Havana

Dissident dies, tanks roll

January 20, 2012

Orlando Luis Pardo tweeted there was movement of tanks via rail from Via Blanca (Paso Superior) on the outskirts of Havana. Is this movement in response to yesterday’s death of dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza after his hunger strike? The same occurred when dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo death was announced in 2010.

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Ammo deal is response to US missile shield

December 1, 2011

Russia Today, the state-run television news network, claims that Russia’s plan to sell ammunition-making technology to Havana is a response to the U.S. missile-defence plans in Europe. Moreover, Pravda chimes in on the Cuban armed forces’ modernization starting point: From 1961 to 1991, the volume of arms shipments from the USSR to Cuba made up [...]

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Risky business

November 16, 2011

The Economist weighs in on the risk of foreign businesses operating in Cuba:  Standing beside Belarusian tractors and Chinese machine parts at Havana’s annual trade fair last month, Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba’s foreign trade minister, said the presence of 3,000 executives from over 60 countries proved the appeal of joint commercial ventures with the Cuban government. [...]

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Artillery units of the Eastern Army

November 2, 2011

This recent but undated video from Cuban state media posted on YouTube shows an artillery unit of Cuba’s Eastern Army in field exercises. A Soviet-era relic BM-21 (truck-mounted 122 mm multiple rocket launcher), which was introduced in 1963 by the Russian Army, can be seen rolling by as well as a wheeled self-propelled howitzer that was on [...]

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Chinese navy hospital ship sails into Havana

October 22, 2011

Via Reuters: Military experts and China watchers say the ship is one of the ways in which the Asian giant is increasing its use of “soft power” to burnish its image and achieve other policy goals such as increased trade and access to raw materials. The Peace Ark was launched four years ago but is [...]

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Corruption or not paying their cut? (Updated)

October 17, 2011

The Cuban government arrested the managing director of a British investment fund in Havana. Reuters reports, Amado Fakhre, a Lebanese-born British citizen, was arrested in an “investigation by Cuban authorities of corrupt practices among the Communist island’s state businesses and their foreign partners.” Fakhre worked for Coral Capital Group Ltd, a venture partner in Havana’s upscale Saratoga [...]

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