More Praise for The Lost City

Julie E. Washington writes a very favorable review of the movie for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Some excerpts:

Andy Garcia revives old Cuba with style

"The Lost City" is director and actor Andy Garcia's love letter to a place and time that have slipped into the shadows of the past.

Set in 1950s Havana, this stylish and beautiful film lingers on sun-drenched lawns, rooms half obscured in shadows and hip-swiveling dancers performing the mambo. Then it juxtaposes that beauty against the bloodshed of the Cuban revolution.

Dustin Hoffman has a strange but memorable turn as a mobster.

"The Lost City" is a bittersweet love letter to Cuba's past. It is also a story of faith, hope and the resiliency of a people.

The 2006 Imagen Award Finalists

It took Andy Gracia sixteen years of hard work to bring "The Lost City" to the screen. The Imagen Foundation announced the finalists for the 2006 Imagen Awards. "The Lost City" leads with four nominations; Best Picture, Best Director, Andy Garcia for Best Actor, and Inés Sastre, for Best Actress.

The awards are scheduled for August 18 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

If you haven't yet seen this wonderful film please do so, you'll be stunned.

Cuba: Yesterday and Today

A number of years ago, I inherited an album of old postcards from my great aunt Nora. At the time, I thought what good are a bunch of old post cards? The album turned out to be a treasure of old photos that captures a time long past and I love them. Viewing them, I imagine my grandparents courting, sitting on a park bench, chaperone nearby or later, taking my mother and her siblings for that Sunday drive in the countryside.

I've come across another postcard collection; this one will transport you back to an untarnised Cuba B.C.

For your viewing pleasure, one hundred years of architecture and life through postcards at Hilda’s Cuban Postcard Museum.

2,996 - One Life at a Time

The fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is fast approaching and it's hard to believe it has already been almost five years since that unfortunate day in our history. It's a date none of us look forward to, but a date that we should all remember, if only to keep the lives those who perished and their families in our thoughts and hearts.

Im sure there will be many special homages that day. Special observations, moments of silence and tributes will be held around the country, around the world and here in cyber land.

With that in mind, I thought let you all know about a very special tribute that will be held this year on September 11. A tribute which I have already pledged to participate and which I hope you guys out there with blogs - or without - might want to join and support. I found out about it via Ken at It Comes in Pints? and I think it may be perhaps the best way we can all honor the victims of the terrorist attacks: by honoring their lives: 2,996 stories…2,996 voices…2,996 remembered…

2,996 is a tribute to the victims of 9/11.

On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers will join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11. Each person will pay tribute to a single victim.

We will honor them by remembering their lives, and not by remembering their murderers.

If you would like to help out, either by pledging to post a tribute on your own blog, or by offering your services to promote this cause, just leave a comment here and I’ll email you the name of a victim.

Then, on 9/11/2006, you will post a tribute to that victim on your blog.

But, and this is critical, the tributes should celebrate the lives of these people–kind of like a wake. Over the last 5 years we’ve heard the names of the killers, and all about the victim’s deaths. This is a chance to learn about and celebrate those who died. Forget the murderers, they don’t deserve to be remembered. But some people who died that day deserve to be remembered–2,996 people.

Thank you,

D.Challener Roe

I will be paying tribute to George C. Merino, American of Cuban descent, 39 years young, who died at the World Trade Center.

Please consider participating in the 2,996 September 11 tribute. It wont be easy and it will undoubtedly be heartbreaking and painful. But it's important to let the families of the victims as well as the rest of the world know that those who perished on that day will never be forgotten. Their deaths touched all of our lives.

If you need a little impetus, I suggest you visit the September 11th Victims site and read through some of the comments from loved ones and perfect strangers posted for each individual who lost his or her life on 9/11.

You can read more about 2,996 here.
And here is a list of the participants to date.
And most importantly, here's how you can sign up.

Bolivians blow up the che statue in Oruro

Bolivians are starting to have had about enough.

This morning, on the heels of the anti-communist freedom rally in eastern Santa Cruz, news broke that Bolivians in the beautiful western city of Oruro blew up the che statue yesterday. Oruro is Evo Morales' hometown.

What's significant about that is that Oruro actually was one of the few places that voted for Morales. The sentiment has significantly changed in the six months he's been in office and they've had enough.

Bolivians are recovering their TRUE heritage of how to deal with the Argentine mercenary of castrodom.

iYA NO MAS!

We love the Bolivians!

Agencia EFE has the killer story here:

Bomb damages sculpture of che in Bolivia

La Paz, Jun 30 (EFE).- A small bomb partially destroyed a bronze bust of iconic guerrilla ernesto "che" guevara on the ground floor of a labor federation in the west-central Bolivian city of Oruro.

Thursday afternoon's blast came three days before elections for a Constituent Assembly the new Socialist government hopes will write a leftist charter for the Andean nation, and two weeks after President Evo Morales joined with the late rebel's son to commemorate his birthday in the village where he was summarily executed by Bolivian forces in 1967.

Unionists in Oruro blamed the attack on unidentified "rightist terrorists" they claimed were seeking to disrupt Sunday's elections.

The blast took place as union officials were meeting on an upper floor of the headquarters of Oruro's Provincial Labor Federation.

Union leader Remigio Lopez said the explosive device blasted away the upper right-side portion of the sculpture of guevara's head.

He said that, upon hearing the blast, he and other unionists rushed downstairs to the spot where the statue stands, but the person or persons who had placed the device had fled.

Earlier this month, Camilo guevara March, son of ernesto, visited the Bolivian hamlet where his father was killed to take part in celebrations of what would have been the legendary insurgent's 78th birthday.

Camilo, one of che's six children, also traveled to Vallegrande, where Bolivian soldiers buried guevara's body in a clandestine grave along with those of six other guerrillas.

The Argentine-born Cuban (mercenary) was killed by government troops in the hamlet of La Higuera on Oct. 9, 1967 after being captured while trying to organize an insurgency among Bolivian peasants.

In June 1997, Cuban and Argentine experts discovered and unearthed guevara's remains and moved them to a mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba.

che guevara has long been a hero for Morales, the Socialist who this year became Bolivia's first Indian head of state. EFE jcz/dgm

From Marxists.org, a commie site, che himself wrote of Oruro:

At the same time, it is important not to neglect the development of networks in cities that are today outside our field of action. In these places we should seek to win support among the population and prepare ourselves for future actions. Oruro and Potosí are the most important cities in this category.

Bolivians continue to tell che what they think of him.

I love ya, my brother.

If one comes away with anything from blogging, it is the fact that one gets to meet some incredible people and sometimes, if you're lucky, make some very good friends. I've been pretty lucky in that department as I have met many fine people and have been blessed with more than a few truly good friendships via the blogosphere.

One of those friendships afforded me through the blogosphere that I cherish the most is that of J. Scott Barnard. Im not exactly sure how we found each other's blogs, but the fact is that we did and I know it's safe to say that had it not been for JSB's support and friendship and encouragement and solidarity these past 3 years, Babalú might not be here today.

I had the pleasure of meeting and getting drunk with Scott last year, finally in person, and I can honestly say it felt like I was reuniting with a long lost brother. Just imagine both of us seeing each other for the first time, right there in the middle of a street in St. Augustine, shaking hands then instantly knowing that a handshake just wouldnt cut it. Two guys who'd never met in person then hugged each other in the middle of the street with tears in their eyes as if we'd thrown rocks together and broken windows and ridden bikes and played little league and gone out on double dates and graduated highschool and been to college together and hadnt seen each other in years.

So, Scott, since today is your birthday and since old age does bring about senility, I just thought I'd remind you that I love you, man. You're like a brother I never had but always wish I did.

Thank you for your love. Thank you for your support and encouragement. Thank you for your love of Cuba and your work for her freedom. And thank you, truly and honestly from the bottom of my heart, for being one heckova friend and a damned fine human being. You totally rock, dude. Te felicito, mi hermano, que cumplas muchos muchos mas.

Please drop by Scott's and let the Cyber Miami Mafia Consiglieri know you wish him a great birthday and many many more to come.

Thank you to you know who.

It arrived in Wednesday's mail. The Mrs. found it in the mailbox that evening when she got home. The unmarked, indistinct package wrapped in brown paper bag addressed to me with me as return addressee stayed in the mailbox outside until Thursday morning - the Mrs wasnt about to bring in a suspicious package like that inside our home - when she remembered it was there and told me to get it as I walked out the door on my way to work.

The small package sitting there on the passenger's side of my truck baffled me on the way to the office. What the hell is it? It's postmarked in Tampa, who the hell do I know in Tampa? Why the hell is there no real return address?

The anticipation too much for me, I opened it while stopped at a traffic light. Carefully. Slowly. Just in case some white powder started leaking out. Or I set off a trigger or something. Maybe it's a small bomb. Maybe it's Anthrax. Maybe Ill keel over right now, in my truck, here on Miller Drive and 87th.

It was a black compact disc case. I opened it.

Inside was a compact disc with a post it note that read:

No soy CD. Soy DVD. (Im not a CD. Im a DVD.)

The worry and anticipation just got a little worse from then on. I was certainly intrigued, but I was certainly not going to insert that disc, from an unknown source and mailed to my home address with my home address as a return address, into any computer. I just wasnt going to take a chance on it being a bomb or Anthrax for my computer.

So the damned thing sat there next to me, on my desk at the office, all day long. Mocking me. Whispering to me all day "Come on, play me. Aren't you curious? Dont you want to know what I am?"

I had a couple of errands to run on the way home. The DVD in the black box with no writing in the brown paper bag wrapping addresed to me and vicariously sent by me waited patiently in the truck as I made my rounds.

I finished my errands, got home, put away the groceries I had just picked up and started on dinner. Id promised the Mrs some comfort food last night. Beef stew made from scratch. I chopped all the veggies: carrots, celery, potatoes, malanga, calabaza, mushrooms, green peppers, onions and forgot, for the moment, about the mocking DVD.

As all the stuff simmered in the big pot and the house beginning to smell like culinary heaven, I caught a glimpse of the black cd case wrapped in brown paper bag addressed to me and vicariously sent by me sitting there on the kitchen counter behind a discarded supermarket bag. Enough waiting, I thought. I set off to find out the contents of the DVD.

I reconnected the DVD player that had been disconnected since Cuba Nostalgia. Opened the little tray, opened the black box that came in a brown paper bag wrapping addressed to me vicariously sent by me and unpeeled the Post-It note from the disc. I inserted the disc into the DVD player, pressed play and anxiously waited for it to begin.

I knew what it was from the moment the first images came on screen. My eyes welled up.

As I sat there with tears in my eyes and the DVD continued to play, I picked up the brown paper wrapping once again and noticed that it had some printing on the inside. It read, simply, "Thank You."

"No," I thought. "Thank you."

Truth, Justice and the AMERICAN way!

Well all the talk in the entertainment world is about this week's premier of Superman Returns. I remember watching re-runs of the old George Reeves Superman TV show when I was kid. We all knew that Superman was faster than a speeding bullet, ore powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. We knew that Superman would always fight for "Truth Justice and the American way." It turns out that the makers of Superman Returns don't think so.

Apparently in the movie "When Daily Planet editor in chief Perry White (Frank Langella) asks his reporters to find out if the returned hero still stands for “truth and justice,” the phrase “the American way” is conspicuous by its absence."

In fact, what he says is "truth, justice and all that stuff."

Apparently this was not an unintentional slight. Here's what Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris, the two credited screenwriters for ‘Superman Returns’ had to say about it.

Dan: “I don’t think ‘the American way’ means what it meant in 1945.”

Mike: “He’s not just for Metropolis and not just for America.”

Dan: “He’s an alien, from Krypton; he has come to Earth to be kind of a savior for this world, not our country . . . And he has no papers.”

Mike: “What would happen with the immigration laws we have now?” Dan: “I’d like to see someone kick him out!”

Well you won't be getting any of my good old AMERICAN dollars, this weekend or EVER.

What 100,000 anti-communists look like when...

...every young woman in your country just happens to look like Raquel Welch.

Every pretty chick in Bolivia (Raquel's ancestral homeland), I kid you not, has come out for an anti-communist rally against slimey castro, thuggish Chavez, and the godawful Evo Morales.

100,000 of them rallied in Santa Cruz yesterday for autonomy from Morales' communist jackboot, many bearing anti-communist signs.

Go see the photos I posted at Publius Pundit here.

The New Man vs. The Obsolete Man

Last night I was channel surfing and I came upon an episode of The Twilight Zone called The Obsolete Man. As I watched the episode, which stars Burgess Meredith, I began to reflect on fidel, ché, the so-called Cuban "New Man", Cuba's independent librarians and the ALA and the case of General Arnaldo Ochoa.

I have pieced together the following summary from various online sources:

Serling begins the episode with the following narration:

"You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the superstates that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he is built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in the Twilight Zone."

In the world of the future, the harsh and ultra-repressive State controls all aspects of human life. All religion is banned and ownership of a book is punishable by death. But still there are those who will not conform to tyranny. One such man is Romney Wordsworth, a God-fearing librarian who has been judged "obsolete" by a chancellor of the State.

He is sentenced to die. Wordsworth is permitted to choose the manner of his own death, which will be televised to the populace as a lesson and a warning. The method of "liquidation" will be a secret known only to Wordsworth and his executioner.

An hour before the appointed time, Wordsworth invites the Chancellor to his apartment to witness the execution. Once inside, Wordsworth locks the door.

Wordsworth tells the Chancellor that he instructed the executioner to place a bomb in his apartment, full of his beloved books, and that it's set to go off at midnight. He explains to the Chancellor that now he too, will die at midnight. Wordsworth begins to read a bible (a crime punishable by death). He shows the Chancellor and the nation, watching on TV, how a spiritual man faces death. Wordsworth will prove whose will is stronger, his or the State's. The Chancellor is calm at first, but as the minutes tick by he begins to panic. He finally cries out, "In the name of God, let me out!" Wordsworth hands him the key, and the Chancellor runs from the room just as it explodes.

The final scene shows the Chancellor, now on trial himself for being obsolete.

Serling's final narration sums up the episode nicely:

"The Chancellor - the late Chancellor - was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so was the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under 'M' for mankind in the Twilight Zone."

Another victory for the terrorists

With friends like the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and the New York Times, who needs enemies?

By a vote of 5 to 3, with Chief Justice Roberts abstaining, the Supreme Court struck down the law permitting the Administration from holding military tribunals for the enemy combatants not covered by the Geneva Convention held at Guantanamo. (Roberts had been the appeals judge who permitted it which is why he recused himself.) It seems that, in the minds of these Justices, everybody is entitled to American jurisprudential rights -- whether they are Americans or not.

Between the scumbag traitors at the New York Times and this, I am very depressed. Comments from our lawyer readers who want to cheer me up are welcome...

Azucah!

Once the world's foremost provider of sugar, Cuba's latest sugar "harvest" mediocre at best:

Cuba's sugar industry won't make harvest goals

By Frances Robles

McClatchy Newspapers

Cuba's struggling sugar industry won't make its harvest goals this year, the government acknowledged this week, saying that inefficient mills and a late start proved to be obstacles difficult to overcome.

"The recently finished harvest demonstrated that hard work and final results don't always correspond," the Communist Party daily Granma reported Tuesday.

In February, when sugar prices rose to 17 U.S. cents a pound, Cuban leader Fidel Castro announced his country - after having closed sugar mills and furloughed workers in 2002 - would try to increase its production. The government announced it would shoot for a 3 million ton harvest.

But experts say it is now producing about 1.3 million tons a year - less than a fifth of what was grown in the 1950s. Government officials also recently announced plans to increase ethanol production fivefold - a lofty goal that requires a stepped up harvest.

The nation that four years ago had 156 operating mills now has just 42, and says 28 of them began the season late. Of 22 low-production mills, eight couldn't grind the amount of sugar cane that had been projected and two were shut down due to "reiterated inefficiency and high per-ton cost," Granma reported.

Even with rationing, Cuba now has to import sugar for it's own consumption.

Such progress with that revolution, eh?

Hat tip: Cherokee

fidel castro breakdancing?

Sad, but true:

Hat tip: Bob C.

Brokeback Island

Get ready to lose your breakfast.

(H/T Mike Pancier)

The Desperate Waiting Game

Remember the news stories from back in March announcing that the Cuban refugees mistakenly sent back to Cuba had been issued visas? Remember how the stories said they would soon be returning to the United States to start new lives? The stories were wrong because acquiring those visas was only one part of the excruciating process of leaving Cuba. They received U.S. entry visas. They also have to have "white cards", Cuban exit permits. If they get the exit permits, then another one of fidel's torturous waiting games will begin. How many times will they be told that tomorrow you are leaving, be at the airport at a certain time, only to be told at the last minute that there's a problem with the paper work, or that it's a mistake. Imagine that life in limbo-- in Cuba, as soon as you receive a U.S. visa, you're on the list; you are persona non grata, a "gusano". It's just one more way the tyrant causes Cuban suffering.

For those of you who still think Cuba's a paradise, ask yourself this; if it's so great in Cuba, why aren't Cubans allowed to freely travel? If it's so great in Cuba, why does castro control all information on the island?

HAVANA - One of 15 Cuban migrants sent home after reaching an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys said Wednesday the group is growing desperate after three months awaiting final Cuban government approval to leave for good.

The migrants were returned to Cuba in January. But a deal allowing 14 of them to emigrate permanently was reached in March between U.S. District Judge Frederic Moreno in Miami and the U.S. government, which had argued that the U.S. Coast Guard acted correctly in sending the Cubans back. Now all they lack is the so-called "white card," an exit permit Cubans must receive from the communist government to leave the island.

"All of us are desperate, they haven't answered us," Elizabeth Hernandez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from a small town in Matanzas Province nearly 100 miles east of Havana.

With luck, castro may let them eventually leave, that is if they are able to endure the wait because as soon as they got that U.S. visa they were forced to quit their jobs. Read the AP article at YahooNews.

Posted by Ziva at 11:08 PM | Permanent Link to this Post | Habla (0)

It's your birthday, Babalusians.

Three years ago today my good friend Dean Esmay, after having installed the applications and completing the set up, posted the very first entry on Babalú Blog. And three years ago today, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Saying it has been an interesting three years is an incredible understatement. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined just how much this blog would mean to me and how it would be the catalyst for so many emotions - good and bad - as it has been.

And I'll be honest with you all: there have been days, weeks sometimes, when I've just wanted to quit. Forget about the blog and politics and Cuba and everything else and go about living a normal life. You'll forgive the cliche, but it has been an uphill battle everyday.

But just as I'm thinking about calling it quits, ready to give up amid anger and frustration, Ill get an email from some reader in Omaha or Canton or Seattle or some city in Europe Ive never heard of thanking me for Babalu. Thanking me for helping them understand Cuba a little better or for giving them a little bit of Cuba, a little bit of home, that they live without from so far away.

I never imagined this blog would reach as many as it has. I never imagined this blog would inspire others to join the blogranks and write daily about Cuba. I never imagined Babalú would get the exposure, both local and national, as it has. I never imagined that I would meet so many exceptional people, allies and friends, that I now know I can count on for support, a helping hand, solidarity. And I never imagined Babalú would have so many exceptional readers, supporters, from all over and with such diversity. I am truly humbled and absolutely honored.

I'm pretty proud of the work done on this here humble blog. Proud of the work our contributors do, proud of the blogkids. Proud of our readers who help out by sending links and articles from all over the world and who help spread the word, passing along information about the reality of Cuba to people all over. I'm proud to know that we share a love for this country that has afforded us our freedoms and a love for Cuba, who despite living in shackles, has freedom in her heart.

Im especially proud of the fact that we helped raise money for the Spirit of America, showing our support for our troops in harm's way, despite the fact that I had to shave my legs to do so. (And yes, I know I still owe someone a leg shave. I havent forgotten.)

Im incredibly proud of how the readers of this modest blog said Presente! and donated thousands of dollars to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina, adding our voice and support and keeping up there with other blogs that have a hundred times our numbers. Being number 16 on that list out of thousands of blogs is a testament to your humanity, love and charity. I am immensely proud of your efforts and your sacrifice.

But today, this third year blogiversary of Babalu, I dont want you all to sing Happy Birthday or send congratulations or what not. No.

Today I need your prayers.

My best friend and his wife just had their third beautiful Cubanita over the weekend. Her name is Tatiana and she is blessed with having been born to the world's best parents. She was released from the hospital on Monday morning only to have to return to the emergency room Monday night with signs of severe neonatal jaundice. Please keep her in your thoughts and pray for her recovery. That's all Babalú wants for this 3rd birthday. The world needs another healthy, loving, beautiful and vibrant Cubanita.

God bless and keep you and thank you for your prayers.

Futbol Fall-ies

The other day I made this post about Soccer and why American fans continue to reject the world's sport. I'll be honest with you, I didn't expect it to generate the response that it did. I should have known better. Jim Rome has described this phenomenon at length on his national sports talk show. He says all marginal sports have their afficionados that come out of the woodwork when you attack their "beautiful game," whether it's 'bowling guy', 'curling guy', 'rugby guy', 'Formula 1 guy' or 'track and field guy'. And it's true. "Soccer guy" came out in full force in response to my post.

Today's Miami Herald features a column from Michelle Kaufman, who has been covering soccer for many years. She echos some of the points I made. Emphasis mine.

Cheating makes Cup the big loser BY MICHELLE KAUFMAN mkaufman@MiamiHerald.com

DORTMUND, Germany -- For months now, soccer fans the world over have been e-mailing one another The Secret Italian Training Video, a grainy film that shows a coach giving his players tips on how to dive. They practice rolling on the ground and writhing in pain, as if they had been stabbed, shot or sentenced to a camping trip in the Everglades with no bug spray.

The team is dressed in black, so it is clearly not the blue-clad Italians. Still, it's funny.

What happened in Kaiserslautern on Monday was not. In fact, it was disgusting. That film clip, which is very real, clearly shows Italian player Fabio Grosso taking a dive Greg Louganis would be proud of, tumbling over the prostrate Australian defender Lucas Neill in the penalty box, just as time is about to expire at 0-0.

Grosso crumpled into the fetal position and peeked out to see if referee Luis Medina Cantalejo bit. He did. A few seconds later, Francisco Totti lined up a penalty kick, scored, and Italy advanced to the quarterfinals.

Australia got a long plane ride home.

It was the latest -- and perhaps most blatant -- example of unpunished cheating going on at this World Cup. For, what else is diving if not cheating? A player who is barely touched launches himself at the ground, feigns injury and tries to con the referee into a penalty kick or free kick. Oftentimes, he is carried off on a stretcher, at which point he takes a swig of water, brushes off his shorts and rejoins the game at full speed. It has been going on for decades now.

It is the reason many American sports fans say they refuse to embrace the sport (though they didn't let flopping Bill Laimbeer of the early '90s Detroit Pistons spoil their love for basketball). They're used to football and hockey players smashing into each other and sneer at soccer players in colorful shorts stumbling when a nearby player sneezes.

Ray Hudson, the former Miami Fusion coach and Fort Lauderdale Striker who is in Germany as a commentator for GOL-TV, said he is ''nauseated'' with the unpunished dives at this World Cup. He was particularly appalled at Grosso's dive.

''What happened yesterday is scandalous and contemptible,'' Hudson said. 'Cynics will say, `Oh, that's Italian football.' I'd be ashamed to be wearing an Italian jersey today. The Italians will have this on their hands for a long, long time. Since Maradona [whose illegally scored goal in the 1986 quarterfinals was allowed on an officiating error], there has not been a more quintessential example of cheating. It will be replayed over and over.

"I know it's not an easy game to referee. However, in terms of diving in the penalty box, it has to be absolutely clear. The rest of the world could see yesterday that it was a dive, and the man with the best seat in the house, three to four yards away, didn't see. . . . It's a sad day for the World Cup and FIFA.''

Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, insisted at the start of this Cup that diving would be among the top priorities on the referees' list. Apparently, many of the referees did not get the memo, and the lousy officiating has been the talk of this tournament. Not only have referees given an unprecedented 26 red cards and 303 yellows for penalties, they have failed to cut down on flopping.

''That will be the legacy of this World Cup, despite the great matches and fans and wonderful job this country has done as host,'' Hudson said. ``An undeniable shadow has been cast over this Cup. Sad thing is, it passes on to kids. They see that cheating works, that you can achieve your goal by cheating.''

There have been murmurs of instant replay and of maybe adding another official on the field.

Why not do what the NFL does? Let each team have a certain number of instant replay challenges, just for those critical moments, moments like the end of the Australia-Italy match.

Soccer purists refuse to imagine adding stoppage to their fluid game. But every one of those dives is a stoppage, isn't it? Maybe the game would flow even better if a player wasn't rolling on the ground every five minutes.

Brazilian midfielder Ze Roberto was awarded ''Man of the Match'' for Tuesday's 3-0 victory over Ghana. I would have given the award to Lubos Michel of Slovakia, the referee, who had the guts to slap Brazil's Adriano with a yellow card penalty in the 13th minute when he dove in the box. Until other officials follow suit, the cheating will continue.

Help A Liberal Today

Have you ever asked yourself "What can I do to help enlighten liberals"? I know sometimes it's frustrating to get our point across to those from the other side of the political spectrum. Perhaps some of you have no interest whatsoever in trying to educate liberals.

For those of you who don't mind interacting with our friends from the left, here's your chance. On Yahoo there is a section called Yahoo Answers, and one of the questions under the category of Media and Journalism is "What is the most important but underreported story of the year?

The question is being hosted asked by none other than Arriana Huffington, the Hollywood socialite and queen of all Loony Leftists. I coudn't help but jump on the opportunity to spread a little ray of information to Arriana and others.

My answer? The plight of anti-castro dissidents in Cuba and the imprisonment of independent journalists in Cuba. I didn't mention any specific names such as Guillermo Fariñas, but perhaps others can join in. You have to be a registered Yahoo member in order to participate and answer the question.

Here's the link. Let's do some educating.

Communist Pez Dispenser

The thing with communism is that as the higher ups become disenchanted with the system, there's always some envious ideological numbskulls waiting in the wings to depose them:

Personnel changes reflect decline of Communist youth organization

MATANZAS, Cuba - June 26 (Oscar Sánchez Madan / www.cubanet.org) - The plenum of the provincial committee of the Union of Communist Youth in Matanzas deposed the organization's first secretary, José Anselmo Díaz, for "errors" committed in the management of the organization, according to an official announcement June 22.

Several members of the youth branch of the Party who asked to remain anonymous, said the deposition reflect unhappiness with the organization's performance at higher levels. One member said the organization's performance had "weakened" in recent years, especially in the ideological sphere, and also cited the failure to motivate younger members.

The Communist Youth elected as new first secretary 29-year-old Ernesto Li Duarte, the candidate proposed by the national bureau.

My bet is that for the newcomers, it's more about the perqs than the party.

Farewell Monguito "el Unico"

I just found out that Monguito "El Unico" ( Ramón Quian) , one of the 20th Century's greatest Cuban soneros passed away on May 26 in New York City. He was born in Manquito, Matanza Province, Cuba where he performed with Orquesta Ito and Arquesta Mazzuet before moving to Havana where he sang with Arquesta Modernista and Conjunto Modelo before moving to Mexico in the 1950's. While in Mexico he sang with Conjunto de Alejandro Sosa, Orquesta Los Brillantes, Pepé Arévalo y sus Mulatos as well as appearing in three films. In 1962 he moved to New York City and sang with Orquesta Broadway and made his first album with Arsenio Rodríguez on Primitivo, one of my all time favorites. During his five decade career as singer, composer, bandleader, and producer, his distinctive nasal voice can be heard alongside all the great ones. He died from a brain tumor, discovered after a fainting spell while performing in Mexico. May he rest in peace.

Forbes kicks billionaire castro harder

Hear how he screams!

The excellent Russell Flannery at Forbes in China has the latest news on tycoon castro's money-making ventures in glass-tower boomtown China, in this week's edition of Forbes magazine here.

All the bearded beast needs now are the spats.

Nice Timing, Comrade

While (f)idel (c)astro fumes to the world that he's a pauper (and that our $900 million net worth estimate is a fiction), his tightly controlled Cuban government is building a five-star hotel--in China. The 28-story Shanghai Xintian Havana is scheduled to open by year's end in the heart of Shanghai's ritzy Lujiazui district, where hotel rooms start at $300 a night--the average Cuban's income for two months. A Chinese-language sign erected in front of the site calls it Cuba's largest overseas investment project. A joint venture with China's Suntime Group, the $120 million hotel will sit on the Huangpu River overlooking the historic Bund, a magnet for luxury-goods outlets. Nearby property owners include Asian billionaires Li Ka-shing and Robert Kuok. The decidedly unbourgeois establishment should benefit from the economic boom in Shanghai and events like the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2010 World Expo. --Russell Flannery

Hat tip: Miguel

Church asked to intervene for Fariñas

A group of human rights activists and Cuban dissidents have sent the Catholic Church in Cuba a letter asking them to intervene for Fariñas who has been on a hunger strike for almost five months.

The letter informs the Church the reasons of his hunger strike - that he is denied the right to access the Internet for political reasons - and calls on the Church to prevent the death of this 42 year old psychologist and independent journalist.

El Nuevo Herald has more in Spanish.

Cubans Setting Trends

Here's another example of Cubans at the forefront of the latest trend to sweep the nation.

Mojito frenzy hits U.S. mainstream

It's gone from the drink of old Cuba to the hip and trendy. But now mojitos have reached the mainstream.

BY ELAINE WALKER
ewalker@MiamiHerald.com

We've been drinking mojitos in Miami forever, but now the traditional Cuban cocktail has hit the mainstream, from Missouri to Colorado.

TGI Friday's launched mojitos this month at its company-owned restaurants in the southeastern United States. Delta Airlines went national with its Mile High Mojito.

You'll find Ernest Hemingway's favorite rum and lime cocktail on menus from Carnival Cruise Lines and Marriott Hotels. Even Colin Farrell is expected to be sipping a Bacardi mojito in next month's premiere of Miami Vice, which has made the drink its official cocktail.

''The mojito is probably the third most popular cocktail right now and it's muscling in on No. 2,'' said Dale DeGroff, author of The Craft of the Cocktail and considered one of the country's leading mixologists. ``Everything Latin is hot.''

While the mojito has a long way to go before catching up with the top-ranked margarita, DeGroff and other experts believe it's neck and neck with the cosmopolitan.

Don't have time to ''muddle'' the fresh mint leaves, lime juice and sugar for the traditional mojito mixing preparation? Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel offer a mojito mix in a bottle. By next month, frozen Bacardi mojito concentrate will be everywhere from Publix to Wal-Mart.

''Not a lot of consumers are going to make the effort and take the time to make an authentic mojito,'' said Paul Nardone, chief executive of Stirrings, a Massachusetts company that makes the mojito mix for Williams-Sonoma, Delta and its own label. ``It's a very intimidating drink. We solve the problem for a lot of people.''

The mojito mix has quickly become a top seller for Stirrings, and it's not the only one enjoying a spike in sales. Mojito mints are the best selling flavor for Oral Fixation, a mint company whose product is featured at high-end hotels like the Delano. Mint growers like Bill Varney of Fredericksburg Herb Farm in Texas have seen sales double over the past year.

REAPING BENEFITS

But the one reaping the biggest benefit of the fascination with all things mojito is Bacardi, which has seen rum sales increase about 5 percent each of the past several years, driven in part by mojitos.

For the giant liquor company, whose Cuban roots are intertwined with the drink, that growth hasn't been by chance. Bacardi U.S.A. marketing executives in Miami have been working since the late 1990s on taking the mojito mainstream.

The timing was right. U.S. Hispanics are the fastest-growing population segment, with buying power expected to reach $1 trillion by 2010. Nuevo Latino cuisine has been all the rage.

It also helps that the cocktail culture has been enjoying a resurgence. As the maker of the top-selling rum, Bacardi's goal was to see if the mojito could do for rum sales what the martini did for vodka.

''Consumers today are more discerning and looking for more stylish products,'' said John Gomez, vice president and group marketing director for Bacardi U.S.A. ``The mojito has been able to ride that wave.''

Bacardi started with getting the cocktail into television shows and movies.

SEX & THE CITY FACTOR

Everyone knows how Sex & the City launched the cosmopolitan, so it's no surprise that's where Bacardi started. Actress Kim Cattrall's character Samantha ordered the first one in 2001. Since then, the company got air time for the mojito on movies such as Die Another Day and Bad Boys II, as well as television shows like CSI: Miami and Lost. The latest is Bacardi's multimillion dollar investment behind its tie-in with the Miami Vice movie.

Another key was getting the cocktail on the menu at the hip bars and restaurants in major markets from Miami to New York and California.

Miami Chef Douglas Rodriguez, who at that time was at Patria in New York City, remembers the day when consumers would come into his restaurant expecting to find tortillas and margaritas. When they found no tortillas and a signature cocktail called the mojito, they were confused.

''We trained people and taught them what a mojito was,'' said Rodriguez, whose restaurant ultimately sold 500 mojitos a night. ``People were ready for something new. The whole martini revolution has changed the way people drink.''

Bacardi executives think this summer is the ''tipping point'' when mojitos really reach the masses. The company this month launched a national mojito ad campaign and next month opens a mojito lounge at Miami International Airport.

The mojito is also evolving in terms of flavor. It's not uncommon now to find bars offering exotic tastes like pomegranate or ginger.

Mojitos restaurant and bar in Dolphin Mall in Miami has more than 15 flavors, including its most popular, Balsero, featuring coconut rum, blue curacao and pineapple. The bar even takes other cocktails and ''mojitoizes'' them by adding sugar, lime and mint.

BEST SIGN

The best sign of how far the mojito trend has come is Shorty Pants lounge in Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. The bar introduced the mojito last year, but maybe sold five a weekend. This year its sales can run as high as 100 on a busy weekend. ''We still get a lot of people asking what it is,'' said Mark Spears, general manager, who first tried one himself on trips to Miami and Key West.

``Once they try one, we get a lot of repeat orders.''

But as the mojito reaches out to places like Missouri, some industry experts believe the trend setters have moved on. In Miami and other markets with a large Latin influence, the next hot thing may be the caipirinha, a traditional Brazilian drink. Rodriguez features caipirinhas and a muddling bar with fresh fruit and herbs at Ola Steak in Coral Gables.

''The mojito is already passé with the in crowd and that's not a good sign,'' said Tom Pirko of Bevmark, an industry consultant.

``It's becoming better known, but that doesn't mean that it's going to have lasting power. This is not the next margarita. What we're talking about is a fashion drink, not something that changes the industry.''

Compulsory New York Times Post

The blogosphere is once again abuzz, this time with the recent New York Times stories exposing secret intelligence information on the War on Terror. Everyone seems to be up in arms with the irresponsible reporting and lack of journalistic ethics displayed by New York Times reporters and editorial staff.

Ive got a short message to my blogging brothers and sisters who are pissed at the New York Times for their less than ethical and incredibly slanted reportage:

Pissed at the New York Times? Take a number. There's a few million Cubans already in line ahead of you.

In the mail....

Just received a review copy of "Tomorow They Will Kiss" by Eduardo Santiago from Back Bay Books.

From the press page:

Like her native Cuba, Graciela Altamira is beautiful, defiant, passionate, and constantly threatened with some kind of trouble.

Far from her tropical home, toiling in a New Jersey doll factory, Graciela longs for the same happy ending that seems always to come in her beloved telenovelas-a kiss powerful enough to erase the sins of her past and the haunting memory of her homeland.

But how can she forget when she lives among the ghosts of that little Cuban town? With Caridad and Imperio-two women Graciela has known since girlhood-by her side in the factory, it seems she'll never be free of her past, never truly able to pursue the possibility of love she finds quite unexpectedly in the cold, gray New Jersey winter. Tomorrow They Will Kiss is a novel as irresistible as gossip, as addictive as a soap opera-a tale of love pursued at any cost, of how friendship and history unite us for better or worse, and of the hope for that redemptive kiss capable of reconciling estranged lovers and countries

It's a good thing Im not blogging this week as I look forward to reading some fiction and getting away from it all.

Why Soccer will never take off in America

Before I get the hate mail and the negative comments I'll say this: I like soccer. I probably like soccer more than the average American and definitely more than the average Cuban-American. But facts are facts and the sad fact is that Soccer will never take off in America, at least not as the game is currently played. Follow my logic.

1. The Tie
Americans love to win. We can accept defeat even though we don't like it but we can never be happy with a tie or a draw as they call it in soccer. "It's like kissing your sister" the famous saying goes. Remember a few years ago the baseball all-star game ended in a tie because the commissioner didn't want to get anyone hurt. They almost put his head on a stake. Even college football, a tradition-rich sport got rid of this relic.

2. The bad acting
Americans have historically admired stoicism. Soccer players have a tendency to take a dive for the smallest infraction. Then they roll around on the field, or pitch as it's known in soccer, flailing. Have you ever seen a baseball player when he fouls a pitch off his foot? As much as he wants to rub it, he doesn't. It's a sign of weakness. Even in basketball when a guy takes a flop to try to get a call, he gets right up. He doesn't make a big deal about how he was allegedly hurt. Maybe they should make you leave the game for good if you stay down longer than 10 seconds (just like in boxing), otherwise get up, play on and shut your mouth.

3. Bad referees
There is no sport with officiating worse than international soccer. It's a joke. Certainly fans have a beef with bad officiating in all sports but no sport is marred as badly by this scourge as soccer. People from other countries may have gained a certain tolerance of corruption, but Americans can't stand it.

4. The clock
A soccer game is supposed to be 90 minutes long. But with the aforementioned play-acting and a number of stoppages, the game invariably goes longer than the two 45 minute halves. Problem is that it's the referees that determine how much "stoppage" time to play. He can blow the whistle whenever he wants. The implication of course is that the ref can keep the game going until a certain outcome is achieved. It's gotten better recently, but why the hell wouldn't they add a timekeeper and count DOWN the amount of time left in the half/game, like they do in every other sport.

5. Offsides
I get it. I understand the rule. Don't send me emails about the rule. It just doesn't make sense. In a sport where scoring is so LOW, you would think that they'd be looking for ways to increase it. Well get rid of this arcane rule that invalidates 50% of goals and scoring chances turning every opportunity into an anti-climax.

The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling...

Well maybe not.

George posted an interesting radio interview the other day. It was about global warming, climate change, or whatever they are calling it today. The news media is determined to bash us over the head with this issue in perpetuity. I've been reading and listening to a lot of debate on this subject and today there was a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal about it. The author of the editorial is Richard S. Lindzen. He is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

There Is No 'Consensus' On Global Warming

By RICHARD S. LINDZEN
June 26, 2006; Page A14

According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms -- unless we change the way we live now.

Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific community is over."

That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this "debate" actually is in the first place.

The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim -- in his defense -- that scientists "don't know… They just don't know."

So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the "consensus." Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore's preferred global-warming template -- namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore's movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming.

They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why.

* * *

The other elements of the global-warming scare scenario are predicated on similar oversights. Malaria, claimed as a byproduct of warming, was once common in Michigan and Siberia and remains common in Siberia -- mosquitoes don't require tropical warmth. Hurricanes, too, vary on multidecadal time scales; sea-surface temperature is likely to be an important factor. This temperature, itself, varies on multidecadal time scales. However, questions concerning the origin of the relevant sea-surface temperatures and the nature of trends in hurricane intensity are being hotly argued within the profession.

Even among those arguing, there is general agreement that we can't attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure, there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be global warming because he can't think of anything else. While arguments like these, based on lassitude, are becoming rather common in climate assessments, such claims, given the primitive state of weather and climate science, are hardly compelling.

A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are clearly not issues over which debate is ended -- at least not in terms of the actual science.

A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by the environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific community now agrees that significant warming is occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, increased again until the '90s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998.

There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatsoever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas -- albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.

Given that we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task is currently impossible. Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising impact. Thus, although the conflicted state of the affair was accurately presented in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the infamous "summary for policy makers" reported ambiguously that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." This sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.

The next IPCC report again described the problems surrounding what has become known as the attribution issue: that is, to explain what mechanisms are responsible for observed changes in climate. Some deployed the lassitude argument -- e.g., we can't think of an alternative -- to support human attribution. But the "summary for policy makers" claimed in a manner largely unrelated to the actual text of the report that "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

In a similar vein, the National Academy of Sciences issued a brief (15-page) report responding to questions from the White House. It again enumerated the difficulties with attribution, but again the report was preceded by a front end that ambiguously claimed that "The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability." This was sufficient for CNN's Michelle Mitchell to presciently declare that the report represented a "unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man. There is no wiggle room." Well, no.

More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

Even more recently, the Climate Change Science Program, the Bush administration's coordinating agency for global-warming research, declared it had found "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system." This, for Mr. Easterbrook, meant: "Case closed." What exactly was this evidence? The models imply that greenhouse warming should impact atmospheric temperatures more than surface temperatures, and yet satellite data showed no warming in the atmosphere since 1979. The report showed that selective corrections to the atmospheric data could lead to some warming, thus reducing the conflict between observations and models descriptions of what greenhouse warming should look like. That, to me, means the case is still very much open.

* * *

So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists -- especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce -- if we're lucky.

Jineteras

In a 2004 speech president Bush accused castro of promoting sex tourism in Cuba. Castro vigorously denied Bush's allegations, saying that what the White House believes is "that which the president makes up in his head, whether it corresponds to reality or not."

In today's el Nuevo Herald, there's an article about Amir Valle's "Jineteras", a chronicle of todays Cuban sex trade, which developed in tandem with the expansion of the tourism industry in the 1990s. The story is told through the voices of the female prostitutes, pimps, and others that profit from their activities. The victimization of these women is evident, just reading the article will turn your stomach.

Remember these words? "Dentro de la revolucion, todo; fuera de la revolucion, nada."

His "revolution" has destroyed civil society in Cuba. In the past a daughter lost to the life of a Jinetera was a family trauma, a dreadful shame. Not anymore, most of the jineteras are minors, and their families are resigned to the life forced on them. Is there anyone more vile than fidel castro? He's nothing more than a pimp, using Cuba as his whore.

The article in spanish is here, and there's a review in english here.

Where, oh where...

...have the Babalu contibutors gone?

A shameful man

John Murtha was in town over the weekend doing his usual schtick: calling for troop withdrawals, bashing Bush, calling his fellow Marines murderers. From yesterday's Sun-Sentinel:

American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to a crowd of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.

But in The Aizona Star I learned something interesting about this scumbag that may explain why he is so hell-bent on doing what he's doing. Read the article here, but pay close attention to the comments. Does anybody remember Abscam? The scandal, twenty-five years ago, where many Democratic conressmen were viedotaped taking bribes from a phony Arab sheik? Here's a commenter on Tip O'Neill's former protege:

Murtha is mentioned in mose articles as a former decorated Marine and in some instances as a hero. As a resident of Western Pennsylvania and at one time represented by Murtha, I am thankful that is no longer the case. For someone who professes to be a decorated former Marine and a "hero", I wonder why he has never released the citations that accompanied his decorations. Try and find the info, it is not available. If the democrats think this kind blabber that Murtha speaks will get them elected in November, they are wrong. The American people are smarter than that and can see right through his retoric. Why doesn't the press ask him about or mention the fact he was an un-indicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM debacle in the 1980's? That subject is off limits since it would make one of the current darling's of the Democratic party look bad.

Here's another commenter:

[...]Murtha does not have a right to engage in treason. And the [...] corruption of our government is shown in that we do not arrest him. In a more civil day, say around 1943, he would literally have been tarred and feathered. There is "the law" and then there is "justice". Unless, of course, one thinks the ACLU benefits America. Thank you for the link to contribute to his opponent. Hopefully, he will have a cardiac from the guilt before the election. Murtha is a man destined for hell. He escaped due to cronyism in ABSCAM and he has traded his worldly benefits for his eternal soul, and it's at the expense of real Marines. He's closer to Judgement Day than away from it. But hving traveled down the road he is on, he hasn't the brains to understand that he should be repenting now, and not adding coal to his own personal fire.[...]

Maybe some more research is in order to bring to light this traitor's past and present dealings with those who would destroy this country.

The Cold War is Back

That's the topic under discussion at Front Page Magazine's Syposium by Jaime Glazov, "When an Evil Emprire Returns"

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, is leading his country back into the dark ages of Soviet totalitarianism and instigating a global confrontation between Russia and the United States -- as well as between Russia and the West as a whole.

The Russian President has consistently rolled back democratic freedoms. And he is proving that the genie can be placed back into the bottle: he has centralized authority and suffocated dissent in the media and in the nation at large. Reformers making efforts to build democracy have been intimidated and silenced.

On the international front, Putin's Russia is making trouble on Iran, obstructing U.S. efforts to get the Mullahs to stop their nuclear ambitions. And it is no surprise, seeing that not only did Russia obstruct U.S. efforts in Iraq, but evidence indicates that the Russian ambassador to Iraq passed on U.S. war plans to Saddam in the early days of the American invasion. More troublesome still, it appears that Russian mischief is behind the missing Iraqi WMDs.

So is the Evil Empire back? Or did it ever even leave us?

Former leading Russian dissident Yur Yarim-Agaev has this to say:

I would not reduce the political system that shaped the 20th century and brought our civilization to the brink of elimination, to a blip on the radar of Russian history. Whatever communism borrowed from Russian autocracy and from Marx’s theories, it developed into a clearly identifiable and new political system with a unique set of basic principles. That system is so deterministic and dominant that it established itself in virtually identical form in Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Cuba—with no regard to race, ethnicity or local history, and suppressing those countries’ cultures and religions. The Russian Gulag, the Chinese Laogai, Castro’s prisons, and Pol Pot’s killing fields are unalienable parts of any communist system and follow directly from Marxism-Leninism. They can hardly be explained by some obscure article of Nicholas I’s criminal code, typical for any autocracy.

Communism is cemented in its ideology and cannot survive without it. It does not make a difference whether its leaders believe in it or not, as long as they serve that ideology. Upon decline of the ideology, the system may continue to procrastinate its demise, since there is no opposition to challenge it. After the collapse of the system, constituent parts can exist even longer, especially if they are as tightly organized as the KGB--but they would still live on a borrowed time.

The KGB was always subservient to the party and cannot exist for any extended period without it. The KGB did not take over the communist party; in 1991 it totally lost its power together with the party. It never regained it, but rather filled the void left by disorganized Russian democrats, and the controversial policy of Western democracies.

Secret police cannot run a modern country; they can only try to control it. All the powers of the FSB as listed by Pacepa are of a destructive or restrictive nature. They only suppress society’s productive and constructive forces. That is why, with the skyrocketing prices of oil and gas, Russia remains a poor country in comparison with Estonia and the Czech Republic, which have no natural resources but a much higher level of political and economic freedom. Of all the offspring of the Soviet Empire, these two countries undertook the most radical steps to root out Communism.

With all its atrocities, totalitarianism has only one advantage. Like a sponge it soaks up into its hierarchy the most evil part of society and makes it localized and easily identifiable. It is unwise not to use that advantage. Any good doctor would be glad to identify a tumor timely and to remove it to save the patient’s life. It would be strange if instead of taking that action he would leave the patient with the explanation that his heredity and unhealthy lifestyle caused the deterioration of his health. Such advice can be useful after removal of the tumor, but not instead of it. It would have been quite unfortunate if in 1945 instead of holding the Nuremberg trials and carrying out the policy of denazification, America had found a historical explanation for German Nazism and left the Gestapo to rule.

Besides Mr. Yarim-Agaev, the panel includes; Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, retired Air Force fighter pilot and military analyst, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania's espionage service, and James Woolsey, former director of the CIA. Read it here.

Like Anagrams?

Rearranging the letters of 'fidel castro' gives:

Docile farts
So daft relic
Craft? Do lies
Old CIA frets
A cold strife
Red: it's focal
Stolid farce

Go play here.

Torture in Cuba

Since the U.N. Human Rights forum opened in Geneva this past week and Cuba’s Felipe Perez Roque made fallacious accusations against the U.S.—I thought it would be a good time to re-examine human rights in Cuba.

Armando Valladares is a Cuban poet who spent 22 years in castro’s gulag for publicly opposing his communist regime and the author of “Against All Hope”. Appointed by President Reagan, he served as a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading "Against All Hope", it will tell you all you need to know about human rights in Cuba.

From his 1988 address to the U.N. Human Rights Commission:

Mr. Chairman, today I want to speak about torture, about what it means for a human being to be tortured, to be humiliated, or what may be even worse, to watch a friend, a companion, or a relative being tortured.

As many of you know, I spent twenty-two years in prison for political reasons. Perhaps, I am the only delegate in this Commission who has spent such a long time in prison, although there are several persons here who have known in their own flesh the meaning of torture. I do not care about their political ideology, and I offer to you my embrace of solidarity, from tortured to tortured.

I had many friends in prison. One of them, Roberto López Chávez, was just a kid. He went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses. The guards denied him water, Roberto lay on the floor of his punishment cell, agonizing, deliriously asking for water. water… The soldiers came in and asked him: "Do you want water?"… The they took out their members and urinated in his mouth, on his face… He died the following day. We were cellmates; when he died I felt something wither inside me.

I recall when they kept me in a punishment cell, naked, with several fractures on one leg which never received medical care; today, those bones remain jammed up together and displaced. One of the regular drills among the guards was to stand on the steel mesh ceiling and throw at my face buckets full of urine and excrement.

Mr. Chairman, I know the taste of the urine and the excrement of other men… that practice does not leave marks; marks are left by beatings with steel rods and by bayonet thrusts. My head is still covered with scars and you can feel the cracks.

But, what can inflict more damage to human dignity, the urine and excrements thrown all over your face or a bayonet's blow? Which is the appropriate article for the discussion of this subject? Under which technical point does it fall? Under what batch of papers, numbers, lines and bars should we include this trampling of human dignity?

For me, and for innumerable other human beings around the world. The violation of human rights was not a matter of reports, of negotiated resolutions, of elegant and diplomatic rhetoric, for us was a daily suffering.

For me (it meant) eight thousand days of hunger, of systematic beatings, of hard labor, of solitary confinement, of cells with steel-planked windows and doors, of solitude.

Eight thousand days of struggling to prove that I was a human being. Eight thousand days of proving that my spirit could triumph over exhaustion and pain. Eight thousand days of testing my religious convictions, my faith, of fighting the hate my atheist jailers were trying to instill in me with each bayonet thrust, fighting so that hate would not flourish in my heart. Eight thousand days of struggling so that I would not become like them, rejecting torture as a mean to fight, forcing myself to forgive, rejecting the thoughts of revenge, reprisal and cruelty.

And when cruelty is extended to one's family, does not it become a means of torture? My father is an elderly man, he is very ill; he too suffered political imprisonment. Because he is my father he is not allowed to leave the country. For two years now, the authorities are preying on him as reprisal for my activities. They do not beat him, but they tell him that he will be leaving the country on the following day. My father travels to the Capital full of illusions. And when he is about to board the plane, they tell him that it was a bureaucratic error that he most goes back to his hometown. They do this to him every two or five weeks. They are damaging his mind, in the same manner that they destroyed my sister's, who is currently undergoing psychiatric treatment.

The arbitrariness of tyrants reduces their victims to the condition of mere beasts… dehumanizes them. In the same manner that animals are tied down, locked up or beaten without explanation, totalitarian regimes treat their adversaries as beasts. And there are times, when one is being treated like a beast, that the only thing that saves us from the most degrading humiliation, the only thing that keeps us firm, is to know that somewhere else there is another soul that loves us, that respect us and that is fighting for the return of the dignity that has been snatched from us.

Read the rest of the address at Capitalism Magazine

Sun & Fun

The Mrs and I will be getting some much needed R&R this weekend and Ill be away from the blog until probably the following Monday, but our fine collection of contributors will be on the ball here at Babalu, not letting any little Cuba related news item go unnoticed.

Have a great weekend, folks! And Ill see you all in a week or so.

Oh, and, please, dont throw any parties while I'm gone, OK?

Liberty City Terrorist Arrests (UPDATED)

Lots of buzz around the blogosphere about yesterday afternoon's arrest of seven terror suspects here in Miami. Michelle Malkin has a great round-up, as does Allah at Hot Air, Gateway Pundit and Blogs of War, plus Charlie Bravo has some choice words for the Cuban-American bashing MSM at KillCastro.

I dont have much to add to all of the above info and opinions, save for one simple fact everyone seems to have been overlooked: Liberty City is but a hop, skip and a jump from Downtown Miami where today at 2 pm, a parade will be held for the NBA World Champion Miami Heat.

Imagine thousands of not tens of thousands of people crowded and lined up and down a Biscayne Boulevard with rather lax security - the parade was, in fact, put together in a few days time - all celebrating their home team's championship.

Now if that scene doesnt make terrorists chomp at the bit and foam at the mouths, giddy with anticipation, I dont know what does...

UPDATED (by Amanda):
Do you think this would be a good target for a terrorist attack?

Anti-castro rap

Some of us like rap music, and if you're one of them, you might like this new rap music, by Somos Cubanos and another rapper in Canada, directed at the slimey beast of Havana.

For once, we all agree with that rappers get it righ about Da Man who's oppressing them.

Stefania's found two links to these rap videos, which she highly recommends, in this post here.

Andy Warhol rises from grave

Creates new images for Campbell Soup cans.

Soup sales plummet.