The Cold War Ended For Some

But not for Cubans. The Miami Herald reports that Cuban blogger Yaoni Sanchez, one of Time's "heroes and pioneers" of 2008, was beaten and detained by the secret police, though fails to mention that her free health care will cover all injures sustained. Sanchez and a fellow dissident were to attend a protest march in Havana when they were intercepted by defenders of the revolution:

"No blood, but black and blues, punches, pulled hairs, blows to the head, kidneys, knee and chest," Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald shortly after she and Orlando Luis Pardo were freed. "In sum, professional violence."

"I, being a person of verbal pacifism, am shaken by this violence, because violence silences anyone," the blogger declared in a telephone interview.

Sánchez, the best-known Cuban blogger on the island and off, said she and bloggers Pardo and Claudia Cadelo and a woman friend were walking to join a ``march against violence'' organized by several young musicians when they were intercepted by three men in civilian clothes. Cuba's state security service agents frequently operate out of uniform.

"We were almost there when we were intercepted by three men in a car with civilian license plates who ordered us to get in," she said. "We refused. I didn't know if they were kidnappers. And the level of their violence went up."

Mentally challenged actor Sean Penn, who is in Cuba now to interview whichever doddering Castro brother is wheeled out to croak "patria o muerte," will doubtless intervene on Sanchez's behalf. And if you haven't seen it yet, make sure to watch Reason.tv's interview with bad-ass Cuban punk rocker and hero of freedom Gorki Aguila:

Comments

[John]

Anyone else remember the appalling scene where Oliver Stone interviewed Castro and some poor souls who were sentenced to like 30 years for trying to escape that hell hole? Stone said that Castro was a father figure and that Latins needed that or something to that effect. I hope Penn and Stone and the rest of them burn in hell.

[atrevete]

Me too! and you can throw in Naomi Campbell and Danny Glover.

[Paul]

Racist.

[Pro Libertate]

It's hard not to suspect that these supposedly enlightened people harbor racist and paternalistic beliefs about other cultures.

[Snarky]

though fails to mention that her free health care will cover all injures sustained.

Zing! Well played, Moynihan.

[Libertymike]

Actually, her "free" health care will require her to wait...and....wait....and.....wait

[Miss Inge T Point]

Doesn't this just prove the point that you don't need your so-called "liberties" as long as you're free from having to pay your medical bills?

[Art-P.O.G.]

I'd ask Oliver Stone what he thought about the film Before Night Falls.

Also, "precriminal behavior"? That's punk rock!

[BakedPenguin]

Art, the last movie he saw about Cuba was this one.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Jeez, I gotta find a copy of that one.

[Seamus]

Last one I saw was "Our Man in Havana." Based on a Graham Greene novel written before Greene became a whore for Latino dictators like Omar Torrijos (and, come to think of it, Fidel).

[Pro Libertate]

I like quite a few of Greene's books. Guess even good authors can become sleazy in their old age.

[Art-P.O.G.]

There's a Gore Vidal joke in there somewhere.

[Pro Libertate]

I was thinking of him, too.

[?]

Mentally challenged actor Sean Penn, who is

also freakishly small. But he has a human-sized head.

He's an actual "giant midget." They're not as big in real life as they are in jokes, so they're still all pissed off and Napoleonic.

"Don't you know how big I am?!"

[angelicsubstance]

He looks like Tim Geitner and has the same physical charactoristics that you mentioned. Smallness, pretty much everywhere but a human sized head and a Nepoleanic ego.

When they make the big Obama movie (.. and why haven't they done that yet? I mean, the man has a Nobel prize for doing nothing - he deserves an academy award for playing the role of president) but Sean Penn will be Timmy Geitner. Tim Robbins can play Obama in blackface and Susan Sarandon can be Michelle.

[BakedPenguin]

Speaking of movies and Sean Penn, I got a favorite from my younger days, Taps, a few months ago. I was amazed at the casting. Tom Cruise plays a raving nut case, Timothy Hutton plays a kid with a great deal of potential who makes some bad choices and winds up not doing much in the end, and Sean Penn plays a whiny, anti-establishment bitch.

Incredible casting.

[Art-P.O.G.]

You win the internets. Seriously, that has to be one of the oddest, most keen observations I've ever seen.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Casting Director Shirley Rich seems to have retired in the early '90s, but it's obvious that her genius has been recognized by others.

Over the years, Rich has helped launch the careers of a number of young actors, including Rod Steiger, who presented her with the Hoyt Bowers Award in 1990 for outstanding contributions to the casting profession from the Casting Society of America.

source: University of Iowa Alumni Association

[BakedPenguin]

Becker singled her out for praise in the commentary on the film. Lest I forget, it had George Scott reprising Patton as if he hadn't died, but had instead retired, and Ronny Cox as the reluctant weekend warrior.

[Art-P.O.G.]

Yeah, that's a great cast. And even though movies are seldom badly cast (Daredevil), it's also hard to find instances where movies were cast so well on multiple levels.

[JW]

I'm with Art. You win the tubes for that take.

[BakedPenguin]

Thanks Art, I try. I don't know if you're still in Iraq, but if not, Netflix has Soy Cuba. Kalazatov is a scenery chewing director. You won't ever be able to forget you're watching a movie, because he makes you so aware of the camera. It can be interesting at times, but it's so over the top, it gets old. For a screen buff like yourself, it's worth seeing once, though.

His other major international success was The Cranes Are Flying, about a Soviet family during WWII. Same deal, flashy camera work, intrusive editing, blah, blah. Considering that Stone has never been a subtle director - *ahem* Natural Born Killers *ahem*, he probably loves Kalazatov.

[Paul]

Natural Born Killers

The only movie I ever almost walked out on. And I never walk out on movies.

[BakedPenguin]

You never saw Alexander, then.

[BakedPenguinRectum]

Yum...with the special sauce!

[Art-P.O.G.]

I've been back from Iraq for about a month, actually. I haven't used the Netflix (I blame being stationed in the Germany), but I'll probably start as soon as it's available to me. For years, the Columbus Metropolitan Library was good to me even for movies.

[BakedPenguin]

CML's interlibrary loan librarian can get it for you. Although when I saw the stories about how the evil capitalists were hurting the poor, poor peasants, I thought of people like Yaoni Sanchez, which made it harder to watch.

[Paul]

Yaoni Sanchez

BTW: It's Yoani Sanchez.

Just sayin'.

[BakedPenguin]

Oops. I copied the typo from the lead paragraph. I didn't RTFA - I'm surprised Time would acknowledge someone like Yoani.

[The Bearded Hobbit]

Art,

I've been back from Iraq for about a month

Jeez, I didn't know that you had gone. If you're a GI, thanks. If you're not, what the hell were you doing in that hell-hole?

.. Hobbit

[Art-P.O.G.]

US Army. Nothing weird, though. Thanks to the internet, it wasn't quite as isolating as it could've been.

Honestly, Veteran's Day is going to be a little different for me this year.

[Efrain]

If I ever met Sean Penn I'd sing him the lyrics to "Bullet in the Head" by RATM. What a tool.

[JB]

Sean Penn didn't have to act in I AM SAM THE RETARD.

Penn = retarded fetus.

[django]

Show some respect. Penn almost graduated from the auto repair program at Riverside Kommunity Kollege which in Hollywood makes him the intellegentsia.

[AlexD]

You see the complexity of issue is that while it's a good thing this kind of people standing up to Cuban regime it just seem to be their thing to rebel against their government whatever it may be, since all the "verbal pacifists" and bad ass punk rockers in free world are pro-Cuba and pro-communism.

[jcm]

The CNN en espa?ol is a must see. Sanchez said that se was accused of being a CIA operative. So cnn added " that is logic" and then showed a review of the murders attempts and Bahia de Cochinos . More than half of the news was about the CIA and not about the beating

[JW]

I doubt I would ever meet Sean Penn, but dear god, if I did, it would take galactic-sized restraint to just not punch him in his face.

[John C. Randolph]

Wouldn't it be better to take him to Miami, and let a couple of Cuban escapees explain to him exactly why Fidel and Raul aren't the cute, cuddly father figures that he thinks they are?

-jcr

[P Brooks]

This post is more than twelve hours old, without a single "I'd hit that" comment.

You guys are slipping.

[D-FENS]

No point, the secret police beat us to it!

[twistedmerkin]

Oh, I would have posted an "I'd hit that" comment, but I was too busy jerkin' off. I'm done now. I'd hit that.

[Kresa Jordan]

After reading some of Ms. Sanchez' stories, I can only say that it is easy to wallow in self-pity for living in a country so called: "without freedom" and cruel, but where she has at least a roof over her head, food, education, etc. It would be very interesting to know her opinion if she lived in a so called "free country" where one has to pay for everything, where unemployment, poverty, hunger, people thrown out of their homes, etc. is an every day occurrence. A country where one cannot go to hospital without insurance or money, or go to University for free. I do not think that someone living in the street, unemployed, hungry,sick would mind loosing the kind of freedom he has for a chance to have a job, eat, live in a house or appartment, even poor looking, have a right to education, be free to fall sick without worrying about the bills, etc. Perceptions are deceptive and depend on the side you are in to judge them. Believe me, when one is in desparate need, politics are meanless.