Cell phones in Cuba...? Eavesdropping on conversations...? NO-O-O-O-O-OOO...! Say it isn't so...!

this might seem a bit trivial in the high-impact news department and maybe it is... however, i think it's right up at the top of the list in the ironic propaganda spin department... read it and see if you agree...

First microwaves, now cell phones. Is this the new Cuba? Raul Castro is revolutionizing his brother's island in small but significant ways — the latest in a decree Friday allowing ordinary Cubans to have cell phone service, a luxury previously reserved for the select few. The new president could be betting greater access to such modern gadgets will quell demand for deeper change.

Many Cubans hope cell phones and new appliances are only the beginning for a post-Fidel Castro government that will improve their lives. Communist bureaucracy currently limits everything from Internet access to home ownership.

Could cellular phones in dissidents' hands give state security forces an edge in monitoring their conversations or tracking their movements by satellite? Perhaps, but government opponents — including the few who have cell phones — already assume someone's always listening.

Until now, the only people legally allowed to have a cell plan were foreigners, Cubans working for foreign companies and top government officials. Thousands more illegally use phones registered to foreign friends or relatives.

"Finally. We have waited too long for this," said Elizabeth, a middle-aged housewife waiting in line to pay her home telephone bill. She wouldn't give her last name because she already has a cell phone through a foreign co-worker of her husband.

so, accusing raúl of tossing bread and circus to the masses, eh...? accusing raúl of monitoring phone conversations, eh...? accusing raúl of tracking citizens' whereabouts, eh...? tell me... does this ring any bells at all...?

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Raúl

raúl, pronounced rah-OOL...

The Cuban National Assembly voted Raúl Castro as its new president on Sunday, the first time the country has had a new leader since his brother Fidel seized power in 1959.

Mr. Castro, the 76-year-old armed forces minister, had been widely expected to be named president by the 614 members of the assembly. Mr. Castro, dressed in a gray suit and steel-colored tie, cast the first vote for president of the assembly with a smile and wave at about 11:15 a.m. Fidel Castro was said to be too ill to attend the meeting, and he voted through a proxy.

hey... no problem... now nobody has to stop referring to cuba's president as castro...

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The end of the Castro era

Fidel Castro in his early years


Fidel Castro in Argentina
in July 2006

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution.

fidel castro has been a fixture of my mental landscape since i was eleven years old... his image was burned in to my brain during the cuban missile crisis but only became more than a two-dimensional propaganda target in the past few years...

i had the opportunity in 2004 to meet and get to know the former ambassador to cuba of a former socialist country... he is a delightful individual, intelligent and urbane, and we quickly discovered we shared the same twisted sense of humor... over dinner one evening, he regaled me with hours-long conversations he had with fidel about every conceivable subject and where castro revealed himself to be a most engaging and decent individual, fully wise in the ways of the world, and a passionate advocate of the common man... listening to his first-hand experiences, i quickly came to realize just how little i knew of fidel and how my views of him had been so effectively shaped by the bias of my own country...

love him or hate him, fidel castro has achieved something for cuba that no other country but north korea has been able to accomplish... he has kept cuba out of the grasp of the united states for nearly fifty years, and that, in itself, is quite remarkable...

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Kill Fidel

quentin tarantino needs to step up to this one...

Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro accused US President George W. Bush of ordering him killed even before moving into the White House, in an article published in the newspaper Granma Tuesday.

"The issue of the accusation related to his plan to kill me comes from before he used fraud to steal the victory from another candidate," the convalescing Castro, 80, said of Bush.

ya know what...? i don't doubt it for a minute...

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Opposed to Bush? "The rule of law is out the window. Wild West hangin' justice is in."

bush and his criminal compadres present themselves as the saviors of the american people, protecting us from the horrors of global "terrorism," which, if not confronted at exorbitant financial and human cost in iraq, will cross the ocean and attack us on our homeland... sadly, far too many people in the united states have swallowed this nonsense, hook, line and sinker, without stopping to consider that the fight is not between u.s. citizens and "terrorists..." rather, it is between those who support vs. those who resist the interests of the bush family and its highly interconnected networks of money and power... no one has documented this better than robert parry... what follows are the four paragraphs introducing parry's latest post on his consortium news, chronicling the staggering hypocrisy of george w. bush in the context of the recently released anti-castro terrorist, luis posada carriles...

George W. Bush likes to present the “war on terror” as a clear-cut moral crusade in which evildoers who kill innocent civilians must be brought harshly to justice, along with the leaders of countries that harbor terrorists. There are no grays, only blacks and whites.

But evenhanded justice is not the true core principle of the Bush Doctrine. The real consistency is hypocrisy: violence which Bush favors – no matter how wanton the slaughter of innocents – is justifiable, while violence that goes against Bush’s interests – even an insurgency against a foreign military occupation – must be punished without remorse as “terrorism.”

In other words, if Bush hates the perpetrators, they are locked up indefinitely without charge and, at his discretion, can be subjected to “alternative interrogation techniques,” what most of the world considers torture. The rule of law is out the window. Wild West hangin' justice is in. Even the ancient fair trial right of habeas corpus is discarded.

However, when the killers of civilians are on Bush’s side, they get the full panoply of legal protections – and every benefit of the doubt. Under this Bush double standard, therefore, right-wing Cuban terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, though implicated in a string of murderous attacks on civilians, get the see-no-evil treatment.

parry's conclusion is stark...

[T]he Bush family regards terrorism – defined as killing civilians for a political reason – as justified or at least tolerable in cases when their interests match those of the terrorists.

Terrorism is only a moral evil to the Bushes when the violence against civilians clashes with the Bush family’s interests.

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