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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Arab rebellions worrying dictators elsewhere

These are scary times for tyrants. Some of the world's most enduring dictatorships, the ones that looked as though they would never end, have met their demise in recent months. For now, the popular revolts have spread only through the Middle East. Unelected governments in other parts of the world are trying to make sure they're not next.

In countries such as Cuba, North Korea and Burma (renamed Myanmar), unelected regimes are raising the walls as they try to keep themselves safe from the very people they claim have nothing but love for their longtime rulers.

When Egyptian protesters, fed up with 30 years of rule by Hosni Mubarak, forced the president out of power, Cuba's Fidel Castro explained the events as a revolt against America. In his column in the Communist Party daily Granma, the iconic former Cuban president wrote, "After 18 days of harsh battling, the Egyptian people attained an important objective: to defeat the United States' principal ally in the heart of the Arab countries."

Castro defended Libya's Moammar Gadhafi until the end, painting the uprising as a brutal NATO onslaught against the defenseless Libyan people, an example of colonialist Western aggression aimed at grabbing Libyan oil.

Most Cubans have little if any access to the Internet or other sources of nongovernment-controlled media. An American contractor, 62-year-old Alan Gross, was sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison after he was found to have brought equipment to allow Internet access for members of the country's tiny Jewish community.

Information is even more tightly controlled in other dictatorships. In North Korea, televisions come factory-tuned to government propaganda channels, and there is essentially no Internet and virtually no cellphone service. Even so, a report by South Korea's Institute for National Unification says the North reacted to Arab rebellions with a number of urgent measures to prevent contagion. Police stations reportedly were ordered to intensify their ideological indoctrination programs, as additional security forces were deployed to prevent any trouble.

If any significant uprising happened to occur, there's little doubt that Pyongyang, with more than a million soldiers receiving privileges from their loyalty to the state, would quickly use force to suppress it.

Burma's rulers have also shown a willingness to use force to stop protests. Long before the Arab uprisings, young Burmese took to the streets to demand democracy. It happened on Aug. 8, 1988 (8-8-88). The military killed thousands of demonstrators and imprisoned their leaders. Buddhist monks launched another protest in 2007. The government again responded with violence.

Still, the Burmese opposition lives on, and the regime has put on a democracy charade. Fraudulent elections produced a new, supposedly civilian, parliament in fact dominated by the military. The new prime minister is a former general. But opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, after years under arrest, has been freed.

In an interview with the BBC, she told Egyptian demonstrators, "We're all with you." But the government says 0.8 percent of the country has Internet access. Local newspapers offer a parody of the news. Stories from Egypt during the January uprising, for example, included news of secret chambers discovered in the pyramids.

The real news, of course, is that tyrants can be toppled.

No dictatorship lasts forever. For the people who have struggled against all odds, facing imprisonment and worse for demanding democracy, the truth about what is happening to Middle Eastern dictators will slowly filter in. Their rulers already know the truth. They are watching closely, and they are not sleeping well at night.

By Frida Ghitis

Source: The Wichita Eagle

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Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Libya… Is Cuba next?

With the global financial crisis, ongoing Arab Spring and now the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s in Libya, there must be a collective worry for the world’s last remaining dictators and authoritarian governments.

Since free or cheap goods and money from other countries to dictatorships are in short supply and with the Internet being a collective unifying force that appears to be more powerful than many military governments, no leader in any repressive country can wake up in the morning without wondering if their country will be next to see an uprising.

The world’s people are demanding their freedom. People are tired of living under repression and now they can easily organize online.

With the spreading of the Arab Spring, I feel compelled to write this article posing the question… Is Cuba next? First, let me explain my reasons for posing this question.

The Arab Spring Contagion

Samia Nakhoul of Reuters from Beirut writes “The implosion of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s 41-year-old rule will put a new spring in the step of the Arab revolutions and demonstrate once again that these entrenched autocratic governments are not invincible.”

Rami Khouri, a Middle East analyst said this Arab Spring is an important development because “it shows there are different ways in which Arab regimes will collapse. It just shows once you get a momentum developing and the right combination—a popular will for change and regional and international support—no regime can withstand that.”

Today President Obama said “The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator.”

David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy writes about the Conclusions and implications of the fall of Gaddafi.

Many people, including myself, have given up trying to predict the end of the Castro regime but I think we can all agree that it is not a matter of IF the Castro’s Communist regime will end, it is a matter of WHEN it will end. Fidel and Raul must be feeling international political and economic pressures to give the Cuban people more freedoms and human rights respect. Yes, Raul has proposed many economic reforms but VERY FEW political reforms. That might work for China but Cuba is NOT China.

Will the Arab Spring affect US Cuba policy?

Also, worth mentioning here, will President Obama change his Cuba policy from the current approach of allowing more Americans to travel to Cuba to a more, hard-line approach as President Bush tried… and failed. With justice served to Osama bin Laden, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and now with Gadaffi on the run, will President Obama take credit for the downfall of these men and set his sights on the Castro brothers regime? I doubt it but since President Obama wants to win in November 2012, his vision and motivation may be corrupted by hard line, selfish advisers from Miami. Hopefully he will not start taking advice from the selfish politicians like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and Senator Menendez… all who have been wrong about Cuba for their entire political careers. Sanctions do not work against Cuba and they will never work but I’ll save that argument for another article.

I hope President Obama elects to engage the Castro’s rather than to try to alienate them. Regarding Chavez in Venezuela, President Obama should play hard ball with him since he is trying to destroy Venezuela as Fidel Castro did to Cuba.

Cuba - A State Sponsor of Terrorism

Agree or not, Cuba is on the US state sponsor of terrorism list. I think that Cuba’s place on the US state sponsor of terrorism list is more political than based on any facts that Cuba actually sponsors terrorists. Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria are all on the list but North Korea is not? How about Pakistan since that’s where Osama bin Laden was living for years and that government didn’t know about it? What a joke...

Gaddafi coming to Cuba?

On August 4, I wrote an article about the Finance Secretary from Libya making a visit to Cuba. I found it odd at the time and now have to wonder if the Finance Secretary may have been asking Raul Castro if he would accept Gaddafi should he have to flee Libya. Interesting right? I would hope that Raul would have the sense to not allow Gaddafi to seek exile in Cuba.

If Gaddafi did land in Cuba, I see that as being more of a Fidel Castro move than a Raul Castro move. Gaddafi in exile in Cuba would certainly be a financial and cultural disaster for Cuba so I don’t think that Fidel is in charge that much where Raul would let him ruin everything that Raul has started. A younger Fidel would probably welcome Gaddafi and that brings me to Hugo Chavez. I can definitely see Chavez taking Gaddafi as an a “victim of US imperialism”.

Gaddafi coming to Venezuela?

According to The Telegraph, Gaddafi could flee to a country not signed up to the International Criminal Court such as Venezuela or Cuba.

A source told The Telegraph that Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela was looking the most likely destination if Gaddafi were able to, and chose to, flee Libya. Hugo Chavez has condemned NATO operations in Libya as an attempt to seize control of the country’s vast oilfields. “Chavez would take him as a victim of Western Imperialism,” the source said.

As recently as this morning, Chavez is supporting Gaddafi. If Chavez welcomes Gaddafi, you can expect democratic governments to condemn Chavez and bring all kinds of political pressure on him. Chavez will probably love the attention but this ultimately would be terrible for Cuba.

More Freedoms

I am no great political thinker, writer or analyst but I can’t help but to speculate on how people want their freedoms today in a collective way. The internet enables people to be free in many ways. Facebook and Twitter allow people to unite or at least find like minded people and that freedom of assembly can give way to hope for a change in one’s government and ultimately the hope for a better future.

Even in the US, we have the Tea Party (a movement I support) where millions of people have “assembled” online and at the voting booth to demand more freedom and less intrusion from our own government. In the US, we don’t need to take up arms and fight the government with bullets, we fight within the political process of freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of the press and free elections.

Now I know this is a reach but hear me out… Hewlett Packard has decided to get out of the computer manufacturing business. How the hell is this relevant you ask? Apple, Google, smartphones… these are the rebels fighting against the desktop computer and software that is only available on one computer. Today we want to be free from the computer for information and free from software that lives on one device. Microsoft. Are you listening?

Gene Marks of Forbes writes about Google buying Motorola Mobility where he compares Microsoft to the Roman Empire, a truly repressive government. He speculates that Microsoft (sort of a repressive regime since they USED TO own all computer operating systems and force us to do things there way).

He goes on to talk about how Google/Motorola/Android and Apple are freeing people from the desktop computer and Microsoft’s empire so oddly enough, I think his story is relevant to the Arab Spring uprisings. We all want to be free from any authoritarian regime. We are smart enough to make good decisions for ourselves.

So, is Cuba next?

Unfortunately not.

1. The Castros, by design, control all communication in Cuba. All the press is controlled by the government. All the radio and TV is controlled by the government. The Internet is by design slow and restricted. (Don’t let anybody tell you the US Embargo is to blame for any of this). The Castros do not want people to communicate because they know what can happen. When people communicate they can share ideas and find like-minded people and then assemble and then demand freedoms… way too risky for a failed political experiment called, oddly enough “La Revolucion”. Fidel and Raul do not want to have another Revolution in Cuba.

2. The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution is a Cuban government operation which is like having a Resident Assistant in every college dormitory. Every neighborhood has an active CDR staffed with people loyal to the Cuban government. It is their job to spy on their neighbors and to report any suspicious activity to the Cuban government. They get rewarded for reporting all of their neighbors’ “suspect” activities… and you would be surprised what is considered a “suspect” activity.

3. Since most all activities are illegal in Cuba, MOST Cubans have to break some law every single day of their life just to survive. The Castros have locked down the entire country in what many call and “island prison”.

In summary, I wish Democracy minded rebels well in their quest for freedom and democracy and I sincerely hope this ultimately leads to a new Cuban government where the Cuban people can enjoy a political process of freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of the press and free elections.

By Rob Sequin

Source: Havana Journal 

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Is the people who are changing things. Tyrants beware!

The above leaders have all pledged support for Gadhafi. Who's next?

To say that uprising in Libya and Syria is a foreign plot is an insult to people who are fighting for their freedom

Last Tuesday, in a joint statement, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez denounced what they called the West's “imperialist aggression” in Libya and Syria.

It is a wonder they did not try and get Cuba’s retired President Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to endorse their condemnation. They would have certainly obliged. Back in March, Castro’s verdict on the Libyan uprising was that it was an American plot. Just over a week ago Mugabe called NATO “a terrorist group” because of its airstrikes against Qaddafi’s forces.

The notion that the uprisings in Syria and Libya are a Western plot is not merely a gross distortion of the truth; it is a vicious slap in the face of ordinary Syrians and Libyans. They are the authors of the uprisings, not the Americans or the French or the British. The hundreds of thousands of Libyans who rose up against Qaddafi's iron grip on power and the young Libyans fighting, and dying, to free their country did not do so because of a foreign plot. They did so because they wanted to be free and were inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. They took their destiny into their own hands. It has been the same for the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets of Syria's cities, willing to die for freedom and, in some cases, doing so. The suggestion that they are agents in a plot devised by NATO and the CIA is an insult to them and the memory of the thousands who have been killed.

In any event, if it were an American plot, it was one for which the Americans should be congratulated for getting their Middle East policies right for a change and doing something that was genuinely in tune with mass public sentiment.

The fact that men like Chavez trot out this lie says everything about them and their politics and nothing about reality. They have a world view that is hopelessly outdated — a world divided into thieving imperialists and, battling against them, anti-colonialist liberation movements led by themselves. That has long gone. The world has moved on. But it is a vision these dictators are desperate to retain. It is their justification for their dead hand on the levers of power.

The same was said by the ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of the protests in Egypt before he fell; they were organized by outsiders, he said. Qaddafi and Assad have come up with different villains behind the opposition to them — they accuse hard-liners — but the thinking is the same. They need someone to blame for the crisis and refuse to admit they are the problem.

For all their populist rhetoric and their glorification of their “people's struggle” against “imperialism,” it is their own people that the likes of Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi and Assad fear their most. So they come up with nonsense about foreign or terrorist plots.

No one is taken in. The Syrians and the Libyans, like the Egyptians and the Tunisians beforehand, know that their uprisings are their alone, not something cooked up in the Pentagon. Others may support them, morally or with money or even arms and air raids, but the Arab Spring is a genuine Arab affair. Those who have to pretend otherwise show how little they understand the momentousness of what is happening.

Source: Albawaba

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