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Unseen Cuba: First aerial photographs reveal island's spectacular beauty
Unseen Cuba: First aerial photographs reveal island's spectacular beauty
David Sim
By David Sim May 18, 2015 13:43 BST
Here's Cuba as you've never seen it before. Lithuanian aerial photographer and publisher Marius Jovaiša is the first artist to receive government permission to fly over the country and photograph it from above.
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Towering mogotes, cone-shaped limestone mountains covered in vegetation, are the signature geological feature in Valle de Viñales.(Unseen Cuba / Marius Jovaisa)
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More images:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unseen-cuba-first-aerial-photographs-reveal-islands-spectacular-beauty-1501542
34 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Especially the "Misty Mountains" 
Just beautiful! 
by Cuban "exiles," etc., and low flying airplanes spraying chemicals on the country which spread disease, killed their crops, decimated their livestock, as has been recorded over the years, even in a murder trial in New York City for Eduardo Arocena, on trial for the murder of a Cuban U.N. diplomat at a stoplight in New York City. Arocena testified that he had done work for the U.S. CIA, had taken chemical weapons into Cuba for the CIA to be used against the Cuban people.
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During his trial Arocena testified he had been asked to deliver by hand biological warfare vials to Cuba. There are numerous references available which can be tracked down, and this is only one thread of a much larger topic of US/Cuban "exile"/CIA terrorism against Cubans for decades:
More, from previous D.U. posts:Terrorist Arocena's wife meets Senator Joe Lieberman
On September 11, 1974, Cuban-American Eduardo Arocena (known as "Omar"
and three other men established Omega 7 to carry out terrorist activities
against Cuba. They assassinated people who promoted dialogue with Cuba,
including Eulalio José Negrín in New Jersey and Carlos Muñiz Varela in
Puerto Rico. They set off numerous bombs for years. For example on
September 11-12, 1981, Omega 7 claimed responsibility for bomb blasts that
destroyed the Mexican consulate in Miami and damaged the one in New York
City because Mexico had not broken relations with Cuba.
They seemed to like to commit terrorism especially on September 11,
perhaps because that is the date of the overthrow of the Allende government
in Chile in 1973. (Omega 7 was involved in the murders of Orlando Letelier
and Ronni Moffett.)
On September 11, 1980, Arocena shot to death Cuban diplomat Félix
García Rodríguez who had stopped for a red light in Queens, forcing the FBI
(who had trained Omega 7) to arrest some Omega 7 members because of the
international outcry from other UN diplomats.
Arocena carried out at least one biological weapon attack, most likely
dengue fever; he testified in his murder trial that he took “some germs” to
Cuba. He said he thought the germs were to be used against Soviet people in
Cuba and was disappointed to learn that they were used against Cubans.
On September 22, 1984, Arocena was found guilty of the assassination of
Félix García and the attempted assassination of Cuban Ambassador to the
United Nations Raúl Roa Kourí. The federal jury in New York City found him
guilty of 25 of the 26 charges against him, including 20 bombings, perjury
(lying to a federal grand jury when he denied involvement in the 1979 murder
of Eulalio José Negrín), and financing his operations by being an enforcer
for a Florida drug trafficker. Then a federal jury in Miami found him
guilty of all 23 weapons and conspiracy charges against him. In a second
federal trial in Miami, the jury convicted him of all 24 counts involving
seven bombings in Miami from 1979 until 1983.
~snip~In the trial held in the United States in 1984 against Eduardo Arocena, a
ringleader of the terrorist organization Omega-7, he publicly confessed to having
introduced germs into Cuba and admitted that hemorrhagic dengue fever had been
introduced in the island through related groups of Cuban origin, based in the
United States.
(snip)
There is a mountain of evidence, background information and facts that cannot
possibly be ignored.
What is beyond question is that, in just a few weeks, the hemorrhagic dengue
epidemic in Cuba --where it had never existed-- had affected a total of 344,203
people, a figure with no known precedent in any other country of the world. There
was another truly record case when 11,400 new patients were reported in a single
day on July 6, 1981.
A total of 116,143 cases were hospitalized. About 24,000 patients suffered from
hemorrhaging and 10,224 suffered some degree of dengue-induced shock. One
hundred and fifty-eight people died as a result of the epidemic, including 101
children.
The whole country and all its resources were mobilized to fight the epidemic. The
vector's presence was strongly and simultaneously controlled in all of Cuba's towns
and cities, using all possible means and with products and equipment urgently
bought from anywhere, including the United States. A request was made to the United
States through the Pan-American Health Organization and finally, in the month of
August, an important larvicide could be bought. Chemicals and equipment were
brought in, often by plane and sometimes from countries as far away as Japan, whose
factories sold Cuba thousands of individual motor fumigators. Malathion had to be
brought from Europe at a transportation fee of 5,000 dollars a ton, that is, three
and a half times the cost of the product.
In addition to the existing hospital network, dozens of boarding schools were
turned into hospitals in order to isolate every new patient reported, without
exception. At the same time, intensive-care units were built and equipped in all of
the country's children hospitals.
This is how the last infected case was reported on October 10, 1981.
If it had not been for this enormous effort, tens of thousands of people, the vast
majority of them children, would have died. An epidemic that many experts had
forecast would take years to eradicate was defeated in little more than four
months. The adverse economic impact was also considerable.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x33420
Life is meaningless without them.
On a more serious note I am looking forward to visiting Cuba, hope
we can all do that soon.
mountain tops off and look for coal, I think. Put a few Holiday Inns on the white sand beaches and give those commies some good old american capitalism.
EH?
of their environment.
UN representative praises Cuban preservation of mountain ecosystems
Myrta Kaulard, representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), speaking March 18 at a meeting at Havana’s Comodoro Hotel, stressed that Cuba’s conservation project focused on mountain ecosystems contributes to the protection of the environment and sustainable development, using a novel and challenging approach which includes the participation of residents as key to the care of flora and fauna
Author: cubasi.cu | informacion@granma.cu
march 20, 2015 15:03:15
Cuba’s mountain ranges are home to some 900,000 people, representing 8% of the population of the island, located in six river basins of national interest.
The country’s project focused on the conservation of mountain ecosystems contributes to the protection of the environment and sustainable development, Myrta Kaulard, representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), stated in Havana.
The official, speaking at a meeting in the Comodoro Hotel, stressed that this is a novel and challenging perspective that includes not only the cooperation of several sectors of the country, but also the participation of human beings as key to the care of flora and fauna.
http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2015-03-20/un-representative-praises-cuban-preservation-of-mountain-ecosystems
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The Nature of Cuba
Tiny frogs. Vast swamps. Pristine rivers. Whether by design or default, the island boasts the Caribbean's best-kept wildlands. But for how long?
By Eugene Linden
Smithsonian Magazine |
May 2003
The Nature of Cuba
On a winding road not far from the vibrant colonial city of Santiago de Cuba, we stop to admire a particularly stunning coastline of cliffs, coves and beaches that seems to stretch to infinity. And just inland are the towering Sierra Maestra. The lower slopes are a patchwork of grasslands and trees that give way at higher altitudes to dense forests. Clouds form, disperse and tatter around the peaks.
The road is empty, and no passing car disturbs the sounds of the surf and wind. “If I were a developer,” I say to Antonio Perera, an ecologist and former director of the Cuban government agency that oversees protected lands, “this is where I would site my hotel.”
“In that case,” he says, “I’d be fighting you.” Chances are, he’d win: Perera once helped defeat a plan to widen and straighten this very road.
During a recent 1,000-mile trip through Cuba to see its wildlands at this pivotal time in its history, I saw a lot of unspoiled territory that is largely a monument to battles that Perera and his colleagues have won: swamps bursting with wildlife, rain forests and cloud forests, grasslands and lagoons. Perera says 22 percent of Cuba’s land is under some form of protection. The percentage of safeguarded environment in Cuba is among the highest of any nation, says Kenton Miller, chairman of the Switzerland-based World Commission on Protected Areas.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-nature-of-cuba-81691555/#cFPvSwc6ZGQAoyBh.99
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
Premiere date: September 26, 2010 | 0:00:30 | Buy the DVD
- video -
Cuba may have been restricted politically and economically for the past 50 years, but its borders have remained open to wildlife for which Cuba’s undeveloped islands are an irresistible draw. While many islands in the Caribbean have poisoned or paved over their ecological riches on land and in the sea in pursuit of a growing tourist industry, Cuba’s wild landscapes have remained virtually untouched, creating a safe haven for rare and intriguing indigenous animals, as well as for hundreds of species of migrating birds and marine creatures. Coral reefs have benefited, too. Independent research has shown that Cuba’s corals are doing much better than others both in the Caribbean and around the world.
Scientific research in Cuba on creatures such as the notoriously aggressive “jumping” crocodile, and the famous painted snails, paired with long-term ecological efforts on behalf of sea turtles, has been conducted primarily by devoted local experts. Conservation and research in Cuba can be a constant struggle for scientists who earn little for their work. But their work is their passion, and no less important than that of those collecting larger salaries. NATURE follows these scientists as they explore the crocodile population of Zapata swamp, the birth of baby sea turtles, and the mysteries of evolution demonstrated by creatures that travel no more than 60 yards in a lifetime.
As the possibility of an end to the U.S. trade embargo looms, Cuba’s wildlife hangs in the balance. Most experts predict that the end of the embargo could have devastating results. Tourism could double, and the economic development associated with tourism and other industries could change the face of what was once a nearly pristine ecosystem. Or Cuba could set an example for development and conservation around the world, defining a new era of sustainability well beyond Cuba’s borders.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/cuba-the-accidental-eden-introduction/5728/
Cuba: The Accidental Eden
Photos: Cuba’s Natural Diversity
April 4, 2011
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/cuba-the-accidental-eden-photos-cubas-natural-diversity/5760/
that I should go there before my old ass dies
Thanks Judi 
