Columbia University appoints a pro Castro professor as dean of the School of International Affairs

Cuban-Americans and other close watchers of events in Cuba are voicing strong opposition to the appointment of John Coatsworth as dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.

Coatsworth's promotion was announced last week by Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger.

Coatsworth made national headlines in September 2007 when he defended inviting the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Columbia by saying he would also have welcomed Adolf Hitler to campus.

That has also prompted opposition to Coatsworth from Jewish students and faculty members. But to some observers of Cuba, Coatsworth's view of Fidel Castro is as egregious as his statement about Hitler.

At the heart of the debate is a book issued in 2004 by Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, when Mr. Coatsworth was its director. In a preface to the book, which is titled "The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century," Coatsworth claimed that Cuba's economy was only one of two in Latin America that grew in the 1980s, attributing that to "careful management of its economic relations with the Soviet Bloc led by the Soviet Union."

"The benefits of this strategy were impressive," Mr. Coatsworth wrote, citing, "rising standards of living in a society characterized by a high degree of equality and universal access to employment, basic nutrition, housing, education and medical care."

The former American ambassador to Venezuela who served as assistant secretary of state for the Western hemisphere under President Bush, Otto Reich, ridiculed Coatsworth's assessment. "The Cuba that this man describes is a Cuba that exists in the minds of academics only. It has nothing to do with the Cuba of centralized planning, of complete political repression, of hundreds of thousands of people dying in the straits of Florida trying to flee over the last 40 years," Reich said.

WSJ: Chavez ties to the FARC are broader and deeper than previously known

May 9 - The Wall Street Journal has a front page article today about Hugo Chavez's involvement with the FARC terrorists.

"A cache of controversial computer files closely tying Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez to communist rebels seeking to topple Colombia's government appear to be authentic, U.S. intelligence officials say.

The trove -- found on a dead guerrilla leader's laptops during a military raid in March -- is likely to ratchet up pressure for the U.S. to impose sanctions on one of its most important oil suppliers.

The files that have been made public so far have largely confirmed Mr. Chávez's well-known sympathy for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

But a review by The Wall Street Journal of more than 100 new files from the computers suggests that Venezuela has broader and deeper ties to the FARC than previously known.

These documents indicate Venezuela appears to be making concrete offers to help arm the rebels, possibly with rocket-propelled grenades and ground-to-air missiles.

The files suggest that Venezuela offered the FARC the use of one of its ports to receive arms shipments, and that Venezuela raised the prospect of drawing up a joint security plan with the FARC and sought basic training in guerrilla-warfare techniques.

Chavez threatens to intervene in Bolivia

May 8 - Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez says he will not tolerate a movement for secession in Bolivia's eastern lowland states.

Chavez says his government will intervene if Bolivian states now seeking greater autonomy from Bolivia's central government push for total independence.

Bolivian Senate asks for a referendum on Evo's rule

May 8 - The people of Bolivia are to hold a vote of confidence in the rule of their leftist President, Evo Morales, as he struggles to enact radical reform.

Morales, who has more than two years to run as leader, agreed to hold the referendum after the opposition-run upper house of parliament backed it.

The Senate has repeatedly challenged his government.

Citizens will vote within 90 days on whether he, his vice-president and nine governors should stay in office.

Cuban regime didn't allow blogger to travel to Spain to receive an award

May 7 - Cuban authorities have refused to give a travel visa to a Cuban blogger who was to have flown to Spain to receive a top journalism award.

"I have canceled tonight's flight" to Madrid, writer Yoani Sanchez, 32, told AFP, after learning that she would not be given authorization to make the trip. "It's another way to remind us that we are like little children who need to get our parents' permission to leave the house," she said.

The blogger now will not be able to personally receive the prestigious Ortega y Gasset prize given out each year by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, which she was to have been given Wednesday. More

Venezuelan woman went to Cuba for a nose surgery and returned with a disfigured face

May 6 - Ifley Patty, a 40 year old Venezuelan woman who went to Cuba for a nose reconstruction, told Globovision that she returned with a disfigured face, a missing right cheekbone and a loss of her sense of taste.

Patty traveled to Cuba as part of the health agreement signed between the two countries, which allows Venezuelans to go to the island to receive medical treatment.

The woman told Globovision that she contracted a bacteria during the operation at a Cuban hospital.

Patty decided to make her case public because Venezuelan authorities have refused to help her.

A doctor from the state of Aragua who is trying to help her, told Globovision that "whoever did this cannot be considered a surgeon."

The doctor said that the Venezuelan authorities have "closed all the doors" to their attempts to get help for her. "They do not want t accept these type of complaints," he said.

Patty, who used to be a model, told Globovision that she now has problems breathing and talking.

"I just want to get back to having a normal life," the woman told Globovision.

Click here to see Ifley Patty's interview (In Spanish)

Reports indicate that fugitive financier Robert Vesco may have died in Cuba

Robert L. Vesco, the fugitive financier who spent most of his life eluding American justice, may even have managed to die on the sly.

Vesco, who was sentenced to a long prison term in Cuba in 1996 and was wanted in America for securities fraud and drug trafficking to political bribery, died Nov. 23 from lung cancer, say people close to him.

Vesco, in nearly four decades on the run, was wanted for bilking some $200 million from investors in the 1970s, making an illegal contribution to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign, and trying to induce the Carter administration to let Libya buy U.S. planes.

Vesco, 72, last made the news a decade ago when he was sentenced to prison in Cuba for a financial scam.

He emerged in recent years and lived a quiet life in Havana until he contracted lung cancer. After about a week in a hospital, friends say, he died and was buried in an unmarked grave. Records at Colon Cemetery in Havana indicate that a Robert Vesco was buried there Nov. 24, and photographs and videos viewed by The New York Times show a man resembling him in a casket with his longtime Cuban companion looking over him.

Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez on Time's list of "The World's Most Influential People"

Yoany Sánchez, the blogger behind Generación Y, appears on Time magazine's latest list of  "The World's Most Influential People."

Her name appears under the category of "Heroes and Pioneers."

"Trained as a philologist in Havana but denied a career in academia—her dissertation, entitled Dictatorships in Latin American Literature, was perceived as a veiled criticism of the Castro regime—Sánchez has made a living working in Havana's tourist industry.

More important, under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech. The pieces she has been clandestinely sending out from Internet cafés—while posing as a tourist—are often funny, elegantly written and poignant. Her subjects have included the shortage of lemons, the turgid proceedings of the Cuban parliament and the slowness of meaningful reforms by Raúl Castro. These have earned her international acclaim.

On April 29, we updated our Feedback page

Cuba's Communist Party: Being crazy or senile is not a reason to quit

April 25 - In an effort to limit the losses within its ranks, Cuba's Communist Party has called on members near retirement not to shirk party-related tasks and cautioned that "disease is not a reason for deactivation.''

Party militants may not quit even if they have senile dementia, according to an internal document issued in January by the Organization Department of the party's ruling Central Committee.

That must be the reason why Fidel Castro, who is sick, senile and demented, has refused to quit and continues to rule Cuba's Communist Party.

The document recognizes that in recent years there has been "an incipient tendency to an increase in applications for deactivation from workers in different sectors, close to retirement.''

The applications "are justified by health or family problems, and arguments are also raised about the lack of physical and mental conditions to deal with the complex tasks tackled ... (by party cells) which [the applicants] do not wish to join," says the document obtained by El Nuevo Herald. The document was included in the bulletin ''Internal information for the nuclei,'' which is distributed to militants for the purpose of discussion.  More

The senile First Secretary of Cuba's Communist Party  Video

Two videos of Monday's violent attack against the Ladies in White (UPDATED)

Brutal attack by Castro's police against The Ladies in White

Members of the Ladies in White being forcefully dragged by Raul Castro's police, for peacefully protesting the detention of their loved ones
Raul Castro's Gestapo trying to stop the Ladies' protest	Members of a mob paid, protected and controlled by the Cuban regime dragging the Ladies from the park where they were protesting

April 21 -  A group of Cuban women peacefully demonstrating for the release of their jailed husbands were roughed up by a mob and arrested on Monday near the offices of Cuban dictator Raul Castro.

The 10 women, members of an organization known as the "Women in White," gathered at a park Monday morning at the edge of Cuba's Revolution Square, where the government and Communist Party headquarters are located.

They wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the faces and names of their loved ones, but carried no signs.

"We are here to demand the release of our husbands and won't leave until they are free or they arrest us. We have waited long enough, we want to talk to the new president," group leader Laura Pollan said.

Moments later, a bus pulled up and about 20 female corrections officers tried to arrest the women, who sat on the sidewalk, clasped arms and refused to move. "They are dying, they are dying," one women yelled with tears in her eyes as the corrections officer tried to move her toward the bus.

Meet Chavez's new Minister of Labor

April 20 - On Tuesday of last week, Hugo Chávez dismissed Labor Minister José Ramón Rivero and replaced him with a former Communist Party member and vice-president of the National Assembly Roberto Manuel Hernández.

Two days later, during a National Assembly meeting to discuss a new oil tax, Hernández seemed pretty bored, while speaker after speaker took the opportunity to condemn the "yankee imperialists" for everything that is wrong in Venezuela. And there is plenty of things that are wrong.

Hernández thought that the best way to stay awake during the boring debate was to begin playing with his dentures! I swear that I'm not kidding.

What Hernández didn't know was that someone was taking a video of him playing with his dentures.

Maybe Hernández got his dentures in Russia before the end of the Soviet Union and has the same problems that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro had with his, which on many occasions almost came out of his mouth while he was giving one of his lengthy speeches.

Now that he is Labor Minister and can afford anything, don't be surprised to see Hernández getting a new set of dentures during his next trip to "enemy territory."

Venezuelan hospitals are looking more and more like Cuban hospitals

With oil selling at record prices, Venezuela's public hospitals should have any and all equipment required to provide the best treatment possible to all Venezuelans in need of its services.

There are no excuses. Chavez cannot blame an American embargo, or a lack of hard currency, as the reason why Venezuela's hospitals cannot have the latest technology and the most modern equipment to treat Venezuelan citizens.

But most Venezuelan hospitals are now in much worse condition than they were when Chavez came to power.

Here are some photos taken at Periferico de Coche, a hospital in Caracas (Courtesy of El Pais newspaper).

These patients are being treated at the orthopedic ward and need to have access to traction beds, which use weights to keep the leg at the correct position according to the type of injury.

 But at the Periferico de Coche they are using disposable jugs full with water because there are no weights available.

Welcome to the Socialism of the XXI Century!

Traction weights used at normal hospitals	But at the hospitals in Caracas they use jugs full of water, because they have no weights. Thanks Hugo!

The Castro clan

The April Issue of Cuba Facts, published by the Institute For Cuban & Cuban American Studies (ICCAS) of the University of Miami, has to do with members of the families of Fidel and Raul Castro who are occupying important positions in the Cuban regime.

There is no doubt that now more than ever, Cuba has become the personal possession of the Castro clan.

According to the report, "During the past few years family members of both Fidel and Raul Castro have come to occupy important positions in Cuba's government. This Castro clan represents in addition to the military, the security apparatus and the Communist Party, a significant force in Cuba's political and economic structures."

Click on the image to see their names and the position they occupy.

The Castro Clan

Castromart: The advantage of having no competition

For 50 years, the Castro brothers have been using Cuba as if it was their own private farm and the 11 million Cubans as their peons.

They send Cuban doctors, engineers, musicians and other professionals to work in countries all over the world, the Castro brothers are paid for these services in hard currency, they in turn pay their slaves a small portion of those wages and pocket the difference.

IIf you refuse to go on one of these "international missions," you'll lose your job and will never be able to find another one because the Castro brothers are the only employers in the island.

The Castro brothers also have a complete monopoly of all the retail stores where their 11 million peons can buy what they need. By having no competition, Castromart is able to charge some of the most outrageous prices in the whole world.

I remember when these hypocrites used to criticize the owners of Cuba's sugar mills for having a nearby store for their employees to buy food and clothing. These "revolutionaries" claimed back then that this was exploitation, because the prices were allegedly higher than it was in the cities.

But now they are the ones charging 11 million Cubans outrageous prices and instead of fascist-exploitation they call it "communism."

On top of that, the Castro brothers pay their slaves miserable salaries in Cuban pesos, but they charge them in US dollars.

Here are some examples of some prices at Castromart compared to stores in countries where there is competition:

Samsung washer W80U3 US$209.95 at a store named Photura in Panama	At Castromart the same washer costs US$821.79!

Cuba is free to buy anything it wants in Panama. As a matter of fact, the Castro regime owns several corporations in Panama that have been exporting equipment to Cuba for years.

Here is another example:

 

Philips 29" inch TV at Grupo DMG in Panama US$274.99	The same TV at Castromart US$886.72

Taking into consideration that the average salary in Cuba is about US$15 per month, you will need to save the entire salary of 55 months to buy a washer and 59 months for a TV at Castromart.