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HAPPY HOLIDAYS
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HAPPY
HOLIDAYS!
Our next edition of Progreso
will appear Thursday, January 4 |
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A journey begins with
a single step
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
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HAVANA -- I
don't know if they brought umbrellas in their luggage, but rain fell
hard during the visit of the 10 legislators (six Democrats and four
Republicans) who constitute the Working Group on Cuba in the U.S.
Congress.
At the head of the group were representatives Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.)
and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who for years have pressed for changes in
certain aspects of the Bush administration's policies toward Havana.
Flexibility is the |
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Congressmen
Flake and McGovern in Havana. (Photo: Ramy/Progreso Weekly) |
keyword,
especially as regards travel and remittances, as well as commercial
aspects. But the greatest emphasis was placed on travel and remittances,
whose frequency was harshly trimmed by the Bush administration in 2004.
Once in Havana, the legislators met with Ricardo Alarcón, president of
the Cuban Parliament; Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, member of the
Secretariat of the Politburo of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), in
charge of international relations; Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque;
Yadira García, Minister of Basic Industries; the minister-president of
the Central Bank of Cuba, Francisco Soberón, and Pedro Álvarez,
president of Alimport, the company that handles trade relations with
American producers.
They also met with Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Archbishop of Havana,
and with ambassadors from various countries. They did not report meeting
with representatives of the dissident movement.
Although the visitors had requested a meeting with the acting president,
Army Gen. Raúl Castro Ruz, the meeting was not held. In this connection,
Flake declared at a press conference on the final day of the visit
(Sunday, Dec. 17) that the Cuban government "does not understand that
there is a new era, but the dialogue has begun and more visits will take
place in the future."
Click to continue reading Ramy’s From Havana column |
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An interview with Gore
Vidal,
writer and critic of the United States |
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The U.S., a banana republic
after the coup d'état of Sept. 11
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde
(From the Mexican daily La Jornada)
HAVANA -- He spent five days in Havana. He followed a dizzying schedule
that took him from the University of Computer Sciences to the Latin
American School of Medicine, from University Hill to the National Ballet
School, from Old Havana to the park that memorializes John Lennon with a
lifesize bronze statue of the Beatles' founder, sitting on a bench like
a local resident's son.
The most erudite American writer of his generation and the most
corrosive critic of the current Republican administration, Gore Vidal
does not just talk; he interprets what he says. He changes his voice and
you can hear George W. Bush, Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, some
obscure Pentagon official and even Vidal himself, mocking them all with
an irony expressed by a face that does not reflect his 81 years of age.
Click to read the Elizalde interview |
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BLACK
AND WHITE |
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“Now, there's been a lot of
talk lately on Capitol Hill about how impeachment should
be 'off the table.' We're told that it's time to look ahead --
not back. … Our country has a legal system, not of men and women, but of
laws. Why then are we so willing to put inconvenient provisions of the
U.S. constitution and federal law 'off the table?' ... Unless we're
going to have one set of laws for the |
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SEAN PENN |
powerful and another set for
those who can't afford fancy lawyers, then truth matters to everyone.
And accountability is a matter of human and legal principle.”
-- Words spoken by actor Sean
Penn when he called for the impeachment of the president while
receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from
The Creative Coalition Monday night in New York City. |
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