I hope your day's been better than mine...

I get up this morning and I still have those damned vertigo related little dizzy spells that Ive been having since Saturday. Im late, Im dizzy, Im tired, Im in a bad mood the second I see my yard because everything is stil in hurricane mode and to top it off its freaken trash day and I have to haul ass outside immediately and almost have to chase the damned trash truck with two full garbage cans.

I get ready for work and bark at my wife - who wakes up at 6 AM everyday just to make me cafe and sometimes pack me a lunch and and see me off - because the cafe isnt ready as Im about to whip out the door. It takes her a whole 30 seconds to hand me the steaming cup of cafe cubano.

I head out for work running late and when Im running late to work I get really irritable so every single other human being infront of or around me is a cause great ire. And there's more traffic today than usual as it seems everyone is guilty for missing a day or two from work and wants to get in early to score some brownie points at the office.

Suffice it to say that if I were ever to have a heart attack induced by asshole Miami drivers, it would have been this morning. I get to work almost 20 minutes late.

When I get to the office, I know I have stacks of piles of stacks that need to be done and Im pissed, Im dizzy, and Im sweaty at 7:20 in the morning and my day hasnt even remotely begun.

After a few hours of emails, phone calls, plan revisions, tutoring a new intern and the beginnings of a headache, I get a phone call. It's the Mrs. Seems the barge with the tree cutters that's been out in the canal back all week - Miami-Dade County Tree Cutting Subcontractors - is finally at our house and has begun butchering the ficus that I have spent the past two weeks calling and emailing ad infintum every known planning and zoning and environemntal entity and sub-entity in the County trying to save. The Mrs had been arguing with them for the past half hour to no avail. I feel useless of course, because Im at the office and I have shit that needs to GET DONE.

When I get off the phone my head is pounding. I finish off something that needed to get done first and tell my boss I have to run home because of the fucking ficus. This of course, after taking so much time away from the office for this blog and health issues and funerals and interviews and having taken the past two days off because of the "hurricane".

I head out at around 11.40 and haul ass home.

When I get there I can hear the chainsaws blaring already from my backyard. My heart sinks. My ficus. My beautiful fucking ficus.

The same stately ficus that was felled by Andrew in 92 and has survived over a decade - withstood every freaken hurricane therefater - and become this incredibly beautifully canopied nuturning tree. I cant even describe this beauty. It was just inspiring. The way despite the trunk being horizontal, it just kept blooming. You would stand under close to the center and look up and you were inside a perfect sphere of leaves.

I think the County's Subbed out project inspector noticed the absolutely intensity in my face when he saw me as I was opening the front door to run through the house and out back and start yelling at the tops of my lungs. I was ready to call the cops myself to save myself.

The inspector tried to be as cordial as possible, I tried with all my strength to respond in kind. He explained that they had to cut the trees that hang out over the canal and that since the ficus was on the ground, they were going to remove it as well.

Needless to say I got my point across, expressing my concerns with as much respect and civility as possible. But I believe it wasnt really the merits of my arguments or my veiled threats about letters to their bonding companies or lawsuits and restitutions that persuaded the inspector to cede. It was my countenance. (The Mrs says I look a little "intense" when I get like that.) They were only going to cut the overhanging branches and limbs and leave my tree so I took the guys name down, shook hands and headed back to the office after inspecting the tree.

I just got home from work again. I just walked into my backyard again. And my day has not improved an iota. When I saw the condition of my ficus tree, I swear I started crying.

Incredible photo of damage resulting from TS Ernesto

Here it is folks. This is an example of the hell we went through Tuesday and Wednesday.

(H/T Lou)

Dengue Fever in Cuba

There have been numerous news stories about Cuba's efforts to fight Dengue Fever. By all appearances, they're doing a lot of spraying, both ground and aerial. As usual, the communist state is demonstrating its band aid approach to problem solving. Everyone knows that adequate housing, sufficient water, sewage, and waste management systems are crucial for controlling mosquitoes. Unsanitary conditions are a leading cause of the spread of Dengue Fever.

Cubanet reports that water contaminated with sewage has been flowing in front of the Havana train station for over a year.

The flow of contaminated waters in front of the Havana train station has been a known problem for more than a year and the sewer authority has not moved a finger to make the necessary repairs in spite of their repeated complaints, say station workers.

The water flows from a backed-up septic tank, workers say, and represents a real danger of spreading disease to employees and the more than 2,000 travelers who use the station daily.

In particular, workers say, the water serves as breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which are very thick around the station and which carry dengue fever, among other maladies. Lately, there has been a spike in the number of cases of dengue fever reported in the capital.

The communist regime in Cuba is irresponsibly risking the health of millions by neglecting Cuban infrastructure. The health and welfare of a country's citizens is any government's first responsibility. Why doesn't the Cuban regime use some of their resources to fix Cuba's crumbling infrastructure? Perhaps some of those 1500 or so "workers" sent to Jamaica to screw in light bulbs could be put to work repairing Cuba's leaky pipes.

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My brain is mush today.

Missed two days of work and am swamped at the office. We survived Ernesto the Asthmatic just fine. I hope to be back to full blogging capacity as soon as I get caught up with work.

Til then, do check out the blogs on the blog roll.

Dejando Al tiempo Lo Que Es Del Tiempo

In 1927, Bacardi's Santiago Brewing Company launched Hatuey Beer. Chairman Don Enrique decided Hatuey would be a premium-priced beer. He had no intention of taking on the other domestic beers, on the basis of price, so he looked for what today is called a niche. In fact, the niche would eventually grow to occupy more than half of the Cuban beer market. "Dejando al tiempo lo que es del tiempo" (leaving to time what is the work of time), Enrique referred to Hatuey as his "pretty little fiancé".

It was named after a Dominican Indian chief know as "El Cacique de Guajabá" who led a local resistance to Diego Velazquez in Cuba's Oriente province in the early sixteenth century. Ultimately burned at the stake in Baracoa, his name became synonymous with the struggle for Cuban Independence.

Before his execution at the stake a Spanish Friar tried to convert him to Christianity. Hatuey asked the Friar if in heaven there were Christians. The Friar told him that only Christians were allowed to enter heaven. Hatuey displayed some early "Cuban" attitude, and responded that he then would rather not convert since he didn't want to go anywhere the Spanish were.

Read more about the history of Bacardi's Hatuey Beer here.

Who was Tati?

I originally wrote this post for Cuban-American Pundits back in February before I became a Babalu contributor. I was just thinking about my grandmother today so I thought I'd post it here too.

As with many Cuban exile families my parents both had to work when they came to this country. We were a two-income household in an era before that was as common as it is now. My parents were able to work and be assured that my sister and I were well taken care of because of Tati.

Tati was my nickname for my grandmother, my mother’s mother. Tati’s real name was America Romero. Tati was a tough lady. She started working when she was only 13 and she didn’t stop until the day a stroke left her in a wheelchair. She raised my mother, alone. My grandparents divorced when my mother was young. Then she raised my sister and I. And she also played a great part in raising my nephew and to a lesser extent my niece. That’s 3 generations of children she cooked, cleaned, and cared for. When she wasn’t raising kids she was quite a seamstress. One of the many jobs she had in her life was assembling military uniforms in Philadelphia. She would take bags filled with uniform components home and sew them together. This job offered her the flexibility of taking care of the kids while she worked. She was paid for each finished garment, which is an incredible incentive to do a lot of work. Incidentally she also babysat for other children while all of this was going on.

My earliest memories are of the five of us living in a 2nd floor, 2-bedroom, 1 bath apartment in the suburbs southwest of Philadelphia. In my lifetime my grandmother never had any hair color other than gray, unless you count white. Tati loved us but not in the typical sweet grandmother type of way. She could be quite the disciplinarian at times. And she didn’t often express a lot of outward tenderness but there was no mistaking that she loved us. Her love was expressed in what she gave us. What always put a twinkle in her eye was the appreciation we’d show when we thanked her for something she did. Maybe it was sewing a Halloween costume or always providing that extra sweet something after dinner like natilla or arroz con leche. A habit I can’t seem to get away from to this day.

Tati also had hobbies. She collected stamps though not the way most people do. All of the stamps in her collection had been used. She would cut the cancelled stamps off the envelopes and store them in large scrapbooks. She also collected souvenir spoons. You know the kind of spoon that might have a slot machine on it that says “Las Vegas”. Well she had them from every country, city, or theme park we ever visited, with or without her. We could never come home without buying Tati her spoon.

Often she’d help my sister and I with our projects for school. Perhaps it was tracing a map or watering a pea pod. I had one plant that started as a kindergarten project that followed us to Miami several years later and that lived in my parent’s home until well after I left to college. Needless to say I didn’t water that plant once. It was all Tati.

Tati never learned to speak English but she learned to understand enough of it to know when we were talking about her behind her back. She always required us to speak Spanish in her presence. She said we’d need to speak it properly some day. Today I work in Spanish language advertising.

Tati was opinionated and argumentative. Now you can understand where I get it. At times her and I got along like oil and water. But we always loved each other. And though I didn’t agree with her on a lot of things, her counsel was always listened to even if her advice wasn’t always followed. She used to say, “when I’m dead you’ll remember me and what I said.” And now she’s dead and I can tell you that she was right about that and a lot of other things that I dismissed as the flawed opinions of a stubborn old lady.

Tati died last year before I started blogging. I’d never been with someone when they passed but I was with her when she took her last breath. Fortunately, I was able to tell her exactly how I feel about her before it was too late. Hardly a day passes that I don’t think about her. Tati, gracias por todo. Sin ti yo no sería el hombre que soy. Te quiero mucho.

The Chinese Model?

If you think that lowering the embargo and trading with Cuba will help bring about democracy and human rights you may want to read this editorial from the Wall Street Journal. It demonstrates how despite its explosive economic growth how China is still a barbaric country that doesn't respect human rights.

China's Great Leap Backward
In most countries, a blind social activist who taught himself law to fight for the rights of the disabled and other victims of abuse would be a hero. In China, Chen Guangcheng's reward for doing this is prison.

After courageously exposing forced abortions and sterilizations that even the government agrees are against the law, he was sentenced Thursday to four years and three months on trumped up charges of "gathering a crowd to disrupt traffic" and damaging $680 of government property. Three lawyers who sought to defend the blind activist were detained by local police in the northeast Chinese province of Shandong and accused of stealing a wallet. The judge then announced that Mr. Chen's silence during the "trial" amounted to an admission of guilt.

Despite China's impressive progress in the economic arena and its repeated claims to be building a fairer legal system, the law is taking a great leap backward.

On Friday, Chinese journalist Zhao Yan was sentenced to three years in jail on dubious charges of fraud. A researcher for the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, Mr. Zhao was detained two years ago on charges of "leaking state secrets" after a story in the Times revealed that former President Jiang Zemin was about to step down as China's military chief. The Times has repeatedly denied that Mr. Zhao was involved in this story, and prosecutors didn't produce evidence that the report fit even China's elastic definition of state secrets. After President Bush twice raised the Times researcher's case with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Beijing had to be a bit more careful. So it let the state-secrets charges fail and dug up an unrelated five-year-old fraud charge to avoid setting Mr. Zhao free.

Meanwhile Ching Cheong, Hong Kong correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times, is waiting to hear his fate after a secret trial two weeks ago, again on charges of leaking state secrets. He was detained last year while trying to collect a manuscript containing interviews with the late reformist leader Zhao Ziyang, who sided with the student demonstrators in the 1989 Tiananmen protests.

Mr. Chen's case is the most tragic of all. He was guilty of doing no more than what Beijing has repeatedly urged disgruntled citizens: Use the country's embryonic legal system to tackle abuses by local cadres. After years of helping disabled people win cases against local government agencies, Mr. Chen last year brought a lawsuit on behalf of the victims of sterilizations and forced abortions inflicted by population-control officials in Shandong's Linyi City. Though China still has a one-child policy, both practices are now officially illegal. Some officials in Linyi responsible for forced sterilizations and abortions were sacked after Mr. Chen's lawsuit prompted an investigation by Beijing.

None of this was enough to save him when local officials took revenge. He was detained, beaten and ultimately imprisoned. Beijing police looked the other way as Mr. Chen was abducted from under their noses by Shandong officials. That fits a recent pattern in which the Chinese leadership has repeatedly sided with corrupt local officials against their accusers. Beijing's actions in cases such as these undermine China's claims that it is committed to the rule of law.

Abject failure? (Updated)

Tropical Storm Ernesto is as much an abject failure as his namesake che guevara. So far, we still have power. Frankly, I've been through summer afternoon thunderstorms that were scarier than this. In any event, we still have a few hours before the system passes over us completely. Kinda reminds me of Rita last year that didn't pan out as expected. Thank the Lord we over-prepared. Keep your fingers crossed.

Update: No damage, some heavy rain and wind. Nothing to write in the history books about. All kidding aside, we've had thunderstorms worse than this. My fourteen year dog Gigi woke us up at 3:15 AM panting, whining and nervous as hell. Per her vet's instructions, we gave her half a tranquilizer and she mellowed out in no time. An hour later, after we had fallen asleep again, we lost power for about fifteen minutes. The event could not be complete otherwise. Now, I'm on my way to help take off some of my family's shutters, and some of ours.

And wait for the next one...

Update #2: At 9:17 AM we lost power for about 15 minutes. Why? Who the hell knows. The wind wasn't as bad as earlier this morning, so any logical reason is out. Maybe Val's Farm Stores lady farted instead of having the hiccups and my power failed. Thanks, FP&L. An event like this would not be complete without a power outage or two.

Pre-losing Power Blogging

I dont want to sound alarmist or anything with the title of this post, but unfortunately, our neighborhood loses power when the old lady at the Farm Stores down the street has hiccups.

We're pretty much ready for Ernesto the Asthmatic Hurricane - we'll call him El Che from now on as he really isnt going to accomplish much except for being a major pain in the ass. You know, full of sound and fury signifying nothing and all that...

I didnt board up windows and I still have blue tarp on my roof. I just dont think El Che will be that bad a storm and reports seem to concur.

I will lose power though, so iffin ya dont see me posting all that much between now and say Thursday morning, it's because Im drinking beer and frolicking in the pool and having all sorts of fun with Mr. Generator.

Just in case, though, send me some extra spark plugs. Champion R-J17LM.

And beer.

"RIGHT LANE FOR GAS...

...LEFT LANE THRU TRAFFIC"

That's a sign I saw today posted on a telephone pole on my way to work. Ordinarily, under a Hurricane or Tropical Storm watch you see these signs pop up over town near gas stations. The difference here is that this sign was at least twenty blocks away from the nearest gas staton.

Worse part about it is that there were some people already waiting in line and the gas station was closed.

Oh, Ernesto Updated

UPDATE: The People's Cube has further commentary on this "People's" Cuba matter here.

Maybe I'm just touchy....

But do we really need this game, Scarface: The World Is Yours-- complete with Al Pacino's "Cuban" accent?

Yes, I know it's just a game, but a commenter at the sites forum asks, "Are there sharks?"

Fontova strikes again

The following is his column from today in Newsmax. Emphasis is mine.

French 'Justice' vs. Cuban 'Vengeance'
Humberto Fontova
Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006

American GIs liberated Paris 62 years ago last week. But pay no attention to the French troops strutting at the fore of the liberation parades on newsreels. Sure, some fought, mainly Foreign Legionnaires. But Ike allowed their strutting because Ike was "politically correct" before political correctness was cool.

The free world rejoiced at the time and the celebrations in Paris surpassed New Orleans' Mardi Gras – or so we hear. It so happens my father-in-law, a lifelong New Orleanian, helped blast the Nazis out of France and spent some leave in Paris. He was in a superb position to judge, and says it was no contest.

Sure, grateful and gorgeous French gals mobbed him. Sure, corks popped and champagne gushed. Sure, bands played and many legs were kicked up in the raucous jubilation. Still, "It was no Mardi-Gras, Hom-Boy-Da (New Orleanian for Humberto, very similar to old Brooklynese)," he assured me. "Nobody parties like us New Orleanians."

The Christmas Eve before his passing ten years ago, I complained about my wife's oyster dressing. "A bit dry," I huffed.

"I think it's delicious, honey!" he quickly turned to his daughter. "Sure beats my Christmas Eve feast in 1944."

That night, made expansive in these usually mum matters by the wine, my father-in-law told us that his 1944 feast had consisted of frozen C-rations and the setting was a quaint little Belgian town named Bastogne. This was the first time his own daughter had heard of his role in the very epicenter of a little dust-up later known as The Battle of the Bulge.

Here's a trademark, I've noticed, of relatives of genuine combat veterans. We thrill at the newsreels on the History Channel. Those on the spot would rather forget that "thrill."

Weeks later, my eyes popped as my mother-in-law pulled out an old satchel and displayed a Screaming Eagle shoulder patch and some medals I identified as a Bronze Star, a Silver Star with Oak Leaf Clusters and many others. The Purple Hearts I had expected from his forehead scars and limp.

In December of 1944, eager to wish the GIs a Merry Christmas, Hitler shifted twenty ferocious Panzer and SS Divisions from the Russian Front to the Western Front. He figured that those green American kids, most of whom had been dancing the jitterbug only a few months before, would cower and quickly cave in before the Reich's toughest soldiers. Then these would blast their way to Antwerp and bust the Western Front wide open.

Der Fuhrer's reaction to the reply from those besieged Bastogne defenders is not on record. But the reaction from the German commander who demanded their surrender is. "Vat does deez 'Nuts' mean?" asked the rattled German officer. "Eez deez reply negative or affirmative?"

"In plain English," laughed the 10st's Col. Harper, who had handed him the message from Gen. McAuliffe, "It's the same as 'Go to Hell!' So on your way, Bud!"

A few months after that hellish Christmas in Bastogne, those same Panzer divisions, who once surrounded and pounded them, surrendered to our GIs, who often shared their smokes, blankets and C-rations with them as the U.S. government started detoxifying their nation from Hitler's infection – not with firing squads and mass graves but by feeding and housing them while rebuilding their cities. Nothing could be more thoroughly American.

But not everyone was keen on forgiving and forgetting, especially the French. According to the Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War, Nazi repression caused 172,260 French civilian deaths during the occupation. Liberation also meant payback time. The heavy hand of retribution fell mostly on native collaborators, and the term "collaboration" proved very sweeping. Usually the phrase "guilt by association" is a pejorative to condemn an obvious injustice. In liberated France it became the dominant legal axiom. Historian and National Review editor David Pryce-Jones estimates 105,000 summary executions of French collaborators in the months after the liberation.

Merely writing favorably about the occupiers was sufficient for a death sentence. The French writer Robert Brasillach was an example, and De Gaulle himself minced few words rationalizing the verdict. "In literature as in everything, talent confers responsibility." And that was that. On February 6, 1945, Brasillach crumpled in front of a firing squad.

Imagine this legal principle of "intellectual crimes" applied after Cuba's liberation to Castro's literary and journalistic collaborators, and with transnational enforcement. The mind reels.

Half the staffs of every publication from the New York Times to Le Monde would be dangling from nooses. Every publisher save Regnery and Encounter would be sending flowers in loving memory of half of their authors. The door of every faculty office of every liberal arts professor from Harvard to Georgetown and from Berkeley to Oxford would sport an RIP note. Every TV network save Fox would find half its anchors marched to the gallows.

You readers are aghast, right? This fantasy is more proof that I'm a "vengeance-seeking Cuban-exile crackpot"!

For the record, I advocate nothing of the sort for liberated Cuba, and neither has any Cuban-American.. Here's a better analogy for the current news cycle: If Hitler had died in 1944, should the Free French have embraced a Nazi regime headed by Goering, Ribbentrop and Himmler? Would enlightened opinion universally denounce the French who balked at such an accommodation as "hardliners" and "crackpots"?

According to the Cuba Archive Project, headed by scholars Maria Werlau and Dr. Armando Lago, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million people in 1960. France was nation of 42 million in 1940 – and as mentioned, 172,260 of these died from Nazi policies.

My calculator reveals that Castroites caused an enormously higher percentage of deaths among the people they "liberated" and lavished with free and exquisite health care than the Nazis caused among the French they enslaved and tortured with the SS and Gestapo.

The Free French, having lost a much smaller percentage of their compatriots to the Nazis than Cubans lost to the Castroites, demanded the heads of every Nazi, every Nazi collaborator and every person who ever uttered anything nice about a Nazi. At Nuremberg the French helped sentence Goering and Ribbentrop to death. In 1987 they found Lyon Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie in Bolivia, had him extradited, and sentenced him to life in prison. All of this was hailed as justice.

Cuban-Americans merely decline to legitimize the rule of Cuba's Goerings, Ribbentrops, Himmlers and Barbies – which is to say, a regime that killed (proportionately) five times as many of their Cuban compatriots as the Nazis killed French. Yet everywhere from the New York Times, to the Boston Globe to the Orlando Sentinel to the Wall Street Journal, Cuban-Americans are being portrayed as insufferable, reactionary blockheads, and the Republicans they elect as craven and unprincipled hacks. All this for refusing to cuddle up to a Cuba run by Raul Castro, Che Guevara's primary rival as the Cuban regime's chief executioner.

Romanian general Ion Pacepa was the Soviet bloc's highest-ranking intelligence defector. He knew Raul Castro well and shared his insights in a recent National Review article: "Raul ... has been the brutal head of one of Communism's most criminal institutions: the Cuban political police. I met him in that capacity. He was cruel and ruthless. Fidel may have conceived the terror that has kept Cuba in the Communist fold, but Raul has been the butcher. He has been instrumental in the killing and terrorizing of thousands of Cubans."

Note that Pacepa regards Castro's political police as "one of Communism's most criminal institutions." Coming from a man who learned the ropes of his profession from Stalin's henchmen and who served as Nikolai Ceausescu's chief spy, this is saying something.

Had Raul Castro only worn a swastika, Miami Cubans and the Republicans they elect would now be hailed as selfless proponents of decency and justice instead of vindictive quacks.

Humberto Fontova is the author of Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, a Conservative Book Club Main Selection.

In August I get up at night...

...and dress by yellow candlelight.

So, um, looks like we're gonna be getting slammed tomorrow by Hurricane Ernesto, doesnt it? That means that today, after work, I will have to start busting my ass.

We pretty much have our standard hurricane crap all ready: batteries, flashlights, candles, canned goods, plenty of water, coolers ready, the whole nine yards. But today I have to board up at least two or three windows. Ordinarily I'd board them all up, but it looks like Ernesto may be a little asthmatic and not pack that much of a punch. The only reason Im boarding up at least one or two rooms is for the Mrs. Just to help keep her nice and calm.

ManCamp basically has to be battenned down. I have to put away all the grilles, take the Fema tent down, store all the tables and chairs, etc... One never really realizes how much crap they have in their yards until they have to pack'em all up because you have a hurricane coming. Freaken pain in the ass.

Local news is all hurricane, all the time. Video from people buying their hurricane provisions at stores, videos from gas stations, videos of people putting up shutters, the standard shots of a desolate Key West, every single hurricane its the same freaken thing all over again. Ad nauseaum, ad infinitum.

What drives me absolutely bat shit is the fact that they keep telling you, over and over and over agian, everything you need to have to be prepared, everything you need to do, etc...For crying out loud: If you didnt learn from last year's hurricane season, you're an idiot and you deserve for Ernesto to pick you up and toss your ass out into the Atlantic.

There is, however, one piece of advice that the news wont give you and its something that could mean the difference between life or death and someting which I will share with you all, dear readers: make sure you do lots and lots of laundry today while you still have power. Specifically, wash all of your underwears.

Because you may lose power for an indeterminate number of days and since you'll probably be busting your hump in the August heat cutting trees and stumps and picking up debris and roof shingles and picking up your neighbors screen enclosure from your pool, you're probably going to go through your Fruit of the Looms rather quickly. And that means that after a few days you'll have to resort to those underwears way in the back of your underwear drawer. The ones you never use because youve probably gained a bit too much weight and they are, how shall I say, rather restraining. Yes, that's right folks, you'll have to resort to the tighty whities. The ones that hurt.

Trust me on this folks. Wash your underwears right now. Because I can tell you it aint no fun to be working around the yard in a pair of underwears three sizes too small.

Ernesto makes a beeline to Miami-Dade County (Update)

Here's the map of the possible path of Hurricane Ernesto with the "cone of uncertainty" as of 2:00 PM EDT today. Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties are the bulls-eye. Some forecasters are sayin that if the storm lingers over Santiago for a while, it may not be as powerful when it comes ashore here. We'll see.

Informal poll: how many here in SoFla still haven't fixed their roofs from last year's storms?

Update 2:39PM: Lines to get gasoline were out of control in soutwest Miami-Dade County about an hour ago. I was able to top off my tank but neglected to take my two 5-gallon gas cans to fill. Now it looks as though I may not get them filled up in time. We're always straddling a thin line between calm and hysteria here during hurricane season; I think we crossed the line earlier today.

Orders from raúl - 1963

When you take a break from all those hurricane preparations, take a look at this: It's a 1963 directive from none other than little brother raúl to his military commanders instructing them on proper revolutionary behavior for the troops, it's about that drinking, it's about that sex, it's about religion.... It's about control, for the dictator.

It's in Spanish, at El Nuevo Herald.

Just make it go away, Robert.

From today's Miami Herald:

South Florida's emergency managers urged residents to start taking sensible precautions -- and to be careful. A 12-year-old boy was flown Sunday night from Southwest Miami-Dade to Miami Children's Hospital after a hurricane shutter fell on his leg.

Local forecasters predicted that tropical-storm conditions -- heavy rain and sustained winds well above 39 mph -- could begin arriving in the Keys, Miami-Dade and Broward by Tuesday afternoon and persist through Thursday.

They also warned of storm-surge flooding and possible tornadoes, regardless of the intensity of Ernesto's winds or its precise path near or through South Florida.

''Preparations to protect life and property may need to be initiated over all of South Florida on Monday,'' Robert Molleda, the National Weather Service's warnings coordinator, said Sunday night.

Robert, isnt there something you can do to make old ernie stay the hell away from us? The blue tarps on my roof will greatly appreciate it.

Coño, me cago en la mierda.

Cuba and American POWS

On May 27, 1966, 166 Cubans, civilians and members of the military -- were executed and submitted to medical procedures of blood extraction of an average of seven pints per person. This blood was sold to communist Vietnam at the average rate of $50 per pint with the duel purpose of obtaining hard currency and contributing to the Vietcong Communist aggression.

Several thousand Cuban soldiers were stationed in Vietnam during the war years; they participated in constructing and maintaining the Ho Chi Minh Trail where a large number of Americans disappeared, and provided "technical" support. There were reports that they were piloting MIGs in aerial combat with American pilots over North Vietnam.

Cubans also tortured and murdered over 20 American POWS with a sadism equal to Hitler's Mengele.

This is not news; the story's been reported off and on since the 1970’s. A November 1999 congressional hearing before the Committee on International Relations left important unanswered questions.

Michael D. Benge, a former POW in Vietnam testified at the hearing, he writes:

Besides evidence contrary to DPMO's stated position on the "Cuban Program," the documents I examined reveal:

The possibility that a number of American POWs from the Vietnam War had been held in Los Maristas, a secret Cuban prison run by Castro's G-2 intelligence service.

A Cuban Official had offered the State Department to ransom some American POWs from Vietnam, but there was no follow up.

That Cubans, along with Russians, guarded a number of American POWs in Laos.

Two unrelated documents telling of American POWs being taken from Vietnam to Cuba.

As recent as 1996, the Vietnamese trained Cuban Special Forces to undertake limited attacks in the USA.

Perhaps full disclosure of Cuba’s role in the Vietnam War should be added to the list of conditions that must be met before the U.S. will lift the embargo.

Read more here, here, and here.

Battening down in south Florida

Governor Jeb Bush has declared a state of emergency in Florida, with Hurricane Ernesto expected to make landfall around Fort Myers on Wednesday. The Category 1 storm is just off the coast of Haiti now, and is expected to dump rain and trigger mudslides on the wretchedly deforested half-island there. After that, it will trash southeastern and central Cuba, before heading into the Gulf, and presumably, Florida, by this time becoming a Category 3. It might go somewhere else, but this is what we know. Miami is going to see a ton of thunder and rain out of this, and might not completely be out of danger. I have not heard from Val or George or Amanda or Henry or Robert yet, but it's reasonable to think they are very busy right now, getting ready for the storms as this thing passes overhead by about Tuesday. Let's hope for the best and say a prayer for them

Via Free Republic, I found the Jeb Bush announcement here, and a Fox News story updating the matter here.

Official National Hurricane Center updates can be found here.

See George's map-post above, here.

The definition of a guranteed failure

Fox News: "Annan Asks France to Lead Lebanon Force." Prepare the white flags, mes amis!

Civil Disobedience

True to form and in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet sends this message from his prison cell in Havana (courtesy of El Nuevo Herald and translated by yours truly).

The people of Cuba have been suffering the contempt of a totalitarian tyranny, of Communism, for more than four decades. Due to this cruel treatment where the honor of the people is violated, many of us are indignant and rising up in prayer and fasting to plead to the God of the Bible, and demanding from our government the signatures from the international human rights pacts (the international pact of civil and political rights as well as the one regarding economic, social and cultural rights) signed and sealed by the international community at the United Nations.

As we have so well expressed, these demands are directed to the government of Cuba, regardless of who's in charge, because as they said in Boston: "Tyranny is tyranny, let it come from whom it may".

For that reason we must continue our journey of prayer and fasting until obtaining the requested signature, and until the fulfillment and respect of human rights for all Cubans is put immediately into practice.

We must expedite the achievement of these basic rights through civil disobedience, and by putting into practice all methods to obtain our humanitarian aim.

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will" (Frederick Douglass).

We have the right to be free and to use our individual sovereignty as a people, and "only freedom brings with it peace and wealth" (Jose Martí).

Here, in this dark gate where I am forced to live, I will continue to resist until obtaining the freedom of my people.

Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet

President, Lawton Foundation for Human Rights

Combinado del Este Prison

La Habana, Cuba

Blog Therapy

HELL YEAH!!

El Che Heading to Cuba?

Cuba is preparing for a visit from Ernesto:

Can anybody tell me why Bill Maher is still on TV?

I saw an ad in the Wall Street Journal announcing that his show is returning to HBO tonight. Bill Maher is not funny and ironically as a pundit he's laughable.

Land of rum and rumba blighted by communism

Two years ago Australian reporter Caroline Overington was sent on assignment to Cuba. She expected a land of dark rum, hot nights, fat cigars and the rumba. What she found was very different. Her review of Luis M. Garcia's, "Child of the Revolution" is also a scathing rebuttal of the hype that Cuba is a socialist paradise.

She writes:

The reality was very different. Cuba was wretched. Every day the photographer and I encountered distressing scenes of women, children and ageing Cubans living in terrible poverty.

Elsewhere, we found barefoot children searching through rubbish bins for food. There is a large black population in Cuba - many of them are descendants of sugar-cane cutters - and there were many blacks among the beggars. Women with babies at the breast tugged at our clothes, begging for pennies.

In the Western-style bars, beautiful Cuban girls hung off the arms of Western men.

We drove into the countryside and found people living with open sewers and dirt floors, with no food, no coffee, no rum, no pork, no music, none of the things a Cuban needs to thrive.

Castro's revolution - free food, free education, free health care for all - was a sad, sorry joke. The classrooms were decrepit, the school books so old as to be useless. Store shelves were empty.

It was a police state, too. Nobody would speak ill of Castro (if they did, it was quietly, with a pale, strained face and a furtive glance over the shoulder).

We visited the homes of dissidents and heard that librarians, poets and free-marketeers - good, friendly people - had been taken to prison, some of them sentenced to 20 years or more in a cell no larger than a toilet block, forced to walk around and around in circles, 400km from home in a nation where it's impossible to visit anybody unless you hitch a ride in the back of a creaking, humpbacked truck known as a "camel", made in eastern Europe and liable to break down in the Cuban heat.

It was a terrible shock because, like many people, I'd believed the hype about Cuba: that it was a socialist paradise; that Castro was a visionary leader; that the Cuban people were happy communists. In fact, Castro is a gutless dictator who has never been brave enough to hold a presidential election. Yet across the West he continues to be celebrated as some grand, visionary leader, instead of being derided as a lunatic on his last legs.

Read her editorial at The Australian.

Did you know...

...that 62 of Wyoming's population of 492,534 are Cubans?

Yep. Says so right here in this brand spanking new Fact Sheet on Cubans in the United States from the Pew Hispanic Center.

Happy Place

Because there's nothing better than a little Cuban cheesecake after being viciously slandered by a cyber acto de repudio.

Resistance

From Uncommon Sense:

The calls for such civic resistance are increasing from Cuban patriots, in and out of the Castro brothers’ gulag.

Let me be blunt:

You wanna see civic resistance increase in Cuba? Stop the checks from the evil fascist Miamians.

Todos mi Cuba

"Mankind is composed of two sorts of men - those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy."

— Jose Marti

King Henry V, Act IV, scene iii, 35

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Possible talks with Cuba in the works

According to the Polish press, there are behind the scene efforts to organize round table talks in Cuba aimed at ending communist rule on the island.

WARSAW, Poland (Reuters): Polish ex-President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who helped negotiate a peaceful end to Ukraine's "Orange Revolution", has offered to mediate talks between the Cuban government and Cuban opposition leaders.

In 1989, Kwasniewski took part in famous "round table" talks between Poland's government and the Solidarity trade union that led to a bloodless end to communism.

An aide to Kwasniewski said former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer would be invited to join the international group, which could travel to Cuba as soon as May. No further details were given.

"This is an issue which requires talks behind the scenes not in the media," Kwasniewski said.

No word on whether or not Cuba would be willing to participate in such talks, but I think an international effort has a better chance of being considered than a strictly US led proposal. Read the story at Caribbean Net News.

H/T PL at Cuba Verdad

Saturday

Don't have plans for the Saturday night? Live in the South Florida area? GREAT!!
Go see Rhett y Los Borrachos Empeñados at Jazid on South Beach. Show starts at 11 PM. Me, my growing belly, the hubby, and a few friends will be there.
There's no cover, and you may have heard us rave about RYLBE!
go to www.jazid.net for more info. Hope to see you there!!

Cuba que lindo son tu paisajes...

Ive been a bit on the burned out side on politics the past few days so Ive decided to take it easy on the political posts for the next few days or so and go to, as Sheila puts it, my happy place.

To wit:

This just in....

I just received a quick text message from Joe Papp:

Val,

We did it! I just wired the final payment this morning! More to follow. Thanks!

Joe.

A huge, heartfelt thanks to all who pitched in and helped to reunite Joe and Yuliet here in the US. Ive said it before a million times, but, you guys totally totally rock.

Stand proud Babalusians, ya done a good thing indeed.

A Resonant Cubanism

Given the events I experienced this morning, I thought Id offer up a very resonant Cubanism.

Cubanism: Visteme despacio que estoy de prisa.

Literal translation: Dress me slowly, Im in a hurry.

Meaning: Basically, "haste makes waste."

We love the Czechs (Part 3)

Great article in FrontPage Magazine on what Eastern European churches are saying to the religious coddlers of fidel in the West. Here's the introduction:

Although Western mainline church officials have refused to criticize Fidel Castro for decades, some East European Christians are now speaking out.

The head of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in the Czech Republic is directly challenging the head of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches over his criticisms of America's anti-Castro policy.

"From our own experiences churches in Central and Eastern Europe are aware of what it means to live under a repressive totalitarian regime of the type, which, according to our opinion, exists in Cuba," gently chided Jitka Klubalová in her letter to World Council of Churches chief Samuel Kobia early this month. Klubalova is the general secretary of the Czech church group for Protestants. She expressed her "uneasiness" over Kobia’s stance.

Great stuff. Read all of it here.

Thursday Open Thread - BOA Edition

Ill be away most of the morning as I have a presentation today at the City of Coral Gables for a project we're working on in the office. I'll be up before the Board of Architects of the dreaded City Beautiful.

Use this post as today's open thread to post any interesting links, observations, comments or Dolphins vs. Carolina score predictions.

Beware of early morning phone calls.

So, Im in my early morning getting ready for work routine when the phone rings. It's our neighbor saying that her husband had just called because on his way to work he'd seen two jonboats out in the canal, banked at the corner of our property. There's been a string of break ins in our little neck of the woods lately and naturally I was more than a little concerned.

I immediately sprung into action, grabbed the Kahr 9mm, loaded it, cocked it, and hauled ass outside. I got to the canal bank but I couldnt see the jonboats for the trees. The grass was wet, there was a little bit of fog wafting atop the water and it was a bit cool outside. A little cooler than normal. A little too cool.

I notice right then and there, standing at the very rear of the property, on the canal bank, with a loaded gun in my hand at 6:30 in the morning with the sun coming up and dew all over the place, that the reason I am so cool is because I am stark naked.

In my zeal to get the 9mm our from its storage place and get it loaded and ready and then get to the back yard as quickly as possible, I had completely forgotten that I was about to get into the shower when the phone rang and had completely forgotten to throw on even a pair of Hanes.

Turns out the jonboats were county jonboats and that one of them didnt say "SURVIVOR" on it as Id been told. It read "SURVEYOR". Seems the county is finally getting around to picking up all the trees and foliage that fell into the canal from last year's hurricanes.

And, I might add, they're gonna chop up my ficus tree that hangs over the canal like a beautiful dome. Bastards.

So, how was your morning?

Anti-Semitism and fidel castro

Yesterday, the subject of anti-Semitism and castro came up. Daniel suggested that maybe it was time for another post on the subject. First off, I want to make clear that anti-Semitism in Cuba is a product of fidel himself; his hero and role model was Hitler, not Stalin. Pre-castro Cuba had problems, but anti-Semitism wasn't one of them. Cubans of all stripes are Cuban, period.

Myles Cantor has written extensively about castro and anti-Semitism. His November 2002 FrontPage Magazine article, " The Baghdad-Havana Axis of Jew Hatred", is a good place to start. A few excerpts:

What are Castro's views of Israel? Last June in Havana, Castro led a rally of approximately 10,000 that protested Israeli "genocide." The rally culminated a week of "Palestinian solidarity" activities organized by the regime.

At last September's "World Conference against Racism" in Durban, South Africa, Castro referred to Israel's "ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people." This March during a televised speech in Havana he referred to "revolting and brutal killings such as the ones carried out by the State of Israel…against the people of Palestine."

... Castro has a long history of backing aggression against Israel. From sending thousands of troops to aid Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur War through the present training of Palestinian terrorists, Castro is in the vanguard of anti-Zionist violence. (The most notorious terrorist Cuba has trained is Illich Rámirez Sánchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal.)

Agustin Blazquez's, "Castro's anti-Semitism and the PLO" at netforcuba, details the dictators enthusiasm for Hitler's fascism and its influence on his future terrorist activities. The 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks was inspired by Hitler's 1924 attack on the War Ministry in Munich which made him a national figure in Germany.

Mr. Blazquez writes, "Like Hitler and his fascists, soon after grabbing power in 1959, Castro began eliminating people by summary executions, jail, concentration camps and exile, destroying them before they could become enemies."

If castro has any regrets, I doubt that it's guilt for the death and destruction he's wrought. More likely he wishes he could have talked Khrushchev into launching those missiles and is sorry that democracy will survive him.

Got a question for you.....

Who's better off since 1959, Cubans or Puerto Ricans?

It may sound like a dumb question, but someone actually is asking. Really.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go answer it!!!

Ride a painted pony...

...on the spinning wheel ride.

H.R. 927

There appears to be some speculation being bandied about that the US is working behind the scenes to lift the embargo. I thought I'd remind everyone of H.R. 927, Title II, Sec. 205:

SEC. 205. REQUIREMENTS AND FACTORS FOR DETERMINING A TRANSITION GOVERNMENT.

(a) REQUIREMENTS- For the purposes of this Act, a transition government in Cuba is a government that--

(1) has legalized all political activity;

(2) has released all political prisoners and allowed for investigations of Cuban prisons by appropriate international human rights organizations;

(3) has dissolved the present Department of State Security in the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, including the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Rapid Response Brigades; and

(4) has made public commitments to organizing free and fair elections for a new government--

(A) to be held in a timely manner within a period not to exceed 18 months after the transition government assumes power;

(B) with the participation of multiple independent political parties that have full access to the media on an equal basis, including (in the case of radio, television, or other telecommunications media) in terms of allotments of time for such access and the times of day such allotments are given; and

(C) to be conducted under the supervision of internationally recognized observers, such as the Organization of American States, the United Nations, and other election monitors;

(5) has ceased any interference with Radio Marti or Television Marti broadcasts;

(6) makes public commitments to and is making demonstrable progress in--

(A) establishing an independent judiciary;

(B) respecting internationally recognized human rights and basic freedoms as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Cuba is a signatory nation;

(C) allowing the establishment of independent trade unions as set forth in conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labor Organization, and allowing the establishment of independent social, economic, and political associations;

(7) does not include Fidel Castro or Raul Castro; and

(8) has given adequate assurances that it will allow the speedy and efficient distribution of assistance to the Cuban people.

(b) ADDITIONAL FACTORS- In addition to the requirements in subsection (a), in determining whether a transition government in Cuba is in power, the President shall take into account the extent to which that government--

(1) is demonstrably in transition from a communist totalitarian dictatorship to representative democracy;

(2) has made public commitments to, and is making demonstrable progress in--

(A) effectively guaranteeing the rights of free speech and freedom of the press, including granting permits to privately owned media and telecommunications companies to operate in Cuba;

(B) permitting the reinstatement of citizenship to Cuban-born persons returning to Cuba;

(C) assuring the right to private property; and

(D) taking appropriate steps to return to United States citizens (and entities which are 50 percent or more beneficially owned by United States citizens) property taken by the Cuban Government from such citizens and entities on or after January 1, 1959, or to provide equitable compensation to such citizens and entities for such property;

(3) has extradited or otherwise rendered to the United States all persons sought by the United States Department of Justice for crimes committed in the United States; and

(4) has permitted the deployment throughout Cuba of independent and unfettered international human rights monitors.

A question from Rob Mayer

Rob Mayer at Publius Pundit has an interesting single question that I think a lot of Babalu readers would be uniquely placed to answer with a lot of insight. Read it here.

Whistling Dixie, a lo cubano

BeanTownCuban's Johnny Diaz had a great article published in the Boston Globe on Loreta Janeta Velazquez, a Cuban woman who fought in the Civil war as a male Confederate Soldier:

Loreta Janeta Velazquez sounded like a mythical figure: a Cuban-born woman raised in New Orleans, where she masqueraded as a male soldier and fought in the Civil War. With a fake mustache, beard, and a soldier's uniform, the Latina enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861 as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford , without her husband's knowledge.

Read the whole incredibly interesting thing.

Hat tip: Christine.

The Religion of Peace kidnaps two Fox journalists (Updated)

Michelle Malkin is having a blogburst today today to get the news out about the two Fox News journalists kidnapped in Gaza.

Fox News Channel reporter Steve Centanni and freelance cameraman Olaf Wiig are still missing. It has now been more than a week since their kidnapping at gunpoint in Gaza by unknown terrorists. FNC top management, the journalists' families, and Palestinian journalists continue to press for their release.

Let's all pray for their safe return.

Update: On a related note, our good friend Josue from TownHall.com and formerly from LatinoIssues.com posted links to videos of two interviews with Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan and a columnist for the Daily Mail. Folks, in my humble opinion, Ms. Phillips is voicing voicing the twenty-first century's version of Paine's Common Sense. Listen carefully to what she says. It is critical information.

Londonistan update: Melanie Phillips on Fox
Monday, August 21, 2006 3:54 PM

I wrote a few days ago about the new book, Londonistan. HotAir is featuring a video clip of author Melanie Phillips -- you got to watch it.

I’m giving you the whole clip, only because she doesn’t get many invites to do American TV. For reasons that will soon become apparent. Kudos to Paul Gigot and the Journal Editorial Report for having her on.

She goes further than I’m willing to go in her proposed solutions to the problem, but perhaps that’s because she appreciates its magnitude more acutely than I do. Ten airplanes blowing up over the Atlantic would have turned a lot of people to her position. How many liberties did Britain’s security services save by foiling the plot? [...]

Update: Neil Cavuto had her on as well. You can watch that one on YouTube right here. [...]

P.S., I have already ordered my copy from Amazon.

White House Conference Call on Cuba - URGENT

This morning at 10:30, I've been invited to participate in a White House Conference Call on Cuba with Dan Fisk, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Caleb McCarry, Cuba Transition Coordinator, U.S. Department of State. We'll be discussing, obviously, this US administration's actions vis-a-vis Cuba.

If there's anything you all want to let the White House know or if there's any questions you would like answers to, please let me know in the comments ASAP.

Update: For starters, Ill be mentioning the possibility of charges being filed against raul castro for his involvement in the Brothers to the Rescue murders. Ill be voicing displeasure about the wet foot/dry foot policy and Ill be asking about "advocacy agreements" added to Cuba trade contracts.

This is your chance to have your voices heard, folks. Please take advantage of this opportunity.

Update: Conference call just ended. There were quite a few Cuban-Americans and others participating including Carlos Eire, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Jose Basulto, Ninoska, Carlos Mayans, Cuban-American Mayor of Wichita, Kansas...too many to note all. I was quite humbled to be among such estemmed company and to tell the truth quite nervous.

All asked important questions. The raul castro indictment topic was addressed and the response was that the government is in the process of authenticating the recently released recording and will make a determination once that is complete. Also addresed was the US government's stepping up of diplomatic outreach to allies and other countries to garner support for the democratic process in Cuba. Carlos Eire, specifically, addressed the PR efforts needed to help garner understanding of the realities of Cuba.

The new immigration policy for Cuban doctors was mentioned and we were told there have been quite a few doctors already taking advantage of said policy with a list of many more waiting in the wings.

Mine was the second to last question and I fumbled through a follow-up of Carlos' questions, asking what efforts the administration is undertaking to garner support for the Cuban cause not just from the rest of the world and from within Cuba, but to help educate the US public on the realities of Cuba.

Obviously, these conference calls are just one of the measures being taken, both to listen to what our community thinks but to help us get the word out to the American public. In essense, the US governmnet will continue and in some instances expand their efforts for support from the American people, but the onus is on us to help deliver that message.

It is we who have to keep speaking the truth about Cuba, shouting even if it appears no one is listening, until more eyes are opened and more hearts are touched.

Our work is only beginning, folks.

castro's got the Crab

The Conductor reports on last night's testimony on A Mano Limpia - a local Spanish TV show - that fidel castro has suffered from some kind of intestinal cancer.

The above coincides with this report from Dr. Lisa Marcucci of InsideSurgery.com which concludes:

Conclusion: I still believe that Castro's diagnosis is some type of metastatic intraabdominal cancer. It just seems to me that if it was at all possible they would have wheeled him onto a balcony for at least a few seconds of a live appearance. When Pope John Paul II was really just hours from death he appeared at the window of his room. The photos from Havanna were intended, of course, to portray that Castro is not as sick as he probably is. Or maybe Castro just doesn't care anymore if he makes a live appearance or not. I will bet my house that we never see him alive again.

(Emph. mine.)

I sure do hope Dr. Marcucci's diagnosis is correct. Read the whole thing here (you have to scroll down a bit as there appears to be a problem with the page.).

Hat tip: Clem.

Truckonauts Update

Via the always superb Tim Blair, Car And Driver has put out an excellent magazine feature with lots of photos about the Truckonaut odyssey, the story of how an amazing Cuban named Luis Grass managed to turn his beloved Chevrolet truck into a boat that floated all the way to Miami's edge, only to be sunk by contemptible U.S. border goons, unwilling to understand the strength of the Cubans' human spirit, or the way they captured the U.S. imagination, and therefore unable to find a way to help these brave people achieve their American dream.

We all still think about the Truckonauts.

The whole am