Posted on 04/14/2002 4:36:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
"More than four decades of revolution have demonstrated that are (sic) country is capable of facing any threat and defeating sinister plans of all kinds," a Cuban government statement said. "The punished will be many families ... and, what is worse, many elderly people who depend on theses remittances," said the statement, published on the front page of the Communist Party daily newspaper Granma. ***
Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage riled foes of Chavez over the weekend when he criticized Venezuelan opposition leaders during a conference in Caracas. Friday's small demonstration came a day after Venezuela voted against a United Nations resolution urging Cuba to accept a visit by a human rights commission following the arrest of scores of Cuban dissidents. ***
''This is an exceptional step, a painful measure taken as a last resort and founded on the hope of avoiding great loss of life and costs for both countries,'' Pérez Roque said, ``impeding a migratory crisis that would end in a war between both countries.''*** The executions followed a wave of detentions and convictions of about 75 Cuban dissidents on charges of subversion. Pérez Roque Friday warned those dissidents who have not been arrested to be careful because there would be no ''impunity'' for anyone who commits treason.
His comments marked the first effort by the government of Fidel Castro to address the executions, which, together with the wave of repression, have drawn an extraordinary round of condemnation from a number of nations and human rights organizations. Pérez Roque also boasted that the U.N. Human Rights Commission's failure to condemn Cuba for its recent crackdown affirmed the island leadership's belief in the right to defend itself from attempts to subvert its system.***
…………………. Greenhill, a research fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, said the circumstances of the current Cuban crisis should be monitored closely for signs of a possible new exodus. ''I would say that the situation bears close watching,'' he said. But he added that Castro might think twice before sanctioning a new exodus. ''I don't think it's impossible we could see another outflow,'' Greenhill said, ``but if I were Castro, I'd think long and hard about launching an engineered migration this time around, given the prevailing environment in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and Iraq. The world looks different today than it did in 1965, 1980 and 1994.''***
WILL RIGHTS BE PROTECTED?
Supporters of Cuban dissidents were right to settle for half a loaf, but we have to ask: If the commission can't use diplomacy to fulfill its most basic mandate -- to spotlight aberrant international behavior and use diplomatic means to redress such behavior -- of what use is diplomacy? When the issue arises again before the commission, as it surely will, it will be good to remember the events of the last few weeks.
The issue is not whether human rights are being abused in Cuba. That question has been asked and answered to the satisfaction of everyone who doesn't wear ideological blinders. The question is whether the commission that is supposed to protect and nurture human rights will be ready to fulfill its duties, or whether, in a world that professes disgust for totalitarian governments, it is already hopelessly out of touch.
A strong condemnation of Cuba would be a signal that, for a change, the world is watching the repugnant actions of Fidel Castro and is ready to declare his government an outcast; that the world understands that Castro's dispute isn't with the United States but with his own people; and that it stands ready to say, with Saramago, ``This is as far as we go.''***
A member of the intelligence community expresses concern, but says that an open hearing on this issue would provide "feedback" to Cuba on "how much we know about its BW effort." Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, the source says, was scheduled to deliver details of the Cuban program to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June, but the testimony was suppressed by the intelligence bureaucracy.***
Cutting-edge biotech in old-world Cuba: Castro's Connections - Editor's Note: This article first appeared in American Legion magazine, April 2002. *** The U.S. government's detaining of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba is supremely ironic given Fidel Castro's long-standing support for global terrorism. As we continue our worldwide battle against terrorists, this sly but significant terror monger on our very own doorstep should not be overlooked. Castro is a bankrupt dictator with a decades-long history of support for violent, anti-American terror groups, obsessive hatred of the U.S., sophisticated spy rings operating on our soil and a potentially deadly biowarfare capability.***
And it's not just Hollywood types, either. Media stars and executives, from CNN founder Ted Turner to ABC News veteran Barbara Walters and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, have joined in the lovefest -- apparently setting aside for the occasion their passion about freedom of speech. In The Washington Monthly, Cave speculates that the reasons for this strange romance are both personal and political: They range from resentment of US foreign policy and the perception of Castro as a fearless David standing up to an American Goliath to the dictator's personal charisma and his skill at massaging the egos of his celebrity guests. All that may be so. But one would think that the recent crackdown in Cuba would serve as a shattering wake-up call even for the most oblivious.***
Bosch is an experienced documentarian whose "American Experience" biography on Ronald Reagan (news) won a George Foster Peabody Award. The Castro documentary is slated to air next year. "There is a need for an objective, well-researched documentary on Castro," Margaret Drain, executive producer of "American Experience," said in a statement. "For nearly 50 years, he has commanded our attention ... yet he is unknown to most of us. Current events in Cuba make this film particularly relevant." ***
Schools and the media now call this date Earth Day, a date that oddly falls each year only a week before an ancient traditional day for celebrating springtime, May Day. (The Soviets marked May Day with a Red Square parade of nuclear missiles and goose-stepping soldiers, the defining symbols of Marxist love.) One of the self-identified "founders" of Earth Day, Bay Area activist John McConnell, has written that in 1969 he proposed to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors a new holiday to be called Earth Day on the first day of spring, the Equinox, around March 21. But, he writes, in 1970 local anti-Vietnam War and Environmental Teach-in activists "who were planning a one-time event for April 22, also decided to call their event Earth Day."
And what was this unnamed "one-time event" in 1970? It was the 100th birthday celebration for Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to history as Lenin, a pen name he might have coined from Siberia's Lena River. He was the patron saint of the North Vietnamese Communists such as Ho Chi Minh that America was fighting. And Lenin apparently has been patron saint to the Marxist vanguard of American activists who with their Teach-ins and other anti-war activities helped their comrades win in Southeast Asia -- and who now hold positions of power throughout American colleges, universities, and media.
Wherever Left-wing political correctness is the dogma imposed by such faculty, Earth Day is likely to be celebrated. Thus, for example, this new holy day of the Marxist faith will find adherents at Princeton University. Princeton is now home to bioethicist Dr. Peter Singer, who defends the right to life of animals but believes parents should have a right to kill their babies not only in the womb but also for up to a year following birth. Exhibiting similar ethics, Princeton's student newspaper published David Horowitz's ad opposing slave reparations for African Americans who have never been slaves, but its editors unprofessionally juxtaposed the ad to their agitprop intended to smear, negate, and shout down its message. These editors, of course, permit no such natural "balance" for Left-wing opinions in their pages. The Prince now ruling Princeton was schooled by Machiavelli.
Might it be mere coincidence that Earth Day falls on Lenin's Birthday? No, this link was apparently intended from the beginning. Sincere environmentalists who objected that Lenin's Soviet Union was a despoiler of the natural ecology of Russia, a dammer of rivers and polluter of ecosystems, have been ignored or silenced. Requests by sincere environmentalists to change Earth Day's date - as one logically would do if a holiday had been accidentally placed on the birthday of a mass murderer such as Adolf Hitler - have been rejected or harshly rebuffed.***
……… Godinez provided a rare glimpse inside Castro's intelligence network and demonstrated just how deeply loyal his agents were. She said she never felt any remorse or sorrow for her work even though she worked with some dissidents for years. "Marta Beatriz was an objective of my mission," she said. "I could never be friends with a counterrevolutionary." Godinez said Roque, also a leading member of the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society, handled as much as $5,000 every month from various groups in the United States that were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The USAID Cuba program has given more than $20 million to U.S. groups working with the opposition on the communist-run island since 1996 to bring about a peaceful transition to democracy. Godinez, a former math teacher, said she received about $700 a month from U.S. organizations as head of the National Independent Workers Union of Cuba.
…………………Other agents were just as loyal as her. Dr. Pedro Luis Veliz Martinez, a 39-year-old internist and a member of a long-trusted communist family, told the AP in a separate interview Monday that he was first approached by an Interior Ministry official while doing late-night hospital rounds in 1996. "I never had any doubts," Veliz said. "I am a revolutionary. I am Marxist-Leninist. I believe in communism." After gaining the confidence of government opponents in the Liberal Party - and the organizations in Miami that support them, Veliz founded the Independent Medical College, a professional organization for dissident physicians, in 1999. ***
Cuba, a country with a coffee culture, produces fine beans in its Oriente province, but not for average Cubans. The good stuff is sold to tourists and exported to earn dollars, or reserved for the Cuban elite, while the government imports cheaper beans, grinds them, mixes them with ground chickpeas, and doles out 28 grams per month - less than one ounce - to Cuban citizens. The government also exports high quality Cuban rice for dollars while importing a low-grade rice from Vietnam for its citizens. It exports 90% of its fresh fruits, directing much of the rest to tourists and others who can pay in dollars.***
By Venezuelan standards, the protest Friday was small, but Castro's imprints on Venezuela continue to loom large. Clearly, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez prefers a Marxist dictatorship cloaked in a constitution that puts him in control of the economy, the courts, the news media and the legislative branch. "We voted for change, but we didn't vote for a revolution," Juan Fernandez told me recently. Fernandez was a key player in the nation's petroleum industry until Chavez fired him to put a political hack in charge. Fernandez's firing, and that of others, led to the failed coup against Chavez a year ago.
About 200 Venezuelans living in the Orlando area came out to hear Fernandez speak earlier this month about his blueprint for peaceful change. He is among those Venezuelans who are leading the charge for new, democratic elections, just recently meeting with Bush administration officials in Washington. But because Fernandez was among those who participated in the national strike against Chavez's government late last year, he's now a wanted man in Venezuela. Fernandez is among several prominent Venezuelans in the growing opposition movement whom Chavez wants to send to prison. His case remains pending. Fernandez's "crime" was simply to offer an opposing point of view. No guns, no secret plots, but a very public national strike seeking new presidential elections.
Since the strike ended, Chavez has moved aggressively to squeeze out businesses, big and small. Chavez has made it illegal, for instance, for Venezuelan businesses to pay in U.S. dollars for goods imported into the country or to get paid in dollars for exports even as the country's currency plunges downward. Venezuela watchers note that of the $1.3 billion that Venezuelans have sought in U.S. currency, the Chavez regime has released only about $30,000, mostly to cover living expenses for students studying abroad.
Chavez has used the failed strike as a pretext to clamp down -- not unlike Castro's move to nationalize foreign enterprises, seize all U.S. dollars and quash any dissent on the island in the early 1960s. Castro argued then that the revolution was under attack from Uncle Sam. Chavez, too, has tried to make that argument, even though polls continue to show that most Venezuelans want new presidential elections.***
Neither Washington nor Havana pays much attention to diplomatic decorum nowadays. In Powell's references to the Cuban leader, he goes straight to "Castro," skipping "president." Castro says President Bush is "stupid." Each side has imposed travel restrictions on the others' diplomats lately. Cuba has even talked about shutting down the U.S. office in Havana and bringing its own envoys home from Washington.***
Indeed, less than a year ago, the House of Representatives voted to block the administration from enforcing a ban on Americans traveling to Cuba, a measure that was interpreted as bolstering support for lifting the embargo. But last week, the mood on Capitol Hill shifted dramatically. Both supporters and opponents of the embargo in the House voted unanimously, 414-0, to condemn Cuba. For all the criticism of the political crackdown, many see recent events as just one example of a more far-reaching curtailment of freedom on the island as Castro consolidates power for his eventual successor, considered to be his brother Raul.
For many, it began with a widely publicized antidrug campaign of in January. Days later, Cuba's state-run media carried stories of a wider crackdown against black-marketeering enterprises, from massive garment presses and private kitchens to unlicensed landlords and repair shops outside the island's state-run economy. The few licensed private entrepreneurs on the island also came under scrutiny. Most of the recently convicted dissidents were charged under Law 88, which promises tough sentences for Cubans convicted of conspiring with a foreign power. Those convictions and the summary execution of the boat hijackers, coming after a number of other incidents in which hijacked Cuban airplanes were given sanctuary in Florida, were seen as a reminder that Castro was unwilling to brook dissent. "This is the sort of housecleaning that other dictators from Stalin to Mao have been willing to do before they go," Mr. Suchlicki says.***
"It was a really big blow, but there are enough dissidents out of jail. We are regrouping," the son of a founding father of Cuba's ruling Communist Party told Reuters. Roca said it would take months before disabled dissident groups could raise their heads again. Western diplomats in Havana wonder whether Cuba's small and divided opposition groups will be able to regain momentum after so many were given severe prison terms of up to 28 years.
The crackdown dealt a devastating blow to a nascent opposition movement that had raised its voice last year calling for democratic reforms to the one-party state while enjoying a rare period of official tolerance. Particularly shocking was the number of undercover security agents who surfaced at the trials as witnesses to reveal that they had been posing as dissidents, in some case for decades. "The damage to the dissidents is enormous. I don't know how they will recover now," said a European ambassador. "Who can they trust now, after it turns out that even leading figures were agents for 10 years?" the diplomat added. ***
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