About Alan Gross

By Ron Kampeas

The high-tech equipment that U.S. contractor Alan Gross brought with him to Cuba in 2009 to help connect local Jews to the Internet reportedly included a SIM card that makes it almost impossible to track satellite signals and is generally unavailable to civilians, even in the United States.

That was one of the revelations in an Associated Press report earlier this month that has exacerbated concerns that Cuba will hang tough on its stated determination not to release Gross, a 62-year-old Maryland Jewish man who was in Cuba to do work for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Gross is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for crimes described as “acts against the integrity of the state”.

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Cuba is not one State Sponsor of Terrorism

From “The Atlantic”
By Jeffrey Goldberg

It’s been curious to me for some time that Cuba, a country that does not sponsor terror groups, is listed by the U.S. as a state sponsor of terror. Cuba’s inclusion (there are three other countries on the list, Iran, Syria and Sudan) undermines the seriousness of the list. Cuba is on the list, of course, because Castro-haters in the U.S. want it to be on the list, but it is not intellectually or analytically honest to include Havana. The State Department realizes this, of course, which is why its description of Cuba’s “terrorist” activities is written the way it is.

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USAID contractor work in Cuba detailed

Associated Press
By DESMOND BUTLER

Piece by piece, in backpacks and carry-on bags, American aid contractor Alan Gross made sure laptops, smartphones, hard drives and networking equipment were secreted into Cuba. The most sensitive item, according to official trip reports, was the last one: a specialized mobile phone chip that experts say is often used by the Pentagon and the CIA to make satellite signals virtually impossible to track.

The purpose, according to an Associated Press review of Gross’ reports, was to set up uncensored satellite Internet service for Cuba’s small Jewish community.

The operation was funded as democracy promotion for the U.S. Agency for International Development, established in 1961 to provide economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of U.S. foreign policy goals. Gross, however, identified himself as a member of a Jewish humanitarian group, not a representative of the U.S. government.

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Documents about Bay of Pigs: “Confuse the Public”

By David Minsky

Even 50 years after the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Central Intelligence Agency is still refusing to release its entire official history of the bungled operation.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the CIA explains that the final volume of its five volume history should be withheld, because — hilariously — it would “confuse the public with inaccurate historical information”. Which is pretty much exactly what the CIA has been trying to accomplish ever since it botched the operation to topple Fidel in the first place.

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The news: Lawyer for Cuban agents vows last-ditch appeal

By PAUL HAVEN
From Associated Press

A lawyer for five Cuban agents sentenced to long jail terms for spying in the United States said Wednesday he is preparing a last-ditch appeal, arguing that one of the men received bad counsel and that the jury for all five was prejudiced because the U.S. paid several journalists who covered the trial.

Thomas Goldstein said he would submit the appeal on Feb. 15 before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, who can either rule on the matter, ask to hear arguments or order a full evidentiary hearing. Four of the men have been jailed since 1998. The fifth, Rene Gonzalez, was released last year after 13 years in jail, but has been ordered to remain in the United States while he serves out his probation.

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Go on being me (Aymara Aymerich´s story)

Neither Pedro nor I had flown before, so we were a bit nervous. We hadn’t ever left Cuba before, so we were excited. We’d never been apart from mum and dad and we were truly miserable. We were alone on our First Big Adventure and we had to be brave. You’re going out into the world on your First Big Adventure and you must be brave, just like she I was when I came to Havana to study, and I became a man. Mum on the other and, couldn’t stop crying and squeezing my little sister, who kept saying play, play, play. Just like she always does. Mum was wearing dark glasses that I’m sure she’d never worn before, not even on the beach. Other mothers were wearing them too, inside, where there was no sun at all, and they were crying as well.

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Legend (Miguel Mejides´s story)

First came the blue bird, the dream ended and life began. It hasn’t stopped raining all morning. An intermittent rain, a thin rain drizzling over the “Ceiba” and running elegantly over the soil. Ceibas in the rain look like women from another place, old wives coming back to the hill with their purchases from the plains. Next to the Ceiba there is a tree that I don’t know the name of, a strange tree, large and at the same time slender; tall with branches from a dark jungle. It’s not from here. It’s from somewhere between Pernambuco and Tierra del Fuego. A tree from cold or warm forests, brought here by the winds of fate. Tree of illusion, space for light and innocent rain.

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Still life (Eduardo Heras León´s story)

At midday the factory workshops were a hive of activity drowning in a tide of heat and sweat. As we finished lunch every man fled to his corner of shade, his portion of the blessed wind, to rest out the all too brief break. I left the canteen stuffed full and climbed the steps towards the foundry. I’d hardly crossed the threshold of the casting room when the noise of the pistons crashed onto my ears and numbed them. “I’ll never get used to this infernal racket”, I thought. I almost ran across the open floor, skirting the dump. They had just finished tapping the molten metal and the casts sat and smoked, contaminating the putrid air further still. In that damned place I’d found a place where sun and silence reigned and a huge whole in the breezeblock wall let the wind come dancing in. A strange oasis, perhaps, in the midst of that maelstrom of noise and dust and heat. Then I saw him.
He had his back to me, a welder’s mask in his hand. He was a tall, slight, black man. His silhouette, caught in the frame of light from the back door of the workshop, was somehow familiar. Something, some cog inside my mind began to turn and take me back, back in time. I stopped suddenly when he turned. He stared hard at me, serious at first, with his face’ screwed tight. Then the grimace relaxed and a broad smile brought out the unmistakable face of a boy that came running towards me over the ripples of my memory.

– I know you from somewhere- he said – From…? From…? Wait a minute. From…?

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He says: “Give Guantánamo Back to Cuba”

The New York Times
By JONATHAN M. HANSEN

In the 10 years since the Guantánamo detention camp opened, the anguished debate over whether to shutter the facility — or make it permanent — has obscured a deeper failure that dates back more than a century and implicates all Americans: namely, our continued occupation of Guantánamo itself. It is past time to return this imperialist enclave to Cuba.

From the moment the United States government forced Cuba to lease the Guantánamo Bay naval base to us, in June 1901, the American presence there has been more than a thorn in Cuba’s side. It has served to remind the world of America’s long history of interventionist militarism. Few gestures would have as salutary an effect on the stultifying impasse in American-Cuban relations as handing over this coveted piece of land.

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The cigarette case (Waldo Leyva´s story)

HIM

…she must know or she wouldn’t have looked at me like that, with those eyes, like she was reading my thoughts. His hand went involuntarily to the false packet of cigarettes in his breast pocket. The woman’s eyes followed his movement, just for a second, or at least he thought they did and the packet burnt into his chest and he gasped for air. He controlled his hands and flicked through the records on the shelf without taking his eyes off her for a second but she turned and was gone. If she didn’t want the record why did she ask me for it, calm down, man, calm down, nobody, not even SHE can find out about this. He tried to concentrate on a new client that came towards him. She looked like Rosita Fornés, all blonde women looked like Rosita to him. The blonde women asked for a Lucho Gatica record, they always want Lucho Gatica records even if they don’t have dark eyes, it’s like a fever. The girl stroked the photograph on the cover, carefully tracing the singer’s lips. She’d look just like Rosita if she weren’t so thin. I won’t get to see the premier of the ‘Merry Widow’, I bet she’ll be splendid, just like the paper said. Or was it sumptuous? No, splendid, as Pinelli said on television. Rosita had been into the Record Shop a few times, but she only came up to me once. I don’t even remember what record she wanted, she was right here in front of me; I could see her lips as she spoke, her hair, it gave off sparks of heat just like I’d always imagined, and her scent, unlike any perfume somewhere between wild and delicate, or at least that’s what I thought. He can’t remember her voice, but he knows it wasn’t like the Rosita he’d heard on television, or on the radio. He closed his eyes to remember her voice, her real voice. When he opened them Rosita was still there and she laughed in his face, he blushed and lowered his head, pretending to fill in an order form. He’d always wanted to be near her and now he wished she would go away. I have a problem with blondes. When I was a kid I dreamt about Marilyn Monroe every night, always the same dream; I would fly into a city and there she was, looking out of the window of a tall building, she would walk to the bathroom, nude, or in a towel that sometimes looked like a coat of feathers, sometimes like a nightgown my mother used to wear that’s still there at home. Every time I see it I stroke it and feel like I`m touching her skin, in the dream.

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