Old Papers, New News / Regina Coyula

Photo: EFE

Friends from Spain have appeared with a bottle of rum and gifts of books. In addition, they have left us a copy of El Pais, El Pais Semanal, Babelia and a provincial newspaper that taking into account all the national newspapers, these don’t even make up half.

I sat down to read them with the greediness of someone reading fresh news — OK it’s fresh news to me — with the widest coverage of the insurgent wave in the Arab world, in which I read over and over again the word “kleptocracy.” I read a very eloquent speech by Libya’s dystopian clown.

Lacking proof that it’s an apocryphal transcription, it’s a sad omission on the part of the Cuban press not to mention the threats the Dear Brother has made to his distressed people. Another piece of news was the defection of Libya’s senior military officials.

Aside from the stock market news, the obituaries and the weather, I read it all, and found a mountain of interesting things.

Meanwhile, here the news is saturated with the history of moles from State Security infiltrating the Cuban Human Rights Commission and the Ladies in White, and another where I’m not sure what they infiltrated. They talk to me about the “mercenaries of the Empire,” but no one says a single word about the mercenaries contracted from Chad and Niger for “our friend” Gaddafi.

Hopefully no international force will intervene in Libya and the dictator will be brought down by his own people. One less.

March 9 2011