Posted on 01/22/2006 11:52:16 AM PST by lizol
Walesa becomes US' man in Havana
From correspondents in Havana January 22, 2006
US diplomats arranged for Cuban dissidents to get a pep talk from former Polish President Lech Walesa today in the latest chapter of Washington's long-running ideological battle against President Fidel Castro's communist government.
"The system will fall because nobody believes in communism," said Mr Walesa, the founder of Poland's Solidarity movement which toppled Poland's communist government and led to the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe.
"You are close to your goal," he said in Warsaw in a video conference with dissidents gathered at the Havana home of the top US diplomat in Cuba, Michael Parmly.
The video conference came five days after the seafront US Interests Section set up a ticker along its upper windows to flash human rights messages and news headlines to Cubans in bright red lights.
The messages included "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up" from US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr's famed 1963 speech.
This infuriated President Castro. "I have to analyse what is happening at the Interests Section, the barbarous things and provocations that are going on," he said in a television address on Friday.
US diplomats said they were trying to inform Cubans whose access to news is limited to Cuba's state-run media.
"The billboard is an effort to dialogue with the Cuban people," Mr Parmly said on Saturday. "Only in totalitarian societies do governments talk and talk at their people and never listen."
The US government has long criticised Cuba's one-party state, born of the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power, for violating human rights and suppressing dissent.
Havana accuses Washington of overstepping international conventions in its efforts to overthrow Cuba's socialist society.
The Bush administration has tightened sanctions on Cuba, increased support for Castro's opponents and stepped up radio and television broadcasts to the island. Havana has largely been successful in jamming the signals.
The ticker is expected to set off a new billboard war.
A year ago, a Christmas display at the American mission included a lit-up number 75, in reference to the pro-democracy activists jailed by Cuba in March 2003.
The Cuban government retaliated with huge billboards showing pictures of hooded and bloodied prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a swastika and the words: "Fascists: Made in USA".
The title is false and offensive.
How is it false? Or offensive?
1. Walesa is not "the US's" man, his imdividual and national persona are quite securely defined for years, bow.
2. nor is he "IN" Cuba (he said in Warsaw in a video conference)
False and offensive.....deliberate and unwarranted swipe at the US and Walesa as well.
Good catch.
Misleading, I'll give you...but I didn't find it offensive at all...if anything it sheds more light on what a shameful lot Catsro and his entire communist/socialist government are.
Sounds like something Castro would say.
-"I didn't find it offensive at all...if anything it sheds more light on what a shameful lot Catsro and his entire communist/socialist government are."
Agree!
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