Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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ALA misspells my name

May 25 article at the American Libraries On Line website (emphasis added): Library Film Festival Riles Anti-Castro Community

The Princeton (N.J.) Public Library came under fire in mid-May over the inclusion of two documentaries about Cuba among 14 films in its 2007 Princeton Human Rights Film Festival. The controversy resulted in a shouting match at the May 12 screening of ¡Salud! What Puts Cuba on the Map in the Quest for Global Health, as well as accusations in the conservative blogosphere that the library was disseminating pro-Castro propaganda.

PPL Director and ALA President Leslie Burger told American Libraries that the purpose of the festival, now in its third year, is to highlight “what we think are human rights issues like the right to clean water or the right to a safe environment or the right to clean air.” Emphasizing that the 2 1/2 day event is “not about the human rights records of countries around the world,” Burger said that the film-selection committee chose ¡Salud! to spark discussion about what constitutes a quality public health system.

Which Cuba doesn’t have.

Click on the photo.

But area resident Faustia Wertz blogged May 8 that she saw PPL’s choice of ¡Salud! as well as The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. as indicative of the library’s indifference to Castro’s human rights record. “People started organizing letter-writing campaigns,” Burger explained, “pressuring us to remove the films from the screening list, which we refused to do.” She said the library also refused to “uninvite” Ellen Bernstein of Pastors for Peace, who is a frequent traveler to Cuba, as a speaker after the ¡Salud! screening.

“The thing about the two films is not that they’re being shown. I have no objection to that. The facts on Cuba are not the facts that were shown,” Wertz told the May 18 Princeton Packet.

A couple of things here:
That’s Mrs. Wertz to you. Mrs. Fausta Wertz, while you’re at it.

At no time did I ask that Ellen Bernstein be disinvited.

And I’m not an “area resident”, I am a taxpayer in Princeton Township, whose taxes support the Festival.

“To have a film festival that doesn’t address the blatant and egregious human rights violations in Cuba seems really unbalanced,” agreed Maria C. Werlau of Summit, New Jersey, and executive director of Cuba Archive.

“If we want to have a discussion about people having public health care, we have to choose a film that allows us to have that discussion,” Burger asserted. “Unfortunately because Cuba appeared in the title of that film, we never had that discussion.” She added that PPL would continue holding the Human Rights Film Festival, “broadening our community involvement in it. We’re willing to take the heat.”

One suggestion, if the Princeton Public Library is calling its film festival the Princeton Human Rights Film Festival, it might be a good idea not to ignore the human rights abuses in the systems it defends, such as the medical apartheid system prevalent in Cuba, when three eye-witnesses in the audience wanted to talk about it.

The Princeton Packet at least emailed me before quoting me, and managed to spell my name correctly.

You can read my account of the PHRFF here.
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Three botched surgeries, a foreign specialist and imported medications later, Fidel says he’s "better"

Updated with a sneak preview of Sicko

Obi’s Sister sent me the link to the AP story: Castro Says He’s Better, Weight Stable

Fidel Castro’s recovery from intestinal surgery 10 months ago was delayed because the first of several operations he had went badly, the communist leader said in a statement that gave the most detailed account of his health since August.

Castro, 80, said in the Wednesday statement that he is now eating solid food and improving after “many months” of intravenous feeding. It was the most information released about Castro’s condition since his Aug. 13 birthday, when he asked Cubans to be optimistic but not rule out possible “adverse news.”

Notice how it’s a statement, not a personal appearance, a press conference, a phone call, or anything such.

The WaPo has a picture of Fidel reading the newspaper, which, as they notice, is undated.

Michael Moore, who’s at the Cannes Film Festival and

praises the Socialized healthcare system that let 15,000 die from heat in 2003 (many waiting for ice water in hospital hallways).

(and who has a vested interest in not having to pay for his lifestyle choices) would be shocked to hear that El Comandante was at death’s door because the excellent Cuban healthcare system (the same excellent Cuban healthcare system that could not treat Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s cancer so he had to go to LA for chemo and radiation) botched up not once, or twice, but three times, or maybe more,

A January story in the Spanish newspaper El Pais described Castro as being in “very grave” condition after at least three failed operations for diverticular disease. The Cuban government denied that report.

After which, the excellent Cuban healthcare system had to be set aside and they called cancer specialist Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, and Castro required medications that were paid by the Spanish taxpayers.

But hey, it’s free healthcare!

Obvoiously all of this stress is getting to him – the previously uniformed Fidel’s letting himself go, perhaps inspired by Michael,

“I don’t have time now for films and photos that require me to constantly cut my hair, beard and mustache, and get spruced up every day,” he said, evidently referring to the preparation required for some of the official images.

Here’s a picture of Michael. Apparently Fidel can’t let go of the newspaper.

Meanwhile, Fidel Castro Appeals for Investment in Health Rather Than in Arms, or more specifically, invest in his tripe.

Update: Via Manuel, LiveLeak has a segment from Sicko, where Michael More is in an NHS hospital and says, “In British hospitals, instead of money going in to the cashier’s window, money comes out!”

Update, Friday 25 May

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In other, more relevant Latin American news, Congress should approve a free trade agreement with Colombia, and Investor’s Business Daily explains why:
Colombia Warning

Americans might not realize it, but Colombia has shown great friendship with the U.S, at a high cost to itself.

– It’s lost 2,658 of its own troops in the drug war since 2002, but cut coca cultivation 9%, the United Nations found. Next door, the Venezuela that Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., praises is doing little about soaring trafficking.

– Colombia also has doubled oil production on the year, moving to become a top-15 U.S. supplier at a time when Venezuela is destroying its own energy industry.

– It has provided rare know-how to the U.S. in Afghanistan. Sending its own security forces into harm’s way, Colombia’s taken a top role in helping Afghanistan defeat the illegal drug cultivation that is a new threat to its stability.

– Do any Democrats remember that Colombia was first on the scene to offer swamp and jungle rescue teams, to help to the victims of the New Orleans disaster?

If Colombia is denied a free trade pact by Congress, its future will be severely hurt. To treat any ally in this way is unconscionable. But in the case of Colombia, it also is self-defeating.

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More Fred Thompson

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but Fred’s cigar is eloquent, indeed.

Two weeks ago I posted about Fred Thompson on Cuba’s ‘free healthcare’

Now Fred’s got a new one, via Instapundit

Thompson to Moore from breitbarttv on Vimeo

Fred mentions Cuban dissident Nicolas Guillen, who was

in a mental institution for several years, giving him devastating electro-shock treatments

I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael Moore et al would say,

but he had free healthcare!

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While you’re here, did you listen to Thursday’s podcast on Tony Blair, and Friday’s on Israel yet?

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Fred Thompson on Cuba’s ‘free healthcare"

The Myth of Cuban Health Care

If Moore wants a subject for a real documentary, I would suggest looking into the life of Cuban painter and award-winning documentarian Nicolas Guillen Landrian. He was denied the right to practice his art for using the Beatles’ song, “The Fool on the Hill,” as background music behind footage of Castro climbing a mountain. Later, he was given plenty of free Cuban health care when he was confined for years in a “mental institution” and given devastating, repeated electroshock “treatments.”

More here.

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And now for more propaganda from AP

Associated Press is back to shilling for the charismatic-leader-helping-the-poor-offering-free-health-care-education-adult-literacy-and-job-training-initiatives-that-help-millions-of-Cubanstm through a lie, not that they ever stopped:

Castro, 80, is a leading example of Cuba’s healthy life expectancy

Fidel Castro may be ailing, but he’s a living example of something Cubans take pride in — an average life expectancy roughly similar to that of the United States.

Living?

Depends how badly:

Homes that were luxurious before Castro’s 1959 revolution are now falling apart and many cramped apartments contain three generations of family members. Food, water and medicine shortages are chronic.

But most prescription drugs and visits to the doctor are free and physicians encourage preventive care.

Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that. I also know that people who travel to Cuba to see their relatives (who are not allowed to leave Cuba) have to get them the most basic supplies, such as sanitary napkins, aspirin, Tylenol, band-aids, and first-aid ointments like Betadine and iodine. Ask my sister’s next-door neighbor, who works at a pharmacy that provides ready-made “care packages” of first-aid items to take to Cuba.

Of course Will Weisert, the AP reporter, hasn’t been told that Cubans treated in Cuban hospitals have to bring their own bed linens because the hospitals don’t have any. The linens are available in Cuban hospitals only to foreigners paying in dollars.

The article continues,

Cuba’s average life expectancy is 77.08 years — second in Latin America after Puerto Rico and more than 11 years above the world average, according to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book.

It says Cuban life expectancy averages 74.85 years for men and 79.43 years for women, compared with 75.15 and 80.97 respectively for Americans.

Here’s the CIA Factbook info on Cuban life expectancy:

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 77.08 years
male: 74.85 years
female: 79.43 years (2007 est.)

For Puerto Rico

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 78.54 years
male: 74.6 years
female: 82.67 years (2007 est.)

And the USA (by which they mean the 50 states, since Puerto Ricans are Americans from birth)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 78 years
male: 75.15 years
female: 80.97 years (2007 est.)

But back to the AP article,

A relaxed lifestyle, which prizes time spent with family over careers, helps keep Cubans healthy, Tache said.

Just ask these Ladies about their relaxed lifestyle:

Just another day of Associated Press Deficit Disorder (APDD)

Update Via Irwin, The Big White Lie
Don’t Worry, Be A Commie
Update 2: A Shredding, at Opinion Journal

If an old American lady told a reporter, “Sometimes you have all you want to eat and sometimes you don’t,” is there any doubt he would write a story bewailing our country’s shocking neglect of the elderly, poor and hungry? Why are American journalists more favorably disposed toward an America-hating communist personality cult than their own country?

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Hard-selling Merc’s HPV vaccine

Michael Fumento emails,

To hear the politicians say it, Merck’s new HPV vaccine is the greatest health advance since penicillin. Hence, like Polio shots, it should be mandatory for all 11 to 12-year-old girls. Only those “nut cases” on the religious right could oppose a miracle like this, right? Wrong. Indeed, as I
write in The Weekly Standard some of those politicians and allegedly neutral groups lobbying them
are being paid off by Merck. The reality is that this vaccine provides protection 70% of the time against the HPV strains that causes about 1 in 75 U.S. female cancer deaths a year. Moreover the incidence and death rate of that cancer, that of the cervix, has been steadily dropping for decades. It also takes about 30 years on average for those few HPV infections that do cause cancer to reach the point where they are life-threatening, during which time all of those women should be receiving regular Pap smears that would catch the cancer from HPV – or other causes – in its tracks. Yet for this we’re going to mandate a series of three injections costing $360 total? And we’re in such a hurry to do it that we can’t wait for the almost
inevitable approval of a competitor vaccine later this year? Hey, you can’t
blame Merck for trying – but you can blame our elected officials.

In the article, Michael states,

a study just released by the CDC says about 27 percent of U.S. females aged 14 to 59 years have it. Importantly, only 2.2 percent of those women are carrying one of the two virus strains most likely to lead to cervical cancer

That means that fewer than six out of a thousand women aged 14-59 carries one of those two virus strains.

This article is a must-read, particularly if you have daughters.

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Bad science, and today’s items

Via Maria, Celebrities told to embrace the facts, not bad science
The Sense About Science guys have their work cut out for them.

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From Larwyn,
Supply Factors and Stagnant Wages

Blue collar workers’ real wages have stagnated because of labor supply factors. These include:

-The baby boom
-Immigration
-Diversity

They have also stagnated because of:

-Health insurance costs and
-Costs of bureaucracy due to workplace regulation.

Social stratification has increased because of:

-Urban renewal and disruption of blue collar social networks and
-Unnecessary college degree requirements.

In other words, supply factors and government intervention have caused the stagnation of blue collar real wages that the US has suffered in the past 30 years.

RTWT

More on Conyers: Get This Turkey Off Judiciary Committee
Oh yes, let’s put our lives in the hands of the government
UN Workers Raping 12 year olds in Sudan

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Via Beth., Honoring Those Who Died
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Via SC&A, from the Victims of Political Islam site, Dr Nasr Abu Zaid
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Call me overprotective, but I would have never allowed my son to do this when he was fourteen.

More blogging later.

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