Banksy's Christmas card

The card has recently gone viral again because of the holidays, but it is actually a few years old and seems to circulate around this time every year.

The piece first appeared at Santa’s Ghetto exhibit in London in 2005, which followed Banksy’s trip to the Middle East.

Regardless of when the image was created, it sends a powerful message about how divided (Israel and Palestine and the other surrounding Arab states are) on racial and ethnic lines, creating a massive refugee crisis, and widespread ghettos in many parts of the region. This current reality is obviously highlighted by the biblical story of Joseph and Mary, two refugees themselves who were said to travel across those lands thousands of years ago.

When the state of Israel was created, instead of integrating the Arab and Jewish cultures together the ruling class put policies in place that would force the Palestinian people onto unfertile ghettos, separated from water sources and food growing lands by giant walls. The Palestinians were also not given the right to organize, own property, or work, and without these basic freedoms, they remain refugees. These policies would result in a growing hostility between the two groups which eventually flared up in physical violence. This violence has spread all throughout the oil-rich Middle East and has allowed the western establishment to have a permanent involvement in the region’s affairs, just as they planned.

It really is this bad.  In fact it might be even worse than described above.

What Israel's Separation Wall Is Really Doing
Security? Or apartheid? We look at what Israel's separation wall is really doing.
Posted by AJ+ on Thursday, December 17, 2015

I'm at a loss for words.

T'was the week before Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes Ag Commissioner Sid Miller a happy holiday as it brings you this week's roundup.

SocraticGadfly dips into the archives and offers up thoughts on that Christmas chestnut "It's a Wonderful Life," including what a remake might look like, and a follow-up post about all of what's wrong with the original.

Off the Kuff reviews who filed for what in the Democratic primaries in Texas, and Stace at Dos Centavos added some impressions of the Harris County contested D primary races.

The Green Party of Texas filed almost sixty candidates for state and local offices for the 2016 election, reports PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Greg Abbott reacts to children coming to America by sending troops. Obama looks at solving problems in Central America. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is disgusted that the only tools Republicans have are military force, fear, and hate.

Egberto Willies is concerned that America is sitting on a powder keg of hatred.

Neil at All People Have Value said that we would be better off with the values of Christmas rather than with the values of commerce.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

==========================

Here's more great Texas blog post roundup...

Grits for Breakfast has the latest prosecutor screwup by the McClennan County DA in the Waco biker shootings case.

ICYMI, Democratic Blog News has both the full video and transcript of Saturday night's debate.

Illustrating the deep divisions fracturing Democrats as a result of the most recent strife in their presidential primary, Ted at jobsanger accuses the Sanders campaign of "stealing" data, and Somervell County Salon says that she won't be voting for Clinton as a result of the DNC's actions.

Mean Rachel wishes Rep. Elliott Naishtat a fond farewell.

Next City believes that urbanists will like Houston Mayor-elect Sylvester Turner, and Kyle Jack lists outgoing Houston Mayor Annise Parker's top ten snarky tweets.

Christopher Hooks analyzes the recent mock mass shooting/farting in Austin.

John Wright proposes five New Year's resolutions for the LGBT movement.

Paradise in Hell tries to distinguish between Ted Cruz's lies.

The Isiah Factor took note of Texas schools following the new fingerprint rule for educators, and Texas Watch is pressing the TEA for more information about school bus safety.

Moni at Transgriot  -- via Strength In Numbers -- seems to be fed up with Caitlyn Jenner, who was in Houston last week and had a prayer session with Pastor Ed Young of Second Baptist Church.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reported on the local press conference declaring the Lewisville Dam -- despite various seeps and a bank slide -- to be in no imminent danger of failing.

Bayou City History shows us those grand penthouse suites from the old Astroworld Hotel, a part of Judge Roy Hofheinz's Astrodomain.

And Fascist Dyke Motors is going to take a sabbatical, so don't keep an eye out for her.

What difference does it make, really.

The condescension is strong with this one.  Jonathan Tilove at the Austin Statesman with the best overnight analysis:

The dramatic highlight of last night’s third Democratic presidential debate, held at St. Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H., came right after the mid-debate bathroom break.

[...]

... there was a candidate-less podium at center stage, between the podiums occupied by Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

Apparently, this was just a mundane, fact-of-life, it-takes-a-woman-a-little-longer-than-a-man-to-duck-in-and-out-of -the-restroom moment and, America, get used to it.

The real puzzle was why ABC, which did not seem to be hewing to some kind of crisp schedule,  could not have simply given the former first lady, New York senator, secretary of state and presently at least even money to be the next president, another 90 seconds to get back in her place as the center square before resuming the debate.

It is not like they shouldn’t have seen this coming.

Here from Slate’s coverage of the Democratic debate in October in Las Vegas:

Hillary Clinton has noted, at Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas, that electing a woman as president of the United States would be a historic first. She also, it seems fair to say, just became the first presidential candidate to make reference during a debate to how long it takes women to pee.

The transcript:

Anderson Cooper: And welcome back to this CNN democratic presidential debate. It has been quite a night so far. We are in the final block of this debate. All the candidates are back, which I’m very happy to see.

[Laughter]

It’s a long story. Let’s continue. Secretary Clinton, welcome back.

Clinton: Well, thank you. You know, it does take me a little longer. That’s all I can say.

How endearing.  A bonafide 'what difference does it make' moment.

But, with Clinton’s reappearance, any chance of any real drama emerging from last night’s debate was gone. Not that the Democrats seemed very intent on gaining an audience for last night’s event.

The debate schedule for the Democrats does seem intended to minimize any harm that could be done to  Clinton’s front-runner status.

Saturday night is better known as a date night, not a debate night. And the Saturday before Christmas leans heavily toward family not politics.

Also, (television) viewers had choices. There was the Jets-Cowboys game, which I suppose might serve as a surrogate preview of a Clinton-Cruz general election race. (Sorry Ted.)

#SorryNotSorry.  As Mrs. Clinton said when she finally reappeared.

Apart from its ratings-proof scheduling, the Democratic race simply lacks the drama of the Republican race, which is among the most interesting and uncertain of my lifetime with a bona fide reality TV star center stage.

With the Iowa caucuses barely more than a month way, the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination – Donald Trump – is a larger-than-life figure who has proved doubters wrong, again and again, and yet still seems unlikely to ultimately make it to the White House.

The Republican contest, with its rich ensemble cast, has intricate plots and subplots. It’s gripping and entertaining, if often dumbfounding.

Particularly, coming at this time of year, there is something familiarly festive about the recent Republican debate – another raucous affair, crowded with jostling personalities. And, they even continue to have, in the spirit of the holidays, a kid’s table debate.

The Democratic debate, on the other hand, has a kind of sad, empty-nester air to it. There’s Sanders, 74, and Clinton, 68, and the young upstart, O’Malley, a mere 52 – but still eight years older than the GOP kids – 44-year-olds Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

And it will be very exciting if the Democratic race doesn’t go the way we think it’s going to go. Very exciting, and really, very unlikely.

Tilove seems to sense the same danger signals about a Trump/Cruz/Rubio-Clinton general election showdown that I do.  The debate was held on Sanders' home turf, New Hampshire, where he currently holds a small lead, but focused on the same topic as the GOP debate earlier in the week, on national security and terrorism concerns.  Not exactly in his wheelhouse, but then nobody -- and I mean nobody -- measures up to Clinton's experience in that regard.  The problem is that she still hasn't learned anything from all that experience.  Being shot at on the Bosnian tarmac just isn't that big a deal, I suppose.

One could, of course, argue that, as a former secretary of state, Clinton’s fingerprints are all over the sorry situation the world is in. But, at time of great uncertainty, Clinton at least is no stranger to the world stage.

[...]

And from Clinton, the most stinging rebuke of Trump – praising George W. Bush, by contrast, and leveling a new and specific charge that I’m sure will be much talked about beginning on this morning’s Sunday shows.

CLINTON: You know, I was a senator from New York after 9/11, and we spent countless hours trying to figure out how to protect the city and the state from perhaps additional attacks. One of the best things that was done, and George W. Bush did this and I give him credit, was to reach out to Muslim Americans and say, we’re in this together. You are not our adversary, you are our partner.

And we also need to make sure that the really discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don’t fall on receptive ears. He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists. So I want to explain why this is not in America’s interest to react with this kind of fear and respond to this sort of bigotry.

No evidence for Clinton claim that ISIS is already showing Trump in recruiting videos https://t.co/NVzR4YOHmE pic.twitter.com/56lk4w1g4k

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) December 20, 2015

Perhaps she was making the point that ISIS could use videos of Trump video to recruit jihadists. But, if there is no evidence they actually are, then her statement may prove reminiscent of the elusive video that Trump said he was certain he saw of  “thousands and thousands of people” cheering in Jersey City, N.J., as the World Trade Center collapsed.

There's more of the least obnoxious "inevitability" meme I've read in this cycle at the link.  Clinton, for her part, decided she was going to be debating Trump last night, and she surely won that.  Sanders did nothing I took note of, in contrast to the previous link,  to forcefully present himself as a better alternative, save his retort to Clinton's "everybody should!" like her, not just corporate America, with "Well, they won't like me."  Point awarded to Bern for the burn.

Martin O'Maddy's Ted Cruz interpretation -- feigned outrage, talking over others, disregarding the timing rules; not the lying and demagoguery -- fell a little flat also.

If you still don't understand why Democrats aren't voting, and why 2016 will demonstrate IMHO another record low turnout for Team Blue, then neither Tilove nor I may be able to help you get it.

Apathy is Hillary Clinton's biggest election opponent.  Hers, and ours.

A more extensive analysis of the debate from Raw Story, and a very pointed reminder from Salon that Trump and the deep Republican dysfunction does not equate to a Clinton roll to the White House, SNL's quite funny skits last night notwithstanding.

T'was the Week Before Funnies

One big happy family again

You'll find very few criticisms of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schutz in these archives.  Not because I disagree with her about essentially everything, but because I arrived at a point seemingly some years ago that her tenure was helping me convince people who have left, or ceased voting for, the Democratic Party for their own various reasons -- many of them just apathy -- that they had made the right decision, and I used those examples to push others in the same direction.

Essentially DWS being the world's worst Democrat made me a bad one, too.  As those of you who know me personally or only by reading here over the past decade-plus, I haven't been able to quit the Democrats altogether because there are in fact good, honest, hard-working, respectable people -- activists and politicians -- whom I like, value as friends, and trust.  Not to mention plenty of their candidates that I have block-walked and phone-banked for, Sylvester Turner and Wendy Davis most recently among them.

Wasserman Schultz has never been one of those Democrats, however, but regular snark and occasional outrage seemed a waste of pixels.  That's in spite of her conduct just during this election cycle being both atrocious and unsurprising.  Even when threatened with losing her job two years ago, she responded by playing both the "sexist" and the "anti-Semite" card.

Given all that exceptional misbehavior, why bother complaining?  She is, after all, doing the dirtiest work that needs doing: destroying the centrist, corporatized, neoliberal Democratic Party, and from within to boot.

Why would that bother me?

So when social media exploded yesterday with the news about her suspension of access of the Sanders campaign to its own voter database, because of a classic (characterized as such by IT professionals) and repeated error by the sole vendor of Democratic computerized voter files, I frankly considered her own breach of contract action to be an early Christmas gift to Jill Stein and the Green Party.  Sure enough, I counted over a dozen different postings on my own social media feeds of Democrats threatening to bolt, using phrases like "rigged election" and -- horror of horrors -- "just as bad as the Republicans".

As we know it took a federal lawsuit for the chairwoman to come to her senses and resolve the kerfuffle.  But plenty of lasting damage to long-term relationships with devout Democrats was done, and the sole benefit to her cause -- electing Hillary Clinton president -- seems to have been in ginning up viewers for tonight's candidate debate... which is going up against Christmas parties, high school state championship football, the opening weekend of college bowl games and even the Dallas Cowboys playing in the same time slot.

The male demographic may suffer a good bit, but she can't be considered a complete failure if ABC finds itself pleased by the overnight ratings, after all.

Ana Kasparian sums up the incompetence of both DWS and the database vendor without mentioning NGP VAN's too-close-for-comfort ties to Clinton, and speaks calmly for the growing minority of Democrats who won't be casting their ballot for the former secretary of state.  A couple of days ago, that percentage could be estimated at about 16% on the low end, and 41% on the high.

Should the Greens send her a thank-you card?  Too early for that, but they can certainly be grateful for such generosity.  The more Debbie Wasserman Schultz shakes the tree, the more potential Green voters fall to the ground.  I hope there are some smiling progressives with large baskets ready to go to work harvesting the fruits of her labor.

Update: Prairie Weather and Somervell County Salon with similar sentiments, also Josh Marshall and Yellow Doggerel Democrat on the big picture: Shrillaries cannot afford to alienate the Sanders caucus.  Too late; Ted at jobsanger has already screwed that pooch.

Democrats prepare to debate amid contentiousness

It's not just the Sanders data "breach" -- the firewall fell down after a software patch by the vendor, somebody snooped, he got fired for it ...

Late Thursday night, the DNC took the drastic step of cutting off the Sanders campaign’s access to its comprehensive 50-state voter file that lists voter patterns and preferences, effectively shutting down the campaign’s voter outreach operations just over a month before the critical Iowa caucus and a little over 50 days before the New Hampshire primary.

The punishment came about as the result of a 30-minute glitch in NGP VAN — the vendor that handles the DNC’s voter data — in which internal models for each Democratic presidential campaign were briefly available to other competing campaigns while NGP VAN was applying a patch to the software. Michael Briggs, a communications aide for the Sanders campaign, said this isn’t the first time they’ve reported security bugs in the DNC’s voter file.

“On more than one occasion, the vendor has dropped the firewall between the data of different Democratic campaigns. Our campaign months ago alerted the DNC to the fact that campaign data was being made available to other campaigns,” Briggs told Buzzfeed News. “At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor.”

The DNC has vowed to not grant the Sanders campaign access to the voter file until it has proved that it destroyed all of the Clinton campaign data it inadvertently accessed as a result of the glitch. However, as Reddit user bastion_of_press pointed out, the Sanders campaign cannot prove it destroyed something it doesn’t have, meaning the ban on accessing critical voter information could be indefinite.

... but also this:

The Democratic National Committee has revoked the sponsorship of WMUR, New Hampshire’s most influential television station, of the party’s presidential debate (tomorrow night) because of a labor dispute involving the station.

Pressure had been mounting on the station’s parent company, Hearst, for some time, as all three Democratic candidates for president pushed for labor negotiations to at least begin before the debate, scheduled for next Saturday, Dec. 19. Otherwise the candidates faced the prospect of having to cross a picket line.

That's enough sturm und drang added to Saturday's night's main event that we all ought to have something to look forward to, as regards whether or not Sanders might actually throw a punch at the front-runner, and how she might counterpunch (or more likely, the other way around).

Here's a few more developments that might liven up the festivities.

-- Majority of Bernie Supporters Would Back Hillary As Nominee:

A new poll has found a majority of Bernie Sanders supporters would support Hillary Clinton if he dropped out of the race. Amid increasingly demagogic rhetoric from the Republican field of candidates, as well as a dearth of Democratic nominees, it is unsurprising that left-leaning voters would opt for Clinton should Sanders halt his campaign. However, this potential support directly defies the very principles Sanders has earned passionate support for espousing.

The poll, conducted by Monmouth University, surveyed 1,006 registered voters from December 10-13, drawing data from 374 Democratic voters and voters who lean toward the Democratic party. Though the sample size was relatively small, it revealed a disturbing sentiment.

Bernie Sanders has long been viewed as an anti-establishment candidate and is most revered for his outspoken goal of breaking up big banks. Though Clinton’s policies and priorities are diametrically opposed to this proposed noble undertaking, 59% of Bernie Supporters would “be okay” with her nomination.

This acceptance of Clinton’s hegemony is ultimately unsurprising, considering Sanders has generally refused to criticize the leading Democratic candidate. Though last month the New York Times reported Sanders was prepping to hit Hillary on trade, gun control, and even the controversy over her State Department email in their upcoming debate, he has shied away from exposing the foundations of her establishment agenda.

Though Sanders has made battling the power of the banking elite a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, he has failed to significantly criticize Clinton for her deep ties to banking corporations. In fact, his campaign abruptly pulled an internet advertisement that attacked Clinton for her “big money interests.”

If he's not going to start fighting back now, it's already over for him.  Frankly I thought he'd make a good game of it until at least South Carolina.  So the Green Party and Jill Stein now have a target number, and it's around 40%.

In spite of the fact that Hillary’s policies directly defy the fundamental goals of Sanders’ campaign, however, his supporters appear content to accept her though she violates the core of their beliefs. Democrats in general are even more enthusiastic about her potential presidency.

Democrats surveyed in the Monmouth poll harbored deep support for Clinton; 22% of respondents said they would “enthusiastically” support her while 58% said they would be “satisfied” if she were to become the Democratic candidate — totaling 80% of Democrats who would positively embrace Clinton as the nominee. This support is concerning, especially considering that according to the same poll, Democrats rate the economy and jobs as their biggest concern — while they simultaneously place faith in the candidate with the strongest reputation for favoring the economic interests of corporations over constituents.

That cognitive dissonance -- or lack thereof -- is plainly what Greens must exploit.

-- On the bright side for Sanders' Democratic hopes, Nate Silver Harry Enten at Nate Silver's 538.com says it's not too late for Bernie to catch Hillary in Iowa.

Over the past month, Clinton has had a 53 percent to 37 percent advantage over Sanders in Iowa polls. A survey from polling demigod Ann Selzer found Clinton ahead of Sanders 48 percent to 39 percent. Her position is stronger than it was at this point during the 2008 cycle, when she led Barack Obama 30 percent to 24 percent. Still, past campaigns suggest that Clinton’s current lead isn’t necessarily secure.

[...]

If Clinton were to underperform expectations in Iowa, it could easily lead to a loss for her in New Hampshire, which has consistently been Sanders’s strongest state. We know from past campaigns that candidates who underperform in Iowa tend to do worse than expected in New Hampshire, while those who outperform expectations in Iowa tend to also outperform expectations in the Granite State. The ultimate example of this is Democrat Gary Hart’s stunning upset of Walter Mondale in the 1984 New Hampshire primary. Hart’s stronger-than-expected second-place finish in Iowa gave him a lot of positive media coverage and momentum going into New Hampshire.

And Clinton doesn’t have a lot of room for error in New Hampshire. Sanders and she are basically tied there. A polling average over the past month has Clinton up by 1.5 percentage points, while the HuffPost Pollster aggregate gives Sanders a 1.5 percentage point lead. A closer-than-expected finish in Iowa could easily put Sanders over the top in New Hampshire.

You might be thinking, “So what?” Clinton, at this point, has a pretty insurmountable 49 percentage point lead in South Carolina thanks to strong African-American support. A win for Clinton there after losing Iowa and New Hampshire would probably put her back on track to win the nomination.

Indeed, anyone who has been following my writing this year knows that I think Clinton is a near-lock for the Democratic nomination even if she loses the first two states. Still, Clinton probably doesn’t want a lengthy primary season against an opponent who has pulled her further to the left. She wants to pivot toward the center while the Republican race devolves into a possible (metaphorical) fistfight.

Saturday night's all right for fighting (Bernie).

Cuba, Cubans, Cuban Americans, America, and Americans

The island nation, its politics intertwining with ours, and its favorite sons battling to be the GOP nominee are all over my newsfeed this week.

-- Cruz and Rubio, two sons of Cuban parents, are vying to lead the anti-immigrant party:

There’s nothing new about seeing a group of presidential hopefuls who are the grandchildren of immigrants — Irish, Italian, Czech, German — decrying the burden of rampant immigration. Seldom, it seems, are the candidates who rail loudest against interlopers the ones whose ancestors walked off the Mayflower.

What is unusual, though, is to turn on a presidential debate and see two notably young Latino candidates, both born to Cuban émigrés, jockeying over who will close the border faster and more securely. That was the scene in Las Vegas Tuesday night, and it underscored a central paradox of this year’s Republican contest: Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio seem like decent bets now to become the first Latino nominee in either party’s long history, at exactly the moment when anti-immigrant fervor is reaching its zenith.

[...]

It’s tempting to see Cruz and Rubio as politicians cast from the same mold and reflecting remarkably similar stories. Here are two 44-year-old conservative Cuban-Americans, both lightning fast from mind to mouth, both first-term senators who capitalized on voter rebellion — Rubio in 2010, Cruz two years later — to shock establishment-backed opponents. The parallels are kind of bizarre.

Both men, eyeing the presidency from the moment they arrived in Washington, also wrote readable, if thoroughly forgettable, political memoirs with the kind of anodyne titles that make you think there must be some publishing algorithm for coming up with this stuff: “A Time for Truth” in Cruz’s case, “ An American Son” in Rubio’s.

Cruz’s father fled political repression and existential danger as an ally of communist rebels seeking to overthrow Fulgencio Batista. Once in America, Rafael Cruz grew disillusioned with Fidel Castro and threw communism overboard, replacing it with a new guiding cause: evangelical Christianity.

Rubio’s dad, on the other hand, came to America chiefly in pursuit of economic opportunity. In Florida and then in Nevada, and then back in Florida again, Mario Rubio’s passion was to provide for his family, running small, ill-fated businesses (a vegetable stand, a dry cleaner) and tending bar.

Cruz’s Cuban story is all about zealotry and purity — a journey of faith, both political and religious. The boyhood chapters of Rubio’s memoir, on the other hand, are largely about paying bills and fitting in, as generations of immigrants have tried to do — playing football and celebrating American holidays, switching churches (Catholic and Mormon) in order to adapt to social circles.

Because of Cuba’s outsize role for a tiny island in the geopolitical drama of the Cold War and in American politics, Cuban-Americans have always seen themselves, perhaps more than any other immigrant group, as instruments of destiny. The most common narrative among Cuban-Americans revolves around all the wealth and greatness that would have been theirs save for the scourge of global communism.

“If you put together all the sugar plantations Cubans have claimed to have once owned,” jokes Joe Garcia, a Cuban-American Democrat who represented the Miami area in Congress, “you’d have a country the size of Brazil.”

I'll let you read on from there.  But don't miss this: "Ted Cruz's dishonesty on immigration".

-- Fidel’s niece, Mariela Castro, leads Cuba’s LGBT revolution:

The moment that Mariela Castro Espin met Rory Kennedy on a Monday evening in early December seemed to encapsulate all the promise of a Cuba in transition as relations with America thaw.

Here was the niece of Fidel Castro and daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro agreeably posing for pictures and gabbing with the niece of former President John F. Kennedy and daughter of Sen. Bobby Kennedy.

More than half a century after their uncles faced off during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the two scions of legendary political families sat down for an in-translation tête-à-tête at a dinner at the San Cristobal paladar, or private restaurant, in central Havana.

The moment came toward the tail end of an evening of good food, music and well-aged rum sponsored by HBO in celebration of Jon Alpert’s documentary “Mariela Castro’s March: Cuba’s LGBT Revolution,” about Castro’s emergence as the most prominent gay rights advocate in Cuba.

Of all the unexpected facts about Cuba today, perhaps none is more so than that the 53-year-old Castro daughter — straight, married, a mother of three — has become its most vocal political advocate on behalf of gay, lesbian, bi and trans rights.

-- Obama wants to travel to Cuba as president, but only if he can meet with Cuban dissidents:

President Obama promised in an exclusive interview with Yahoo News that he “very much” hopes to visit Cuba during his last year in office, but only if he can meet with pro-democracy dissidents there.

“If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody,” Obama said. “I’ve made very clear in my conversations directly with President [Raul] Castro that we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”

Speaking in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Obama strongly hinted that he would make a decision “over the next several months.”

The president hopes that “sometime next year” he and his top aides will see enough progress in Cuba that they can say that “now would be a good time to shine a light on progress that’s been made, but also maybe [go] there to nudge the Cuban government in a new direction.” 

-- The Americans are coming!  Is Cuba ready?

-- US, Cuba to establish regular air service

-- Exploring the underground real estate market in Cuba

-- Hair has become an art form for Cuban men:

Under Fidel Castro, barber shops and beauty salons were state-owned and state-run. For the most part, a men’s haircut was just that — a cut. There was no shampooing and no styling.

However, in 2010, two years after Fidel’s brother, Raúl, became president, many small salons were handed over to their employees — essentially privatized. 

This quietly implemented, small economic change might be the reason behind the evolving hairstyles worn by men in Havana. When you walk down the streets today, you’ll see guys with carefully sculptured Mohawks, pompadours, fades, and highlights.

Much more from Yahoo: "US and Cuba, One Year Later" and also from the Havana Times.  And be sure and click on the blog appearing regularly in the right-hand column: "Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter".