North Coast Online

Despite Free Health Care

The Today Show is broadcasting from Cuba this week and as Newsbusters reports, it's fairly bursting with enthusiasm for the island prison.

To hear the media tell it, Cuba is a great country to live in and visit. With propagandist Michael Moore’s “Sicko” soon to debut and glorify the Cuban health care system, NBC “Today host Matt Lauer broadcast from Havana, Cuba on June 5.

Lauer praised the “booming” economy and talked about the country’s stability.

“There’s stability here. Business is booming and tourists are flocking here, some two million a year.”

But those tourists are certainly not moving there.  Robert at 26th Parallel tells the story of Cuba's greatest export.

One thing that set Cuba apart from most Latin American countries was the sustained Spanish emigration to the island even well into the 20th century. From 1901-1930, almost 750,000 Spaniards emigrated to Cuba, mainly from the northern Spanish regions. Many of these came from Galicia, hence the term gallego as a reference to any Spaniard in Cuba (never mind the many Spanish immigrants from Asturias, Catalonia and the Canary Islands who likely bristled at being called a Galician).

As this site points out, it wasn't just the gallegos who formed part of the Cuban immigrant community.  Chinese (chinos), Middle Eastern Arabs (referred to as Lebanese - libaneses - or Turks - turcos - regardless of their actual origin), Americans (over 30,000 between 1901 and 1930), and Jews (Ashkenazi and Sephardic), which Cubans often referred to as polacos.

In turn, very few Cubans left their country for good before 1959. Sure, there were some who emigrated to the United States, but compared to the masses from Europe it was a very small group per capita.

If you've stuck with me thus far, what comes next should be obvious. Simply put, after Castro and his bandits took over in 1959, the boats and airplanes changed directions. They began leaving instead of arriving in Cuba. Estimates place the Cuban-American emigration to the United States at over a million. From a population of 6 million in 1959, that's staggering. This doesn't count the many Cubans who emigrated elsewhere in Latin America, as well as to Europe and even Australia. A country of immigrants became a country better known for its human export. A country which boasted sugar among its exports now spits out its own flesh and blood.

Cubans do have the right to vote.  Of course they can only vote for one person and failure to do so might and often does result in serious physical harm.  So, for the past 50 years they've voted in the one true way left to them -- escaping.   How do Michael Moore and the rest of Cuba's Hollywood apologists explain that 1/6 of the country's population risked death to get out of there?

Cuba Libre Is Still Just A Rum And Coke

There's late-breaking news of a shoot-out at Havana's airport.

A Cuban military officer and a soldier were killed when three young recruits deserted their base and then tried to hijack a plane to the United States Thursday, a Cuban Interior Ministry statement said.

Two of the conscripts, who were captured, killed a lieutenant colonel they took hostage in the failed hijack attempt at Havana's José Marti International Airport, the statement said.

They and a third conscript, captured earlier, had killed a soldier and wounded another when they deserted April 29 from their military base and made off with two AK-47 assault rifles, the Interior Ministry statement added.

The statement said the two captured at the airport had hijacked a bus with several passengers, guided it to the airport and entered a plane that had no crew or passengers.

''One inside the airplane the murderers killed one of the hostages, Revolutionary Armed Forces Lt. Colonel Victo Ibo Acuña Velasquez, who even though he was not armed tried heroically to avert this terrorist act,'' it said.

Could it be they longed for freedom in the United States?  Nah, probably just demonstrating against the embargo.  I mean, why would anyone want to leave, what with the free health care and the high literacy rate?  That little bit about not being allowed to do what you wish with your life or say what you believe is just right-wing ranting -- isn't it?

That Fiendishly Clever Bush

The Buffalo News editorial board claims that Alberto Gonzales's refusal to resign is just a distraction.

Good Republicans who don’t yet want to go so far as to call for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to resign have begun referring to him, more in sorrow than in anger, as “a distraction.”

Of course he is. That’s the role Gonzales has been assigned in the damage control party that the entire Bush administration has become. As long as the focus is on the hangdog Gonzales and his apparent nonmanagement of the Justice Department, less attention will be paid to the White House political operation run by Karl Rove and its suspected mismanagement of the same department.

Gee, if a bunch of humble reporters in Buffalo have caught on to the Republicans' latest wily ploy, you'd think that Pelosi, Reid and Schumer could figure it out, too. Leave Gonzales alone and go after the big fish!  Hey, I heard that Al Gore's in town today; maybe he read the paper and can get word to someone in charge that the Democrats are being hornswoggled again.

Ah, Fair Cuba

James Taranto takes a reporter to task for his rather glowing accounts of life in Cuba.

Cuba's average life expectancy is 77.08 years--second in Latin America after     Puerto Rico and more than 11 years above the world average, according to the     2007 CIA World Fact Book.

 

It says Cuban life expectancy averages 74.85 years for men and 79.43 years     for women, compared with 75.15 and 80.97 respectively for Americans.

Weissert doesn't tell us the source of the CIA's information. Do these numbers   come from Cuba's totalitarian regime, and if so, shouldn't we automatically   take them with a grain of salt? There are some obvious questions a serious reporter   might want to ask about these numbers. The most obvious one: Do they include   people who die trying to escape?

Of course, there's no money to buy smokes, likely no booze and deaths due to traffic accidents must be low because very few outside Fidel's family can afford to buy one.  Come to think of it, it's surprising Cuba doesn't have the highest rate of suicide in the Americas.

Though, of course, if it did, who'd know?

We Aren't So Mean After All!

For those of you who believe Cuba is in shambles because nasty old America won't trade with it, here's an interesting article.  U.S. remains top food source for Cuba.  Some $340 billions worth just last year.  It would probably be even larger but the U.S. requires cash up front from Castro.

The Beautiful Havana Of The North?

Reuters has realised that Havana is crumbling into ruins.  Fifty years of communist rule has taken its toll on that once-gorgeous city.

Almost half a century of communist rule has saved Havana's eclectic architecture from the urban developer's bulldozer, but a lack of repair has taken a ruinous toll on its neo-Baroque and Art Deco gems.    

Dozens of colonial buildings and beautiful squares in Old Havana have been restored since the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO designated it a world heritage site in 1982. But the rest of the city of 2.2 million people is falling into decay.

   

"The situation has become critical. There are areas of the city where buildings collapse every few days. The overcrowding is tremendous," said leading Cuban architect Mario Coyula, who fears Havana's architectural beauty is damaged beyond repair.

In teeming, pot-holed Central Havana, poverty coexists with some of the world's finest examples of neo-Baroque and Art Deco architecture built before Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

   

It is Cuba's most densely-populated district, with 160,000 people living in 1.3 square miles of crumbling buildings dating from the 1920s and 1930s, many now lacking basic sanitation.

   

This is the setting for the ribald fiction of Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutierrez, whose best-selling "Dirty Havana Trilogy," which has been translated into English, recreates an underworld peopled by pimps, prostitutes and black-market hustlers.

    Foreign visitors stroll through spectacularly dilapidated streets snapping photographs of the city's rotting grandeur and vintage American cars caught in a bizarre time warp.

Please read the whole thing.  But to continue just reminds me too much of how Buffalo resembles Havana after 50 years of  New York's "benevolent" socialism. Beautiful buildings go under the wrecking ball because no one can afford to maintain them.  Tourists (and movie companies) come here because we're so untouched by nasty progress, and poverty coexists with "some of the world's finest examples of neo-Baroque and Art Deco architecture." 

I suppose I should be glad that while the buildings collapse around us and our people struggle every day to survive, at least we aren't thrown into prison for blogging about it like the Cubans are -- yet.  Whoa!  Never mind, Internet connection just burped and visions of Spitzer flashed through my head.   

Evidently Socialism Does Work

The Cuban government has announced almost staggering growth results for 2005.

Havana -- Cuba said yesterday that its economy grew 12.5 per cent this year, the fastest pace in the Western hemisphere, and that its budget deficit remained well under control despite a 32-per-cent spending rise.

The Communist-run government said the growth figure, based on its own formula that includes subsidized social services, would have been 9.5 per cent using traditional measurements.

In other news, New York State once again led the nation in job creation and population growth.

Proof? This Ain't Proof

This is the picture that's set left-wing hearts beating hard all across the world today.  This is the "proof" that the old bastard's still alive -- a picture of him holding today's issue of Granma.

Given recent events in Hezbollah press coverage, there's been some speculation today in the press that the picture might have been photo-shopped.  Hello! This is Cuba -- they don't have to photoshop.

Remember? Fidelito runs that paper.  Who's to say today's front page wasn't planned weeks ago to use, um, just in case?  I mean, if the headline had announced the cease-fire in Lebanon or praised Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut (both pleasing developments to Fidel I'm sure) I'd be more convinced.

But a picture of Fidel Castro holding up yet another copy of the state-run paper praising, surprise -- surprise, Fidel Castro, allows me to continue hoping that he's still in the hospital bleeding from his nether parts -- if he's alive at all.

Not Quite Official, But . . .

Brazilians are claiming that Fidel suffers from a stomach tumor.

Cuban authorities have told the Brazilian government that Cuban leader Fidel Castro has a malignant stomach tumor and may be unable to return to full power, a Brazilian newspaper reported on Saturday.

Folha de S.Paulo said Brazilian officials had been told that Castro's illness marked the start of an irreversible transfer of power on the Communist-ruled island.

Folha said Cuban authorities informed Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and members of the ruling Workers' Party about the malignant stomach tumor this week. His condition was worse than has been publicly admitted, according to Folha.

"It looks like we will lose our friend," it quoted Lula as telling an aide.

In The End, Cuba Libre Was Just A Cocktail

The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin must certainly be one of the very-most liberal daily newspapers in the United States.  Of course its market is one of the very-most liberal cities in America.  Madisonians could shame the Birkenstocks off an Ithacan.  To wit, this article from two days ago, U.S. moves toward Cuba worry locals

Sister city activists and other Madisonians with ties to Cuba said today they fear the Bush administration will use the transition in power from Fidel to Raul Castro as the occasion to activate a plan to replace that nation's communist system.

They said such a move could lead to war.

The Associated Press reported today that Bush told a Miami radio station on Monday, prior to the announcement of Castro's illness, "If Fidel Castro were to move on because of natural causes, we've got a plan in place to help the people of Cuba understand there's a better way than the system in which they've been living under."

I realize that the left claims to believe that Bush is a warmonger at heart, but a plan "to help the people of Cuba understand there's a better way than the system in which they've been living under" much more probably represents a renewed propaganda campaign than an invasion.   And I suspect that war isn't what worries Castro's American friends at all.

Dr. Bernard Micke, a UW Health physician who heads the Wisconsin Medical Project that takes medical supplies to a hospital in Cuba, said today that, personally, he has concerns about possible U.S. action.

"The Cubans are capable of governing themselves whether Castro is there or not. It is not a dictatorship to the degree that our government would like to paint it. This is a very functional government at the local and national levels," Micke said, stressing that he was speaking as an individual, not for the completely non-political humanitarian Medical Project.

"The United States should not be meddling. We would certainly not want some other country to have a plan in place as to how to run our country if something happened here. That is a very imperialistic approach, that we have some God-given right to have a hand in Cuba's affairs."

Dr. Mickle's statement that Cuba "is not a dictatorship to the degree that our government would like to paint it" is almost beyond belief in its smug American-leftist arrogance.  A "little" dictatorship is just fine unless it's one that he might have to live in, say of the Republican variety which would dictate that abortion is a states-rights issue -- that's unacceptable.

I do, however agree that the Cubans are capable of governing themselves, my only difference of opinion from the good physician is that I'd like to see them given a chance.  And left simply to their government, even one without a Castro or two, it's altogether likely that the military and a half-century's worth of entrenched, well-fed bureaucrats won't let that happen easily.

In the end, I think that our comrades in Madison are much less concerned over a Bush-led American invasion then they are over the establishment of democracy in Cuba -- American-style or other.   The Cuban Revolution is one of the two last remaining hopes of the potential glory that communist workers' paradises once offered. North Korea is the other but Kim Jong-Il is just too icky even for the left.

And so, it's on Cuba that America's dwindling number of hard-core socialists will make their stand -- and if it means another generation of misery for the Cubans, well at least they'll have their universal health care.  Stop by the clinic the next time the good doctor jets in from Madison -- we'll have some aspirin that day.  Oh yeah, and Heil Hitler Viva la Revolución.