Odds and ends

• Lt. Col. Simmons didn’t impress former Cuban political prisoner Nicolas Perez, who wrote in today’s El Nuevo Herald. He can’t quite figure Simmons out, and wonders if he is, among other things, settling scores between federal agencies, trying “irresponsibly to promote his book,” or promoting “an electoral agenda.” He says Simmons claims there are Cuban agents among the staff of Miami’s Versailles restaurant, something I had missed. Regarding Simmons’ charges against Marifeli Perez-Stable, Perez asks why he singles her out “in this Miami of a million inhabitants, where 950,000 sympathized and cooperated with the Cuban revolution,” and where people who were “until yesterday” ministers, military officers, functionaries, and torturers in Cuba, are on the radio and television constantly.

• Lincoln, call your office: Alabama’s baseball team heads to Cuba in mid-December to play three games.

• The Czech Republic, one of the few reliable partners of the Bush Cuba policy, broke ranks in June. Now, Costa Rica: President Arias calls on the United States to take the first step toward normalized relations by returning the naval base at Guantanamo to Cuba.

• The UN Human Rights Council picks its new president, Miguel Alfonso Martinez, a Cuban law professor and former foreign ministry spokesman. [Correction: the post is president of an advisory committee, not of the council itself.]