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Hugo Chávez undergoes tracheotomy after complications from cancer surgery

Dec. 22 - Hugo Chávez is on artificial respiration after undergoing a tracheotomy earlier this week, according to Spanish daily ABC.
Chávez has been suffering from complications after his fourth surgery in Havana, Cuba to treat cancer. Doctors performed the tracheotomy after a respiratory infection blocked the leader’s breathing, ABC reported. The procedure involves opening a hole in the neck so the patient can breathe without using the nose or mouth.
Venezuelan Vice President Nicolás Maduro has summoned several Chavista leaders to Havana, the Spanish publication reported.

Read the ABC article here (Spanish)

Venezuela Hugo Chavez: His Terrible Reign May Soon Be Ending

Dec. 22 - Venezuela’s future will be decided in January. Hugo Chavez hasn’t said a word in public since December 11, before he was scheduled to receive his fourth cancer treatment. Silence has never been one of his virtues. He seems to be in critical condition, and doctors are hinting that he might not be healthy enough to be sworn in as president on January 10th, the constitutionally scheduled date. This presents a golden opportunity for the opposition to foment division inside "Chavismo."
Even though Chavez has named his successor in Nicolás Maduro, his vice president, National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello may challenge this decision on constitutional grounds.
There is a behind-the-scenes battle taking place between these two men, and the first showdown will take place on January 5, the day when the National Assembly will choose the new president of that body (the first man in line of succession if Chavez doesn’t recover by January 10th, an unlikely scenario). If Chavez cannot stand on his feet, travel from Cuba to Venezuela, and speak the solemn words in front of the National Assembly, the president of that body will be sworn in his place temporarily, and a new presidential election must be called within 30 days.
Naturally, Cabello wants to be reelected as National Assembly president, securing his temporary ascension to the presidency of the republic, the strongest position from which he can then dictate his own terms. In a country where institutions are so weak, this temporary mandate would be essential to establish his own power, autonomous from his rival Maduro.
Maduro could try to undermine Cabello’s reelection to the National Assembly presidency, cutting his way to the supreme office of the government. Chavismo is on the verge of breaking apart.
The lesson of Venezuelan politics is clear: Opposition parties and candidates cannot win a presidential election as long as the chavistas remain united. This was accurately displayed during the October 7th presidential elections.
Why can’t the opposition win a presidential election? Simple: the biggest political machine in Latin America, financed by one of the wealthiest oil empires in the world, stands in its way. Venezuela does not hold fair elections, and the opposition faces an overwhelming disadvantage to the government Read more

U.S. Policy for Cuba: Libertad

Dec. 22 - Speaking in Miami in May 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama outlined his proposed Cuba policy: “My policy toward Cuba will be guided by one word: Libertad [Liberty]. And the road to freedom for all Cubans must begin with justice for Cuba’s political prisoners, the rights of free speech, a free press and freedom of assembly; and it must lead to elections that are free and fair.”
In his 2009 inaugural address, President Obama said, “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
It is now 2012. The Obama Administration has opened the door for unrestricted travel by Cuban-Americans, a largely unrestricted remittance flow, and more liberal travel for educational and cultural groups. Yet official U.S.–Cuban relations remain stalemated because of the Castro regime’s refusal to unclench its fist and take even the first steps toward true liberty. Continue reading

John Kerry’s nomination as secretary of state raises hopes, fears over Cuba policy

Dec. 22 - Both hopes for and fears of significant changes in Cuba policies during President Barack Obama’s second term heightened Friday with the nomination of Sen. John Kerry as the next U.S. Secretary of State.
The Massachusetts Democrat in the past has endorsed the embargo but proposed allowing all travel to the island, including tourist trips, and criticized both Radio/TV Marti and the U.S. government’s pro-democracy programs in Cuba.
His nomination to succeed Hillary Clinton is expected to sail through Senate confirmation because Kerry has served in the Senate since 1984 and chairs the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Kerry’s long-telegraphed move to the State Department won applause from backers of the Obama administration’s policy of expanding ties and assistance to the Cuban people while waiting for the government to move toward democracy and human rights.
“The president’s positions on Cuba are clear, and he (Kerry) is a good pick to implement them,” said Joe Garcia, a Miami Democrat elected to Congress last month. “He’s a thoughtful, experienced foreign policy expert.”
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, a Cuban-American Democrat who is likely to succeed Kerry as chairman of the foreign relations committee, favors strong sanctions on Cuba. He praised Kerry for his knowledge of foreign policy but did not mention his stands on Cuba.
“The high-level relationships that he has built with world leaders will allow him to step seamlessly into the position and to ensure that there is no decline in U.S. leadership on important global issues during a transition,” Menendez said.
Even Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive director of the pro-sanctions U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, described Kerry as “reasonable and willing to listen to all sides.” Continue reading

Ricardo Alarcón will be replaced as head of the 'national assembly' of puppets

Dec. 20 - Cuban parliament President Ricardo Alarcon, one of the most influential people on the island and long its point man for U.S. affairs, will apparently be leaving the job he's held for the last 19 years when the body reconvenes next year with new membership.
Alarcon's name was absent from a list of candidates for the new legislature that was published Thursday in Communist Party newspaper Granma. Under the Cuban Constitution, the National Assembly chooses its president from among its ranks.
Alarcon, who has been parliament chief since 1993, is 75 years old, and President Raul Castro, himself 81, frequently speaks of a need to promote younger leaders.
"This looks to me like one more part of a move to replace people in their 70s and 80s with people in their 50s in the top jobs in government," said Philip Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Virginia-based think tank The Lexington Institute.
Cuban officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rumors have suggested as a possible successor Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who last week was promoted to the Communist Party's powerful Political Bureau.
Rodriguez is on the list of candidates for the National Assembly, as are Fidel and Raul Castro and rising stars such as Marino Murillo and Miguel Diaz-Canel. Read more

Oswaldo Paya's widow wants to meet with Carromero

Dec. 19 - Ofelia Acevedo, widow of dissident Oswaldo Payá, says she wants to hear Spanish politician Angel Carromero’s version of the car crash that killed her husband.

The widow of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá said Tuesday she wants to speak with Angel Carromero, the Spanish politician convicted of causing her husband’s death in a car crash, before he leaves the island to serve the rest of his prison sentence in Spain.
Ofelia Acevedo’s comments came after Payá’s Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) published several posts on Facebook over the weekend repeating allegations that Cuban security agents bore responsibility for the accident.
Acevedo said she plans to go to the Spanish embassy in Havana in the next few days to ask that she and her daughter, Rosa Maria, be allowed to meet with Carromero and hear his version of the crash before he is sent to Spain. Continue reading

Analysis: High stakes for Cuba in Chavez's cancer battle

Dec. 18 - As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recovers in Havana from his fourth cancer operation, Cubans face renewed worries about their economic future if the country's top ally dies or has to step down from office.
Cuba has staked its economic well-being on the success - and generosity - of Chavez's self-declared socialist revolution, much as it did with another former benefactor: the Soviet Union.
Cubans vividly remember the great depression of the 1990s that followed the demise of the Soviet Union, and they worry about the communist-run island plunging into similar economic hardship if Chavez loses his struggle with cancer.
In the 1990s, they suffered through severe shortages of food, consumer goods and oil. Prolonged electricity blackouts made daily life miserable in what the government called the "special period".
"I remember those days. No lights, no transportation, no food. Nothing of nothing. It drove you crazy and it can't happen again," said Havana handyman Domingo Garcia.
Recalled Marlen Perez, an operator at the state telephone monopoly: "I had to ride a bicycle to work and I'm too old for that now."
The gravity of Chavez's condition became clear when, before returning to Cuba to be operated on last week, he named his vice president and foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, as his preferred successor if he cannot continue in office.
Between bouts of cancer, Chavez won a new, six-year term in October, but if he has to step down in the first four years of his new mandate, a new election must be held within 30 days.
In politically polarized Venezuela, where Chavez's opponents do not hide their disdain for Cuba, their victory at the polls would have huge consequences for the heavily indebted island which relies on lucrative barter contracts with Venezuela, such as exchanging thousands of medical personnel for oil.
One economist warned that if a loss of Venezuela's support were to destabilize the Cuban economy and cause a new round of serious shortages, there could be bouts of social unrest.
"Take away the preferential terms for our oil and the billions of dollars for our services and there is no doubt we would be in very serious trouble," he said, requesting anonymity due to a ban on speaking with journalists. "I doubt many people would put up with another crisis, even if it was only half as bad as the last. There would be serious unrest." Continue reading

Cuba’s fatal conceit on economic reforms

Dec. 17 - In late 2010, the Cuban government first detailed its plan to revitalize the moribund Cuban economy. Two key components of this plan were the massive firing of over one million state employees (in a workforce of five million) and to allow some private sector self-employment to absorb the newly unemployed.
The enlightened nomenclature decreed that the firings were to take place in short order and the newly permitted activities would be limited to a bizarre amalgamation of precisely 178 occupations from baby sitting to washing clothes to shoe shinning, to repairing umbrellas.
Not surprisingly, two years later, the process is mired in a web of internal debates and emerging rules and regulations. The failure in implementing economic reforms is rooted in the pathology of thought of the Country’s ruling elite. It is this pathology of thought that economist and political philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek described in his influential work The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. As Hayek explained, central plans fail with unforeseen and unintended consequences because all variables are not known or even knowable to the central planners. Continue reading

Letter to the Washington Post from a friend of Alan Gross

Dec. 15 - I agree 100% with what he says:

"Thanks for the Dec. 6 editorial “No deal with Havana,” about how the Obama administration should clamp down on the Cuban government for keeping my friend, Alan Gross, in prison for three years now. I have known Alan for more than 20 years. He is and always has been a selfless humanitarian worker trying to help underprivileged people, whether as a social worker in the United States or as an international development consultant working with Africans in Gambia (where I first met him 23 years ago) or with Palestinians on the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip.
The Obama administration should tighten the U.S. trade embargo, stop allowing any kind of tourist flights to Cuba and do everything legally possible — even work with Congress, if necessary — to tighten the financial and administrative regulations against any individual American or U.S. firm that wants to do business with Cuba until Alan Gross is released — unconditionally — and can come home to his wife, Judy, his ailing mother and his two daughters.

Tom Herlehy, Arlington, Virginia" The Washington Post

Another video from Cuba: Using an iPod to navigate the WebPaq

Dec. 10 - More and more WebPaqs continue arriving in Cuba.

This time, the video shows someone inside Cuba using an iPod at a park to navigate through the more than 30 different websites contained on the WebPaq, including Cubanet, El Nuevo Herald, Cruzar Las Alambradas, Revolico, Generación Y, etc.

If you want to cooperate in this project but don't know or cannot download the packages yourself to send it to contacts in Cuba, you can help by donating to this project to help purchase the DVDs, flash memory, SD cards for cell phones and with the cost of sending them to Cuba on a weekly basis.

Click here to see how it works; and see the videos from Telemundo and Maria Elvira Salazar and also videos we received from Cuba showing people already using this new technology and how you can help this project grow.

Nueva tecnología permite a los cubanos tener acceso a los portales de Internet bloqueados por Castro

Oprima aquí para conocer más sobre este proyecto y ver los videos que hemos recibido de Cuba de personas que ya están utilizando esta tecnología para tener acceso al los portales bloqueado por el régimen cubanos.

Vea también como usted puede ayudar a que crezca este proyecto.

Cuba’s partners in human exploitation

Dec. 6 - Haiti’s President Michel Martelly recently visited Cuba to sign cooperation agreements including in health. No doubt Haiti needs help to deliver needed healthcare, but these accords exploit Cuban workers and contribute to the continued oppression and impoverishment of the Cuban people.
Currently, around 700 Cuban health professionals are in Haiti. Cuba has similar government-to-government agreements with over 70 countries. These partnerships allow the Castro dictatorship to reap huge financial gains, avoid needed reform, and increase international influence to advance its agendas. Meanwhile, the export of scarce medical resources is causing a severe public health crisis in Cuba. Doctors and basic medical supplies are hard to find and facilities are falling apart.
When the earthquake struck, 344 Cuban health professionals were working throughout Haiti; more were immediately sent and deployed to the most remote areas. Cuba had long been receiving millions from international organizations and countries such as France and Japan for these services. Great need and corresponding international largesse became a golden opportunity. Just weeks after the disaster, Cuba was promoting a gigantic endeavor to build a new healthcare infrastructure for Haiti at an annual cost of $170 million, to be paid for by international donors. Cubans and Cuban-trained medical staff would run it at “half the international prices.”
Countless millions are now pouring into Cuba from the Pan American and World Health Organizations, dozens of NGOs, foundations, companies, and individuals from the United States, Canada, Spain, Belgium and others. Many governments have also donated — Venezuela $20 million to start, Brazil $80 million, Norway $2.5 million. The list of donations is undisclosed, but France, Australia, Japan, and other countries have apparently chipped in. The cost to Haiti is just a $300 monthly stipend to each Cuban health worker plus transportation and housing.
Haiti is just one very profitable subsidiary in Cuba’s global multi-billion dollar ¨humanitarian¨ enterprise. Most of its profits come off the backs of Cubans indentured as “collaborators.” Angola, for example, reportedly pays Cuba $60,000 annually per doctor; the doctor receives $2,940 (4.9 percent), at most. These service exports bring more than three times the earnings from tourism and far more than any other industry — $7.5 billion in 2010, the last year reported. Business is so good that in 2010 the Cuban government reduced an already decimated local health staff by 14 percent to send more abroad.
This unique brand of health diplomacy is only possible in a totalitarian state guaranteeing a steady pool of “exportable commodities.” Leaving Cuba without government authorization is punishable with years of prison; health professionals face the strictest travel restrictions. If they defect while abroad, their family, which must stay behind, cannot joint them for five years; issuing them academic or other records is forbidden.
The average monthly pay of a doctor in Cuba is around $25, barely guaranteeing survival. Abroad, they live off a bare-bones stipend from the host government. But, they receive from Cuba their usual peso salary and a bonus of $180-220 per month, plus are allowed to send home shipments of consumer goods. This paltry compensation package is enough for Cuban doctors to “volunteer” to be exploited abroad rather than at home.
The health workers are sent abroad for at least two years and often to far-flung areas under rudimentary, sometimes dangerous, conditions. In Venezuela, dozens have been killed or raped. Heavy workloads, surveillance, and many arbitrary restrictions add to their hardship. Continue reading

Cuba Teen is Brutally Attacked for Defending Human Rights Group

Dec. 5 - A teenage girl in Cuba who was defending the human rights group Ladies in White allegedly was stabbed by another teenager who reportedly is the daughter of a police captain, according to The Miami Herald.
The alleged victim, Berenice Hector Gonzalez, is the niece of Ladies in White member Belkis Felicia Jorrin Morfa, the paper said. Gonzalez is said to have ended up with such serious injuries that she underwent a four-hour operation and got nearly 70 stitches.
Dissidents, who told El Nuevo Herald about the incident, said that the alleged perpetrator, Dailiana Planchez Torres, used a switchblade and repeatedly stabbed Gonzalez all over her body, almost severing her vocal chords. They complained that Torres had not been arrested.
The Miami Herald, the sister publication of El Nuevo Herald, reports that the Nov. 4 attack occurred after Gonzalez told Torres “to stop insulting her family and the Ladies in White.”
“We are dismayed by this attack and, above all, by the lack of response from the authorities,” Berta Soler, a leader of the female group, told El Nuevo Herald in a phone interview from Havana. “We are demanding justice here.” Fox Latino

El Nuevo Herald: Experts in Miami break the censorship to the Internet in Cuba

November 11 - Jorge Utset and a group of computer experts work diligently every weekend on a mission as ingenious as it is risky: expand the flow of uncensored information to Cuba by sending USB drives, CDs and SIM memory cards for cell phones.
Each unit contains a thorough and comprehensive "package" of more than twenty websites, blogs and online news portals that Cuban authorities block consistently on the island in order to curb opposition voices and continue to control with an iron fist a monopoly on the news.
"We are always looking for ways to help ordinary people in Cuba to have access to information," said Utset, a Miami-based Cuban American.
Utset explained that they use an advanced technology that allows users on the island to "surf" the content of websites that are recorded in Miami and that the user in Cuba can without the user in Cuba having the need to connect to the internet.
"We record the material in very small memory cards and DVDs that are difficul to be be intercepted by the Cuban authorities," said Utset.
Shipments of memory drives, CDs and SIM cards began three months ago. To date over 150 'web packages' have been successfully sent to the island through different means, including people traveling to the island, agencies that send packages to Cuba and other means.
The websites that are recorded regularly for Cubans on the island include El Nuevo Herald, the Cuban Law Association, Revolico and Cubanet.
But not all is political information and news dispatches. The group has also been given the task to include beauty tips, entertainment, humor and sports on each web package.

"The last package had between 25 and 30 sites. Each package has the complete information that is on the website. We're not talking about a page or maybe the cover. The entire site is downloaded" said Utset.