El crack en La Habana

Cubanet

Ernesto Santana Zaldívar

LA HABANA, Cuba –“La piedra empezó a usarse con la llegada de los excluibles. Ellos son los que trajeron «la maldición»”, me dice Norberto hablando del crack y refiriéndose a las personas que el gobierno de Estados Unidos comenzó a devolver a Cuba desde los años 90.

El crack es una mezcla variable de cocaína con bicarbonato de sodio, que se calienta y, ya petrificada, se fuma. Parece que el nombre crack se deriva del ruido del vapor que se libera de la mezcla endurecida y caliente. En Cuba, como en otros lugares, se le llama “piedra”.

Potente y relativamente barata, también es una de las drogas más peligrosas. Por ser fumada, la piedra resulta peor para el organismo que la cocaína aspirada, pues crea fácilmente adicción y puede ocasionar accidentes vasculares en el corazón o en el cerebro.

Además, su efecto estimulante es más rápido y más fuerte que la cocaína, pero es de muy corta duración, lo que provoca que el consumidor tienda a repetir pronto y continuadamente la dosis, a veces durante muchas horas, lo que a la larga la convierte en más cara que aquella.

¿Por qué no desaparece?

Norberto (nombre supuesto) tiene poco más de cuarenta años y, desde que dejó el preuniversitario, siempre se ha dedicado al tráfico de drogas. Ha estado preso dos veces durante varios años. Intenta que su negocio no sea demasiado notorio, sobre todo porque no vive en una zona donde este comercio sea casi normal, como en tantos lugares del Cerro, Centro Habana, La Lisa o Habana Vieja.

“Lo primero que tienes que poner en tu escrito”, me aconseja Norberto, “es: ¿Por qué no desaparece? Eso es lo importante”, insiste: “¿Porque es un gran negocio? ¿Porque detrás de esto hay un ejército? ¿Quién dejó que se convirtiera en lo que es?”

Según él, el crack, como toda droga, es un asunto de gente con mucho dinero que “utiliza a los pobres como intermediarios para que paguen”. Aunque la coca es más cara, la piedra es mejor negocio porque enseguida quieres meterte más. La llaman “la nota que nunca llega”. Es con la droga que más se gana, pero a veces los clientes tienden a ser conflictivos y hacen cualquier cosa para seguir “halando”.

Aunque la mayor parte de los consumidores son jóvenes, Norberto asegura que “cualquiera le

da a la piedra”. Incluso en las prisiones hay consumo, pero no mucho, en comparación con la calle, porque es más bajo el nivel económico.

La policía persigue más la piedra que otras drogas, por mover más dinero, no por más peligrosa. Por otra parte, aunque parezca una contradicción, para Norberto es necesario que exista la droga en la calle para que el Departamento Antidroga tenga trabajo. “Con tanto control que hay en este país, ¿cómo es posible que exista tanta droga?”, se pregunta.

Para él, la clave de la droga se encuentra en la bolsa negra: funciona en el balance de la bolsa negra, como trampolín del dinero. “El dinero que no pueden mover ni el pollo, ni el arroz, ni los frijoles, ni la carne, lo mueve la droga”, subraya: “Con esto se le saca el dinero al que lo tiene embolsillado”.

La marca de ceniza

“Este pedacito es de cinco pesos (CUC) y dura cinco minutos”, dice Norberto y me muestra un pequeño fragmento de la sustancia, que en realidad pudiera confundirse con cualquier cosa y, sin embargo, vale el dinero que muchos ganan en una semana.

Más aun, me muestra cómo se prepara esa mínima dosis.

“No te puede faltar nada de esto: una cuchara, agua común, cocaína, bicarbonato, una aguja y candela. La cocaína es una grasa y con bicarbonato y calor se convierte en una piedra así, gris pálido o amarillenta, que suena crack, crack… Y no se derrite con la saliva, así que se puede transportar en la boca. Muy importante”, me advierte mientras realiza el ceremonial de preparación. Y sonríe: “Es increíble que casi demora más tiempo la preparación que fumarte la piedra y disfrutar el efecto”.

Por esa brevedad de la sensación de euforia que produce es que hay quien utiliza otras drogas para parar el uso compulsivo del crack. “La marihuana, por ejemplo”, explica Norberto: “Me echo un «taco» y me da hambre, hasta me entra un poco de sueño, y así se me olvida por un rato la piedra”.

También hay muchos que combinan los efectos del crack con los de la marihuana, liándolos juntos en un cigarrillo. Es lo que se conoce como “yayuyo”. También lo llaman “5 con 5”, debido al precio de 5 cuc que tiene la dosis de cada una de las dos drogas. La sensación resultante es entonces más duradera y más activa también.

Le pregunto por la mezcla con el alcohol y su respuesta es terminante: “La curda no puede faltar. Es rarísimo que consumas la piedra sin beber”. Y explica: “El alcohol es el macho de todas las drogas, que son hembras: el macho de la marihuana, el macho de la coca, el macho de la piedra”.

Hay un detalle sobre el que me llama la atención: al consumidor de la piedra casi nunca le falta una marca de ceniza en la mano, en el brazo, en cualquier parte, pero casi siempre en la cara. Según Norberto, como esta persona tiene que usar la ceniza de cigarro en el manejo de la piedra, y la ceniza siempre deja churre, y como nunca tiene un espejo y, además, está «arrebatado», siempre se le queda alguna marca. “El que sabe, enseguida se da cuenta de que ese le dio a la piedra”.

“No te imaginas lo que significa este ritual de la preparación”, dice, ardientes los ojos: “Yo solo en mi espacio. Agua, bicarbonato, cocaína, una cuchara, un alfiler ¡y mi lata de Cristal con huequitos! Yo y ella solos”.

El amigo en el bolsillo

Habla Norberto ahora de lo que considera una parte deprimente de este negocio: “La gente te saca el dinero, a ti, traficante, y después se apartan y hablan mal de ti. Pero ya te sacaron el dinero. Por eso los traficantes tenemos fama de ser chantajistas, agresivos”. Considera que, si alguien no consume ni vende ni le importan las drogas, entonces tampoco debe querer beneficiarse con los lujos que puede darse el traficante. “Si quieres gozar de esas cosas buenas, entonces tú también eres traficante”, asevera.

Y se describe a sí mismo como alguien a quien nadie quiere en tanto persona. Sin embargo, se cuida de tener siempre un billete de cinco CUC en el bolsillo. Ese billete “no es amigo mío”, aclara: “Cargo siempre con amigos ajenos. Por eso, yo tampoco te quiero. Nadie quiere a un vendedor de drogas y mucho menos a un consumidor, pero el que vende la carne por fuera y el aceite en el mercado no sabe que el amigo que siempre llevo no es mi amigo, sino el de ellos. A mí nadie me quiere, ¡pero todos quieren al amigo que llevo aquí!”.

Y Norberto se pone una mano sobre el bolsillo.

Oldest Fossilized Sperm Found and It's Enormous

Discovery News

By Jennifer Viegas 

Mussel-Shrimp Sperm Looks Like Angel-Hair Pasta/ Renate Matzke-Karasz, Ludwig-Maximilian University and the Geo-Bio-Center

Paleontologists have just discovered the world’s oldest-known petrified, fossilized sperm, according to a paper published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The sperm dates to at least 16–17 million years ago and was found in a near-perfect state of preservation. The researchers often use one word to describe it: “giant.”

“The animal that produced these giant sperm belongs to the class of Ostracoda, or mussel shrimp,” lead author Renate Matzke-Karasz, a paleontologist at the Ludwig-Maximiliian University and Geo-Bio Center, told Discovery News, explaining that these hearty animals and their relatives have been on Earth for at least 500 million years.

Male mussel shrimp have industrial-strength sperm, which could explain why these animals have been around for so long. While it looks like angel hair pasta and strands are less than an inch in length, the sperm is enormous relative to the size of its male producer.

Russia to Deny US Access to International Space Station over Ukraine Sanctions

breitbart

By Frances Martel

wikipedia.org

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced Tuesday that Russia has denied a NASA request for continued co-habitation of the International Space Station beyond 2020, citing sanctions on Russia over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine as a reason the Russia government wants to distance itself from the US space program.

Reuters reports Rogozin announced that the United States would not be able to use the International Space Station beyond 2020, when the mutual agreement to use it was set to expire, though NASA had requested an extension to 2024. The money used to keep it open would go to "more promising space projects" after 2020, he said.

In addition, Russia would not allow its native rocket engines to launch US military satellites and would close off eleven GPS sites on its territory until further notice. The measures are in response to sanctions from the United States, which Rogozin called "out of place and inappropriate."

While the United States has had access to the International Space Station for years, the only way to enter the station is using Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the Daily Mail notes. This gives Russia full discretion to decide which astronauts can access it.

Rogozin had previously hinted that Russia might use the space program as a way to counter a series of sanctions on it from the United States after Russia annexed the Ukrainian province of Crimea. After an initial round of sanctions in April, Rogozin tweeted that America should find another way to reach the International Space station: "I suggest U.S. delivers its astronauts to the ISS [international space station] with a trampoline."

That outburst came as a response to a sanction directly related to NASA. In April, the American space agency announced that "Given Russia's ongoing violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, Nasa is suspending the majority of its ongoing engagements with the Russian Federation." Those engagements did not include the International Space Station, however, which NASA was keen on keeping open for longer than the original date set to expire in 2020. That announcement came a month after questions surrounding the tensions between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in Ukraine escalated, during which NASA announced that all ties with Russia's space program were "normal."

The news of further dissolution of ties with the United States followed a call by Russia for the European Union to stop issuing new sanctions and instead open dialogue with Russia. The latest round of sanctions from the EU targets individuals with power in the Russian government who are considered to be especially responsible for the annexation of Crimea and continued violence in the region.

Google shows off its driverless cars in California

ITN

Christopher Columbus Santa Maria shipwreck? Experts say dive footage is the best proof yet

ITN

 

Los Cincos Balseros Cubanos Cuentan su odisea en el mar

72pantalla2

Recibe el Papa Francisco a la familia Payá en audiencia privada

martinoticias

El Papa Francisco recibió en audiencia privada este miércoles 14 de mayo a la familia del fallecido líder opositor cubano Oswaldo Payá, informa la página web del Movimiento Cristiano Liberación (MCL)

Los Payá se entrevistaron con el pontífice en la Casa de Santa Marta, adyacente a la Basílica de San Pedro. En el encuentro con Francisco, de una media hora de duración participaron la viuda de Payá, Ofelia Acevedo, y sus hijos Oswaldo J. Payá, Rosa María Payá y Reinaldo Payá.

Los visitantes abordaron con el Papa la muerte del fundador del MCL y Harold Cepero, uno de sus militantes; la represión gubernamental en Cuba, especialmente contra los miembros de la oposición democrática; la realidad de los cubanos y la propuesta de plebiscito del MCL; así como la situación de la Iglesia Católica en Cuba.

El Movimiento Cristiano Liberación y la familia Payá agradecieron profundamente al jefe de la Iglesia Católica y al Vaticano "la gracia concedida y la comprensión encontrada. Gracias a Dios por ello".

Conspiracion: La Habana sin aclarar el pasaporte falso de Alfredo Despaigne

¡¡¡ A TRANCA LIMPIA !!!

Publicado por el estilista

Por Andrés Pascual

¿Tienen elementos de la NOMENKLATURA castrista billetes "metidos" en clubes de la Liga Mexicana de Béisbol? Si, como supongo, es una realidad ¿Alcanza solo al beisbol? La última fue que a Alfredo Despaigne (foto inicio) lo sorprendieron jugando con identidad falsa en el circuito mexicano, bajo protección ilegal de un pasaporte dominicano ¿Cómo sucedió con alguien que estaba allí bajo reglamento y condiciones NORMALES de contrato? Debajo, Antonio Castro:

 La encargada de estos asuntos en el país caribeño inmediatamente se desmarcó, quién sabe si por cuestiones de seguridad, e informó que habrá una investigación más amplia. Todo lo anterior lo leí en el sitio web DIARIO DE CUBA.

¿El Departamento de Inmigración-Emigración de México pasó por “bobo” durante más de un año? ¿Habrá algún propietario o partícipe en utilidades de los Piratas de Campeche (FOTO DIRECTIVA con Higinio Vélez) en La Habana? ¿Cuáles son la verdaderas relaciones de este equipo con la dictadura castrista, incluso del Veracruz? Porque "Tony", el hijo playboy del tirano, no esconde su interés por compartir titulares con magnates del Beisbol Organizado (para lo que mal habla ingles) y México es una plaza de esa pelota, porque pertenece al circuito de Ligas Menores.

Sin embargo, que quede claro, directamente el jugador no es el culpable, sino la tiranía, la liga y el Departamento del Tesoro Americano, así como el de Estado, que en su empeño por violar el embargo, hacen lo que sea y esto lo ratifica; de antemano, el pelotero es culpable parcialmente, a fin de cuentas, no tiene autonomía ni es libre ni responsable por sus acciones, que no son suyas.

Evidencia alterna de lo que se puede producir cuando se trata con ese hato de bandidos que usurparon a Cuba, que deciden y manejan todo lo relativo a los contratos de jugadores, cuyo única “vela en este entierro” es montarse en el avión sin saber ni a dónde van, bajarse en el país al que los mandan, ponerse un traje y jugar pelota; si acaso, comprarse una Coca Cola con el estipendio diario, porque, hasta donde sé, ninguno ha comprado un auto dentro ni fuera de Cuba, ni alquilan un apartamento o una casa en el país en el que juegan. Tampoco, supongo, podrán viajar con la esposa y los hijos, como se estila por cualquier deportista profesional del mundo libre y soberano que juegue fuera de su patria.

Se está hablando de un régimen sin decencia ni escrúpulos para cometer actos delictivos de mayor cuantía, incluso actos terroristas y asesinatos por encargo, al que no le importa cómo quede el nombre del colaborador. A pesar de... todavía hay quienes justifican y patrocinan esas indecencias, colocándolos en plano de “infelices agredidos”.

Esta claro que a la Méxicana (foto Plinio Escallante, Pdte del circuito) no pueden volver, porque está clasificada TRIPLE A y pertenece al BEISBOL ORGANIZADO; así, mientras HIGINIO VÉLEZ, descaradamente decía que con MLB no estaban dispuestos a cerrar tratos ni contratos, se metían ¿o los metían Selig y Cía? en ese beisbol, a través de las Ligas Menores.

Les quedan las Ligas del Pacífico (donde no hay tanto cupo), incluyo a Australia, también a Italia, con la disyuntiva de que en Europa no tendrán posibilidades de desarrollo.

Lo interesante será conocer qué dirá Bud Selig, incluso Obama, que, sabiendo, como medio mundo, que el Campeche y la Liga Mexicana pertenecen al beisbol que dirigen, recibían jugadores castristas en franca y abierta violación de las leyes del embargo, a pesar del robo de identidades.

Hsta hoy, nada se conoce de los implicados en el asunto ni de la intención que tuvieron, es decir, la tiranía y Estados Unidos, porque el circuito mexicano es un intermediario, ni de investigaciones que, parece, comenzaron hace rato, con la posibilidad de que contratar para botarlo inmediatamente a Jorge Fuentes (foto con directiva del Campeche) funcionara para desviar la atención del asunto y detener la investigación...

El problema no es si Despaigne jugó o no con un pasaporte coreano o francés, sino, como que en esa Liga no puede jugar ni participar nadie de la Cuba de los “hombres nuevos” ¿Cómo les permitieron colarse, a Despaigne y a los otros, con toda la publicidad de los medios que cubren la pelota americana y la mexicana?

Como quiera que se analice, a los efectos legales de jurisprudencia comercial, la Liga Mexicana es parte de la organización americana del beisbol conocida  como BEISBOL ORGANIZADO, capítulo LIGAS MENORES, aparentemente, concluyó la Aventura castrista para evitar las "deserciones" en un país que le venía como anillo al dedo.

Sin embargo, esperemos por el otro conejo que sacarán MLB y las Administración Obama para continuar ayudando a violar las leyes del embargo a esa caterva de ladrones.

Top Cuban Alfredo Despaigne in Mexico with false passport

ESPN

ESPNdeportes.com/ A copy of the falsified Dominican passport Alfredo Despaigne has been using to play in Mexico.

Cuban slugger Alfredo Despaigne, 28, a three-time MVP in Cuba's national league and heralded as a talent at the level of countrymates Yasiel Puig, Jose Abreu and Yoenis Cespedes, has been playing his second Mexican League season with a falsified Dominican passport, Dominican authorities said Tuesday.

Despaigne -- 5-foot-8 and 225 pounds, and hitting .333 with 14 RBIs and five home runs through 18 games with the Piratas de Campeche this season -- is playing professionally in Mexico as part of a program between Cuban baseball and the Mexican leagues that allows Cuban prospects to gain experience outside the Caribbean island. The outfielder, who hit 36 home runs during the 2011-12 season, made no attempt to defect his first season and returned to Cuba after 33 games.

Despaigne's passport was issued in his name April 24 , 2013, at the passport office in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. A source close to the player said Despaigne was in Cuba playing for his club, Granma, during that time and that Despaigne has no family in the Dominican Republic, nor has he ever visited the island. The source also said Despaigne did not know that he was registered as a Dominican in the Mexican summer league and would not comment until he had more information.

As part of the Cuba-Mexico baseball exchange program, Despaigne and other Cubans played in Mexico last season with no issues. However, before the start of this season, the source said, Cuba's national baseball association told Mexican summer league authorities they could not sign players residing in Cuba due to the U.S. embargo and the relationship the Mexican League has with Major League Baseball.

Unlike the United States, Mexico does not have an economic embargo against Cuba, but the Mexican League maintains a working relationship with the MLB minor leagues. Residency, or a passport from a country such as the Dominican Republic, would facilitate the means for a Cuban athlete to defect.

Francia Hernandez, the colonel in charge of passport fraud in the Dominican Republic, told ESPN that the Dominican passport Despaigne is using has three irregularities: The numbers of the passport and of the book belong to two different Dominican citizens, and the ID card used to make the passport is false.

"At this time we are opening an investigation to determine the legality of the passport Campeche submitted to register Despaigne," Mexican baseball league president Plinio Escalante said. "If we find an irregularity, he will have to stop playing immediately and the club will be sanctioned.

"We have no precedent for a case like this and thus we have no established penalties," Escalante said. "This is a completely new case for the league.

"For a Cuban to play in the Mexican leagues, he must present some kind of documentation that shows he has residence or nationality from another country."

Campeche Pirates president Enrique Rosado said he knew nothing about a falsified passport.

"This is the first I am hearing of it," Rosado told ESPN. "The Mexican League is a well-respected institution. Campeche respects the rules."

Despaigne broke the Cuban league regular-season home run record during the 2012 season, hitting 35 and breaking the old record of 33 shared by Cespedes and Abreu.

New arrest in case of money laundering to Cuba

MiamiHerald.com

A case that started out alleging $70 million in Medicare fraud now puts the figure at nearly $240 million.

Jorge Emilio Perez de Morales

By Jay Weaver And Juan O. Tamayo

A Miami man has been arrested in an unprecedented money-laundering case that alleges some part of $238 million gained from Medicare fraud was secretly pumped into the Cuban banking system.
Eduardo Perez de Morales, 26, was arrested by FBI agents Monday on one charge of conspiring with his fugitive brother, Jorge Emilio Perez de Morales, who owned an offshore remittance company, Caribbean Transfers.
The company is suspected of bankrolling a Florida check-cashing business that prosecutors say cashed checks for Medicare fraud offenders and transferred the dirty dollars through Canada to Cuba.
Jorge Emilio Perez de Morales, who owns a seaside home in Havana, is wanted by the FBI and was last reported to be living in Cuba. Charged in 2012, he also could be in the Dominican Republic, Mexico or Spain, authorities said.
The revised indictment now charging his brother alleges that as much as $238 million in stolen Medicare proceeds were laundered in the scheme, but it does not say how much was believed to have ended up in Cuba’s national bank. The indictment further alleges that the Perez brothers laundered some of those dollars through Caribbean Transfers’ bank accounts in Canada and other locations.
The initial indictment, which made national headlines, alleged that $70 million in tainted Medicare profits were laundered by 70 healthcare operators through the Naples check-cashing business of Oscar L. Sanchez, who has pleaded guilty and is serving a 4 ½-year prison sentence.
Prosecutor Ron Davidson has alleged that about half of that amount was transferred through Canada into Cuba, and described Caribbean Transfers as a sort of offshore Western Union. The company, which closed its doors in 2012, claimed it specialized in remittances to Cuba, the Dominican Republic and other countries.
Caribbean Transfers, meanwhile, has claimed that it did nothing wrong but acknowledged that money from the Medicare fraud had “contaminated” its legitimate remittances to the island.
A 1,200-word statement posted Monday on the company’s website attacked the newspapers el Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald and the blogs Diario de Cuba and Cuba al Descubierto for their reports about the company’s affairs.
“This media campaign with irrational lies creates an irreparable prejudice in the community from which a jury is supposed to be chosen to judge this case,” it said. It added that the campaign “prepares the way for a sure conviction” of Jorge Perez de Morales.
The statement repeated its previous argument that the real blame for the case lies with the Miami banks that accepted Medicare payments for fraudulent billings, and a Miami remittance company that sent money to Cuban families through Caribbean Transfers.
Caribbean Transfers has not identified the remittance company, but sources close to the investigation say it was La Bamba, which also cashed checks. La Bamba owner Juan René Caro is serving 18 years in prison for making false reports of money transfers.
Caribbean Transfers said it does not operate in the United States, but added that the money from the Miami remittance company “contaminated” its own legal transfers of money to the island.
“Our company does not steal, does not defraud and does not move the money of fraudsters to Cuba. What we do is to transfer the money of families to Cuba,” the statement said. “You can ask the more than 150,000 clients who have received our service of remittances to Cuba if at any time they have not received the assistance that is sent to them.”
The statement said that the documentation needed to prove that the accusations against Jorge Perez de Morales are false is being prepared and that it will be presented “before the proper authorities” when it is ready.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/13/4115310/new-arrest-in-case-of-money-laundering.html#storylink=cpy

Jackie Kennedy Letters Shine Light on Her Marriage and Mourning

NBC News.com

Jacqueline Kennedy confided intimate thoughts to an Irish priest about her entire romance with John F. Kennedy, from the excitement of first love to an assassination that left her “bitter against God.”

“God will have some explaining to do to me if I ever see him,” the devastated first lady wrote to the priest in 1964 after her president husband was gunned down. “I have to think there is a God — or I have no hope of finding Jack again.”

The future Mrs. Kennedy began writing to the priest, Rev. Joseph Leonard, after meeting him on a visit to Ireland in 1950, when she was 21.

First Lady Jackie Kennedy on daughter Caroline’s privacy in 1961

Over the next 14 years, in a neat, back-slanting hand, she wrote of dating and marriage and of her ultimate heartbreak. She wrote freely of how she felt, a departure from the controlled image of previously released letters and books.

The letters, previously unpublished, number 33 in all. They will be sold in June by Sheppard’s auction house of Ireland. Excerpts were published Tuesday by the Irish Times newspaper. They are expected to fetch as much as $1.6 million.

The auction house said Tuesday that the letters amount to “the unpublished autobiography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.”

“What comes though from the letters is Jacqueline’s obvious love for Ireland, which pre-dated her engagement and marriage to John F. Kennedy,” said the auctioneer, Philip Sheppard. “But there’s also wonderful insight into their courtship and into the character of the man who would become president.”

 

Sheppard's Irish Auction House

Some of the correspondence between Jackie Kennedy and Rev. Joseph Leonard that will be auctioned next month.

In July 1952, when Kennedy was a third-term congressman and a rising political star, Bouvier wrote of being in love with “the son of the ambassador to England.” She had written of a previous love, an engagement that was broken off.

Of John F. Kennedy, she wrote: “He’s like my father in a way — loves the chase and is bored with the conquest — and once married needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you. I saw how that nearly killed Mummy.”

The Kennedys married in 1953. After a year, Mrs. Kennedy wrote: “I love being married much more than I did even in the beginning.”

In 1956, after a daughter was stillborn, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to the priest that she could see “so many good things that come out of this — how sadness shared brings married people closer together.”

Leonard died in 1964. Kennedy married the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis after the president’s death. She died in 1994.

Newly Released Letters to Jackie Kennedy

Besides the 33 letters, the auction house will put on the block Christmas cards, photographs and newspaper clippings shared between Mrs. Kennedy and the priest.

In the letters, she spoke in detail of her feelings about Catholicism. She wrote in 1952 that she and her sister had been away from church for a year but desperately wanted to “get close to God again.”

The Irish father, she wrote, was “someone who loves everything I love — who you can have FUN with — who can take you to Jammet’s & the theatre as naturally as to Mass — whom you can talk to about anything in the world and know you won’t shock them — and whose whole life is built on love — love and not fear — which is what always put me off.”

The two also regularly exchanged books. She thanked him for a gift, for Christmas 1962, of “My Ireland,” by Kate O’Brien. She signed her letters with Xs and Os. She introduced the priest to her husband, by then a U.S. senator, in 1955, the Irish Times reported.

Mrs. Kennedy wrote in a January 1964 letter that she was “so bitter against God” but confided that “only He and you and I know that.” She wrote that she was trying to make peace with God, and did not want to raise her children in bitterness.

The letter arrived on black-lined mourning paper, embossed “Mrs. John F. Kennedy.”

A few weeks later, she wrote again to thank the priest for his prayers — he had celebrated Mass for the late president — and to agree with his previously expressed sentiment that “the American people are beginning to realize what they have lost.”

“I feel more cruelly every day what I have lost,” she wrote. “I always would have rather lost my life than lost Jack.”

               

               
           
            

Life under Cuban communism - WP

A bakery in Havana/
www.npr.org

WP/ By Ilya Somin

Michael Totten has an interesting City Journal article on the realities of life under Cuban communism, which are far different from what is claimed by the regime and its admirers in the West:

Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 science-fiction film Elysium… takes place in Los Angeles, circa 2154. The wealthy have moved into an orbiting luxury satellite—the Elysium of the title—while the wretched majority of humans remain in squalor on Earth….
Some critics panned the film for pushing a socialist message. Elysium’s dystopian world, however, is a near-perfect metaphor for an actually existing socialist nation just 90 miles from Florida….
In Cuba, as in Elysium, a small group of economic and political elites live in a rarefied world high above the impoverished masses. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto, would be appalled by the misery endured by Cuba’s ordinary citizens and shocked by the relatively luxurious lifestyles of those who keep the poor down by force….
Initially, I found Havana pleasant, partly because I wasn’t supposed to be there and partly because I felt as though I had journeyed backward in time. But the city wasn’t pleasant for long, and it certainly isn’t pleasant for the people living there. It hasn’t been so for decades.
Outside its small tourist sector, the rest of the city looks as though it suffered a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami. Roofs have collapsed. Walls are splitting apart. Window glass is missing. Paint has long vanished. It’s eerily dark at night, almost entirely free of automobile traffic. I walked for miles through an enormous swath of destruction without seeing a single tourist. Most foreigners don’t know that this other Havana exists, though it makes up most of the city—tourist buses avoid it, as do taxis arriving from the airport. It is filled with people struggling to eke out a life in the ruins.

Totten explains how Cuba is divided into a small, government-connected elite, with access to hard currency and foreign goods, and the rest of the population, who live in dire poverty and suffer from shortages of even very basic goods such as soap and cooking oil. He points out that the regimes vaunted “free” health care is of very low quality, and still requires patients to purchase their own medicine, iodine, and even bedsheets – items that are usually available only on the black market. Totten also correctly notes that Cuba was actually a fairly affluent nation before the communists seized power in 1959, so its economic failures of the last fifty years cannot be attributed to preexisting economic backwardness.

Much of this information is not new, and is unsurprisingly consistent with experience in other communist regimes. In one important respect, however, Cuba is actually more oppressive than many other communist regimes were:

In the United States, we have a minimum wage; Cuba has a maximum wage—$20 a month for almost every job in the country. (Professionals such as doctors and lawyers can make a whopping $10 extra a month…..
Even employees inside the quasi-capitalist bubble [that serves Western tourists] don’t get paid more. The government contracts with Spanish companies such as Meliá International to manage Havana’s hotels. Before accepting its contract, Meliá said that it wanted to pay workers a decent wage. The Cuban government said fine, so the company pays $8–$10 an hour. But Meliá doesn’t pay its employees directly. Instead, the firm gives the compensation to the government, which then pays the workers—but only after pocketing most of the money.

There was no maximum wage in the Soviet Union after some experiments in the early years of the regime, or -as far as I know – in other Soviet bloc nations after 1945.

These and other grim realities of life under Cuban communism explain why so many Cubans are willing to risk their lives to flee.

I do have one beef with Totten’s article It is entitled “The Last Communist City,” implying that Havana fits that description. But as long as North Korea still has a regime that is a real-life version of George Orwell’s 1984, Cuba will not be the last commmunist state, or even the most repressive.

UPDATE: I wrote this post before noticing co-blogger Eugene Volokh’s post on the same subject earlier today. I am going to leave this one up, because it addresses several issues that Eugene’s post does not.

Cuba: 1ro de Mayo

Anonimo

Cuba's "New" Foreign Investment Law Violates International Norms

capitolhillcubans

We've long argued how Cuba's "new" foreign investment law -- almost exactly like its old one -- violates international labor law.

A new report by Dr. Jose Alvarez, Emeritus Professor at The University of Florida, confirms this position and elaborates on the specific International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions it violates.

It's shameful how some lobby the U.S. to allow American companies to partake in such gross violations of international law.

1. Forced Labor Convention (No. 29) and Abolition of Forced Labor Convention (No. 105) - Cuba has used forced and compulsory labor by sending workers to permanent agricultural camps as a means of political coercion and education and punishment for holding expressing opposing political views. In addition, labor mobilizations to work in specific agricultural development projects also violate these Conventions.

2. Freedom of Association and Protection to Organize Convention (No. 87) - Article 1(g) of the new Labor Code grants the workers “the right to associate themselves voluntarily and establish Unions.” In practice, it is not allowed.

3. Protection of Wages Convention (No. 05) - Cuba violates this Convention that prohibits deductions from wages with a view to insuring a direct or indirect payment for obtaining or retaining employment made to a state intermediary agency.

4. Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention (No. 98) - Collective bargaining is nonexistent in Cuba.

5. Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention (No. 111) - By selecting the workers to supply to foreign enterprises, Cuba does not follow the mandate of equality of opportunity or treatment in employment and occupation.

6. Employment Policy Convention (No. 122) - Cuba’s policy is of selecting who works where, regardless of skills or endowments, and transfers are not the result of the will of the worker.

And also:

7. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 23) - Nonexistent in Cuba are: the right to work; free choice of employment; just and favorable working conditions; protection against unemployment; the right to equal pay for equal work; just and favorable remuneration; and the right to form and join trade unions.

As Predicted, Travel Income is Indispensable For Castro Regime

capitolhillcubans

The Castro regime has just announced another extension of its consular services in the U.S. until September 2014.

This the second such extension, despite M&T Bank's decision last year to terminate Cuba's banking services and the Castro regime's hollow "threats" to cut off consular services ("travel") as a result.

As we have predicted all along -- the Castro regime is never going to sacrifice the hundreds of millions (if not billions) it reaps from current U.S. travel to Cuba.

It also sadly demonstrates -- despite what some in the U.S. government argue -- that the benefits the Castro regime reaps from U.S. travel greatly outweigh any costs it may impose to its rule.

Proving the indispensable value of U.S. travel income to the Castro regime -- we (once again) remind the State Department:

Want to see American hostage Alan Gross immediately released? 

Here's how.

From Havana Times:

Cuba to Renew Passports of Citizens Living in the USA

The Cuban Interests Section in Washington today announced that it will renew expired passports of Cubans residing in the United States who plan to travel in the coming months to the island, reported dpa news.

The good news from the island’s diplomatic mission comes despite having yet to find a solution to the suspension of consular services because of not having a bank that will handle its accounts.

The Cuban Interests Section issued a statement calling the measure “temporary” that will “create conditions in our Consular Office to renew expired passports or those coming due from those citizens residing in the United States who are booked to travel to Cuba in the period May 15 to August 31, 2014.”

Does D.C. Stand for "Donate to Castro"?

capitolhillcubans

By Cuban blogger and democracy activist, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, in Sampsonia Way:

Does D.C. Stand for “Donate to Castro?”

New campaign pushes for an update in Cuba-US relations.

Snoozing on the Washington, D.C. subway early one morning with my dreams still flitting between Franz Kafka and Stephen King after a evening filled with nightmares of State Security bursting into the apartment I’m staying in—which is near to where they shot The Exorcist—I finally wake up when I see the CubaNow banners through the train’s windows.

CubaNow is a media campaign run by a group of young Cuban-Americans who prefer not to disclose the source of their funding. Their secrecy echoes the recent scandal of USAID’s not “undercover” but “discrete” operations with the ZunZuneo project, an SMS network designed to work in Cuba. Their secrecy is also a reminder of the opacity with which the Havana government operates, in its domestic matters that ought to be in public view, as well as its smuggling of weapons on civilian ships, and its spies in the United States disguised as scholars, entrepreneurs, and even Pentagon analysts.

It’s curious how similar the political propaganda is starting to look in the capital cities of those two once irreconcilable enemies.

Perhaps CubaNow is a part of the pressures that President Obama needs to feel before he takes each controversial step, even though his administration has already shown enough signs of goodwill towards Castro’s Cuba, as these banners implicitly recognize. For their part, the leaders over in the Plaza de la Revolución have always rejected any rapprochement that does not fit with their monolithic model for continued power.

“It’s time to try something new,” suggest the CubaNow banners. Also, “It’s time to bring the discussion of politics between the United States and Cuba into the 21st century.” Then they add a quote from the blogger and famous Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez, plus a photo that I took of her.

As far as I know, we were never asked whether we wanted to lend our support to this campaign. As compensation, CubaNow ought to do a better job of launching itself in today’s Cuba, where the people need something more than economic concessions, in a denaturalized nation that has lived for 55 years under a single press, a single party, and a single person.

The "Dialogue" in Venezuela Is a Fraud

capitolhillcubans

By Mary Anastasia O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal:

The 'Dialogue' in Venezuela Is a Fraud

More than 500 citizens have been arrested since negotiations began.

Lenin bragged that the "capitalists" would sell him the rope he would use to hang them. Fidel Castro is still putting that wisdom to good use. Observe Venezuela.

Since April 10, when Castro's puppet in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro, launched a so-called negotiation with the political opposition, more than 500 citizens linked to anti-government demonstrations have been detained. The Supreme Court has put new restrictions on the right to assemble in public. The newspaper El Nacional announced it has to suspend publication because it is being denied dollars to buy newsprint.

The government-controlled Congress announced that no opposition legislators will be included in a "truth commission" established to investigate political violence since Feb. 12. Chavista militias continue to terrorize the population. In other words, the dialogue with the opposition, cheered by the U.S. State Department, is a fraud.

The university students who continue their street demonstrations despite being abandoned by the official opposition leadership know this. Trapped in the poverty, crime and despair of the Bolivarian Revolution, they know there is no future in a country without free speech or access to hard currency, and where they have to scrounge for food. They reject life in a world where they are spied on, brainwashed and forced to conform.

They have risked much since February. Now they are told by the official opposition, led by former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, that it does not support regime change. Instead there will be "a dialogue" with the Cuban-backed police state.

The opposition leadership seems to have fallen into this trap because it is worried about the high cost of civil disobedience, in both blood and treasure. The State Department talks a good game about human rights, but its priorities are stability and predictable oil flows. Yet there is no peace in our time. Instead, the pretense of dialogue has given the military dictatorship time to regroup and helped it gain legitimacy internationally.

Negotiations aimed at winning concessions from a criminal organization make no sense without leverage, which the opposition had in March when the people were on the streets. But Mr. Capriles called off the big marches and went to the table without securing preconditions like the release of political prisoners, the disarming of the militia or the restoration of press freedom. Mr. Maduro slipped the noose.

It was not Mr. Capriles's first costly miscalculation. After a flawed April 2013 presidential election, hundreds of thousands in Caracas were ready to march to the electoral tribunal to demand an audit. Mr. Capriles said he was worried about bloodshed. He told them to stay home.

Fast forward to Feb. 4, when students in the city of San Cristóbal hit the streets to peacefully protest a sexual assault on campus. The police detained some of the students and jailed them far from their homes. When they were released they claimed they had been abused. More protests were followed by more arrests. Word spread. On Feb. 12, students around the country began local protests against "the tyranny." Civil-society groups joined in.

Mr. Maduro blocked the signal from the only source of independent television news (coming from Colombia) so that the public could not learn from uncensored sources of the wildfire of unrest. In the days that followed, the government cut Internet service to thousands of homes. In Caracas, tens of thousands of people went to the streets. They were met by tear gas, batons and rubber bullets. Hundreds of students were arrested while the government's civilian-clothed militia beat protesters. When opposition politician Leopoldo López was carted off to prison, the students doubled down on their protests.

The government had the firepower but it was rapidly losing control of the streets. Food shortages were worsening. The protests were centered in the wealthiest section of the city but many protesters were coming from poorer neighborhoods.

Chavistas had already infiltrated student groups. But Mr. Maduro needed more help. In March he began offering business some concessions including limited relief from price controls. What some view as a sign of hope is only more manipulation: The regime needs someone to feed the nation or, as Lenin advised, someone to sell the rope.

Meanwhile Mr. Capriles took the "dialogue" bait, pledging to reject any effort to topple Mr. Maduro. Dialogue with Castro and his cronies doesn't have a good track record. Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá challenged the regime legally. He wound up dead, run off the road by state security. In 2011 Colombian President Manuel Santos was suckered into "talks" with Colombia's Cuban-backed narcoterrorists. In 2012 he pledged they would last months not years. They drag on.

Thousands of Venezuelans have been detained since February and an estimated 41 are dead. Some were killed by a single sniper's bullet through the head. A state that practices such cruelty won't voluntarily surrender its power. That will have to be taken away by patriots who are willing to pay the price.

Special report: Shadow banking

The Economist

Abuso del gobierno contra cuentapropista

UNPACU

Impresos y octavillas a favor de la libertad de los presos políticos en Santiago de Cuba

UNPACU

Documental Cubano: 'Por Cuenta propia'

72pantalla2

Caribbean Transfers admite que el fraude del Medicare 'terminó contaminando' sus cuentas

Diario de Cuba

Dinero defraudado al seguro de salud norteamericano Medicare "terminó contaminando" las cuentas de Caribbean Transfers, según admitió este lunes la propia compañía.

La empresa insistió en que "los bancos de Miami" eran los que "manejaban las 70 cuentas" de las compañías defraudadoras del Medicare.

Tras descalificar al autor de la investigación publicada en DIARIO DE CUBA, con alusiones personales, el comunicado pide que se pregunte a los bancos "por qué enviaron" el dinero, "que ni queríamos ni necesitábamos y que terminó contaminando las cuentas de Caribbean Transfers".

La empresa, a través de un blog habilitado para defenderse del marasmo judicial en el que se encuentra, niega que el expropietario Jorge Emilio Pérez de Morales Sante sea un "fugitivo" de la justicia estadounidense.

Pérez de Morales Sante está acusado de "conspiración para lavar dinero" y actualmente está en búsqueda y captura por Interpol. Se enfrenta a una pena máxima de 20 años de cárcel.

"La primera mentira es llamarlo fugitivo (...) No se puede escapar de Estados Unidos porque no es de allí, nunca ha vivido allí, y tampoco ha visitado ese país durante el periodo en que se dice ocurrieron los hechos", dijo 

Un documento judicial de Florida, de octubre de 2012, confirma que Pérez de Morales Sante tiene estatus de "fugitivo".

Según Caribbean Transfers, "los medios de Miami manipulan a la audiencia y a los lectores creándoles la impresión de que nuestro ejecutivo fue enviado por las autoridades del gobierno cubano a estafar a los seguros médicos y luego envió a Cuba los dividendos de dicha estafa".

"Todas son mentiras mal intencionadas, preparando el camino hacia una condena segura", especula.

Dice la compañía que el reportaje publicado por DDC este lunes "menciona muchas compañías que operan legalmente en sus países y mucha documentación, pero ninguna indicando que esas empresas son propiedad de Caribbean Transfers".

"¿Cuál es el delito de estas empresas? ¿Ayudar a las familias en Cuba enviándoles medicinas, comida y dinero?", se pregunta.

Caribbean Transfers, según autoridades federales, fue usada para lavar unos 30 millones de dólares estafados al Medicare. La compañía opera actualmente con el nombre de 123envialo y tiene como socio logístico a una empresa del Gobierno cubano.

Balseros cubanos detenidos en Republica Dominicana

AmericaTeVeCanal41

Déficit comercial cubano supera los $9 mil millones de dólares

Café Fuerte

Por Wilfredo Cancio Isla*

El déficit en la balanza comercial cubana aumentó en un 15% durante el pasado año, convirtiéndose en el segundo mayor en el decursar económico del país en cinco décadas, revelaron cifras oficiales.

El reporte anual sobre los indicadores del comercio exterior de la isla muestra un decrecimiento del valor total de las exportaciones de $5,899.5 millones en el 2012 a $5,587.7 millones el pasado año, lo que marca una caída del 5,3%.

Mientras, las importaciones se dispararon de $13,868,8 millones a $14,778 millones, un alza de 6.6%.

Los datos fueron publicados por la Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas e Información (ONEI) y recogen solo el comercio internacional de bienes, que  incluyen mercancías, donativos y aprovisionamiento de naves y aeronaves.  La balanza comercial (mercancías) hay que diferenciarla de la balanza total, que comprende tanto mercancías como servicios exportados.

Alza histórica

De acuerdo con el informe, el agravamiento de la balanza comercial escaló de $7.967  a $9,190 millones, el más abultado desde 2008, que marcó un déficit histórico de $10,500 millones.

Aunque la ONEI publica los datos del comercio exterior en pesos cubanos (CUP), a los efectos de cálculos macroeconómicos esos montos se refieren al tipo de cambio oficial del Banco Central de Cuba con respecto al peso convertible (CUC), con equivalencia al dólar de uno por uno, pues las exportaciones e importaciones se realizan en divisas.

El panorama de la economía cubana que se desprende de estas estadísticas confirma la realidad de un país dependiente de las importaciones, con escaso crecimiento de las exportaciones de bienes, y una apuesta fundamental por los ingresos a partir de los servicios profesionales en el exterior, mayormente en el sector médico.

“Es una claro indicador de que Cuba produce cada vez menos y sigue siendo una economía altamente dependiente del dinero que llega del exterior”, opinó Emilio Morales, presidente del grupo de análisis The Havana Consulting Group, con sede en Miami.

El economista Carmelo Mesa Lago, profesor emérito de la Universidad de Pittsburgh, señaló que Cuba ha mantenido históricamente un déficit en la balanza comercial de mercancías, pero recordó que desde el 2003, tras la llegada de Hugo Chávez al poder y la firma de convenios de cooperación con Venezuela, la balanza total comenzó a equilibrarse.

Exportación de servicios

“Desde que el gobierno venezolano comenzó a pagar por servicios profesionales cubanos, se ha producido un superávit que compensa o excede el déficit de mercancías”, comentó Mesa Lago, autor del libro Cuba en la Era de Raúl Castro: Reformas Económico-Sociales y sus efectos (2012).

“Pero es difícil calcular el superávit de la balanza total, pues no existen aún cifras sobre servicios prestados en el 2013”, agregó el experto.

La exportación de servicios de salud, educación y deportes, le reporta a Cuba unos $6.000 millones de dólares, muy por encima de los ingresos del turismo ($1,803 millones) y las ventas de níquel ($1,100 millones).

El plan de ingresos anunciado por el gobierno cubano -solo por servicios en el sector de la salud- para el 2014 asciende a más de $8,200 millones de dólares, una cifra que se acerca al 40%  de todos los ingresos por exportación del 2013.

El gobierno cubano aspira que la nueva Ley de la Inversión Extranjera, que entrará en vigor el próximo junio, aporte entre $2,000 y $2,500 millones anuales a la maltrecha economía nacional.

Pero Morales considera que son cálculos demasiado optimistas, a pesar de las altas exenciones impositivas que ofrece a los inversionistas.

“La cantera de oportunidades que abre esta ley es a partir de las necesidades del gobierno, no de las necesidades del mercado interno”, explicó Morales. “Si se aspira realmente a un salto económico, Cuba necesita liberar al máximo sus fuerzas productivas, que son el eslabón perdido de las reformas de Raúl Castro”.

*Publicado en Diario Las Américas

El índice de consumo de alcohol en Cuba, según la OMS

martinoticias

América Latina es la segunda región en el mundo con mayor consumo per cápita anual de alcohol, donde Cuba aparece con un consumo de 5,2 litros, entre Costa Rica (5,4),  y Nicaragua.

La tercera posición en la región la ocupa Venezuela, con 8,9 litros de alcohol puro per cápita, que se divide en 12,7 consumidos por los venezolanos y 5,2 por las venezolanas, según un informe publicado hoy por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS).

Chile es el país del área donde se dan los índices de ingesta más elevados, con un consumo anual per cápita de 9,6 litros de alcohol puro.

El estudio recoge las estimaciones sobre porcentajes de consumo de alcohol en el mundo basados en estadísticas proporcionadas por los propios países.
 

Cifras contrastantes

La posición de Cuba según el informe de la OMS contrasta con un estudio publicado el año pasado por la revista The Economist, referido  al consumo en el mundo, en 2012, de los licores más conocidos.

Según la publicación británica Cuba fue ese año el mayor consumidor de ron por habitante en el mundo, y tuvo uno de los más altos percápitas en la ingestión de las bebidas espirituosas más populares del planeta.

Según tablas comparativas compiladas por la revista --que mostraban las cifras globales de consumo de vodka, ron, whisky tipo escocés, ginebra y tequila-- el destilado de la caña de azúcar figuraba en segundo lugar como el más consumido después del vodka (13 mil 900 millones de litros)  con 4 mil 440 millones de litros.

Los países que más ron consumieron en cifras absolutas fueron la India, Estados Unidos, Filipinas, y luego Cuba.

Pero en lo relativo a la cantidad consumida por habitante, los de la isla caribeña fueron los líderes, con 4,9 litros por persona anuales, cifra que quintuplicaba la cantidad de litros ingeridos por cabeza en nueve de los diez países donde más ron se consume. En segundo lugar aparecía República Dominicana, con 3,3 litros del mosto al año por persona.
  En cuanto al consumo per cápita de los seis licores espirituosos más difundidos en el mundo en general, los cubanos ocuparon el sexto lugar, sólo detrás de cinco grandes consumidores de vodka como Rusia (11,9 litros anuales per cápita); Belarrús (11,3); Ucrania (7,7); Polonia (7,0) y Kazajstán (5,9).

 

Alcohol y salud

En el mundo se consume anualmente un promedio de 6,2 litros de alcohol puro per cápita, especificó en rueda de prensa Shakhar Saxena, director del departamento de salud mental y abuso de substancias de la OMS.
 

Reporte referente a Cuba en el documento de la OMS

La OMS habla de alcohol "puro" para poder comparar entre países dado que, por ejemplo, en algunas naciones la ingestión de cerveza será muy elevada pero, al tener este producto menos alcohol puro que el whisky, puede quedar en el ránking mundial por detrás de otro donde haya menos cantidad de litros consumidos pero éstos sean de vino.

El informe revela que el consumo abusivo de alcohol provocó que más de 3,3 millones de personas murieran en el mundo en 2012, lo que representa el 6 por ciento de todas las muertes en el mundo, "o lo que es lo mismo, una muerte cada diez segundos", especificó Saxena.

Divido por sexos, el alcohol fue la causa del 7,6 por ciento de las muertes de hombres en 2012 y del 4 por ciento de los fallecimientos de mujeres.

El texto indica que el consumo excesivo de alcohol no sólo lleva a una nociva dependencia, y a un aumento de la violencia y por ende de la posibilidad de herir y herirse, sino que está relacionado con el riesgo de desarrollar más de 200 enfermedades, incluidas la cirrosis y algunos tipos de cáncer.

Además, el informe destaca que el consumo excesivo de alcohol hace que las personas que abusan sean más susceptibles de desarrollar enfermedades infecciosas como la tuberculosis y la neumonía.

Según los datos con los que cuenta la OMS, Europa es la región del mundo donde hay un mayor consumo de alcohol per cápita -10,9 litros de alcohol puro anuales- y especialmente Europa del Este, que tiene los índices más altos del mundo.

La segunda región donde el consumo de alcohol es más elevado es Latinoamérica, con 8,4 litros de alcohol puro per cápita por año, de los que 7,2 litros son efectivamente comprobados y 1,2 litros son calculados.

Vladmir Poznyak, coordinador del departamento de abuso de sustancias y autor del informe, explicó que se calcula que un 25 por ciento del alcohol que se consume en el mundo se produce de manera ilegal.

​Cuba renovará pasaportes para viajar este verano

es un lugar comun en los asuntos cubanos que se exageren los exitos del gobierno cubano en politica internacional y pasen inadvertidos los fracasos algunos de ellos contundentes, como el que refleja el siguiente despacho. cuba advertida reiteradamente que debia encontrar una entidad financiera para continuar tramitando sus cobros y pagos en la oficina de intereses en washington, opto por la solucion dura de acentuar la crisis para presionar a la administracion obama que tiene asuntos mas apremiantes que atender y cerro el consulado a la renovacion de pasaportes y permisos de entrada.  toda vez que la emigracion cubana en el exterior y particularmente en los eeuu, ocupa el 2do lugar en emision de turistas a la isla, el regimen recoge pita y levanta parcialmente la medida. se sabia desde hace unas semanas, que las agencias de viajes a cuba en la florida estaban viajando a washington con el pasaporte de sus clientes para que fueran renovados. no extrana el nivel de informacion interno y tanta solicitud por sus clientes de estas entidades???
--------------------------- 
​martinoticias

La Sección de Intereses de Cuba en Washington anunció hoy que los cubanos residentes en EE.UU. que tengan pasajes para viajar a la isla este verano podrán renovar sus pasaportes si lo necesitan, como solución temporal mientras busca banco con el que operar y restablecer sus servicios.

En un comunicado que dio a conocer la agencia EFE, la misión diplomática de La Habana en Washington informó hoy de que todavía no ha encontrado un banco en Estados Unidos que asuma sus operaciones y, por tanto, ofrecerá esta solución temporal a los cubanos con reservas para viajar a la isla entre el 15 de mayo y el 31 de agosto de este año.

El pasado 14 de febrero, tanto la Sección de Intereses como la misión permanente de Cuba ante la ONU perdieron la capacidad de realizar depósitos en su entidad financiera, el banco M & T, y desde el 1 de marzo se quedaron sin cuenta bancaria en Estados Unidos.

Ese banco decidió el pasado noviembre rescindir los servicios que prestaba a la Sección de Intereses pero, después de que Cuba se viera obligada a suspender durante dos semanas su atención consular, decidió otorgar una prórroga para el cese de sus servicios a ambas misiones diplomáticas, hasta el 1 de marzo.

"A pesar de los esfuerzos realizados, todavía no ha sido posible encontrar un banco radicado en los Estados Unidos que asuma nuestras operaciones bancarias, debido a las regulaciones derivadas del bloqueo económico, comercial y financiero impuesto por los Estados Unidos a Cuba", explicó hoy la Sección de Intereses en una nota.

Los cubanos residentes en Estados Unidos que necesiten renovar su pasaporte para viajar en verano deberán dirigirse a "las agencias de viaje que tienen vínculos de trabajo con la Oficina Consular, directamente en su sede en Washington DC".

"El plazo señalado pudiera extenderse en caso de que la implementación de la solución alternativa tomara más tiempo del que se ha previsto", precisó la misión diplomática.

Asimismo, la Sección de Intereses recordó que las solicitudes motivadas "por razones humanitarias"  continuarán recibiendo un tratamiento expedito y que, de acuerdo con las normas migratorias vigentes en Cuba, los ciudadanos residentes en el exterior deben portar un pasaporte cubano válido para entrar en la isla.

Desde que suspendiera sus servicios consulares, la misión atiende solo casos "de carácter humanitario" y, hasta la nueva medida anunciada hoy, había dejado de efectuar los trámites asociados a la emisión de pasaportes, visas, legalización de documentos y otros servicios similares.

El Gobierno estadounidense ha reiterado en varias ocasiones que desde el pasado verano ha estado asistiendo a Cuba en el asunto y ha contactado "a más de 50 bancos" para encontrar un sustituto a M & T.

Según fuentes cercanas a la misión cubana, la decisión del M & T de suspender sus servicios es algo que decidieron hacer con "varias misiones diplomáticas" y el problema para Cuba ha aparecido a la hora de encontrar otro banco que esté dispuesto a prestarles servicios mientras continúa el embargo financiero a la isla.

'Best friends already': Twin girls born holding hands

ITN

Identical twin girls, Jenna and Jillian, were born holding hands after surviving a life-threatening condition.

 

Federal jury convicts 3 Cuban immigrants in Las Vegas-area theft ring

Las Vegas Review-Journal

By JEFF GERMAN

A federal jury Monday convicted three Cuban immigrants of all charges tied to a major Las Vegas-area theft ring.

The three defendants — Alexis Torres Simon, 46; Julio De Armas Diaz, 54; and Alexander Del Valle Garcia, 42 — were found guilty of stealing drugs and expensive merchandise from delivery vans and warehouses around the valley, as well as planning the robbery of a van driver.

The charges included conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery and attempted interference with commerce by robbery.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey set Aug. 18 sentencing dates for all three defendants, who are in federal custody.

The 12-member jury deliberated less than three hours since it got the case late Friday.

Defense lawyers, who said they would appeal the convictions, contended during the two-week trial that the case hinged on the word of a six-time felon motivated to set up the defendants.

But prosecutors argued that secretly recorded conversations showed that two of the defendants had their own “big mouths” to blame for their legal troubles.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel Schiess and Christina Brown singled out the undercover work of the six-time felon Yordani Corona Del Toro, who helped the FBI break up the theft ring.

Del Toro, 23, also a Cuban immigrant, secretly recorded Simon and De Armas Diaz planning the robbery and kidnapping of the delivery van driver, who was hauling pharmaceutical drugs, the prosecutors told the jury.

Simon and De Armas Diaz were taken into custody April 8, 2013, as they were about to carry out the robbery scheme, according to trial testimony. Del Valle Garcia was arrested several days later.

The recorded planning session, or as Schiess called it the “big mouth evidence,” occurred the day before the robbery was to go down, when Simon and De Armas Diaz were driving Del Toro around town on a dry run.

“It was clear as can be,” Schiess told the jury in his closing argument. “Is there any doubt what they were doing?”

Defense lawyers throughout the trial attacked the credibility of Del Toro and the thoroughness of his FBI handler, agent Shay Christensen.

They argued Del Toro lied during the investigation and set up their clients to escape punishment for felony convictions in two burglary cases in state court.

Del Toro got probation in both cases, despite plea deals allowing state prosecutors to seek life in prison for him as a habitual criminal after he left the country for several months last year.

He testified that he fled to Mexico and then Cuba, leaving his newborn daughter behind, out of fear for his safety. The wife of one of the defendants sent his mother a threat, indicating he would pay for cooperating with FBI agents, Del Toro said.

Agents assigned to the FBI’s organized crime squad linked the ring to the Oct. 15, 2012, warehouse theft of $573,756 in Coach merchandise, mostly purses, in southeast Las Vegas.

Ring members also broke into unattended delivery vans to steal drugs and other goods, prosecutors said.

One theft was said to have occurred Nov. 14, 2012, from a delivery van in the parking lot of a Smith’s grocery store on North Rainbow Boulevard. Another happened March 13, 2013, in the parking lot of a Walgreen’s store on West Desert Inn Road.

This was the first criminal trial for Dorsey since she took the bench last summer. It also was Christensen’s first trial as an FBI agent, as well as the first time former federal prosecutor Kathleen Bliss appeared in trial as a defense lawyer. She represented Del Valle Garcia.

Defected Cuban boxing star in Miami

GlobalPost

Boxer Ramon Luis has joined the exodus of Cuban sporting talent defecting to compete in the United States, according to a report in the Miami daily El Nuevo Herald on Monday.

The 21-year-old fighter abandoned his teammates on Friday at a pan-American championship in the Mexican city of Tijuana and made his way to Florida, it said, citing an unnamed source.

On Saturday, Cuban state television had confirmed the defection and condemned it as a "despicable act."

Luis' defection follows that of Cuban boxer Marcos Forestal, who fled his team during a World Series stop in the United States on April 12.

Defections from Cuban sports teams are still relatively common despite President Raul Castro's communist government recently increasing the wages paid to athletes and coaches.

In the past decade several Cuban boxing champions -- including Guillermo Rigondeaux, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Odlanier Solis and Erislandy Lara -- have left to their professional careers elsewhere.

Exiles captured in Cuba during armed infiltrations cannot return to the U.S.

MiamiHerald.com

By Juan O. Tamayo

Branded as a terrorist by both the Cuban and U.S. governments, Tomas Ramos says he is essentially a non-person in Havana — no job and no identification papers, but lots of harassment by State Security agents.
“We are always persecuted,” said Ramos, 70, one of several former South Florida men freed after serving long sentences in Cuban prisons for armed raids against the island in the 1990s — but prohibited from returning to the United States.
Cuban authorities monitor them tightly and with deep suspicion. And the U.S. State Department has denied them visas and political asylum, they say, because of their past involvement in political violence.
“We are watched all the time, even in our private lives. Our lives in Cuba are worth nothing. They can kill us anytime,” Ramos said. “And nevertheless, the U.S. does not allow us to go there because they say that we are violent.”
All told, 21 raiders from South Florida are known to have been captured on the island from 1991 to 1996, when some exiles believed Cuba was vulnerable to an anti-Castro revolt during the devastating crisis after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
At least 16 are still in Cuba, including eight in prison and seven released after completing long terms, according to several former prisoners and supporters in Havana and Miami interviewed by el Nuevo Herald. One other died in Cuba from natural causes. Two were allowed to return to Florida because they were U.S. citizens.
Some have acknowledged that they infiltrated Cuba with weapons and plans to attack or sabotage government targets. Others claim they went to the island only to deliver supplies or information to others already there.
Their stories were highlighted last week when Havana announced the arrests in April of four Cuban men from Miami who were allegedly plotting to attack military installations on the island on orders from three exile activists still in South Florida.
On Saturday, the U.S. Interests Section issued a statement confirming a May 8 meeting with representatives of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the arrests. It said, “The Cubans provided some information about the allegations which we are now reviewing.”
Cuba’s Interior Ministry has identified the men as Jose Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodriguez Gonzalez, Raibel Pacheco Santos and Felix Monzon Alvarez. It said they were detained in late April for planning “terrorist actions” masterminded from Florida.
Egberto Angel Escobedo Morales, whose Association of Current and Former Political Prisoners in Havana tries to help the raiders, said their conditions both in prison and after their releases are almost unimaginably horrible.
The raiders are usually sent to the worst prisons, where guards treat them with special brutality, beating them and putting them in isolation cells, said Escobedo, a Havana man who served 15 1/2 years for trying to promote a military revolt in 1995.
Some of the imprisoned raiders became “sick with nerves from the constant beatings” and were regularly denied food and medical care, Escobedo told el Nuevo Herald by phone.
Jesús Manuel Rojas Pineda, 70, a raider captured in 1994 and freed in 2013, said he went on a hunger strike for 18 days to demand treatment for hemorrhoids. On day 19, he was rushed to a hospital and underwent emergency surgery, he said.
And once the raiders complete their sentences and are set free, said Escobedo, “they have no possibility of anything.”
“No government opponent can find legal work here. And if it’s illegal, State Security comes after us, so we don’t do that,” Ramos said. “I have been arrested and beaten so many times I can’t even remember.”
Rojas said police took away his U.S. parole card when he and six other armed members of the militant exile group known as PUND were captured near the north central fishing town of Caibarién, following a raid in which a local Communist Party official was killed.
“I don’t have American papers, and I don’t have Cuban papers. I am nobody,” Rojas said from the city of Matanzas, where he has been living with a daughter since his release.
Rojas fled Cuba during the 1994 “Rafter Crisis,” which saw more than 30,000 people leave the island aboard homemade vessels. He had been in Miami only a month when he went to the funeral of two rafters who had drowned in the crossing. Two months later, he joined the plot to infiltrate Cuba.
He said he is now almost deaf, suffers from high blood pressure and circulatory problems, and wants to return to the United States because “I want to spend my last days quietly.”
Rojas said he was denied a U.S. visa because he has no identity document and because of his past. Ramos, Escobedo and another former raider, Jose Benito Menendez del Valle, said they were rejected because of their records of political violence.
Menendez, 67, said he was first jailed for anti-Castro activities from 1969 to 1973 and left in 1980 for Miami, where he worked as a handyman and obtained U.S. residence. He infiltrated the island in 1994 but was quickly captured and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was freed after serving 16 years.
He once spent 16 months in an isolation cell and has been arrested dozens of times since his release, Menendez said by phone from Havana. He has not found work because of his record and relies on assistance from friends abroad and on the island.
Menendez said he wants to return to Miami because he has three grown children and three siblings in South Florida, and “at my age, and with my years in prison, I know that my life is ending.”
Escobedo said he was angry that while scores of Cuban government officials and supporters regularly receive U.S. visas, “men who have spent years in prison and remain under constant harassment are denied visas.”
The asylum office in the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana “is not doing a good job,” he added. “The Obama administration has practically abandoned us.”
A State Department official said there are “many reasons why a visa application may be denied” but declined to comment on the specific cases of the Cuba raiders because of confidentiality restrictions.
Tomas Ramos is a lot more critical of the U.S. mission, calling it “a nest of Cuban security agents” because many of its day-to-day functions are handled by the several hundred Cuban citizens employed there.
Jailed from 1960 to 1970 for anti-Castro activism, Ramos left for Miami in 1989 and returned to Cuba in 1990 as part of a two-man infiltration team from a Miami exile group that called itself the Cuban Liberation Army. Prosecutors said the team was part of a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, brother Raúl Castro and other senior government officials.
Ramos said he suffers from Parkinson’s disease but remains steadfast in his opposition to the Castro brothers.
“At no time will I stop feeling proud of having belonged to violent organizations,” he said. “I do not regret what I did or what I tried to do at one point.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/11/4111095/exiles-captured-in-cuba-during.html#storylink=cpy