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]
The next day, as we waited for a cab, a man idling on a corner befriended us and asked my friend about her injuries. His concern seemed genuine. But when we got into a cab, he hopped in, too. He insisted on staying with us to make sure there would be no more trouble. It wouldn't cost much, he said. When we declined his offer, he shrugged and exited the cab. It was worth a try. Such constant asking must take a toll on the collective soul of Cubans. As neighbors of the United States, they are also reminded ad nauseam of Americans' voracious consumption of the luxuries they are denied by the embargo.***
As early as today, President George W. Bush will spell out what his administration plans to do. The wisest course would leave U.S. policy alone and concentrate diplomatic efforts on nations in Europe and Latin America that now trade with Cuba without regard to its dismal human-rights record.
Tightening the U.S. embargo by making family remittances or direct travel to Cuba illegal would only encourage people to go through third countries to reach family. Most Cuban-Americans want more family contacts, not less.
No, the best U.S. course is to focus on Mexico, Chile, Spain, France, Italy, Canada and all the other countries with businesses on the island. Most of their leaders, including Mexico's President Vicente Fox, already have given the dissidents credibility by meeting with them while visiting the island. European diplomats in Havana, particularly those from Spain, often invite dissidents to partake in their national celebrations. That has put Cuban officials on notice that creating a civil society that values diverse viewpoints is not a U.S.-manufactured plot but a universal goal, spelled out in the United Nations' own declaration of human rights.
If Bush focuses on what's best for the Cuban people, he would mount a diplomatic campaign for the European Union and the Organization of American States to put pressure on Cuba and free the dissidents.
Cuba's crackdown on dissent merits more than world condemnation, more than protests against the communist regime in Spain or France or, as are planned for this weekend, in New York and Washington. The Europeans and Latin Americans wield the big stick of trade if they care to use it. If not now, then when?***
Years later, Turner was still swooning for the strongman. "Everyone in Cuba likes him," he told The Washington Post in 2001. That's clearly the impression you would get from watching CNN. During the first five years of the Havana bureau's existence, ordinary Cubans interviewed by the network were six times more likely to express agreement with the regime than they were to disagree with it. That finding comes from a Media Research Center report examining all 212 prime-time news stories produced by the Havana bureau through the first part of 2002. Other data were just as striking: For instance, Castro and his spokesmen were six times more likely than regime critics to provide soundbites for the network, and only seven of the 212 stories focused on dissidents. (Jordan insists the MRC was "misleading and unfair" because its prime-time figures didn't include every report CNN has filed from Cuba.)
THIS comes as no surprise to people who know Lucia Newman, CNN's Havana bureau chief. "When we heard CNN got a Havana bureau, we knew right away who would be going there," says Paul Scoskie, a retired ABC News producer who first met Newman in the 1980s, when they both were covering Central America. (Newman started with CNN in 1986, as its bureau chief in Managua.) "We used to watch Lucia file her stories from Nicaragua, just amazed at how she reported some events." Adds Peter Collins, a former ABC and CNN foreign correspondent: "There were reporters you could always rely upon to follow the Sandinista line, and she was one of them."***
A Havana court convicted the five men of terrorism for planning to commandeer a plane with a stolen rifle and knives.
The five would-be hijackers, and three accomplices -- who received jail sentences ranging from 20 to 30 years -- were arrested as they prepared to take over a domestic airliner at the Isle of Youth airport on April 10, during a spate of hijackings by Cubans trying to reach the United States.
On April 11, Cuba executed three men who hijacked a Havana Bay commuter ferry with a handgun and knives in an attempt to sail 90 miles across to Florida. [End]
Will the United States keep selling any Cuba assets that arrive on our shores? It's another subplot in this 44-year-old power play. The U.S. government has been auctioning off hijacked planes that arrive in Miami to pay a Cuban-American woman who, by court decree, is entitled to big bucks from the Cuban government for having been jilted by her husband, who turned out to be a Cuban spy who infiltrated exile groups. Talk about government policy wrapped in the wrath of a woman scorned.
Will there be another rafter crisis as Cuba's bankrupt communist economy continues to struggle? Will Cuba's dissident movement be revived after this latest crackdown? Will Europe and Latin America make Cuba accountable for its human-rights violations?***
Now, as the Bush administration prepares its response to Fidel Castro's recent crackdown on dissidents and emigrants, it's confronted by a new dilemma: Cuban-Americans, a key political constituency, are split between the traditional hard-liners and a new generation of moderates like Mas Santos, who has taken over the chairmanship of the CANF. The old guard is lobbying to have the US cut off the funds - more than a billion dollars annually - that Cuban-Americans send to their families on the Caribbean island, and to ban all travel there. The moderates, made up of younger Cuban-Americans and newer migrants from the island, object to both those aims, and would prefer the administration to champion human rights and free speech - and indict Castro as a war criminal.***
`SATISFIED' Another exile, Isabel Roque, broke into tears as she approached a microphone. ''We leave here satisfied,'' said Roque, sister of dissident economist Martha Beatriz Roque, who was given a 20-year jail term in a sweeping crackdown last month. ``He [President Bush] will not abandon us. Rest assured that this president is on our side.'' White House aides said the scheduled half-hour meeting stretched to a full hour. ***
It all happened as a result of the recent executions of three young men, shot dead ''to prevent an American invasion'' -- as if Castro had become an Aztec priest who conjures fate by means of human sacrifices.
Suddenly, the mutiny was directed at García Márquez, the prior of Latin American literature. ''Where is García Márquez's signature, in the face of this limitless cruelty?'' everyone asked. The author first said that he repudiated the death penalty but then made clear his inalterable affection for the dictator.
Murderers also have friends, and García Márquez wasn't willing, like José Saramago, to break with the old tyrant just because of a handful of new victims and some fresh blood on the execution wall.
………………..How can someone justify the huge moral concession of traveling to Havana to support or show affection for the oldest of the Latin American executioners? Very simple: by rescuing one or two captives and, if possible, returning home with them in a suitcase and exhibiting them as a great diplomatic success.
Of the 75 dissidents convicted in hasty trials in April, only independent economist Marta Beatriz Roque is a woman. Every week the wives gather at the church of the patron saint of desperate causes. "We have come to remember our husbands," said Miriam Leiva, wearing a T-shirt imprinted with a photo of her jailed spouse, independent economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe. "This is an act of solidarity and support for their cause."***
Today however, I understand why my dad and so many other good men have been incarcerated. I have cried so much that I felt my heart was breaking into one thousand pieces, I think that I will never again be able to cry, because right now I feel a great emptiness inside of me. Perhaps you are asking yourself why I am directing myself at you.
I will tell you that I do so for many reasons; one of them being the fact that you are a woman, and this allows me to speak to you as if I am speaking to a mother, mothers always understand better the suffering of their children. Another reason is that you are a journalist and a professional, dedicated to the cause of Liberty for our country in your radio program "Monday Communiqués With Cuba", with Mr. Agustin Tamargo, as well as in your other program; but the main reason why I write to you is than on more than one occasion, during your broadcasts, I have heard your voice break and I realize that you feel the anguish of our people, as if instead of living in a free country, you lived here, with us, and suffered with your own body and spirit our pain. That is a miraculous thing, and even difficult to comprehended.***
Reid introduced a Senate Resolution that calls upon the State Department and the Organization of American States to convene a special tribunal that will try Fidel Castro, and other political and military leaders of Cuba who have committed crimes against humanity.
"We cannot allow Castro, Hussein, other dying despots or their associates to hide behind a phony claim of immunity," Reid said in a speech on the Senate floor today. "We must ensure that all of these despicable figures are held accountable for their crimes against humanity. They have willingly chosen to torture and kill their people, and it is time to hold them accountable for that decision. The Iraqi people, the Cuban people and the people of the free world demand and deserve justice."
Since 1959, more than 100,000 Cubans have been persecuted by Castro's regime. Over 18,000 of whom were killed or have disappeared. Just this past March, Castro launched a massive crackdown on leaders of independent labor unions, opposition parties, and the pro-democracy movement that led to the arrest of 80 dissidents. Castro denied these detainees due process and subjected them to secretive trials, after which 50 of them received prison sentences of up to 28 years.
In April, three Cubans hijacked a ferry in an attempt to flee Castro's repressive regime. The Cuban government summarily tried these men behind closed doors and then executed them by firing squad. Journalists have endured especially severe punishment from Castro. In 2002, his government killed 25 journalists and threatened, harassed or detained 1,420 more.
"Fidel Castro has led a tyrannical regime in Cuba that systematically violates basic human rights, including freedoms of expression, association, assembly and movement, and he shows no sign of ending his campaign of terror," Reid said. "101 years ago today, a proud Cuban people declared their independence. Cuban Independence Day should be a celebration of freedom for the Cuban people. Instead, their island has been hijacked by a cruel dictator whose false promises of prosperity have given way to cowardly acts of intimidation. The sad truth is that the Cuban people still are not free."
Since the end of World War II, the United States and the other free nations of the world have agreed that individuals who commit crimes against humanity must be held responsible for their actions. From Nuremberg to Bosnia, to Rwanda and now in Iraq, the international community, under U.S. leadership, has brought tyrants to justice. Reid's legislation ensures preparations would be made to do the same to Fidel Castro. [End]
But Venezuela Production and Trade Minister Ramon Rosales, speaking in Bogota at a meeting with Colombian exporters, added that it will be another two weeks before further details of the payment process will be avaialable.
Up to 800 Colombian exporters and other business leaders who deal with Venezuela are awaiting payments from Venezuela. The exporters are becoming impatient due to four-month-old currency restrictions in Venezuela that have tightened dollar flows, saddling importers there with dollar-debts they are unable to pay.
Also speaking at the meeting was Juan Emilio Posada, president of Colombia's largest airline, Alianza Summa. He said the carrier is owed $3.8 million in Venezuela and that this figure increases $1 million each month.
"What's the purpose of selling in a country that can't pay," Posada told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting. "The moment will soon arrive in which this type of business is unsustainable."
Summa flies to Caracas from Bogota three times a day.
Venezuela's Rosales responded, saying a special plan will be set up so airlines such as Alianza Summa can be paid.
During the first two months of the year, Colombian exports to Venezuela totaled $69 million, down from $233 million in the first two months of 2002. [End]
Radio and TV Martí, which were created in the 1980s to beam news and information to Cuba critical of the socialist government of Fidel Castro, are seen here as just one more example of Washington's continued aggression towards the island. Havana also rejects the celebration of May 20 as Cuban Independence Day, which is observed by Cuban exiles in the United States. On May 20, 1902 the Republic of Cuba was declared after three years of U.S. military intervention. Prior to its withdrawal, the United States inserted the Platt Amendment into the Cuban constitution, authorizing Washington to intervene in the country whenever it deemed necessary.
The White House special envoy for Latin America, Otto Reich, told the press that the transmission of a four-hour program Tuesday formed part of an "initial test phase which will be followed by others." With this gesture aimed at appeasing the most radical faction of the anti-Castro Cuban exile community, Bush limited his May 20 speech to expressing his "hope...for the Cuban people to soon enjoy the same freedoms and rights that we do." ***
As she talks into the early evening, the sunlight dims and the room goes dark. She and two daughters rely on the light from the kitchen since the bulb that hangs over the living room is burnt out and there is no money to buy another. Today Garcia is pulling her life together after her son's execution. She spends most of her days in her small apartment, nursing her chronic migraines on the cot she and her family pulled from a trash bin -- the only furniture in the room save three chairs.
She says she worries about being watched by Cuba's security, and that many of her neighbors have stopped talking to her. Now she plans to apply for an exit visa to the leave the island, saying the "rage in my heart" over her son's execution is so great she can barely breathe some days. Last week, she contacted one of Cuba's leading opposition activists, Elizardo Sanchez, and Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega for help to begin the process.***
Address moved outdoors Thousands of Argentines crowd Buenos Aires boulevard to hear Cuba's Fidel Castro speak***BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - To the cheers of thousands of screaming Argentines, Cuban leader Fidel Castro criticized U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and Latin America in a speech Monday. Castro, who attended Sunday's inauguration of President Nestor Kirchner, was on his first trip to this economically troubled South American country since 1995. Dressed in a dark blue suit and tie, Castro drew shouts of "Ole! Ole! Ole!" and "Fidel! Fidel!" as he spoke for more than two and a half hours outdoors on a crisp winter night.
Castro began by paying homage to Argentina-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who served as one of his top advisers during the 1959 revolution. "He was a wonderful human being, extremely intelligent and cultured, and who had an enormous sense of solidarity," he said. Castro then compared his country's achievements in health care and education to levels attained by the United States in the same field. But his criticism of the U.S-led war in Iraq drew the loudest applause. "We send our doctors, not bombs, to the farthest corners of the world to help save lives, not kill them," he said to a roar of cheers. ***
"The people of Buenos Aires are sending a message to those in the world who want to ride roughshod over our cities and our countries in Latin America," he added in a thinly veiled reference to the United States. The speech was organized by a student group and originally planned to be held in an auditorium at the University of Buenos Aires Law School, but was moved outdoors after thousands swarmed the building to hear Castro speak.***
______________________________
And Saddam and Castro imprison, torture and execute at home. Well, Saddam used to.
Castro's injustice system convicted them of violating Cuba's independence, which is the very thing they yearn for-"independence from oppression," as Cuban founding father José Martí wrote. Perversion of language is to totalitarianism what theft is to kleptomania.
These heroes' real crime was heresy; they defied Castro's archaic absolutism and called for openness and progress. They called for a Cuba where people aren't imprisoned for speaking their minds and are citizens instead of slaves.
Cuba's most famous heretic is currently Oswaldo Payá. He was born in 1952 and endured forced labor camps from 1969 to 1972 for opposing the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. (Castro endorsed the invasion.)
Payá leads the Christian Liberation Movement and the Varela Project, the latter a petition drive that seeks a referendum on human rights, electoral reform, and other issues. The Project bases the referendum on a provision of Cuba's 1976 "constitution," a document that among other things prohibits private media and activities "against the existence and ends of the socialist State."
Payá's international prominence shielded him from April's autos-da-fé, but lesser known supporters of the Project suffer greatly. College students Roger Rubio Lima, Harold Cepero Escalante, and Joan Columbié Rodríguez were expelled last fall for signing the Project; Project activists Jesús Mustafá Felipe and Robert Montero were sentenced to 18 months in February; and Project organizer Hector Palacios was sentenced to 25 years in April.
These are six names, and there are so many more.
While Cuban human rights organizations share a common purpose in emancipating Cuba from totalitarianism, they differ on methods. Dr. Biscet, for example, leads the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights and doesn't support the Varela Project.
"When I was presented with the Project in 1997, I told them that everything that unites the people is good, but that I personally dissented, because I would never honor that [1976] constitution," he said last November. "I will only honor a constitution when a democratic constitution is established that respects the rights of the people of my country." (There's also the contradiction of a referendum on human rights, rights by definition not being subject to a referendum.)
Payá considers economic sanctions diversionary from Cuba's internal crisis, describing them as "not a factor in change in Cuba." Dr. Biscet supports sanctions, however, and made the following analogy in November:
My stand is pragmatic: if you have an individual that abuses his family at home, the right thing to do is to remove the individual from the home, not to give him more money to continue abusing. If the international community had acted with Cuba in the same form that it did with [the apartheid regime] of South Africa, our country would have been free a long time ago.
This tactical diversity is appropriate. Unlike a despot's lackeys, free thinkers aren't expected to be identical. ***
Just a few weeks ago, Castro locked up 75 dissidents and executed three Afro-Cubans accused of hijacking. Yet, even after that crackdown, some lawmakers still call for an end to sanctions against his regime. They claim American goods and tourists will hasten a democratic transition.
That would be a first. Commerce and tourism with the Soviet Union, for example, didn't bring down the Berlin Wall or produce perestroika. Trade with Moscow did change perceptions about Americans in a part of the world unfamiliar with us. But the Soviet dictatorship collapsed when its economy ran out of gas.
Similarly, lifting the current embargo on Cuba would have no effect on Castro. Like other tyrants in history, he lives in a dream world that he forces others to inhabit and sustain. He will insulate it from all threats and do whatever it takes to keep it alive.
Those threats include a vocal dissident movement and a populace that seems more cynical about the old dictator every day. Holding them in check requires money to keep his repressive state running. Tourism and credit from a market the size of the United States could help supply the financing his government needs.
Historically, Castro has liberalized only when forced to do so. He didn't begin tolerating self-employment, for example, until Soviet subsidies to the island dried up in 1991. And he released dozens of political prisoners in 1998 only after Pope John Paul II made a plea before an international audience.
In contrast, commerce, joint ventures and aid money from Canada and other donors have produced no change in behavior. It's easy to see why. Entrepreneurs hoping to sell Cuba something don't want to question Castro's human rights record or the regime's business practices. Castro holds all the cards. Those who won't play his game lose their place at the table.
Canadian and European tourists haven't helped democracy flourish on the island. But they have fueled the growth of Cuba's joint-venture resort industry that supplies the state with hard currency. Like others before them, American visitors would be unlikely to go out of their way to criticize a state where there is no freedom of speech, nor to risk a jail term helping dissidents.
The only valid argument in favor of lifting restrictions is whether the U.S. government is justified in so limiting the freedom of American citizens to travel to another nation. There is a legal basis for establishing such limits in the interest of national security, but the government must continually make a case for keeping them. Right now, Cuba maintains a huge electronic espionage complex directed at U.S. shores, conducts research into biological warfare and sponsors international terrorist groups. So it would seem that current policy wins the national interest debate.***
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.