All the news that's fit....

Don't you just love the Western media? For days it has been reporting how the family of the Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya claim that he was killed when another car forced his off the road, thus implying that the Cuban authorities were somehow responsible. Now today they have been forced to backtrack on that one completely because the two survivors of the crash have confirmed that there was no other car and the driver himself has admitted he lost control of it on a bad stretch of road.
Not only that, Swedish politician Jens Aron Modig (pictured) who was in the car with Paya when it crashed has admitted to taking some 4,000 euros ($4,900; £3,100) for Oswaldo Paya and other dissidents, which is illegal in Cuba.
The Leveson inquiry into Press standards in the UK that has just wrapped up, ought to have heard from the Cuban government about how it is so consistently and constantly undermined by biased, hostile and downright malicious reporting.

"The freedom to travel shall not be infringed..."

 

...That's what the US Constitution says so how come  a man who travelled to Cuba 14 years ago has been hit with a $6,500 fine?
According to this report from USA Today, Zachary Sanders, who violated the United States' ban against travelling to Cuba (without the required U.S. Treasury license), had been fighting his fine since 2009. On Tuesday, Sanders agreed to pay the fine in a settlement.
Sanders had also been denied admission to the New Jersey bar because he had admitted visiting Cuba illegally, reports Reuters.
The sooner Cuba gets around as it has promised to removing its restrictions on its own citizens travelling abroad the better - then Cubans will have greater rights than Americans. 

Don't sound so surprised - it's been said time and time again

Raúl Castro: "Let's talk - as equals"

So if you google news 'Cuba' tonight you'll get hit after hit on headlines that read something like the BBC's:

'Cuban President Raul Castro 'willing to talk to US'

Now forgive me if I am wrong, but er...hasn't this always been the position of Cuba since 1959? They have never said anything else. As far as I can see it is not Havana that won't talk to Washington but the other way around. Cuba doesn't have an embargo, Cuba hasn't got an official list of terrorist states, Cuba does not fine international banks for handling US money, Cuba respects international brand marks, Cuba doesn't finance subversive activities in the United States. Cuba has offered to talk to the US constantly and consistently for the past five decades. The only condition that it places on such talks is that they should be government to government as EQUALS. Therein lies the rub. Is it not the simple fact that it is the United States that remains aloof like the angry parent who expels the unruly child? Washington simply refuses to talk unless the child accepts subservience - well, just read what Castro said today at the 59th anniversary of the Moncada attack celebrations:

“.... now they want what happened in Libya, or what they want to happen in Syria, to happen here.  But this is a peaceful little island, we like to dance and make friends with everyone, including the United States, but this is a stubborn little people and if they want confrontation it is better in baseball, where sometimes we win and sometimes we lose, but not in other things.”

Get real Mr. Obama.

Cuba's coming Cooperative economy 2

Following on from my post a few days ago. This morning the Washington  Post has this:
"Cuba economy czar: 222 experimental non-state cooperatives to be launched by year’s end"

According to the paper, Marino Murillo the minister overseeing Cuba's 'updating of its economic model' told the Parliament (pictured) that some of the new coops will be converted state-run enterprises, and they will be given preference over private single-owner businesses. “For these cooperatives and the non-state entities, in the coming year $100 million is being budgeted which is the financing necessary so they can be assured production, because if we create them and there is no financing, they won’t work,” he is quoted as saying.

Cuba's Coming Co-operative Economy

Marcelo Vieta has just returned from two field trips to Cuba where he has studied the possibility that Cuba is going to cooperatise its economy.

He concludes: "My sense is that many – perhaps the majority – of Cubans know that they have too much to lose to go down the neoliberal path, a distinct possibility given the trajectory of other ‘socialist’ command economies, and the structural reforms that are unfolding. The co-operative path to economic sustainability would, I think, be a viable alternative development model for many key sectors of the Cuban economy. Such a development model would keep social wealth within the country and expand the capacities of Cuban workers in self-management. Such activism and participation among workers can also be a key spur to the nature of reforms in crucial areas where large state enterprises will remain, whether fully state owned or in joint enterprises. The co-operative road to reforms, most importantly, could help conserve the successes of Cuba's brand of socialism, notably its egalitarian education, cultural and health sectors, which remain quite unique across South America and the Caribbean."

Read his report HERE

No speech like free speech.... Especially when it's paid for

 Cuba based African-American columnist Circles Robinson, reporting in the Havana Times has this to say about the latest tranche of cash-for-treachery payments to would be Cuban 'independent' journalists:

"The political wing of United States foreign policy is offering up to $3 million dollars each for two projects to break the through the state-controlled media monopoly in Cuba. The US-AID funds are the latest in 53 years of overt and covert programs trying to topple  the Cuban government and install a new one friendly to US corporate and government interests."

Circles wonders whether the new contractors will suffer the same fate as the jailed US citizen Alan Gross.

Alan Gross is serving the third of a 15-year sentence for attempting to equip dissidents with sophisticated illegal communications equipment while working for Development Alternatives Inc. under a US-AID contract.