Posted on 01/17/2002 2:24:56 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA (AP) - When 40 influential women from Washington state met with Fidel Castro this week, the 75-year-old president spent several minutes chatting with each one, asking their names, their interests, their thoughts on Cuba.
``He obviously had read the biographies and knew who each person was,'' said Susan Jeffords, dean of Social Sciences at the University of Washington.
The personalized attention that Cuba's head of state gave each woman demonstrated his great interest in Americans whose opinions could count in efforts to change U.S. policy toward the communist country. It also underscored what Castro has said all along: his beef is with the U.S. government, not with the American people.
``It was certainly exciting to meet with him. He is a very charming and eloquent man,'' said Jeffords, who traveled here with the university's Center for Women and Democracy. Their visit ends Friday.
Castro learned the importance of courting average Americans such as these women during the fight for shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez, who returned to the island in the summer of 2000.
While Cuban exiles battled to keep the child with his relatives in Miami, many other Americans supported efforts to have the child returned to his father on the island.
The seven-month battle over the boy, who was rescued at sea off Florida's coast, showed that even if Americans don't agree with Cuba's form of government, they no longer view Cuba through a purely ideological prism.
While the Bush administration and powerful Cuban exiles support the 40-year-old embargo against the island as a way to pressure Castro, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have fought to ease and even eliminate the sanctions, saying Cuba could become a new market for American products.
Legislators across the political spectrum also have worked to erase U.S. restrictions against travel by most Americans to the Caribbean island.
An Arizona Republican, Rep. Jeff Flake, is sponsoring an amendment prohibiting the Treasury Department from spending money on enforcing the four-decade travel ban.
Flake believes that by traveling more freely to Cuba, Americans will bring with them ideas and values that will help end the communist regime.
The Washington women - bankers, business owners, government officials and others - said they also support freer American travel to Cuba, and hope to return next year. For this visit, they traveled under a Treasury Department license granted to the University of Washington.
The trip was aimed at promoting understanding between U.S. and Cuban women leaders, said Laurie McDonald Jonsson, board chairman of the center that organized the trip and president of Stellar International, a Seattle investment firm.
``I first came here a little over a year ago with a vision that American women should have the chance to share with the women of Cuba,'' said Jonsson.
The Americans said they were impressed by the gains women had made in Cuba, and particularly with individual women they met in recent days.
``I've had the chance to meet some amazing women here. Some I will remember for the rest of my life,'' Jeffords said.
Connie Niva, head of the Washington State Transportation Commission, said she will also remember meeting Castro, who chuckled when she shared a joke learned here about Cuba's huge buses, known as 'camels' for their unusual shape.
The common form of public transport is formed by two connecting trailers and drawn by a tractor. They are typically overcrowded, resulting in frequent disputes among passengers and complaints by women about groping men.
``How are camels like American movies?'' goes the joke. ``Sex, violence and bad language.''
From left: Laurie McDonald, Merideth Tall, Constance T. Bacon, Connie Niva and Suzi Le Vine converse with each other at the San Francisco Plaza in Old Havana, Cuba on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2002. They are all part of the Center for Women & Democracy at the University of Washington. (AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera)
WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD FOR CASTRO?--[Excerpt] Psychologists may be better able than political scientists to explain why many American liberals idealize foreign dictatorships with institutions or values that they find horrifying in milder forms in the United States. For some reason, many American leftists who loathe the military are not troubled by the fact that Castro appears in public only in a military uniform. American liberals somehow manage to support gay rights in the United States while ignoring Castro's vicious campaigns against homosexuality, which he has defined as a "bourgeois perversion" American liberals fret about the FBI and Internet censorship, while calling for the United States to befriend a regime where culture and religion are rigidly controlled by the secret police. [End Excerpt]
Delighting in the Dictator- -[Excerpt] In the late 1970s the American writer Sally Quinn returned from Cuba having found it an Isle of Eros. Said she of the country that then housed thousands of political prisoners in dirty cells and torture chambers, "an attitude of sexuality is as pervasive in Cuba as the presence of Fidel Castro. You can feel sex in the atmosphere." Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern bounced around the Cuban countryside with Fidel in a jeep and survived to tell of it. Said he of a man who even then was sending arms and soldiers around the world to support Communist terror and oppose American policy, Fidel is "soft-spoken, shy, sensitive, sometimes witty….I frankly, liked him." And Senator Lowell Weicker, the Republican ever on the prowl for a presidential nomination, launched this line certain to illuminate his presidential qualifications. "Castro's been known to snow people but he didn't snow me," Weicker asseverated. He spoke of Fidel's "enormous intellect and idealism" -- yes, idealism! He questioned why the United States did not take Fidel's side, the side of progress. [End Excerpt]
Campus Marxists are a funny bunch--until they end up running your country--Both of my grandfathers were exterminated by Stalinist terror. My father and mother both barely escaped the Gulag. But here I am, with PhD students, being treated to a one-hour discussion about "homophobia" on campus. My colleagues are agonizing about how "Homophobia-Free Zone" pink stickers must be put on every door in the university. "But what if a professor or a teaching assistant refuses to have one put on his door?" one of them asks indignantly. After a few seconds of silence, another answers, "Well, then a committee might just have to be set up where these people will be taken to account." Serious head-nods follow. [End Excerpt]
U.S. Representatives Dine with Castro---Sally Grooms Cowal is calling in her chips.
Hitler probably would have made her wet her pants from excitement.
This man is a monster, tortured some 100,000 to death, still is doing so now to some...
Academics, feminists, and Seattle liberals. Now you know why my city is so screwed up.
Such behavior may seem merely ridiculous, but it is not without its effect on dissidents. Valladares confirms the obvious: that it demoralizes them terribly. "It demoralizes not only the resistance inside Cuba, but all of us who have struggled for many years while we wait for the solidarity of those who believe in democracy." He may wait for that solidarity a long time. The likes of Naomi Campbell and Jack Nicholson, sadly, have far more influence on Americans than Armando Valladares ever could. [End Excerpt]
Fidel's Nobel Prize winning Prison for Women-- [Excerpt] She says that the massive detention of innocent people in Cuba for the single reason of disagreeing with Castro's regime must stop. Citizens are thrown, without trial, into inhumane dungeons where they are physically and psychologically tortured. The women political prisoners in Black Mantle as well as in other prisons throughout the island are forced into the same dungeons with dangerous common criminals. The fact that the Castro regime does not allow international inspections of their jails must stop. It is time to stop denying the nightmare that has been going on for 42 years.
Maritza's is not an isolated case. About a million people have gone through Castro's gulag and those who survive tell stories that are much the same. But after 42 years the world still is not listening, especially the American people, just 90 miles away from the most brutal and repressive regime in the history of the Americas. It is a frustrating shame that because the U.S. media, which has failed to report the facts to the American people, must take much of the blame for Castro being and staying in power.[End Excerpt]
Hitler probably would have made her wet her pants from excitement. "
i couldn't say it any better then you so:
its worth repeating....
what a "noble cause"....if only they'd included "the children"
And then when we were in the USSR, they would only take us to the dollar stores. Hard currency such as US dollars, deutchmarks, francs, etc were only allowed as the currency to buy the very best products. My friend and I didn't go on most of the official tours, we went to see for ourselves. We went to a meat store where women would have plastic bags for the meat, and blood would drip from their purses as they exited the store. The fruits and vegetables store had potatoes, carrots, and apples for sale, and we couldn't pick them out ourselves, the cashier did. The department stores had nothing of value to buy. It was pathetic. The level of hygiene was low too, one could smell the bathrooms before arriving at them. We'd always laugh because a lot of the tourist sites were pre-Revolution. Absolutely exquisite everything, post-Revolution was junk. It was a very interesting experience for me, and one that I will never forget.
Hitler probably would have made her wet her pants from excitement. "
"Center for Women & Democracy "
they only want to do for washington state what castro has done for cuba............
sorry, but what a bunch of morons...
"Center for Women & Democracy,"
did these lesbians get to go see elian gonzalez???
Communists destroy everything they touch.
The following makes the prison conditions at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay look positively 5 Star!!
Alain Gonzales fumigates a home against mosquitos Monday, Jan. 14, 2002 in the Old Havana neighborhood of Havana, Cuba. Cuba is launching a campaign in Havana against mosquitos that carry the dengue virus. (AP Photo/Jose Goitia)
Cuba Wages Offensive on 'Over-Sized' Houses -- [Excerpt] ``The day money is the factor behind distribution of the nation's properties is the day we will be divided into social classes. We will not allow that,'' said Juan Contino, who heads the movement of Cuba's state-affiliated neighborhood groups, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR).
The CDRs are encouraged to keep a lookout for property ''irregularities'' and make denunciations where appropriate. ``We are the good neighbors, those who have to go out and warn people 'you're making a gigantic house','' Contino said.
The housing offensive has spread terror among the numerous Cubans who have in recent times carried out home extensions or ''permutas'', or used their houses for illegal purposes. **(like trying to surivive)**
``They've destroyed my life. They say my house is 'over-sized' and I don't know where this is going to end,'' said one Cuban resident, whose repairs brought threatening inspectors' visits. ``They take my house away, I have nowhere to go.'' [End Excerpt]
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now they'll have to move out of their "side by side fridge/freeze box", n move into a "unicef blanket box"...
is that infidel,s family foto-album?
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