Mickey Mouse Communism

 Mickey Mouse Communism  Anti-Communism, Cuba's Economy, Cuban Embargo  Comments Off
May 132007
 

It’s interesting to see Castro admit–not verbally, but through his dictatroship’s actions–that capitalism is superior to communism.

Yes folks, American name brand products are for sale right now–in Cuba:

Despite the U.S. Trading With the Enemy Act, which governs Washington’s 45-year-old embargo, sales on Fidel Castro’s island are lining the pockets of corporate America.

Nikes, Colgate and Marlboros, Gillette Series shaving cream and Jordache jeans – all are easy to find. Cubans who wear contact lenses can buy Bausch & Lomb. Parents can surprise the kids with a Mickey Mouse fire truck.

Dozens of American brands are on sale here – and not in some black-market back alley. They’re in the lobbies of gleaming government-run hotels and in crowded supermarkets and pharmacies that answer to the communist government.

The companies say they have no direct knowledge of sales in Cuba, and that the amounts involved are small and would be impractical to stop. But it’s hard to deny that a portion of the transactions wind up back in the United States.

Mickey Mouse is especially popular on the island:

Decades-old Walt Disney cartoons air on state television every afternoon and stores have Mickey Mouse toys and wrapping paper and Snoopy products.

No word on whether or not Castro has recruited Mickey Mouse to preach revolution and socialism. But at least we do know Castro is Mickey Mouse.

Share
 Posted by at 10:39 am

I can’t believe the source

 I can’t believe the source  Anti-Communism, Defection  Comments Off
May 052007
 

For readers who wonder why I’ve been silent on the recent hijacking of the airplane in Cuba by a group of young conscripts… well, I’ve been extraordinarily busy this week. I do have a “day job,” after all.

My take on the thing is I could understand why they want to leave. They just chose the wrong way to do it. I suppose desperation drives you to do irrational things. The young guys who did it are not going to get a fair trial–if they even get a trial at all–and the reason for their taking an airplane won’t fly (pardon the pun) with Castro.

Sadly, I think you can count in days how much longer these youngsters are going to remain alive. There’s not going to be an appeal. There’s not going to be an international “Free the Three” campaign. No long, drawn out drama. Just an execution of three young men whose only crime is wanting to be free.

That’s why I was surprised to find coverage somewhat sympathetic to the young men in the Seattle Times. Normally, we in Miami think of Seattle as an ultra-liberal enclave and so you’d expect their newspapers only to provide coverage sympathetic to Castro and not would-be defectors:

Cuba analysts said the deadly hijacking attempt reflected the discontent among the island’s young people. More than 20 percent of Cuba’s 11.4 million people were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the economic hardship that followed the fall of Cuba’s once-powerful benefactor. At least one-third of the nearly 1 million Cubans who have left the island for the U.S. since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 did so after 1999, according to a Pew study of U.S. Census data.

“These were 19-, 21-year-old kids, and they obviously felt extreme desperation that they were willing to take those risks,” said Brian Latell, a Cuba analyst and author of “After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and Cuba’s Next Leader.”

I think this says something important. Youngsters who have been indoctrinated practically since birth know instinctively that there is something terribly wrong with Castro’s version of Cuba.

Share
 Posted by at 7:43 am

Who do YOU believe?

 Who do YOU believe?  Anti-Communism, Castro Is Dead, Human Rights, Media, Politics  Comments Off
May 012007
 

An article in USA Today about Raul Castro’s rule over Cuba is laughingly titled “Many find reassuring continuity under brother Raul.” Read the article carefully and you’ll find the so-called “many” who find continuity “reassuring” are those who benefit the most from said continuity: Castro’s lackeys:

To those close to the government, there’s been a reassuring continuity.

(Jorge Mario Sanchez, an economist at the Center for the Study of the United States, a government think tank in Havana), says Raul Castro is using the party constructively.

Meanwhile, what does the average Cuban Jose have to say about this? How does this affect his life? Does he, too, find this continuity “reassuring?”

Ordinary Cubans, including many who won’t allow their full names to be published for fear of retribution, say they’ve noticed little change.

Abdel, a former wrestling coach, says a heavier police presence is the only difference he’s seen since Fidel Castro underwent emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding in July.

Rene, a carpenter, says food and other routine purchases cost more today.

The U.S. government says Raul Castro has brought hard-liners back into prominent positions and given the Communist Party more authority.

Miguel, a carpenter and electrician in Havana, is wary of the party’s new assertiveness. “This is how they intimidate us,” he says.

I think that last quote sums it up quite well.

Share
 Posted by at 8:30 pm

Way to go, Conchita!

 Way to go, Conchita!  Anti-Communism, Chavez - Venezuela, Politics  Comments Off
May 012007
 

It’s a good, albeit rare, thing to see Hollywood types pick the right side when it comes to socialist dictators:

Cuban-born actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela and is a staunch opponent of President Hugo Chavez, plans to play a die-hard Chavez supporter in a film that takes a critical view of Latin America’s most outspoken leader.

Alonso, a Hollywood veteran who has appeared in films including “Moscow on the Hudson” and “The House of the Spirits,” said Monday that she will enjoy switching roles to play a passionate admirer of the president she deplores.

“It is not going to be very difficult to play a Chavista,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Washington. “You know, love and hate are very close to each other.”

The film, “Two Minutes of Hate,” is to include real footage of Chavez’s speeches and his supporters firing guns from a bridge when chaos erupted at a large opposition march that led up to a short-lived 2002 coup.

Producer Edward Bass said he plans to begin shooting the film – written by a Venezuelan who remains anonymous – in Miami within three months. Bass said the concept is that “Venezuela is the Titanic, Chavez is the captain,” and Alonso’s character is in love with an anti-Chavez professor who in the semi-fictional account is among those shot and killed in 2002.

Bravo, Conchita! I can’t wait till the film comes out.

Share
 Posted by at 6:04 am

Breaking: 13 Cubans make landfall in Miami

 Breaking: 13 Cubans make landfall in Miami  Anti-Communism, Defection, Friends of Cuban Freedom, Human Rights, Wet Foot Dry Foot  Comments Off
May 012007
 

According to Channel 7 in Miami (WSVN TV), 11 adults and two children have made it to shore safely from Cuba in the Miami area. The 13 are reported in good health as they made landfall near Key Biscayne in Miami. The news coming on the High Holy Day of communism, May Day. Ha!

Share
 Posted by at 5:46 am

Anti-Castro news makes MSM?!?!

 Anti-Castro news makes MSM?!?!  Anti-Communism, Cuban Dissidents, Freedom of the Press, Friends of Cuban Freedom, Human Rights, Media  Comments Off
Apr 282007
 

Holy cow, the Apocalypse must be coming soon! I found an article about an anti-Castro journalist winning a Spanish journalism award on both the Miami Herald’s and ABC News’ respective websites:

Cuban dissident writer Raul Rivero has won a prestigious Spanish journalism award for his work as a journalist reporting on his native country, where he spent two years in jail on charges of trying to undermine President Fidel Castro’s government.

Rivero, who is 62 and moved to Madrid in 2005 after being released from prison, won one of several Ortega y Gasset prizes that were announced Wednesday. The awards, now in their 24th year, are given by Spain’s top-selling newspaper, El Pais.

The jury voted unanimously to give Rivero the prize for journalism in recognition of his “tenacious and committed battle for journalistic freedom” in Cuba.

It praised Rivero, who is also a poet, for a life’s work that is “very original and of extraordinary literary value.”

Rivero was among 75 independent journalists, opposition politicians and other activists who were arrested in 2003.

Share
 Posted by at 10:13 am

Still more news about Cuba ignored by the MSM

 Still more news about Cuba ignored by the MSM  Anti-Communism, Friends of Cuban Freedom, Human Rights, Media  Comments Off
Apr 262007
 

On Yahoo! News, from the Christian Science Monitor:

On Friday, a hospitalized Fidel Castro met with a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo, Wu Guanzheng. It may be no coincidence that Mr. Wu’s specialty is Communist Party discipline.

No coincidence? Ya think?

But there’s more:

Meanwhile, Cuba’s rickety economy is beset by continuing problems. This year’s sugar harvest was well below normal, and tourism is down by 7 percent. Cuba faces a continuing shortage of oil and has been existing on deeply discounted shipments from Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chávez, sees Castro as a leftist brother in arms. Cuba’s own oil is heavy with sulphur, which is highly corrosive.

Some power plants have been shut down as a result of using the damaging Cuban oil. Oil from Venezuela was intended for Cuban domestic use but the Cuban regime is selling some of it for badly needed cash to solve some of its financial problems.

While Venezuela’s Mr. Chávez idolizes Castro, nations such as Spain that may once have been friendly to the Cuban regime are expressing concern about its continuing clampdown and imprisonment of dissidents and would-be reformers.

Two former Polish presidents, Lech Walesa and Aleksander Kwasniewski, issued a letter in March to the Cuban people, drawing on Poland’s experience of abandoning communism for democracy. Published in the Miami Herald, the letter said Poland’s example was a “testimony to the victory of agreement over conflict, dialogue over quarrel, good over evil.”

The letter said the “time of change is imminent. The breath of awakening democracy in Cuba can be felt even … in Poland. Be persistent and in solidarity, be patient and indomitable, ready to construct common future for all Cubans, so that your beautiful country can become a friendly home to all those of your citizens who today inhabit the island and those who have been forced to abandon it.” That last phrase is an obvious reference to the large Cuban exile community in Miami.

In a trenchant challenge to the Castro regime, the letter reminded it that “the time of tyrants and running the country while following ‘the only right line’ is coming to an end. A triumphant march of democracy cannot be stopped. We in Poland know this better than anyone else.”

The letter was timed for the fourth anniversary of a Cuban crackdown on dissenters called the “black spring,” an event that the letter called “yet another blow against the democratic opposition.”

Share
 Posted by at 7:45 am

More news about Cuba ignored by the MSM

 More news about Cuba ignored by the MSM  Anti-Communism, Friends of Cuban Freedom, Human Rights, Media  Comments Off
Apr 252007
 

I suppose when international leaders speak out AGAINST Castro, it’s not important enough to be covered widely. From the ÄŒeské noviny, the only place I could find this story:

Former Czech president Vaclav Havel called for greater international solidarity for the benefit of freedom and human rights in Cuba, at the start of a two-day meeting of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba (ICDC) in Berlin. Havel addressed his appeal mainly to the European Union.

“Everything that serves human rights and freedoms must be paid attention,” Havel said.

He stressed the importance of international support, referring to his personal experience from opposition to the former regime in Czechoslovakia.

The ICDC brings together politicians and intellectuals. It was created on Havel’s initiative four years ago. Its members include former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar and Nobel Literature Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa from Peru.

“Europe should catch up with the United States in its effort at human rights,” Havel said in an allusion to the EU’s effort to compete with the USA mainly in the economy.

He clearly pointed to the EU’s years-long disunity on the totalitarian regime in Cuba.

The Czech Republic and some other post-communist EU member countries are among the major critics of the Cuban regime and refuse to cooperate with it while some western countries are more accommodating towards the regime of Fidel Castro.

Maybe the reason for a lack of coverage is the self-important MSM can’t pronounce ÄŒeské noviny?

Share
 Posted by at 7:06 pm

You won’t read this in the MSM

 You won’t read this in the MSM  Anti-Communism, Cuban Dissidents, Friends of Cuban Freedom, Human Rights, Media  Comments Off
Apr 252007
 

If Castro farts or Cuba issues some ridiculous statement, it gets picked up all over the MSM. Meanwhile, this is being ignored:

The United States has praised a statement from representatives of the Cuban opposition movement calling for peaceful democratic change in Cuba.

In its statement, released April 16 in Spanish, members of most of Cuba’s leading opposition groups said they were united in their call for Cuba to change peacefully from communist rule to democracy, freedom, social justice and human rights for all the Cuban people.

The statement added that the task of achieving democratic change in Cuban society is up to “Cubans and only Cubans.”

The Bush administration’s Cuba transition coordinator, Caleb McCarry, told USINFO April 20 that the statement is an “important message to the Cuban people and the outside world from Cuba’s peaceful democratic opposition.”

The United States, said McCarry, “supports the right of the Cuban people to define a democratic future for their country.”

McCarry oversees day-to-day operations of the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. The commission, co-chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, was created in 2003 to ensure that the U.S. government is prepared to assist Cuba’s peaceful transition to democracy.

Michael Parmly, chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, added that U.S. policy “has been to give the Cuban people the lead in deciding their country’s future.” Parmly told USINFO that the statement from the opposition Cuban group, dubbed “United for Freedom,” represents the “views of many Cubans who have been advocating for human rights and democratic change for a long time.”

The Cuban opposition’s statement also urged the release of all political prisoners from Cuban prisons who have been “imprisoned unjustly for defending, promoting, and peacefully exercising universally recognized human rights.”

More than 20 members of Cuba’s opposition movement have signed the statement.

Signatories include prominent dissident leaders Oswaldo Payá of the Christian Liberation Movement; Elizardo Sanchez of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation; Martha Beatriz Roque and Rene Gomez Manzano of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society; and members of the Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) opposition movement, which consists of wives and other close female relatives of imprisoned Cuban dissidents. Among its many honors, this last group was named one of the three winners of the 2005 Sakharov Prize for the promotion of freedom of thought.

But there is no media bias. And I’m Santa Claus.

Share
 Posted by at 6:44 pm

Awww, poow widdle babies

 Awww, poow widdle babies  Anti-Communism, Cuba's Economy, Cuban Embargo  Comments Off
Apr 252007
 

Take your bank accounts and stuff ‘em:

Cuba on Wednesday protested the decision by an Austrian bank recently bought by a U.S. consortium to stop serving Cuban customers.

“For us, this action is unacceptable,” Norma Goicochea Estenoz, Cuba’s ambassador to Austria, told reporters at the Cuban Embassy.

Gee, I thought socialists hated bankers. Gee, I thought nobody in Cuba had enough money to have a bank account, let alone one in a country so close to… Switzerland.

Hmm… maybe this will only affect Castro and his cronies, hence all the loud whining and protestations. To which I say, GOOD!

Share
 Posted by at 6:36 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries
© 2012 curioZities, LLC Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha