) Jan. 1 - The fire at La Puntilla shopping mall was the third fire to affect a store owned by CIMEX during 2008. In September, a fire destroyed El Encanto in Camagüey and in early December a similar fire damaged Harris Brothers in Havana. Corporación CIMEX (Comercio Interior Mercado Exterior) is Cuba's largest corporation. As everything else in the island, it is owned by the Castro regime. It controls over 1,500 restaurants, stores and gas stations with sales of more than one billion dollars per year. CIMEX's stores operate with Convertible Pesos (CUC). One CUC is equivalent to 24 Cuban pesos. Tuesday's fire occurred before the regime was able to finalize its investigation of the Harris Brothers' fire A Harris Brothers' employee told El Nuevo Herald that several employees of the store were arrested after the fire and taken to the 100 y Aldabó station, which is the headquarter for the Departamento Técnico de Investigaciones. The Harris Brothers store was closed for several days and El Encanto was just reopened on Monday after CIMEX spent more than 2 million CUC rebuilding it. El Nuevo Herald has more (In Spanish) Dec. 31 - A dozen fire companies subdued a blaze that broke out Tuesday afternoon at a busy shopping mall in the Cuban capital, authorities told Efe. Smoke began coming out of La Puntilla, a mall in the residential neighborhood of Miramar, at around 4 p.m., witnesses said. Cuba's fire chief, Bienvenido Rafoso, told reporters that no one was injured in the blaze, whose cause has yet to be determined. "It was a fire of great intensity," he said, explaining that the mall contained plenty of flammable material to stoke the flames. The 162 firefighters dispatched to the scene took about 75 minutes to bring the fire under control. Witnesses said that explosions could be heard inside the mall after the blaze began. More El Nuevo Herald has photos of the fire
Che Guevara; a Study in Stupidity, Sadism and Failure Dec. 30 - Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. The Cuban freedom-fighters who faced Che at the Bay of Pigs and later in the Congo still laugh. The Bay of Pigs invasion plan included a ruse where a little boat packing a huge fireworks show and tape recording of battle sounds landed in extreme western Cuba as a diversion. Sure enough, the wily Che immediately recognized this as an Anzio-type “second front!” He snapped on his holster, cocked his beret at just the right angle, scowled for the camera and rushed over with a few thousand troops. He spent the whole battle there (300 miles from the invasion site). It was the only thing in the invasion that went according to plan. Later, many of these Cuban-American freedom-fighters itched to get back into the fight (but with ammo and air cover this time). The CIA obliged and sent them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in ‘65 where Castro (with tongue tucked deeply in his cheek) had sent Che to foment a “war of liberation.’ There, the Cuban-Americans fighters linked up with the legendary mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare and his “Wild Geese.” Here’s Mike Hoare’s opinion, after watching them in battle: “These Cuban-CIA men were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding. Their leader [Rip Robertson] was the most extraordinary and dedicated soldier I’ve ever met.” Canada Free Press
Cuba's Hidden Heroes Dec. 30 - Jordan Allott, filmmaker and founder of In Altum Productions, recently returned from Cuba, where he spent three weeks filming a documentary about Cuba's political prisoners. He wrote the following article for The American Spectator
Two top baseball players defect Dec. 29 - Cuban pitcher Yadel Marti and outfielder Yasser Gomez have departed their Communist island homeland in a bid to launch Major League Baseball careers, ESPN reported on Monday on its website. Citing unnamed sources, the US sports telecaster reported that relatives and friends of the players in Cuba confirmed the duo had departed and were in an unknown location but attempting to reach the Dominican Republic. As we reported earlier this month, Marti and Gomez were banned from Cuban baseball after being caught with others trying to board a boat to escape Cuba. More
Exiles' Stories Dec. 29 - The BBC has the story of five Cuban exiles who arrived in the US at different times after Castro came to power. One arrived in early 1960 and the last one just a few months ago. Read their stories here
Hollywood celebrates Che Guevara, but it makes no film about the Cuban resistance movement Dec. 29 - The Wall Street Journal: Hollywood hotshot Benicio Del Toro is not a stand-up comic, but he seemed to be playing one earlier this month when he said he found the role of Cuban Revolution hero Ernesto Guevara, in the new film "Che," like Jesus Christ. "Only Jesus would turn the other cheek. Che wouldn't," Mr. Del Toro explained. Right. And Bernie Madoff is Mother Teresa, only she wasn't into fraud.
Question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Cuban children: "A foreigner" Dec. 27 - I remember when that used to be a joke among Cubans, who grew accustomed to seeing that foreigners were treated as kings while regular Cubans were second class citizens in their own country. But the joke has turned out to be a sad reality. Here is an article today about Cubans who want to become Spanish citizens: Hundreds of Cubans are applying for Spanish citizenship as part of Madrid's new "law of grandchildren", which comes into force next week, EFE reported on Saturday. The new law makes provision for grandchildren of Spaniards born in Spain or exiled during the regime of Spanish dictator late General Franco. According to estimates of the Spanish consulate in Havana, in the two or three years that the law will be in force, some 100,000 Cubans a year could obtain Spanish nationality. Read more
Yoani Sánchez: Christmas in Cuba 2008, Marking Another Year of a People in Waiting Today could be the 3rd of June or the 9th of September, because there are hardly any signs that it is Christmas. Few, very few, offer holiday greetings in the street. Compared to December 25th of last year, this is a lifeless day with fewer expectations for the future. More than twelve months have passed since we predicted-in the privacy of family and friends-anticipated reforms that have turned out to be a mobile phone or a room in a hotel that we can't afford. Generation Y
After first banning Christmas, Castro now wants to make money off it Dec. 24 - A country that shunned Christmas for decades is now looking to cash in on the holiday season, promoting an online shopping site designed to let Cubans overseas buy products, including flowers and flat-screen TVs, for delivery to relatives in the island nation. Grupo Excelencias, based in Spain, teamed with Cuba's communist government to create MallHabana.com, which offers prices in U.S. dollars and says it can deliver products within 24 hours to homes in Havana and get purchases to even the country's most remote addresses within three weeks. It also appears to be a direct challenge to U.S. legal limits on shipping funds to Cuba or spending money there. Dozens of the products listed are made in Cuba -- such as Havana Club rum and guayabera shirts. Others are imports already stocked by upscale government-run stores, such as 29-inch Panasonic TVs or crunchy peanut butter from Canada. The site was created in August 2006, but Cuba's government has been promoting it heavily during the Christmas season. More
Chavez is helping Iran smuggle missile parts to Syria Dec. 21 - Iran is using its warm relations with Venezuela to dodge UN sanctions and use Venezuelan aircraft to ship missile parts to Syria, an Italian newspaper reported Sunday. Citing US and other Western intelligence agencies, La Stampa said Iran is using aircraft from Venezuelan airline Conviasa to transport computers and engine components to Syria for use in missiles. The material comes from Iranian industrial group Shahid Bagheri, listed inthe annex of UN Security Council Resolution 1737, adopted in December 2006, for involvement in Iran’s ballistic missile program. The resolution instructed all nations to “prevent the supply, sale or transfer” of all material or technology that could be used for Iran’s nuclear enrichment programm and the development of weapons to carry nuclear warheads. Read more
Instead of "Call me Ted," Ted Turner should title his new book "Call me stupid" During an interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News to promote his new book, "Call me Ted," Ted Turner said that Fidel Castro has never killed anyone. Read what Humberto Fontova has to say about that Ted Turner's Lies About Cuba
Cuban women in Castro's Gulag: The 'Plantadas' Dec. 20 - Known as 'plantadas,' thousands of idealistic Cuban women shared cells and horror stories as political prisoners under Fidel Castro's regime. She spent 16 years, nine months and four days in Fidel Castro's prisons, but it's what happened on Dec. 7, 1969, that still torments Georgina Cid. That cold dawn, prisoner Cid was ushered into a room in a forced-labor farm outside Havana with the government-imposed Orwellian name of America Libre, Free America. Two interrogators delivered an impossible ultimatum as a simple choice: Snitch on your group's anti-Castro activities -- on lacausa, the cause -- or we'll kill your older brother, who had been running CIA-backed raids on the island from Miami. Cid had already lost her younger brother, Eladio Jr., to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista during a shootout at the Haitian Embassy, where he had been hiding in 1956. And now, facing these two men -- just months after her father, Eladio Sr., had died of a heart attack in state custody under questioning -- she was supposed to help the regime? 'I told them, `Look, I am willing to give my life for my brother's because he is better than I am and more useful than I am,' '' said Cid, catching her breath while wiping tears from her face at her Miami home recently. "'But I can't do that. This is a struggle, and I can't risk anyone's security to save even those dearest to me.' '' Francisco ''Paco'' Cid -- bruised, emaciated, his once sturdy muscles hanging from bone as he hugged his imprisoned sister for the last time -- was executed by a firing squad, leaving his widow, Ofelia Rodríguez, in prison and a young son. In Defiance: Cuba's Women Prisoners
Chavez is feeling the heat from plummeting oil prices
Dec. 19 - The price of oil dropped to $33 a barrel Friday morning, down another $3 today and down $114 from their high of $147 in July of this year. This is terrible news for Hugo Chavez and for parasites like the Castro brothers, Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales and others whose economies have been kept afloat by billions of dollars that Chavez has stolen from the Venezuelan treasury to give to his friends in the region. Chavez is desperately trying to change the Venezuelan Constitution to allow him to become president for life. He knows that the country's economy will collapse next year and that is why he wants to have a new referendum as soon as possible, probably in February. Venezuela's budget for 2009 was approved early this month based on oil prices at $60 a barrel, even though the price of Venezuelan oil was being quoted then at $31. Venezuelan oil price is always below the New York price and is now under $30 a barrel. The budget also forecasts a 15% inflation for 2009, but that is also another "impossible dream." The Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce predicts that inflation in 2009 will exceed 45%. Analysts are also predicting a devaluation of the Venezuelan currency by as much as 37%. Such devaluation will probably be announced in March, a few weeks after the referendum. When the price of oil was at $147 a barrel, Chavez justified the 100,000 barrels of oil a day that he provides the Castro brothers saying that the 30,000 Cuban teachers, trainers and security personnel that had been sent to Venezuela were worth more than the oil that Cuba was receiving. The 100,000 barrels of oil at $147 had a value of $14,470,000 per day, or $5 billion + per year, but at today's price it is only worth $3,000,000 or $1 billion per year. The $64,000 question is: Will Castro Inc. devaluate also the price of the slaves operating in Venezuela, or will Chavez have to pay for the difference? On these deals between crooks you never know.
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.
Warning: Chewing coca leaves makes you even more stupid than you normally are Dec. 17 - Latin American nations should give an ultimatum to the United States to lift its embargo of Cuba, and expel the American ambassadors if they do not, Bolivian clown-president Evo Morales said Wednesday. “I want to make a proposal that many are not going to like: set a time limit for the new U.S. government to lift the economic blockade” against Cuba, Evo said, using the term that Castro and his allies use to refer to the American embargo. “If the new government doesn’t lift the economic blockade, we are going to lift our ambassadors,” said Evo. As expected, everyone ignored Evo's request who is seen as a clown by most of these leaders, including the ones who are supposed to be his strongest supporters. Total merchandise trade between the US and Latin America exceeds $400 billion a year. Evo didn't specify if Bolivia and Cuba were ready to substitute the US as Latin America's main trading partner.
Here is what to expect if the US allows Castro to buy on credit Dec. 17 - Three hurricanes and the global financial crisis have left Cuba strapped for cash, forcing the government to juggle debt payments and seek new financing, diplomatic and business sources say. France is the latest government to receive notice from Cuba that it needs to reschedule upcoming debt payments, European diplomats said. Various foreign businessmen, who asked that their names not be used, said payments had slowed from Cuban state-run banks, with cash transfers that usually took 48 hours now sometimes put off for weeks. "It appears they do not have the cash on hand so they delay and then pay you and delay payment to someone else," one Western businessman said. More
"Obama Effect" highlights racism in Cuba
Dec. 16 - As Cuba prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, U.S. President–elect Barack Obama’s victory is raising disturbing questions about the institutional racism in the so-called egalitarian society, where racism is said to have disappeared along with capitalism. In Cuba, signs in windows have begun to appear that read, “Si se puede, coño” or “Yes we can, damn it.” “Cuba, I am inclined to believe, is nervous about the impact that a black president in the White House could have upon its own black population,” writes Carlos Moore, a black Cuban of Jamaican ancestry and author of “Pichón: Race and Revolution in Castro's Cuba,” in the Miami Herald. It was the official policy of the government to deny the existence of racism, arguing that Communist “egalitarianism” made discrimination based on race “an impossibility,” simply because it was incompatible with a socialist state. This was a polite fiction. As Alejandro De La Fuente wrote in his authoritative book, “A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba,” the color of one’s skin determines the life one leads in Communist Cuba. “(A) strong correlation between race, the regional distribution of the population, and the quality of the housing stock persisted through the 1980s,” De La Fuente wrote. “A traditional geography of race and poverty had not been dismantled, largely because of the government’s failure to provide adequate housing to the entire population. No neighborhood was racially exclusive—this was true, for the most part, in pre-Revolutionary Cuba also—but in the most dilapidated areas of the big cities, the proportion of blacks and mulattos was greater than that of whites.” Read more
More about the beating of dissidents by Cuban police Dec. 10 - On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Wednesday – a day when Cuban dissidents traditionally gather for protest marches – Belinda Salas, a leading Cuban activist, was beaten by Cuban police, she said via telephone in Havana. Salas, the director for the Latin American Foundation of Rural Women (FLAMUR), says she, her husband, and another couple were leaving the US Interests Section in Havana, where the group regularly sends e-mails and news to Cuban activist groups based in the US and Europe, when two police cars stopped next to them. Eight officers began to beat them on the street, just after 1 p.m. Tuesday, and detained her husband and the two other activists. Salas says she does not know where they are being held, but she says she knows the motive. "They want to sell the image that they respect human rights, so they beat us to avoid our peaceful protests planned for Wednesday." Christian Science Monitor
The Castro brothers owe US$29.7 billion to the Paris Club Dec. 1 - The Paris Club of creditor nations disclosed last week for the first time how much it is owed and by whom. Indonesia is the biggest debtor, at $36.2 billion, followed by Cuba at $29.7 billion. After Cuba, Argentina and Peru are the other two Latin American countries that owe more money to the Paris Club, but the figures can be considered small compared to what is owed by the Castro brothers. Argentina owes $6.4 billion and Peru $3.6 billion. Other Latin American countries on the debtor list include Brazil $2.8 billion Mexico $1.4 billion and Ecuador $1.3 billion. The embargo keeps saving American taxpayers billions of dollars.
Play soccer with Fidel Grab the SOB and throw him as hard as you can. Move the mouse and you'll see him fall as if he was on his way to Hell.
PBS: The Hugo Chavez Show Nov. 25 - The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired a new Frontline program on Tuesday night titled "The Hugo Chavez Show." It is the whole story of how Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela and what he has done in the 10 years since he became president. It is a very detailed documentary that covers everything, from the time that Chavez attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela in 1992, until the regional elections of last Sunday. It is available in both, English and Spanish The Hugo Chavez Show
Two new videos filmed in Cuba without government permission Nov. 24 - Baracutey Cubano has two new videos filmed inside Cuba without government permission, that were recently aired on America TeVe, Channel 41 in Miami.
Video of Castro's police beating a Cuban man near the University of Havana
The Christian Science Monitor: Cuban slaves in Curacao Nov. 18 - Olivia Ocampo well remembers the night the two Cuban workers came to her house in January 2005. Exhausted and afraid, they had escaped from the premises of the nearby Curaçao Drydock Company, where they said they and some 100 other Cubans had been forced to work 112 hours a week fixing ships for three cents an hour. Ms. Ocampo approached the police and government authorities in Willemstad, the capital of the Netherlands Antilles, a Dutch dependency in the southern Caribbean, but "they just wanted to push all the trash under the carpet and say that everything is fine," she said. But last month, a federal judge in Miami ordered the shipyard to pay the workers and one of their colleagues a total of $80 million in damages, after finding it had conspired with the government of Cuba to force them into what was, in effect, slave labor. "These types of violations are not out of the ordinary for the Cuban government," says Tomas Bilbao of the Cuba Study Group in Washington, which helped the workers bring their suit. "What's surprising is that it happened in a dependency of the Netherlands, a country known for its interest in human rights." The three men testified that they had been sent to Curaçao to work off Cuba's multimillion-dollar debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company, a private company whose largest shareholder is the government of the Netherlands Antilles. Their passports were seized at the airport and they were rarely allowed to leave the shipyard complex, and only in groups with a minder. They typically worked 15 days in a row and when off-duty had to watch Fidel Castro's videotaped speeches. More
Where is the blockade? But the Castro government and its foreign puppets will continue to talk about the US "blockade." All the $536 million was paid cash in advance, which is the only smart way to conduct business with the Castro brothers.
Video of the devastation caused by Hurricane Paloma in Santa Cruz del Sur
On October 11 we updated our Find my friend page Please check to see if someone is looking for you or if you can help any of those who are looking for family and friends
The Telecinco video about child
prostitution in Cuba Our readers react to the letter from the Canadian "humanist" Feedback
Click here to see a slide presentation with over a hundred photos taken in Cuba after the hurricanes
When you click on the image it tells you where it was
taken and during which hurricane
While Cuban mothers cannot find medicines to give
their sick children after hurricanes Gustav and Ike....
...... and the dictatorship keeps telling the Cuban people that it
cannot supply the medicines or food that they need because of the
"American blockade," the Cuban regime keeps offering help wherever they
can get free publicity.
Here is a report in today's Kingston Chronicle, a Jamaican Newspaper:
"The Embassy of the Republic of Cuba has the honour to inform the
decision of the Government of Cuba to supply 2.5 tons of medicines to
the Government of Jamaica for the victims of the Tropical Storm Gustav.
The humanitarian assistance will be arriving to NMIA in a TU-204 plane,
at 08:30 hrs next Wednesday September 24, 2008. The flight shall
continue to Haiti at 10:30 hrs of the same day, in order to also carry
humanitarian aid to that sister nation."
Now, expect to see a barrage of stupid comments and
press articles about the "generosity" of the Cuban regime.
Kingston Chronicle
Let's take a break
Tyrants really hate to see people making fun at them.
Click here
Sept 18 -
Click here
to see photos of Banes after the
Hurricane, sent to one of our readers by his relatives in Cuba
Video of the destruction caused by Ike in Holguin and Gibara
More photos showing how the Castro brothers have destroyed one of the world's most beautiful cities
A look at Havana before the Castro brothers destroyed it Our good friend, "Myself," has put together two videos and dozens of photos of Havana B.C. Before Castro). The second video is about "Calle 23" (23rd. Street) also known as "Havana's Broadway." Click here to see the videos and here to see the photos
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