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Cuba’s bloggers are as sharp abroad as at home

Part 4 of the series “Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins.”
Link: Babalú Exclusive – Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins (Part 4 of 6) | Babalú Blog

This link is for the full video in Spanish, since YouTube remove the video with English subtitles.
Link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xl1b13_habana-arte-nuevo-de-hacer-ruinas_shortfilms
Part 4 runs from minute 27.57 to 37.22.

The Urban Reform Law of 1960 expropriated the property of urban landowners and the tenements (cuarterias) without compensation. For over 50 years the Castroit regime has been the owner of all buildings. It has not allow the people to sell their homes to other individuals. They only could sell them to the regime, which would determine their value, in detriment of the so call “owner.”
 
The Riomar Building formed by five blocks of horizontal property apartments, was built in 1958. The building blocks are 12 story high with a total of 1,120 apartments, located next to the coastline in Miramar. Nowadays only 14 families live in the center block. As in the case of the Hotel Regina in part four off the series, the building deteriorated gradually due to lack of maintenance during decades. Two of the blocks are in such state of deterioration that they could collapse at any time.

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Riomar Building and swimming pool, 1973 photo

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Riomar Building and swimming pool, 2013 photo
 
Part 5 of the series “Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins.”
Link: Babalú Exclusive – Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins (Part 5 of 6) | Babalú Blog

This link is for the full video in Spanish, since YouTube remove the video with English subtitles.

Link:


Click the "d" in the bottom of the right corner to watch the video.
Part 5 runs from minute 37.23 to 42.40

The total collapse of buildings, or the partial ones leaving only its external structure, is awesome. Most of the time the rubble from the collapsed buildings is not clear, blocking the streets and sidewalks, creating hazards for walkers and motorists. It is impressive the state of dilapidation due to lack of paint and regular maintenance for decades. People cannot afford the cost, and paint and construction material are not available.

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What can it mean that people should live contentedly in the ruins of their own capital city, the ruination having been brought not by war or natural disaster but by prolonged (and in my view deliberate) neglect? They are not barbarians who actively smash or destroy what they do not understand and value; nor do they fail to notice—how could they?—that the buildings in which they live are on the verge of collapse.

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Collapse of building in Centro Habana, February 10, 2015.
 
Part 6 of the series “Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins.”
Babalú Exclusive – Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins (Part 6 of 6) | Babalú Blog

This link is for the full video in Spanish, since YouTube remove the video with English subtitles.


Click the "d" in the bottom of the right corner to watch the video.

Part 6 runs from minute 42.40 to 49.40
I believe that Cuba would live again and prosper, and be reborn more powerful and beautiful than ever, and will again be the envy of many. Castro is a psychopath, and has always been one, His sadistic ego alone destroyed Cuba, and he doesn't live in the ruins but he became a ruin.
 
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Theodore Dalrymple writes of the ruins of Havana in his article about the dilapidated city falling apart.

The city is like a great set of Bach variations on the theme of urban decay. The stucco has given way to mold; roofs have gone, replaced by corrugated iron; shutters have crumbled into sawdust; paint is a phenomenon of the past; staircases end in precipices; windows lack glass; doors are off their hinges; interior walls have collapsed; wooden props support, though not with any degree of assurance, all kinds of structures; ancient electrical wiring emerges from walls, like worms from cheese; wrought ironwork balconies crumble into rust; plaster peels as in a malignant skin disease; flagstones are mined for other purposes. Every grand and beautifully proportioned room—visible through the windows or in some places through the walls that have crumbled away—has been subdivided by plywood partitions into smaller spaces, in which entire families now live. Washing hangs from the windows of what were once palaces. Every entranceway is dark, and at night the electric lights glimmer rather than shine. No ruination is too great to render a building unfit for habitation: Havana is like a city that has been struck by an earthquake and its population forced to survive among the wreckage until relief arrives.
Havana ruins is one of Castro's successful creation. Meanwhile Cuban children die under collapsing buildings while Castro’s fans post rubbish from their comfy armchairs in London and New York.
 
Old Havana Building Collapse Kills Four
Old Havana Building Collapse Kills Four - Havana Times.org

By Fabian Flores (Café Fuerte)

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Another building collapses in Old Havana, killing four persons. Photo: Oriol de la Cruz Atenccio/AIN

HAVANA TIMES — A building in the historic center of Havana collapsed at dawn on Wednesday leaving four dead, including a three-year-old child, and three other people injured.
Click link above for full article.
How sad that little children die under collapsing buildings due to the deliberated neglect of the Castroit regime which is responsible for their death.
 
Hiroshima vs. Habana: Appendix to “Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins”
Link: Babalú Exclusive – Hiroshima vs. Habana: an appendix to ‘Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins’ | Babalú Blog

Excerpts: Havana starts to resemble Hiroshima after the atomic blast 65 years ago, except than the ruins have been created by deliberate neglect, not by war. The city with its crumbling buildings looks like a war zone, its previous splendor unrecognizable to those who have lived in it before. The decrepit state of the buildings in Havana after five decades of continuous neglect by the Castroit tyranny, keep causing the death of Cubans living in dilapidated buildings.

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Hiroshima today, 2010
As buildings collapse due to heavy rains, the island economy keep going down the drain. In a few more years under the Castroit regime the dilapidation of the Cuban buildings falling apart, would bring to memory the devastation of Hiroshima by the atomic bomb.

Hiroshima - Habana
As buildings collapse due to heavy rains, the island economy keep going down the drain. In a few more years under the Castroit regime the dilapidation of the Cuban buildings falling apart, would bring to memory the devastation of Hiroshima by the atomic bomb.

Hiroshima - Habana
 
Hiroshima - Habana


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Panoramic view of Havana, 2013

As Humberto (Bert) Corzo says: “Castroism had caused more lasting damage to the city of Havana than an earthquake or the atomic bomb. Castro's desire is becoming a reality, what he couldn’t accomplish during the missile crisis with nuclear warheads stationed in Cuba, the extinction of the island in a nuclear confrontation, he is accomplishing it through the course of time.”
 
Mexico is running out of*tears
https://generacionyen.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/mexico-is-running-out-of-tears/

YOANI SÁNCHEZ
Posted on November 24, 2014

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Mobilization in Mexico City for 43 missing. (Twitter Juan Manuel Karg)

YOANI SÁNCHEZ, Havana, 24 November 2014 —*When I visited Mexico for the first time I was impressed by its tremendous potential and enormous problems. I was amazed by a culture whose calendar is lost in time, especially when compared to a Cuba that is still a teenager. However, most shocking for me were all the warnings and advice from friends and acquaintances about the insecurity and the dangers that might await one in every street.

The most heartbreaking testimony of that visit, which I heard from the mouth of Judith Torrea, a Spanish journalist based in Ciudad Juárez who collected the stories of mothers whose teenage children never returned to their jobs or their schools.
Click link above for full article.
I blame the Castroit regime Minister of the Interior for the killing of children, women and men. Their lives were cut short before they were born 55 years ago, when Fidel Castro became a murderous communist tyrant.

How many more boats like the "13 de Marzo" tugboat, sank by the regime boats (41 people drowned, 10 of them children), the riverboat "XX Aniversario”, machine gun, rammed and sank by the regime boats (48 of the 60 people on board were killed), and the yacht "Pretexto”, attack with machine guns by a regime navy vessel (5 people die, 24 sentenced to 20 years in prison), the Castroit military regime has sank in the last 55 years, sending to their death many innocent children, women and men? Like the icebergs, where only ten per cent of the mass is visible above the water surface, the rest below the surface isn’t. The same happens with these mass murders of innocent people, where only ten per cent is of common knowledge, the rest below the surface isn’t known up to now.
 
The regime change of the age of adulthood and criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 years, gave it the legal framework to send minors to the fire squad. The Cuban Archives had proved the execution by fired squad of 22 minors from 1959 to May 2004. How many more minors have been killed and will be killed by the sadistic Castroit tyrannical regime?
 
VICTIMS UNDER AGE 18 OF THE CASTRO REGIME IN CUBA

Summary Report

May 5, 2004 Truth Recovery Archive on Cuba. Reports – Cuba Archive

DOCUMENTED DEATHS: 94

FIRING SQUAD EXECUTIONS: 22

EXTRAJUDICIAL ASSASSINATIONS: 32

ASSASSINATED IN EXIT ATTEMPTS: 24

MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE IN PRISON: 1

ACCIDENTAL DEATHS - EXIT ATTEMPTS: 3

KILLED IN COMBAT: 12
 
Hello? Hello?”
https://generacionyen.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/hello-hello/

Joani Sánchez

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Public telephones in Cuba (Silvia Corbelle)

Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 13 March 2015 – She dialed the number and waited. Nothing, not a ring, not even a busy signal. She tried again and then got a woman’s voice telling her to wait on the line. After several minutes she realized it was a scam, but she’d already lost half the value of her prepaid card. Finally, she was able to connect, but her mother’s voice sounded as if she was speaking under water and she was barely able to say she was fine and that she missed her. The line was cut and her call to Cuba ended.

Among the many dramas that play out because of emigration, in the case of Cuba we have to add the complications of communicating with the Island. We have the most expensive rates in the world for those who want to communicate with us, only comparable to countries at war or nations collapsed by some conflict. Cuban exiles have spent billions over these more than fifty years to talk to their families in their native land, resources subtracted from the hard work of opening a path to a new reality.
Click link above for full article.
Prices of local and national and international long distance were raised January 1, 2014. According to data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information, in 2012 the island had only 3,008,867 lines in operation, and 41% of the fixed telephone installs are obsolete.

ETECSA, A Bankrupt Monopoly
ETECSA, A Bankrupt Monopoly / Pablo Pascual Mendez Pina – Translating Cuba

The Castroit regime has not even been able to double the capacity Cuba had in 1959, when there were eight landlines for every hundred residents and it ranked 14th in the world in terms of telephone coverage. Only 5% of Cubans has unrestricted access to the internet. Even Haiti has been able to extended mobile service close to 85% of the population in a very short period of time.
 
Telecom is no longer part of the ETECSA partnership, it is under the management of GAE, a business arm of the MINIT. ETECSA has become a military organization. The main reason for slowing the increase in capacity of the private phone service is the monitoring capabilities of the MINIT’ surveillance system, known as K1 and K2, which required a 100% surveillance capability.
 
From “White Udder” to the seven-legged bull
https://generacionyen.wordpress.com...udder-to-the-seven-legged-bull-yoani-sanchez/

Posted by Yoani Sanchez on May 15, 2015

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Illustration of a cow. (14ymedio)

Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 5 May 2015 – For a long time the extraordinary, the unusual, was our hope. On this Island which must have been Atlantis, the reincarnation of Alexander the Great was born and there lived a cow who gave the most quarts of milk in the history of humanity. Like all childish people we needed to feel that nobody surpassed us and that the ordinary rested far from our borders. White Udder, the cow that still owns the Guinness World Record, was a sacrificial victim on the altar of this national and political vanity. Gone are the times of those exaggerated ranching achievements, now we can only crow about our anomalies.

Muñeco is a bull with seven legs. The local press just narrated his story, a wild yearling born from two commercial zebu breed cattle, and ultimately adopted by the cattle rancher Diego Vera Hernandez in the Trinidad area. What distinguishes this exemplar from so many others that die of hunger and thirst in the Cuban countryside is that springing from its back, near the shoulder hump, are three additional legs and one testicle. Its anatomy includes everything the official rhetoric needs: on the one hand the inconceivable, on the other, this piece of virility that should not be lacking in anyone or anything that wants to brag about being made in Cuba.

Gone are the times of those exaggerated ranching achievements, now we can only crow about our anomalies.

Muñeco’s three legs have saved him from the illegal slaughter to which so many of his peers succumb due to the needs and poor livestock management displayed by the current system. That piece of another bull hanging from his back has freed him from the middle-of-the-night butcher’s knife because a clever farmer realizes that he has before his eyes a fair animal, a circus creature, to show off to journalists at the agricultural fairs. But there is not much difference from this pet with mischievous genes and that cow that represented all our hopes of seeing milk run in the streets and factories drowning in cheese and yogurt.

White Udder died from the excesses of a leader who needed results, but Muñeco has lived for the pride of this nation burdened by its own malformations.
In a speech on June 17, 1968, Fidel Castro said: “And daily milk production ought to increase 4 million liters more a year. In other words, if we attain 4 million in 1970, we will attain 8 million in 1971; 12 million in 1972. The rate will increase until we reach a production of 30 million liters of milk a day in 1975!”

As early as 1962, when the law establishing the ration booklet was passed, milk was rationed to one liter only for children up to 7 years old and adults with special diet. The production of milk in 1958 was 784 million liters per year with a consumption of 119 liters per capita. By 2011 the production has declined to 582 million liters with a consumption of only 52 liters per capita, a 56% declined. Unbelievable! Another among many of the industries obliterated by the Castroit regime.
 
In a speech on January 30, 1969, Fidel Castro said: “Of course, our traditional cattle are Zebu, an animal which is resistant to heat and other adverse tropical conditions. In other words, it is an animal which is quite resistant but does not produce milk. We need Holstein cows as foundation stock to develop some new cattle breeds and above all to produce hybrids of dairy cattle and Zebu cattle....
Suffice it to say that in 1975 Havana Province will have 9,500 caballerias producing milk.
This gives you an idea of our country's possibilities....
At the present time, Havana Province has 60,000 Zebu cattle which have arrived in the last few months and it will have some 250,000 by year's end....

We should have some 600,000 dairy cows and the province will achieve something else, something that seemed difficult some time ago, in the future it will be self-sufficient in meats.”


The results of the artificial insemination of Holstein cattle with Cebu to develop the new breed of cattle F-1, which would have the milk production of the Holstein and the resistance of the Cebu was a completed failure.

The progressive deterioration of the cattle stock, which from 5.9 million head of cattle and a population of 6.6 million in 1958 equivalent to 0.9 heads of cattle per capita, fourth in the world, has been reduced to 4.06 head of cattle with a population of 11.2 million in 201, equivalent to 0.36 heads of cattle per capita, due to the absurd dairy cattle project of the Castroit regime.
 
Carnival Cruise Lines, A Paradigm of Our Times
https://generacionyen.wordpress.com...ruise-lines-a-paradigm-of-our-times/#comments

Yoani Sanchez
Posted on July 9, 2015

https://generacionyen.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/transporte-carnival_cymima20150709_0002_13.jpg[,img]

Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 9 July 2015 – There are several ways to react when faced with another person’s affluence. One of them is the one taught to us by the Castro regime from the time we were little, and that is based on anger and stigmatizing the prosperous. A Robin Hood-like intransigence, the point of which is to snatch from the other person the “excess” or whatever he “has too much of.” This animosity toward anyone who makes progress, accumulates property, or enjoys certain material comforts, has ended up becoming an inseparable component of our idiosyncrasy, although the times seem to be changing.

“I am never going to go on a cruise, but the more they come… the more we gain,” a retired man said yesterday, chewing tobacco and wearing a shirt so worn out his skin showed through. The official news just announced that the US company Carnival Cruise Lines received authorization from Washington to travel to Cuba, and the gentleman was expressing his own opinion about the luxuries enjoyed by others. This symbol of a capitalism of pleasures, fun and wastefulness is about to dock in Havana and it is noteworthy that officialdom will receive it not with shouts or slogans, but rather will welcome it.
Click liink above for full article.[/QUOTE]In January 5, 2011, a British cruise ship arrived in Havana carrying 1,500 passengers and the regime rolled out the red carpet for it. In 2005, the cruise ships practically stopped going to Havana after Fidel Castro complained that cruise ships were [B]“floating hotels, floating restaurants, floating theaters, floating diversions that visit countries to leave their trash, their empty cans and papers for a few miserable cents.”[/B] He proceeded to cancel the contract with the Italian company running the island’s cruise terminals. In 2005, the island had over 100,000 cruise visitors, and in 2006 only 10,000.

Now Raul Castro welcome cruise ships from the U.S. to leave their trash in the island “for a few miserable cents.” The regime that is cash strapped, look the other way, it do not mind the trash bring by the almighty dollar. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
 
The Castroit regime draconian laws, don’t allow Cubans to board any vessel. The regime, in violation of maritime international laws, don’t allow doesn’t matter where they reside, from entering the island through seaports. The regime Naval Command center says that “No Cuban is authorized to navigate in Cuba. The only exception are those married to citizens of another country, who must request a permit beforehand.”
 
The Castroit regime survive because of the subsidies from the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Now that the Venezuela subsidies had been cut in half, the Obama administration is throwing it a lifeline.

Carnival Corp. will be operating the cruises under Carnival's new “fathom” brand, which is dedicated to “social impact travel.” Progressives will be lining up for these “social impact” cruises at $3,000 per person for a seven day cruise. They would be watching the Cuban people in their cages in the island of Dr. Castro, as they were monkeys in a zoo.
 
Tsipras’ “Betrayal”
https://generacionyen.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/tsipras-betrayal/#comments

Yoani Sanchez
Posted July 15, 2015

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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, during an interview with state television. (Alexandros Vlachos / EFE)

14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 14 July 2015 — A week ago he was a hero lauded by the official Cuban media, today he is a political corpse many fear to mention. Alexis Tsipras negotiated and lost. Sanity has been imposed over his initial bravado, and the pact he is about to accept has turned him into a traitor to his own politics. The critical voices within his party are already being heard about the agreement he has closed with the Eurozone, and Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution is keeping an embarrassed silence.

A third rescue, which will be around 86 billion euros, has been approved to pull Greece out of the quagmire. The money will come accompanied by conditions that force the Greek government to raise taxes, cut pensions and engage in privatizations. Far from that intransigent posture of the man who was congratulated by Fidel Castro, “for his brilliant political victory,” in the recent referendum.
Click link above for full article.
Paris Club: Cuba Remains 2nd Most Indebted Nation
Capitol Hill Cubans: Paris Club: Cuba Remains 2nd Most Indebted Nation

The Paris Club, a group composed of the world’s 19 largest creditor nations, has released its annual list of outstanding claims (debtors).

These claims are held either by The Paris Club member States directly, or through their appropriate institutions (especially export credit or official development aid agencies) on behalf of the member States.

Cuba owes $35.193 billion, which makes it The Paris Club’s 2nd most indebted nation. This represents a $5 billion increase from 2011. That same year, Indonesia was the largest debtor with $40.679 billion owed. Yet, this year, Indonesia’s debt has decreased to $29.297 billion, and most indebted nation is Greece, which owes $70.305 billion.
 
What the Castroit regime really wants are loans and lines of credit guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury Department, since it doesn’t have hard currency to pay the interests on the lines of credit for the importation of merchandise.

These credits will not be paid and the American taxpayers will be the losers, the ones to pick up the debt, as it happens at the present time with the taxpayers of many countries. By 2014 the Castroit regime’s foreign debt amounted to $35 billion with The Paris Club, 35 billion with Russia, 10 billion with China, 25 billion with Venezuela, 3.5 billion with Japan and another 8.5 billion with other countries, for a total staggering debt of $117 billion.
 
Cuban economy’s bankruptcy is the sole responsibility of Castroit regime. It is due to the corruption and ineffectiveness of a military dictatorship that is against private property and free enterprise. Under this system the economy will continuous to deteriorate without any hope of improvement. These and no others are the real reasons of the problems.
 
Cult of Personality in Cuban Parliament
https://generacionyen.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/cult-of-personality-in-cuban-parliament/#comments

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Yoani-Sánchez

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The cover of the book “Raul Castro: A Man in Revolution ‘Nikolai Leonov.

Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 15 July 2015 — The cult of personality has a thousand ways of showing itself. From the face that stares out from every schoolroom wall, to the flattery with which the government journalists refer to certain officials. It would seem, however, that the times of greatest excess in the veneration of a figure had been left behind, to the extent that the memory of Fidel Castro has languished since his forced retirement. However, the pernicious practice continues here, with its exaggeration and ridiculousness.

On Tuesday, the entire National Assembly of People’s Power dedicated itself to the presentation of the book Raul Castro: A Man in Revolution, written by the Russian Nikolai Leonov. A special session of the Parliament had as its sole purpose to attend the launch of this volume, published by Capital San Luis, and with more than 80 biographical photos, some of them previously unpublished.
Click link above for full article.
Raul Castro is impulsive, dogmatic and sometimes brutal, in 1959, during the surrender of Santiago, the second largest Cuban city; Raul presided over the execution of more than 70 soldiers and officers who were machine-gunned and their corpses thrown into a ditch.

There is an aspect seldom commented of Raul Castro’s life and the fact is that in all the “judicial” processes of great importance that have taken place in Cuba after the triumph of the insurrection, has played a fundamental role. He has been a kind of special prosecutor, a prosecutor with the capacity to sanction.
 
Those Cubans who lived and suffered under the Castroit regime do know and will never forget that while Fidel was the voice, Raul, Che, and others like Ramiro Valdés were the hammer and sickle of the revolution crushing and decapitating fellow Cubans.

Not only is the Castroit regime evil and violent, it is also inept at governing the incredible resources and ingenuity of the Cuban people. They have managed to completely destroy the sugar industry, mining, and now rely on foreign companies to help keep afloat what is left of tourism and tobacco.

For near sixty years the Castroit regime has waged a war against its number one enemy, the Cuban people. They have violently denied the people of Cuba their rights and dignity as human beings. Their army of corrupt thugs harass, arrest, and torture anyone remotely perceived as a threat to the Castro mafia family total hold on power.
 
Raul Castro, as Defense Minister, is responsible for war crimes in and out of Cuba. During the rural uprising of the sixties, his armed forces executed hundreds of prisoners on the spot. During the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, five prisoners were executed shortly after their capture and nine were deliberately asphyxiated in a trailer truck. The toll of victims multiplies over the course of decades with Cuba’s international military incursions in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Intentional attacks on civilian populations in Angola are part of his legacy.
 
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