Russia to help Cuba with production of rifle ammunition

Russia and Cuba are planning to sign a contract on building an assembly line for production of ammunition for Kalashnikov assault rifles, Kommersant business daily reported on Wednesday.

According to a source in the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, cited by Kommersant, an assembly line for 7.62-mm rounds used in Kalashnikov assault rifles and other Russian-made rifles will be built at Cuba’s Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara military plant.

The source said that Russia’s arms exporter Rosoboronexport had already prepared a contract, which includes the license and technology transfer.

The official did not specify the value of the contract but said Russia was hoping to receive a contract in the future on a complete overhaul of rifle ammunition production facilities in Cuba, which were built in 1970s-1980s with the help of Soviet specialists.

A Rosoboronexport source has confirmed the planned contract with Cuba but refused to provide more details on the subject, Kommersant said.

Although the Cuban leadership has repeatedly said it has no intention of resuming military cooperation with Russia after the surprise closure of the Russian electronic listening post in Lourdes in 2001, bilateral military ties seem to have been improving since 2008.

Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov said during his visit to Cuba in 2009 that modernization of the Soviet-made military equipment and training of Cuban military personnel will be the focus of Russian-Cuban military cooperation in the future.

Source: Ria Novosti

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Cuba's smoke-and-mirror reforms

The Castro regime's announcement that for the first time Cuban citizens will be able to buy and sell their own homes has spurred an outpouring of irrational exuberance that real change is finally coming to the island-prison of Dr. Castro. "To say that it's huge is an understatement," one interested observer told the New York Times. "This is the foundation, this is how you build capitalism, by allowing the free trade of property."

Another told Reuters, "The ability to sell houses means instant capital formation for Cuban families ... It is a big sign of the government letting go." Still another writes in the Christian Science Monitor that these are "incredibly meaningful changes."

Such optimism is ill-founded. In fact, it is indicative only of one of two things: either it betrays a brazen political objective (Time magazine: "Why the U.S. Should Drop the Embargo and Prop Up Cuban Homeowners") or it demonstrates just how low the bar of expectation has been placed for what the Cuban people need and deserve that we must celebrate mere crumbs tossed their way by the Castro dictatorship.

Indeed, sweep away the hype and all you see are daunting hurdles as to how this announcement will change in any way the regime's suffocating control of the Cuban population. The new order restricts people to "ownership" of one permanent residence and one vacation home (as if the average Cuban is in any position to own a second home); all transactions must be approved by the State; no explanation is given on how you grant titles to homes that either have been confiscated from their rightful owners, have been swapped multiple times in the underground economy, or which house multiple families because of the severe shortage of available housing; the construction industry remains state-controlled; and the regime itself admits this order reflects no backsliding on the preeminence of the State in controlling the country's economic and political systems.

Beyond these challenges, however, is the fundamental fact that you cannot conjure private property rights, let alone the free trade in property, out of thin air. Those rights exist only where they are rooted in a credible, impartial, and transparent legal superstructure that can protect one's property, settle disputes, and guarantee transactions against the predations of the State. Anything less is a rigged game where the State is the dealer.

This is how the State Department's annual Human Rights Report characterizes Cuba's judicial system: "While the constitution recognizes the independence of the judiciary, the judiciary is subordinate to the imperatives of the socialist state. The National Assembly appoints all judges and can remove them at any time. Through the National Assembly, the state exerted near-total influence over the courts and their rulings ... Civil courts, like all courts in the country, lack an independent or impartial judiciary as well as effective procedural guarantees."


Translation: Cubans' ability to "own" property, trade, or leverage their property to build capital will continue to exist at the sufferance of the State. And what the State giveth, the State can taketh away. The bottom line is that, ultimately, all Cubans will really own is a piece of paper that says they own something.

Rather than empowering individual Cubans, the regime's goal in allowing the open trade of houses is to hopefully siphon more Cuban American money into the island's perennially bankrupt economy. With average Cubans on the island too poor to buy or improve their dilapidated dwellings, their hope is relatives in Miami and elsewhere will remit even more cash to the island attempting to improve their relations' situation. Indeed, the cynicism of relying on Cuban exiles to support the Cuban economy has never bothered the Castro brothers in the slightest.

The Castro regime recognizes the increasing unrest among the repressed and impoverished Cuban people for fundamental change, but they are capable only of prescribing more painkillers rather than the radical surgery that is needed to restore the nation's health. Pretending to devolve more autonomy in individuals' lives is just one more cruelty inflicted on the Cuban people over five decades of dictatorship, a cruelty made worse by the cheerleading from abroad.

By José R. Cárdenas
Source: FP Blog

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Castro's regime battles WiFi

Cuba recently accused the United States of enabling illegal Internet connections in its territory and said several people were arrested in April for profiting from the wireless networks. Granma newspaper said that those arrested, who were not identified, “had for some time and without any legal authorization, been installing wireless networks for profit.”
 
Using satellite connections to the Internet and equipment that was either stolen or brought to the island illegally, they set up a service to receive international telephone calls that bypassed the state telephone monopoly ETECSA. “This activity is financed by the United States, which is where the necessary means and tools come from, evading the established controls,” the newspaper charged. Cuba has restricted access to the Internet, giving priority to universities, research centers, state entities and professionals like doctors and journalists.

Because of the US embargo, Cuba cannot connect to the underwater fiber optic cables that pass near the island, leaving satellite connections with high rates and narrow bandwidths as the main option available to Cuban Internet users. To overcome those limitations, a Cuban-Venezuelan company laid an underwater cable between the two countries in February. It was supposed to have been activated in July, but it has been delayed for reasons the government has yet to explain.

Cuban authorities have previously accused the United States of illegally introducing technology in the island to enable the creation of wireless networks outside state control. One such case was that of US government contractor Alan Gross, who was arrested in December 2009 and sentenced to 15 years prison for bringing IT equipment into the country and delivering it to various people.

“Cuba has every right to safeguard its radio-electronic sovereignty. Those who try to evade it will bear the weight of the corresponding administrative rules and criminal law,” Granma said.

Source: Repeating Islands

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The Unreported Tragedy of Cuba’s Repressive Communist Regime

Cuba—to listen to, watch or read some of the media—is a place that has remained unbowed in the face of impoverishment by the U.S. embargo. Lately what you hear is that it is attempting to make bold reforms not just in the economy, but socially as well (it just allowed gays to marry!) The people still dance.

Only that the reality of Cuba bears little resemblance to the plucky little island narrative. Cuba’s penury has nothing to do with the U.S. decision not to trade with the communist island, but with the fact that the island is communist in the first place. If communism produced misery in Europe and Asia (where one half of Germany and Korea stagnated under repression while the capitalist halves of those countries thrived in economic and political freedom) why would the result be different in the Caribbean?

Communism is a human tragedy, enslaving the soul while failing to produce enough goods for the people trudging under it. Communist countries are large prisons; the borders must be closed lest the people escape. And within that hell there are smaller circles where the repression is intensified. It’s the Gulag, the re-education camp or, in Cuba’s case today, public beatings by government mobs for who speak up their minds.

One would think a journalist would want report on that, especially when—as is the case in Cuba today—the people have finally decided to risk it all and take to the streets to voice their opposition. Reality, however, is again otherwise.

In Cuba today there’s a growing and vibrant protestor movement, headed by a group of women called Las Damas de Blanco (The Ladies in White). Originally organized by the wives of political prisoners, it has now galvanized others to lose their fear and voice their anti-communist sentiments in public.

Their acts are dignified.  They march to Mass on Sunday bearing flowers; sometimes they stand in squares and chant slogans or meet in each other’s houses.

The repression that Cuba’s communist regime has unleashed against these poor ladies is anything but dignified. They have been seized by government goons bused in for the occasion, pushed, scratched and beaten. In one case, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, these ladies were stripped to their waist and dragged through the streets.  In another instance they were bitten. The founder of the movement, 63-year-old Laura Pollan, died last month and her remains were returned to her family only after she was cremated..

We understand—though it still rankles—why journalists posted in Havana are reluctant file stories or broadcast on these events or on the overall mind-numbing reality of communism. If they do, they will be put on the next plane out (a fate any Cuban would relish, of course). As blogger Yoani Sanchez—a rare Cuban allowed to speak her mind, with only the occasional beating—posted last month at Foreign Policy:

“The dilemma of foreign correspondents — popularly called ‘foreign collaborators’ — is whether to make concessions in reporting in order to stay in the country, or to narrate the reality and face expulsion. The major international media want to be here when the long-awaited ‘zero day’ arrives — the day the Castro regime finally makes its exit from history. For years, journalists have worked to keep their positions so they will be here to file their reports with two pages of photos, testimonies from emotional people, and reports of colored flags flapping all over the place.

“But the elusive day has been postponed time and again. Meanwhile, the same news agencies that reported on the events of Tahrir Square or the fighting in Libya downplay the impacts of specific events in Cuba or simply keep quiet to preserve their permission to reside in the country. This gag is most dramatic among those foreign journalists with family on the island, whom they would have to leave or uproot if their accreditation were revoked. The grim officials of the CPI understand well the delicate strings of emotional blackmail and play them over and over again.”

It’s unfair to single out the press, however. The Obama Administration has failed, too, to bring the plight of Cubans to the forefront, even during the current wave of repression against the Ladies in White.

Two reasons are given for the soft approach. President Obama may not want to complicate the case of Alan Gross, a Marylander Cuba has taken hostage. Gross was sent to Cuba in 2009 by the U.S. Agency for International Development to set up internet connectivity for Cuba’s dwindling Jewish community.  He was arrested in December of 2009 and has been sentenced to 15 years for the crime of bringing satellite phones and laptops into Cuba. President Obama also wants to reach out to the Castro brothers.

We at The Heritage Foundation agree with Churchill and Reagan that tyranny cannot be appeased. We have a proud record of standing up to communism, including its Caribbean variety, an effort led by decades by such giants as Lee Edward, the chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

That’s why next week, on Tuesday, Nov. 15, we will have two events on these subjects; the first devoted to Cuba and the second to communism.

At the first event, at 10 am, we will feature a key note address by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., FLA), the Chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as a panel on the latest from Cuba.

In the second event, which follows at 11 am, we’ll look back at the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the USSR, Cuba’s former patron, in a panel featuring Heritage experts and the distinguished scholar of the Soviet Union, Professor Richard Pipes.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a tremendous victory, but the survival of the Castro regime, and the rising tide of authoritarianism in Russia, should remind us that not all the achievements of 1991 are secure. So in addition to celebrating the return of freedom to Eastern Europe, we’ll look at how the lessons and concerns of two decades ago are relevant to today.

By Mike Gonzalez

Source:  The Foundry

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For Cuban Women, Sundays Are for Protest Marches

The Ladies in White march in Havana, Cuba

Relatives of political prisoners in Cuba--many of them women--are fighting to curb abuses they say family members suffer during incarceration. One of the most prominent opposition groups, Ladies in White, meets on Sundays.

Four women stood with anti-government signs in a well-trafficked square in Havana.

They were members of Ladies in White, a group that formed in 2003 after 75 political dissidents were jailed.

Dressed in white--the color of peace--they march to Catholic mass to pray for human rights and the release of relatives and loved ones in prison.

The group has been meeting on Sundays across Cuba for years. But this particular small demonstration a couple of months ago--on Aug. 23 in Havana--proved momentous. When a plain-clothes police officer came to break up the women, some nearby people defended the women and forced the officer to leave in search of backup.

It wasn't the first time bystanders had aided the women, but because it was in such a busy area, it was the first time such an action was caught on video with cell-phone cameras and uploaded to YouTube the very next day.

"It was visible proof, released to an international audience over YouTube, that there is an increasing support for the resistance movement," said Aramis Perez, a leader of the Assembly of Cuban Resistance, based in Miami, Fla.

Often, he said, reports filed from Havana are censored or written by government supporters and describe activist groups as "small and fragmented."

Two days later Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, published a call to stop the repression of the Ladies in White.

Police and government officials have violently attacked individuals and groups of female political dissidents on at least 25 occasions this year--sometimes while the women were engaged in nonviolent protest, and other times while they were with their families at home--according to a report released by the Assembly of Cuban Resistance in August. The report, "Cuba: Violent Aggressions Against Women, Human Rights Defenders," was based on daily communication with activist groups in Cuba.

'A Leading Role'

The resistance movement is carried out by a wide cross-section of Cuban citizens--urban, rural, farmers, students--but "women have been playing a leading role," said Perez.

One of those women is Laura Pollan, the leader of Women and White and the recipient of the European Parliament's 2005 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Pollan died on Oct.14 at age 63.

Another is Bertha Antunez who lives in exile in Florida.

She spoke at a meeting last month on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly along with other human rights activists, including Marina Nemat, Iranian author and former political prisoner; Jacqueline Kasha, Ugandan LGBT rights activist and winner of Martin Ennals 2011 Human Rights Defenders Prize; and Rebiya Kadeer, Uyghur dissident and former political prisoner.

Antunez used the podium to urge the international community to help women in Cuba who are working for human rights.

"These women, today, at this moment, risk their lives, put their bodies before the police violence," she told a roomful of people at the forum, organized by a coalition of international nongovernmental groups. "Their voices shout for freedom while they are brutally beaten and they continue to take to the streets."

Antunez said her activism was fueled by prison visits to her brother, released in 2007, after 17 years of incarceration in various prisons, making him one of the longest serving political prisoners in Cuba.

"Soldiers from the prison savagely beat my brother in my presence and in the presence of two children from our family. We were beaten too. On various occasions I had to resort to a hunger strike to save my brother's life," she told the human rights activists, advocates and supporters.

Motivational Visits

In an interview with Women's eNews, Antunez expanded on how those prison visits had motivated her.

"I got firsthand testimony from many prisoners and there were things I couldn't believe" she said. "I never thought these abuses were taking place in my country. I knew there were injustices outside the prison because we are all victims of those; but this was torture."

A Cuban dissident group, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, based in Hialeah, Fla., reports that Antunez's brother, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, was arrested during a demonstration for yelling that communism was "an error and a utopia." His speech was considered "oral enemy propaganda," the report says. His sentence was extended several times for speaking back to guards and continuing to vocalize his political beliefs.

Antunez and relatives of other family members of political prisoners founded the National Movement of Civic Resistance "Pedro Luis Boitel" to fight abuse in prisons.

The group remains active and continues to organize peaceful protests, sit-ins and hunger strikes at prisons across the island.

This year, the incarceration of two of the group's members and other recent crackdowns on dissidents spurred Human Rights Watch to issue statement in June saying that Cuban laws "criminalize virtually all forms of dissent, and grant officials extraordinary authority to penalize people who try to exercise their basic rights."

By Maura Ewing

Source: Women's eNews

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Just How Specious is Latin America's Revolutionary Rhetoric?

Although Cuba's Fidel Castro, as one of the fathers of revolution, continues to verbally assault the U.S. and essential democratic principles, Cuba is playing it safe and cautious not to stagger too far off the beaten path of a much better informed world audience.

An exception to this apparent rule is Castro's admiration for his protégé, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Castro does not hesitate to wave the much tattered Cuban revolutionary flag when speaking of his admired pupil.

An op-ed column last week by Fidel Castro graphically demonstrated his remaining true moniker of world dictator. He remarked, "Given its exceptional educational, cultural, social development and its immense energy and natural resources, Venezuela is called upon to become a revolutionary model for the world." And with what must have been a monumental attempt to be sincere and appear rational, he added, "I had long conversations with (Chavez) yesterday and today. I explained to him the intensity with which I am devoting my remaining energies to dreams of a better and more just world." (Digital Granma Internacional, Havana, Cuba, Oct. 19, 2011; translation Granma)

While both Castro's have been pandering for world support and U.S. mercy to lift the decades old trade embargo against Cuba, Fidel could not resist his usual venomous hatred of U.S. governance and culture. "... (T)he empire [the U.S.] is already showing the symptoms of a terminal illness.... Saving humanity from an irreversible disaster, these days, could depend on the stupidity of any mediocre president among those who have led the empire in the most recent decades, or even one or another of the constantly more powerful heads of the military-industrial complex which controls the destiny of that country."

While praising the "friendly nations" of Russia and China, Castro said that "together with the peoples of the so-called Third World in Asia, Africa and Latin America, (they) could attain" the goal of saving humanity from capitalism.

Castro's usual heady dialogue always fails to confess the financial and institutional destruction of the Cuban mainland and the horrible sacrifices imposed on the populace by iron-fisted communist dictatorial rule. And the Castro agenda, once again, telegraphed the proverbial passing of the now dimly lit torch of radical rhetoric to Hugo Chavez's narrowing optical imagination.

Furthermore, Castro's revolutionary hysteria appears to have taken a curious back seat with Cuba's silence on the death of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, while having and maintaining a very strong mutual support relationship.

To the verbal rescue of those revolutionaries remaining mute, Venezuela's Chavez stepped up quickly to say, "(Gaddafi's death is) an outrage. We shall remember Gaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr." Owed loyalty could be attributed to Chavez's ego, after having been awarded the "Algaddafi International Prize for Human Rights," a prize granted by the Libyan leader. Cuba's Fidel Castro and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega were also past recipients of the award.

Fidel Castro's fading revolutionary tenure and factual recollection remained to remind that Chavez "is a supremely humanitarian person and respectful of the law; he has never taken revenge against anyone. The poorest and most forgotten sectors of his country are profoundly grateful to him for responding - for the first time in history - to their dreams of social justice."

Considering apparent major voids of factual events in praise by Castro, Chavez and (Nicaragua's) Ortega of each other's human rights achievements, one must question their words and thoughts related to national liberation and social revolution - and then refuse support to the overwhelming majority of Libyans in their battle for freedom against dictatorial rule and public dissent.

Leftist leaders Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Bolivia's Evo Morales have also been noticeably quiet recently, as citizens of their respective countries have amassed in verbal and demonstrative posture in protest.

More than 1,000 Indians opposing a jungle highway in Bolivia's Amazon paraded last week into the capital after a 63-day protest march. Government "baton-swinging police" attempts to break up the marches "fueled charges that leftist President Evo Morales discriminates against Bolivia's Amazon-based indigenous groups."

Ecuador's Correa too has had problems. Last year Correa's own brother, Fabricio Correa, said the nation is being "directed" from Venezuela in an effort to impose "a political model" that is widely rejected. "Now everybody rebels, and students, indigenous people and professors are against a Venezuelan project that nobody wants in Ecuador. A totalitarian model is intended to be established."

Rafael Correa was attacked in 2010 in what he described as "an attempted coup d'état (and ‘kidnapping')" from his own police force. Soldiers subsequently arrived with tanks and submachine guns, opened fire on the police, and a fierce gun battle ensued.

Even with a world "media revolution," that is apparently demonstrating new messages these days, leftist regimes in Latin America are having serious trouble with credibility. Consequently, many are silent - for now.

By Jerry Brewer
Source: Mexidata

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Updating Immigration Policy in Cuba

The mere fact of hearing it on television petrifies me, but listening to the president of my county has been illuminating, because in revolutionary Cuba there are issues so ethereal that they never find an appropriate occasion to be raised “procedurally,” taboos the single mention of which give one goosebumps, themes that cannot be approached without people looking at you, eyes wide with terror.

This is the case with the immigration policy the Cuban government has maintained over the last 50 years, one of the most traumatic and thorny issues in Cuban society. The twisted mechanisms created to impede the free flow of people, whether to travel or to emigrate, have turned what would normally be one more choice in the life of any Cuban, into a real ordeal.

During his speech delivered to the Cuban Parliament on August 1, 2011, Raul Castro announced that work was now underway “…to implement the upgrade of the current immigration policy…” While I welcome the proposal — given that Fidel Castro never announced anything like this in his entire time in government — I quickly curbed my enthusiasm when, a minute later, Raul specified that “…the flexibilization of the policy will take into account the right of the revolutionary State to defend itself from the interventionist and subversive plans of the United States government and its allies, and at the same time will include reasonable countermeasures to preserve the human capital created by the Revolution in the face of the theft of talent practiced by the powerful.”

Stated thus, is this a way of saying he’s going to put the usual patch over the tatters? Suddenly I sensed he was talking about me because, being a doctor, I am subject to the super-punitive Ministry of Public Health Resolution 54 — which places restrictions on the emigration of doctors — which hangs like a guillotine over professionals in my profession.

Until now, the Cuban citizen who desires to travel outside of Cuba has to overcome a whole string of obstacles: obtain a “letter of invitation” from a foreign citizen, getting a visa for the country in question, first having deposited thousands of dollars in a bank — a necessary condition for many countries — and then… ah! then… the terrifying “exit permit,” also called the “white card,” that can be issued or denied at will, and which also includes the “entry permit” — awarded by the immigration authorities of the Ministry of the Interior through Decree/Law 989 of December 5, 1961, which says it all.

This has one obvious consequence for Cubans within and outside the island, who for fifty years have been subjected to a tacit ban on travel abroad, because the above-mentioned mechanism functions like a narrow filter, unbreachable by anyone stigmatized for political reasons and especially anyone whom it is suspected might emigrate if given authority to travel. This monster, treacherously rationed, is subject to thousands of acts of extortion, bribery, corruption and moral degradation involving both officials and citizens throughout the country.

But as this is the land of magical realism, a government that has practiced, for so long, this policy of secrecy with regards to travel, has come to the point of cynically questioning the immigration policies of others. They cite repeatedly, for example, the government of the United States for prohibiting its citizens to travel to Cuba as a consequence of the embargo — which is certainly a violation of the rights of the American people — and even convene meetings with the diaspora where they poetically call for “normalization” of relations with emigrants, including, I suppose, those who left Cuba in 1980 under the rain of their blows and tossed eggs.
At these meetings not a word of apology is heard, nor is the need to reform immigration policy even mentioned; convened by the Cuban government, its representatives lash out, throwing stones from their glass house. When I hear news like this I turn off the television, because I was born with only one liver and my tolerance has its limits.

Shielded behind the argument of the “…legitimate defense against the aggressions we’ve been subjected to for more than 50 years…” — perpetrated by successive U.S. administrations, but for which my people bear no fault — the Cuban government lashed out indiscriminately against our freedom and extended this “immigration” war to the rest of the known universe.

Taking as a given that the U.S. administrations certainly haven’t rested, nor will they, in their attempt to overthrow the Revolution, there are still more than 180 other countries with whom Cuba maintains diplomatic relations, consulates, or full trade. This, if there’s no way we can consider ourselves an “enemy” of all humanity, then why don’t we have the right to travel freely in the rest of the world? Why does this ban remain even for countries with “friendly” governments like China, Bolivia, Ecuador and our Venezuelan ally? Why has this sick control been maintained over something so natural? This shows that the sealed-wall policy marks the hard line of a much wider control strategy. Maintaining this strategy fits like a glove with our condition as an archipelago. Our insularity greatly facilitates the wishes of the Cuban government, which has the luxury of trampling rights that it would not be able to monopolize so fully if we had land borders.

Raul added in his speech: “This sensitive issue has been subject to political and media manipulation over many years in an effort to denigrate the Revolution and create enmity with Cubans living abroad.” As if anyone needed to distort anything in relationship to this policy to show exactly what it is: the glaring and massive violation of a right inherent to every home sapiens on the earth. It is not possible to ethically defend such a posture, nor is it necessary exhaust oneself in any kind of “manipulation” to “denigrate” the guilty, because this policy is already, in and of itself, a sufficiently denigrating manipulation to universally discredit anyone who perpetrates it.

Nor was it necessary to “alienate” anyone from the Revolution, because this same policy led to truly bestial treatment of emigrants; it’s enough to remember those shameless repudiation rallies in 1980, the demonization of those who left, the social stigmatization of all those “lumpen” and “worms,” of all that “social scum” dragged through the streets everywhere in Cuba for their “sin” of emigrating, the confiscation of all their property, the total uprooting…

It was this brutality that kept families separated for five decades, and not just residents of “enemy” territory, but every Cuban resident in any country from Manchuria to Patagonia. This policy is at fault, in great measure, for thousands of lives lost at sea in the last two decades, a trail of death that could have been avoided with a policy supporting the natural flow of Cubans through legal means. No one, given a civilized alternative for travel, would have risked ending up adrift with the sharks.

Hopefully, for the good of everyone, sanity will finally be imposed, because once this policy of perpetual imprisonment is eliminated, maintained against the will of the Cuban people, its immediate and visible consequences will end — the illegal trafficking of people across the Gulf, for example — and then time will heal, bit by bit, its generational consequences — which are chronic and so, deeper — at the same time that the Cuban government casts off this serious stigma. For now, one conclusion is clear: “normal relations” cannot exist with immigration as long as there are not normal legal mechanisms that regulate the migratory phenomenon; as long as this isn’t the case every attempt to approach the subject will be a farce, as long as it is not accompanied by sincere political will.

The time has already come in my country when travel can no longer be entertainment earned by a privileged caste, or a gift rewarded uncritical or servile postures, but rather a strictly personal decision, without consultation, not subordinated to the authority of any minister.

Citizens must be left to their own devices, through binding and unequivocal laws that no authority would dare to break. They must guarantee full respect for the individual right and return to the national the wealth of the diaspora, the whole universe of Cubans beyond the sea that has been separated from us for far too long; a universe that in its time included the poetry of Gaston Baquero, the narrative of Cabrera Infante, or the lyrical prose of Reinaldo Arenas; the music of Sandoval and Willy Chirino,Celia’s lost voice that no longer vibrates with Los Van Van in the Piragua; the arms of Duque and Contreras, who don’t throw against their Cuban team, but are excluded from it in the World Baseball Classic; I speak of the generational painting José Bedia and many others, Cubans like me, who make an infinite cosmology that belongs to us. We all fit under the sky of our unique tricolor Cuban nation, but to realize this miracle will require that we forever swear off the doomed Dictionary of Absurd Analogies and admit, finally, that concepts such as travel and renounce, migrate and betray, abdicate and forgive… will never be synonymous.

There remains, however, the sting of uncertainty: In the event that the leadership of the country is certainly thinking about freeing foreign travel without conditions — something I sincerely doubt — will doctors and other professionals be excluded? Will they take “reasonable countermeasures” — words of a rare exoticism among us — or will they to back to the extremes?

Not to fall into sterile speculation, we can only hope. But for now I recover the hope of seeing old friends again, alienated by this wall of discord for over ten years, when they left for new horizons. Because they decided not to live under this government, the doors of their country closed behind them. I say their country, because that sacred spiritual possession that is one’s homeland is always carried within. These, my beloved beings who seek new paths, convince — I already said the most universal of Cubans — that homeland is also humanity.

By Jeovany J. Vega

Source: Translating Cuba

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Cuba: Anti-corruption campaign hits British golf developer

Directly affecting a core player in Cuba’s ambitious golf development plans and a major port expansion, the top executive of a British investment fund was arrested in Havana amid an investigation into alleged corruption.

The Cuban government has not made any announcement regarding the arrest last week in Havana of Amado Fakhre, of Coral Capital Group Ltd.

The arrest, first reported by Reuters, is part of a broadening anti-corruption sweep against Cuban state company executives and the foreign investors they interact with. The move against Coral Capital comes after long prison terms, in absence, for the Chilean owners of Alimentos Río Zaza and a shut-downs of Canadian trading companies Tokmakjian Group and Tri-Star Caribbean.

Cuban company executives receive tiny salaries, while often handling millions of dollars worth of transactions.

According to Reuters, the investigation of Coral Capital apparently centers on the company’s import business in Cuba, not on its plans to build a $120 million golf resort just east of Havana and a $43 million logistics zone at the port of Mariel.

Set up in 1999 and incorporated on the British Virgin Islands, the London-based company has slowly become a strategic player in the Cuban economy. Coral offers trade financing, manages the Laroc Trading Fund, provides brand representation in Cuba, and has invested in plastics bottle manufacturing, as well as film production and other cultural ventures in Cuba. It also spent $28 million on the Saratoga boutique hotel in the historic center of Havana and led the 2006 buyout of the foreign side of the El Senador joint venture hotel on Cayo Coco; that hotel, managed by Iberostar, is undergoing renovation and expected to reopen in winter 2011.

However, Coral may have the biggest impact yet with its plans to build a 1,200-home golf resort at Bellomonte, just 15 miles from the center of the capital. The 628-acre site at Playas del Este, within the city limits of Havana, is anchored by two 18-hole golf courses; plans include a country club, spa, and 323,000 square feet of commercial space. On a separate 20-acre property, Coral plans to build a 160-room beach hotel and beach club.

Bellomonte is one of four golf projects the Cuban government is expected to approve soon, and Coral was planning a construction start of the $120 million first phase for the end of 2012.

In another key project for Cuban economic development, Coral is a partner in a planned $43 million investment in the Mariel logistics zone just west of Havana. Over five years, Coral has produced a master plan with Dubai-based Economic Zones World. The first phase includes 540,000 square feet of warehousing, light industrial plants and offices.

Source: Cubastandard

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In Memory of Laura Pollan

Today, all of Cuba grieves for the passing of Laura Pollan, the co-founder of las Damas de Blanco (The Ladies in White). For nearly a decade, she helped to stage weekly protests with other wives of political prisoners to press for their release. She never missed a week, regardless of whether it rained or if the island was awaiting the imminent arrival of a hurricane. She also never gave up hope that her voice, and the voices of so many other families, would be heard.

She was 63 years old when she passed from this world on Friday, October 14th. According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, she had been in intensive care for acute respiratory problems since October 7th.

As the head of the Commission said of her, "She was a teacher and a housewife, but she became a leader for civil rights. She has played a fundamental role, without a doubt even beyond winning freedom for her husband."

Indeed, it is true that few can remember a time when Pollan was seen wearing any colour other than white. But, before the Black Spring of 2003 that saw her husband and dozens upon dozens of other Cubans imprisoned on trumped up charges, Laura Pollan was a high school literature teacher who loved cats and plants. She steered clear of politics.

When she dared to speak out against her husband's imprisonment and to call for his release, the Cuban authorities labelled her a "traitor" and a "subversive agent" in the employ of the United States. Even under attacks by paramilitary forces, she and the other brave members of the Ladies in White have continued to march peacefully once a week, a silent and non-violent expression of resistance against a decaying dictatorship that stubbornly clings to power.

IFLRY stands in solidarity with the Ladies in White, the family of Laura Pollan, as well as all those who knew this courageous person, as they go through a difficult and trying time. Her loss is felt around the globe. But, as Laura Pollan passes from this world, she also leaves behind a powerful legacy. The weekly marches of las Damas de Blanco have secured the release of many political prisoners. The decision to continue, to carry on the legacy of Laura Pollan, is a welcome one.

On behalf of the IFLRY Cuba Programme Team, I commit myself to intensifying our efforts, to giving all that we can and all that we have in the struggle for a brighter future for Cuba and the Cuban people. Laura Pollan deserves no less from us.

Paul Pryce

IFLRY Cuba Programme Manager

Source: IFLRY

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Cuba, Venezuela pose subtle, but real dangers to United States

Havana Malecon, summer 1994

This bicoastal discussion with a colleague began on Twitter. We are often — to avoid the absolutes — on different sides of most issues. This one exchange over the weekend was no different.

We were tweeting along, disagreeing respectfully, when she came up with a question that was difficult to answer in 140 characters. What danger do Cuba and Venezuela represent to the United States?

This was not a question of human rights, or of democracy, or even of communism. The question was simple and direct. I was stumped, particularly when limited in space. I have to admit that, in that Twitter conversation, I was check-mated.

This is why I resort to a lengthier format; one in which I am more comfortable in responding to my colleague.

Cuba and Venezuela do represent a serious dangers to the United States, but not directly in a militaristic way.

Cuba did at one point represent a very real danger to the United States — during the 1962 Missile Crisis, when armed with Soviet missiles the world came closer than ever to a nuclear war. That, however, was almost five decades ago — it will be 50 years ago in October 2012. Certainly, that is not the case now.

Still both Cuba and Venezuela, each in its own way, present a real and present danger to the United States today. No, the danger is not of a military invasion, or of terrorists attacking this country, or even of invading other countries in the region. Still, they represent a real and present danger to this country in many other ways.

First, let's start with Cuba. The Cuban regime has repeatedly used its people as weapons against the United States. It has done so at least three times, and could do it again at any point as a way of relieving the pressure from its failed economy. South Florida felt the brunt of its fury in the 1960s when Fidel Castro opened the Port of Camarioca in 1965, forcing the United States to adopt an orderly flow of exiles from Cuba that brought 270,000 Cubans to the United States over the next seven years.

Fifteen years later, Castro did it again when he opened the Port of Mariel and allowed 125,000 Cubans to cross the Florida Straits in less than five months. And in the mid-1990s, he allowed more than 33,000 people to flee on rafts in a few short weeks.

Back in the 1980s, then-Ambassador Victor Palmieri, director of Refugee Affairs in the State Department when Jimmy Carter was president, wrote in an unpublished paper that Mariel had been "an act of war." And this is a weapon Cuba can always use on the United States to test the will of a U.S. president.

Venezuela and Hugo Chávez, Castro's most advanced disciple, represent an enormous danger to U.S. diplomacy in the region. In much the same way that Castro tried to oust regimes in Latin America by helping guerrilla movements, Chávez now is the chief financial officer of the movement to elect socialist leaders in countries to set up an anti-American block in Latin America. For starters, we can talk about Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. All have been helped by Chávez, whose petrodollars feed anti-American sentiment in the region.

Cuba and Venezuela still support Iran, as well as Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who is now probably fighting for his life in the city of Serta against Libyans rebelling against his regime. They also back the Palestinian effort to be recognized as a nation, and quietly oppose the state of Israel.

Furthermore, Venezuela's armed forces have billions in new weapons purchased from Russia to please its generals, who are now heavily Involved — albeit secretly — in the drug trade. As Colombian rebels have lost power, it has moved across the border to Venezuela where its own armed forces supervise the drug trafficking to Europe and the United States.

The elected authoritarian regimes rising in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua are not a direct danger to the United States. They do represent, however, represent a danger to the freedoms of people in the hemisphere. Freedom of the press and human rights are constantly violated in these countries. People live in fear of their governments and thousands have been forced to flee their homeland.

But no, none of this represents a clear and direct danger to the United States; just to the type of government we would like our neighbors to our south to have. So point, set and match go to my colleague on the West Coast. Or does it?

By Guillermo I. Martínez

Source: Sun Sentinel 

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Cubans Escaping Castro's Economic "Reforms"

Cubans continue to "vote" against the Cuban regime

The number of Cubans intercepted at sea trying to reach the coast of Florida more than doubled in the last fiscal year according to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security. In the previous fiscal year, 422 Cubans were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard, while in the fiscal year 2011 (which just ended on September 30th), 1,000 Cubans were caught. Moreover, the number of Cubans who actually reached the U.S. shore increased by 70%, from 409 in fiscal year 2010 to 696 in fiscal year 2011. This is the first rise in illegal Cuban immigration by sea in 3 years according to authorities.

This is yet another sign that the much heralded economic “reforms” announced by Havana aren’t working. The massive layoffs of hundreds of thousands of public employees undertaken by the government of Raúl Castro were meant to be absorbed by Cuba’s almost non-existent private sector. The Communist regime tried to ease the pressure by allowing private employment in 178 economic activities, such as masseurs, clowns, shoemakers, locksmiths, and gardeners. However, as I warned over a year ago, it capped the number of permits for these private activities at 250,000 while also penalizing the new entrepreneurs with stiff tax rates. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner in economics to realize that Cuba’s nascent private sector wouldn’t be able to make room for all of the newly unemployed. What then for these people?

Earlier this year I talked to an official from the U.S. Interest Section in Havana who told me that we shouldn’t be surprised if we see a steady increase of Cubans trying to escape the island towards the United States. Faced with a dilapidated economy, hundreds of thousands of unemployed, and growing social unrest, the Castro regime wouldn’t hesitate in letting more Cubans use the “escape valve” of emigration. We might be seeing the first signs of this.

by Juan Carlos Hidalgo

Source: Cato@ Liberty

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Vietnam presses Cuba on debt

Before increasing investment in oil and construction on the island, Vietnam wants Cuba to find a way to its debt with rice exporter Vinafood and allow the opening of a Vietcombank office in Havana, official daily Viet Nam News reported.

Debt is rarely mentioned in the official communication between the two long-time partner countries.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung urged a Cuban delegation, in Hanoi for routine bilateral talks, to “continue creating favorable conditions for Vietnamese enterprises to invest in the Caribbean nation and to encourage more Cuban investment in Viet Nam,” according to the official daily. Dung suggested the partners should “come up with solutions to settle outstanding debt” and urged Cuba to speed up the permit process for Vietcombank, the government foreign trade bank, to open a branch in Cuba.

“The presence of the bank will help facilitate the financial settlement between Vietnamese and Cuban companies and enable Vietnamese investors to invest in Cuba, particularly in the fields of construction, oil and gas, and trade,” Dung said, according to the newspaper.

Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca, who led the Cuban delegation, said Cuba wants Vietnam to continue to sell rice, and pledged to honor Cuba’s financial commitments by gradually reducing credit debts with Vinafood, according to Viet Nam News. Malmierca said Cuba wanted the partners to agree on a joint development strategy.

Neither Cuba nor Vietnam have released details about the debt.

Vietnam, a close political ally of half a century, has been selling 400,000 tons of rice per year to Cuba under generous conditions, making the fellow Communist nation the island’s main source of the basic staple. Payment terms in the past have included 450 to 540 days and either interest-free or very low interest financing. In September 2010, state company Vinafood 1 signed an agreement to sell Cuba 200,000 tons of rice, including 50,000 tons for a low price of $496 per ton.

Affected by a cash crunch in Cuba, bilateral trade dipped to $250 million in 2010 but is expected to grow again this year.

State oil company PetroVietnam leased an offshore block in Cuban waters and partnered with Russia’s Zarubezhneft, but has not performed an exploration drill yet. Meanwhile, state construction company Housing & Urban Development Corp. (HUD) in 2008 signed a letter of intent with Grupo Palmares to jointly build a 300-hectare golf community near Bauta, just west of Havana. HUD has also been negotiating construction of another golf course resort in Varadero as well as a hotel at Playa Santa Lucía in Camagüey province. In 2009, Vietnam also agreed to set up textile and electronics joint venture production in Cuba.

Dung committed to Vietnam’s continued support of rice cultivation programs in Cuba. Agricultural projects supported by Vietnam have played “a very important role” in Cuba, Malmierca said.

Meanwhile, Cuba wants to introduce new pharmaceutical products to the Vietnamese market, Malmierca said.

Source: Cubastandard

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Project: Help Young Cubans Connect Through Cell Phones

 

Summary

 

By purchasing and shipping new Cuba capable cell phones, we are boosting connectivity among youth in Cuba. With these modern tools, youth in Cuba can start becoming the authors of their own future.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

 

At the end of 2010, fewer than 8% of the Cuban population will have access to cell phones. In other developing countries, cell phones--especially SMS text services--have been used as low cost ways of sharing news about job opportunities, organizing and connecting civic groups, and broadcasting news that could otherwise be censored by the official press. Cell phone access remains limited today, which restricts Cubans' abilities to inform, advise and act on up-to-date information.

How will this project solve this problem?

 

Our project provides pre-paid calling cards and new, Cuba-ready phones for youth on the Island. These young people can use their new cell phones to not only communicate with each other, but also to connect with the world outside of Cuba.

Potential Long Term Impact

 

By increasing young peoples' connectivity, we provide Cuban youth with a means of educating and organizing themselves. In the process, we promote their self-determination and give them a tool for creating positive social change.

Project Message

 

Since I was born in Cuba, I could have been the young man I am today in a country separated from the outside world. I want to see that each day less and less young persons in Cuba are disconnected.
- Miguel Cruz, Cell Phones for Cuba Project Manager

Funding Information

 

Total Funding Received to Date: $5,095
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $17,405
Total Funding Goal: $22,500
 

Additional Documentation

 

This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).

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What about Cuba?

Cuba’s 52-year nightmare is about to end with the death of the last of Latin America’s old time dictators. In the long run it is hard to see how the demise of the old caudillo can be anything but good news, but the short term will be rough. The U.S. has a plan but no doubt so do regional nuisances such as Hugo Chavez.

All day I have been whistling that song from the “Wizard of Oz”. You, know, “ding-dong the witch is dead”. Whether Castro sups with the devil tonight or not, his reign is clearly through. An eighty-year-old guy who probably pees in his pants and cannot remember what he talked about yesterday is already knocking on hell’s door. How will he come back? His brother Raul has taken power.

Raul is known as the ruthless enforcer. He is the one who killed many of the regime’s opponents. He lacks his brother’s charisma, but may be a little more practical. He evidently advocated such radical capitalistic steps as allowing small farmers to sell produce at farmers’ markets during the hard times when the regime lost its Soviet sugar daddy. But after Hugo Chavez stepped in with subsidies to take the place of the Soviets Fidel was able to kill (sometimes literally) the farmers’ markets and roll back other reforms. One possible hope is that Raul will try to go the Chinese route when big brother is out of the picture. Ironic that the best case scenario would make Cuba only just a little more oppressive than China.

Beyond the geriatric Castro brothers, there is no heir apparent. The Castro boys killed, exiled or imprisoned any bright young man or woman with ambitions so Raul is what they get.

We have to remember that Cuba is not a democracy and not even as open a system as the latter day Soviet Union. The strength of a democracy is that it produces lots of leader and independent thinkers. Fidel’s did not go for this sort of idea. He executed even ideological allies if he suspected them of disloyalty and his paranoia made him suspect everyone except his brother. (Those who know say “Fidel only praises the dead,” many of whom he made that way.) That means Cuba has nobody accustomed to making decisions without asking Fidel first. Anyone with power derives it from a relationship with Fidel. When he is gone, so is that connection. The Cuban communist system will collapse, soon after he shuffles off this mortal coil. We need to be ready.

Cuba is a mess. Fidel really believed the Marxist-Leninist crap he was peddling. He opposed individualism, private enterprise, investments or any of the ordinary freedoms we take for granted. Cuba was more of a closed society than most E. European communist regimes under communism. We will find Cuba more like Albania than Poland or the Czech Republic. It is a long road ahead.

In 1959, Cuba was one of the most developed countries of Latin America. Now it is among the most backward. Most of the rest of Latin America shook off its dictators in the 1980s, but the Cuban socialist showboat managed to stay afloat, even listed a bit to the left. It will not be enough to get rid of Fidel and replace Havana’s 1950s vintage automobile fleet. The world will be surprised at the abysmal poverty and corruption when people are free to visit and take pictures all over the island.

The added complication will be Cuban Americans. More than 10% of the Cuban population left the country soon after Fidel se up his socialist paradise on the Pearl of the Antilles. Others followed as soon as they learned to sail small boats or float in inner tubes. Most went to Florida. They were Cuba’s best and brightest. Fidel kept their property, but their skills and intelligence were their real wealth. They took their human capital with them. In the U.S., where such things are valued, they were soon successful. They and their children are still interested in their country of origin. Some want to return. Expatriate skills and money will jump start Cuban development. A similar thing happened in Poland. The difference is that Cuban-American numbers are larger in comparison to the population of Cuba. Cubans in Cuba will probably come to resent these guys. There is a real possibility of a divided society, not only divided between haves and have nots, but also between skilled and skilled not.

Think of it like your rich and smart cousin who goes away to school at some nice place, while you stay at home and endure years of hardship. Then he comes back to tell you what to do. The worst part is that he is usually right.

So after Fidel has gone where the goblins go, below, below, below, expect a messy transition, but ultimately a successful one, this time w/o Myer Lansky (who it turns out was a less successful gangster than Fidel).

Source: China Online News

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Cuban Hip-Hop Artists Arrested along with other activists

Activists marching at Río Verde. Photo courtesy of Hablemos Press.

Cuban hip-hop artists Julio León Fonseca (Julito) and Rodolfo Ramírez Hernández (El Primario) were arrested last Monday during a protest at Río Verde, Boyeros, Havana.

They were beaten and arrested along with other activists, including Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, Yaimara Pérez Mesa, Donaida Pérez Paseiro, René Ramón González Bonelli, Rances Camejo Miranda, Rodolfo Ramírez Cardoso and Yoani García Martínez, when they attempted to march to demand the release of Sara Martha Fonseca, her husband, Julio Ignacio León, and another activist arrested on Saturday.

Video of the protest in Río Verde

El Primario and Julito NO INTENTEN

El Primario y Julito Website

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Yoani Sanchez issues plea to We Have A Dream summit of dissidents

Yoani Sanchez

Yoani Sanchez, the Cuban dissident and world-renowned blogger, called on the phone from Havana today to address the We Have A Dream: Global Summit Against Discrimination and Persecution:

Fortunately for me and many Cubans, technology has permitted us to project our voice both inside and outside the island, to be able to reach those places where our government does not permit us to travel.

But the path to end the censorship and the state monopoly over information is still a very long one for us. Precisely on that topic I want to speak to you today — of the personal civic drama that signifies not being able to significantly access the new technologies and especially the internet.

We are a nation locked in the 20th century; we are still unable today to navigate in cyberspace. We need to pass through an ideological filter, or pay a very high price that is inaccessible for our salaries. Only the very reliable functionaries, the foreigners in our country, or the communicators from our official sector, can have access to internet from their homes. The rest of the Cuban citizens are condemned to an information blockade.

And for that reason, today, at this forum, I want to denounce the crimes against connectivity that the Cubans are suffering, in not permitting us to gain access to other information…the citizens of this country are being victimized by a crime against journalism and mafia.

It is a violation of our rights to be denied knowledge of what happens outside and inside of our national frontiers. Nevertheless, despite these restrictions, human rights activists, non-conformist citizens, and non-conformist artists are finding the way to express and spread their voice.

The magnificent tool of blogs and Twitter have served us as a substitute to the free press that we do not have. From the small country in the east of the country, from the places where no one has ever seen a computer connected to the internet, through cell phones, Cubans are able to tell our story. Messages going out through Twitter are like an SOS, a call for help that is able to leap over the wall of control.

Technology has protected us. We have avoided in many cases that the repression would be excessively harsh with us. Each minute that passes that we Cubans are not permitted the massive access to the technologies, are years and years that we remain behind professionally and as citizens.

International community: please, pressure Cuba, so we could feel like individuals of this millennium, and interact with the citizens of the world on an equal basis. To get information today is to get democracy for tomorrow.

Source: UN Watch

Speech by cuban blogger @yoanisanchez from #Cuba

 

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Jackie Kennedy Held American Marxists Responsible for Castro

JFK and Jackie -1960 

While most of the media have focused on the Jackie Kennedy tapes as they pertain to such figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lyndon Baines Johnson, there are fascinating parts of the conversations that demonstrate the anti-communism of President John F. Kennedy. In this context, Jackie singles out The New York Times for criticism for helping bring Castro to power.

One reason for the lack of attention to these excerpts may be that they shed light on one of the worst performances of the liberal media in the history of journalism. Partly as a result of the coverage of the Castro revolution by Herbert Matthews, the Times correspondent in Cuba, the Cuban people have been saddled with the Castro regime, which once hosted Soviet nuclear missiles targeting the U.S., for over 50 years.

National Review had published a caricature of Castro over the caption, “I got my job through the New York Times,” alluding to how the paper tried to promote classified advertising to job-seekers.

A book by Anthony DePalma, described as the dramatic story of “how a New York Times reporter helped Castro come to power,” referred to Matthews as “The Man Who Invented Fidel.”

Humberto Fontova’s book Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant explains how Matthews’ coverage helped Castro. “This is not a Communist revolution in any sense of the word,” Matthews wrote in 1959. “In Cuba there are no Communists in positions of control.” Matthews added, “Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he’s decidedly anti-Communist.”

Jackie indicates that the Kennedys accepted the view of one of their family friends, Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith, that The New York Times and the State Department were largely responsible for Castro’s rise to power and the fall of Fulgencio Batista.

Smith said that the U.S. government facilitated Batista’s downfall by withdrawing support for his government. But Smith also said that “Until certain portions of the American press began to write derogatory articles against the Batista government, the Castro revolution never got off first base.”

Smith said that Matthews’ columns “eulogized Fidel Castro, portrayed him as a political Robin Hood, and compared him to Abraham Lincoln.”

While JFK had no sympathy for Batista, he thought it was “awful” that President Eisenhower, a Republican, had permitted Castro to visit the U.S. after his seizure of power in Havana, said Jackie, going on to cite Smith’s book, The Fourth Floor, on how the U.S. State Department had paved the way for Castro’s takeover. The title is a reference to the officials responsible for Cuba policy who were on the fourth floor of the State Department.

Smith wrote that the Fourth Floor had a “close association” with the Times’ Matthews, “who gave the impression by his editorial conduct of advocating Batista’s downfall.”

Smith, ambassador to Cuba when Castro took over, spoke at an Accuracy in Media conference in 1979 when Castro’s communist comrades in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, were threatening a takeover of that country. Nicaragua was Cuba all over again, Smith said.

He signed a copy of his book to this columnist by saying, “To Cliff Kincaid in memory of ‘Accuracy in Media.’” It was a commentary on the failure of the Times to accurately depict Castro as the communist he was and the continuing failure by the media to factually describe the nature of communism and its adherents.

“We knew Earl Smith then, who’d been Eisenhower’s ambassador at the time,” said Jackie in the tapes featured in the book Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. “When we were in Florida—that’s all Earl could talk about. Yeah, then Jack was really sort of sick that the Eisenhower administration had let him [Castro] come in and then The New York Times—what was his name, Herbert Matthews?” Jackie adds, “I can remember a lot of talk about it and wasn’t—didn’t even Norman Mailer write something?”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was interviewing Jackie, interjects, “Norman Mailer was very pro-Castro, yeah.”

When Schlesinger noted that Smith had written a book about Castro being a communist and working with the communists, Jackie replied, “Yeah—The Fourth Floor? Well, he was always saying his troubles with the State Department—I remember there was a man named Mr. Rubottom he kept talking about. And how hard it was—warning against Castro and how just it was like, I don’t know, dropping pennies down an endless well. He just never could get through to the State Department. So, I suppose he thought he was a Communist, yeah.”

Roy Rubottom was the Assistant Secretary of State at the time of Castro’s seizure of power.

Smith wrote in his book, “It cannot be maintained that the government of the United States was unaware that Raul Castro and Che Guevara, the top men of the 26th of July movement, are Communists, affiliated with international communism. There was ample evidence to that effect. I have shown in this book that it was impossible for Assistant Secretary of State Roy Rubottom, his associate William Wieland, and the Fourth Floor not to be aware of Fidel Castro’s communist affiliations.”

Wieland, the State Department’s chief of Caribbean affairs and a friend of Herbert Matthews, was accused of being a communist agent. Citing Nathaniel Weyl’s book, Red Star Over Cuba, Fontova says Wieland, who had partly grown up in Cuba, had been active in the Cuban Communist Party in the 1930s and had used the name “Guillermo Arturo Montenegro,” an alias he kept secret when he filled out a national security disclosure form. Wieland resigned in disgrace.

Analyzing U.S. policy, Smith wrote, “To make my point clear, let me say that we helped to overthrow the Batista dictatorship, which was pro-American and anti-communist, only to install the Castro dictatorship which was Communist and anti-American.”

Smith noted that, in a national broadcast on December 2, 1962, Castro declared, “I am a Marxist-Leninist and will be one until the day I die.”

Although JFK authorized an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, Jackie alludes to the failure to follow through with adequate military force. “I mean,” she said, “the invasion in the beginning and then no air strike—half doing it and not doing it all the way…” The result was a slaughter of anti-communist Cubans in the invasion force and a victory for the Castro regime.

By Cliff Kincaid

Source: Gulag Bound

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Cuba After Castro

Social networks and media outlets have been spreading rumors on Fidel Castro's alleged death the past few weeks.. The speculations started in early August after an infected virus-email depicted the Cuban leader lying in a coffin. The fact that Castro has not appeared in public since the Communist party meeting in April 2011, and that he has stopped writing his editorials in the Cuban paper Granma elicited further suspicions about the status of his health. According to an op-ed in the Venezuelan paper El Universal, Castro's health situation is deteriorating; this could be the reason why Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez decided not to go back to Cuba to continue receiving chemotherapy, and instead decided to go to Hospital Militar Carlos Arvelo in Caracas for treatment.

The Venezuelan state-run media, however, assured everyone that Castro is alive and healthy. On September 7, the program La Hojilla, run on Venezuelan Television, aired an interview with a Fidel Castro looking in good shape, putting to rest rumors about his health. "Those who are at this moment enjoying and believing that Comandante Fidel had a stroke, I'm sorry to inform you that he is alive and kicking," said Mario Silva, the program's host. In the interview, Castro joked about the rumors about his death: "They've killed me off any number of times," he said. "The guys who make these predictions make me laugh, as if for me death would be bad news."

Future Scenarios

After the revolutions in the Arab world, some opinion makers have wondered whether Cuba could be also hit by a spontaneous uprising against the regime, in which the economic crisis might deepen, despite policies of liberalization.

The Spanish political magazine Atenea argued that after the death of the Comandante, a possible scenario for Cuba could be the continuation of market liberalization's reforms while at the same time trying to keep alive the ideology of Catroism. Last April 2011, during the 6th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, Raul Castro took further steps towards economic reform and political liberalization. Reuters reports that Castro's brother "in public statements… has accused government cadres of laziness, corruption, neglect and ideological rigidity and has repeatedly urged them to reject old revolutionary dogma and embrace new ways of thinking."

The death of a charismatic leader such as Fidel Castro, along with the pursuit of economic liberalization, could, however, lead to the disappearance of Castroism, and with it, the dictatorial regime -- but not without a price to pay. Raul Castro lacks charisma, historical legitimacy and the needed consensus among the government's elite. This is why the after-Fidel time could be characterized by a power vacuum and instability, followed by uprisings and infighting. If such a situation emerged, there is a risk that Cuba could become a failed state if the international community would not help its transition. Of course, that would totally depend on who did the helping. A failed state in Cuba would be am extremely dangerous scenario: drug cartels could take advantage of the instability on such a strategically-situated island.

According to Atenea, a possible political scenario for the post-Castro-era in Cuba would be a negotiated transition. If Raul Castro will not manage to continue his rule on the island, the Cuban economic and military elite – pressured by the socio-economic crisis – could be willing to share power-quotas with other sector of the society. Following the example of South Africa, where a negotiated transition was led by Nelson Mandela, Atenea suggests that a Cuban dissident could be the means of democratizing the country. Again, the success of that, for Cuba and for the world, would depend on which dissident.

The path thorough democratization will not be easy for Cuba, a country for five decades under the grip of a dictatorship. Unless the Cuban people suddenly start an uprising against the regime, however, the Castro brothers have no intention of giving up power. As Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said, Fidel Castro is more alive than ever, and willing to continue the fight against "Imperialism." Any popular revolt would be instantly repressed by the powerful Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, who now control 60% of the economy. In order to avoid giving up to this privileges, they will defend Castor's regime to the death.

Economic Liberalization

The fake news about Castro's death succeeded in bringing back the question of whether the ideology of Castroism can survive after Castro. Many analysts argue that Catroism is doomed to disappear: the island has no other choice but to liberalize its economy to overcome its current economic crisis. Some cautious measure towards the openness of the market has already taken place in Cuba under the presidency of Fidel Castro's brother Raul. Even Fidel Castro himself admitted that the Communist economic model failed: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he confessed last September, 2010.

As pointed out by a University of New Mexico paper by Mario Rivera, Cuba found it necessary long ago "to put into effect market-oriented policies," especially to address the severe economic crisis triggered by the loss of Soviet support after 1989 that left the country with nothing to sustain it. However, "even the most spontaneous and forceful change is occurring within revolutionary bounds, and… the fits and starts of liberalization policy have simply manifested the tactical agility of Cuban leaders. In this view, the cyclical nature of economic policymaking in Cuba is not cause for concern so much as a corollary of pluralism—of a plurality of intersecting and competing interests within the confines of a socialist civil society. The creation of mixed enterprises, joint ventures, and other hybrid forms of commerce, and the rise of managerial, entrepreneurial, and other social networks in the economy, is an indication of a potential for the development of capable institutions, both public and private, in a democratic direction," the paper noted.

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Source: Hudson New York 

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Why we're not seeing a "Cuban Autumn"

A dissident signs the letter "L" for the Spanish word "libertad" or freedom as he is detained by police during a procession celebrating Cuba's patron saint in Havana, Cuba, Thursday Sept. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano).

Dissidents took heart at the successes of the Arab Spring, but pro-democracy protests aren't gaining traction.

The uprisings that have rocked the Middle East this year appear to be inspiring a new wave of protests on this island.

But while the Arab Spring is still in full effect in many countries, opponents of the Castro government have gained little momentum for a "Cuban Autumn."

In recent weeks, anti-government activists have staged several public demonstrations in Havana and eastern Cuba. News and video clips of the events were posted on social-networking sites and broadcast on Miami television channels.

They show small groups of activists banging cookware, chanting anti-Castro slogans and "Freedom!" until police and state-security agents arrive to whisk them away.

In some of the videos, larger crowds of Cubans stand around watching the protesters, but they do not join in.

The incidents come after a period of relative calm that followed the Castro government's move last year to release scores of imprisoned political prisoners, with the Catholic Church playing a mediating role. The amnesty briefly ameliorated criticisms by Western governments and human-rights groups of Cuba's one-party socialist system and its treatment of non-violent dissenters.

Now activists are once more testing Raul Castro's tolerance for public protest -- and whether the tactics used by tweeting insurgents in the Middle East could spread anti-government sentiment here.

So far: not so much.

One disadvantage often cited by Cuban activists is that they operate at a significant technology deficit. The island is one of the least-connected countries in the world, and though many young people have mobile phones, most lack access to Facebook, Twitter and video-sharing sites because of internet restrictions and scarce bandwidth.

Anti-Castro activists on the island are also viewed suspiciously or with outright hostility by many Cubans, even those who have lost faith in Cuba's socialist model. State media broadcasts frequently show them meeting with U.S. diplomatic officials, depicting them as "counterrevolutionaries," "mercenaries" and "opportunists" who are out to make a buck or get political asylum abroad.

Many others here remain committed to Cuba's system and its revolutionary ideals, even as the free health care, education and other benefits the government provides continue to diminish.

But dissidents also say Cuban authorities are escalating their attacks to intimidate others from joining their pro-democracy efforts. In August, police violence against peaceful protesters reached its highest level in recent years, according to the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, an anti-Castro group that the tracks political arrests and detentions. Nearly twice as many activists have been detained so far this year compared to the same period in 2010, the group said, including 130 short-term detentions over the weekend.

The Cuban government has challenged those charges, accusing the group of padding its lists with fake names.

Castro opponents do not claim the Cuban government stoops to the type of methods that have been used by regimes in the Arab world, where activists are raped, tortured and murdered, and where protests are commonly met by volleys of police gunfire.

But state-security officials can plainly be seen coordinating counter-protests by government loyalists, who often surround dissidents and shout epithets at them for hours on end, sometimes accosting them physically. Security agents typically stand between the two sides to keep things from getting too rough.

When Cubans protest in public spontaneously, as some of the recent videos show, police quickly swoop in to arrest the demonstrators and haul them away, though the activists are often released several hours later.

Cuba's Catholic church, which played a central role in securing the release of more than 100 jailed activists over the past year, issued a carefully worded statement last week that condemned violence against "defenseless" people.

But Church spokesman Orlando Marquez also said in the statement that the Cuban government told the church "no one at the national level" had ordered attacks on protesters.

Cuban state television has aired footage of the protests, claiming the incidents were part of a "media campaign" against the island. It called the demonstrations acts of "public disorder" that were organized by U.S.-supported "mercenaries" and planned in coordination with American officials.

"The goal is to create a climate of tension that will justify aggressions against Cuba," the report said.

While Cuba's economy continues to struggle, there has not been the kind of broader unrest on the island that sparked street protests during the post-Soviet crisis of the 1990s.

Raul Castro has eased state control over the economy since taking over for his older brother in 2006, allowing for new private businesses and pending reforms that would permit Cubans to buy and sell homes and cars for the first time in half a century.

Castro has also encouraged Cubans to vent their frustrations -- within limits -- through established channels like workplace forums and neighborhood meetings. Criticizing state institutions and government bureaucracy is no longer taboo, but organized opposition and public protests -- like the recent demonstrations -- remain out of bounds.

Since most of the dissidents freed over the past year opted to leave Cuba for Spain as part of an arrangement with the Madrid government, the latest rounds of protests may also be an effort by activists to remain visible, particularly to supporters abroad.

Cuba's most famous online anti-government activist, Yoani Sanchez, sends out cascades of tweets from her mobile phone, including information about protests. Her blog, Generation Y, is no longer blocked on the island by the government, but many young Cubans who manage to get online aren't necessarily inclined to use their precious bytes on political sites.

A high-speed undersea data link to Venezuela completed this summer with much fanfare is supposed to come online in the next few months, increasing Cuba's bandwidth by a factor of 3,000. Its debut has been repeatedly delayed, adding to perceptions that Cuban authorities are wary of its power, even though they have already announced it will not be used to deliver private internet access to Cuban homes.

U.S. officials appear to view communication technology as the key to sparking political change on the island. In a leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable that recently surfaced, the top American official in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, urged the lifting of restrictions on software downloads in Cuba, where Microsoft and other American companies have blocked access to comply with anti-terrorism statutes. Such restrictions, Farrar argued, work "directly against U.S. goals to advance people-to-people interaction."

Bringing more technology, wrote Farrar at the time, could "help facilitate Iran-style democratic ferment in Cuba."

By Nick Miroff

Source: GlobalPost

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