Uncommon Sense

Arroz con Frijoles, 11/30/06

Happy Birthday, Adolfo Fernández Saínz!

A 15-year prison sentence just for doing his job has not stopped the Cuban independent journalist, who turned 58 today, from continuing to do his job.

Reporting from Prisión de Canaleta in Ciego de Ávila, Fernández describes in this short dispatch how prison guards tried to "re-educate" a fellow prisoner Osmany Adán Pérez, 21, with beatings on two consecutive days and by throwing him in a punishment cell.

Miscelaneas de Cuba is also carrying two dispatches written by imprisoned journalist Normando Hernández González, 37, who is serving a 25-year sentence at the Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey.

Fernández and Hernández are members of the "Group of 75" dissidents imprisoned during the "black spring" crackdown of March-April 2003.

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Americans are pretty cool about Cuba.

At least that's the findings of a Quinnipiac University Global Thermometer survey, which polled Americans about their attitudes towards 16 countries, the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations.

Cuba — which scored an average of 24.1 on a scale of 0-100 — ranked 16th in the hearts of the respondents, above only Iran and North Korea.

Venezuela came in at No. 12, between Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

In order, Americans felt the warmest about England, Canada, Israel, Germany and India.

See all the results here.

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Child of the Revolution has what Fidel Castro's says is the real reason Cubans can't have computers and cell phones.

Fetch the Geiger counter

Now we know why the Castro regime insists that ordinary Cubans need a rarely-issued government permit before they are allowed to buy a personal computer.

And why Cubans are restricted from using the Internet.

It has nothing to do with the paranoid Communist regime wanting to keep a tight rein on what Cubans can and cannot read – or write.

Not at all.

It’s because Fidel Castro is worried about radiation from computers and mobile phones, according to message read out on Cuban television last night supposedly written by the seriously ill dictator.

That’s right. Radiation from computers and mobile phones.

You can read it here, in Spanish.

Val at Babalú, who gets the H/T, offers Castro a solution.

Cubans are "losing their fear"

The most disappointing thing about Fidel Castro's illness — apart from the fact that he has yet to succumb — is that it has not been met with more active and more vocal resistance by the Cuban people against the Castro's regime.

A mass movement has not erupted, but that, as a new report indicates, does not mean all Cubans have remained compliant in the face of tyranny.

The Cuban Democratic Directorate is reporting that in 2005 there were more than 3,300 acts of civil disobedience on the island.

The Miami Herald reports:

"Repression generates rebellion,'' said Janisset Rivero, executive director of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a Miami exile organization that published the Steps to Freedom report, to be released Thursday at the University of Miami.

The report's numbers underscore growing discontent with the quality of life in Cuba, and the government's inability to satisfy basic needs. And while the government's 2003 crackdown decapitated much of the dissident movement, each year the number of acts of civil resistance climbs, the report said.

Among the group's findings:

— The central province of Villa Clara appears to be a hotbed of political opposition, logging far more protests than any other province. Even though nearly all of the island's internationally known dissident activists live in Havana, only 11 percent of last year's civil disobedience took place there.

— 25 hunger strikes were held by prisoners.

— The Ladies in White, the group of female relatives of the 75 political prisoners picked up in the 2003 sweep, held 182 different protests.

— The 3,322 acts logged in 2005 — including 2,613 vigils — represent an 85 percent increase over the 1,805 acts of civil disobedience in 2004.

"What we're seeing is a direct relation between the incapacity of the regime's administration - economically, politically, the errors they commit every day - and the discontent of the people,'' Rivero said. "People see no hope, but they are losing their fear.''

The end of the story describes how dissident lawyer Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva cut short an interview "when he said the pro-government mob throwing rocks at the home of another dissident where Gonzalez was using the phone had set the roof on fire. Reached later, he said a few pails of water put out the fire."

That "other dissident" was independent journalist Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia, 21, who complained to journalist Roberto Santana about what happened, according to a story at Payo Libre.

"I want to call on the international community to condemn these acts of repression of which I have been victim lately," said Rodríguez, who works for Youth Without Censorship. "I make the Cuban government and State Security in charge of my physical integrity, and that of my family, because no longer is it affecting only me, it is affecting my family, my younger sister, who is a girl, and to my mother who has an heart ailment. ... This is an attempt by State Security to try to intimidate him."

Rodríguez, no stranger to harrassment by Castroite mobs, said he would continue working as a journalist.

Read the whole Miami Herald story here.

The real news from Cuba this week

Some headlines you might have missed, in the midst of the celebrations in Havana this week of the anniversary of the landing of the Minnow, er, Granma, and the dying dictator's 80th birthday:

— Political prisoner Luis Enrique Ferrer García is suffering from various health ailments, but doctors at the Mar Verde de Santiago de Cuba prison are ignoring him, according to his sister Ana Belkis Ferrer García, according to a story by journalist Luis Esteban Espinosa and posted at Payo Libre.

Luis Ferrer, a member of the Christian Liberation Movement, is serving the longest prison sentences handed down to members of the Group of 75 during the "black spring" crackdown of 2003 — 28 years. (His brother José Daniel Ferrer García, a journalist and also a member of the Christian Liberation Movement, was sentenced to 25 years. Read more about the brothers Ferrer here.)

— Dissident Tomás Arquímedes Quintana Aguiar is threatening to stage a hunger strike protest in the Plaza of the Revolution — Havana's Red Square — if the Cuban authorities continue to deny him permission to leave the island. Quintana, who has been trying to emigrate for 20 months, claimed the government is retaliating against him because he founded the Independent Blind Brotherhood of Cuba.

Quintana said State Security agents have threatened him, and that water to his home has been cut off and his belongings have been stolen, according to a story by journalist Esteban posted at Payo Libre.

— The communists can't even keep the lights on. From CubaNet:

Electric blackouts on the increase in Havana

HAVANA, Cuba - November 27 (Juan Carlos Linares Balmaseda / www.cubanet.org) - Electric blackouts have become more frequent in Havana during the last week, according to an official of the Electric Power company in the city.

The official said the cutbacks were due to problems in the power lines. Most areas of the city have been involved, but the municipalities of Cerro, 10 de Octubre, and Plaza have been the worst.

The most common service interruptions are usually due to the changing of poles, transformers and crossovers, she said, adding that linesmen cannot keep up.

Meanwhile, for a poignant, almost heart-breaking view of this week's festivities in Havana, read Val Prieto at Babalú.

Uncommon Sense turns 1

One year ago today, without much of a vision and much less of a plan of what it would be, I launched Uncommon Sense. I just wanted an outlet for my writing, since my job at the newspaper leans heavily towards editing. It has been that, and much more.

What I would write about, I really didn't know, but it didn't take long for me to reconnect with my indentiy as a Cuban — well, at least as the son of former refugees — and to dedicate the bulk of my work here to the situation in Cuba. As time has passed, I have further narrowed my primary focus, to the work and struggle of Cuban dissidents, especially the independent journalists on the island.

They are my colleagues and my brothers.

Telling their stories has become a passion for me.

How do I measure the success of this blog?

One way is the more than 45,000 visits and more than 80,000 page views I have received since I started. Those numbers won't get me a buyout offer from Google, but each one of those numbers represents a reader who whether by accident or on purpose, found their way here from some Uncommon Sense. Maybe it's because of my newspaper background — we need all the readers we can get — but each visitor is precious to me.

Thank you to everyone who helped bring Uncommon Sense to life, and whose friendship and support sustains it.

What does the future hold for Uncommon Sense?

Like on the day, I started, I don't have a clue, and I couldn't be more excited.

Cuban libraries house freedom

Yesterday, I went to the library, and later to a bookstore, and I must confess that I took it for granted.

I took for granted the unfettered ability, the freedom, I have — that all Americans have — to visit these repositories of knowledge, and to explore the stories and ideas just waiting to be mined from the shelves. The public library, especially, is a citadel of democracy, providing equal access to those treasures to all, and housing ideas that have shaped the past, and could change the future.

Few understand that power better than the Cuban dictatorship, which de facto has banned independent libraries, and saved some of its worst repression for librarians like Jose Miguel Martinez Hernandez and Victor Rolando Arroyo.

Cuban police routinely raid libraries, which usually are housed in private homes, and seize books and other materials. After one such raid last week, librarian José Antonio Mola Porro was jailed and ordered to complete a two-year prison term that had previously been suspended.

All of that and still, new libraries are opening all the time.

Payo Libre has news on two of the newest ones:

— Jóvenes del Escambray (Youth of Escambray) Independent Library, in Manicaragua, Villa Clara province. Library director Miguel Boza Becerra said the library has about 250 books.

— Eusebio de Jesús Peñalver Mazorra Independent Library, in Arroyo Naranjo. Librarian Vivian Santana Barreto, who also is a spokeswoman for the Cuban Pro-Human Rights Party, said the library has about 300 books. (Peñlaver, who died earlier this year in Miami, fought alongside Fidel Castro in the revolution, but later spent more than 30 years in a Cuban prison.)

It is easy to tell whom a dictator fears. Their prisons are filled with people brave enough to stand up to them and bear witness for freedom, and for the truth.

In Cuba, some of the worst spots, in some of the worst prisons, are saved for librarians.

If you are the dictator, you cannot take them for granted. They are truly to be feared.

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For more on Cuba's independent libraries, and how American librarians have not always been sympathetic to the cause, visit Friends of Cuban Libraries.

Michelle Malkin is an out-of-touch hypocrite

OK, I'll admit it, I'm still sore at Michelle Malkin for not including a single word about Cuba in a column she wrote last week about how press freedoms are repressed in certain countries of the world.

But the more I read her blog, the more I am convinced that she is not only out of touch with events in Cuba, she is out of touch with reality — especially the reality of journalism.

Just look at her latest rant, in which she suggests — complete with a poll question for her like-minded readers — that the Associated Press, the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets are sympathizers, if not worse, with al-Qaida and other terrorists.

Not to skew the poll results, but the Associated (with terrorists) Press has a lot of explaining to do.

Sure, the mainstream media has not gotten the Iraq story all right. And perhaps, the situation is not as dire as the public has come to believe. The fog of war can be hell to slice through.

But there has been no greater error on Iraq than the Bush administration's presumption that the war would be a cakewalk and that the Iraqis would greet us with candy and flowers. We'll be paying for that miscalculation for years. Ironically, many in the MSM helped the administration sell that story before the war.

What is repugnant about Malkin's attacks on the MSM is her underlying sentiment that the reporters and editors on the Iraq story are anything less than patriotic Americans just trying to do their jobs — which means finding out the facts, understanding what is happening the best they can and then writing their stories, with the good, the bad and the ugly.

More dangerously, she also demonstrates a total lack of respect and reverence for the underlying constitutional freedoms that give the MSM, and her, the right to write what they write.

Malkin, it seems, would on her best days, muzzle the MSM because they tell stories she doesn't like or cast the U.S. in a bad light. And on her worst, she would give reporters and editors a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay for a first-hand experience with water-boarding.

Of course, this is the MSM from which Malkin, whose column is inexplicably published by newspapers across the country, makes what I presume is a good living. (Full disclosure: The newspaper I previously edited was a Malkin subscriber, and it was my decision.)

As my old boss Denny Herzog noted last month, that makes Malkin a hypocrite:

I don’t understand how someone can work all day long trying to undermine the very hand that feeds her. But Michelle Malkin, the Queen of Shrill, does just that. She spends a good deal of her time on her blog doing what the right-wing shouters all spend a good deal of their time doing: Trying to blame the mainstream media for all the ills of the world. And then in her case, she hawks her column to … the mainstream media, including The (Grand Junction, Colo.) Daily Sentinel.

Malkin has found a schtick, and she has used it make a good living. I don't begrudge her that, although I don't think there is enough money to wipe away from her the stench of hypocrisy.

Just don't call her a journalist.

She is not worthy.

I'll skip this party

Cuba this weekend will be celebrating Fidel Castro's 80th birthday, which was actually almost four months ago, on Aug. 13, but the festivities were postponed because of the dictator's bad stomach until Dec. 2, which also is the 50th anniversary of Castro's rebel invasion of the island.

MSNBC.com is in full-tribute mode — there's even a quiz on Castro trivia! — for the butchering bastard.

Granma couldn't do it any better.

"Democracy" for Commies

National Assembly President Ricardo "Little Ricky" Alarcon says Cuba is "people-powered."

Well, I guess he has a point if you mean, Cuba and the dictatorship survive because of the blood, sweat and tears of the Cuban people, who get nothing in return but misery, fear and repression.

Otherwise, I have to ask you, Ricky, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

The flunkies at Prensa Latina "report":

Habana, Nov 27 (Prensa Latina) Without the Granma landing the Peoples Power assembly in Cuba would have been impossible, Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon stated Monday.

Alarcon said that the 30th anniversary of Peoples Power coincides with the 50th anniversary of the historic arrival of Granma Yacht led by Fidel Castro.

Talking with several journalists, including Prensa Latina, he highlighted the transcendence of that date even more for the action that the Cubans and international figures are readying for celebrating President Fidel Castro s 80th birthday.

Alarcon referred to advances in structure and functioning of the Peoples Power that in 1976 made the first postulations and elections of delegates in the grass-roots and constituted the National Assembly.

Over 100,000 people have carried out since then a work with sacrifice and social recognition, said the Cuban legislator.

Alarcon pointed out the democratic nature of this system, unlike others that impose officials and decisions to safeguard their particular interests.

"Our system has nothing to do with democratic bourgeoisie fiction because, in Cuba, the people wield power, even under the economic siege and US terrorism," he stated.

Peoples participation in decisions like the budget, neighborhood meetings and approval of main laws are evident successes.

Since the beginning of the revolution, the US has strived to make Cuban people suffer any way it can, including starvation and extreme material deficiencies.

This has only resulted in massive support for Fidel Castro, he explained.

He recalled Parliament is in direct contact with the people and dedicates more hours to debate important affairs on all levels.

Get used to more of this Orwellian B.S. in the coming week, before Saturday's anniversary and orgyfest in Havana.

Recommended reading

In the spirit of Babalú, here are a few Cuba-related postings worth checking out in the blogosphere:

— Henry, at Cuban American Pundits, delivers a valuable economic lesson about oil.

— Robert at 26th Parallel casts his sharp, skeptical eye on restrictions on travel to the island.

— And Luis "Child of the Revolution" Garcia, explains the difference between Venezuelan fruits and Cuban vegetables.

Read. Enjoy. Learn.

New news agency is on the Cuba story

Guillermo Fariñas is reporting that a new news agency, Yayabo Press, started operations on Nov. 17 in Sancti Spiritus province. (The Yayabo River runs through the province.)

The director and assistant director, respectively, are Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito and Elvis Gregorio Pérez Lara. Others on staff are Osmany Borroto Rodríguez and Raimundo Perdigón Brito, according to Fariñas' story, which is posted at CubaNet.

The launching of a new independent news agency in Cuba is significant for two reasons.

First, a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month attracted the attendance by representatives of two dissident groups, the November 30 Democratic Party and the Cuban Human Rights Commission, demonstrating the integral role of independent journalism in the Cuban opposition. They are the storytellers needed so that Cubans and others know the truth about life under the dictatorship.

And more importantly, Pérez, Borroto and the Perdigóns are hitting the streets in a period of increased repression by the police and security forces against independent journalists, as evidenced by the too-frequent reports of reporters being brought to police stations for not-too-friendly chats about their chosen professions.

The journalists of Yayabo Press are not naive about the risks they are taking. For instance, Ana Margarita Perdigón, who also is an independent librarian, was detained, along with her father, when they tried to attend in Havana a meeting of the November 30 Democratic Party.

And they are well aware of their colleagues serving long prison terms in Castro's gulag.

Here's guessing the journalists of the new Yayabo Press will soon get the attention of the regime.

And here's guessing the dictatorship will again fail to silence the work of my brave fellow journalists, and my brave fellow Cubans.