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What should Obama say about the oil spill tonight?

The President will address the country from the Oval Office this evening, talking about the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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What should Obama say about the oil spill tonight?

3DS To Offer Portable 3-D Entertainment, Nintendo Announces At E3

3-D movies and camera, ‘Kid Icarus: Uprising’ and ‘Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword’ dominate company’s keynote presentation. By Brian Warmoth The Nintendo 3DS Photo: Nintendo Nintendo came to the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles with very little information circulating in public about its upcoming portable 3-D system, the 3DS. While Microsoft and Sony have focused on gaming in living-room spaces with Xboxes and PlayStation 3’s this year, Nintendo opted to surprise its audience with the announcement that their DS successor would play 3-D movies from major studios and take 3-D pictures. Together with an extensive list of third-party developers, such as Activision, EA, Harmonix, Konami, Capcom and others, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata presented logos from franchises including “Metal Gear Solid,” “Saints Row” and more, which he expects to see appear on the new portable device. “In this case, I believe we will enjoy our biggest launch support ever from third parties,” Iwata said onstage. “To all of you developers and publishers, I want you to know that [I am] truly grateful for the support [you’ve offered].” Iwata and Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime focused mainly on bringing 3-D viewing to a mass market without the use of glasses and reintroducing the company’s classic character Pit for the 3DS title “Kid Icarus: Uprising.” Still, the 3DS’ farthest-reaching impact may come from the system’s features that extend beyond gaming. “Nintendo 3DS is also capable of displaying 3-D Hollywood movies,” Iwata explained. “We are not announcing any specific plans [this week], but at our booth, you will find demonstrators showing you [examples] from Disney, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks. You can see DreamWorks’ ‘How to Train Your Dragon,’ Warner Bros.’ ‘Legend of the Guardians’ and Disney’s ‘Tangled,’ all playing in 3-D.” Though no distribution plans, partnerships or agreements were detailed, the Iwata did state that Nintendo will be the first to enter the 3-D sector of handheld entertainment. “This is the first time any such 3-D content has been demonstrated without the need to wear glasses,” Iwata said. “It’s also, it seems, one of the first times such content will be commercially available for a mobile device.” The 3DS will incorporate a “Slide Pad” to adjust imaging on its 3-D display, as well as a motion sensor, gyro sensor and two camera lenses. “What this means is you can also take photos and view them in 3-D,” he stated. In addition to “Uprising,” Nintendo showed demonstrations from its new Wii title “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword,” which saw its name premiere during the keynote address along with word that it would launch in 2011. That announcement was joined by a first look at “Donkey Kong Country Returns” and “Kirby: Epic Yarn,” which will reintroduce two of Nintendo’s longest-running franchises. The already-known Metroid title “The Other M,” meanwhile, received an August 31 release date, and the new offering “Mario Sports Mix” received a 2011 release window. Third-party titles on display included “Just Dance 2,” a new “GoldenEye” game for the Wii featuring the voice of Daniel Craig, “Epic Mickey” and “NBA Jam,” which Fils-Aime emphasized as an exclusive. “Technology is only a tool,” Fils-Aime said, assessing Nintendo’s approach. “The end product, the thing that does matter, is the experience. And the best experiences always come when technology and game design are perfectly matched.” How well Nintendo manages to match its new entertainment platform with “Uprising” and everything else the third parties bring to it at launch should come into focus when the 3DS launches, but the development partners and intended scope of use should provide a wide range of opportunities heading into next year. Check out the Multiplayer blog , updated daily, for even more E3 and gaming coverage. Related Photos Eminem, Usher, More Perform At Activision’s E3 Party

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3DS To Offer Portable 3-D Entertainment, Nintendo Announces At E3

Religion Blogger Shreds Newsweek’s Take on ‘Saint Sarah’ Palin

“You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.” That’s how the biblical prophet Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall that heralded the imminent demise of the Babylonian Empire. It could also sum up journalist Sarah Pulliam Bailey’s take on Lisa Miller’s “Saint Sarah” piece in Newsweek (emphases mine): Journalists have long been puzzled over Sarah Palin’s popularity. In November, Newsweek took a stab at the trend with its provocative cover of Palin in running clothes: “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah Palin: How Sarah Palin Hurts the GOP And the Country.” Lisa Miller’s thesis is compelling if it is true, but journalists usually rely on hard facts, polls, maybe interviews with political scientists to prove their points. Unfortunately, Miller’s article contains none of these to support her theory that Palin is somehow the new leader of the Christian Right. Instead, she strings together a bunch of anecdotes and quotes to prove what she thinks is happening.   Pulliam Bailey devoted most of her June 14 Get Religion blog post to fisking Miller’s argument. Here’s just a sample (emphases are the author’s): The story leads with Palin’s classic story of how she decided to give birth to her son Trig. Palin has already overshared: nothing makes a person, let alone a politician, appear more vulnerable, more ordinary, and more unambiguously female than a scene in a bathroom where she pees on a stick. But then she defies a generation of pro-life activists who preached that the life of the fetus is sacred, no matter what an individual woman wants. Is there any indication that Palin doesn’t think the fetus is sacred? Lots of women who chose to give birth give testimonies about their decision-making process. Is she actually defying other activists? Let’s face it: the Trig story is a women’s story, the kind girlfriends share over coffee or in church. It has all the familiar elements of evangelical testimony: tribulation and dread; trust in God; and, finally, great blessings. Many Christian women loathe Palin , Who? Why? of course, and many men love her, Who? Why? but a certain kind of conservative, Bible-believing woman worships her. Who? Is it only Bible-believing women who worship her? And really? Worships her? To a smaller number, she is a prophet, ordained by God for a special role in the cosmic battle against the forces of evil . What forces of evil? Who thinks she was ordained by God? Does this smaller number think the political arena is the cosmic battle? Perhaps the biggest failure on Miller’s part? Pulliam Bailey notes that Miller insisted that Palin has her faults, but the left is partially to blame for her ascent. Its native mistrust of religion, of conservative believers in particular, left the gap that Palin now fills. The GetReligion.org writer then argued that, “Perhaps Miller should have spent more time writing about this part of the story. It would be more compelling to read more about the left’s mistrust of religion that left a gap.” Given Newsweek’s cutesy take on “Saint Sarah,” it was only fitting that an analysis critical of it should end with a biblical allusion. Pulliam Bailey didn’t disappoint with the observation that the financially-struggling magazine is intent on “making Palin in its own image”: If Palin is really leading the religious right, has anyone captured photo evidence of Palin’s flock? The accompanying slideshow , titled “Cult of Palin,” features Palin condoms, porn movies and strip clubs. The slideshow does nothing to back Miller’s thesis about Palin’s new found leadership of the religious right. Maybe that’s because Newsweek is making Palin in its own image.

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Religion Blogger Shreds Newsweek’s Take on ‘Saint Sarah’ Palin

WaPo Predicts Glenn Beck’s Dangerous New Novel May Become Handbook for Terrorists

You don’t have to be a fan of Glenn Beck’s moonlighting as a fiction writer to be a little stunned at the audacity of The Washington Post today. Post book editor Steven Levingston mocks the prose of Beck’s new novel The Overton Window on the front of Tuesday’s Style section, including its patriotic character Molly Ross proclaiming “”There’s nothing I wouldn’t give up to defend my country…No matter how hard it might be, there’s nothing that’s in my power that I wouldn’t do.” But then he suggests Beck will inspire the next Oklahoma City-style terrorist act:   The danger of books like this is that radical readers may take the story’s fiction for fact, or interpret the fiction — which Beck encourages — as a reflection of a reality that they must fend off by any means necessary. “The Overton Window” risks falling into the tradition of other anti-government novels such as “The Turner Diaries” by William L. Pierce, which became a handbook of extremists and inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. As Beck tells his soldiers in the voice of Noah: “Put up or shut up . . . go hard or go home. Freedom is the rare exception . . . not the rule, and if you want it you’ve got to do your part to keep it.” I have not read the book, but I doubt it’s a racist manifesto like “The Turner Diaries.” Levingston’s quotations here don’t exactly suggest his characters are saying “let’s blow up a federal building with an ammonia bomb.” Levingston has a blog on the Post website called Political Bookworm. Last month, he publicized two leftist authors of the book “Over the Cliff: How the Obama Election Drove the American Right Insane.” 

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WaPo Predicts Glenn Beck’s Dangerous New Novel May Become Handbook for Terrorists

Where Are Australia’s Most Sustainable Cities?

Image: ACF Australia maybe the world’s sixth largest country, but with over 80% of its 23 million people live within 100 kilometres of the coast. This makes it one of the most urbanised nations in the world. So the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) set out to investigate which of the country’s 20 largest cities is the greenest. The results are contained within their just released Sustainable Cities Index, which ranks Australia’s metropolises “with the aim of encouraging healthy competition, … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Where Are Australia’s Most Sustainable Cities?

NY Times Leaves Mao’s Atrocities Out of Obituary for Physicist Turned Maoist Joan Hinton

The New York Times’s obituary Saturday for Manhattan Project physicist turned Maoist Joan Hinton by William Grimes left out her Maoist beliefs in both the headline — ” Joan Hinton, 88, Physicist Who Chose China Over Bomb ” — and a text box: “A Manhattan Project member whose desire for peace led her to a Chinese farm.” And the obituary itself completely omitted the deadly nature of Mao Zedong’s totalitarian regime: Joan Hinton, a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atom bomb, but spent most of her life as a committed Maoist working on dairy farms in China, died on Tuesday in Beijing. She was 88. …. In 1948, alarmed at the emerging cold war, she gave up physics and left the United States for China, then in the throes of a Communist revolution she wholeheartedly admired. “I did not want to spend my life figuring out how to kill people,” she told National Public Radio in 2002. “I wanted to figure out how to let people have a better life, not a worse life.” Grimes concluded without any reference to Mao’s atrocities during the Cultural Revolution: She and her husband remained true believers in the Maoist cause. “It would have been terrific if Mao had lived,” Ms. Hinton told The Weekend Australian in 2008 during a trip to Japan. “Of course I was 100 percent behind everything that happened in the Cultural Revolution — it was a terrific experience.” By contrast, the Washington Post’s obituary Friday from Matt Schudel mentioned Hinton’s Maoism in the online headline: “Joan Hinton, worked on Manhattan Project and became devoted Mao follower, dies at 88.” A middle paragraph also made clear the murderous nature of the regime: “Nonetheless, Ms. Hinton remained an ardent supporter of Mao, the Chinese Communist leader who controlled the country from 1949 until he died in 1976. Even after Mao’s Cultural Revolution reshaped Chinese society by force, leaving tens of millions of people dead in ideological purges, Ms. Hinton’s loyalty was undiminished .”

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NY Times Leaves Mao’s Atrocities Out of Obituary for Physicist Turned Maoist Joan Hinton

Oil Spill Hits Utah, Official says Oil spill hasn’t reached Great Salt Lake

Imagine if an oil spill happened in your town and contaminated a whole park… that's exactly what just happened in this Utah town. http://heraldextra.com/news/state-and-regional/article_b28deb54-3914-5051-8ce0-d… Emergency workers believe they have stopped a 21,000-gallon oil leak from reaching the environmentally sensitive Great Salt Lake, one of the West's most important inland water bodies for migratory birds that use it as a place to rest, eat and breed. But the spill has taken a toll on wildlife at area creeks and ponds, coating about 300 birds with oil and possibly threatening an endangered fish. The leak began Friday night when an underground Chevron Corp. pipeline in the mountains near the University of Utah broke. The breach sent oil into a creek that flows through neighborhoods, into a popular Salt Lake City park, and ultimately into the Jordan River, which flows into the Great Salt Lake. The 10-inch pipeline was shut off Saturday morning, when workers at a nearby Veterans Administration building smelled oil and called the Salt Lake City fire department, which notified Chevron. The pipe carries crude oil from western Colorado to a refinery near the Salt Lake City International Airport. Jason Olsen, spokesman for the Salt Lake City Joint Information Center, said Sunday that emergency workers believe they have contained the spill to the Jordan River. But the spill still took its toll on birds at Red Butte Creek and at a large pond at Liberty Park, where visitors often feed birds from the shore and on rented paddle boats. About 300 birds were coated in oil and cleaned at Utah's Hogle Zoo. Fewer than 10 have died, said Salt Lake City spokeswoman Lisa Harrison-Smith. Most of the birds were Canada geese, although some ducks were also covered. Harrison-Smith said the oil also flowed through several other riparian areas, which could threaten the June sucker. It's been listed as an endangered species since 1986. Most of Liberty Park reopened Sunday. The pond remained closed, and Olsen urged those who live near affected waterways to stay away from them. “Wherever the oil is, the smell is still fairly strong,” Olsen said. The Salt Lake City Police Department told residents whose yards were polluted by the spill not to clean them up, but to file a claim with Chevron first. Chevron has said it is taking full responsibility for the spill and will pay for its cleanup. Harrison-Smith said Chevron had investigators at the scene of the leak Sunday and that the Environmental Protection Agency had brought in a U.S. Coast Guard water recovery expert to assist with cleanup efforts. She said city officials were hoping to receive a report on the spill from Chevron sometime Sunday evening. U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, said he spoke by telephone Sunday with Becky Roberts, president of the company's Chevron Pipe Line Co. unit. Matheson said Roberts told him that until Chevron crews dig up the broken section of pipe, the company can't be sure what caused the leak. Matheson is urging full disclosure on the leak's cause, and said his office will follow up to make sure Chevron follows EPA regulations. “I would say they are responding very aggressively to it. I think they know there is a heightened concern among people in this country about oil spills,” Matheson said. “I think they understand it's in their best interest to do everything they can to fix this as soon as possible.” Online: http://www.chevron-pipeline.com added by: captainplanet71

Arianna Huffington Comes Out in Favor of Flat Tax — for Greece

Sometimes even the seemingly most unreasonable characters as far public policy goes can be reasoned with if the circumstances are right. Just sometimes it takes someone like Steve Forbes to pull it off. On the June 14 broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Forbes explained that a flat tax might be the medicine that Greece, a country on the fiscal brink needs. “Well, when you engage in binge spending and the idea that going to revive an economy, you just get in a spiral on that,” Forbes explained. “In terms of countries like Greece what should be done, in addition to the necessary austerity, is they haven’t put in place policies, Joe that we did in the early ’80s that enabled this  country to get back on its feet. Forbes alluded to the bounce back Russia had after its economic struggles coming out of the collapse of the Soviet Union.  “For example, one thing Russia did right 10 years ago was put in a flat tax,” Forbes said. “Within two years, collections doubled because you make it, you pay it. Most central and eastern European countries have done the same thing with the tax codes. Do it to Greece. Greece makes it very hard to set up a legitimate business. Remove those barriers. Unleash their entrepreneurs. So, in addition to the belt tightening put in things that enable these countries to get back to their feet as well.” “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough expressed concern that belt-tightening measures may inhibit an economic recovery. But that isn’t the case according to Forbes, if the recipe is right. “No, if you combine it with these other pro-growth measures,” Forbes said. “For example, we have enormous tax increases coming in this country. Don’t do it. In Western Europe, reduce those onerous tax rates, labor practices that get in the way. One of the good things the Irish did – Ireland was hit hard by this recession. They faced up to it over a year ago. Didn’t wait for, like Greece to hit the wall. One of the things they didn’t do was raise their business tax. They have the lowest in Europe. The Europeans are always beating up on them – raise it, raise it. They kept it at 12.5 [percent]. Ireland is going to come out of this faster than other countries.” Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington, also a guest on “Morning Joe,” said she’d be in favor of a Forbes-style flat tax, in Greece that is assuming it got Greek citizens paying their fair share of taxes. “Well, there’s something to be said for the flat tax in Greece because nobody has been paying their fair share of taxes in Greece,” Huffington said. “So if the flat tax can get Greeks to pay their fair share that might be worth it.” However, Huffington explained that she thought the real problem wasn’t tax rates, but high unemployment, similar to what the United States is facing. “But to prevent what happened to Greece from what happened in America, surely Steve, you must agree that the kind of unemployment we are facing right now – 26 million people out of work, either no job at all or under-employed or too discouraged to look for work – is not sustainable,” she continued. “I mean the kind of fear and anxiety that is seen around the country is leading to violence in many areas. So, how do we deal with that when retail spending is down? When consumer spending is down? Doesn’t the government have a role here?” But rather than government being pro-active, as Huffington suggested, government should get out of the way to allow for business to expand Forbes explained. “Well, the government has a role to provide an environment that makes it possible for a business to grow and hire,” Forbes replied. “For example, this new tax bill that the Senate may pass is going to be very, very onerous on small businesses. Stop it. Stabilize the dollar so you get small business lending again. So you create the environment and entrepreneurs will step in. But right now everybody is on the side with uncertainty. We saw it in the jobs report where businesses extended the workweek instead of hiring new people because of uncertainty. So if the government provides the right environment, this thing will snap back.”

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Arianna Huffington Comes Out in Favor of Flat Tax — for Greece

Jimmy Dean, Country Star And Sausage King, Dead at 81

Country Music Hall of Famer was a singer, TV host and actor before launching Jimmy Dean Meat. By Gil Kaufman Jimmy Dean Photo: Steve Helber/ AP Photos Country singer Jimmy Dean, whose career as a storyteller was equaled later in life by his success as a sausage pitchman, died at his home in Varina, Virginia, on Sunday night at the age of 81. According to CNN , the Country Music Hall of Famer apparently died of natural causes. Though later in life his name was most familiar for his famous line of smoked sausages, Dean made his mark first in the world of country music, scoring a #1 hit on the pop and country charts in 1961 with the song “Big Bad John,” a tune about a mysterious, Paul Bunyan-esque coal miner who saves his fellow workers after a mine collapse. Written with country legend Roy Acuff, the million-selling song won a 1962 Grammy for Best Country & Western Recording and helped save Dean’s recording career, after his label, Columbia Records, was considering dropping him. The tune and other story songs like “Little Black Book” and “P.T. 109” helped Dean score an ABC variety show in 1963, “The Jimmy Dean Show,” which ran for three years. One of the show’s regular guests was the early Muppet character Rowlf, a piano-playing dog cooked up by master puppeteer Jim Henson. Dean also acted in the late 1960s NBC series “Daniel Boone,” in which he played Boone’s friend, Josh Clements, and played the role of James Bond’s ally Willard Whyte in 1971’s “Diamonds Are Forever.” As his music career began to wind down, Dean returned to the thing he knew best growing up: hogs. According to an Associated Press report, Dean grew up slaughtering pigs on his family’s farm by hitting them over the head with the blunt end of an ax and then grinding the meat alongside his brother Don. In 1969, he started the Jimmy Dean Meat Company, which was almost instantly profitable and eventually earned him more than $75 million. With his just-folks appeal and kind face, Dean became a staple in ads for his sausage products, even after selling the company in 1984to Sara Lee Foods, which dumped him as its pitchman in 2003. The singer was born Seth Ward in Olton, Texas, on August 10, 1928, and raised in poverty in Plainview, Texas. His mother taught him how to play piano at age 10, and along the way he picked up guitar, harmonica and accordion, dropping out of school in the ninth grade. After leaving the Air Force in 1948, he formed a band, the Texas Wildcats, who began a strong local draw in Washington, D.C., and earned their first hit in the early 1950s with “Bummin’ Around.” Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘A-Team’

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Jimmy Dean, Country Star And Sausage King, Dead at 81

Welcome to Hershey, Cuba

Hershey first visited Cuba in January 1916. It is said that he fell in love with the country at first sight. It was a country of eternal spring, where the inhabitants found it hot if the temperature went up over eighty degrees and cold if it dropped to seventy. Hershey was excited by the immense sugar plantations in Cuba. In 1916 the world was embroiled in the first great war and sugar, essential to milk chocolate production, was in short supply. During his first visit to Cuba, Milton Hershey decided to purchase sugar plantations and mills so that he could mill and refine his own sugar for use in his Hershey chocolate factory. True to style, once he had made the decision, Milton Hershey moved rapidly to carry it out. Within a few weeks of his arrival in Cuba, he had explored the country for sixty miles east of Havana, bought a small sugar mill, Central San Juan Bautista, (central is the Cuban term for a sugar mill and its surrounding town) selected the site on which to build a larger mill, and started to build a railroad to service it. When he returned home to Hershey, Pennsylvania in early April, the Cuban enterprise was already well under way. The flagship of Hershey's Cuban holdings would be a new mill and town, Central Hershey, located near Santa Cruz. To provide for his workers at Central Hershey, Mr. Hershey constructed a town or “batey.” In addition to comfortable homes for rent, there was good health care, a free public school, recreational facilities including a baseball diamond, golf course and sport club, and a general store. As in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the railroad permitted employees to choose where they would live. Hershey's presence and manner of doing business in Cuba were in sharp contrast to most foreign businessmen who exploited the country and its people and took their profits home with them. Cuba praised and honored Milton Hershey with many awards including the highest honor that the country could bestow: The Grand Cross of the National Order of the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. Hershey's Cuban holdings were sold in 1946 to the Cuban Atlantic Sugar Company. At the time of the sale the operations included 60,000 acres of land, 5 raw sugar mills, a peanut oil plant, a henequen plant, 4 electric plants, and 251 miles of railroad track with sufficient locomotives and cars. _____________________________________________________________________________ Fast forward to 2002: Why are you taking pictures?” a local woman asks me in Spanish. “There’s no history here.” Five minutes later, a young man walks up and says: “Cuba is a museum.” Such are the ironies of this small town near Havana, officially known as Camilo Cienfuegos, unofficially referred to by its original name, Hershey. In 1917 Milton Hershey built a mill here to process sugar cane for his chocolate factory in Pennsylvania. Around the mill, he built a town featuring American-style bungalows and sprawling fieldstone mansions. There was a golf course, a cinema and a hotel. Six years later, the Hershey Electric Train journeyed from Havana to Matanzas, stopping in the town of Hershey. Fast forward to the present: I wait, with a growing crowd of Cubans at the train stop outside Guanabo, in the countryside just east of Havana. We’re surrounded by towering royal palms and a distant ridge of hills. Every few minutes a beat-up car putts past, or a horse and buggy, or a clunker bicycle. The Electric Train pulls up only half an hour late. Rust has turned its roof reddish brown. On top is a transformer that looks older than electricity. Four bent poles reach for the sagging cables that miraculously manage to deliver power to the engine. Slowly, we sway through miles of overgrown fields, some seats swaying considerably more than others. I feel like I’m inside the skeleton of a double-jointed contortionist. We stop in one-shack hamlets to pick up peasants dressed in their business best for a trip to the city of Matanzas. Several riders get off with me at the clay-roof Hershey station. The first thing I notice is the mill, now a jumble of twisted frames and patchy sheet metal. Fidel Castro’s government took it over after the 1959 revolution and sold sugar to the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, when the Cuba’s Russian lifeline fell away, there were few markets and fewer spare parts to keep the industry afloat. Efficiency went down and sugar prices dropped. In 2002 Cuba shut down half its sugar mills, including this one. Hershey became a one-industry town without an industry, hollow at the core. Today, the mill is still being dismantled. Ancient Russian trucks rumble around the un-building site, preparing to ship any useable parts to other functioning mills. Behind many homes I see storage sheds made of scrap metal. Cheerful billboards pop up all over town, with messages like, “The Electric Railway will be rejuvenated,” “Sports are the right of the people” and “This revolution was made with the humble, for the humble, and by the humble,” a quote from Camilo Cienfuegos, a comandante who played a major role in the overthrow of Batista. The paint is peeling on the tiny bungalows surrounding the mill, but they still look like they were transplanted directly from the post-war suburbs of America. Each has its own porch and wee lawn outlined in pebbles. I feel like I’m in a Communist Pleasantville, twice-frozen in time, evoking two opposing dreams. I meet one believer, the man who described Cuba as a museum. He’s a mechanic in one of the post-mill industries, fixing ailing trains dragged here at all hours from all over Havana Province. His workshop could pass for a museum, crammed with turn-of-the-century trains from Russia, Romania, the U.S., France and Spain. He poses for a photo beside a massive cast-iron funnel spray-painted green. The letters embossed on its surface read, “New Doty Mfg Co, Janesville, Wis.” “I love my job!” he exclaims. “I love trains! I love Che!” I believe him, even though his boss is standing right there. I keep believing when I see what the other laid-off mill workers are doing. Many have gone back to school, continuing to receive their government salaries. One man repairs umbrellas on the front porch of a house. Others work on an organic farm in the middle of town, where I buy two shining eggplants for one Cuban Peso. My optimism deflates in a dingy snack bar near the train station, when I bite into my long-awaited sandwich. A closer examination reveals a mystery meat like bologna decorated with large chunks of fat. Poor fuel for a revolution. I can’t wait to get back to Guanabo and cook my eggplants. As the vegetables sizzle on the frying pan, my host asks me why I spent the whole afternoon in such an obscure place with no tourist attractions. My answer comes in pieces. It was the surrealism, the wild juxtapositions, the way the town made me believe, if only for a moment, against all odds. _____________________________________________________________________________ In the video, see the old timers of Hershey, Cuba reminisce about the past. Not everywhere does the future signal progress. In some places it means regression. Welcome to Hershey, Cuba and to the story of hundreds of towns across Cuba. [See pictures of the town of Hershey I added on the comments section, as it was before the Revolution] Check it out folks. The film is called “Model Town”… added by: UrbanGypsy