Odds and ends

• The Alan Gross case has provoked a lot of discussion for nearly five years, but until this new star of the Cuban opposition movement came along, it didn’t occur to anyone that Mr. Gross’ precarious health is apt for ridicule. Yesterday, “Let Alan rot!” And later, a joke on Twitter: “Alan Gross will be taken soon from Cuba to Africa to fight Ebola: if he survives, he'll be free. If he dies, USAID will take him to U.S.” If you set out to discredit the opposition movement from within, could you do any better?

• VOA: Cuban doctors practicing in U.S.-built hospitals in Liberia. Wait ‘til the Helms-Burton purists get on this one…

• Speaking of Helms-Burton, the President of Bacardi (!) talks about investing and doing business in Cuba when the embargo is lifted, without mentioning the law’s myriad conditions.

• El Nuevo Herald: In Miami, dissident Guillermo Farinas talks about the state of the opposition movement, the parts he views as legitimate and not, and he tells of his fear for his life. He also says, without naming names, that someone in Miami tried to buy him off and did the same with Oswaldo Paya years ago. Paya’s widow says it isn’t true. Farinas came to Miami to attend a workshop on human rights and nonviolent action.

• At the UN, how the Obama Administration defends the embargo.

• A top USAID official slams the Times for failing to note Cuba’s responsibility for jailing Alan Gross. Don’t hold your breath waiting for USAID to admit responsibility for sending him into a predictable disaster.

• Aron Modig, the Swede who was in the car in which Oswaldo Paya was killed, slept through the whole thing, and remembers nothing, is now a member of Parliament. The Herald recently asked the driver, Angel Carromero, about Modig; Carromero said: “There were times when he was asleep but he was the copilot. If he chose to remain quiet and turn the page, well I don’t share in that sentiment. I respect it but I’ve chosen a more complicated road and one with worse consequences for me but I couldn’t stay silent.”

Odds and ends

• Herald: The UN is awaiting an invitation to Havana to talk to Cuban officials about the North Korean freighter with weapons aboard.

• More reporting from the Herald on the scam whereby immigrants fake Cuban origin, complete with forged Cuban birth certificate, to get the fast-track treatment and federal benefits that only Cubans receive.

• How does Cuba handle the human rights question?  Check out this infographic from the state news agency AIN.

• NPR interviews Arturo Sandoval, the Cuban trumpet virtuoso who will soon be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He tells how he was touched by Dizzy Gillespie (who himself was influenced by Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo).

• In El Mundo, Rui Ferreira reports on Miami families who send their kids to spend summer vacation with family in Cuba.  There’s another story to be written about those who go to Cuba for medical care.

• Diario de Cuba assembles an all-Cuban dream team of ballplayers playing both on the island and here.

• El Pais: After lots of back-and-forth, Brazil is going to contract for the services of 4,000 Cuban doctors.  More from Global Post.

• From the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, a cholera warning for travelers.

• TIME’s Tim Padgett, writing in the Herald on Daniel Shoer Roth, who is writing a biography of the late Bishop Agustin Roman.

Odds and ends

• La Jornada reports on some trimming of organizational charts in the Cuban government, and says only one tenth of the planned reduction of one million workers from Cuban government payrolls has been accomplished. The figure I have heard is 127,000.

• A fond Laura Pollan obituary in the Economist.

• From the UN General Assembly debate on the resolution condemning the U.S. embargo against Cuba: the U.S. representative’s statement, and the Cuban foreign minister’s response. The resolution carried for the 20^th consecutive year, again with only Israel siding with the United States. The Cuban foreign ministry’s report on the effects of the embargo is here.

• The Cuban children’s theater troupe La Colmenita concluded a somewhat politicized U.S. tour during which they presented a piece dedicated to the Cuban Five; spoke by phone to one of the Cuban Five, and performed at the United Nations while Cuba’s foreign minister was present for a General Assembly debate.

Odds and ends

· Reuters: For the 19^th time, the UN General Assembly voted to call on the United States to end its embargo of Cuba. 187 voted in favor, the United States and Israel voted against, and the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau abstained.

· Agree with him or not, one has to admit that Cuban foreign minister speaks very clearly. From his UN speech yesterday: “The European Union is dreaming if it believes it can normalize its relations with Cuba, with the Common Position in existence.” Most of his speech was about U.S. relations.

· EFE: Spain will request extradition from Cuba of ETA member Jose Angel Urtiaga in connection with a Madrid court investigation of “the supposed collaboration between ETA, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the government of Venezuela.”

· Likely Florida Senator-to-be Marco Rubio’s closing appeal warns about the risk that America could become more like Cuba, but his script has Politico confused as to which Cuba – Batista’s, or Castro’s? Watching the video, it seems clear to me that he means both.

· AP: The wife of detained USAID contractor Alan Gross says telephone contact with her husband has become more frequent since her letter to Raul Castro.

· From South Florida Daily Blog, a wonderful slice-of-Miami-life video about a food palace called El Palacio de los Jugos.

· In Washington, we now have the “Epcot version of Havana,” according to this reviewer’s take on the new downtown restaurant Cuba Libre. “The real showstopper was the Arepa Rellena, a corn cake filled with short rib and mozzarella,” she says. Whatever.