around the world - cuba

"Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, 32, has gained a worldwide following for the independent blog she writes from Havana. On Wednesday, Sanchez earned a top prize in Spain for digital journalism — or, so she was told. Cuban authorities did not let her go to Madrid to accept the award.

The boldness with which she writes comes partly because she spent two years living in Switzerland. She left Cuba, she says, because she was exhausted by the tension of life under a totalitarian system. But in Europe, she was impressed by the exiles she met who dreamed of going back to their native countries; that made her think about Cuba and what might be possible there."

According to this article, Cuban authorities block the internet from the general population-- only an estimated 2% of Cubans have internet access. At least they all get free healthcare.

I think continually of those who were truly great.
-Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fŠted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

"The recent horrific wildfires in California set off a gratuitous series of maunderings (from Jamie Lee Curtis to Thomas Friedman) about human culpability in global warming, the new liberal theology. Man is evil! Natural disasters are escalating! The world is coming to an end!
...
This facile attribution of climate change to human agency is an act of hubris. Good stewardship of the environment is an ethical imperative for every nation. But breast-beating hysteria merely betrays impious tunnel vision. Thousands of factors, minute and grand, are at work in cyclic climate change, whose long-term outcomes we cannot possibly predict. Nature should inspire us with awe, not pity." - Camille Paglia, from Salon.com

…no one should be confident that although he has been able to pass from a worse state to a better, he may not also pass from a better state to a worse. Our only hope, our only confidence, the only firm promise we have is your mercy. –Augustine's Confessions, Book X, Ch. 32