Yoani Sanchez Publishes Her Online Newspaper
HAVANA TIMES — Cuba’s internationally famous blogger Yoani Sanchez posted the first edition today of her online newspaper “14ymedio”, a publication with which she aims to “break the information monopoly” on the island and “accompany the necessary transition.”
The newspaper (www.14ymedio.com) went online this morning and opened fire with a report on violence in Havana and an interview with imprisoned writer Angel Santiesteban.
However, dpa reports that the site was immediately censured from Cuban servers which redirect it to another site set up by the government where pro-Castro intelectuals and simpathizers attack Sanchez.
“It’s a bad strategy of the government to redirect our web site, there is nothing more attractive than what’s forbidden,” said Sanchez on her twitter account.
Sanchez says her paper aspires to be plural, publishing general information on the island, which focuses not only on politics but also with photo galleries, daily updates, blogs, culture and calendar, notes dpa news.
One of the “major challenges” for the new newspaper will be to reach the Cuban population due to very poor Internet access from the island, states its creators on the Quienes Somos (About Us) page.
Yoani Sánchez is one of the most familiar faces of Cuban dissidents. The blogger and journalist 38, philologist, started her blog “Generation Y” in 2007, which she continues today, presenting a critical look at the reality of the island.
Sanchez blogging has earned her several hundred thousand dollars in prizes. She is better known outside of Cuba than within because the government controlled media has only attacked her, criticizing her ties with the US Interests Section and other anti-Castro politicians around the globe, but without publishing or discussing her acrid portrayals of Cuban life.
I am just pointing out how Sanchez’s story changed so dramatically from one day to the next. Both versions can’t be true. I suspect that neither is true. And that she just needed to get her quota of ink in the international press that week. No one has been able to corroborate either version.
The Castro regime denied she was ever arrested or attacked. Are you admitting she was and are you only arguing the extent of the mistreatment or are you following the official line that nothing ever happened?
Did you even look at the pages?
The first link confirms the brutal arrest.
The testimony of Orlando shows the description of his own ordeal is correct (photo at his site) and the third site reports the statement.
Orlando later describes one of the attackers of Yoani later as a misygonist and “attacker” of Yoani.
“Clearly they were, because one of them was Yoani Sanchez’s attacker on 6 November 2009, a paramilitary misogynist.”
http://translatingcuba.com/what-the-political-police-dont-see-orlando-luis-pardo-lazo/
He showed his own bruise and tells about the struggle:
orlandoluispardolazo.blogspot.ca/2009/11/abuse-your-desillusion.html
Nothing at the first link to support any beating such as described at Sanchez’s website. The second link only quotes Sanchez’s “reconstructed” lies there. No witness there. You have been caught in yet ANOTHER lie. When will you learn?
You have no sham. The UN has never called the embargo genocide and neither has Amnesty International.
You are just putting ascribing your propaganda lies to these organizations.
No “decent person” would agree with your lies and any decent person would be abhorred by your abuse of the names of respected organizations for propaganda purposes.
Indeed fabrications. For the selected edited one-liners you give no sources eliminating the context that exposes your abuse of data. None claim that what Mrs Sanchez reported are lies. That is your “kitchen table fabrication”. That is one of your trademark propaganda tricks. You take words out of their context, attach your fabrications to them and then try to mislead people in to thinking that the lies you try to sell are reported facts from valid sources. You have done that various times in this exchange with me and others. No respected organization is safe. Not even Amnesty International or the UN.
Please tell us where Reuters even said the report of Mrs. Sanchez was a “fabrication”. I am not holding my breath as we both know they didn’t. Witnesses in fact have confirmed what she said.
Given you predilection to misquote AI (the AI report on the US embargo does NOT use the word genocide, you do) in your attempt to feed your anti-US hatred, you should also read the same AI report on the Castro’s violation of Human Rights.
“Amnesty International regrets that Cuba has rejected recommendations aimed at improving respect for the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. While reform to the migration law which entered into force in January 2013 as a positive step, which have facilitated travel abroad for Cubans, including human rights defenders and government critics, the organization shares concerns, expressed during the review, that peaceful demonstrators, independent journalists and human rights activists continue to be routinely harassed, detained and also sentenced for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. ”
http://www.cubademocraciayvida.org/web/article.asp?artID=22614
Dan, don’t be ridiculous. Either you read with low comprehension, or your attempt at promoting Castro propaganda is way out of control. Your Article 2(c) reads:
“Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ”
US sanctions are not intended to “bring about |life| physical destruction in whole or in part; Your reaching to this very somber section to feed you anti-US hatred does a disrespect to real victims of genocide. It also speaks volumes about your capacity to engage in adult-level debate over this issue.
False. Claudia Cadelo and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo who were arrested with her described the part of this aggressive attack they saw and endured.
Claudia Cadelo described the attack until she was taken away in a second car:
http://octavocerco.blogspot.ca/2009/11/la-marcha-la-que-no-fui.html
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo was in the car with Yoani backs her up.
http://baracuteycubano.blogspot.be/2009/11/cuba-abuse-your-desillusion-golpes.html
Their joint ordeal was described in lots of news items:
http://www.cubaencuentro.com/cuba/noticias/yoani-sanchez-detenida-y-golpeada-por-la-seguridad-del-estado-junto-a-otros-blogueros-221651
Fabrications? Well, who are my sources? Just the capitalist news agency, Reuters, and your precious Yoani herself. Can you top that?
For over 5 years you have been desperately trying to slander Yoani woth your “kitchen table inventions”. When will you finally see that your despair is showing every time you have to go back 5 years to repeat and old, tired and exposed lie.
It is in a way a tribute to Yoani that you can’t come up with anything else than old fabrications and second hand slander.
Her “story” about being beaten has never been corroborated. The public record, as I have outlined above, speaks for itself.
Your beloved Yoani is a proven liar with an obvious political agenda.
No one, not Amnesty International, not even your closest allies at the UN are buying into your often repeated rationalizations for these cruel and inhumane sanctions of yours.
As AI has reported, your beloved embargo is depriving Cubans of “vital access to medicines, new scientific and medical technology, food, chemical water treatment and electricity.”
As any decent person would agree, such sanctions are indeed a form of genocide — one of five forms defined under international law (see UN Genocide Convention, Article 2C). Whatever it takes, right, Moses?
Your use of the term “genocidal” is misplaced. Given more than $5 billion in remittances, more than 500,000 tourists and as a leading exporter to Cuba of food and medicine, it is ridiculous to use that important label to satisfy your agenda to slander the US. I shamelessly support the US policy to rid the Cuban people of Castro tyranny. You avoided answering the question: would you support the arbitrary arrest, detention and even torture and imprisonment of Canadian bloggers simply because they published what you believed to be inaccurate stories of Canadian society? I hope not. In that case, how do you stomach this abhorrent policy in Cuba by the Castros?
Witnesses testified. Deal with it. Her story was corroborated by those present.
How long will you repeat the same slander?
From being “flustered” (her own word ) and having her purse thrown out the car window to being savagely beaten and left for dead. Additional details??? You are grasping at straws Ernesto.
Her “savage beating” was not even corroborated by her own subsequent propaganda video still on YouTube. Supposedly showing cuts and bruises on her face, a close-up showed nothing at all! Apparently, she and her handlers had never seen the result of such a beating, never mind being the victims of one.
Canada is not in virtual state of war with its US neighbour. If the US would lift its genocidal embargo targeting every man, woman and child in Cuba (see Amnesty International reports) and pouring millions every year into funding subversion on island, you might have point.
The point is that her statements were corroborated by others while yours can’t be trusted as has been shown over and over again.
Her credibility is confirmed by international awards, prizes and confirmation by others.
You write “The point is, she is not to be trusted…” Really, and you trust the Castros instead? Okay, let’s say what she writes is biased. In Canada and here in the US, bloggers write biased articles all the time. Why do you support a Castro regime that violates the rights of “biased bloggers” with impunity? If she lives in Canada or the US would you feel the same?
As usual you repeat yourself using the same series of unreferenced snippets.
A news story goes from “breaking news” to more detailed reporting. Your fallacy is that you claim that the additional details on the gravity of the attack and on the extent of injuries are “fabrications”. Not all news organizations carry all details.
What has frustrated your propaganda fabrications in the past and now is that there were various witnesses to the attack that corroborate her story.
Your pathetic attempts to slander Mrs. Sanchez clearly can’t dent her reputation how ever hard you try.
The point is, she is not be trusted to give an honest account of anything. She is a propagandist. Yes, a “prize winning” propagandist. The capitalists with their cash “prizes” just love her, but she is the farthest thing from an independent journalist.
Even here you can see what communism is all about. Their style is to scream at you, terrorise you and send you to jail. Look at comments written here using rude words in capital letters (which is widely accepted as ”I am screaming at you”) , see how they start swearing at you and terrorize you with the things that they are planning to do to you. Even to a woman.
She deserves to be respected by her ideas even if they are different.
All your “creative” inventions, won’t change the facts.
…where you sip from Fidel’s Kool-Aid.
Look up what happened to Heberto Padilla. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but when the Sword is armed with the full array of repressive tools of the Totalitarian State, the lone writer is screwed.
The Totalitarian State is always afraid of writers, because a writer is a living breathing objection to the idea that the State controls everything, even thoughts & feelings.
http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/the-arrest-of-heberto-padilla-and-belkis-cuza-mal
Well, I don’t know Griffin…sounds awfully defeatist and weak to me. What about the whole “Pen is mightier than the sword” stuff?
Actually, they come straight from my kitchen table.
Dan,
We are quite familiar with your obsessions. You haven’t an original thought. Your every post comes straight from the Cuban MIMINT propaganda mill.
From Heberto Padilla’s novel, “There Are Heroes Grazing in My Garden”
“Standing up to a perfectly orchestrated, unscrupulous maneuver is utterly futle. There is no courage more impotent and unrecognized than a Cuban’s as he tries to shout his truths at a police squad armed to the teeth. Your friends will tell you not to get stirred up; they know how much a petty official can count on to provoke you, and how much a victim has to lose. The only weapons against a bully is intelligence, cunning. Before bullies, it’s not a question of balls. The Chief of State’s balls are beautifully protected by a repressive apparatus, while a writer’s are highly vulnerable to blows and torture.”
That can’t be it. A full three days later the same reporter, Jeff Franks, interviewed Yoani again and posted her “reconstructed” version of events leaving readers to judge for themselves. And he continued to report from Havana for years afterward.
Face it, your precious Yoani is not what she appears to be in the capitalist media. This is consistent with a recent denunciation by her own Italian translator. See: http://progresoweekly.us/yoani-denounced-italian-translator/
Who is Sonia? What do I have to be afraid of? What truth is not being told? Why would she need a baby bottle AND (c)hutzpah?
Imagine how pissed off you would be even if you were “briefly detained”. Do you have your head so far up Castro’s arse that you fail to see the point here? She was stopped by security agents for NO reason! Reuters soft-peddles the story so as to remain in the dictatorship’s good graces because the point is Sra. Sanchez’ rights were violated regardless of the degree of violence that actually took place.
Brave? I know Sonia and trust me she is as afraid as you are She does cast the country people and leadership in a poor light SO? Amerikkka has been doing that forever? We are here and going nowhere and when WE chose to transtion it will be when we choose to do it not because of a poorly built blog that is not telling the truth Read my blog..She needs a DICK a baby bottle and some hutzpah
Its horrible I do not know who set this up but they need to regroup and do better
The Reuters reporter described the incident as “briefly detained”
Yoani described the violence in her own report.
There’s a reason why Reuters soft-peddles their reports from Havana. If they told the truth, the Castro regime would kick them out of the country.
On November 6, 2009, Reuters reported on a supposed incident between dissident and international media darling, Yoani Sanchez, and Cuban police:
“Yoani Sanchez said she and two fellow bloggers were detained briefly on Friday by security agents….
“Sanchez, 34, told Reuters the agents forced her and blogger Orlando Luis Pardo into a car,… took them to a spot near her home and dropped them off, throwing her purse on the street as they drove away….
“‘I’m flustered. It has been very intense,’ she said. She said she had a sore shoulder and back from the encounter, but no serious injuries….Sanchez said they had gathered at her home to ‘reconstruct the events.'”
At Sanchez’s blog the next day she recounted a titanic struggle, a “gangland abduction” with a flurry of punches, kicks and biting. With much melodrama, she wrote:
“One put his knee in my chest and the other, from the front seat, hit me in my kidneys and punched me in the head… At one point I felt I would never leave that car… ‘Kill me now,’ I screamed, with the last inhalation I had left in me….
“The blows continued to rain down on us… We were left aching, lying in a street.”
That was some “reconstruction!” From “briefly detained” and “flustered” to brutally beaten and left for dead!
Well that didn’t take long:
“Yoani Sanchez’s news site is hacked in Cuba on day of launch”
Cuba’s first major independent general-interest news outlet in five decades was hacked on Wednesday shortly after being launched by the country’s best-known dissident blogger.
A little more than an hour after its launch, the site http://www.14ymedio.com was directing readers inside Cuba to a page dedicated to scathing criticism of blogger Yoani Sanchez by well-known pro-government writers. Access outside Cuba appeared to be unimpeded.
Sanchez accused the Cuban government of using its control of the country’s internet to divert readers to the critical site.
“Bad strategy by the Cuban government to redirect our site from Cuba,” she wrote on Twitter. “There’s nothing more attractive than the forbidden.”
http://voxxi.com/2014/05/21/yoani-sanchez-online-newspaper-hacked/
As Jose Marti wrote, “Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.”
Good on her!!
The more they try to defame and block Yoani Sanchez from Cuban citizens the stronger she gets! The Castro clan are living in the 20th century and they wont allow anyone living in the 21st to “help” them!! Their achilles’ heel!
Congratulations to Sra. Sanchez for her brave efforts to expand the dialogue in Cuba. What is it about so-called socialist regimes like Cuba that make them so thin-skinned? Why censure this publication? If she publishes articles that cast the regime in an unfavorable light, so what?
Good luck to Yoani & her new newpaper. Cuba needs an independent media.