Odds and ends
- As cleanup efforts begin,
Cuban civil defense authorities announce
11 fatalities caused by hurricane Sandy’s pass through Santiago,
Guantanamo, and Holguin provinces in eastern Cuba. Among the dead was a four-month-old who died
in a building collapse. Granma has photos. Reuters story here.
- AP: Florida’s
Ethics Commission investigated Rep. David Rivera’s conduct while he served
in the state legislature and found probable cause to believe he committed
11 violations of the law. This is
separate and apart from the investigation of his apparent financing of a
Democratic primary candidate this year to soften up the eventual Democratic
nominee, Joe Garcia. Republicans
continue to keep their distance from Rivera. The Washington Post recently ran
interviews of Rivera
and Garcia.
- Steve Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
has written a chock-full-of-information paper on academic exchanges with Cuba. He recognizes the complications and
argues that a greater degree of exchange is in the U.S. national
interest. Also, that it’s easier to
achieve by private organizations than by the government.
- Mambi
Watch has the audio of a speech delivered in Spanish by Senator Rubio
where he predicts that the Cuban government’s end is near. The prediction was based on information
he couldn’t share, he said. He
spoke to Unidad Cubana, many of whose members surely made the same
prediction to each other before Rubio was born.
Conditions for widespread public protests are building up and many incidents occur that are routinely suppressed by the vigilant repressive services who are eager to pounce on them like a cat on a mice that strays out of its hole.
ReplyDeleteAll police untis in Cuba are connected by internal internet and contingency plans are in place to cut off communications and arrest prospective dissident leaders in the rest of the country whenever protests break out somewhere in Cuba before they are even aware of what is going on elsewhere.
But as the conditions deteriorate and protests multiply the repressive defenses will begin to be overwhelmed by the numerous incidents and they will be spread too thin to be as effective as they are at present.
Someday some incident will take place that would evade repressive controls and will become known and supported by the population throughout the island.
This will be the beginning of the end of the Cuban totalitarian regime and it will unravel as quickly and totally as the Eastern European Communist regimes in 1989 or the USSR itself in 1991.
But it is the nature of revolts against totalitarian regimes that such a result. even though it is as predictable as death itself, will occur at random and due to causes and circumstances that nobody can predict.
Perhaps it will be triggered by an incident of police brutality somewhere in thecourse of an eviction or the arrest of someone stealing government property to feed his family or due in the course of putting down a routine opposition protest.
Somehow the knowledge of the police brutality will become known people will react to it by joining the protests and the successful occurrence of a nation wide protests against teh government will lead to its downfall.
But the notion that somebody has the inside dope about when, where and how such random events will occur and what will be their end result is, to say the least, absolutely preposterous, if not outright bullshit!
I think such claims avoid the impending doom of teh Cuban dictatorship, are just ways to pander to what the anti Castro audience wants to hear in order to pick up monetary contributions or to clinch their vote in the coming elections.
It's a par for the course demagogic performance in political circles in order to manipulate their followers and as such should be expected.
In short it should not surprise us and when it occurs should make us smile knowingly and say "Demagogic politicians can be such scoundrels to take such brazen advantage or their audiendence's candidness and ignorance!"
Cantaclaro