Let's see if I can make sense of all this.

We have, as Henry posted this morning, the pro-fidel group ENCASA - a comingling of self-proclaimed scholars and artists - beginning a public relations campaign to lift the embargo and normalize relations with fidel castro's dictatorial communist regime from way up high in their Ivory Towers.

We have editors of major metropolitan newspapers like the Miami Herald making statements like:

We fell in love with it because it had the power to change lives for the better -- and we can do that on paper, on the web and over the airwaves with equal devotion.

The potential for having even greater impact than we have now is enormous.

Meaning, obviously, that it is now the journalist's job to "change lives and have greater impact" on society as opposed to ethically, realistically and honestly covering the news. The news now, you see, must have impact. It cant simply be just "the news." What fun would that be if you couldnt attempt to dethrone a sitting President with "fake but accurate" coverage?

And it's many of these same "scholars" and "journalists", sitting upon such high and mighty, self-aggrandized and self-serving perches that keep telling you, us, about the evils of the US embargo, about the evils of the travel restrictions to Cuba, about the repellance and intransigence of the Cuban-American community in South Florida, about the quaintness of Cuba as a vacation destination, about the wonders of Cuba's healthcare system, it's 100% literacy, its low infant mortality rate. These same "scholars" and "journalists", whose words are eerily reminiscent - echoing, even - of their comrades in arms in Cuba, those luminaries in Cuba's State Sponsored academia, the yes men and women of Granma, Peridodico 26, Ahora Cuba, to name a few, who sit in the luxury of their own particular freedoms with all the world at their fingertips.

Because they do, you know. Im absolutley certain that the spin doctors at the New York Times have access to the same information that those spin doctors of Granma, etal, have.

And with all information readily available, with the world at their fingertips, through their keyboards and monitors and hi-tech software and internet connections, they sit there and CREATE the news for you. Trying desperately to make an IMPACT on the way you perceive things. Trying, through their "journalism", to spoon feed you what you are supposed to think.

Yet to any discerning and reasonable reader said impact comes though not with a bang, but with a whimper.

You want to know what real impact is?

Real journalistic impact is when that reporter is embedded against his will. When that reporter sacrifices it all to bring you the truth. When he risks his life reporting what oppessors do not want reported. And he does so by whatever means. WHATEVER MEANS.

You want to see real IMPACT in reporting?

Here it is. And here.

I am humbled and awed by those two images linked above. They are from Jaime Leygonier, one of Cuba's many independent journalists, reporting on the arrest of Dr. Darsi Ferrer. Merely sitting down to type this report out in Cuba, on an ancient typewriter that has obviously seen its share of words, could get this man beaten and thrown in jail. His family could suffer repercussions, physical, emotional, psychological. His life could be swiftly ended for the crime of reporting the truth.

THAT, my friends, is IMPACT.

Update: The last few lines of the news story in the above links speak volumes:

From the Dominican Today, we see, once again, just how "dignified" castro's supporters and La Revolucion really are:

Shouting match mars anti-Castro lecture

SANTO DOMINGO. – Sympathizers and followers of Cuba’s Government caused an incident in the Dominican Republic’s 9th International Book Fair, which prompted the intervention of security agents.

The pushing and shoving began when Fidel Castro sympathizers felt annoyed because the Fair’s organizers invited the exiled Cuban writer Zoé Valdes to dictate the conference "Cuba: fiction and reality," on Tuesday.

Supporters of Castro’s regime, who throughout the day had warned several media that they were against the writer’s presence, last night tried to prevent and spoil the activity, but the security prevented them from entering the National Theater’s Culture Salon, scene of the conference.

Several people were beaten and Clave Digital photographer Carmen Suàrez’s camera lens was flung off.

"It is a regime of a tremendous cruelty, he is a man (Fidel Castro) who simply has used the nation of Cuba to make it his property in the dirtiest tradition of his land baron father," Valdes said.

She affirmed that in Castro’s 47 years in power very little is known on the outside on the Cuban people’s sufferings, because his government has a complete control of the information and a great manipulative capacity.

She defended the writers’ right to speak of their own countries’ political subjects, citing the cases of Chile’s Isabel Allende, during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship; Mario Benedetti, in Uruguay and Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

Several of the participants tried to boycott the writer from the audience, constantly interrupting or talking aloud, which forced the moderator, the writer Avelino Stanley, to speak firmly to end the disorder.

"Ah, I know this strategy: What you want do is speak and speak and not to let me speak. It is I who will speak now," the writer Valdés said in one occasion.

The room was filled, but many people, including international guests and journalists, deiced to skip the event when learning of the conflict.

In another moment a loud bang was heard from the main door and everyone looked back. The noise came when a Culture Ministry official slammed the door in Carmen Suárez’s face, which damaged her camera lens.

Way to go Zoe!

Hat tip Cherokee.

One day after Martha Beatriz Roque was assaulted, Dr. Darsi Ferrer has been attacked and arrested by castro's thugs. The brutal dictator is going after the leading challengers to his odious regime. Dr. Ferrer is one of the most courageous. And castro's scared. He's lashing out.

Dr. Ferrer, right now, is desaparecido. As in a Dirty War.

This is an outrage.

Stefania Lapenna at Publius has the story here.

Winner gets a Che? Still dead! tshirt.

One of the things I overlooked last year during the Cuba Nostalgia Convention planning was business cards. I had thought about having some printed, but with all the other preparations, they fell through the cracks. And I didnt realize just how needed the cards were until we were actually at the convention and exhibit visitors kept asking for the URL so they could visit the blog from home. We kept having to scribble the URL on pieces of paper for everyone and that just wont do this year.

I am not only swamped with work and preparations, but I completely suck at graphic design and my Photoshopping skills are...um... shall we say somewhat lacking. So here's your chance to help:

You can design the Babalú cards that will be handed out at the Cuba Nostalgia Convention.

Here are the specifics:

- Standard business card size: 2"x3.5", portrait or landscape.
- Two colors maximum. Full color printing gets expensive so I'd prefer to keep the printing at two runs.
- Must say "Babalú" on them and have the URL "www.babalublog.com" prominently displayed.
- I'd prefer the use of the Babalú header font: Impact and should be blood red in color.
- They could say "an island on the net without a bearded dictator" or "fidel castro's internet nemesis" or "a spearhead righteous activism" or "blogging for a free Cuba" or any other phrase you can come up with. (I'm not too thrilled with displaying the words "fidel castro" on the cards.)
- Should have my email address shown as well.

I'll take any other suggestions you all have to offer into account.

We'll decide on the best design and whoever's is used will get a free Che shirt and a free Babalú eyes shirt, not to mention my neverending gratitude.

You can submit entries to val - at - babalublog dot com.

Gracias and buena suerte!

Update: I've received only two designs thus far, let's hear you chime in:

And:

Val posted a link to an article in the Herald about a group calling itself ENCASA that wants to change US policies toward Cuba and remove the economic emargo (what's left of it).

I decided to dig around a little bit to see exactly what kind of people are behind ENCASA. I did a google search for "ENCASA US-CUBA" and found what can only be described as a recruitment message sent out to an online newsgroup, Now the actual page of the message has since been removed but thanks to Google's cache there's a record of the message. I have pasted the message (up to the draft of the "open letter") below.

Newsgroups: soc.culture.cuba,soc.culture.latin-america,soc.culture.caribbean
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org
Subject: Scholars & Artists for Change in US Cuba Policy
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:58:56 GMT
Organization: NY Transfer News Collective
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Scholars & Artists for Change in US Cuba Policy

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Jane Franklin - Mar 15, 2006

Scholars and Artists for Change in U.S.-Cuba Policy
ENCASA/US-CUBA - March 12, 2006

Estimados amigos, colegas y compatriotas,

Attached below is a declaration by a newly formed group­-an Emergency Network of Cuban American Scholars and Artists for Change in U.S.-Cuba Policy (ENCASA/US-CUBA). The statement, which is self-explanatory, was drafted by a steering committee (listed below) that has met and worked over the past several weeks, with a sense of urgency, to mobilize the largely silent and silenced voice of Cuban American academics and professionals and to stimulate concerted action aimed to reverse a politically failed and morally bankrupt U.S.-Cuba policy­-as most recently reflected in the arrogant and extreme 2004 Report to the President: Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (which had the temerity even to redefine away our own families in Cuba... como si fueran otros desaparecidos).

We ask you to join us and support this effort. If you agree in principle with the attached statement, please let us know, providing your name, title, and institutional affiliation/profession.

In addition, if possible, please forward the attached statement (with this e-mail or a note of your own) to your own networks of Cuban American scholars and artists, academics or professionals, and ask them to join this effort by e-mailing their names/etc. to: ENCASA .

Finally, as a separate step, we also want to collect the names of non-Cuban American intellectuals and academics, scholars and artists, who support our call for a reversal of U.S.-Cuba policy, and who want to see educational and cultural exchanges with Cuba and to exercise their right as U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba without the intimidation and prohibitions of current policy. If you can, please contact your non-Cuban American colleagues in your departments and networks and pass this on to them as well, asking them to support us by e-mailing their names/etc. to: NOENCASA .

We want to act quickly to generate as many names as possible, and continue this recruitment effort over the next few weeks, starting at the Latin American Studies Association meetings in Puerto Rico in a few days. U.S.-Cuba policy is expected to take yet another a turn for the worse come May; in anticipation of this we are planning to send a delegation to Washington DC in April, and to use what political and moral authority we can muster as scholars and artists, public intellectuals and professionals, to articulate a reasoned and forceful repudiation of current policy and to push for an alternative vision.

Let us not abdicate our moral responsibility to speak our truth to power, or allow a clique that does not represent our views to continue to claim that they speak for all Cuban Americans (or for all USAmericans, for that matter), or continue to remain silent and intimidated in our homes and ivory towers when an incessant stream of outrages continues to be perpetrated in our name. Let us instead speak up and act as moral agents and catalysts for change.

Members of the steering committee include: María Isabel Alfonso and Lillian Manzor (University of Miami); Marta Caminero-Santangelo (University of Kansas); Max Castro (Independent Scholar); María Cristina García (Cornell University); Liz Cerejido, Guillermo Grenier and Lisandro Pérez (Florida International University); Félix Masud-Piloto (DePaul University); Rubén G. Rumbaut (University of California, Irvine); and Silvia Wilhelm (Executive Director, Puentes Cubanos).

The sender of this message is Jane Franklin. You can see Ms. Franklin's ideology in her own words here, here, here, and here.

I also found it interesting that the draft of the statement by ENCASA was published, apparently in mid March, on the web site of Radio Progresso. Of course Francisco Aruca of Radio Progresso infamy and the operator of Marazul Charters has a lot to gain by liberalizing the travel restrictions to Cuba. If you had any doubts that the people behind ENCASA are hard-core fidelistas then you have just been disabused of those notions.

By the way ENCASA is planning a press conference at the Biltmore Hotel at noon today. Too bad I have to be in Miami Beach because I'd be interested to see what the cat drags in.