The month of July, 2011 is over, and it was a month filled with news stories about the "reforms" of the Raul Castro dictatorship in Cuba. The news detailed everything from private businesses to fiber optic cables, from unused farmland to immigration reform, from oil exploration to momentous votes in the Cuban Communist Party congress.

What none of these news reports mentioned, however, was the 266 politically motivated arrests that took place on the island during the month of July.

At the end of June, there had already been 1,727 political arrests and detentions in Cuba. Add the 266 from July and you now have a running total for 2011 of 1,933 politically motivated arrests of peaceful dissidents and opposition members.

1,933: This is an astounding number of arrests in just the first 7 months of the year, yet the media has not found it to be significant enough to report. They tell us of Raul's "ideas" and "suggestions" for reform, about his warnings of wasteful bureaucracy, and they gleefully talk about all the supposed new licenses being handed out for paladares. They even told us about the regime's recent decision to allow the Cuban people to buy sandwich presses, which is apparently infinitely more newsworthy than 1,933 innocent Cubans being arrested for daring to publicly  pronounce their desire for freedom in liberty on the island during 2011.

Some call it lazy journalism, but in my book it is called propaganda, regardless of whether it is intentioned or not.

Uncommon Sense has more on July's political arrests numbers.