Fausta's Blog

Cuban prisoner Alan Gross settles lawsuit against Md. company

Lawyers filed a notice of the settlement Thursday in federal court in Washington. The settlement amount was not disclosed, and the agreement only covers Development Alternatives Inc., also known as DAI, not the government.

DAI’s chief executive officer said in a statement that settling the lawsuit, in which neither party admits fault, allows the company to work together with Gross’ family to bring him home.

Gross’ wife Judy, who has traveled to Cuba on several occasions to see her husband, said in the same statement that the family is “very pleased that DAI has committed to help address the injuries sustained by our family.

The $60million lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Cuban officials have suggested they would be willing to free Gross in exchange for the men. Four of the men remain in prison in the United States. One man who completed his sentence but was serving probation in the U.S. was recently allowed to return to Cuba permanently.

Since the US is not amiable to releasing the four, will Havana take the cash instead?

[Title typo corrected]

Brazilian medical council condemns plan to bring in 6,000 Cuban doctors
Government’s attempt to source doctors for remote north-eastern regions is irresponsible, says Federal Council of Medicine

Brazil plans to hire 6,000 Cuban doctors to serve in remote parts of the country where medical services are deficient or nonexistent, despite controversy over the quality of their training.

The Brazilian foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, said negotiations were under way involving the Washington-based Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) to allow the Cuban doctors to practice in Brazil.

Brazilian medical associations have opposed Cuban-trained doctors practicing in their country, arguing that standards at Cuba’s medical schools are lower than in Brazil and equivalent in some cases to a nursing education.

In exchange for the Cuban indentured doctors,

He said Brazil would pay for the modernisation of five airports in Cuba, where Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht is already building a container terminal at the port of Mariel.

On Monday, Brazil’s trade minister Fernando Pimentel signed an agreement in Havana setting conditions for a $176m (£113m) loan from its giant development bank BNDES to upgrade and expand the airports of Havana, Santa Clara, Holguín, Cayo Coco and Cayo Largo.

Sounds to me like the powers that be are counting on an expansion of trade and travel once Fidel & Raul are no longer of this world.

Lloré escuchándolo.

1a parte:

2a parte:

3a parte:

4a parte:

1. Last weekend Mariela Castro was in Philadelphia, where she received an award for her gay rights advocacy. Cashing in on the occasion, over in La Habana, the Communist regime allowed a calculated, state-sponsored rally to coincide with Mariela’s award.

2. Guillermo Fariñas is now traveling through the US and Europe to talk about human rights abuses in Cuba.

3. Six-day event in Pittsburgh targets discrimination in Cuba
Fidel Castro declared it nonexistent, but racism is still pervasive in a country known more for its rich culture

A group of Cubans attending AfricAmericas, a six-day event being held here through today, told stories that most U.S. blacks would find familiar, “but it is not like here,” said Manuel Cuesta Morua, who has been a tour guide, history teacher and a museum director whose political activism cost him his job. “In Cuba, we are all equal, but [blacks] can’t be in the media. We have the same education, but we can’t have that job.

“Here there are civic tools” and a justice system that can work, he said. “We have no political or symbolic representation, no access to the emerging economy” and no avenues to leadership positions.

4. Barbara Walters is retiring. Back in 1977 she spent 10 days in Cuba as Fidel Castro’s guest.

She came back with an interview that aired on TV, and a very persistent rumor that she boinked the dictator. Then she went back 25 years later, asked the same questions and got the same BS answers, like “we [Cuban Communists] don’t have the same notion of freedom as you”,

Since Fidel’s not available for interviews, but the regime needs money, expect more dissidents being allowed to travel abroad and that Mariela will get more awards.

The real test comes when the dissidents return to the island-prison. So far, it does not bode well.

Yes, Mexican students studying to be teachers are holding hostages in protest against president Peña Nieto’s proposed changes. Mary O”Grady reports on Mexico, Where Teachers Take Hostages
President Enrique Peña Nieto needs to show the country that he will defend the rule of law.

Mexican students studying to be teachers released a hostage on Wednesday—in the municipality of Nahuatzen—due to concerns about his health. But they continue to hold five others. The students are supported by the Michoacán State Teachers Organization, which warned that the remaining captives, who are state policemen, would be freed only when a demand for 1,200 new teaching jobs is met.

ARGENTINA
Argentina Peso Trades on Black Market Above 10 to USD
Argentina’s currency traded above 10 pesos to the U.S. dollar for the first time on the black market, with Argentines desperate to acquire greenbacks for travel and savings paying a premium of 93% over the official exchange rate.

BRAZIL
Brazilian will be the first Latin American to head the WTO

Brazil judge suspends stadium deal
A judge suspends a deal giving control of Brazil’s biggest stadium to a private consortium, saying there were irregularities in the bidding process.

CHILE
Alert Status Raised at Chile’s Copahue

así estaba el volcán copahue a las 3.30 de la madrugada twitter.com/claucaviahue/s…

— claudiacarrasco (@claucaviahue) May 9, 2013

COLOMBIA
Bojayá massacre, Uribe and Plan Colombia

CUBA
Fidel Castro may be America’s most famous illegal immigrant

Cuban spy, back in Havana after years in U.S. prison: No regrets

HONDURAS
Tribute to a fallen police officer – Edgardo Galdámez

LATIN AMERICA
Olavo de Carvalho on socialism: A thousand combat fronts which do not advance the socialist cause ostensibly, but erode the moral and cultural values of capitalist society

MEXICO
Vatican declares Mexican Death Saint blasphemous

The PRI’s long tail
A battle is brewing between Enrique Peña Nieto and the dinosaurs in his party

The Rise of the ‘Aztec Tiger’
Under a charismatic new leader, Mexico is roaring toward a turnaround

Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico
The unmentionables

Thermo Sold Plant Overrun by Drug Cartel, Suit Alleges
Lab-equipment maker Thermo Fisher allegedly hid information that a Mexican facility it sold as part of a broader deal last year was overrun by a drug cartel, according to claims in a lawsuit filed by Opengate Capital.

PANAMA
Proof Of Life

Panama orders power rationing as drought continues
The Panamanian government has ordered schools to close and government offices to reduce their opening hours as the country suffers from a power shortage.

PERU
The Father and Son Business Meeting: Plutocrats and their progeny
A secretive fathers-and-sons knees-up for billionaires

PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico to end inmate transfer program with US

1/3 Population of Puerto Rico Gets Food Stamps from U.S. Gov’t — $2 Billion in 2012

TURKS & CAICOS
Arrests of vacationing Americans in Turks and Caicos spark concern

VENEZUELA
Venezuela’s election aftermath
Cry havoc
As political and economic crises deepen, the army waits in the wings

The week’s posts and podcast:
Guatemala’s historic decision

Venezuela: Photo of the week

Should Argentina dollarize?

Lady in White met Pope in white

Blogger call on tomorrow’s CSP conference

Venezuela: no US access to Timothy Hallet Tracy

Turkey’s mustache business

Argentina: El Tejar moves to Brazil

Podcast,
Mexico and other US-Latin America issues

Cuban dissident Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, was able to exchange greetings with Pope Francis yesterday at the end of a general audience held in St. Peter’s Square

Soler handed the pope two letters from the wives of political prisoners, according to the French news agency AFP. Soler later told the media that the pope had given her a blessing and asked her to continue her fight.

Carlos Eire points out that

It may seem like an insignificant encounter to some, but this is a big deal, and the rulers of the Castro Kingdom will gnash their teeth when they see this photo. The Cuban flag draped between the two figures in white will be a great irritant to the tyrants, because they refuse to accept the fact that Cuba belongs to all Cubans, not just to their slave-drivers and those slaves who agree to submit to the lash. .

So, even though this was a brief encounter, it delivers a potent message.

It’s definitely an improvement over the prior pope’s refusal to meet them while he was in Cuba.

The big news this week, Fascist Venezuela: The end of the National Assembly

ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Lures Foreign Buyers
A hunger for stable U.S. dollars is creating opportunities for buyers to nab steeply discounted properties. As long as the properties are owned by sellers willing to do a foreign-account-to-foreign-account sale, that is.

BOLIVIA
Bolivia throws out USAID

BRAZIL
Dams in the Amazon
The rights and wrongs of Belo Monte
Having spent heavily to make the world’s third-biggest hydroelectric project greener, Brazil risks getting a poor return on its $14 billion investment

Shock over latest Brazil bus rape
Police in Brazil are looking for a man who raped a woman on a moving Rio de Janeiro bus, in a case that has shocked the host nation of the football 2014 World Cup.

CHILE
Statistics in Chile
How many Chileans?

COLOMBIA
Colombian government FARC peace talks, first 6 months

CUBA
Political Change in Cuba so that Everything Remains the Same

FBI Adds Cop Killer Joanne Chesimard To Most Wanted Terrorist List
She Was Convicted Of Gunning Down A New Jersey State Trooper In 1973

In poor health, Cuban prisoner of conscience Marcos Lima released from jail

COSTA RICA
Costa Rica Declares Obama Visit a National Holiday

ECUADOR
Judge dismisses $19B Ecuador judgment against Chevron’s Canadian subsidiary

MEXICO
Obama In Mexico Gives Cartels Short Shrift

Evolving U.S.-Mexico Relations and Obama’s Visit

Mexico’s Drug War and Booming Economy

THE GANG OF EIGHT’S TORRENT OF IMMIGRANTS: IS THE REAL NUMBER 57 MILLION?

NICARAGUA
Nicaragua cloud forest ‘under siege’
Indigenous communities say that illegal logging and land speculators are threatening Central America’s most important tropical forest.

PUERTO RICO
Another top university official in Puerto Rico resigns amid protest

URUGUAY
‘Breaking the wall of impunity’ in Uruguay
Uruguayan judges and prosecutors begin to defy the Supreme Court of Justice’s closure of human rights investigations.

VENEZUELA
For foreign non-illustrated media and chavista supporters: chavismo media lock up

Mario Vargas Llosa: La muerte lenta del chavismo
PIEDRA DE TOQUE. Al mismo tiempo que el Gobierno de Nicolás Maduro convertía el Parlamento en un aquelarre de brutalidad, la represión se amplificaba y se detenía a funcionarios por votar a la oposición

The week’s posts and podcast:
About cinco de mayo, the American holiday

Venezuela: 50 shades of crazy

Obama in Costa Rica

Cuba sheltering Most Wanted Terrorist

Venezuela: The Cuban perp?

Obama heads to Mexico

Fascist Venezuela: The end of the National Assembly

Bolivia: No term limit for Evo

Ecuadorian Ambassador to Peru allegedly kicks a woman in public

Cuba’s message to dissidents: You had your trip, now we’re coming after you

Immigration from south of the Mexican border

Podcast: In Silvio Canto’s podcast.

Mary O’Grady interviewed Berta Soler,

Havana in Black and White
Dissident Berta Soler takes a big risk by telling the truth about racism and repression in Cuba.

Now Ms. Soler is taking advantage of the dictatorship’s new travel policy—that for the first time in a half-century allows Cubans to take trips abroad—to ask the international community for “moral and spiritual support” for the Cuban people in their struggle against the dictatorship.

She wants the world to know of Castro’s racism. Blacks, she says, are grossly underrepresented in the universities and overrepresented in prisons. “The beggars in Cuba are black, not white. The marginalized are blacks, not whites.” She adds: “They tell me ‘Negra, what are you doing? You have a lot to thank the revolution for!’”

Repression is on the rise, and in the absence of international condemnation the regime feels free to administer publicly the beatings the Ladies in White endure in order to show who’s boss. The regime used to send women only to attack the Ladies but now they send men as well. They punch the Ladies with the clear intent to hurt them. They sometimes break bones.

Ms. Soler says that these attackers “never have been neighbors” spontaneously defending the glorious revolution. They are professionals working for the Interior Ministry or civilians who obey the regime in order to keep their jobs or their place in university classrooms. Ms. Soler says that for the past two years many of “the same faces” have consistently shown up to attack the group. The woman who bit Laura Pollan is well known by the Ladies because she is a regular on the goon squad and works for the ministry.

It is chilling to think what might happen to the politically incorrect Ms. Soler when she returns to Cuba, which is what makes her trip to Rome this week so crucial.

Lady in White Belkis Cantillo was beaten, arrested, and taken away the week after returning to Cuba.

She has asked to see Pope Francis. If he agrees, the visit might protect her. Without it, and in the absence of other influential international voices coming to her defense, her fate is less certain.

I’m not counting on the Pope.

Too bad Beyonce and Jay-Z couldn’t drop by, though.

The former Joanne Chesimard (now known as Assata Shakur), who murdered a NJ State Trooper 40 years ago, is now on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, the first woman to make it.

Chesimard is believed to be one of dozens of American fugitives living in Cuba, many of them one-time members of U.S. militant groups.

She

attends government functions in Cuba and her standard of living is higher than most in the country, officials said.

Which makes the higher reward tempting,

Officials have also doubled the reward, to $2 million, for the capture of Chesimard. The state is adding its own $1 million on top of the million dollars already offered by the FBI for her capture and return.

Turns out she’s Tupac Shakur’s aunt and godmother.

$2million bucks.

Belkis Cantillo, second from the left.

Cuba’s Communist regime has telegraphed a message to dissidents Orlando Luis Pardo ‏@OLPL, Yoani Sánchez @yoanisanchez, Rosa María Payá @RosaMariaPaya, and any others who were allowed to travel outside the country:
One week after returning to Cuba, Lady in White is missing after being beaten and arrested by Castro State Security

Yesterday, the Castro regime carried out its usual Sunday of violent repression against members of Cuba’s peaceful human rights group the Ladies in White when they joined together for Sunday church services as they do every Sunday. As the women stepped out of the church after Sunday mass in the town of Palma Soriano, they were met by Castro State Security agents who began to viciously punch them and beat them with umbrellas before placing them under arrest.

Among the Ladies in White victimized by the violence of the Castro dictatorship was Belkis Cantillo, a Lady in White who just a week ago was in Brussels to take part in the long overdue acceptance of the Sakharov Prize the group had won in 2005. Ms. Cantillo was one of the women who was beaten and arrested by the Castro political police before being arrested and taken away. As of this morning, her physical condition and whereabouts are unknown.

In record time, From Brussels to a Cuban Prison in just one week.

In Italy, Yoani Sánchez was “greeted” by this,