Posted on 04/14/2002 4:36:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Currently Castro is enjoying a close relationship with Venezuela's controversial leader, Hugo Chávez. Venezuela is oil-rich and is important to the US, supplying around 13 percent of its imported oil. But Mr. Chávez has presided over the disintegration of his country's economy and speaks with a revolutionary fervor akin to Castro's. He has become a benefactor of Castro, supplying him with subsidized oil that Cuba has needed to keep its economy limping along since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of its massive subsidies.
Informed sources say that Castro is supplying Venezuela with Cuban advisers and military officers who assume fake Venezuelan identities - which sometimes leads to tension between the Cubans and Venezuelan soldiers. This tension may have been connected to a curious fire at Fuerto Mara in the Maracaibo region of Venezuela last month, in which two soldiers died and eight were arrested. All this gives the Bush administration little reason to be fond of President Chávez. Additional cause for concern is Venezuela's long frontier with neighboring Colombia and the prospect of sanctuary in Venezuela for guerrillas battling the Colombian regime.
As for Castro, the commission's report, on which Bush's recommendations are based, says that it is the "historical role" of the US to support the Cuban people's aspirations to hasten the day they can "restore their country to a respected, peaceful, and constructive role in the international community."
The commission is coy about "predicting exactly" what form a transition in Cuba will take. But clearly, the Bush administration is eager for an end to Cuba's internal oppression and its external aggressiveness. ***
''Clearly it is in the Cuban government's commercial and economic interests to have Chávez remain the president of Venezuela,'' said Kavulich, who compares a possible Chávez loss to the end of Soviet subsidies to Havana in 1992.
The loss of Moscow's subsidies, estimated at $4 billion to $5 billion a year in the 1980s, created an economic crisis that forced Castro to adopt some free-market policies, open his doors to tourism and legalize the use of U.S. dollars in the early 1990s.
''Venezuela has clearly replaced the USSR in terms of the commercial and economic element,'' says Kavulich. ``Without Venezuela, Cuba would not be able to maintain its current commercial, economic, and political systems. There would have to be some changes.''
The deep friendship between the two leaders was underscored by Chávez's recent decision to dispatch his brother Adán to Havana as Venezuela's ambassador.
While Chávez has said that Cuban-style communism would not work in Venezuela, he has nevertheless famously exclaimed that the two nations are ``swimming together towards the same sea of happiness.''
Chávez also has pursued a series of other Cuba-style political initiatives, such as land redistribution and the creation of ''Bolivarian Circles,'' pro-government groups of civilians, some of them neighborhood-based, some of them said to be armed.***
I was reminded this week of how Castro so artfully used Mr. Carter when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez took a page from his Cuban mentor's playbook. On Monday, the Carter Center along with the head of the monumentally meaningless Organization of American States, Cesar Gaviria, endorsed Chávez's claims of victory in the Venezuelan recall referendum, rather too hastily it now seems.
The problem was that the "observers" hadn't actually observed the election results. Messrs. Carter and Gaviria were only allowed to make a "quick count"--that is, look at the tally sheets spat out by a sample of voting machines. They were not allowed to check this against ballots the machines issued to voters as confirmation that their votes were properly registered.
If there was fraud, as many Venezuelans now suspect, it could have been discovered if the ballots didn't match the computer tallies. The tallies alone were meaningless. The problem was clear by Tuesday but it didn't stop the State Department spokesman Adam Ereli from chiming in. "The people of Venezuela have spoken," he proclaimed.***
Arias met Cuban Ambassador Carlos Zamora Tuesday morning and handed him a note ordering him to leave. Panama recalled its ambassador from Havana on Monday.
The four men jailed include three Miami exiles and Luis Posada Carriles, an El Salvador resident labeled by Havana as its most wanted terrorist. They were arrested in 2000 in Panama City after President Fidel Castro, visiting for a heads-of-state summit, alleged at a news conference that the exiles were plotting to kill him.
They were cleared of the murder charges and possession of 33 pounds of explosives but were convicted in April of endangering the public safety and given sentences of up to eight years in prison. Posada and the three Miamians -- Pedro Remón, Guillermo Novo and Gaspar Jiménez -- claimed they were in Panama to help a Cuban general who was to accompany Castro and supposedly had planned to defect.
Arias said Cuba had made ''offensive'' allegations that Moscoso was in cahoots with Miami exiles to free the four men. On Sunday, Cuba issued a strongly worded statement threatening to break relations if the four convicts were pardoned.***
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., the sponsor of the initiative, blamed election-year politics for his decision to withdraw the amendment.
''Unfortunately, the timing of this legislation this year does not lend itself to a reasoned and thoughtful debate about our policy toward Cuba,'' he said.
The setback marks a shift from previous years, when a growing number of lawmakers has backed initiatives to roll back travel restrictions. A similar amendment passed the House and Senate last year, but was later dropped in a conference committee under a veto threat from the White House. ***
Sending a buzz through the crowd, the 78-year-old leader appeared to trip as he was walking away from the podium.
In an effort to calm the crowd, Castro took the microphone after a few minutes, saying: "Just so that there won't be any speculation, it seems that I broke my knee." He apologized for any concerns he may have caused for those who care about him and then joked how his spill was likely to make headlines in the international media.
Looking shaken, the Cuban leader of 45 years was taken to the hospital where he said he would probably get a cast, promising to get back to normal as soon as possible.
.....Castro's state of health is considered a state secret and is not discussed by the government.***
Havana's move earlier this week to eliminate U.S. dollars from circulation is a tacit admission of the effectiveness of U.S. trade and travel sanctions and is the Cuban president's response to the United States, they say.
And the change comes at a time when Cuba's economy is also starting to suffer from skyrocketing oil prices and a drop in crucial foreign investment.
Cubans may still hold dollars, but to spend their money in any official establishment, they must exchange their dollars for convertible pesos -- known as chavitos or little pennies. After Nov. 8, any exchanges will be subject to a 10 percent government charge.
The decision to withdraw U.S. dollars from the economy for the first time since the American greenback was legalized on the island in 1993 followed a Bush administration directive in June that limited family visits and remittances to Cuba in an effort to dry up the supply of dollars.
Cuba watchers are expecting the number of family visits to tumble by at least 30 percent, and remittances also could drop substantially.
While these measures won't have the same impact as the end of subsidies from the former Soviet Union, which devastated the Cuban economy starting in 1990, they are still hitting home.
''That has hurt the economy,'' said Miami lawyer Antonio Zamora, who just returned from a visit to the island last week. ``No doubt, it has had a big impact.''……***
"I strongly believe the people of Cuba should be free from the tyrant," Bush told a crowd of supporters here two days before the election, winning the rally's loudest cheers and chants of "Viva Bush" -- long live Bush.
"Over the next four years, we will continue to press hard and ensure that the gift of freedom finally reaches the men and women of Cuba," he said. "We will not rest, we will keep the pressure on, until the Cuban people enjoy the same freedoms in Havana they received here in America."
The crowd packed into the Coconut Grove Convention Center cheered, screamed and applauded, waving pro-Bush signs in English and Spanish and chanting "four more years!"
Like most Republican candidates in Florida, Bush's hopes of victory here rest in large part on the support of the state's sizeable anti-Castro Cuban exile community.
Earlier speakers had fired up the audience with attacks on Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry, with one asking "who do the enemies of America favor?" and then thanking Bush for the global war on terrorism.
The president was to make three stops in this pivotal state before going to another critical battleground state: Ohio, without which no modern Republican has won the White House.
Before Bush arrived in Miami, a small army of speakers -- including Mexican-born actress and singer Lucia Mendez -- who extolled him and attacked Kerry as the crowd swelled to a few thousand.
Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen pointed to elections in Afghanistan and plans for elections in Iraq and said that Bush was committed to "help bring about that same freedom, that same democracy ... to the oppressed and long-suffering people of Cuba."***
Hugo Chavez has made a point of praising, visiting, and embracing the most totalitarian regimes in the world. He was the first head of state to visit Saddam Hussein in Iraq after the Gulf War. He has allied himself closely with Red China, Russia, Iran, Libya, Algeria, Syria, and, of course, Cuba. His administration praises the Communist regime of North Korean madman Kim Jong Il — leader of an economic basket case, as well as a human rights hellhole — as a model for Venezuela’s development. On October 12, 1999, during a state visit to China, President Chavez proudly announced: “I have been very Maoist all my life.” He praised Mao Zedong, one of the greatest mass murderers in history, and let it be known that he viewed Chairman Mao’s program as a model for his own Venezuelan revolution.
Chavez calls his program a “Bolivarian revolution,” claiming inspiration from the popular 19th-century South American independence fighter Simon Bolivar. But it is clearly more Marxist and Maoist than Bolivarian. Recognizing that his hold on power was tenuous, Chavez imported thousands of Cuban agents masquerading as teachers, health professionals, scientists, and sports instructors. Their job is to organize his Bolivarian Circles — the Communist mobs patterned after Castro’s Committees in Defense of the Revolution. At the same time, Chavez has brought in hundreds of intelligence agents from Castro’s DGI (Cuba’s version of the KGB) to help take over and purge the Venezuelan military and police of counter-revolutionary elements that pose a threat to his total consolidation of power.
In 2003, General Marcos Ferreira resigned as head of Venezuela’s border control agency, DIEX, and presented documents and his own eyewitness accounts of the Chavez government’s close cooperation with global terrorist groups. According to Gen. Ferreira, thousands of fraudulent Venezuelan identities were issued to members of known terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, on orders from top officials in Chavez’s government. …***
"This is the first time Cubans on the island and in the rest of the world are working together as one, because Cuba has only one future," Paya said.
But the moderate leader's call to dialogue with the Cuban government has enemies within the recalcitrant anti-Castro exile groups, mostly based in Miami.
"They attack us systematically. They are bombarding this dialogue," Paya said.
Miami hard-liners want a leading role in a post-Castro Cuba, but the transition will be decided firstly by Cubans living in Cuba, Paya said. "This is not a pie to be shared out," he said.
Within Cuba, the fledgling dissident movement remains divided and infiltrated by government informants.
A rival group founded by economist Martha Beatriz Roque, the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, is planning an unprecedented public meeting scheduled for May 20.
Roque, one of the 75 jailed dissidents, has set about organizing hundreds of small groups, such as rights groups and independent libraries, since she was released from prison in July for health reasons.
Paya said his followers would not go to Roque's meeting because it represented only part of the dissident movement, while his effort was aimed at a national dialogue.***
We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America's belief in human dignity will guide our policies, yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.
Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty - though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt. Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals. Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it.
Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world:
All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. ....***
Cuban officials could not be reached for comment, but they have long denounced U.S. government-funded programs as violations of Cuban sovereignty.
Some of the 75 dissidents imprisoned in 2003 were charged with accepting cash and other support from the U.S. government.
Cuban authorities track the aid closely, sometimes infiltrating the U.S.-funded programs in an effort to monitor, disrupt and control opposition activities, activists on the island say.
The debate over U.S. efforts in Cuba is intensifying in Washington and Havana as officials solicit proposals for up to $29 million in projects envisioned by the President's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba.
Since the passage in 1996 of the Helms-Burton Act, the vast majority of funding to support political change in Cuba has been managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has distributed more than $35 million in funds related to Cuba since then.
Projects vary
The USAID assistance has primarily gone to U.S.-based groups for projects ranging from producing and sending pro-democracy literature to Cuba to providing computers, fax machines and other equipment to Cuba's dissident journalists.
USAID officials say their policy prohibits the agency and its grant recipients from sending cash to individuals or groups on the island.
But the decision to prohibit cash payments to the Cuban opposition does not apply to the NED, which describes itself as a private, nonprofit group but is funded largely by the U.S. Congress.***
As Cuban leader Fidel Castro put it recently, the revolution will no longer allow any blandenguería -- wimpiness -- at home to go unpunished.
More and more, the Cuban government is tightening its political and economic controls -- from ordering tourism workers to spy on clients to canceling foreign companies' checkbooks -- in what analysts believe is a campaign largely designed to prepare the island for Castro's eventual death.
''This is a very well thought-out policy. In the long term, it sets up the state for succession,'' said Hans de Salas del Valle, a researcher at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
''It works like this: They tighten the screws politically, improve the economic situation slightly and, thereby, ensure control'' when Castro passes on, de Salas added. The 78-year-old Castro, who has ruled Cuba for 46 years, has suffered a couple of fainting spells in recent years and a fall in which he shattered a kneecap and broke an arm.
The new restrictions hark back to the Cuba of the 1960s, '70s and '80s, when the central government controlled virtually everything, took a dim view of foreign tourists and investors and outlawed the holding of U.S. dollars.
The end of the Soviet Union's massive subsidies forced Havana to open its economy somewhat in the early 1990s, legalizing the dollar, encouraging foreigners to visit and invest and giving managers of state enterprises more leeway to grow profits.
BENT ON CONTROL
But now Castro is bent on regaining control of a population and government agencies that grew accustomed to a measure of independence -- and on cracking down on the widespread corruption and black-market activities that the economic reforms fueled.
Castro emphasized those points in a recent six-hour speech to economists in which he asserted that the Cuban economy had finally come out of its post-Soviet abyss -- in essence arguing that the 1990s reforms were no longer needed.
The U.S. dollar had been recently ''dishonorably discharged'' from circulation -- shops no longer accept them from Cubans -- and control of the economy was shifting back to the the hands of central government planners where it belongs, Castro said.
Cuba's economic ''motor,'' he added, would be revved up not by open-market reforms but by deals with China and Venezuela -- the former ruled by the Communist Party, the latter by President Hugo Chávez, Castro's top ally and a regional economic powerhouse while oil prices remain high. ...***
In Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, author Humberto Fontova reveals for the first time how Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" interview with Juan Miguel (Elian Gonzalez's father) was stage-managed by former Clinton lawyer and friend, Gregory Craig.
According to a Cuban-American translator from the U.S. Treasury Department: "The questions for Juan Miguel were actually fed to Dan Rather by Gregory Craig. After a taping session, Craig would call Dan over, give him some more instructions and exchange papers with him. Then Dan would come back on the set and ask those."
The book reports that during the interview Craig acted like the movie director and even got a bona fide dramatic actor to translate and mouth the responses of Miguel.
Once again, Rather's "reporting" is nothing but elaborate deception……………..***
"The government is not going to change. Castro is deaf. Sanctions have a political value because they demonstrate to the whole world that Castro is a human rights abuser. The EU should not be seeking deeper relations with a totalitarian regime," she said. "The fact that we could meet Mr Michel one day, for an hour, is an isolated phenomenon.
The Cuban government allowed it to take place so the EU would see what the authorities wanted them to see. I don't understand how Mr Michel, who is an intelligent person, can think that he understands Cuba in the short time that he was here." …..***
He also told me that Chávez envisions an axis of power linking Brasilia, Montevideo and Buenos Aires. As it is, these populist governments aren't much for standing on principle and anything anti-Yanqui scores cheap domestic points; some may even aspire to Venezuelan-style authoritarianism. But it is also possible that cooperation with Chávez is part survival technique to ward off his use of bullying militants.
...[T]he revolution must necessarily "break the spine of democracy in the region. That is Colombia."
Colombians are specifically worried about three things. The first is Chávez's overt weapons buildup. War is not considered imminent. But there is a fear that the persistent threat from a hostile neighbor engaged aggressively in arms acquisition will take a toll politically and economically.
The second concern is Chávez support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN). For years Castro has been giving their troops medical care in Cuba. But now Chávez is providing safe haven to them just across the Colombian border....
The third big worry that Colombians have about Venezuelan aggression is the likelihood that Chávez will try to interfere in the 2006 presidential elections. There is good reason to believe that Chávez will choose his Colombian protégé, fund him liberally, and should he "win," help him to consolidate power....
Castro's revolution is alive and active all over Latin America. Where he and his Venezuelan mini-me have not gained the upper hand, they have been successful in fueling violence and instability and discouraging development.
If Mr. Bolton felt, in recent years, that U.S. intelligence in the region was wanting and could end up costing U.S. interests, he was prescient....***
He first got in trouble with the regime in 1998 when he was working at a Havana hospital and he presented to authorities the results of a clandestine study he had done on the government’s use of the chemical substance Rivanol to abort advanced pregnancies. The practice is widespread in Cuba, including its common use among girls as young as 12, who during their government-mandated school time in the countryside without their parents, often become pregnant.
Dr. Biscet has written that the study proved “the murder of infants born alive, denied of medical assistance.” According to his report “the umbilical cord was cut and they were allowed to bleed to death or they were wrapped alive in paper and asphyxiated.” His opposition to these practices made him a counter revolutionary and qualified him for the corresponding government program: He was fired, lost his home and was set upon by mobs that beat him and harassed his family.
In December 2002, Dr. Biscet’s plan to create small groups meeting in private homes to promote human rights landed him in jail again and he received a 25-year sentence. The Web site www.free-biscet.org says that since his incarceration “he has staged protests against Cuba’s violation of human rights at the prison with acts of civil disobedience, such as fasting and holding prayer services.
“Consequently, he was punished by being locked up in solitary confinement for 42 days in an unlit cell.” Cuba’s notorious “punishment” cells have no windows, a hole in the floor for a toilet and measure only about three-feet wide. Yet despite such grim circumstances, Dr. Biscet send messages like this on: “My conscience and my spirit are well.”
Of course, Dr. Biscet’s real crime is that he is an Afro-Cuban who is neither grateful nor obedient to the regime and who answers to a higher power. Perhaps his worst transgression is his courage, which makes him a dangerous inspiration to the many Cubans that are now organizing in small groups.***
For one, Telesur's director, Uruguayan journalist Aram Aharonian, seems more interested in thwarting the United States than in conveying the truth. He calls the United States "the enemy" and the Iraq War "genocidal." In a March interview with La Jornada, after giving nods to Messrs. Castro and Chavez, he promised a free editorial line -- with the exception that he'll broadcast "nothing against regional integration or the struggle against neoliberal globalization." That's Marxist for nothing favoring the United States. He praises Al Jazeera and welcomes the comparison. "Al Jazeera wants to show the Arabian point of view and Telesur wants to show the Latin American point of view," he told the New York Sun in March.
... the president of Telesur's board, Andres Izarra, is also Mr. Chavez's information minister. Incredibly, Mr. Aharonian says that won't affect Telesur's coverage. No wonder the critics are already calling it "Telechavez."
....So far no private investors have emerged. Only governments,... Mr. Castro's 19 percent stake says something, ...Mr. Chavez is using his country's oil money. Next week, Qatari Emir Hamad Bin-Khalifah Al Thani reportedly will meet with Venezuelan officials to talk shop and deepen ties with Al Jazeera…..***
While not abandoning his close relationships in the Middle East, Castro has recently concentrated his support on several groups: the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), where Castro, and his new ally Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, see significant possibilities for success; ETA, the Basque terrorist/separatist organization from Spain, which has found refuge and support in Cuba, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which established its Latin American headquarters in Havana.
American policymakers should pay careful attention to the intricate web of relationships which emerges so clearly from this chronology. It carefully details Castro's involvement with and support for terrorist regimes and organizations during the past four decades. Cuba's geographical location, Castro's continuous connections with these groups and states and the harboring of terrorists in Havana creates a dynamic that requires vigilance and alertness.
It should be emphasized that in addition to violence and terrorism, Castro and his regime, have been for more than four decades, the most vocal and active proponents of anti-Americanism. The often-repeated view in many countries that the United States is an evil power, guilty for much of the problems and sufferings of the developing world, is owed in great part to the propaganda efforts of Fidel Castro. ..........................***
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