Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Nikki Hailey’s human rights op-ed

U.S. ambassador to the UN writes at the WaPo: The U.N. Human Rights Council whitewashes brutality

The president of Venezuela, whose government shoots protesters in the street, recently thanked the international community for its “universal vote of confidence” in that country’s commitment to human rights.

The Cuban deputy foreign minister, whose government imprisons thousands of political opponents, once said Cuba has historic prestige “in the promotion and protection of all human rights.”

How can these people get away with saying such things? Because they have been elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose members are — on paper — charged with “upholding the highest standards” of human rights.

On paper only, since

Venezuela is a member of the council despite the systematic destruction of civil society by the government of Nicolás Maduro through arbitrary detention, torture and blatant violations of freedom of the press and expression. Mothers are forced to dig through trash cans to feed their children. This is a crisis that has been 18 years in the making. And yet, not once has the Human Rights Council seen fit to condemn Venezuela.

Cuba’s government strictly controls the media and severely restricts the Cuban people’s access to the Internet. Thousands are arbitrarily detained each year, with some political prisoners serving long sentences. Yet Cuba has never been condemned by the council; it, too, is a member.

Read the whole thing.

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Cuba invites Lopez Rivera

Raul and the commies invited unrepentant terrorist  to visit Cuba:

“The Cuban Party, government and people send our fraternal congratulations,” Castro told Lopez Rivera. “We share the joy of your liberation.”

López Rivera would reunite with fellow FALN bomb maker William Morales,  who is thought to have lived in Cuba since June of 1988, according to the FBI.

 

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The sad lives of Jews in Cuba

Dovid Margolin reports on What Life Is Like for Jews in Cuba. Now that Americans can easily visit the “Latin paradise,” I jumped at the opportunity to see first-hand the reality of life for its few remaining Jews. It isn’t pretty.

In Cuba, what with the added factors of a failed Marxist economic policy and the all-encompassing police state, almost all hope of actualizing one’s potential has disappeared. What remains is a naturally sunny people resigned to their forlorn reality. As for the remaining and mainly elderly Jews, they have seen their lives pass by, their God-given potential suffocated by a man-made revolution.

Read the whole thing.

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Cuba gets Venezuelan oil for first time in eight months

From OilPrice.com,

Cuba Receives Light Oil Shipments From Venezuela After Eight Months

Cuba received Venezuelan light oil for the first time in eight months in March, according to shipping documents from government-run PDVSA seen by Reuters.

The eight-month halt had caused Cuba’s Cienfuegos refinery to stop production due to lack of supplies. The Venezuelan company had scaled back export of its lighter grades to the Caribbean in order to use the fuel to dilute heavier grades.

Venezuela – in the middle of its deep crisis –  appears to be able to continue to support its overseas cronies. Don’t expect any of them to clamor for human rights and democracy any time soon.

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Google goes to Cuba

The servers will only speed up access for existing users, as the CSM points out.

Headlines:

Google just became the first foreign internet company to launch in Cuba

Cuba is on the brink of an internet revolution

 Google becomes first foreign internet company to go live in Cuba
Google Is Officially the First Foreign Internet Company in Cuba
Google Global Cache is now available in Cuba
Google activates company’s first servers in Cuba

Currently, Cuba gets most of its internet through an underwater cable from Venezuela, which makes connection speeds very slow.

“Right now, it’s cumbersome to access the Internet in Cuba, even in a big metropolitan area like Havana – and forget about the countryside,” Mark Grabowski, an an associate professor of Internet Law and Ethics at Adelphi University on Long Island, tells the Monitor via email. “Typically, to get online, you have to buy a card from a street vendor, and it has a code that gives you internet access for an hour. These cards are relatively expensive – perhaps $2 or $3, which is a lot in a country where the average person makes the equivalent of $25 per month. Then you must find one of the rare hot spots to login with your card. And, of course, you need some sort of device, like a smart phone or laptop, that will allow you to get online. To put it in perspective, I had easier and more access to the internet when I lived in Cairo, Egypt, in 1998 than I did when I visited Havana last year.”

Then there’s the matter of censorship, too.

In other news, Uber comes to Cuba,

 

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Cuba gets the crabs

Millions of Crabs Are Invading Cuba’s Streets

Why did the crab cross the road? To get to the Bay of Pigs, apparently. Cuba’s roads are currently “carpeted” with red, black, and yellow land crabs on their annual migration to spawn by the sea, according to Reuters.

Each year, shortly after the island’s first spring rainfall, crabs scuttle by the millions from the forest to the southern coast to lay eggs. They come out daily at dusk and dawn, and cover the roads surrounding the bay. Unfortunately, their numbers are so great that many are inevitably run over. Their shells are sharp enough to puncture motorists’ tires though, which is bad news for visitors but good news for local businesses: Tourists are willing to pay $10 to repair their crab-popped tires, which is nearly half of the state’s average $25 monthly salary, says Reuters.

How bad is it?

This bad:

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The Cuba diet is like the Maduro diet is like the NoKo diet

The image is a screen cap since Cosmo apparently decided to hide the article.

The “Cuban diet” is like the Maduro diet:

Nearly three-quarters of Venezuelans lost an average of 8.7kg (19 pounds) on the “Maduro diet” over the past year; in 2016 more than half of children monitored between October and December in four regions, including the capital, suffered from malnutrition or were at risk of it.

And let’s forget that North Korea has “a handle on obesity,” through “behavioral change,”

Behavioral change, Stalinist-style, or as the brain-dead would call it, the Holodomor diet.

UPDATE,

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