LET'S FIGHT BACK
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
CSI
| |||||
| |||||
|
Free Cuba Now!
To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Why protests started in Nuevitas? Religious in solidarity with victims of repression. Electricity for luxury hotels, not everyday Cubans. Emilio Bacardi at 100.
August 30, 2022
Yoani Sanchez explains why protests started in Nuevitas, and it has to do with revolutionary expectations not being met. Electricity for luxury hotels prioritized, but everyday Cubans left in the dark by the communist dictatorship..
Religious conference expresses solidarity with victims of repression, and highlights protests in Nuevitas. The centennial of the death of Emilio Bacardi Moreau, the first democratically elected mayor of Santiago, Cuba reminds Cubans of the democratic republic that was lost, and the courage needed to regain it.
Religious men and women in solidarity with victims of repression in Cuba
The Cuban Conference of Religious Men and Women (CONCUR) in a August 27, 2022 Facebook post gave a message of solidarity with the hundreds of citizens persecuted or arrested by the Cuban dictatorship during protests that began on August 19th in the town of Nuevitas: “As religious life calls us to be alongside the suffering people, we make ours the cry of the multitudes in different communities of the country and more recently in Nuevitas, Camagüey, demanding a response to their basic needs and their desire to be able to express themselves in freedom.”
“Protest in Nuevitas, Cuba in August 2022.
There are over 1,000 identified political prisoners today in Cuba. This includes Cuban artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez of the San Isidro Movement. Yesterday some of their friends gathered on the television program Canatalo TV highlighted the cases of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez.
Iris Ruiz, wife of artivist Amaury Pacheco, explained that in recent weeks Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI) "has been in a punishment cell, deprived of making phone calls and they do not give him his materials to paint. She warned that all political prisoners have undergone similar repression."
Maykel Castillo Pérez "Osorbo" and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara prior to their present jailing.
CiberCuba reports that Maykel Castillo Pérez "Osorbo" suffers from some kind of disease that causes hard bumps under the skin and although biopsies have been performed, they do not trust the official diagnosis. "This has been a very long process," said activist Anamely Ramos. "It was clear that something had to be done to save Maykel's life, because we don't even know what's wrong with him."
Why did protests break out in Nuevitas?
Yoani Sanchez in an August 23rd piece republished in the Havana Times"Why the Protests in Nuevitas, Camaguey, Cuba?" explained that "in the 1960s, some guerrillas who had just come to power decided to turn it into the 'industrial city' of the country, a Caribbean icon of development and modernity." According to Yoani, "those who packed their bags in other provinces of Cuba and moved to Nuevitas, believing that if socialism was going to bear its first fruits of prosperity and bonanza somewhere, it would be in that piece of land with the smell of the sea. But the bubble burst at the end of the 1980s, when the Soviet subsidy, essential to maintaining that showcase, began to fade." ..."Those who took to the streets on August 19 were, for the most part, the children of those who were made to believe that this beautiful seaport could only experience better times, evolution and splendor."
Revolutionary priorities in Cuba: Electricity prioritized for luxury hotels, not every day Cubans.
The Grand Aston in Havana inaugurated in March 2022, has electricity while surrounding neighborhoods do without. (Photo: 14ymedio)
The Minister of Energy and Mines, Liván Arronte Cruz, declared that maintaining Cuba's national electricity system “is expensive” and Edier Guzmán Pacheco, director of Thermal Generation of the Electric Union of Cuba (UNE), explained which blocks or units are out of service and how much it will cost to recover them. Adding up the figures provided by the staff member, he said the amount would be between $245 million and $265 million.
Cuban government officials claim they do not have the money to repair thermoelectric plants, some of which haven’t been maintained for years, but they do have money to build five-star hotels, and construction hasn't slowed. For example, the K Tower of El Vedado built by the Gaesa military conglomerate, that some specialists estimate, cost a minimum of 200 million dollars; an amount that would repair and update most of the thermoelectric plants in Cuba. The money invested in the thermoelectric plants would help millions of Cubans with stable access to electricity, but not enrich the military junta's coffers with tourist dollars is the ruling class's thinking.
Emilio Bacardi Moreau on the centennial of his death
Emilio Bacardi Moreau (1844 - 1922)
Emilio Bacardi Moreau after a life of entrepreneurship and patriotic service, died 100 years ago on August 28, 1922, of a heart ailment in Santiago de Cuba, the city of his birth. The city of Santiago suspended all public events for two days to mourn and celebrate the life of who they had nicknamed “Cuba’s foremost son.” He conspired against Spanish colonialism, was repeatedly exiled, and his son served as an officer in combat against Spanish forces under Antonio Maceo.
Paying their respects to Emilio Bacardi Moreau following his death in August 1922
Elements of the Cuban regime have tried to co-opt his memory on the centennial of Emilio Bacardi's death, but the life he lived is the antithesis of Castroism.
Angel Castro, Fidel and Raul Castro's father fought for the Spanish crown against Cuban independence. Castro's father, Angel, according to the 2016 TV3 documentary, "Franco and Fidel: A Strange Friendship" had a photo of Francisco Franco on his nightstand. On Franco's death in 1975, Fidel Castro decreed three days of mourning in Cuba for the Spanish despot, in an official decree rubber stamped by Cuban president Oswaldo Dorticós.
During the Republic, the Bacardi family not only had enlightened business practices, but also engaged in civic activities that promoted a Cuban democratic culture. Emilio Bacardi was the first democratically elected mayor of Santiago de Cuba. His reputation for honesty and public serviceearned him a seat in the Cuban national senate in 1906.
Each time that a dictatorship arose in Cuba, the Bacardi's joined the democratic resistance. A tradition they have continued to the present day, but since 1960, when Bacardi's assets were illegally taken by the Castro regime, they have done it from exile.
Cuban's In Degraded, Collapsing Property And Sewer Streaming Between Their Living Quarters
https://rumble.com/v1i3cpn-cubans-in-degraded-collapsing-property-and-sewer-streaming-between-their-li.html
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
CSI
| |||||
| |||||
|
Monday, August 29, 2022
A Warning, Do Not Do Business With Communist Cuba
https://rumble.com/v1huxwr-a-warning-do-not-do-business-with-communist-cuba.html
Free Cuba Now!
To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
CubaBrief: Bad time for cuts at Radio Martí and VOA say Sen. Rubio & Rep. Diaz-Balart. Why Cuba is a failed state.
August 29, 2022
Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart have taken the lead in calling out personnel cuts at the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). On July 13, 2021, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas spoke about U.S. Maritime Migrant Interdiction Operations at a Department of Homeland Security press briefing warning Cubans and Haitian: “Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States.”
This message would have been more effective if it were more widely heard in Cuba, but the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which includes Radio Martí, continues to be gutted in the midst of the largest Cuban exodus since 1959.
The Center for a Free Cuba has prepared a report on the budget cuts and reduction in personnel of Radio Martí and the programming in Chinese of the Voice of the Americas (VOA) at a time when crises with both Cuba and China, including threats against Taiwan, are increasing.
“I am appalled by the Biden admin’s shameful decision to begin a “Reduction in Force” at the OCB,” Diaz-Balart
In the Cuban case, street protests continue to break out across the island, despite continuing repression. In addition, tens of thousands of Cubans are on dangerous journeys to enter the United States. The report finds that this trend has been ongoing for some time, but the present moment demands more, not less public diplomacy through channels that will reach more Cubans directly, and that Havana will find more difficult to shut down or jam.
The Cuban dictatorship, and their agents of influence attempt to deflect responsibility for causing the exodus, and weaponizing it but the facts say otherwise. Consider the following.
Failures in Agriculture
Tons of fish rotting in Cuba in the midst of scarcity due to government inefficiencies.
The Washington Post published on August 25, 2022 the Associated Press article "Reforms help Cuban farmers, but many still struggle" by Andrea RodrÍguez, who is based in Cuba. She reproduces the official line in the article that shifts blame away from the dictatorship, but experts outside of Cuba offer a more accurate analysis.
“Before the 90s, Cuba had all the resources (supplied by Soviet Bloc allies) and the results were bad,” said Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at the Center for Latin American Studies at American University in Washington.He said problems include overly centralized administration and state ownership of most land — something imposed in years soon after the 1959 revolution, which nationalized big foreign owned farms and later smaller local ones. Most farmers have rights only to use the land they farm, not to own it, which outside experts say limits their incentive to invest in it.
This was not always the case. According to the Cuban Studies Institute between 1952-1958 there was "a successful nationalistic trend aimed to reach agricultural self-sufficiency to supply the people’s market demand for food." Despite the efforts to violently overthrow the Batista regime in the 1950s, "the Cuban food supply grew steadily to provide a highly productive system that, in daily calories consumption, ranked Cuba third in Latin America."
This ended when the Castro regime seized and collectivized properties, and prohibited farmers selling their crops to non-state entities, in the early years of the revolution. Farmers no longer decided how much to produce, or what price to sell. The Cuban government established production quotas and farmers were (and are) obligated to sell to the state collection agency, called Acopio. Recent laws on agriculture in Cuba, such as ( Decreto Ley 358 de 2018), continued to prohibit private sales of agricultural products to non-state entities. The dictatorship began rationing food in 1962 as a method of control and continues the practice to the present day. Rationed food is not free, but sold at subsidized prices. Rationed items are not enough to feed a person. In 2021 the regime attempted to change their agricultural policy, but it was cosmetic because officials are still wedded to communism, and cannot permit true market reforms.
Healthcare in tatters
On the healthcare front the system is also in tatters. The death of Cuban General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, chief administrator of GAESA, and former son-in-law to Raul Castro on July 1, 2022 presents several problems for the regime. First, he had played and was supposed to continue to have a role in Raul Castro's succession plans. Second, it appears that he died of lung cancer, but this has been shrouded in secrecy, in part because Havana claims to have developed a vaccine against lung cancer that they have widely touted. Since 2008 they have used this claim as a propaganda talking point for their claims to superior healthcare in Cuba, and have set up an online presence encouraging patients to go to Cuba for treatment.
Failed COVID-19 response
Cuban government officials decided early on in the COVID-19 pandemic that they wanted to be “be the first country in the world to vaccinate their whole population with their own vaccines,” and were willing to let Cubans die while they developed their domestic vaccines instead of importing them, including from their allies Russia and China in order to advance their “healthcare superpower” narrative.
The Economist on August 3, 2022 published “Covid-19 has damaged the reputation of Cuban health care: The country’s once-famed health system is in tatters.” In the United States, which had well publicized challenges and failures during COVID-19, excess deaths were 354/100,000. While Cuba, which was touted as a success story, had a far worse outcome than the United States with 550/100,000 excess deaths. Costa Rica, by comparison, had better outcomes than both Cuba and the United States with 194/100,000 excess deaths.
Obstetric violence in Cuba
Havana Times on August 25, 2022 published the article "How Cuba’s Authoritarian System Enables Obstetric Violence" written by Partos Rotos, a collaboration by Cuban journalists that begins with a description of what one Cuban woman went through.
On August 12, 2015, at two in the afternoon, Paloma López called the ambulance that would take her to Ramón González Coro, an OB-GYN hospital in Havana. Early that morning, she decided to start her labor at home, as she had heard about women being ill-treated at the hospital. When she arrived, she was six centimeters dilated but her water had not broken. “They took me to the gurney to monitor me, they lifted me and took me to a strange room. Then, without any warning, (the doctor) took out a pointy object, and bam! She stuck it in me, and it hurt. I screamed, ‘what is that!’, and it broke my water.” The obstetrician threw all her weight on Paloma’s stomach and used her forearm to press on the uterus to push the baby down. Paloma was startled and struck away the doctor’s hand. As she was leaning on her with her feet practically up in the air, the doctor fell to the floor. “Look at this bitch, she doesn’t want to be helped! She’s going to kill the baby,” Paloma recalls the doctor shouting. “Doctor, don’t say that! You have to ask me for permission.” “No, you don’t have a clue.”
The rest of the article outlines the systemic nature of obstetric violence in Cuba. Beyond psychological abuse visited upon the prospective mothers there are also negative physical consequences according to Havana Times.
For some, the problem was that they suffered excessive medicalization or aggressive practices. One of these practices is known as the Kristeller maneuver, which involves applying manual pressure on the ribs and has been questioned by the WHO since 1996. Another common procedure is called an episiotomy. It is performed by making an incision in the perineum, a tissue located between the vagina and the anus, to facilitate childbirth. This is often performed without consent and/or when it is not required.
Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist, in Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 described how her idealistic preconceptions were dashed by 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality.' She observed a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights.
viewing.
Luis Pablo de la Horra in an article published by the Foundation for Economic Education titled "Why Cuba's Infant Mortality Rate Is So Low" answers the question in the subtitle that "Cuba’s impressive infant mortality rate has a simple explanation: data manipulation" and provides a more detailed explanation that is reproduced below.
"In a 2015 paper, economist Roberto M. Gonzalez concluded that Cuba’s actual IMR is substantially higher than reported by authorities. In order to understand how Cuban authorities distort IMR data, we need to understand two concepts: early neonatal deaths and late fetal deaths.
The former is defined as the number of children dying during the first week after birth, whereas the latter is calculated as the number of fetal deaths between the 22nd week of gestation and birth. As a result, early neonatal deaths are included in the IMR, but late fetal deaths are not. For the sample of countries analyzed by Gonzalez, the ratio of late fetal deaths to early neonatal deaths ranges between 1-to-1 and 3-to-1.
However, this ratio is surprisingly high in Cuba: the number of late fetal deaths is six times as high as that of early neonatal deaths. This number suggests that many early neonatal deaths are systematically reported as late fetal deaths in order to artificially reduce the IMR. Gonzalez estimates that Cuba’s true IMR in 2004, the year analyzed in the paper, was between 7.45 and 11.46, substantially higher than the 5.8 reported by Cuban authorities, and far worse than the rates of developed countries."
Daniel Raisbeck and John Osterhoudt at Reason on Monday April 18, 2022 premiered a documentary on "The Myth of Cuban Health Care" that is required
Not mentioned in their documentary is that other Latin American countries ( Costa Rica, and Chile ) rate higher than the U.S. on international indices with regards to their healthcare systems, but are rarely mentioned as models to emulate. Despite Cuba's unreliable and inflated statistics, its health care system still rates lower than the United States.
Failing Infrastructure
Hotel Saratoga explodes on May 6, 2022 killing over 40 Cubans and tourists
On May 6, 2022 the historic Hotel Saratoga exploded and over 40 Cubans were killed in what officials said was caused by a gas leak, It was managed by the military-owned Gaviota tourism company.
Cuban voices were declaring Cuba a failed state in the midst of a major fire at the Matanzas Supertanker Base that began on August 5, 2022 and over the next four days has spread out of control engulfing four tanks at the storage facility.
Matanzas Supertanker Base caught fire on August 5, 2022 following a lightning strike.
In the midst of the unfolding disaster, the Cuban government continued with a focus on optics and propaganda, in some cases delaying help to confront the raging fire. Stephen Gibbs, the Latin American correspondent for The Times tweeted on August 7th, “Mexican firefighters arrive in Cuba. Are the speeches really necessary? Isn’t this an emergency?”
Case study on relationship between lack of freedoms and failures to address social problems
Silverio Portal Contreras jailed for four years for protesting against dilapidated buildings.
Silverio Portal Contreras was sentenced to four years in prison for alleged crimes of "public disorder" and "contempt" after leading several public protests demanding decent housing for all Cubans. He was detained on June 20, 2016 in Havana, and the court document states that "the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a touristic area." The document further describes the accused as having "bad social and moral behavior" and mentions that he fails to participate in pro-government activities. According to Silverio’s wife, before his arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings in Havana. Silverio was recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International on August 26, 2019. He was beaten by prison officials in mid-May 2020 and lost sight in one eye.
