Odds and ends

• Feeling ambiguous about the life and work of Vladimir Ilyich on the 141^st anniversary of his birth? This Granma article will clear things up.

• In the Herald, historian Enrique Ros writes about Eisenhower-era origins of U.S. plans to work with Cubans here and in Cuba to bring down the communist government. (Raul Castro’s opening speech to the Party Congress covered the same ground and quoted similar U.S. documents.) The LA Times looks at the track record of those U.S. plans, five decades later.

• In El Pais, Rafael Rojas writes that the PCC chose well to link its Congress with the anniversary of the defeat of U.S.-backed forces at the Bay of Pigs, saying it held up the Revolution’s perfect enemy, one that combined “the evil of the empire with the vileness of traitors.”

• Granma’s page that sums up the Party Congress is here, and the Herald’s list of the 15-member PCC political bureau is here.

• Alan Gross has filed an appeal of his conviction in Cuba’s Supreme Court (Reuters) and was visited by leaders of a Havana Jewish congregation (CBS).

• The State Department gives a human rights award to the Damas de Blanco.

• The Party Congress received 108 congratulatory messages from 54 countries, Granma reports. Those from China’s Hu Jintao to Raul and Fidel, and a message from Vietnam’s communist party chief mentioned the prospect of increased “cooperation,” which I’m sure has a nice ring to it. See stories by AP and La Jornada.