Before falling ill last week, Las Damas de Blanco leader Laura Pollán vowed not to give up her fight for peaceful democratic change in Cuba. See 19-minute interview of Pollán in HD on the Cuba Money Project’s Vimeo channel. Pollán said: As long as there are political prisoners, there will be Damas de Blanco fighting [...]
Exiles: Politics sway Cuba contracts
Several Miami exiles suggested, delicately, that domestic politics may have influenced who received the latest round of contracts for democracy programs in Cuba, author and blogger Emilio Ichikawa wrote on Wednesday. Ichikawa said Orlando Gutierrez, president of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, discussed the Cuba democracy funds on the radio show “Ninoska in Mambi,” which airs [...]
Firm also has “email blasting” deal
A Maryland software company that plans to send thousands of text messages to Cuban cell phone users every week received a separate U.S. government contract in July to manage an “email blasting subscription service” for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG. That contract was worth $24,275 and was scheduled to end no later than [...]
No money, no perks, yet here she is
Karly Berezowsky, a student journalist in St. Augustine, Fla., has joined the Cuba Money Project. Her duties include writing articles, doing interviews and helping out with research and Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests. What I know about Berezowsky is that if you ask her to write a three-page paper, she’ll give you 10. [...]
Just don’t expedite your FOIA request
In 2010, the State Department took an average of 144 days to process simple Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests, 284 days for complex requests and 435 days for expedited requests, according to the agency’s 2010 FOIA report (see Page 18). So expedited requests take three times longer than simple requests? How odd. Government [...]
New details on Cuba program spending
Over the past few days, I’ve been updating the Cuba Money Project’s Where the $ Goes page. Links on the page will now lead you to charts the summarize spending by organizations that have run Cuba programs. The page is a work in progress. The charts on the Where the $ Goes page account for [...]