Odds and ends
- The Wall Street Journal reports on golf course development. Cuban officials have talked about this for years, to make for a more diverse tourism destination and to attract higher-spending travelers. Maybe there’s some action afoot.
- Cold water on ethanol: Reuters’ sources say that in the near term, Cuba is interested in ethanol production not from sugar, but from bagasse, the waste product from sugar milling.
- London’s Independent gives an account of the mass offered in the square in front of Havana’s cathedral by the Vatican Secretary of State – invitation only, some top officials in attendance, Damas de Blanco standing in the back. The reporter also talked to Oscar Espinosa Chepe and Miriam Leiva in their apartment in Marianao.
The Church has demonstrated it has no intention of being a player in promoting a real transition in Cuba. Looking back, one realizes that the role Pope John Paul II played in Poland was unique to the circumstance of him being Polish. The Church will be content with exercising its pastoral mission and that is it.
ReplyDeleteHey phil, look what AP is writing,
ReplyDeleteWriting under his new title, "Comrade Fidel," the 81-year-old Castro scoffed at suggestions in news reports that his retirement, announced Tuesday, would lead to political changes aided by Cuban exiles in the United States.
"The reality is otherwise," Castro wrote. He quoted approvingly from other articles that said his retirement showed the failure of U.S. officials to affect Cuba's political transition.
Fidel approves of your writing! That should mean an upgrade in your hotel accommodations on your next trip to Havana, you lucky bastard!
Anon, thanks for the joke.
ReplyDeleteWhat I still don't get is why it causes such irritation for it to be pointed out that after so many US efforts to get rid of Castro, the guy simply went away?
The answer is simply Phil, there is no mystery. Castro is already too sick and senile and unable to do anything but write his reflexions sometimes. Anyone who saw his last interview with Randy (Mr.Lapdog) Alonso should know that. He was no able to state a coherent thought during the whole interview and sometimes his speech was slurred and could not be understood. It does not take a scientist or doctor to decipher that any person of his age who was under the knife so many times and with the amount of anethesia he received, cannot be in possesion of all his faculties.
ReplyDeleteHe did not retire of his own volition, nature forced him to retire by showing him he is not inmortal and will die just like anyone else. As for me, the sooner the better, he has been too long holding the reins of absolute power and any change, will be an improvement for the Cuban people. Good riddance.
Thanks. I thought it was obvious that his health was the cause, but I suppose that could have said it.
ReplyDelete