A day to remember

In Cuba, 113 years ago (February 24th, 1895) with El grito de Baire and leaded by José Martí, the Independence War started, aiming to free the island from the Spanish colony.

In the Florida Strait, 12 years ago, four civilians flying in a humanitarian mission with Brothers to the Rescue were shot down by the Castro's airforce. In international waters.

Back in Havana, merely 24 hours ago, raúl castro inherited his older brother best kept asset: a whole country subdued under a communist dictatorship for the past 50 years; slaves included.
(Please, refer to the dictionary of your choice to see the difference between "sucession" and "transition").

Northern Colorado highways, around 7 hours ago, NPR's Morning Edition shoved me off a headline along the lines of: "A new era on Cuba's leadership".
BTW, a whole different from the one they have posted online.

Mark your calendars. They day that we see real independence and democracy --the one Martí dreamed of... well, that one is still to come.

On a separate note: last night, while having dinner with Cuban & Puertorrican friends and chatting, of course, about the news of the "no-news", the local newspaper call me to get to some reaction to complement (should I say "balance") the AP wire for this morning's paper.

Although some points were edited out (like the mention to free political prisoners in order to have a real transition, or the fact that with almost seven different political police forces to enforce repression most Cubans afraid of being 'the first dead corpse', or the reality that it is extremely hard for the dissidence to organize and take out the streets with all the surveillance from the CDR and the Stasi's style state security forces), these are the nuts and bolts of my reaction.

And if you search from the real experts's comments, you'll see we are all more or less in the same page.