Fidel Castro's friends in Ottawa

Earlier this month, while Iraq was dominating the news, Fidel Castro quietly imprisoned nearly 100 of Cuba's dissidents, independent journalists, human rights activists and intellectuals. Oscar Elias Biscet, for instance, a doctor and one of Cuba's best-known activists, was sentenced to 25 years in jail. Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, a 56-year-old economist who leads an umbrella organization of 300 human rights groups, was sentenced to 20 years; as was independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who has written about the Cuban economy for U.S. Web sites. Cuban authorities accuse the defendants of collaborating in a U.S.-led scheme to undermine the country's government. The charges are baseless. But convictions were rammed through in farcical "trials" nevertheless.

Back at home, the Canadian government issued a statement decrying the "severity" of the recent crackdown. But Jean Chrétien made clear he still wants good relations. "I know there is a problem of human rights in that country ... sometimes it's better, sometimes it's bad ... and we're protesting. But it's better to be engaged because that's putting pressure," the Prime Minister told a news conference last week. "I believe it's better to be engaged and talking than to ignore the problem ... I know that if you don't do anything it could be much worse."

Engagement with Cuba has been the official line in Ottawa for decades. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was famously chummy with the Cuban dictator, and left-wing Canadian politicos have been sucking up to Havana ever since -- mostly as a means to demonstrate Canada's moral superiority to the United States. Indeed, Canada indirectly helps prop up Cuba's government in a number of ways. From 1994 to 1999, the federal Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provided $34-million in development assistance to Cuba. Last November, CIDA pledged $750,000 over six years toward a University of New Brunswick project to help Cuba create a biomedical engineering education program. Last October, CIDA made a three-year, $2.9-million commitment to a training program for Cuban workers run by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. Moreover, in the 2000-2001 fiscal year, Canadian taxpayers paid about $30-million to cover Canadian exports to Cuba that el jefe máximo could not or would not pay for. Canada has also granted Cuba what amounts to a $14-million line of credit to help pay for Canadian agricultural imports.

As noted above, Mr. Chrétien justifies propping up Mr. Castro's dictatorship under the theory that "it's better to be engaged because that's putting pressure." But in this regard, we'd like to direct the Prime Minister's attention to a brilliant piece of historical analysis published by Cuba expert Ann Louise Bardach in last Sunday's New York Times. As Ms. Bardach shows, it is exactly at those junctures when Cuba was most "engaged" with the West that Mr. Castro -- fearing glasnost might undermine his authoritarian rule -- took deliberate steps to cement his rogue status.

In the 1970s, when the United States was signalling a willingness to end its Cuban embargo, Mr. Castro sent troops to Angola. In 1980, when Jimmy Carter opened a de facto embassy in Havana, Mr. Castro flooded Florida with refugees. In 1996, when Bill Clinton's administration was set to sign migration and drug interdiction accords with Havana, Cuba shot down two planes operated by a U.S.-based exile group. Mr. Castro's latest move fits in perfectly with this pattern. In recent years, pressure to permit agricultural exports and travel to Cuba has grown stronger in Washington. Leading elements of the politically powerful Cuban exile community in south Florida are leaning toward engagement with Mr. Castro's regime as well. Thus came the recent crackdown in Havana, which has destroyed any hope of détente.

We admit the decision whether to engage a dictatorship through diplomacy and commerce is complex. In some cases -- China, for instance -- engagement has gone hand in hand with at least some measure of political reform. And even in the case of North Korea, the world's most totalitarian nation, the United States had until recently provided power and food as a bribe to prevent nuclear weapons development. But in the case of Cuba, the historical record cited above suggests that Canada's decades-old policy of engagement is not only morally objectionable, it is also counterproductive in practical terms.

Mr. Castro's latest outrage provides Ottawa with a good opportunity to review its policy toward Cuba. Where this hemisphere's last true dictatorship is concerned, Mr. Chrétien's mantra -- "if you don't do anything it could be much worse" -- seems not merely incorrect, but the exact opposite of the truth.

Moreover, in the 2000-2001 fiscal year, Canadian taxpayers paid about $30-million to cover Canadian exports to Cuba that el jefe máximo could not or would not pay for. Canada has also granted Cuba what amounts to a $14-million line of credit to help pay for Canadian agricultural imports.

Well,

well,

look

this........

*** In a desperate financial gamble, Castro recently raided the $250 million set aside to pay hard currency debt to European, Latin American, and Asian countries for essential imports. Instead, he used it to buy US farm products for cash. He was apparently calculating that he could persuade the US Congress to enact legislation freeing up additional exports to Cuba, and approving a flood of tourists to Cuba. The ploy hasn't worked. Nor, given the crackdown on dissenters, does the outlook look good for improving US-Cuban ties. President Bush is threatening new punitive measures. *** Castro's $250 Million "Charm offensive" hasn't worked: It's same old cruel regime.

Castro cannot quash all dissent - books not bombs put them in prison *** Owning ''books contrary to the socioeconomic process,'' an old computer and a video camera, and ''acting on behalf of a foreign power,'' were some of the charges the prosecution put forward during the 18-hour trial of independent journalists Maseda and Oscar Espinosa Chepe and the dissidents Héctor Palacios, Marcelo López and Marcelo Cano.

They were all sentenced to more than 15 years for not agreeing with the official or party line.

The blow that the government has struck against the peaceful opposition within the island (no home search turned up bombs or guns) shows that the dissidents were doing a good job.

To accuse them of ''subverting the established order'' demonstrates how feeble the administration's hold on power really is. Ideas cannot be smothered, even if those at the top think that they have eliminated all opposition.

………………….To complain in a soft voice on the bus, in the bread queue and at the grocery store are the are the only escape mechanisms for the bitterness of not being able to say what we are thinking.

My husband told me during the last visit that State Security agents tell him about me every day, with whom I meet and what I say. This is their way of putting the fear in him and make him understand that I, too, could go to prison.

That's the daily blackmail at State Security headquarters. It's the blackmail of those who fear the power of humble but firm words with which some of us dare call a spade a spade.

Maybe some more of us will still be stuffed into a cell in a Cuban prison, but I'm positive that they won't be able to smother ideas.

In the world beyond, Castro does not have absolute power.

Claudia Márquez Linares is an independent journalist in Cuba. Her husband is among a group of peaceful dissidents recently rounded up and sentenced to prison terms in Cuba.

Castro Defends Executions, Says US Provoking Conflict - Nothing A Little Freedom Wouldn't Cure*** "The sinister idea is to provoke an armed conflict between Cuba and the United States in the hope of ending the revolution," he said on a television program where he spoke for almost four hours. Cuba has allowed mass departures in 1980, when 125,000 people left from the port of Mariel, and in 1994, when 35,000 Cubans were picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, many taken to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Most ended up in the United States. Castro said the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, James Cason, was sent to Cuba last year with instructions to stir up opposition to his government and had overstepped the boundaries of diplomatic conduct.

The Cuban leader repeated his accusations that Cason was "a bully with diplomatic immunity" who had turned the U.S. mission into "an incubator of counterrevolutionaries" by allowing dissidents to openly hold meetings in his residence. Most of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists arrested and given stiff prison terms on charges of being on the payroll of the United States and conspiring to subvert the government were activists seeking peaceful reforms.***

April 25, 2003 Violent Clash Outside The Cuban Embassy in ParisIn her telephone interview with El Nuevo Herald, Valdés indicated that Embassy personnel "who are obviously not diplomats, but rather oppressors", exited the Embassy building carrying hammers and sledgehammers to break the protesters chains, whose hands and harms they beat, as well as striking several observers standing near by.

April 24, 2000 - Useful Idiots Hard at Work*** On April 15, at the Cuban Diplomatic Mission in Washington, DC, America got a glimpse at how Juan Miguel's hosts deal with dissent. Annoyed by a crowd of Cuban-American protestors, a group of fifteen men inside the mission ran outside and pummeled the demonstrators so severely that several required treatment at a local hospital. According to the Associated Press, US Secret Service agents, who are charged with guarding the mission, had to strike the attackers with batons to subdue them.

Now that's a "state of imminent danger" to one's "physical and mental well-being." Not that Dr. Redlener will take note. Like Janet Reno and Greg Craig, he is a diligent minion of Castro's totalitarianism-a useful idiot, as Lenin once called his Western accomplices. For Elian Gonzalez to stay in the US, he will have to overcome a vast force of useful idiots-starting with the contingent that occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.***

Cuban Embassy in Canada *** To access the web page of the Embassy of Cuba in Canada, just make a clic on this master piece of one of the most famous Cuban painters, Carlos Enríquez, "El rapto de las mulatas"***

Castro's preparing "the way for his own exit from the world stage in a hail of flames" - Criticism From Leftists Surprises Cuba -*** But some of the strongest criticism came from Cuba's supporters, who have stuck by the government's 44-year rule despite complaints about its human rights record. "Must they learn the bad habits of the enemy they are fighting?" wrote Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, who once praised Castro as a "symbol of national dignity." "The death penalty is never justified, no matter where it is applied." Fuentes, a Mexican novelist and longtime Cuba supporter, was even more disillusioned. He lumped Bush and Castro together and declared himself against both. Castro, he said, needs "his American enemy to justify his own failings."

"As a Mexican, I wish for my country neither the dictates of Washington on foreign policy, nor the Cuban example of a suffocating dictatorship," he wrote in a letter published in Mexico City's Reforma newspaper. He wasn't alone. Saramago, a Portuguese writer who won the 1998 Nobel Prize for literature and considered himself a close friend of Castro, said Cuba "has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, cheated my dreams."

Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who lives part-time in Cuba, has been silent on the issue. But his magazine, Cambio, published an article saying "few other repressive waves have left a government so isolated and rejected." The government responded by publishing rebukes in the Communist Party daily Granma. In one letter published Saturday, a group of well-known Cuban intellectuals urged their colleagues to stop criticizing the island. ***

The Eason Jordan disclosures have prompted speculation about the conduct of CNN in other dictatorships where the network maintains bureaus, such as Cuba. A study by the Virginia-based Media Research Center found the network has given Fidel Castro a platform to promote his views unchallenged. According to the center, "just seven of 212 stories focused on the regimes' treatment of dissidents; only four stories concerned themselves with the lack of democracy; and only two stories spotlighted the intimidation of journalists."

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Turner called Murdoch a 'warmonger' while speaking in San Fran. But as described on O'Reilly with MRC's Graham last night, was Turner a 'sock puppet' of Saddam and a 'shoe shiner' for Castro?

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