There doesn’t seem to be much being said or done in my home country about the 10,000 or so Cubans stranded in Costa Rica and Panama who are about to start heading for the United States. With the notion spreading that the US-Cuba détente might mean the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act, those eager to put a dry foot on US soil started, a little ( Read more... )

The two links below will give you contrasting views of the nature of WikiLeaks. The first sees it upholding a free press and honesty in government, the other, as a tool of corporate elites and intelligence agencies.

While making up my mind I’ve been following some of the leaked cables that relate to Cuba (appearing on the blog, “Along the Malecon,” ( Read more... )

This is how the news gets reported to us:

An article on tensions between Arabs and Jews in Israel tells us: “Last week, Amir Makhoul, a leading community activist, pleaded guilty to handing sensitive information to Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that fought an intense monthlong war against Israel in 2006. He faces up to 10 years in prison.”

( Read more... )

US working to accept exiled Cuban prisoners

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101004/ap_on_re_la_a_ca/cb_cuba_us_political_prisoners

It’s the right thing to do, of course. Washington set these people up for a fall and should accept responsibility for them. The attempt to portray them as “prisoners of conscience,” though, is nonsense.

Seventy-five people ( Read more... )

With all the talk about Cuban "dissidents" I thought I might share this item.  It's from the website of a radio station in Las Tunas province, Cuba.  Although slightly dated, I think it represents the thinking of the majority of the island's people.
(The opening sentence refers to a part in the novel in which Don Quixote and his squire are wandering ( Read more... )

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36768841/ns/world_news-americas/

If I were an editor at AP, I’d have some questions for the reporter who filed the above story. Regarding that “small group of carefully choreographed government supporters,” who did the ( Read more... )

Alan P. Gross, 60, is in custody in Cuba, “under investigation” but not charged with anything now.

He was detained December 4th at Havana’s Jose Marti Airport, although the news didn’t come out for three weeks; it was another 2 weeks before he was identified.

Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, said at the time that Gross had ( Read more... )

My last date with Elena might have been just that - my last. It’s not my fault; she brought up the subject - Cuba of course. She had to start talking about that blog, Generation Y, which is all the rave now among this country’s Cuba-bashers. It’s all about the suffering of the people and the brutality of the government ( Read more... )