I wonder if there's a shortage of people willing to do this?
Cuba seeks applicants for secret police
Havana, Aug 19 (EFE).- Cuba's national police are inviting applications for the force's OTOS secret operations unit, the official AIN news agency said Wednesday.
The process is open to men and women ages 18 to 40 who have high-school diplomas and suitable "political-ethical characteristics," AIN said, citing a police statement.
OTOS needs "motivated" individuals with a "taste for investigation, risk," who are capable of dealing with cases in which there are no obvious suspects, the police statement said.
Recruits will have the opportunity to earn a law degree while on active duty with the force, the national police said.
"OTOS works in the uncovering, prevention and solution of criminal and economic offenses through the use of the methods and means of secret operations work," the statement said.
Besides OTOS, the communist-ruled island has a State Security force that deals with perceived threats and challenges to Cuba's one-party political system. EFE
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Not Enough $$$ for a Party
With Fidel not completely out of the picture (read: dead) Raul cannot call a Party Congress...the problem: Fidel is officially the First Secretary, and one cannot hold a Party Congress without the First Secretary present (well, one could, but it just wouldn't be proper).
Raul called for this Congress in 2008, undoubtedly assuming Fidel would have died, thereby making his assension to First Secretary a defacto occurance. With Fidel alive, Raul most certainly feels that the internal politics would not allow him to strip the title from his brother.
So, to try to save face, Raul is blaming the bad economy for the Party's indefinite suspension...although, I can't quite see how one has anything to do with the other.
Cuba suspends plans for Communist Party congress
WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer Will Weissert, Associated Press WriterHAVANA –
Cuba on Friday suspended plans for a Communist Party congress and lowered its 2009 economic growth projection to 1.7 percent — nearly a full percentage point — as the island's economy struggles through a "very serious" crisis.
In a closed-door meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee, officials agreed to postpone indefinitely the first congress since 1997, which had been announced for the second half of this year.
The gathering was to chart Cuba's political future long after President Raul Castro and his brother Fidel are gone. Instead, top communists will try and pull their country back from the economic brink.
Cuba lowered its 2009 growth estimate from 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent, but even that figure is dubious given that it includes state spending on free health care and education, the food Cubans receive with monthly ration booklets and a broad range of other social services.
The revision downward was the second of its kind this year. As recently as December, central planners said they thought the Cuban economy would grow by 6 percent in 2009.
The country's economic problems began last summer, with three hurricanes that caused more than $10 billion in damage. The situation has worsened with the onset of the global financial crisis and subsequent recession.
The 78-year-old Raul Castro succeeded his brother as president more than 18 months ago, but it's the soon-to-be 83-year-old Fidel who remains head of the Communist Party.
Party congresses historically have been held every five years or so to renew leadership and set major policies, but the government has broken with that tradition over the past decade.
Information about the Central Committee meeting occupied the entire front page of the Communist Party daily Granma and a full page inside cited Raul Castro as reporting that "things are very serious and we are now analyzing them."
"The principal matter is the economy: what we have done and what we have to perfect and even eliminate as we are up against an imperative to make full accounts of what the country really has available, of what we have to live and for development," the newspaper said, citing the president.
It said authorities would postpone the sixth Party congress "until this crucial phase ... has been overcome," but did not say when that might be.
Waiting for his copy of Granma when it hit newsstands at 7 a.m., Raul Salgado, a 72-year-old retiree, said, "I want to know what's happening, or better yet, what's going to happen."
"I don't think it matters much to the people if there is a congress or not. What the people want here in Cuba is to know what the government is going to do to get out of such a terrible situation like the one in which we're living," Salgado said.
Cuba has begun a major push to conserve energy in an attempt to save some of the imported oil it uses to run power plants. State-run factories have been idled during peak hours, air conditioners have been stilled at government offices and some work hours shortened.
Granma made it clear more cutbacks were coming, but did not give details. Cuba's rubber-stamp parliament convenes Saturday for one of its two full sessions a year and could unveil new energy-saving plans then
Raul called for this Congress in 2008, undoubtedly assuming Fidel would have died, thereby making his assension to First Secretary a defacto occurance. With Fidel alive, Raul most certainly feels that the internal politics would not allow him to strip the title from his brother.
So, to try to save face, Raul is blaming the bad economy for the Party's indefinite suspension...although, I can't quite see how one has anything to do with the other.
Cuba suspends plans for Communist Party congress
WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer Will Weissert, Associated Press WriterHAVANA –
Cuba on Friday suspended plans for a Communist Party congress and lowered its 2009 economic growth projection to 1.7 percent — nearly a full percentage point — as the island's economy struggles through a "very serious" crisis.
In a closed-door meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee, officials agreed to postpone indefinitely the first congress since 1997, which had been announced for the second half of this year.
The gathering was to chart Cuba's political future long after President Raul Castro and his brother Fidel are gone. Instead, top communists will try and pull their country back from the economic brink.
Cuba lowered its 2009 growth estimate from 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent, but even that figure is dubious given that it includes state spending on free health care and education, the food Cubans receive with monthly ration booklets and a broad range of other social services.
The revision downward was the second of its kind this year. As recently as December, central planners said they thought the Cuban economy would grow by 6 percent in 2009.
The country's economic problems began last summer, with three hurricanes that caused more than $10 billion in damage. The situation has worsened with the onset of the global financial crisis and subsequent recession.
The 78-year-old Raul Castro succeeded his brother as president more than 18 months ago, but it's the soon-to-be 83-year-old Fidel who remains head of the Communist Party.
Party congresses historically have been held every five years or so to renew leadership and set major policies, but the government has broken with that tradition over the past decade.
Information about the Central Committee meeting occupied the entire front page of the Communist Party daily Granma and a full page inside cited Raul Castro as reporting that "things are very serious and we are now analyzing them."
"The principal matter is the economy: what we have done and what we have to perfect and even eliminate as we are up against an imperative to make full accounts of what the country really has available, of what we have to live and for development," the newspaper said, citing the president.
It said authorities would postpone the sixth Party congress "until this crucial phase ... has been overcome," but did not say when that might be.
Waiting for his copy of Granma when it hit newsstands at 7 a.m., Raul Salgado, a 72-year-old retiree, said, "I want to know what's happening, or better yet, what's going to happen."
"I don't think it matters much to the people if there is a congress or not. What the people want here in Cuba is to know what the government is going to do to get out of such a terrible situation like the one in which we're living," Salgado said.
Cuba has begun a major push to conserve energy in an attempt to save some of the imported oil it uses to run power plants. State-run factories have been idled during peak hours, air conditioners have been stilled at government offices and some work hours shortened.
Granma made it clear more cutbacks were coming, but did not give details. Cuba's rubber-stamp parliament convenes Saturday for one of its two full sessions a year and could unveil new energy-saving plans then
Monday, July 20, 2009
Biscet's 48th Birthday
In his sixth year of incarceration, Oscar Elias Biscet turns 48 today.
Let us hope he will soon be able to celebrate as a free man.
Let us hope he will soon be able to celebrate as a free man.
In other words, it's nothing new...
Disaster Drill Illustrates New Approach To Cuba (Rosenberg, MH)
Monday, July 20, 2009; A1
Miami Herald
By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- About 150 U.S. and Cuban troops worked side by side last week, testing collaboration across a minefield that has long divided the Cold War adversaries.
A Cuban Army helicopter flew over this Navy base and dropped 500 gallons of saltwater on burning plywood to extinguish a simulated raging wildfire. American sailors crossed into Cuban-controlled turf to set up a mock triage center run by both nations' militaries, should catastrophe strike.
Nearly anywhere else, the event would have been a run-of-the-mill training exercise. And although U.S. forces at this remote base have engaged in the annual rite with the Cuban Frontier Brigade for more than a decade, the Bush administration forbade the disclosure of information. The Southern Command usually answered questions about the time, date or operation scenarios with ``no comment."
This time, the U.S. military struck a different tone. It provided details but refused to let journalists already on the base for war-court hearings observe the "mass casualty exercise." Sailors photographed the event but were forbidden to release the images, said U.S. Navy base spokesman Terence R. Peck.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Jack Sheehan called the calibrated exposure a likely "trial balloon" by an Obama administration experimenting with expanded relations with Havana.
The White House has moved on a number of initiatives involving Cuba this year, including increasing the frequency with which Cubans could visit the island and voting for a process that could return Cuba to the Organization of American States after almost 50 years. And this summer, the administration resumed U.S.-Cuban diplomatic talks on migration issues, which the Bush administration abandoned seven years ago.
`INCREMENTAL'
Sheehan, a 1994-97 commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command, and advocate of deeper U.S.-Cuban military relations, told The Miami Herald he instituted the mass-casualty drill as part of an outreach to a military that, he said, would have a critical, trusted role in any future transition in Cuban society.
He said the Obama administration was now likely engaging in "an incremental process" of exposing and potentially exploiting the military relationship at Guantanamo. "We've never advertised it in the sense of the term because it was very controversial," he said.
Pentagon policymakers refused to comment on the new approach. Navy spokesmen said only that the U.S. Navy base ``has fostered a positive relationship with the Cuban Frontier Brigade . . . as one outcome of our shared responsibility for this region of Cuba."
Sheehan said all sorts of military engagement began in the mid-'90s when both sides agreed to migration accords to stem the tide of rafters trying to cross the Florida Straits for Miami, a time he said, ``when hard-liners on both sides of the Straits were looking for reasons not to advance a dialogue."
Discussions then, he said, included minefield removal and scenarios for what would happen if a U.S. fighter jet strayed into Cuban territory.
`BENIGN'
The talks increased when the Bush White House decided to open the war-on-terror prison camps at Guantanamo, said retired Navy Capt. Bob Buehn, a former base commander.
The Americans informed their Cuban military counterparts ahead of the Jan. 11, 2002, arrival of alleged enemies in orange jumpsuits, and the Cuban government permitted large U.S. military aircraft carrying al Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan to fly over portions of Cuba rather than perform risky corkscrew landings.
But these drills and exchanges were mostly kept secret and mentioned cryptically by base commanders long afterward to illustrate what they cast as a "benign relationship" along a 17.4-mile fence line where cameras, motion detectors and stadium lighting now augment a leaner U.S. Marine force than those portrayed in the Hollywood hit, A Few Good Men.
CIRCUITOUS ROUTE
Another example: Last month, the U.S. Navy provided a special flight to an American archbishop, Timothy Broglio, from the base at Guantanamo to Grand Cayman -- in time to catch a connection to Havana.
From there he flew on to Santiago, in time to tell worshipers at a Mass the next day, across the minefield, that U.S. troops would welcome ties with the Cuban people.
"Many of the servicemen in the Guantanamo base wanted to make this trip with me," he told Cuban Catholics in a homily reportedly delivered in flawless Spanish by Broglio, a former Vatican delegate to the Dominican Republic. ``Let us pray to God that someday we may share a service together, without separations."
Broglio is head of the Vatican's diocese that ministers to Catholics and their families in the U.S. military.
He told The Herald that the U.S. Navy made his trip easier, but it was initiated by the Bishop of Guantanamo, in the Castros' Cuba, who had been told the American archbishop would visit the 45-square-mile Navy base that Fidel Castro ordered evacuated more than 40 years ago.
Cuba declined a proposal by the Guantanamo Archdiocese to let Broglio cross the minefields, through a road that connects Cuba to the Navy base.
Monday, July 20, 2009; A1
Miami Herald
By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- About 150 U.S. and Cuban troops worked side by side last week, testing collaboration across a minefield that has long divided the Cold War adversaries.
A Cuban Army helicopter flew over this Navy base and dropped 500 gallons of saltwater on burning plywood to extinguish a simulated raging wildfire. American sailors crossed into Cuban-controlled turf to set up a mock triage center run by both nations' militaries, should catastrophe strike.
Nearly anywhere else, the event would have been a run-of-the-mill training exercise. And although U.S. forces at this remote base have engaged in the annual rite with the Cuban Frontier Brigade for more than a decade, the Bush administration forbade the disclosure of information. The Southern Command usually answered questions about the time, date or operation scenarios with ``no comment."
This time, the U.S. military struck a different tone. It provided details but refused to let journalists already on the base for war-court hearings observe the "mass casualty exercise." Sailors photographed the event but were forbidden to release the images, said U.S. Navy base spokesman Terence R. Peck.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Jack Sheehan called the calibrated exposure a likely "trial balloon" by an Obama administration experimenting with expanded relations with Havana.
The White House has moved on a number of initiatives involving Cuba this year, including increasing the frequency with which Cubans could visit the island and voting for a process that could return Cuba to the Organization of American States after almost 50 years. And this summer, the administration resumed U.S.-Cuban diplomatic talks on migration issues, which the Bush administration abandoned seven years ago.
`INCREMENTAL'
Sheehan, a 1994-97 commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command, and advocate of deeper U.S.-Cuban military relations, told The Miami Herald he instituted the mass-casualty drill as part of an outreach to a military that, he said, would have a critical, trusted role in any future transition in Cuban society.
He said the Obama administration was now likely engaging in "an incremental process" of exposing and potentially exploiting the military relationship at Guantanamo. "We've never advertised it in the sense of the term because it was very controversial," he said.
Pentagon policymakers refused to comment on the new approach. Navy spokesmen said only that the U.S. Navy base ``has fostered a positive relationship with the Cuban Frontier Brigade . . . as one outcome of our shared responsibility for this region of Cuba."
Sheehan said all sorts of military engagement began in the mid-'90s when both sides agreed to migration accords to stem the tide of rafters trying to cross the Florida Straits for Miami, a time he said, ``when hard-liners on both sides of the Straits were looking for reasons not to advance a dialogue."
Discussions then, he said, included minefield removal and scenarios for what would happen if a U.S. fighter jet strayed into Cuban territory.
`BENIGN'
The talks increased when the Bush White House decided to open the war-on-terror prison camps at Guantanamo, said retired Navy Capt. Bob Buehn, a former base commander.
The Americans informed their Cuban military counterparts ahead of the Jan. 11, 2002, arrival of alleged enemies in orange jumpsuits, and the Cuban government permitted large U.S. military aircraft carrying al Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan to fly over portions of Cuba rather than perform risky corkscrew landings.
But these drills and exchanges were mostly kept secret and mentioned cryptically by base commanders long afterward to illustrate what they cast as a "benign relationship" along a 17.4-mile fence line where cameras, motion detectors and stadium lighting now augment a leaner U.S. Marine force than those portrayed in the Hollywood hit, A Few Good Men.
CIRCUITOUS ROUTE
Another example: Last month, the U.S. Navy provided a special flight to an American archbishop, Timothy Broglio, from the base at Guantanamo to Grand Cayman -- in time to catch a connection to Havana.
From there he flew on to Santiago, in time to tell worshipers at a Mass the next day, across the minefield, that U.S. troops would welcome ties with the Cuban people.
"Many of the servicemen in the Guantanamo base wanted to make this trip with me," he told Cuban Catholics in a homily reportedly delivered in flawless Spanish by Broglio, a former Vatican delegate to the Dominican Republic. ``Let us pray to God that someday we may share a service together, without separations."
Broglio is head of the Vatican's diocese that ministers to Catholics and their families in the U.S. military.
He told The Herald that the U.S. Navy made his trip easier, but it was initiated by the Bishop of Guantanamo, in the Castros' Cuba, who had been told the American archbishop would visit the 45-square-mile Navy base that Fidel Castro ordered evacuated more than 40 years ago.
Cuba declined a proposal by the Guantanamo Archdiocese to let Broglio cross the minefields, through a road that connects Cuba to the Navy base.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
In Case You're Not Too Busy Standing in Line
When will they realize that salaries will not substantially rise until they break away from the dictums of a centralized, socialist economy?
June 30, 2009 Cuban Colada, The Miami Herald.
New law: It's OK to hold more than one job
Cubans may hold more than one job, says Decree No. 268, approved June 26 by the Council of State and announced Monday in the Communist Party daily Granma.The Council calls the concept "pluriemployment," explaining that "the workers, after fulfilling the duties of the post they hold, may enter into more than one work contract and receive the corresponding salary."
The announcement does not say how many jobs a worker may hold.Pluriemployment "is linked to the rational use of human resources and labor contracts" and is intended "to attenuate the effects of an aging population, stimulate work in society" and provide "the chance that the workers may increase their income."There are some exceptions. Multiple jobs are out of the question for "cadres and functionaries, health technicians and professionals, researchers, professors, teachers and auditors, except in the case of teaching or scientific research posts or others that are approved" by their current employers.High school and college students old enough to work may hold more than one job but only part-time and for a specific length of time.The City of Havana is empowered to hire workers who live in other provinces "to cover its work needs on a temporary or permanent basis," the decree says, citing the need "to stimulate the productive forces, make possible an increase in income" and enable "work to be the principal source of satisfaction for [Cubans'] material and spiritual needs."
The average monthly salary in Cuba is 415 pesos, about US$19. While the Cuban government subsidizes many food products and provides education and health care at no cost, that amount is not sufficient for most wage earners. Decree No. 268 appears to be a way to help Cubans to help themselves. To read the announcement in Granma, in Spanish, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
June 30, 2009 Cuban Colada, The Miami Herald.
New law: It's OK to hold more than one job
Cubans may hold more than one job, says Decree No. 268, approved June 26 by the Council of State and announced Monday in the Communist Party daily Granma.The Council calls the concept "pluriemployment," explaining that "the workers, after fulfilling the duties of the post they hold, may enter into more than one work contract and receive the corresponding salary."
The announcement does not say how many jobs a worker may hold.Pluriemployment "is linked to the rational use of human resources and labor contracts" and is intended "to attenuate the effects of an aging population, stimulate work in society" and provide "the chance that the workers may increase their income."There are some exceptions. Multiple jobs are out of the question for "cadres and functionaries, health technicians and professionals, researchers, professors, teachers and auditors, except in the case of teaching or scientific research posts or others that are approved" by their current employers.High school and college students old enough to work may hold more than one job but only part-time and for a specific length of time.The City of Havana is empowered to hire workers who live in other provinces "to cover its work needs on a temporary or permanent basis," the decree says, citing the need "to stimulate the productive forces, make possible an increase in income" and enable "work to be the principal source of satisfaction for [Cubans'] material and spiritual needs."
The average monthly salary in Cuba is 415 pesos, about US$19. While the Cuban government subsidizes many food products and provides education and health care at no cost, that amount is not sufficient for most wage earners. Decree No. 268 appears to be a way to help Cubans to help themselves. To read the announcement in Granma, in Spanish, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
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