Yahoo news reports:
While Cuba played the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, a spectator in the stands raised a sign saying: “Down with Fidel,” sparking an international incident that escalated Friday with the velocity of a major league fastball.
The image of the man holding the sign behind home plate was beamed live Thursday night to millions of TV viewers — including those in Cuba. The top Cuban official at the game at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan rushed to confront the man.
Puerto Rican police quickly intervened and took the Cuban official — Angel Iglesias, vice president of Cuba’s National Institute of Sports — to a nearby police station, where they lectured him about free speech.
“We explained to him that here the constitutional right to free expression exists and that it is not a crime,” police Col. Adalberto Mercado was quoted as saying in El Nuevo Dia, a San Juan daily.
The brouhaha gathered steam Friday when Cuba’s Communist Party newspaper, Granma, called the sign-waving “a cowardly incident.” Cuba’s Revolutionary Sports Movement exhorted Cubans to demonstrate in Havana late Friday, saying U.S. and Puerto Rican authorities were involved in “the cynical counterrevolutionary provocations.”
An anti-Castro Web site, therealcuba.com, identified the protester only as Enrique, and carried his own account of the incident.
Enrique said that during the warmup before the game, he flashed another sign denouncing Castro — this one saying “Baseball players yes, Tyrants no” — to the Cuban leader’s son, Tony Castro, who is the Cuban team doctor.
“He looked down and kept walking and I shouted, ‘Eso es para tu papa (’That is for your dad’).’ … I know he heard that,” Enrique said, according to the account in the Web site.
Mercado said the spectator, and a second one who also waved signs, had tickets for the section behind home plate, but had moved out of their seats so their signs would appear on TV. Cuban state TV was showing the ESPN signal, and the signs were briefly visible on television in Cuba.
Silly Cubans, didn’t they realize that the protester is the true patriot in all of this, after all, he was just exercising his patriotic duty!!! Oh wait, it is the United States and Puerto Rico that believe in Free Speech, not Cuba. Thanks again Che!!!
Update: Market Power has more.
Another perspective.
Interesting, disagreements amongst the fans.
Well, hey, atleast they were able to show opposing views, honest open dialogue is a good thing. Too bad they couldn’t have done the same thing in Cuba where you’re jailed for stuff like this.
Fidel represents a major embarrassment for the U.S. How can the dictator of rinky-dink backwards country defy and embarrass the mighty U.S.? They’ve tried to invade and overthrow his government, and when that didn’t work they tried several times to assassinate him.
They should have hired him as a professional baseball player; then maybe the US would be more inclined to trade with Cuba, and we wouldn’t have to travel to Mexico to get decent cigars.
hahahaha!
Yes….our sincere gratitude to Che and the rich little kids who adore him and romanticize his so called revolution. [/sarcasm]
because we all know how free and great our own free speeches are in this country!
( continued sarcasm)
Yep, we sure do. Nobody goes to jail for bad mouthing the president of this country, on the other hand, many people in Cuba are in jail for precisely that. It is a night and day comparison.
Alfred must be a rich little kid [/sarcasm]
A good site for Alfred to look at.
http://www.therealcuba.com
Down with FIDEL!
And to think, even with the most powerful country calling for his ousting for so long his fellow countrymen haven’t rebelled.
Oh many have rebelled, thousands and thousands have rebelled by voting with their feet and risking life and limb to come to the United States, and others have rebelled by publically condeming Castro and his ilk, only to be thrown in jail for the rest of their lives. This is alot of rebellion, considering that Castro has removed their weapons and threatens them with years in prison just for whispering bad names against Castro.
I should have qualified my statement. It’s a wonder why the Cubans haven’t successfully rebelled against Castro, given that the current most militarily aggressive industrialized nation is mere 90 miles away and anti-Castro, and has been for over 40 years.
What can be extrapolated from this situation: a relatively lowly armed and economically mouse of a nation (Cuba under Castro) can fend off a military and economic powerhouse of a nation (the U.S. under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, papa Bush, Clinton, and baby bush) for over 40 years?
Oh I dunno, maybe the bulk of the people would rather be ruled by a homegrown dictator than many foreign corporate dictators and one homegrown puppet like Batista?
That, or that any President of the United States doesn’t want to suffer the political fallout from its own citizens for liberating Cuba.
Remember, the Cuban citizens can’t really do much, as much as they hate Castro, it is him who has all of the weapons.
Yeah, that could be, I mean I worry about the fallout every time I think of liberating this really nice Ford Mustang sittin’ on chrome 20s.
Yeah, that could be, I mean I worry about the fallout every time I think of “liberating” this really nice Ford Mustang sittin’ on chrome 20s.
The Castro lovers in the US want to trade with Cuba?!?! If the US trades with Cuba we’ll just get ripped off like all the other dumbasses like Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Russia, etc., to whom Castro owes BILLIONS. He long ago destroyed the sugar industry with the dopey socialist collective farming stupidity (just like the Soviet Union ruined its farms) and so sells tourism and medical care meted out under an apartheid system-a good one for foreigners who pay CASH$$$$ and another crummy one for his own people (no malpractice suits allowed). Now he is even selling sex tours on the side using mostly black girls (blacks have no power and no status in Cuba outside athletics). He’ll of course send you his wonderful doctors who probably have an UZI in their back pocket and little or no medical training (I see they are riding around Caracas in brand new SUVS with Cuban license plates). Blaming the embargo for his troubles is ridiculous but fools do fall for it. The first thing he did with the 2 billion dollar loan he got from Venezuela (run by another Latin American idiot on the rise)was to contract for new private jets from Russia. This with Cuban buildings falling down and people having nothing to eat??? Like the typical dictator, he cares only for his own luxury and nothing for his people, who are merely pawns to control and even dangerous when they don’t obey blindly (remind you of Saddam?). Hell, where did the estimated 100 billion dollars that the Soviet Union gave him go? Castro has always been a mooch living at someone else’s expense. It is sad that so many dummies in the West can’t tell democratic socialism from totalitarian communism these days. The idiots in Europe are so far gone down the “socialist welfare state” route and lost in the “marxist intellectualism” trip that they don’t even have the backbone or common sense to get the Moslems out of their countries before they all get their throats cut. Just blame it all on the evil USA and capitalism of course.
PS: Hollywood dummies, do you support the death penalty? Do you like Che the Executioner? Do you support homosexual rights? Does Castro lock them up?
Bottom line: any country where people RUN AWAY probably SUCKS!!!! Where is Reagan when you need him?
The immigration movement has been heavily infiltrated by La Raza communists at this point. They are bent on their “Atzlan Plan” to retake the American Southwest. Everyone but the US government seems to know it by now. The politicians are busy trying to figure out how to get votes out of this issue and don’t seem to see the security threat. Bush wants to make sure the cheap laborers get to where they are needed so American workers are displaced and salaries drop. Hollywood thinks commie psychos like Castro and Che are innocent sweeties trying to save the poor. A lot of the immigrants are following the radicals like sheep and don’t seem to realize that May 1st was chosen for the protests for a reason. Immigration is simple: Good people in, bad people out. No baby droppers, welfare bums, drug dealers, al-queda psychos for Allah, etc.
The communist insanity is spreading through Latin America feeding off centuries old kill Columbus race hatred and Venezuelan oil money. The destructive madness of communism is already visible as Venezuelan society crumbles into Cubazuela and Chavez has to buy Russian oil to meet contracts because he fired 75% of PDVSA’s engineers and supervisors because they opposed his “revolution.” The Cuban cancer and oil mania persist as the root cause of all of this crap. We already won the “Cold War” but it appears there is another one brewing. Communism has never been anything but a failed and sometimes horrific, bloody experiment in textbook stupidity.
Word on the street in LA is that La Raza plans to seize some area of the ciy and declare autonomy. Mexican soldiers have apparently tested the US border over 200 times claiming to be “lost” according to Vicente Fox, in an effort to gauge the timeliness of law enforcement’s response. Some feel that rogue segments of the Mexican army and perhaps drug dealers’ thugs will stage some sort of Pancho Villa type raid into US territory and return home a great hero for the Americans they have killed. This is all sadly a reality that our news media refuses to examine, preferring to keep us in some sort of happy fog of delusion that it “can’t happen here.” Europe lost its balls long ago. Let’s not lose ours. Buy more guns and get ready people!!
HP, your tio is loose again.
Verdad que si! They don’t call him Crazy Dave for nothing.
Fidel is a big Hijo de Put…
Go to hell Fifi!!! We don’t want you in Cuba!