Posted on 06/11/2002 3:07:53 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro called on Monday for a massive march against U.S. interference in his island nation which he said was aimed at destroying his socialist revolution.
Castro called a "giant march" for early Wednesday in Havana. Other marches will be held throughout Cuba in support of constitutional reforms proposed by pro-government groups which appear to be a response to dissident proposals backed by the United States seeking political freedoms.
"I propose the following: let's call a march on Wednesday to support the document presented here," Castro told a meeting of leaders of pro-government worker, student and farmer organizations.
The meeting followed rallies Castro has led for three Saturdays in a row to reject calls by President Bush that Cuba allow freedom of speech and open elections.
In policy speeches on Cuba on May 20, Bush called Cuba a "tyranny" and vowed to maintain a four-decade-old trade embargo against Cuba until its one-party state undertook reforms. Bush also announced increased aid for independent groups in Cuba, including grants for the children of political prisoners.
Speaking to 780 leaders of social groups, who chanted "Fidel, Fidel" and revolutionary slogans, Castro said Bush's speeches to anti-Castro exiles in Washington and Miami were "insulting and threatening."
Cuba is listed by Washington as a state that sponsors terrorism for harboring Basque separatists and maintaining links with Colombian guerrillas, charges Havana denies.
Bush's hard-line policy on Cuba was seen as an attempt to head off increasing pressure in the U.S. Congress from big business to lift trade sanctions and allow Americans to travel freely to the Caribbean island of 11 million people.
Havana's stepped-up anti-American rhetoric comes midst deepening economic troubles brought on by low world prices for sugar exports, oil shortages and a big drop in tourism, Cuba's main source of hard currency.
Hardship has been widespread on the island the size of England since the collapse of its ally the Soviet Union a decade ago.
Castro said that in Havana alone at least 1 million people were expected to participate in the event Wednesday, adding that such a march "has never been done before."
"It will put our organizational ability to the test ... to organize the march in all of the country's provincial capitals, in all of the country's municipalities," Castro said after an evening gathering of the national leadership of the government's popular support organizations.
The announcement comes one month after activists delivered more than 11,000 signatures to Cuba's National Assembly, demanding a referendum for broad changes in the island's socialist system. The government has given little hope for its success.
During a subsequent visit in mid-May, former President Jimmy Carter mentioned the Varela Project signature drive by name - the first time most of the island's 11 million citizens had heard of it - during a live and uncensored television address to the Cuban people.
Seen as the biggest homegrown, nonviolent effort in more than four decades to push for reforms in Cuba's one-party system, the proposed referendum would ask voters if they favor civil liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly, the right to own a business, electoral reform and amnesty for political prisoners.
Before Castro spoke Monday, hundreds of representatives of the popular organizations, which form the pillars supporting Cuba's one-party system, unanimously agreed to ask the National Assembly to consider approving the proposed amendment. The proposal asks lawmakers to ratify that "Cuba is a socialist state of workers, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all, as a unified and democratic republic, for the enjoyment of political liberty, social justice, individual and collective well-being, and human solidarity."
In addition, it asks that the amendment to Cuba's 1976 constitution state that "the political will of the people is that the economic, political and social regimen consecrated in the constitution of the republic is untouchable."
It also asks lawmakers to "ratify that economic, diplomatic and political relations with any other state are never negotiated under pressure, threat or pressure of a foreign power."
Castro said the marches are an extension of speeches he's made the last three Saturdays in eastern provincial capitals, responding to President Bush's May 20 address reiterating his promise not to ease up on Cuba trade or travel restrictions until the communist country undertakes deep reforms, including the holding of free and competitive elections. [End]
Too bad it didn't make bigger headlines when Castro offered intelligence bases to the Chinese recently. The Cuban missile crisis, one remembers, was mostly of Castro's doing.
You want to march in the streets, El Heftie Windbag? March in your shorts.
Bump!!
Castro's Cuba Bad for Business ***Cuba's much-touted Foreign Investment Law No. 77 is, like the Shakespearean comedy, much ado about nothing. It fails to resolve problems such as the restricted liquidity of investments, high risk for foreign exchange losses and reversibility of investment agreements.
The experience of foreign investors in Cuba is replete with horror stories. In 1995, when the "liberalizing" law was passed, the Cuban government unilaterally canceled Spanish utility company Endesa's investments in hotels. Mexico's Grupo Domos found itself arbitrarily slapped with enormous back-tax penalties, and Canada's First Key Project Technologies' proposal to build a $350 million power plant was stolen by the Cuban government and shopped around elsewhere.
Cuba last year devalued its currency by 18 percent and fell behind in debt payments of $500 million to private banks and firms in France, Spain, Japan, Canada, Chile and Venezuela. (This does not include the repayment of government trade credits to France for the last four years and the principal on foreign debt of $35 billion.) With export prices down in nickel, sugar and tobacco, along with a fall in tourism and remittances from abroad, Cuba will remain an economic basket case. Doing business in countries that violate labor rights is not considered good business practice.***
March 2002 - Forbes.com The World's Billionaires - "Royal Flush" - Castro - $100 Million.
Cuban Economic Downturn Deepens Island's Hardship - Duh, it's the communism.***HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist Cuba's economy has been battered by falling tourism, low export prices and shortages of oil that will make life harder on the Caribbean island, experts and business sources said on Monday. President Fidel Castro's government plans to shut down almost half of Cuba's inefficient sugar mills, which cannot compete at today's rock-bottom world price of about 5 U.S. cents a pound. The drastic measure will leave tens of thousands of Cubans out of work in Cuba's largest industry, which for decades was the backbone of its socialist revolution.
Cuba's pressing need for hard currency to pay for essential imports of food and oil led the government to jack up prices for consumer goods sold indollar shops by up to 30 percent. The price hikes angered Cubans, most of whom earn local pesos but need dollars to buy a fan, a refrigerator or other basic consumer goods in the state-run shops. "It is going to be a very hot summer in Havana, which can only mean more push for migration and more social tension," said Damian Fernandez, an expert on Cuba at Miami's Florida International University.***
Glad you mentioned South Africa, because the boycott against that country was responsible for the end of apartheid. The embargo is designed to force Castro to democratize; it was further enacted as a response to the billions stolen from thief Castro in american property "liberated" by the commies. He is more desperate than ever. God save the embargo! Watch and see the long-suffering rise up soon in Cuba. A glimpse of defiance was seen in the refusal of thousands to be "hand-chosen" by El Heftie Windbag to watch the exhibition american baseball games. As much as they would have liked to see them, thousands refused the tickets, hand-picked by Fidel, because they did not like the control.
The only "more of the same" is your defeatist drivel.
I disagree with your defense of the South Africa embargo. SA was in good economic shape despite the embargo. The regime collapsed because its own internal contradictions and, quite simply, because of the courage of De Klerk. The embargo had little to do with it. Rhodesia is in some ways an even better example of the folly of embargoes. Embargoes were in well from the beginning of Ian Smith's government from beginning to end. All the while Rhodesia was one of the most prosperous countries in Africa.
one very small Christian denomination...SDA---
smaller than the population of Cuba---
does over a thousand times more---million times better...
in the world medical mission--profession than his 3rd world commie cross hack-butchers!
In marketing/liberalism Castro is a 'loss leader'...something 'free' to get you in the shop---before he sucks your brains out!
Back with another!
Reminds me of the clinton legacy...tunnel---devilcrats!
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