Posted on 04/14/2002 4:36:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
This is a LINK to articles since April 21, 2001 about Cuba and the communist threat - CHILDREN'S CODE At this LINK is a LINK to many Elian articles. Below I will post similar articles since the FR format changed and locked posts to this LINK. Please add what you wish to this thread.
Eyes Wide Open--[Excerpts] The Los Angeles kids, chosen for their photographic skills and their ability to work with others, represented the Venice Arts Mecca, a nonprofit organization that brings volunteer artists together with youngsters from low-income families to nurture their creativity in areas ranging from literary arts to photography. They looked. They listened. They photographed. And they took notes for their journals.
…….Before embarking on their adventure, the kids--who were joined by two young people from Washington, D.C., and accompanied by adult mentors--studied the sociopolitical history of South Africa, including apartheid. All were Latino or African American or a mix of the two, and were encouraged to think about their own identity, their own experiences with racism.
……..Before embarking on their adventure, the kids--who were joined by two young people from Washington, D.C., and accompanied by adult mentors--studied the sociopolitical history of South Africa, including apartheid. All were Latino or African American or a mix of the two, and were encouraged to think about their own identity, their own experiences with racism.
…..At the conference exhibit hall, the L.A. kids mounted a photo exhibition showing the underbelly of America. There were bleak images of life on an Indian reservation, of the homeless in Los Angeles. It was an eye-opener to some South Africans, who thought everyone in America was rich. "They were absolutely shocked," said Lynn Warshafsky, executive director of Venice Arts Mecca.
In turn, the L.A. group was surprised at the degree of anti-American sentiment, something they had to process. "They had to ask themselves questions they'd never asked before" about how others see them, Warshafsky said.
……..For Eamon, the highlight was hearing Fidel Castro speak. "I had thought of him as seriously evil. I realized he's not evil, he's doing what he thinks is best. He has this sort of demeanor about him. Whether you like him or not, you respect him. It opened my eyes." [End Excerpts]
Chavez left his strikebound and politically riven country despite the crippling work stoppage aimed at toppling him from the presidency of the world's fifth largest oil producer. Silva also has a compelling reason for staying on friendly terms with Chavez: The long border the two countries share. "Brazil worries very much about violence in Venezuela spilling over into Brazil," Haber said. "So you want to have peaceful relations with the Venezuelan, regardless of who is in charge."
During his breakfast with Silva, Chavez also brought up the idea of increasing cooperation among Latin American state-owned oil industries and set up a company called Petro-America. "It would become a sort of Latin American OPEC," Chavez said. "It would start with Venezuela's PDVSA and Brazil's Petrobras," and could come to include Ecopetrol from Colombia, PetroEcuador from Ecuador, and PetroTrinidad from Trinidad and Tobago." Last week, Cardoso's outgoing administration sent a tanker to Venezuela carrying 520,000 barrels of gasoline, but that barely dented shortages around the country. If Silva decides to help Chavez with Brazilian oil workers, it probably won't accomplish much either, said Albert Fishlow, who heads Columbia University's Brazilian studies program. "If he does it will be minimal and not enough to affect the situation," Fishlow said.***
" - They are criminals and killers," he lambasts the inner circle of Chavez cohorts. And he is not afraid of naming names: "The job was given to me by Hugo Chavez. I coordinated with current Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, then Interior Minister Luis Alfonso Davila, and the current Vice President (then Defense Minister) Jose Vicente Rangel. When we determined the difficulty of sending three Hercules C-130 transport planes to Afghanistan, Diosdado Cabello decided to send cash instead.
" - In the last week of September, 2001, one million U.S. dollars was transferred to Dr Walter Marquez, Venezuela's representative for the region. Of that amount, one hundred thousand was used for food and clothing for the Taliban government, and the remaining nine hundred thousand dollars went to the Taliban in cash, with the understanding that it was to support the Al Qaeda terrorists in their relocation efforts."
Cuban involvement: "Chavez is Castro's puppet"
Asked why Chavez would support Al Qaeda, the high-level military defector offered two explanations. " - First of all, Chavez had for a long time wanted a direct line of communication with Al Qaeda. He had asked Libya for that, but with no success. Then came 9/11 and Chavez was impressed," remembers the pilot of the presidential airplane.
" - Second, Chavez looks up to Fidel Castro. The Cuban dictator has collaborated with terrorist groups for years. Chavez emulates Fidel Casto. It sounds bizarre, but Chavez is a bizarre man. He was already starting to go off the rails in 2001, and he wanted direct contacts to all the major terror groups in the world." According to Diaz Castillo, Chavez depends on Fidel Castro's advice in governing Venezuela. The pilot revealed that during the last four years, roughly 4,000 Venezuelans have been receiving military and intelligence training in Cuba. The Cuban communist dictator assists Venezuela's embattled crypto-communist in holding onto power, at whatever cost, because Cuba depends on Venezuela's oil billions to stay afloat. Earlier this year, Fidel Castro said that "for the Cuban revolution to survive, it is necessary for the Bolivarian revolution to survive," in reference to Chavez's Marxist experiment.***
But Diaz-Balart could not predict that 47 years later his prophecy would assure his family legacy, propelling two of his sons into the U.S. Congress. On Tuesday, his youngest, Mario, 41, will be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a large swath of South Florida. Standing at his side will be his big brother, Lincoln, 48, representing an adjoining district that now takes in a chunk of Pembroke Pines in southwest Broward County. Elected a decade ago, he has been returned four times with little or no opposition. The first Florida brothers to serve in the U.S. House together, the Diaz-Balarts will join Congress' first sister act, Loretta and Linda Sanchez, who represent Orange and Los Angeles counties in California. The brothers are Republicans, the sisters Democrats. But they share the distinction of being the first Hispanic siblings to ascend to such heights of power -- a great source of pride, and sweet irony, to many Cuban-Americans.***
I introduce the American public to Article 5 of "Cuba's Code for the Child and Youth" from Castro's 1976 Cuban Constitution. This code - unthinkable and unacceptable for Americans - gives the state the right over the raising and education of children in Cuba, officially removing authority from the parents. If that had been explained to Americans as the events of Elian's life unfolded, the public's understanding of what Cuban Americans were trying to say could easily have been very different. The presence of Elisabet Broton, Elian's mother, throughout the dramatic moments of the film stands as a symbolic reminder of the underlying cause of the tragedy.
In this film I try to depict the ongoing, unnecessary struggles of the Cuban people resulting from Castro and his totalitarian regime. It is the story of families divided and being held hostage because of political games and the resulting intolerance for individual freedoms. It reminds the audience that Cubans have been dying in the Florida Straits since 1959 - about 85,876 to date. But the focus is on the most famous survivor of the 13 people who risked their lives seeking freedom in the U.S. Only three of them reached the land of the free. One of them was 5-year old Elian Gonzalez.
This documentary is also a rebuttal to the Clinton administration's handling of the Elian Gonzalez case and the "travesty of justice" - as some interviewees said - committed against a child and his relatives in Miami…………………. A person who saw the documentary said to me. "It left me with a knot in my throat and a desire for what would have been a more humane conclusion to this tragedy. After all, this was a private family matter that was used by Castro and the Clinton administration for political purposes."
This documentary is available on VHS and DVD through www.CubaCollectibles.com Agustin Blazquez, Producer/director of the documentaries COVERING CUBA, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation & COVERING CUBA 3: Elian. Author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING and translator with Jaums Sutton of the soon to be released book by Luis Grace de Peralta Morell THE MAFIA OF HAVANA: The Cuban Cosa Nostra
They have not moved one inch from their original Marxist ideas. They even admit that their intention is to resort to violence in order to reach their goals of socializing the country. The party program also declares that the PT party is just a branch of the international socialist program. Though all over the world communism is seen as a black page of history, marked by bloodshed and economic failure, in Brazil it is being hailed as the solution of all problems of the country, strictly in accordance to Marxian canons. Certainly the communists will not succeed in establishing a clone of soviet or Cuban regimes, but surely they will lead Brazil to very serious social, political and economic crisis, with dire consequences to all citizens.***
Gutierrez thrust himself into the national spotlight in January 2000, when he led a group of disgruntled junior army officers and 5,000 Indian protesters in an uprising that drove the widely repudiated Jamil Mahuad from power in the midst of the country's worst economic crisis in decades. Gutierrez was imprisoned for six months after the coup and expelled from the army.
In his address Wednesday, he said he would take strong steps against "the corrupt oligarchy that has robbed our money, our dreams and the right of Ecuadoreans to have dignified lives." "If sharing and showing solidarity, if fighting corruption, social injustice and impunity, means belonging to the left, then I am a leftist," he said, drawing cheers. But he added: "If generating wealth and promoting production means belonging to the right, then I am a rightist." That remark drew fewer cheers.***
After failing to take power in a coup in 1992, Chavez was elected by the country's poor, and took a grand tour of America's "Fan Club" - Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The Axis of Evil became the "Axis of Oil."
Eighty-two billion dollars, the combined 2002 revenue of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq - the OPEC's Top Three - can buy lots of terrorism, and lots of weapons of mass destruction. At least Saudi Arabia and Russia are willing to step in when Chavez's Venezuela is losing its market share. At its January 12 meeting, OPEC oil ministers recommended hiking the cartel's production by 1.5 million barrels a day. We won't have to push our SUVs this winter - and we won't be sending our troops to Iraq on bikes. I guess it's time to send those thank-you notes to King Fahd.***
…………On Wednesday, some moderate opposition leaders reported that during a meeting they held with Mr. Chávez in Caracas last weekend, he appeared open to a proposal for a constitutional amendment to reduce the presidential term to four years from six - a change that could conceivably lead to new elections later this year. At a news conference today after he met with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, Mr. Chávez described the proposal as "very interesting" and said he was continuing to study it. In the interview, however, he was less accommodating. "The solution to terrorist, subversive acts by an anti-democratic opposition cannot be elections," he said, referring to the supporters of the strike.
………He said that the possibility of such a referendum was "just around the corner." The call for such a vote could be registered after Mr. Chávez reaches the midway point of his six-year term on Aug. 19. But opposition leaders have called the idea a ruse that would not lead to new elections before sometime in 2004, and tonight they described Mr. Chávez's latest remarks as proof of his intransigence.
"There is no political will in the government for finding a solution to this conflict," said Timoteo Zambrano, an opposition representative in intermittent talks that have been facilitated by César Gaviria, the secretary general of the Organization of American States. "Chávez does not care about negotiations. To him they are irrelevant," he said. Mr. Zambrano said the opposition would to press ahead to organize a nonbinding referendum on Mr. Chávez's presidency on Feb. 2. However, the country's Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the legitimacy of that referendum, and Mr. Chávez said a legitimate vote could not be organized that quickly. Mr. Gaviria has also been the driving force behind the formation of a group of six countries to try to mediate the conflict between Mr. Chávez's government and the coalition of business, labor and civic groups that have led the 46-day strike.
The group, called the Friends of Venezuela, was unveiled on Wednesday in Quito, where Mr. Chávez and other Latin American leaders attended the inauguration of the new Ecuadorean president, Lucio Gutiérrez. Along with the United States, it includes Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and Chile. Mr. Chávez said tonight that he welcomed the formation of such a group. But he called the six countries announced in Ecuador as "the pre-configuration of a nucleus of what could become" a viable mediation group. Such a group would also have to include other countries from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia, he said.
A State Department official responded tonight that the United States and other countries involved in the initiative believed that the group had already been formed. "As far as we are concerned, this was put together as the result of a lot of discussions in the region, as well as with Spain and Portugal," a State Department official said. Mr. Chávez also raised questions about his willingness to compromise in the context of any eventual mediation, saying "a good group" of mediators, he said, would be one that "took away relevance" from the hard-line opposition groups calling for his ouster.***
…………… Democrats complained that quashing the Cuba initiative was part of a pattern by the new GOP majority to use the massive spending bill to further the Republican political agenda.
………….. Spokesmen for the National Security Council, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the House and Senate majority leaders' offices did not return calls seeking an explanation for the change in the bill.
''The president has been very clear on where he stands on this issue, and the House leadership is in agreement with him,'' said Dennis K. Hayes, head of the anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation.***
CUBA'S CASTRO PRAISES CHAVEZ
Chavez on Sunday accused a U.S.-controlled technology company, Intesa, of joining what he called a campaign of sabotage by the opposition strikers in the state oil giant PDVSA. Intesa, 60 percent of which was owned by the U.S. company Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), had been responsible for running PDVSA's computer systems which Chavez said were deliberately blocked and disrupted in the strike.
"The Intesa executives didn't want to cooperate ... We'll have to rescind that contract ... We're nationalizing the brains of our oil industry," the president said. Opposition leaders said Friday's raids against the drinks firms were an attack on private property. They accuse Chavez of trying to introduce Cuba-style communism in Venezuela. Cuban President Fidel Castro on Sunday defended his friend and political ally Chavez, praising him as a "firm, good and intelligent man who is not going to abandon his people." Speaking in the eastern Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba, Castro said Chavez's striking opponents were being defeated. ***
His first visits abroad were to Baghdad, Tripoli, and Teheran. His friendship with Castro is both personal and concrete: in accordance with a 2000 agreement, Venezuela provides 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, some 53,000 bpd, with 25 percent of the cost payable over 15 years and a two-year grace period-all of which amounts to a vital lifeline to Cuba's dismal economy. Castro has paid a long visit to Venezuela (reminiscent of his three-week visit to Allende's Chile) and provides doctors (which Venezuela does not need) and experts on internal security (which the Chávez regime does need), including some involved in the formation of the "Bolivarian circles," a local copy of Cuba's infamous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Like the CDRs, the Bolivarian circles are basically mobs of the unemployed, unemployable and social misfits paid and armed by the government.
To make his ideological allegiances and the threat he poses to regional stability clearer, Chávez' security services are actively cooperating with the Colombian Marxist-Leninist terrorists/narcotrafficantes of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército Popular (FARC-EP), including providing arms, safe havens and transit facilities-at least according to the Colombian government and high-ranking defectors from the Venezuelan military.
All of this raises a crucial issue regarding the Chávez regime's chances of surviving: the loyalty of the armed forces. Indeed, with his popularity in the 20-percent range among all social and economic sectors of the population, including the poor and disadvantaged he is supposedly championing, it is becoming clearer by the day that Chávez' ability to stay in office, just as Allende's before him, is almost completely dependent on the military.
The problem is that the Venezuelan military has a dislike of Castro and Castroism that goes back to the early 1960s, when Fidel and his sidekick Che Guevara prepared and led a failed insurgency against the recently established democratic government in Caracas. And although in April 2002 segments of the military briefly removed Chávez from power, only to have others bring him back, the country's almost total militarization in recent months-the armed forces have taken over the oil fields, ports, and police armories in Caracas, the transportation and distribution sectors, etc.-increases the stress on an institution that has had no decisive political role since the 1950s. Chávez' habit of appearing in public ceremonies with the generals in his lieutenant colonel uniform, rather than as the civilian supreme commander he is supposed to be by the Constitution, does not help with the military's institutional pride-or speak well for his political judgment.***
While Esher's comment may have been offensive, it was made during a casual conversation to a high-profile writer about his recent column, and shouldn't be the basis for dismissal, Simon said. DeFede, who says the remarks in the column were accurate, said Esher's comments, while offensive, were not unusual in South Florida.***
In May, Varela Project delivered to the assembly boxes of petitions bearing more than 11,000 signatures requesting the popular referendum on political and economic reforms under the current constitution. Explaining the rejection of the opposition effort, Mr. Alvarez said it "went against the very foundation of the constitution, amongst other reasons." "It has already been shelved," Mr. Alvarez added, in the first official declaration that Cuba's one-chamber parliament considered the Varela Project dead.***
International Relations Committee, have even gone as far as to say that Lula may have posed as a moderate in order to win the election and then form, with Chávez and Castro, a Latin American axis. Lula's words and actions since taking power call in question that prediction, and with President Bush paying little attention to the region - the administration did not send high-ranking officials to the inaugurations of either Lula or Gutierrez - the way may be open for Lula to continue carving out a leadership role. "Brazil has always had good diplomats," says Mauro Silva, a union leader attending the six-day Porto Alegre summit, which is due to wrap up tomorrow. "Lula knows how to talk to people. It was a skill he learned as a trade-union leader. He could be a mediator ... and a bridge between [the right and left]."***
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