Cuba: ... and ketch arse for all

HAVANA, June 1 (Moisés Leonardo Rodríguez, Grupo Decoro / www.cubanet.org) - Alfredo Caraballo, a pastor in a Pentecostal church in Güines, south of Havana, must make do as best he can with what he has, just as everybody else here.

So when he decided to take his asthmatic two-year-old daughter to El Rosario beach on Sunday, he had to take her on a homemade motorized bicycle he owns because there is practically no other way to get to the beach, except for the one daily bus, which in any event one could take going in or out, but not both ways. Not if one were inclined to spend any time at the beach, that is.

And that's how he came to be at El Rosario on Sunday when police swept through in an operative which might have been designed for some other purpose, but in which nevertheless they found his homemade motorized bicycle and confiscated it as an unauthorized conveyance devoid of papers that might make its operation on public roads legal. Not that such homemade vehicles are ever issued those papers; authorities do not consider they meet minimum safety requirements.

Caraballo says the bicycle is the only means he had to take his daughter for treatment when she has asthma attacks.

This is the true beauty of communist countries. If I'm catching my arse, you must catch yours, too. Your catch arse can't be less than mine.

As for the rising tide which lifts all boats? To hell with that. Let all the damn boats stay beached.

Yah, mon! Communism is a fine thing.