Odds and ends

• Canadian foreign minister John Baird visited Cuba last week, showing how a democracy can engage with Cuba and, in some cases, disagree with its government at the same time.  Imagine that.  (CBC, Globe and Mail, Juventud Rebelde)

• After about five minutes in Brazil, Yoani Sanchez is calling for an end to the U.S. embargo and the release and return of the Cuban Five.  How long before they call it a provocación in Miami?  There, she is slated to receive Miami-Dade College’s presidential medal in recognition of her human rights advocacy.  (See EFE, EFE again, El Nuevo, and Babalu’s translation of her remarks.)  Update: She tweeted last night that when she was speaking about the Cuban Five, it was with “tremendous irony” that was lost on her audience in Brasilia (and, apparently, everywhere else).  She also implied that the U.S. should get out of the Guantanamo naval base.

• IPS: Novelist Leonardo Padura on Raul Castro’s five years as President.

• A long profile in Cincinnati Magazine on Aroldis Chapman, the Reds’ enigmatic fireballer.

• Prensa Latina has a brief item on the upcoming selection by the National Assembly of the Council of State’s membership and officers, which will determine the line of succession in Raul Castro’s second term.

• Yahoo Sports on Cuba’s selection for the World Baseball Classic.

• Trabajadores: The 2012 rice harvest set a production record.

• Prensa Latina: Chipping away further at heavily subsidized goods and services provided to the public, the Cuban government announces that water rates will go up.

Poor Cubans are good Cubans

It’s hard to know where to begin with this article by Michael Taube, a former speechwriter for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Mr. Taube thinks that President Obama’s announcement that he will (someday) end all travel and remittances limits on Cuban Americans has unleashed “optimism that the President’s gestures will motivate Cuba to ultimately embrace capitalism and the free market.” Really?

He says: “For more than a half century, the U.S. was in control of its destiny with respect to Cuba.” (Yep, we’re right where we wanna be.) But with “one stunning maneuver” – Obama’s April 13 announcement – “the U.S. lost its advantage.”

It is remotely conceivable, as Mr. Taube argues, that Raul Castro will experience a “surge in popularity” once restrictions on family visits are ended. But Cubans will surely know who will cause that change, and it’s pretty predictable that Cuban officials, far from claiming credit for it, will scoff at it as a minor gesture that leaves the vast bulk of the embargo intact.

But this is what really got me: “And if the average Cuban sees an increase in the standard of living, the push toward democracy will collapse in short order.” Should we therefore all hope that Raul Castro’s government, and Canada’s, and the United States’, and everyone else’s, adopt policies that reduce the Cuban standard of living?

Helping hands

One Canadian couple, three sons, seven grandchildren, help from friends and neighbors, lots of drive, and a huge sense of charity – and the result is possibly the largest foreign NGO operating in Cuba, with $4 million in donations per year. The Ottawa Sun writes about John and Marion Dubois of Woodstock, Ontario, and their charity, the Dubois Charitable Foundation.

The Dubois Charitable Foundation receives no government money.

Odds and ends

• “We seem to have had good cooperation from the Cubans on these law enforcement and drug issues,” a U.S. diplomat tells Reuters, as Raul makes his third rendition of an American wanted on criminal charges here.

• A Presidential call for release of a Cuban political prisoner.

• Gloom and doom, fear and loathing, an ascendant Left, drugs, guerrillas, subversion, a hemisphere going completely down the tubes – and all of this at 5:14 a.m., no less, from our friends at Western Hemisphere. Before or after their coffee, I don’t know. It’s the State Department’s fault.

• The U.S. government wants Canada to hand over passenger lists and more, 72 hours in advance and then with updates, for flights that depart Canada, cross U.S. airspace, and land in a third country. There are two Cuba angles here: 1) this would be a problem for Americans who go to Cuba via Canada, and 2) if Cuba asked the same of the many U.S. flights that cross Cuban airspace, would Washington agree?

• Coverage of local debates on economic policy from the IPS news service. In the magazine Consenso (h/t Penultimos Dias), a skeptical view.