Just another plug for my now monthly poll (I’ve decided to make them monthly, for now). The poll question this month is How are you going to celebrate when Castro dies?
Oh yes, thanks for visiting Castro Death Watch and thanks in advance for taking the poll!
Anyone remember Magda Montiel Davis, the lawyer who kissed Castro on his cheeks (I should point out she may have been caught on video kissing him on his facial cheeks, but she’s been kissing him on his other cheeks ever since, if you know what I mean).
The St. Pete Times has done a fluff piece on her and how, boo-hoo, sniff, sniff, she had lost a friend over kissing Castro. Eventually, they resumed their friendship, but the threat of losing her friend didn’t stop Davis from kissing Castro’s nether regions some more:
With the storm still raging, Davis quietly returned to Cuba on a humanitarian visa four months later – a trip that was the first of many over the next decade. On those trips, she and Castro developed a cordial relationship.
Oh, isn’t that so quaint. I wonder if she visited the prisons where political prisoners and journalists are held. Or El Paredón, site of so many summary executions after Castro and his henchmen seized power. Or the site of two unarmed Cessna aircraft being shot down over INTERNATIONAL waters simply because they released fliers. Or the site of the sinking of the tugboat “13 de Marzo” (13th of March).
I wonder.
Looks as though the folks at Parade Magazine are asleep behind the wheel. They just released their list of the World’s Worst Dictators for 2007 and NEITHER Castro brother makes the cut.
Hello, Parade??? What were you thinking? Or were you EVEN thinking?
Satellite dishes are technically illegal in Castro’s Cuba, but the communist government would often turn a blind eye to them just as long as their sheep, er, I mean, their people, would only watch entertainment programming (something about “bread and circuses,” only there isn’t much bread–or much of anything else that’s edible–in Cuba).
But with word recently that the U.S. government is going to beam the oft-blocked TV Martà via commercial TV stations–which can be seen by satellite dish owners–guess what the commie government of Cuba is doing now?
Just two months after the U.S. government announced it would transmit its anti-Castro channel TV Martà on Direct TV — which Cubans can watch using the banned satellite dishes –Cuban authorities appear to be going after the illegal signals with a vengeance.
What is the Castro government so afraid of? After all, isn’t TV Martà nothing more than “propaganda?” If it’s propaganda, don’t you think the educated people of Cuba would know it when they saw it? I mean, come on Fidel and Raul, why can’t Cuba’s people watch it and decide for themselves?
‘The attention they are giving it now gives us confidence that TV Martà is working,” said Alberto Mascaro, chief of staff for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the government office that runs TV MartÃ. “If they are so worried about it, that only means one thing: It is working.”
Associated Press ran a story picked up by numerous outlets–including Yahoo! News–about a poll by Ipsos on Americans’ attitudes towards Cuba and Fidel Castro.
As with any AP story, the media outlets that run it are free to use AP’s headline or make their own. As could be expected, most of the press picking up this story focused on the results that could be interepreted as the least anti-Castro, such as that 62 percent of Americans would like to “establish diplomatic relations with Cuba” or that “only” 48 percent (which, if you actually bother to read the entire article, you come to find out is a plurality of those polled) favor maintaining the embargo against Cuba.
Here are a few choice numbers that are buried in the article on most outlets:
-64 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Fidel Castro
-Only four percent think Cuba will be worse off after Castro dies or steps down from power
The BBC’s headline makes it sound as though it were a big deal: Cuba’s Castro ‘able to eat again’. Really? Well, big freakin’ whoop-de-do. Dog bites man.
How about this for a headline: Cuba’s people able to eat again? 11 million Cubans go hungry everyday on the island but the MSM could care less. Castro “eats again” and it’s news.
The world is upside down, man.
Even though the Castro dictatorship loves to strangle any opposition in Cuba, thanks to the Internet, dissidents now have a voice that can be heard around the world. Reuters today published an article on this titled Cuban dissidents tap cyberspace from abroad (via Yahoo! News). Here is an excerpt:
Leading Cuban dissidents who are denied access to Internet at home now have their messages on Web sites thanks to the work of exiled friends and family abroad.
Oswaldo Paya, who doggedly began a signature drive for a referendum on civil liberties riding a bicycle five years ago, has no access to e-mail.
But his Web site (www.oswaldopaya.org, site is mostly in Spanish) was launched last month by relatives in Madrid. The site has Paya’s statements and news about the Varela Project, a petition that was rejected by the government despite its 25,000 signatures.
“We have to do it from outside Cuba because we can’t here,” said Paya, winner of Europe’s 2002 Andrei Sakharov prize for human rights, on Wednesday. “We want to express our point of view, which we cannot do here due to the lack of freedom.”
Thank God for the Internet. Even Castro can’t put this genie back into its bottle.
Just another plug for my first-ever poll. It’s still active and fun to take, plus it only takes a couple of minutes to, um, take.
Besides, we think you’ll like the poll question: How are you going to celebrate when Castro dies?
Today is President Ronald Reagan’s birthday. He’d be 96 if he were alive now.
President Reagan was credited with helping to, as he himself said it, put “Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history.” Alas, it was not meant to be so for Cuba. But it is notable that among those who support freedom for Cuba today are the leaders of the nations who once lived behind the Iron Curtain.
Here’s to the best president in my lifetime, the Gipper.
The Daily Bulletin, a Southern California newspaper, tells the story of a man whose heart, if not his mind, is in the right place:
A judge ordered a psychological evaluation Monday for the Upland man who says he planned to use his massive gun collection to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
The man, whose name is Robert Ferro, was discovered to have about 1,500 weapons at his home. His lawyer said a private doctor who saw Mr. Ferro said he has recently had a number of miniature strokes.
Here’s to your mental health, Mr. Ferro. At least we know you have a good heart.
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