Ibrahim Ferrer, R.I.P.

Sad news – the great Cuban sonero, Ibrahim Ferrer, a man whose voice was as distinctive and stirring as Celia Cruz’s, has died in Havana. He was 78.

He was my favorite singer.

His lashing voice, striking son and bolero songs, and individualistic humor came to life in Ry Cooder’s 1999 Buena Vista Social Club film, which while avoiding direct politics, was unintentionally the most damning large-scale film against castro ever made.

Ferrer was a real Cuban who lived and suffered through the castro regime, same as everyone, and for many years was driven from pre-castro-era stardom to obscurity by castro’s state planners, the blotting-paper-faced communist bureaucrats who wouldn’t know a great singer if he was right in front of them. castro’s gray mediocrities consigned the great talent of Ibrahim Ferrer to shining shoes. That’s right, castro forced him to give up his golden singing and instead made him a shoe-shine boy. It tells you just about all you need to know about the nature of the castro regime.

In Cooder’s movie, Ferrer was extremely humble, questioning, open, and exuberant. He was passionate about Cuban music – and dancing, too. He played checkers on the patio. He loved Cuban traditional religion, and in his shabby apartment, he showed his statues of Santa Barbara and other santos to the filmmakers. Of course he was a threat. But after Cooder’s movie, even they could no longer ignore him.

I have his albums and every single off other musicians’ records I can get my hands on, and I notice his work improves in succession. It’s vibrant, spirited, and highly disciplined. You can tell that this is a great talent even if you do not know much about Cuban music. His talent is that obvious.

He was incredibly good in so many ways.

I love the sexy rhythms and lilting low undertow of Guaguanco Callejero from his Buenos Hermanos album, exuberantly extolling the beauty of his black woman. We all love that black woman he’s hailing like a goddess – ‘iave maria, morena!’

In No Tiene Teleranya, we hear the song of scorn of a spider caught in its own web, with Ferrer’s voice sharply moving against the amazingly rhythmic slack-key guitar that really draws you in. It sounds like surfer music – something that reminds you that Cuba was a major influence on the Southern California surf music of the 1960s.

But I especially love the subtle undercurrents of cutting political putdowns in some of Ferrer’s songs, things I hear in his voice and read through his lyrics.

In his Oye el consejo from his Buenos Hermanos album, he, at age 76, manages to convincingly portray the spirit of a 16-year-old boy who’s being nagged by his oppressive mother as he longs to be free and experience Havana. She yells that he never listens to her. And he doesn’t. Sound political? Maybe it was.

The 1940s-era song, Buenos Hermanos, from his Buenos Hermanos album, is mysterious and stirring and evocative even if you cannot understand a word. But when you read those lyrics, those biting sarcastic lyrics about how ‘big brother takes care of me, giving me crumbs and bones and gristle and fat’ then you know that, even though there is the political cover of the 1940s, this is a true anthem of the real Cuba under castro. And sung with such heart.

He was taken too young. I hope to god it wasn’t the air-conditioning, the castroite power outages suffocating Cuba as I write this. I hope not that.

iQue lastima!

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Rest in peace, son of Cuba.

From castro’s colony…

…a cartoon that appeared in a Venezuelan newspaper ahead of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s castro-style stacked election tomorrow. The face in the figure is a map of Venezuela, with that striped section representing the part of Guyana’s territory that Venezuela still claims. I take it you can tell what it says.

The cartoon is courtesy of Alek Boyd:

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Source: Tal Cual

Apagonazo continues

…in broiling summer. While castro cools himself at any of his selection of spa-like palaces. Wherever he wants. He and his cronies. Jingling his $550 million.

Ya No Mas.

Power plant breakdown increases blackouts in Cuba

Havana, Aug 4 (EFE).- Hard-pressed Cubans already suffering through frequent and long interruptions in the flow of electricity saw the problem worsen Thursday when Antonio Guiteras, one of the nation’s largest plants, broke down.

In a communique, state-owned Union Electrica explained that the pipeline feeding fuel into the plant’s boiler experienced damage.

Repairing and sychronizing the structure, which stopped generating electricity Thursday morning, should take at least until Friday, the note added.

The plant’s breakdown has “noticeably impaired electric service,” said Union Electrica, as it called on all government agencies to cut back on non-essential activities during peak hours and implement relevant emergency measures.

The plant’s collapse is aggravating the power crisis the country has been struggling with in recent months, the result of both breakdowns at several facilities and heightened summer demand.

Problems in the power network are prompting blackouts of up to 10 hours a day in Havana and other cities around the country.

The Cuban government has started an energy-savings plan to reduce consumption and outages that relies in part on replacing traditional incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient ones. EFE mar/mp

castro the Venezuelan generalissimo

Imagine you are a citizen of the U.S., or Mexico, or Colombia, or Peru, or Brazil, or any self-respecting country in the Americas. Imagine how you would feel if your president just couldn’t keep hugging the filthy unkempt castro, a man despised by his own people and rapidly headed for the dumpster of history. You could write it off as his foible, and maybe try to ignore it. It would be unpleasant, but you could live with it. Somehow.

But now he’s gone further and turned your country’s army over to the bearded Beast, the whole damn army, and now made castro the generalissimo. This is the same army that fought castro and his invasions as late as the 1980s.

I trust your blood pressure would hit the top of the measure. And worse.

That’s just what Hugo Chavez has done with Venezuela’s once-respected military – today, he’s turned the military over to castro, flying the whole graduating class over to Havana, Cuba, for him to inspect as their new generalissimo. Oh gee I hope they passed castro’s muster.

I think I’d die.

Given the wretched state of the Cuban military, an organization left in ruins by the Monster, its leadership shot dead, its citizens unwilling cannon fodder, it’s not surprising that castro’s been looking for a new Hessian guard to protect him from the growing rage of the Cuban people. castro knows he’s on his last legs, and unable to inspire Cubans, needs fresh blood for a new military to guard his rotting ‘revolution’ in Havana. Well, now he’s got one from his Mini Me in Caracas. Will Venezuelans fight and die against the angry Cuban people for the sake of a dead castro? Incredible as it seems, they might. And this has got to be demoralizing to Cuba’s civil society democrats. In fact, sickening.

Alek Boyd’s got an appropriately angry essay about what’s going on and the vast scale of treason against Venezuela that this Hugo Chavez military ‘gift’ to Generalissimo castro amounts to.

Read it here.

The worst thing outta Brooklyn

I am a former New Yorker, and I adore the bright winter sun and hazy summer heat alike in the speckled spangled urban landscape that is Brooklyn. I love the green of the parks and the cool of the harborview near the Brooklyn Bridge. I love Howard Beach, Bayview, Bensonhurst, Coney Island. It’s an acquired taste but I find it energizing – but let’s see, for the flip side, what are the grossest things I have ever seen outta Brooklyn?

The fat sewer rats under the bridge at Red Hook? The vomit on the subway platform at Atlantic Avenue? How about the shattered glass by the burnt out house in Bed-Stuy? The degraded bottle bums at Nostrand? No, no, none of those. HERE is the grossest thing I have ever seen outta Brooklyn, right in your face from blogger Da Man, at GOP In The City:

Cop-Hating, Military-bashing, former Black Panther-turned NY City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) has turned his attention to normalizing relations with Communist Cuba. Barron plans to introduce legislation later this month that would call for the lifting of the embargo on the island.

The NY Sun also reports that Barron praised Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as a better leader than President Bush, “There is no question in my mind that Castro is a better leader than Bush” Barron said. On America’s Cuban policy, Barron stated: “It’s the racist arrogance of this country to tell a country of color what kind of government to have.

Oh gawd and it only gets worse. Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: The “dignified” castro movie clip he has posted will make you feel better.

What god do you worship, Pastors?

The castro-worshipping Pastors for Peace paid homage to none other than the bloodsoaked psychopathic killer, che guevara, as they merrily pushed along on their castro propaganda tour inside Cuba.

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What purpose these frauds could have by paying tribute to a cold blooded killer like che is well beyond what I can fathom. Perhaps they are being trotted around by castro to confuse Cuban people who are long deprived of any knowledge of God or religion. These pastors are here to tell Cubans that their god is che and that this is how to be religious. There’s something utterly repulsive about this near-satanic spectacle. People of God may forgive brutal killers; they may turn the other cheek; they may sacrifice to make up for the killers’ deeds. But they sure as heck don’t pay tribute – TRIBUTE! – to monsters who hated God. And who, as che did, made a special venomous effort to murder those who kept their faith in God as authentic Christian martyrs.

This is like worshipping Baal or the Minotaur, with a creepy, eerie, empty pagan echo in it.

The strange religious echoes continue in neighboring Venezuela by the way. In a curious coincidence, today Venezuela’s leading Cardinal, Rosalio Castillo Lara, who really is a man of God, warned that castro’s catachumen, Hugo Chavez, was in need not of a blessing (or homage, or tribute), but an exorcism.

The Cardinal warned that Chavez had grown into a despotic paranoiac and acted possessed of evil. He also said that the Venezuelan dictator was sheltering Colombian narcoterrorists – another monstrous bloodsoaked group whose inspiration is … che.

It has the feel of coming full circle. More information is here and here, here.

The ‘ya basta’ line

Back around when I was in grad school in New York, I had a Cuban roomate named Ibis. We were a perfect match because I never watched television and she never stopped. My abstention gave her total access to the whole set and time to see every last television show on the air. I was no threat. The TV was all hers. What the heck, Cuba Libre in hand, I even watched sometimes with her, and got to see Law & Order, or maybe it was LA Law, her favorite show. Could television-watching could be turned into a career? She often wondered about it.

She explained to me that for some Cubans, exemplified by herself, television was non-negotiable, a necessity of life, something to fight for. And all things, truly all things, except for a call from her mother in Miami, could wait while Law & Order was on. But if her mother called while Law & Order was on, they watched together on their simultaneously tuned sets in two cities as they chatted. That’s the way it was.

Well it looks like castro has met his first Ibis.

This past week, a whole neighborhood of Cubans in Havana fought off castro’s sweaty little communist agents in grubby black leather jackets for trying to confiscate one of their television sets. A line was crossed – into the intolerable – when the bastards tried to steal the television set for the “crime” of watching American television programs. Who were these resistors to communism? Ordinary Cubans, and maybe, like Ibis, watching Law & Order by satellite dish. They beat the castroite thugs back and chased them out in a real revolutionary act. Over this ordinary pleasure.

Television is often seen as a passive medium. Well, in Cuba it isn’t. In an unfree society, it’s a few minutes of sanity, a few glimpses of freedom. Amid all the ration cards, restrictions on movements, 12-hour speeches by the bearded Beast, rotten medical care, insulting billboards saying ‘we’re doing well,’ block committees, bad food, leering, grinning visits from Hugo Chavez, crappy transport, potholes, propaganda education, damn castro to heck if he ever tries to take their TV sets, too.

Because that is obviously the line where some Cubans say ‘ya basta.’

A small victory, for now.

castro’s media whore at it again

As castro’s reputation and support hit all time lows in Cuba, with the bastard tottering as never before, who should come along to help with the propaganda effort than Miss Vanessa Bauza, who assures us that castro is training young communists who love him like Hugo Chavez.

Now, how did this media hooker get access to those castro schools? Can it be that she was a ‘trusted person’? Can it be that castro’s grubby little men had embarassing photographs of Miss Vanessa in compromising positions? Or, like a slut, does she do it for free?

Whatever it is, she is missing the huge building story about castro’s imminent demise to show an entirely false picture that makes castro happy. And the Sun-Sentinel should get rid of her for that.

Max Baucus, total creep

Senator Max Baucus of Montana just rammed through a bill in the Senate to make it easier for Montana sugar beet farmers to sell SUGAR to castro’s Cuba. Gee what a pro-trade guy he is, he wants free trade even for castro. First conclusion: so he’s in the pocket of the Sugar Barons, I am not surprised, this is after all Congress. And castro is pleased.

But that’s one thing.

What’s despicable is his unforgiveable effort to SHUT OUT our loyal Central American allies from free trade. Less than a month ago, the bastard voted against CAFTA, even though he has voted for every other free trade measure that has been put before him. Baucus is no free trader. Open Secrets shows that he’s in bed with the Trial Lawyers. His legislative record shows that he looks out for his friends. What he wants is free trade for castro and everyone else with the exception of our loyal friends and allies in Central America. Most of the countries are doing their damndest to fight castro, Hugo Chavez and “Sunglasses” Danny Ortega.

What a slap in the face.

Central America is our friend and ally. In Latin America, they are our ONLY friend and ally – outside Chile and Colombia. Most of the little countries there vote with us in the U.N. and fight side by side with us to liberate Iraq. They too have paid with blood and treasure the price of freedom.

But Max Baucus wants free trade with castro’s Cuba and NONE for our brave Salvadoran and other Central American allies.

Now remember this: Forbes magazine noted that castro owns all the agriculture producers in that $550 million fortune of “his,” so we might as well say that Baucus wants free trade with castro, never mind Cuba.

But at the same time, he tried to SHUT OUT our good and worthy friends from Central America! castro si, Central America no. What a scumbag.

This jerk has got to go.

Chavez and his Cuban chulo

‘Chulo,’ according to our good friend blogger Daniel in Venezuela, is a Venezuelanism for ‘pimp.’ castro is Chavez’s pimp and in every way shows it and acts it.

Daniel’s got an awesome article translated from the great Carlos Alberto Montaner that appeared in Spain’s media, describing this castroite pimpery. It satisfies like a good steak.

It’s an absolute must-read, Montaner at his vintage best. Don’t miss it. Read it all the way to the dazzling end and read it here.