2010-09-08 / Will Weissert - AP
Report: Castro blasts Ahmadinejad as anti-Semitic
HAVANA — Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears of global nuclear war.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged on the magazine's website Tuesday that he was on vacation last month when the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington — which Cuba maintains there instead of an embassy — called to say Castro had read his recent article about Israel and Iran and wanted him to come to Cuba.
Goldberg asked Julia Sweig, a Cuba-U.S. policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, to accompany him, and the pair spent portions of three days talking with Castro.
Cuba's state-controlled media reported Aug. 31 that Goldberg and Sweig met with Castro and attended the dolphin show at Havana's aquarium, but the blog was the first to reveal details of what they discussed. ...more
2010-09-08 / Expatica News Service
Two more Cuban political prisoners arrive in Spain
Two more Cuban political prisoners arrived in Madrid Tuesday, bringing to 30 the number of dissidents who have reached Spain following their release under a deal between Havana and the Catholic Church.
The two men, Victor Arroyo and Claro Sanchez, traveled to the Spanish capital on two separate commercial flights accompanied by 16 close family members, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Arroyo was serving a 26-year prison term while Sanchez had been jailed for 15 years for dissident activities.
Cuba agreed on July 7 to release the remaining 52 of 75 dissidents who were arrested in a March 2003 crackdown who are still behind bars in a landmark deal that was brokered by Madrid.
The deal came after dissident hunger striker Guillermo Farinas nearly starved to death.
If all 52 dissidents are freed, it will be the largest release of Cuban prisoners since 1998 when 300 dissidents were spared jail time following a visit by then pope John Paul II.
2010-09-08 / Badge Greenslade (Guardian UK)
Cuban blogger is press freedom hero
Cuban blogger Yoani Maria Sánchez Cordero has been named by the International Press Institute as its 60th World Press Freedom Hero.
Sánchez's blog, Generation Y, is an acerbic critique of life in Cuba, and a telling reminder to the world of the restraints on free speech and expression on the island.
Launched in 2007, the site was rendered unavailable in April 2008 by the Cuban authorities. Since then, Sánchez has managed to keep the blog alive through a series of ingenious measures and is thought to have a regular readership of more than one million.
She has been refused permission to travel outside of Cuba at least six times in the past two years. In 2008, Time magazine named her one of the world's 100 most influential people, noting that "under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practised what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech." ...more
