Martí bottler gets canned
By Varela
The American monster created to topple the Castro government by supplying a propaganda alternative to the Cuban people – Radio and TV Martí – was spawned during the Cold War.
The funny thing is that, in Miami, RTV-Martí is called “the Martí Bottling Company.” (We Cubans look for humor even in funeral homes. We say: “Look how much rouge they ladled on the stiff.”)
“The bottle” is a Cuban euphemism for “sinecure,” meaning a cushy job that requires little or no work. And “the bottle” is a way to make a living that we inherited from the republican Cuba, a practice much joked about and just as much criticized.
Florida voters: Brain dead?
By Gimleteye
From the Eye on Miami blog
No one is surprised that the [Florida] Marlins, a professional sports team, conned public officials into standing behind a $700 million stadium, lying about the team's finances. If you are a paid consultant to the Marlins and read this blog and are surprised, raise your hand. The voters of Miami Dade are that stupid.
Do voters care that Pepe Diaz or Dorrin Rolle allowed rock mining in West Dade to threaten public health and drinking water? Of course not. Worried about cancer rates or cancer clusters? Hell no: that's someone else's problem. Care that the police department looted the environmental fund, which collects millions in fines from polluters and law-breakers? No one cares about the environment. Mayor Alvarez won't even answer press questions on police looting...
Click to continue reading...Agricultural production needs further encouragement
By Mercedes Varona
In 2007, the Cuban authorities expressed their decision to introduce changes in the economic model, as a result of the deterioration of some indicators that make up the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which were particularly critical with regard to food production, described as a national security problem.
Since then, the trend has worsened, as shown by the results of agricultural production in the first half of 2010, during which non-sugar-cane agriculture declined 9.7 percent and livestock 4.8 percent compared with the same period in 2009.
If we consider only those items that directly affect foodstuffs, the variation between 2010 and 2009 is 10.6 percent.
Marazul welcomes reports of a new travel policy to Cuba
As the largest U.S. Travel Service provider to
Cuba, Marazul welcomes the reports that
President Obama intends to broaden the existing
categories of travel and reinstate previous
categories of travel to Cuba.
Bring out the clowns
By Max J. Castro
Last Saturday, Glenn Beck, the right-wing radio demagogue and Fox News fixture, held an event at the Lincoln Memorial. The gathering, at which Sarah Palin and other “Tea Party” favorites spoke, was billed as an effort to “restore honor” to the country and to “reclaim the civil rights movement.”
It just so happened that the event took place at the same place and on the same date that, forty-seven years ago, Martin Luther King gave his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech. Beck has claimed that place and date were all pure coincidence, perhaps aided by “divine providence.”
Beck’s pretension to claim any connection to the civil rights movement, much less to reclaim it, is a travesty. It is offensive, ridiculous, farcical. In 1963, Martin Luther King was in the midst of leading a historic movement to ensure dignity to millions of Americans too long segregated, subjugated, and oppressed. In the process...
Click to continue reading...We won in Iraq? Where’s the cheering squad?
By Saul Landau
After 7 and ½ years President Obama seems to be updating his Republican predecessor’s May 1, 2003, pronouncement: “Mission Accomplished – Iraq Still Destroyed.”
Bush still gets support from the gushing (synonym for surging) David Brooks. “Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable”. (NY Times August 23, 2010).
Hemorrhage of resources
“Today, our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. … It must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as President.”
-- Barack Obama in presidential address
“The President needs to realize that the 50,000 residual forces left behind in Iraq will still cost about $50 billion a year ... And of course, we are now spending more than $100 billion per year in Afghanistan ... The U.S. cannot restore its health with a hemorrhaging of resources and money that large.”
-- Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation responds in his blog, The Washington Note
Follow our progress by clicking here where we will show you the number of hits received on a monthly basis. Or, at the top, click on each of our sections and there you’ll find a week by week account of how each article was received by the number of hits it received.
It’s witch-hunt season
By Paul Krugman
The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment -- at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.
Click to continue reading...
‘I came to be dead, but revived’
By Carmen Lira Saade
HAVANA – He spent four years struggling between life and death, in and out of the operating room, intubated, receiving food through intravenous catheters and with frequent loss of consciousness.
“My illness is no secret,” Fidel said shortly before the illness became a crisis and forced him to “do what had to be done”: to delegate his duties as President of the Council of State and, consequently, as commander-in-chief of the Cuban Armed Forces.
“I cannot go on,” he admitted then, as he revealed in this, his first interview with the foreign print media since then. He made the transfer of command, and turned himself over to the doctors.
The shock shook the whole nation and his friends elsewhere; it gave his detractors hope for revenge and placed the powerful northern neighbor on alert. It was July 31, 2006, when he officially released the resignation letter as the maximum leader of the Cuban Revolution.
What his most ferocious enemy had not achieved in 50 years (blockades, wars, assassination attempts) was accomplished by a disease no one knew anything about and everyone speculated much about. A disease that the regime, like it or not, would turn into a “state secret.”[…]
Forty days ago today, Fidel Castro reappeared in public in a definitive manner, at least without any apparent danger of a relapse.
Click to continue reading...Republican Party platform: Welfare for the rich
By Bill Press
Something important happened this week: Republican leaders in Congress finally came out for something.
Don't knock it. This is progress. We know what they're against: anything President Obama is for. He's for tax breaks for small business; they're against 'em. He's for extending unemployment benefits; they're against it. He's for 
emergency funds to states for keeping cops, firemen, teachers, and nurses on the job; they vote no.
