Carter to Cubans: Embrace freedom

"My nation is hardly perfect in human rights," Carter added, pointing out that many U.S. citizens are in prison, "and there is little doubt that the death penalty is imposed most harshly on those who are poor, black or mentally ill."

HAVANA -- Former President Carter, in the first-ever broadcast speech by a U.S. leader to the Cuban people, urged Cubans to embrace a fledgling democracy movement on their communist island and asked Americans to embrace Cubans as friends.

The speech, delivered in Spanish at the University of Havana and broadcast live and uncensored on television and radio throughout the island, was the first time many Cubans had heard of the Varela Project. The yearlong movement resulted last week in 11,020 Cubans petitioning their National Assembly for free elections, freedom of speech and assembly and the right to own their own businesses.

"When Cubans exercise this freedom to change laws peacefully by a direct vote, the world will see that Cubans, and not foreigners, will decide the future of this country," Carter said.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, who had publicly challenged Carter the day before on what he considers the pitfalls of democracy, sat in the front row of the university's auditorium, but did not speak during the event. Afterward, he took Carter to an all-star baseball game, where the ex-president was given the honor of throwing out the first pitch.

In his 20-minute speech, which came in the middle of a six-day visit to Havana, Carter said he wants the people of the United States and Cuba to share more than a love of baseball and music.

"I want us to be friends, and to respect each other," Carter said. He called on the U.S. Congress to lift a four-decade-old trade embargo against Cuba and allow Americans to travel here unrestricted. And he said the two countries should create "a massive student exchange" between U.S. and Cuban universities.

He asked Cubans to work with Americans to resolve longtime property disputes involving businesses and homes of Cuban exiles who fled to the United States after Castro's 1959 revolution.

He also called on Cuba to reach out to Cuban exiles in South Florida, who remain angry over their abrupt departure from the island and the division of their families.

"We need to define a future so they can serve as a bridge of reconciliation between Cuba and the United States," he said.

In Washington, President Bush said Tuesday he did not view former President Carter's trip as hindering his own approach to Cuba, which includes maintaining sanctions against Castro's regime.

Bush, however, did suggest that Carter stick to speaking on the need for human rights in Cuba.

"I think that's important in Cuba, a place where there is no human rights," Bush said.

Bush, who will outline his policy toward Cuba on Monday, said his message will be that "Fidel Castro is a dictator and he is repressive and he ought to have free elections and he ought to have a free press, and he ought to free his prisoners, and he ought to have free enterprise."

Meanwhile, the controversy continued over administration claims that Cuba may be developing biological weapons.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer acknowledged Tuesday that the U.S. had no concrete evidence that such a development was occurring, but stood by the administration's stance that Cuba might have the expertise to do so.

Fleischer said that since March administration officials have expressed "concerns about Cuba's limited offensive biological research and development."

Carter said that in his briefings with U.S. officials, he asked if there was any evidence that Cuba was sharing information with other countries that could be used for terrorist purposes.

In his speech to the Cuban people, Carter said that while the United States and Cuba have been at an impasse, "the world has been changing greatly." He noted that in 1977, when he became president, only two democracies existed in South America and one in Central America. Today, almost every country in the Americas is democratic.

But Carter said he was not speaking of the U.S. definition of democracy, but rather of the definition accepted by Cuba since it signed a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. That declaration is based on simple premises, Carter said: "All citizens are born with the right to choose their own leaders, to define their own destiny, to speak freely, to organize political parties, trade unions and non-governmental groups, and to have fair and open trials.

For more than 25 years, he said, America has struggled to guarantee "the basic right of universal health care," which all Cubans have.

"Still," he said, in the United States, "guaranteed civil liberties offer every citizen an opportunity to change" laws they don't like.

Carter said the right also is guaranteed under Cuba's constitution, and is being tested now by the Varela Project.

While polls show that most Americans want to lift the trade and travel restrictions against Cuba, Carter said, they also believe that the Cuban people need to address the issues of economic and political freedom.

It will be interesting to hear with President Bush says when he speaks out on this issue this week. However, the credit for any change brought about by Bush's hardline policy toward Castro will be forever reported as coming about by Carter's visit. Just like Reagan not being credited with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Left will never give the embargo credit for the collapse of Castro's regime. The collapse of the Soviet Union laid the groundwork for the cracks in Castro's 43 year tyranny and Bush's continued hardline will complete it's destruction.

Here's more on the Carter-Castro Fest.

May 15, 2002 - Carter Addresses Democracy on Cuban TV JOHN RICE, AP - [Full Text] HAVANA (AP) - Jimmy Carter addressed Cubans in an unprecedented hour of live, uncensored television - telling them that their country does not meet international standards of democracy and repeatedly promoting a grass-roots campaign for greater civil liberties.

It was not immediately clear if Carter's Tuesday night speech, broadcast across Cuba, would turn out to be more than a dramatic goodwill concession by Cuban President Fidel Castro toward the former American president who did more than any other to try to ease tensions between their two nations.

For many Cubans, it was the first time they had heard such a public airing of opinions that differ from their government's views. For some it caused discomfort, but many expressed optimism about Carter's hopeful words on improving relations.

"On the day that relations between our countries are normalized, Cuba should thank Carter," said Gisela Frances, a 36-year-old office worker. "He has planted an important little seed."

Castro, who had been shunned by current and former American presidents for four decades, welcomed Carter with a promise that he could meet anyone, say anything, and speak his mind over Cuba's state broadcast network.

Democracy, Carter told viewers in heavily accented Spanish, "is based on some simple premises: all citizens are born with the right to choose their own leaders, to define their own destiny, to speak freely, to organize political parties, trade unions and non-governmental groups and to have fair and open trials."

"Your constitution recognizes freedom of speech and association, but other laws deny these freedoms to those who disagree with the government," Carter added.

He balanced comments on Cuba's system with a call for the United States to end the embargo on U.S. trade and travel that for 40 years has failed in its expressed purpose of bringing change in Cuba.

"Our two nations have been trapped in a destructive state of belligerence for 42 years, and it is time for us to change our relationship," he said.

"Because the United State is the most powerful nation, we should take the first step," Carter added, urging "unrestricted travel between the United States and Cuba," and an end to the U.S. embargo.

In a historic moment of domestic promotion for Cuba's dissident movement, Carter praised the Varela Project, which gathered 11,020 signatures to appeal - under Cuba's constitution - for a referendum on rights such as free speech, free assembly and freedom to create a business.

"When Cubans exercise this freedom to change laws peacefully by a direct vote, the world will see that Cubans, and not foreigners, will decide the future of this country," said Carter.

For many Cubans, it was the first time they had heard of the Varela Project. Given an opportunity to comment, pro-government members of the audience attacked the project as a U.S. plot.

Castro offered only lukewarm applause as Carter finished his speech, but smiled as Carter expressed gratitude for the chance to speak.

In a sign that there were no hard feelings, Castro accompanied Carter in throwing out the first ball at Cuba's All-Star baseball game, and sat beside him for four innings - often chatting and gesturing in ways that suggested they were discussing baseball.

While many Cubans said they had listened to Carter's words, the reaction was muted - and circumspect - in the streets of Old Havana.

Unlike many other countries in Latin America, Cuba has no polling industry, so public reaction is nearly impossible to gauge.

Carter's speech "was excellent," said housewife Landolina Tenerero, 57. "He's the only one who has spoken correctly about things here." Asked if that could mean change, she said, "anything can happen here."

Francisco Cordero, a 37-year-old industrial worker, grinned as he said that Carter's speech was "very good." He said he agreed with Carter's call for better relations with the United States. Asked about the Varela project, he added, tersely, "The same."

Carter - who traveled here with official permission from the U.S. government, which licenses all American travel to Cuba - did not spare his own country, pointing to America's large prison population, inequalities in applying the death penalty, and the shortcomings of health care.

"Still, guaranteed civil liberties offer every citizen an opportunity to change these laws," he said. [End]

We are being manipulated and destroyed by our own system.

IMHO much of it boils down to an egregious misunderstanding of the meaning and proper application of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an Establishment of religilon or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,
or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

If you look at its clauses in reverse order you can see its meaning and intent more clearly:

assembling to petition the government could hardly be more obviously political.
But in truth, speaking and publishing what the government might wish to suppress is also highly political; the framers weren't particularly afraid that medical textbooks would be banned!
And the governments with which the framers were familiar all entangled with the local churches; the king of England was "defender of the faith" and considered that title to be an essential part of the political legitimacy of his crown. Taking a man's religion to be the near-constant that we are familiar with, essentially freedom of religion protects the political franchise of people whose religion is discriminated against.

Also, the conceit that the government should respect "journalistic objectivity" is completely at odds with the First Amendment. That is, if someone appeals to the First Amendment in defense of their speech or writing they are not appealing not to the right to be right but to the right to publish their own opinion, right or wrong. Which means that everyone is equal before the law in their right to publish their own opinion at their own expense.

It is important to note that the FCC created broadcasting by giving licenses to broadcast at high power in particular frequency bands and censoring the transmission of "interfering" signals by the riffraff like you and me. Thus we see that the FCC is an evasion of the First Amendment. Broadcasting has essentially transcended the press as a medium of political discourse, yet nothing the FCC does would pass muster if applied to the press or to in-person speech.

And journalism is not--as it loves to style itself--either "the press" or "the first draft of history." Print journalism is part of the press--as are magazines and books--but government-licensed broadcast journalism is no part of the First Amendment "press" at all. Commercial journalism is entertainment, and as such is systematically negative and superficial towards we-the-people and our institutions.

So our melieu is saturated with anticonservative propaganda, and we wonder why. It is no accident. No accident at all . . .

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