Killing People

Killing People

Are you or someone you know dying? Do you have a debilitating disease? Perhaps all that troubles you is some dreaded task that you complain about by saying…they can put a man on the moon but they can’t (you fill in the blank). Almost certainly the person who might have innovated a cure or invented the device to take away your pain – has been murdered. Perhaps he died of a disease before he could help with your problem because the guy who might have cured his disease was murdered.

We could work backwards in time and kill some important people to demonstrate. We could go back and murder penicillin discoverers, DNA researchers, polio vaccinators and all the wondrous medical advances that have saved literally millions of people in total. Think about the transportation revolutions that whisk you to modern hospitals where 100 years ago they would just sent for the priest. Tyrants who enslave people and stop their productivity and force them to worry about getting their next meal also stopped innovation. Hitler might have won the war but he murdered and drove out millions of very bright people who the US exploited for science. Hitler’s hatred of the Jews may be the single biggest blunder of his reign.

Yes people like Fidel have an excellent chance to have actually killed or repressed the person that could have saved his life. It is fitting don’t you think? But truth be told, hundreds of millions of humans were exterminated by Twentieth Century tyrants like Fidel and Raul. That’s a tremendous amount of human intellectual capital gone to waste.

This is reason enough to implement an economic system that legally allows humans to create wealth which THEY are allowed to spend and not the rulers. Fund the government with land location taxes that prevents land hoarding but allow the poorest to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Come on people – we’ve been taxing income in one way or another, to one degree or another and the middle class barely hangs on while the poor live in the street.

You know as well as I do that the wealthiest always have the choice parcels of land on which to live and do business. But the poorest would live in the less valuable outlying areas where the location tax drops to zero. Therefore even the least skilled could earn enough to survive comfortably – just not on Park Avenue. Don’t underestimate the poor either. George Washington Carver started out a slave and look how far he got even in segregated America? Help me free Cubans with this economic approach that will legalize personal creation of wealth for use by the individual creator. Doing this will permit all but the most challenged to survive and thrive comfortably. It would be a tragedy to replace Fidel’s form of slavery with another economic system that also taxes the productive labor of the people even if it is done under a freer environment.

Tomás Estrada-Palma

Two Party System?

Two Party System?

America is based on a two-party system right? WRONG! In fact the founders were bothered by the presents of political parties in the first place. Today we are fast approaching a Mubarak election system where only the ruling political elite are legally permitted to participate. There are 50 different state election legal requirements to get your candidate onto the ballot. And let’s not forget DC and the territories. Some are worse than others but they all generally work this way. Your current party ballot access is based on how well you did in the last election and/or the percentage of people registered with your party. Naturally the two main guys never fall below this percentage and virtually always maintain their ballot status.

For example, in Maryland if you get ten percent of the registered voters to registered under your party banner then you are considered a Primary Party with full ballot access in the state of Maryland. However, before your party can be recognized in the first place as a party by the state you must initially collect thousands of signatures just to get a statewide candidate onto the ballot. From that point until the election people can register as members of your party. If the candidate then polls 3 percent or more then the party can keep its ballot status and continue to register voters under their party. But no third party has ever reached 3 percent in a statewide election so immediately after the election the third party is decertified and all members registered under that party are instantly converted to “OTHER” by the state board of elections. Yes “Other.” Other what? Maybe you’re a communist, fascist or royalist but I’m a Libertarian and we are all lumped in with everyone who is not a democrat or republican. Then you start the petitioning process all over again until you’ve collected the thousands of signatures to get another statewide candidate onto the ballot at which time you must re-register under your just re-recognized political party or you continue to be officially considered by the state as “Other.”

As anyone can see this is designed for one reason - blocking competition against the two main parties, by the two main parties, for the two main parties. Plus there are many other ridiculous regulations for things like petitioning percentages within various counties or residency requirements for petitioners but they are all designed for one thing…blocking competition. These election catch-22 laws also are used to block third parties from debates and give big corporate media ample reason not to provide coverage. I would think Cubans understand that following big corporate media political coverage for voting decisions is not wise because, as with Castro’s Cuba, they are missing the big story to reap big corporate bucks. This is why you never hear alternative idea every election. The left and right are just talking out of different sides of the same mouth and winking at one another while laughing at the rest of us.

So I NEVER, EVER vote for candidates nominated by the two big media, big corporate political parties. I figure if they have to set up rules to block ideas and political competition then they must be hiding something.

Tomas Estrada-Palma

Castro Divides Families

Castro Divides Families

My family has purposely been separated by Fidel Castro. This is the main strategy he has used to maintain his death grip on power. Unfortunately for Fidel, time and technology have conspired against him. The Internet and the computer revolution, besides providing Cubans with the tools to free Cuba, has slowly begun to reconnect families cruelly ripped apart by Castro. For example, my cousin Elpidio Estrada. I always knew there must be an entire branch of my family, the Estrada's, which I had never met. Then a few years back I contacted Emiliano Antunez to offer help with his political efforts. He responded by saying, "Tomas, I believe we are cousins." After a bit of investigation I learned that, like Elpidio, he is from the Estrada branch of the family. My great grandfather died in their great grandfather's house. They were first cousins. Elpidio and Emiliano are just now learning about each other. They both live in south Florida too.

So Castro you suck! You suck at everything including separating families. You have squandered your nation to keep us apart but that will now rapidly fall apart. I ask that anyone who thinks they may be related to me to please contact me. Between your information, my known relatives' knowledge and what I know we can figure out if we're relatives or will remain just friends. Elpidio was a bit tentative to contact me until he was sure. But the rest of you Estrada's and Palma's and Estrada-Palma's and Antunez's and whatever countless other married names you may have - please contact me now. I will be put off if you DO NOT do so. In the mean time here is my cousin Elpidio. He looks like a real decent man and I look forward to the day when we can meet face to face along with the rest of our family.








Tomás Estrada-Palma

Bill Makes Good

Bill Makes Good

I guess the squeeky wheel gets the grease. Bills is going to send me a replacement copy of XP. I still have to live with my data loss but I'll just have to take precautions in the future.

But thanks Bill.

Tomas Estrada-Palma

I Hate Bill Gates!

I Hate Bill Gates!

Yes, that’s right…I hate Bill Gates. He is following the path of many monopolists before him. He believes he will have his way forever and he treats his customers accordingly. Do I sound angry? It is not possible to express my fury on a mere computing device, especially when I‘m using my wife‘s laptop instead of my own desktop. Fortunately, I have countless other computers available to me and some very computer savvy Cubans to advise me. So before I make any decisions let me tell you about my problems with Microsoft then humbly ask your advise on how I should proceed.

In the beginning…there was Microsoft. It sucked but it was all we had. Sure it crashed a couple times a year and I had to re-install everything and accept the loss of my data. But I was hopeful that Bill would get it right eventually. After a few years the software did get more stable…right around the time that hackers and ad-ware scum began exploiting the security weaknesses of Microsoft. But I fought through that, reinstalled everything a number of times until I got the necessary software that Microsoft didn’t bother to include to protect its customers. I at this point was using Window 98 and everything was finally working fine. Then my wife required Microsoft Word for her nursing school (I had been happily using Word Perfect) and we upgraded to Windows XP. Everything worked fine for about a year.

Then, about two months ago I started getting this annoying icon on the lower right hand portion of my screen telling me that I was using a bogus copy of XP. It was aggravating enough having that little twerp Gates implying that I had stolen his software but his opinion means nothing to me. Coincidentally, I began having these lying accusations right around the time of Microsoft’s roll-out of Vista. Finally, after several crashes since getting these bogus warnings, my computer crashed for the last time yesterday. Then I spent the entire day on the phone with Microsoft but was basically told there was nothing they could do for me. They had my couple hundred dollars and I had their lame software which they had disabled.

Forgive me for telling you the obvious if you already know this fact. But if you have XP or software that is newer like this Vista, whenever you go online your computer immediately checks in with the Microsoft head quarters and runs a check on your operating software to see if it is yours. What does that mean? Well for a coworker of a friend of mine it meant that when he bought a hot computer it ended up landing him in jail. How? Unbeknown to this person, was the fact that this hot computer was stolen from the federal government. The feds’ had already alerted Bill Gates that one of their computers was missing. So this guy plugs the hot laptop into the World Wide Web and within minutes the government knows exactly where he is and can monitor if he is still surfing as they speed towards his house. Of course you can imagine the rest. The door gets kicked in by federal agents. He is arrested and taken to jail with bond high enough that he will be there at least five years or more. His wife and young son were given 48 hours to vacate their rental as they had violated the lease. They are now homeless.

My point here is not that this is wrong to prosecute this guy for stealing. He probably knew the computer was stolen but bought it anyway. What I am pointing out to you is that now Bill Gates will be the head slave master for the government. If you want to participate in the modern world you must use his software and he can and does tell the government right where you are whenever they ask and perhaps even what you are into. If you do not pay your slave income tax, massa Bill will help the federal cops hunt you down better than any hound dog. This is the perfect plantation set up because they no longer need fences or chains to extract labor from us. We can run wherever but they can easily track you slaves down better than the Egyptian pharaohs, Nazi concentration camp generals or southern plantation owners. The best part for our masters is we can accomplish ten times more slave labor for them because we are not chained or fenced in like the slaves of the past. In fact right now most of you slaves probably think that you are free even while half of your labor is being extracted. You are the best slaves to own.

But now that I have exposed this horrible slave plantation that we all find ourselves toiling on - lets get back to my next computer move. I’m thinking of moving to MAC. Any known problems with doing that? Please give me guidance Cubanos. Also, Don forgive me for not calling into your show last night. Believe me buddy…you didn’t want to talk with me last night. But I will call in the near future and I hope your show went well! Also, everyone should please shoot me off an email as Gates has caused me to lose virtually all of my email addresses. In the future I will keep copies of these things in cyberspace so when and if Microsoft’s lame software screws me again, if I’m still using it, I’ll have a back up.

Tomas Estrada-Palma

Amado, the Gofer

Amado, the Gofer

There was somebody in my life, a little bit unconventional. He had a very picturesque personality and was always happy, which made him very attractive to have around as he performed those undesirable jobs the ladies in the family didn’t want to do. If anybody needed the house cleaned or painted, needed a babysitter or a mechanic, or just someone to run errands, we would call Amado. He cleaned my grandmother’s house, would run to the store for my aunt, make a soup for the sick, iron some shirts for my uncle, he was the Jack of all Trades and for a very minimal fee would do all the jobs to perfection.

One of his talents was to be a great nanny; yes he was my nanny sometimes. Amado was a good-looking young man, his eyes were big with huge eyelashes. He wore his hair short and was very well groomed all of the time. And he was very eloquent, polite and effeminate. I knew he was different than the rest of the men. He was sweet. He was friendly and happy all of the time but I didn’t know what was different about him until I was older. I remember he would make up these amusing stories of people that he had worked for. His stories kept everybody listening because he had a flamboyant way of talking. Of course, when he was coming over everybody wanted to be around him since he had this peculiar way of making us feel special. It was easy to love him; we all appreciated his gestures of kindness towards the family.

In Cuba everything was scarce and therefore rationed. A lot of the people had to buy products on the Black Market, which was illegal and a punishable act. Castro turned my mother into a criminal because she used to buy a lot of products through this Black Market and Amado was the person that used to go make the pick ups for her. He didn’t mind, yet he knew he would be in trouble if caught. But with his busy eccentric way of walking with his tote bag, thanks to Amado, we had a few better meals at the table.

I never told him how special he was. People come in and go out of our lives and we don’t seem to stop and thank them for their services before it is too late. Years later after we came to the states, my mother took a trip back to Cuba and found out that Amado had been sent to a concentration camp for homosexuals called the UMAP where he was taunted and beaten everyday until he finally lost the will to live and committed suicide. He never did any harm to anybody and he certainly didn’t have to be driven to kill himself.

There are many things I will never forgive Castro for. They are all the victims under his regime. I can't forgive him for my father’s suffering and for Amado’s death. In the 70’s, Castro’s government arrested innocent young men just because they were homosexuals, or Jehovah Witnesses, hippies, gusanos or for refusing to participate in the military. These concentration camps were called “UMAP”- Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción. In short, Castro needed slaves to help with the production of sugar and at the same time continue with his terror regime. At the UMAP the prisoners were taunted, beaten, and forced to work long hours in the sugarcane fields. These young men had to endure mental and physical torture and forced to comply with the regime’s demands. They either left the camp dead or brainwashed.

Today Castro will swear that not one has ever been tortured in Cuba, or arrested, or treated unfairly. No One? Yeah right! He’s nothing but a pathological liar and a terrorist! I testify to that. Amado, my dear friend...you are free now. It was an honor to have you in my life.

Maria

Note: Maria cannot give her last name or Castro will hurt or kill more of her friends and family in retaliation.