Marc Masferrer has a link with one of Helena Houdova's thankfully-not-confiscated photographs of the real Cuba of just a few months ago. Hopefully, the glories of castro's socialist revolution will be soon available for the world to see.

What is a Canadian member of parliament doing spending ALL HIS TIME in Cuba! MP Tony Ruprecht, a schmuck, is supposed to be working for Canada as an ELECTED OFFICIAL but seems to be having a whole hell of a lot more fun in Havana instead. The other parliament members have noticed and they're not happy.

God knows what this castrolover really doing. God knows how much film of him castro has by now. Even jaded and crapulent castro's gotta be wondering. He's now got this "pet" Canadian who keeps hanging around, wanting to sip up the atmosphere, flattering the stone-faced commissars, sucking up to the communist hellhole castro's turned his country into, all the while (castro muses) he's got peaceful, attractive, pacific and wealthy Canada to represent. Can you IMAGINE castro's contempt for this lowdown sack of garbage who doesn't even know what his job is?

Cuban-American Pundit has an item up about this disgusting Canadian truant in this click here.

Just thought I'd thank all who participated in yesterday's Brigada 2506 Bay of Pigs homage and to hilight the various blogs who linked and wrote about our Cuban heroes. Please be sure to drop by and offer a hardy thanks for their support.

INDC Journal
Dean Esmay
J. Scott Barnard
Hog On Ice
Sgt. Hook
Pajamas Media
Belmont Club
Gateway Pundit
Publius
Discarded Lies
Barcepundit
El Cafe Cubano
Paxety
Lilac Rose
Chez Diva
Uncommon Sense
Ya No Mas!
The Real Cuba
Glittering Eye
Brandon's Puppy
Never Yet Melted
Gall and Wormwood
The Politburo Diktat

If I've missed anyone, please drop me a line or let me know in the comments. Thanks.

Setting aside the debate as to whether or not there is such a thing as a Hispanic or a Latino for a minute, I wanted to present this idea for your consideration. I work in Spanish language advertising. In my profession I have met and worked with a lot of Hispanic professionals. These are people that are in business and happen to be Hispanic. But there's another breed of people, not just in my industry, that I call Professional Hispanics. Simply put, they are in the business of being Hispanic. There's a huge difference between Hispanic professionals and Professional Hispanics. Professional Hispanics have no discernable talent other than to beat their chest and play the race card. It's just sad.

Those of you who are blessed with having kids know that your lives from the day they are born are nothing but sacrifice to give those kids a better life. To keep them safe, well cared for. To provide for them. To raise them into thinking, feeling, responsible and independent adults.

You want them to have that toy you never had as a child. You want them to eat what you perhaps never got to eat when you were a child. You want them to have that education that perhaps you werent able to get. You want them to have more of everything that you had and some of somethings that you didnt have.

If you were born and raised in Cuba and are a parent of your own child now, what do you think would be the most coveted thing you could give your son or daughter? Something you didnt have as a child, you didnt have as a teaanger and you dont have as an adult?

Yes, freedom.

Having been raised without it, you will do anything to afford your child the one thing you have lacked all your life. The ability to think freely. To believe in what you want to belive in. To be an individual and not part of a collective. Free from indoctrination. Free from imposed hatred. Free to be whomever and whatever they want to be.

In the sixties, some Cuban parents made the ultimate sacrifice for their kids: They sent their children, through Pedro Pan, to the United States by themselves. These parents risked never seeing their children again in order to afford them the opportunity to be free.

Unfortunately, there are no Pedro Pan flights from Cuba today. La Revolucion begins and ends with the children of Cuba. It's much much easier to foment hatred, to mold thought, to indoctrinate a child than it is to control an adult. Without the indoctrination of children, there is no next generation of Revolucionarios.

And Cuban parents understand this all too well. They lived that indoctrination themselves. They know they wasted years of their lives following an inept ideology. They have lived a lie.

So what do some of these parents do? The same thing the parents of Pedro Pan kids did: try to get their children to a place where their children will be free.

They will risk both their lives and that of their kids'. Because it's worth it. Freedom is worth it. Truth is worth it. Love for their children compels them to do whatever it takes to give them a real life.

So they take to makeshift rafts. And they take to a smuggler's boats, under the cover of darkness, children in arms to reach a place where their children will be guaranteed a life unkown to these parents. A life of freedom.

But in castro's Cuba, to sacrifice for the future of your child is a crime:

Cuban moms charged for escape attempt

Monday, April 17, 2006; Posted: 5:57 p.m. EDT (21:57 GMT)

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- Seven women whose attempt to leave the island with their children was frustrated when Cuban coast guard officials opened fire on their alleged smugglers will be tried in court for endangering their children's lives, state media reported Monday.

The Communist Party daily Granma said the seven children, ages 1 to 14, had to walk through swampy terrain plagued with mosquitoes and were without water or food for two days before April 5, when they were to be picked up by migrant smugglers in the western province of Pinar del Rio.

"Once again it has been exposed how irresponsible and unscrupulous people put the lives of their children in twice as much danger: to drown during their voyage or get sick because of the bad environment chosen by the smugglers," Granma said.

The newspaper offered no details on the specific charges against the women or when they would be tried.

The women and children were part of a group with 25 other adults who were to be ferried out of the country on a 40-foot (12-meter) speedboat.

Cuban coast guard officials opened fire on the three-man crew operating the vessel after they did not obey an order to stop, killing one and wounding the other two.

Authorities temporarily took the would-be-migrants into custody for questioning.

Paxety has more.

...that I love the Czechs?

Hugo Chavez's plan to invest $1 billion in a Soviet refinery built for castro out in hurricane-prone Cienfuegos will be nothing but a castroite money pit that will never make money of any kind. The Chavistas and the castroites apparently believe they can command oil refineries to produce oil if they throw enough billions at it. These jackasses could build a whole new refinery for the same cost of refurbishing this piece of crap, but preserving the Soviet legacy seems to be far more important. castro has no idea about the concept of cutting losses. He just lets them run and run. Being castro, it's how he does everything else, too.

A prominent Venezuelan oil man, former president of the state oil company, PDVSA, offers a lot of good reasons why:

Ex-Caracas Oil Head: Don't Invest in Cuba

By FABIOLA SANCHEZ
© 2006 The Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela's plans to refurbish an idled Soviet-era refinery in Cuba represent a lost investment for this oil-rich South American nation, a former president of the state-run oil company said Monday.

The Cuban government and state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, announced an agreement last week for PDVSA to invest US$83 million (euro69 million) to rehabilitate the facility in the southern coastal city of Cienfuegos to refine, store and distribute crude oil.

But former PDVSA president Guaicaipuro Lameda criticized the deal, saying the refinery is too old to run profitably and too many of its Russian-made parts would have to be replaced.

"Making an investment to make that refinery function doesn't permit recovering the investment," said Lameda, who resigned in 2002 and quickly became one of the government's most outspoken critics.

Lameda accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of investing in the aging refinery as a means of giving economic support to his close ally, Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The rehabilitated refinery would produce about 15,000 barrels of gasoline, 14,000 barrels of diesel, 7,000 barrels of jet fuel, 33,000 barrels of fuel oil and 1,000 barrels of liquefied petroleum gas per day, according to PDVSA.

Production is expected to meet local demand, plus a surplus of about 9,000 barrels of gasoline and 600 barrels of aviation fuel to be exported each day to the Caribbean market.

Cuba will control 51 percent of the new joint venture, called PDV-CUPET SA, with Venezuela holding the rest.