Cortometraje de Lilo Vilaplana: "La muerte del gato" [Completo]

Arturo M Del Monte 

La Muerte Del Gato,desgarrador testimonio donde la realidad supera la ficción,escrito y dirigido por Lilo Vilaplana con la colaboración en el guión de Alberto Pujol,se convierte en una denuncia al mundo de las carencias, y represión a que es sometido el cubano desde la llegada al poder de los mafiosos encabezados por fidel y Raul,desde el mismo enero de 1959.
Como describe la pagina Rincón Felino"Cuando perdemos a nuestro gato, así como sucede en el caso de nuestros seres queridos, el sentimiento de angustia y dolor es inevitable, y no hemos de sentir vergüenza alguna por ello. Cada persona es capaz de superarlo de diferente manera y algunas necesitarán más tiempo que otras para desembarazarse de la sensación de vacío que nos deja el hecho de no ver más a nuestro querido compañero de alegrías y fatigas. Sin embargo, hemos de saber que no todo el mundo comprenderá nuestra pena. Muchas personas se mostrarán extrañados y no faltarán crueles comentarios del estilo "pero si sólo era un gato". No pretendamos que todos compartan nuestro dolor, pero sí intentemos compartirlo con personas sensibles capaces de comprenderlo. Hablar ayuda".
En Cuba es similar este sentimiento,con la diferencia que los gatos no morían por la edad,sino,como consecuencia de la carencia de"Fibra" como le llama el cubano de a pie, a la carne,producto alejado de la mesa del pueblo cubano,el conejo de tejado como también era conocido este famoso felino,que a finales de la década del 80 y comienzo de los 90 corrió el riesgo de extinguirse en Cuba.
Comer gato o mejor conejo de teja'o,se convirtió en una practica común en los hogares humildes y entre las personas reunidas para tomarse un trago de ron,que a falta de cualquier alimento recurrían a el manso y noble animal,que alimentaba el caldero en ese momento,no falto el engañado que creía haber comido conejo y que vomitaba una vez enterado y hasta ofendido por tan grande ofensa,pero también los que encontraban en el felino un manjar que repetían en otras ocasiones repitiendo el dicho popular de que"Todo lo que camine es fibra".
Lilo refleja en este cortometraje la crudeza de la realidad,el servilismo,la pobreza de alma y espíritus,la represión y sobre todo la desesperación y el odio hacia lo que representa la tiranía.

Exodo tragico: Las multiples rutas de los que escapan de Cuba

Martí Noticias

Despite Real Estate Reforms, Housing Market In Cuba Sputters

Fox News Latino

HAVANA (AP) –  The residents of 308 Oquendo Street were jolted awake in the middle of the night by violent shaking and a noise that they likened to a freight train, or an exploding bomb.

Part of their building's seventh floor had collapsed into the interior patio, heavily damaging apartments on the floors below. No one died, but the 120 families living in the building were left homeless.

Despite reforms in recent years to address the island's housing problem, such building collapses remain common in Cuba, where decades of neglect and a dearth of new home construction have left untold thousands of islanders living in crowded structures at risk of suddenly falling down.

When President Raul Castro legalized a real estate market for the first time in five decades, it was supposed to stimulate both new construction and maintenance of existing homes. But 2½ years later, there has been only a minimal impact on easing one of Cuba's biggest challenges: a chronic lack of suitable housing.

"We are very worried. The housing situation is critical in Cuba," said Anaidis Ramirez, among those displaced by the Feb. 28 building collapse in the densely populated Central Havana neighborhood.

Ramirez and dozens of other neighbors camped out for weeks on sidewalks and in a nearby parking garage to press authorities to find them decent homes. Some went to stay with relatives, while others found housing in cramped government shelters where families can be trapped for years until a permanent home opens up.

Cuba, a country of about 11 million people, lacks around 500,000 housing units to adequately meet the needs of the island's citizens, according to the most recent government numbers from 2010. The housing deficit widens each year as more buildings fall further into disrepair, punished year-round by the tropical sun, sea and wind.

Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a U.S.-based demographer who has written about the island's housing deficit, estimated the figure is now somewhere between 600,000 and 1 million.

And, he said, adding in the existing units that are structurally unsound or otherwise unfit for occupancy, the true deficit "could be even greater."

In tandem with legalizing the real estate market, authorities are trying to tackle the problem by handing over warehouses, former retail spaces and other underused buildings to be converted into housing. They also created construction subsidies for Cubans looking to repair or expand existing homes.

Angel Vilaragut, a senior official in the Ministry of Construction, told The Associated Press recently that the subsidies and other measures mark a policy change from the days when the state shouldered nearly all responsibility for its citizens' housing.

"It is about seeking solutions to the problem we have today with housing," Vilaragut said. "There has not been a halt to the construction of homes by the state. ... The intention is for the people to have access to materials" such as cement and concrete blocks to do their own building and improvements.

Around Havana, Cubans can be seen taking advantage of the materials now available as they add second stories to homes, enclose balconies to create extra rooms or throw on a fresh coat of paint.

While helpful to individual families, such efforts are piecemeal and have not adequately addressed the overall deficit, analysts say.

Government statistics say new construction has actually declined since Castro assumed the presidency from older brother Fidel in 2008, when 44,775 new homes were built.

In 2011, the year the real estate law took effect, 32,540 new units were built. The following year, it was 32,103. Official figures for 2013 have not yet been released, but officials said late last year that about 18,000 had gone up through the end of October, 80 percent of the target.

Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, a professor at Javeriana University in Colombia, said it may take time for the new law to have an impact, especially because the incipient private sector so far doesn't have the economic resources to finance large-scale new construction.

"Responsibility for the construction of new homes is being given to the private sector, micro-enterprises and now cooperatives," Vidal said. "The new private sector — the scale it has, the capital it has — apparently it does not compensate what the state was doing."

Meanwhile, people like Lazaro Marquez and his family have to make do.

He and his family live in Central Havana in a substandard apartment whose ceiling leaks wastewater every time the toilet upstairs is flushed. To leave the home, his daughter, who is paralyzed, must be carried in her wheelchair down precarious stairs on the verge of caving in.

Although officials agree the family urgently needs better housing, on a ground floor, it has been on a waiting list for six years.

Cubans like Marquez and Ramirez have no choice but to depend on the state, in part because it has not created a mortgage system that would let them borrow money to purchase a home.

"Everywhere in the world the housing demand is accompanied by a finance mechanism, mortgage credits, and until a market of mortgage credit develops, demand will not stimulate construction of new homes for citizens," Vidal said.

Marquez thinks he had a better chance of getting a new home under the old rules, which saw the state redistributing the homes of people who have left the country to those who need housing. The state no longer automatically takes the homes of emigrating Cubans, who are now free to sell their property and pocket the cash.

Average incomes of around $20 a month mean most islanders cannot afford to buy real estate unless they have hard currency through a job with a foreign company or remittances from relatives overseas.

But even in gritty Central Havana, a one-bedroom apartment can cost at least $7,000.

"I drive a bicycle taxi," said Marquez, who makes about $2 a day pedaling passengers through the neighborhood. "How am I going to buy a house or an apartment with what I earn?"

Reforms in Cuba: The road to capitalism does not run smooth | The Economist

The Economist

news.yahoo.com

WHEN the Cuban government said in December that it intended to let the population buy modern cars without requiring permits, many suspected there would be a catch. They were right.

The cars, which can only be bought through state-owned suppliers, cost a fortune. A 2013 Peugeot 508, marketed in Europe as an affordable saloon car costing around $30,000, has a price tag of more than a quarter of a million dollars at a rundown showroom in Havana. A Chinese Geely, with more than 80,000 kilometres (50,000 miles) on the clock, is on sale for around $30,000. The average salary in Cuba is less than $20 a month. “What do they think they are selling? Aeroplanes?” jokes Erik, a handyman, as he looks at the price-list. “They don’t want to sell any cars. It’s all a show,” agrees Ernesto, a mechanic.

In this section

The prices certainly seem designed to deter purchasers. Some even wondered whether there had been a clerical error and prices had been listed in Cuban pesos, Cuba’s local currency, which is worth 24 times less than the dollar-pegged convertible peso (CUC). Another theory is that the high prices are a preview of a widely predicted devaluation of the CUC as part of the government’s commitment to unify the island’s two currencies.

A further explanation may lie in the immediate effect of the reform: the elimination of a thriving black-market trade in the permits to buy new cars. For decades these have been awarded to valued individuals such as exceptional party workers, sports stars and artists. But they had more recently become a currency themselves, swapping hands for around $12,000 each. The government says that those with permits will be first in line to buy new cars—a dubious benefit given that many have quadrupled in price since the reform.

“There could hardly be a stronger signal that this remains a controlled economy,” says one Havana-based diplomat. Since taking over as president from his brother Fidel in 2008, Raúl Castro has taken some steps to reduce the state’s economic role. He has allowed small-scale self-employment, permitted Cubans to buy houses and given private farmers more autonomy to grow and sell their produce. But he has always insisted such reforms will be “without haste”. Now there are signs that he is deliberately slowing things down.

On January 1st, the 55th anniversary of the revolution, Mr Castro gave a speech in Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city. He made no mention of further reform, instead castigating unnamed foreign groups for attempting to introduce “neoliberal” and “neocolonial” thinking.

That day the government also enacted a law banning the resale of clothes imported from abroad. The trade of “tailor and dressmaker” is one of around 200 private occupations that were officially permitted in 2010. Since then thousands of entrepreneurs have stretched its definition, setting up small clothing stores stocked with brands from Europe and the United States.

The clothes are often imported in suitcases by Cuban travellers taking advantage of another reform, which eliminated the requirement for a permit to travel. Eva, a 27-year-old from Havana, says that since 2011 she has been flying to Madrid every two months to stock up her fashion store in the back of her apartment. Now she says she will close her business. “Every time we start to breathe a little, we know the government’s grip will soon tighten.”

Living in a Van to Pay Off Student Debt

Leftists Propose Plan to Reduce So-Called Global Warming by Deliberately Lowering American Living Standards

international liberty

By Dan Mitchell

Regular readers may remember last year when I shared some remarkably silly data from the “Happy Planet Index,” which supposedly showed the United States ranked below very poor nations such as Cuba, Albania, and Venezuela.

Red is unhappy

It turns out that nations got lower grades based on their energy consumption. And since energy usage is one of the key indicators of prosperity, that explains why the United States also trailed such global garden spots as Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, Moldova, and Tajikistan.

Well, the authors of the Happy Planet Index are not the only ones who explicitly embrace stagnation and decline as a strategy to deal with so-called climate change. A leftist think tank in DC is now arguing that we should work less, which means we will produce less and consume less energy.

But that means we will earn less, and therefore consume less. In other words, they are openly asserting that we should all endure lower living standards.

Here are some excerpts from U.S. News and World Report.

Working fewer hours might help slow global warming, according to a new study released Monday by the Center for Economic Policy and Research. A worldwide switch to a “more European” work schedule…could prevent as much as half of the expected global temperature rise by 2100, according to the analysis, which used a 2012 study that found shorter work hours could be associated with lower carbon emissions. The Center for Economic Policy and Research is a liberal think tank based in Washington. “…lowering levels of consumption, holding everything else constant, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” writes economist David Rosnick, author of the study.

Gee, maybe we should be like Haiti and Afghanistan, the nations that “won” the top two spots for smallest “ecological footprint” in the Happy Planet Index.

Small carbon footprints!

I suppose this is the point where I should freely acknowledge that I’m not an expert on environmental issues.

But I am a big fan of wilderness and nature and I recognize that – unless we figure out a way to extend property rights to water and air – there is a role for government intervention.

But I’m nonetheless quite skeptical of professional environmentalists. Why? Well, here are a few reasons.

• The environmentalist-driven war on high-quality light bulbs.
• The environmentalist-driven rule against working toilets.
• The environmentalist-driven prohibition against washing machines that actually clean.
• This environmentalist-driven example of EPA thuggery.
• The environmentalist-driven pointless recycling mandates.

This is what we get from the sane environmentalists. The nutty ones are even more bizarre.

• The environmentalist accusation that you’re racist if you oppose their agenda.
• The environmentalists who don’t believe in bathing,
• The environmentalists who sterilize themselves to avoid carbon-producing children,
• The environmentalists who produce/use hand-cranked vibrators to reduce their carbon footprint.
• The environmentalist claim that climate change causes AIDS.

Then there’s the super-nutty category.

• The environmentalists who choose death to lower their carbon footprints.

So perhaps global warming is a real concern, but I think you can understand why I don’t trust environmentalists to be in charge of the issue. Though Al Gore has lots of followers, so I guess that’s all that matters.

We are the median: Is $50,000 a year enough?

msnbc.com/ By Allison Linn

Does $50,000 a year seem like plenty to live on, or not nearly enough?

If you said somewhere in between, that makes sense because $49,445 is the national household median income, meaning about half of all households live on more than that and half on less. The figure, based on 2010 calculations, was reported in September by the Census Bureau as part of an extensive report on income and poverty.

In some places and circumstances, $50,000 is enough for a large family to live comfortably. In others, it’s not even enough for a single person to afford rent, utilities and other expenses.

Four years into the deepest economic downturn in a generation, some Americans, especially those who have experienced bouts with unemployment, are overjoyed to be earning $50,000 a year. Others are devastated to have seen their incomes fall so far.

For some, it’s a mixture of both.

We recently asked the readers of TODAY.com's Life Inc. blog to let us know what it's like to live on about $50,000 a year, and we got hundreds of responses. More >>

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