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]
"You have to have passions and dreams," he said recently, but "life has inexorable laws." He promised to stay on as president "until nature itself decides, not a minute less and not a second longer." His frenetic work schedule still includes statistics-laden addresses that go on for hours; meetings with visiting heads of state, politicians and others from the early hours of the morning to the wee hours of the following day; and personal supervision of the implementation of government programs in education and heath care.
But this ideal society concept does not mesh with a complicated and crumbling reality. After 40 years of communism, more than 11 million Cubans do not have their basic needs met. Housing shortages hit crisis levels years ago. Insufficient subsidized food supplies, combined with low salaries that make purchasing nonsubsidized food prohibitive for most, are dawn-to-dusk frustrations for millions. Limits on personal freedoms also take their toll, and these are just the beginning of problems facing Cuba's revolution. The economy is limping, as a tough US economic embargo, combined with a rigid communist bureaucracy here, less tourism and sliding international prices for top export sectors sugar and nickel, have slammed the brakes on growth.
Castro's regime "tends to substitute reality with its own vision ... in a sort of political schizophrenia, an ideological unconciousness that makes it lose all sense of reality," said prominent dissident Elizardo Sanchez. That "is an enormous obstacle" to potential reforms," he told AFP.
The Cuban president drew fire from nearly all corners abroad when in April a tough crackdown against dissidents rounded up 75 of his political opponents and sentenced them to up to 28 years in prison. Then, three people who tried to hijack a commuter ferry to get to the United States faced swift summary trials and execution. ***
Still, Gutiérrez-Menoyo has demonstrated that he has no use for that industry or for U.S. government help. ''I'm independent,'' he said. ''I'm not manipulated by the (U.S.) Interests Section.'' We'll soon see if he's manipulated by Castro.
His decision to stay in Cuba couldn't come at a more difficult time for the Bush administration. Its Cuba policy is in disarray -- or, more accurately, it isn't configured to deal with current realities. Even Gov. Jeb Bush has said so publicly. ''It's just not right,'' the governor told The Herald, referring to sending Cuban refugees back to negotiated prison sentences.
The White House was worried enough to dispatch presidential advisor Otto Reich to Miami to get disgruntled Cuban exiles back on the GOP reservation.
It will take more than calming words from Reich, who managed to put his foot in his mouth. He trotted out a cockamamie theory about the Castro regime's sending out balseros to force the Coast Guard to return them, to roil Cuban Americans.***
"Oscar doesn't even know what they gave him. We don't even know what kind of treatment they are giving him," Leiva said by phone from Havana. "They are all-powerful, and we are helpless."
As the health of more than a dozen jailed Cuban dissidents like Espinosa deteriorates, U.S. officials and human rights groups say the Cuban government is purposefully denying them proper medical care. Their illnesses range from poor circulation to kidney trouble and gastritis, and "the Cuban authorities don't appear prepared" to provide them with adequate medication, said Eric Olson, Amnesty International's Americas advocacy director. This week, the United States said 75 dissidents arrested this spring are being held in "appalling conditions, with very poor sanitation, contaminated water and nearly inedible food."
"The Cuban government appears to be going out of its way to treat these prisoners inhumanely," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
The United States called on the Cuban government to let independent groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders evaluate the patients.
Doctors Without Borders hasn't had a Cuba program for three years because the group was not allowed to act independently, spokesman Kevin Phelan said. [End]
The shipment, the latest of several summer deliveries, raised to nearly 450 the number of U.S. cattle that have been sent to Cuba since Congress in 2000 exempted U.S. food and agricultural products from the overall trade embargo, provided Cuba pays cash. ***
Cuban President Fidel Castro, right, talks with Spain Prince Felipe during lunch in Asuncion, Paraguay, Friday, August. 15, 2003. Castro and Felipe traveled to Paraguay to attend New Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte swearing-in ceremony. (AP Photo/Dado Galdieri)
Many cheered at the mere sight of the gray-bearded leader and chanted "Ole! Ole! Fidel! Ole!" and "A people united will never be defeated!"
It was Castro's first visit to Paraguay. The communist leader was long considered persona non grata here during the right-wing military dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled from 1954 until 1989. Professing a deep aversion to communism, Stroessner long considered the Soviet Union and Cuba top enemies.***
On Saturday, Castro seemed more the object of celebrity adulation by leftist sympathizers and others in post-dictatorship Paraguay. Turning to the crowd, Castro likened the United States to the "Rome of antiquity" and outlined arguments defending his communist state. At one point, many in the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to the Cuban leader - and he appeared touched, shedding a few tears. ***
But Sanchez, president of the Cuban Human Rights Commission, vehemently denied the allegations as an effort to discredit his opposition to Castro. "It's a colossal lie," the 59-year-old activist told reporters at his home. "It is part of a campaign, like those in the former Soviet Union, to disqualify and silence dissidents," he said.
The book has sown further disarray and suspicion among Cuba's small dissident movement already shaken by mass arrests in March and the surfacing of a dozen infiltrators as witnesses during the trials of 75 members. The dissidents were sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years. Sanchez, who spent 8 1/2 years in jail in the 1980s, said the book entitled "El Camajan" (The Rogue), was a montage of true and fabricated events. But the former Marxist professor who became a dissident in 1977 had difficulty explaining photographs in the book showing him apparently being decorated for his work by a Cuban intelligence service colonel. The pictures show him hugging the officer and toasting the occasion. ***
Satellite-broadcasting experts said at the time that since Tehran could not jam the Telstar-12, due to its stationary position, it made the request for friendly Cuba to do it instead.
But on Wednesday a spokeswoman for the US State Department said that Havana had informed them that the jamming was made by the Iranians in Cuba, using a compound in a suburb of the capital belonging to the Iranian embassy.
According to a source, the Cubans have now shut down the facility and presented a protest note to the Iranian government in Tehran, and the jamming stopped earlier this month. "Cuba informed us on August 3 that they had located the source of the interference and had taken action to stop it," Jo-Anne Prokopowicz of the State Department said. "The government of Cuba informed us that the interference was coming from an Iranian diplomatic facility," she said, adding, "We will be following this up with Iran."
After denying that it was responsible for the jamming but pledging to investigate the US complaints in mid-July, Cuba told the US that it had found the source and that it had acted to stop it, she said.
The news surprised many Iranian observers, doubting Cuban leader Fidel Castro's "innocence" in the affair. "Being a fully police state, it is difficult to believe that the Iranians had introduced the sophisticated jamming equipment into Cuba without the knowledge of the Cuban authorities," Dr Shahin Fatemi, a veteran Iranian political analyst, told The Asia Times Online. ***
Dr. Biscet has written: "I say to my brothers in exile, the international community and the Cuban people that I feel kidnapped only for defending the right to life and the right of all Cubans to live in freedom. What inspires me is alive: God and the great teachers of non-violence present today more than ever. As Martin Luther King said: 'If a nation is capable of finding amongst its ranks of people 5% willing to go voluntarily to prison for a cause they consider just, then no obstacle will stand in their way.'"
That is precisely what Castro fears. The Free World has a moral obligation to pay attention to the victims in his gulag. ***
It has. But Mr Chavez may not have bargained that the rows of lettuce, cucumber and mint now thriving amidst the traffic and high-rises of downtown Caracas would also produce a harvest of controversy.
The controversy has arisen because many of the advisers assisting with the gardening programme are Cubans. And Mr Chavez's opponents, who accuse him of desiring to convert Venezuela into a communist dictatorship similar to that led by his friend, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, suspect that the Cubans are here to do more than teach farming. ***
Castro: U.S. Exile TV Broadcast Will Fail***Cuba calls the broadcasts by TV Marti an attempt by the U.S. government and Cuban exiles to impose their political views. Castro said earlier efforts to thwart the Cuban government's jamming of TV Marti's signal have failed. "Up to now, experience has shown that it has gone badly," Castro said Friday. He commented on the new attempt by saying: "I read something about that and I was laughing. They are always inventing something."
The Miami-based Office of Cuba Broadcasting says that within days it will use a satellite located over the east Atlantic Ocean off the African coast to strengthen TV and Radio Marti signals.
TV Marti, which went on the air in 1990, broadcasts its signal from a balloon tethered to Cudjoe Key in Florida, about 20 miles east of Key West, Fla. But because of Cuba's jamming of the signal, very few people on the island have ever seen TV Marti. Only satellite dishes will be able to pick up the signal. Although Cuba prohibits most ordinary citizens from having satellite dishes, as many as 20,000 families on this island of 11.2 million are estimated to have satellite antenna and reception equipment purchased illegally on the black market. ***
"What they have done is absolutely insignificant given the gravity of the problem," Chavez said, blaming globalization and failed neoliberal economic policies. "Neoliberalism has been defeated," Chavez proclaimed to audience applause. "Now we're going to bury it, starting this century."
Chavez and Castro are strong political allies and close friends. Chavez thanked the Cuban leader for technological assistance that he said helped sharply reduce Venezuela's illiteracy rates. Chavez contends that an "oligarchy" bent on ousting a democratically elected leader has sabotaged his efforts to fight for the poor.
The 13 heads of state and government from Africa and the Caribbean attending the U.N. conference also included the presidents of Zimbabwe, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Mali and Namibia and the prime ministers of Lesotho, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Many of the Africa presidents in attendance hail from countries whose independence struggles were aided by Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Coming to Cuba is to come to a country where there are true friends of Africa," Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said. Mugabe is the target of widespread international criticism. Zimbabwe was suspended for a year from the decision-making councils of the Commonwealth of Britain and its former terrorities because of concerns about human rights and disputed presidential elections Mugabe narrowly won last year.***
The large audience had mostly come to show support for relaxing the current laws against commerce with Cuba. The embargo, its opponents aver, has not brought positive changes to Cuban society. An American economic presence in Cuba, they say, can only be more beneficial than its absence has been.
An abundant irony is that many people who make this argument are those who still sentimentalize Castro. At the San Francisco meeting, the loudest applause went to a speaker who restated the very litanies the regime has employed for nearly fifty years to justify itself. And in the face of conventional wisdom, one must clarify that the embargo law was never meant to cause reform in Cuba. Its purpose was to turn away from a regime that-under the guise of “socialization” -had just stolen about one billion dollars in U.S. properties.
The heart of the current anti-embargo stand is a plea for “constructive engagement.” Its advocates posit that when American citizens come face to face with Cuban citizens, mutual understanding will flower and democratic tendencies will spread. Actually, some of that did happen when Castro’s regime opened the door to family visits by Cuban exiles; but business-to-business relations are much more doubtful, because independent enterprise does not exist in Cuba. American companies would be dealing not with Cuban counterparts but directly-and whether they know it or not-with Castro’s security forces; a prospect that offers no hope of amelioration to ordinary Cubans.
Unlike U.S. companies, Cuba’s enterprises are completely dominated by government officials and informants. Any sign of disloyalty can bring the gravest consequence. Workers have no right to collective bargaining; any attempt to organize among workers is met with ostracism, demotion, dismissal, or with arrest and lengthy imprisonment. Foreign businesses that employ Cuban workers do not pay those workers directly. Payments are made to the state, which keeps nearly all the money and doles out a pittance to workers who receive, on average, about fifteen dollars a month. The fact that even so small an amount is paid in dollars makes the deal attractive to Cubans, who gladly accept jobs in foreign companies.
This setup is a potential boon to offshore investors who can acquire the services of skilled workers without labor troubles, and without concerns about how workers are treated. A further irony-given the extensive support Castro’s regime has enjoyed in the West-is that such arrangements, far from fostering a general welfare, have led to the kind of hyper-exploitation that once occurred in pre-capitalist, feudal societies.
Even if our Western countries have no current experience in this regard, we do have words for a condition in which people must do as they are told, say and think as they are told, work as they are told, consume as they are told, live where they are told-with one’s only chance for a self-determined life residing in escape. One of those words is serfdom; another is slavery. ***
As Colas described it: "I used Fidel's words to protect myself."
He started with more than a thousand books, many of them brought into the country by a friend authorized to travel abroad. Other materials had been provided by the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.
Colas, an intense man who is the son of peasants, said word of his audacious initiative spread quickly. Within 12 days, a counterpart library opened in Cuba's second largest city, Santiago. Before long, all 14 provinces had one.
From abroad, books started coming in from Sweden, the United States, Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Canada, Spain, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
In time, the authorities started cracking down. Colas, who had become a traveling salesman on behalf of his idea, was told to stay home.
His wife was fired from her job as an accounting professor. His two children, then 14 and 8, were shunned by their friends and were warned by school authorities that education in Cuba was exclusively for supporters of the revolution.
Colas applied for political asylum. The family received their U.S. visas in October 2000. The Cuban government granted them permission to leave in December 2001.
But his campaign for independent libraries persists, and he wants the Bush administration to embrace it. ***
European Union legislators passed a joint resolution criticizing "the continuing flagrant violation of the civil and political human rights and the fundamental freedoms of members of the Cuban opposition and of independent journalists."
On Wednesday, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose country holds the EU presidency, told the legislature that the human rights situation continues to deteriorate on the Caribbean island.
In July, Castro said his country would no longer accept aid from the EU, accusing it of backing the anti-Castro policy of the United States.
EU members have already agreed to reduce high-level governmental visits and participation in cultural events on the island.
Since 1993, the EU has provided over $156 million in aid to Cuba. [End]
"They point out that, despite four decades of sanctions against his government, Castro remains in power," Grassley said. "They also contend that U.S. farmers and businesses are losing trade opportunities in Cuba to their counterparts in other countries."
But Grassley also explained that other lawmakers "believe that now is not the proper time to change U.S. trade policies," given that Castro's record on human rights has "become even more egregious during the past year" and that "lifting trade restrictions will in effect reward Castro for his actions."
State Department Under Secretary Al Larsen testified on the problems American businesses face over investing in Cuban markets.
"The reality of the situation is that investing in Cuba remains a very risky proposition," Larsen said. "Proceeds from foreign investment go principally to the coffers of the Cuban state. Any economic benefit derived from tourism or other joint ventures does not filter down to the average Cuban citizen."
Larsen also pointed to the "very serious issue" of Cuban creditworthiness.
"According to its own figures Cuba owes nearly $11 billion to the creditors of the Paris Club," Larsen explained. The business information provider, Dun and Bradstreet, rated Cuba as one of the riskiest economies in the world."
Commerce Department Under Secretary Grant Aldonas pointed out that the State Department has identified Cuba as one of seven countries on its list of terrorist-sponsoring countries.
Aldonas added that lifting the trade embargo would produce minimal results anyway since Castro would likely allow very little to be traded.
Still, the committee's ranking minority committee member, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, said his state would benefit from agricultural trade with Cuba.***
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on Tuesday on an amendment that would deny the Bush administration the funds it needs to enforce the travel restrictions.
"Sunbathers are not going to liberate Cuba nor is upgrading the brunch at Cuba's isolated tourist enclave hotels," Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega told an event at the Center of Strategic and International Studies.
The U.S. government requires licenses to visit Cuba but does not give them to tourists, arguing that tourism dollars strengthen the government without benefiting the people.
A coalition of business organizations and human rights groups have been making a determined push to overturn the embargo and the travel restrictions, saying they have failed to topple Fidel Castro and have provided the leader with an excuse for the island's economic woes.
A similar amendment passed last year in the House by a 262-167 margin but did not pass in the Senate. Embargo opponents say the Senate is now more receptive to a lifting of the travel ban.
Noriega ridiculed the idea that President Bush should follow the lead of a congressional majority and refrain from using his veto power against an end to the restrictions.
"Why else would a president threaten to veto something that he didn't like? If it didn't have majority support in the Congress, you wouldn't have to veto it. You'd just sit back and watch it crash," he joked.
Last week the White House said that lifting sanctions now "would provide a helping hand to a desperate and repressive regime at the expense of the Cuban people" and that "the President's senior advisers would recommend a veto.
Analysts say U.S. policy toward Cuba is heavily influenced by the views of Cuban-American voters, especially those in southern Florida. The most vocal Cuban-Americans support the embargo but the level of support has been slipping over time. [End]
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