"For what it's worth, I couldn't help but notice that some of the (slightly Photoshopped) photos of Cuba at therealcuba.com website have appeared on other web sites before, but then they were involving stories from Vietnam, Haiti and a couple of other places."

As the webmaster for therealcuba.com, I would like to know which photos have been "slightly Photoshopped" and which ones have been previously used involving stories about Vietnam, Haiti or any other place.
I am very careful to check each an every photo that is posted in therealcuba.com and would be happy to review any specific photograph that you make reference to.
My website has been visited by well over a million people in two years and no one has ever been able to point out to a photo that has been altered or taken in another country. Its accuracy is the main reason for its success.
There is no need to "Photoshop" any photo from Cuba in order to show the brutality of the fascist regime and the mismanagement, stupidity and failure of the ruler that has been oppressing the Cuban people for close to 50 years.
I hope that you would be nice enough to tell me which photos you are referring to. Otherwise, I would think that you were lying in order to promote your agenda.

"102 000 Cubans killed by Castro"? Pull the other one.

therealcuba:

Don't pay any attention to rache's charge that the photos on your site are "photoshopped" or duplicated elsewhere. It is a charge that he does not document because he can't, and since he can't he has no recourse but to cast aspersions on your honesty when it is his own that is in question.

We must be very wary indeed of anything which rache calls "manufactured" since he also believes that the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) was "manufactured."

During the October 1962 crisis, Castro endeavored to convince Khruschev to launch the missiles against the U.S., thereby precipitating World War III with Cuba as Ground Zero. That is the kind of "patriot" that Castro is, willing to sacrifice his country and his people for his own aggrandizement. Of course, he wouldn't have shared their fate, but retired to his bunker to watch like a petite god this Armageddon of his own making.

Khruschev removed the missiles from Cuba in exchange for Kennedy's promise not to invade the island. This agreement, known as the Kennedy-Khruschev Pact, established the U.S. as the guarantor of Communism in Cuba, and this is the reason that the U.S. has not liberated the island.

Tsk, who to believe? One guy says photos have been touched up & another says he's the one who put them there. You just can't believe what you find on the net these days, can ya?

Therealcuba,
On your humor page, there is a photo of a horsedrawn car (Castrogas2.jpg)
Here's the original(?) version.

http://www.fenderforum.com/userphotos/index.html?recid=19593

The Socialist Sandals photo had been sent to me some time ago with a note that they it was taken in Haiti.

This topic had a good run elsewhere some time ago with good points raised from both sides.

http://www.cubamania.com/cuba/showthread.php?threadid=16692

I'm no fan of Castro or any other political leader in the world.

Despite the quantity of unsourced statements on your site, I don't doubt your motives or sincerity in what you believe and I actually wish you the best of luck in your endeavours.

Cubano.
I never said that the Missile Crisis was faked.

If you care to actually read the linked document http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-i.htm (Page 7 onwards) it will prove that the USA was planning to provoke a war by faking an attack by Cuba by killing innocent people or shooting down commercial aircraft - so much for any Khruschev-Kennedy-Castro agreement.

If they were prepared to do this over 40 years ago, and with all the atrocities claimed to have occurred since, why haven't they done it yet?

Maybe Castro just doesn't have any WMDs (or oil) or perhaps humanitarian causes simply don't matter in Central America.

Could it be because that even as late as November 2006, the UN voted 183 to 4 for lifting the embargo? The US Congress is now debating whether the embargo may have actually strengthened the Cuban government and even the Pope and other several religious leaders in the US have spoken out against it.

rache:

If the U.S. had wanted to invade Communist Cuba after 1962, it could have done so under the aegis of the Rio Pact (1948), which bound the U.S. and all Latin American countries to liberate any nation in the Americas which fell to Communism. But the U.S. chose to ignore the Rio Pact and other conventions because it did not desire to precipitate a war with the Soviet Union. This was a grave mistake because as Khrushchev's son-in-law and aide has since confirmed Khruschev would not have attacked the U.S. in case of that eventuality. If you require me to read 7 pages of agitprop in order to learn about this mythical and never realized attack which the U.S. supposedly planned on Cuba, I respectfully decline.

You say that you "are no fan of Castro or any other political leader in the world" and there's your mistake. Fidel Castro is not a "political leader" since politics has not been practiced in Cuba since 1959. For there to be politics there must be a system open to politics. The Castroite system is not even a one-party state (that would actually constitute an "opening" in the system); it is a one-man state, completely dominated by one man and run in the interests of one man.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission has condemned on numerous occasions the Castro regime's systematic violations of human rights. And, of course, there is no trade embargo any more except on paper since the U.S. is now Cuba's largest trading partner thanks to innumerable loopholes that have gutted the embargo.

I am glad that you now admit that you don't know if the pictures in dispute originally appeared in therealcuba or on some other website; and that you don't know either whether the sandals picture depicts a Cuban or a Haitian. That being the case you had no reason to accuse therealcuba of deceipt. An apology is in order.