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]
In the last month, Cuba has imprisoned 75 dissidents for terms of up to 28 years in a move to stamp out pro-democratic opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro's one-party state. It shocked human rights organizations two weeks ago with the execution by firing squad of three men who hijacked a ferry in a bid to cross the Florida Straits to the United States.
The Cuba Policy Foundation has been a driving force behind recent efforts in Congress to lift the four-decade-old U.S. economic embargo. The group argued the embargo has failed in its objective of promoting democratic change in Cuba and has hurt sales opportunities for U.S. farmers and other exporters. Brian Alexander, former executive director of the foundation, said the disbanded group still believes the United States would benefit from increased economic ties with Cuba. "But we also feel that under Fidel Castro significant change in Cuba will be very hard to come by. I hate to use the phrase 'death watch,' but the man has made it clear that unilateral efforts by the United States at improving relations will be rebuffed and they will be rebuffed violently," he said.
The group's chairman, William Rogers, was a top State Department official for Latin American and economic affairs during the administration of former President Gerald Ford in the 1970s. Alexander said the group received its funding from a number of sources, including companies and individuals interested in seeing the embargo ended. The Cuba Policy Foundation will cease its daily operations, but remain in existence as a corporation, he said.[End]
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Sally Grooms Cowal's group.
……………. Formed in 2001, the Cuba Policy Foundation lobbied lawmakers, encouraged them to visit Havana and held town hall debates on Cuba policy around the United States. TOP LEADERS At the forefront was Sally Grooms Cowal, a former deputy secretary of state for inter-American affairs under former President George Bush. Cowal is better known in Miami for arranging a place to house the father of Cuban boy Elián González during his stay in Washington.
Among the others heading the foundation: William Rogers, chair, former assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs under President Gerald Ford, who pushed for normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations in the 1970s; and Diego Asencio, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia and Brazil.***
So what's to be done? Simply extending the U.S. embargo from here to eternity is unlikely to achieve much, but neither is it consonant with the lessons of history that rewarding criminals stops crime. At the least, voices must rise in fierce condemnation, and from all over the civilized world. The dissidents must be encouraged, their tormentors excoriated. The free world must not let go of its outrage, but beat the drum regularly, turning to other sanctions if effective, humane ones can be found, while insistently seeking the release of all Castro's political prisoners and the demise of his government by thuggery.***
…………………. After meeting with dissidents, including the Gisela Delgado, whose husband Hector Palacios was handed a 25-year jail term, Harkin said "it is clear that the best course of action now is moderation not escalation, engagement not isolation." At that meeting on Tuesday evening at the Hotel Nacional, the dissidents recognized the waiter serving drinks as one of the witnesses the government produced at Palacios' trial to testify that the dissident had met with U.S. legislators at the hotel. ***
…………………..While the arrest and conviction of the dissidents has angered organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the decision to summarily execute the three hijackers has alienated even some of Cuba's left-leaning allies. Criticism has come from such diverse sources as the French Socialist Party, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and the prominent Uruguyan writer Eduardo Galeano. "In the hard road it has traversed in so many years," Galeano wrote in the April 18 edition of Mexico City's La Jornada, "the revolution has lost the wind of spontaneity and freshness that has driven her from the start. I say it with pain. Cuba hurts."
Meanwhile, the flood of international condemnation has left many Cubans fearful for the future. The New York Times has reported that President Bush is preparing to issue a statement on Cuba's crackdown, including a stern warning that the United States will not tolerate another mass exodus of Cuban rafters to the United States, as happened in 1980 and 1994. The Times has also reported that the Bush administration is considering a retaliatory move that would revoke Cuban-Americans' ability to send money to their families on the island, and end direct flights to Cuba from the United States.
Such measures risk worsening the acute poverty on the island while doing little to affect the political situation, says Gerardo Sanchez, of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation, the independent Havana organization that monitored the dissidents' trials. "The economic impact would be tremendous," he said, adding that he himself receives cash sent from relatives in the United States. "That's what many people here depend on to survive." ***
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.***
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.***
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.
In 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. "The objective of delivering this letter, addressed to Fidel Castro, to the Ambassador was not achieved, but all the press present at the site bore witness of the violent attacks by these purported diplomats", said Valdés.***
"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. ***
Back home in Britain he was still married to first wife Elaine and already seeing the woman who would become wife No.2-striking Palestinian Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyadwe. This week Galloway's political career will be officially terminated when he has the Labour Party whip withdrawn in the Commons for calling Tony Blair and George Bush 'wolves' over the attack on Iraq. The move will mean he can no longer use Labour Party offices and speak from the Labour benches in the House of Commons.***
A smaller group of supporters of Castro and Chavez, many carrying posters of Castro, confronted them. The two sides exchanged taunts and insults, then started throwing stones and bottles. Police fired tear gas to separate them. The topic of communist-ruled Cuba, where Castro is facing a storm of international criticism over his crackdown, is highly sensitive in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Chavez, a former paratrooper who was first elected in 1998, is a close friend and political ally of the Cuban leader and has turned his oil-rich country into the Caribbean island's single biggest trading partner.
Venezuela ships oil to Cuba under a preferential energy accord and several hundred Cuban doctors, coaches and sugar specialists work in the South American country. Foes of Chavez accuse him of trying to imitate the Cuban leader and of seeking to install Cuba-style communism in Venezuela. Venezuela was the only country in Latin America to vote with Cuba this month against a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution calling on the communist state to accept a visit by a U.N. envoy to probe alleged abuses. The resolution was passed overall by 24 votes to 20, with nine abstentions. [End]
Inspired by Cuba's system of urban market gardens, which has been operating for several years, left-wing President Hugo Chavez has ordered the creation of similar intensive city plots across Venezuela in a bid to develop food self-sufficiency in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. "Let's sow our cities with organic, hydroponic mini-gardens," said the populist former paratrooper, who survived a brief coup a year ago and toughed out a crippling opposition strike in December and January. Inside Fuerte Tiuna military headquarters, soldiers of the crack Ayala armored battalion supervised by Cuban instructors have swapped their rifles for shovels and hoes to tend neat rows of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, coriander and parsley.
Since his election in late 1998, Chavez has drafted the armed forces to serve his self-styled "revolution" in a range of social projects, from providing medical services to running low-cost food markets for the poor. Besides the military vegetable patch in Fuerte Tiuna, the government has also planted a 1.2 acre (half-hectare) plot in Caracas' downtown Bellas Artes district. The market garden, denominated "Bolivar 1" in honor of Venezuela's independence hero Simon Bolivar, is being run by an agricultural cooperative set up in a nearby poor neighborhood.
PUBLIC SKEPTICISM The sight of sprouting vegetables nestling in concrete-lined earth beds behind wire fences in central Caracas causes many passers-by to stare. "This might be all right to provide for a family but not to feed a country," scoffed Diego Di Coccio, a 40-year-old unemployed businessman. "They should use the money to unblock the drains," said chemical technician Hector Gonzalez, pointing to the piles of rubbish in the streets around. Skeptics question why resource-rich Venezuela should need urban vegetable gardens when it has hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farming land, much not in use. ***
"This is so arbitrary for a man whose only crime is to write what he thinks," his wife, Blanca Reyes, said in an April 8 New York Times article. "What they found on him was a tape recorder, not a grenade."
The Clinton administration - which has so much to answer to history for - promoted "people-to-people" trips to Cuba, which have continued. The American tourists and the participants in educational and cultural exchanges will not be able to engage in person-to-person visits with Raul Rivero, and other Cubans whom the Castro "justice system" has turned into non-people. Not even such an eminence as Spielberg will be free to show Rivero videos of Holocaust survivors.
Mr. Spielberg, immersed in pre-production of his next film, was not available for comment on Mr. Castro's latest eradication of dissenters. But his representative, Andy Spahn of Dreamworks, told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Castro had been "provoked" to order the crackdown, because the head of the American mission in Havana, James Cason, had been meeting - can you imagine? - with Cuban dissenters in their homes last February.
And if an American official had, however discreetly, been meeting with Jews in Berlin who still hoped that the world would come to their rescue - if it only knew of the design for the Final Solution - would that diplomat have exceeded his responsibilities to humankind by "provoking" Hitler?***
***The United States is now at a crossroads.
First, the United States must buck what is becoming a trend in the Western Hemisphere; namely, that democratic means are being manipulated by leftist leaders to preclude the United States from affecting or supporting "regime change," lest it appear to subvert the democratic process. To this end, the removal of Fidel Castro from power could provide a benchmark against which all pro-Castro leaders can judge their future behavior.
Moreover, a congressionally approved regime change in Cuba could at this moment accomplish three other important tasks: One, Fidel Castro's absence would have a detumescent effect on those leftists who exhibit a penchant for Castro-ism. Two, a positive regime change would eliminate Fidel Castro's ideational inspiration, which serves as the greatest source of intellectual, ideological, and political anti-Americanism in the region. Three, the United States would destroy one of the most powerful logistical infrastructures for supporting terrorist movements. Cuba's military and intelligence advisors would no longer be able to assist anti-U.S. regimes or terrorist organizations.
Second, The United States must demand that Brazil abandon any material attempt to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Any evidence to the contrary should result in devastating consequences. On the terror front, the United States can test the veracity of Brazil's numerous pledges to fight terrorism by requesting an unequivocal denunciation of the FARC and an exhibition of the appropriate legal measures to support this rhetorical decision.
Third, without Fidel Castro's intellectual, ideological, and political influence, Hugo Chavez would assume the status of an unimpressive despot akin to Saddam Hussein's Yasser Arafat. At that point he might be more easily contained until a future date when the people of Venezuela can be encouraged to elect someone more competent to lead that great country.
Unless the United States government adopts a coherent Western Hemispheric strategy to counter the influence of the Castro- da Silva-Chavez tripartite, one can expect to witness the growth of this "axis" and a concomitant rise in terrorist related activity in the region. As an example of things to come the Washington Times reported on 7 April 2003 that Al Qaeda terrorists had plans to enter the United States illegally through Mexico to carry our attacks against various targets. It is wholly conceivable that these terrorists could one day commence operations from secure locations in the Western Hemisphere and given enough time they may even attain a nuclear weapons capability courtesy of an anti-U.S. regime.
To borrow a phrase from the Bush Doctrine: "…the United States cannot remain idle while dangers gather."***
POPE URGES CLEMENCY ``In the face of these facts, His Holiness charged me with asking Your Excellency to give full consideration to a significant gesture of clemency toward those convicted, with the assurance of knowing that such an act will contribute to create a climate of greater detente to the benefit of the real Cuban people.'' In an introduction to the letter released by the Holy See, the hijackers were described as dissidents, not criminals.
In his speech on Friday night, Castro said his administration was aware of the political consequences it would face but had no choice in adopting ''the measures,'' referring to the arrests and executions. The three-hour speech explained the government's action by detailing alleged provocations incited by the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, and U.S. support for a democratic reform initiative known as the Varela Project and another dissident movement known as the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba.
Citing the war in Iraq as an example of U.S. aggression, Castro warned that Cuba could not be conquered with soldiers, military tanks or aircraft. He said that ''principal leaders'' in the country would never surrender and that even if they were killed, thousands of other ``combatants would occupy their posts . . . and generation after generation would fight for Cuba and against occupying troops.'' ''When our country is occupied,'' Castro said, ``The war will not end; rather, it will just begin.''
Castro said that the Bush administration ``is seeking an inevitable mass exodus [out of the island] . . . to serve as a pretext for military aggression against Cuba.'' Cuba always has blamed U.S. immigration policy for spurring illegal departures because U.S. law allows most Cubans who reach U.S. soil to qualify for permanent residence. But in his speech, Castro suggested that a string of hijackings over the last year is part of a U.S. plot that began to unfold nearly eight months ago with the arrival of James Cason, chief of the U.S. Interests section in Havana.***
The cash sent to families in Cuba by relatives in the United States is estimated to total as much as $1 billion a year and is vital source of income for many Cubans coping with economic hardship in Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Powell told the Council of the Americas that Castro had condemned himself by refusing to let a U.N. human rights envoy visit the island to investigate. "Why would Castro reject scrutiny if he has nothing to hide? We know the reason. He has everything to hide," he said.***
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