Despite crackdown in Cuba, senators push to lift travel ban

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A group of US senators introduced legislation to lift a ban prohibiting Americans from traveling to Cuba, undeterred by the recent crackdown on dissidents in the Communist island.

"After 43 years, it ought to be clear to everyone that the embargo has failed to weaken (Cuban President Fidel) Castro," said Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the main sponsor of "The Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act."

"A better approach is to reach out to the Cuban people. Ending the travel ban is the best way to do this," said Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

Other senators who are co-sponsoring the legislation include senators Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Larry Craig of Idaho, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, and Mark Dayton of Minnesota.

Baucus decried Cuba's human rights abuses -- including the recent crackdown on dissidents -- as "appalling," but said democracy is better served by reaching out to the Cuban people than by trying to isolate the regime.

"By continuing and even strengthening the embargo and travel ban in Cuba, we are only further closing off the country and preventing democracy," he said.

Tens of thousands of Americans visit the island every year, but US officials have said tourist dollars only prolong Castro's rule.

Interest groups which support lifting the travel ban, as well as a four-decade-long trade embargo against Cuba, cheered the new proposed legislation.

"This bill is a clear demonstration of solidarity with the Cuban people at a time when they need it most," said Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy, and a former US Interests Section Chief in Havana.

"Legalizing travel to Cuba is needed, now more than ever, so that engagement with Cuba can replace isolation of Cuba, as the best instrument for America to influence democratic openings there," Smith said.

SHAMEFUL THAT THEY BETRAYED PRESIDENT BUSH'S WAR AGAISNT TERRORISM.

Houston, 10/25/2003

Honorable Senator Hutchinson:

I have always supported you as a strong defender of the United States’ interests and principles. Now I am writing with a heavy heart. You have shown extraordinary naiveté in thinking that business and tourists’ contacts with Castro’s regime would transform the brutal tyrant into a peaceful and benevolent leader. By doing so, you are derailing our President’s war against the long lasting terrorist base 90 miles away from our shores.

Over 150 nations around the world have been dealing with Castro for 43 years without achieving any change in the Stalinist economic and repressive model chosen by Castro. What makes you think that contact with American tourists and businessmen will infest the Cuban leaders with the virus of freedom and democracy?

In order to deal with Castro you have to overlook the fact that he is a cold-blooded murderer who approved death by firing squad of over 40,000 Cubans, including some Americans, who opposed his reign of terror. Recently Castro incarcerated over 70 pacific dissident under inhuman conditions with sentences of up to 20 years. You are now among the misguided elected officials rewarding the brutal Cuban tyrant with your vote in the Senate in support of his regime.

Be aware also of the more than 500,000 thousand political prisoners, men, women and even children who were tortured in his dungeons. Over thirty thousand have died trying to cross the Florida straits in fragile makeshift rafts in their quest for freedom in what might be perceived as an unprecedented mass suicide.

Still now, after 44 years, there are hundreds of prisoners of conscience whose human rights are being violated every day in Castro’s dungeons. Add to this horrific picture, the more than 2 million Cubans that were forced into political exile from a population of 7 million.

It seems that what happened to these unfortunate Cubans has no bearing on the conscience of those who vote favoring Castro’s regime. Remember that this is the same dictator who tried to nuke our cities during the Missile Crisis and whose henchmen brutally tortured our POWs in Vietnam.

As a representative of the American people, regardless of any other considerations, you must be concerned that Castro’s Cuba is the main haven and sponsor of terrorism in this hemisphere and the politicians and business people dealing with Castro will be aiding and abetting terrorism.

Last year, British intelligence exposed Castro’s relationship with the IRA, the Colombian guerrillas, the Spanish Basque and Chilean terrorists, provoking a strong protest to the Cuban regime by the Chilean socialist administration.

We now have a Castro subrogate in power in Venezuela. With President Chavez cooperating with Cuba’s terrorist designs, the U.S. is confronting the worst menace since Castro’s puppets in Central American were defeated in the 1980’s by President Reagan’s policies.

Venezuela is one of our main providers of oil. In case Chavez stops the flow of oil to our country and to secure another source, our government just provided $90 million dollars to reinforce the protection of the Colombian oil pipelines, which are under constant attacks by the Castro’s supported Marxist guerillas.

Castro’s Cuba has been the headquarters for the coordination of activities of over one hundred international terrorist organizations. Tens of thousands of terrorists were trained in Cuba by Castro. We have in this hemisphere another “axis of evil” in the troika Castro/Chavez/ Colombian guerrillas. Recent events extended Castro’s strong influence in Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina.

Things are going from bad to worse in this hemisphere. Argentina elected a leftist president a Castro’s sympathizer. The President of Brazil, Lula, has a long history of communist activism, and although he has been, so far, very prudent, he has been a strong supporter of Castro’s subversive activities in the continent. The recent overthrow of the democratic elected president of Bolivia by leftist extremists, add another dangerous dimension to Castro’s evil influence in South America.

Your vote today is the first step on the normalization of commercial and diplomatic relations with a terrorist Stalinist regime that has state of the art biological, chemical and cyber warfare capabilities, and the will to use it against us.

As a matter of fact, Cuba has more than 3,000 biological and chemical warfare researchers trained in the Soviet Union and East Germany who has been working in tandem with Iraq and Iran in the development of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

We should keep in mind that in May 2001, Castro visited the main centers of terrorism in the Middle East, Iraq, Libya, and Iran, reinforcing his ties with the “Axis of Evil.” Castro sold Iran one of his biological research laboratories as part of their cooperation in the production of biological weapons. Iran has well-developed facilities in their own country, why do they need one 90 miles from U.S.?

Was Castro also giving the necessary intelligence information to the Al Qaeda terrorists that made the successful attacks of September 11th possible? The Russians have a spy base in Cuba that is their main source of intelligence. During his visit to Cuba In August 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Fidel Castro, visited the Lourdes spy center. At a meeting with center specialists, Putin noted that their work is very much needed, "not only by the military, but also by the political leadership of the country."

Putin said at a press conference in Havana that both Russia and Cuba are currently interested in continuing the operations of the Lourdes base. According to Putin, this center serves the interests of the Russian military and also provides some of the information obtained for appropriate Cuban government agencies.

Such information might have been also very valuable for Al Qaeda and the terrorist network. Why did the Russians decide to close their spy base in Cuba immediately after the attack without even consulting with the Cuban regime? .

After several postponements, and in spite of Castro’s public tantrums and opposition, the base was dismantled and returned to Russia. Were the Russians trying to disassociate themselves from Castro and the Al Qaeda partnership? .

Castro, nevertheless, still has a more modern spy base which was built and is operated by the Chinese government equipped with cyber-warfare capabilities which is able not only to spy, but to interrupt our electronic communications.

During one of those pilgrimages to Cuba that have become fashionable among American politicians, Senator Specter recognized the extraordinary intelligence capabilities of the Cuban regime, a service that rivals the Mossad and the CIA. In one instance, the Pentagon’s most trusted analyst in charge of evaluating Castro’s menace to the U.S. was found to be a mole working for the Cuban intelligence. Are we going to put our security in the hands of one of our worst enemies?

Some American legislators last year went so far as to ask the American taxpayers to provide Cuba with state of the art radar under the pretense that Castro, would cooperate with us in the interdiction of drugs coming into the U.S. Did you know that Castro's main source of personal income is drug trafficking? That is absolutely insane. In fact, this will further facilitate the importation of drugs into the U.S. and enable him to easily fulfill his dream of obliterating our country.

It is unconscionable that you are advocating a policy of appeasement toward Fidel Castro’s regime, while undermining President’s Bush war against terrorism.

Your are, in fact, encouraging American tourists to finance Castro’s repressive apparatus with their dollars, and to maintain in power a terrorist state whose leader pledged on May 2001 at the University of Tehran, that their alliance would bring U.S. down to its knees.

Castro’s ominous threat came to fruition on September 11 with the brutal terrorist attacks to our country. Was Castro aware of the attack? Was he part of the planning? Russian Prime Minister Putin’s reaction after the attack attests to that possibility.

In a visit to Cuba, Rep. Diane Watson, attacking the U.S. bipartisan policy toward Cuba for more than four decades, arrogantly affirmed: "That might be the executive branch's view, but that is not the legislative branch's view, and we make policy…More and more lawmakers are coming here for themselves, seeing for themselves, developing good will."

I always thought that, according to our Constitution, the President was in charge of U.S. foreign policy.

Castro’s sycophants in the Congress want to open to Castro American and international lines of credit. Although Castro, with a personal fortune of over 1.5 billion dollars is among the richest chief of state in the world according to Forbes magazine, Cuba, nevertheless, has defaulted on all its international debts. But, according to Rep. Farr if the American taxpayers finance Castro’s purchases, Cuba “would buy a billion dollars worth of American food each year.”

Are you going to place on the shoulders of the overburdened American taxpayers the financing of a terrorist and mortal enemy of the U.S.? Lenin affirmed that we would be the ones selling the rope to the communists in order for them to hang us.

It is heartbreaking that American senators and representatives go much further; they want to provide the rope free of charge to Castro. As stated so well by Senator Helms: “Some in Washington are all too willing to give Castro what he wants. At the least they should stop pretending that they are doing this to promote Cuban democracy and American values. “
Cordially yours,

WHY HELP CASTRO?

By Myles Kantor
FrontPageMagazine.com
La Nueva Cuba
October 25, 2003

"Nicaragua’s most important war is the one fought inside the United States…The battlefield will be the American conscience."

—Tomas Borge, former Sandinista Minister of the Interior, 1983

I THINK of my grandfather when I look at the Cuban exile community in America.

My paternal grandfather was an émigré from Bolshevism and knew the dreams of Lenin and Trotsky meant human devastation. When he died in Brookline, Massachusetts, he was not a Russian-American but an American.

Before immigrating to America my grandfather lived in Mexico, where he studied medicine and mastered a new language. In 1926 he wrote an article on the third anniversary of Max Nordau’s death. (Nordau was an important figure in the modern Zionist movement.) The article was in Spanish.

My grandfather mastered another language in America, toiled again to become a physician, and maintained Zionist convictions. In 1962 he wrote an article on the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl. The article was in English.

My grandfather could have written these articles in his native Russian, but he sought to maximize his audience and, I believe, convey his gratitude to these countries for opening their doors to him. Like Ludwig von Mises (an émigré from Nazism), he appreciated that "What is specifically ‘national’ lies in language" and acted accordingly.

If I were Fidel Castro, I would ask one thing of the Cuban exile community in America: Do not oppose me in English.

I would ask this because English is the language of America, and I would not want my enslavement and atrocities highlighted in the common language of over 280 million people in a consequential country.

Tragically, the exile community all too prevalently opposes Castro in the language of Cuba instead of the language of America.

Of course there is English material that documents Castro’s despotism. Just three examples are the recent documentary Made in Cuba: Children of Paradise, Juan Clark’s Human Rights in Cuba: An Experiential Perspective, and Mario Ramirez’s website for prisoner of conscience Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet.

In the crucial realm of mass media, however, the exile community is grievously deficient.

Yes, several programs in Miami discuss America’s closest sponsor of terrorism, but they are overwhelmingly in Spanish. The vast majority of Floridians and Americans are not fluent in Spanish.

Americans are fluent in the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; the language Frederick Douglass and James Meredith spoke when they confronted slavery and segregation; the language Todd Beamer spoke on Flight 93 before he confronted America’s enemies on September 11.

These overwhelmingly Spanish programs are not only incomprehensible by mainstream America; they alienate mainstream America.

I have spoken with too many Americans who tell me that the exile community could care less about America’s support. When I ask them why they feel this way, they invariably cite its linguistic exclusivity.

This exclusivity ghettoizes—yes, ghettoizes—the exile community and conforms to what Castro wants. That exiles yearn for Cuba’s emancipation makes their self-imposed ghettoization a sad irony.

Many Americans feel the exile community is indifferent to their support; many exiles feel Americans are indifferent to their cause; and a murderous tyrant still enslaves Cuba. The imperative is not for Americans to accommodate Spanish (i.e., foreign) media but for exiles’ media to accommodate America.

English was good enough for my grandfather, and it’s good enough for the Cuban exile community. To maintain the present dearth of mainstream media only helps Castro. Why should a butcher’s wish be fulfilled?

Myles Kantor is a columnist for FrontPageMagazine.com and Director of the Center for Free Emigration, a human rights organization dedicated to the abolition of state enslavement. His e-mail address is kantor@FreeEmigration.com.

A GREAT TRIUMPH FOR CUBA'S FREEDOM

Lawmakers Agree to Maintain Cuba Travel Ban

Reuters ^ | 11/13/03 |

Pablo Bachelet

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate and House of Representatives negotiators on Wednesday bowed to a threatened presidential veto and accepted that a 42-year ban on travel to Cuba should remain in place.

The lawmakers removed from pending legislation a provision that would have barred President Bush (news - web sites) from spending any money to enforce the travel ban, thus allowing Americans to resume traveling openly to the island nation.

Opponents of the travel ban had tried to stop funding of enforcement of the travel ban as part of an appropriations bill for the departments of Treasury and Transportation. Top White House officials had told House and Senate negotiators meeting in a conference committee the bill would be vetoed if it contained the language relating to the Cuba travel ban. "Under these circumstances (we) have no alternative but dropping the language from the conference report," said Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican.

Opponents of the travel ban, which included most Democrats and influential farm-state Republicans, argued that it has failed to produce change in Cuba. They said Americans can travel legally to North Korea (news - web sites) and Iran, both denounced by Bush as part of an "axis of evil.." Bush strongly supports continuing the travel ban, arguing that it stops valuable hard currency from propping up a repressive communist government. Thousands of Americans visit Cuba without authorization every year, mostly by going through Mexico and Canada.

Bush has instructed officials to step up inspections to catch violators. The travel industry has also lobbied hard to get the travel ban removed, eyeing a bonanza of visitors drawn to Cuba's proximity, lush beaches and Colonial architecture.

Rep. John Olver, a Massachusetts Democrat, told negotiators they had "squandered" a chance to get rid of a "senseless" ban. Lawmakers also defeated an effort by Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, to introduce an amendment that would have allowed travel to promote U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba. The House voted on Sept. 9 to ease the travel embargo by a 227-188 margin in the treasury and transportation bill. The Senate did the same on Oct. 23, by a 59-36 vote.

Bush's Allies Plan to Block Effort to Ease Ban on Cuban Travel***WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - President Bush's allies in Congress quietly eliminated a widely supported provision easing restrictions on American travel to Cuba from a major appropriations bill to save him from embarrassment over his political designs in Florida, officials from both parties said Wednesday evening.

Leaders of a House-Senate conference committee removed the provision on Wednesday before the bill reached the president, who had threatened to veto any legislation that lifted sanctions against Cuba, the officials said.

"You're not going to put a bill on the floor that potentially embarrasses the president," said a senior Republican staff member. Referring to the Cuba provision's bipartisan supporters, he added, "I'm sure there will be some gnashing of teeth."

The provision, which would bar Treasury Department authorities from enforcing a ban on travel to the island, was approved by the House in September 227 to 188, and by the Senate last month 59 to 38. Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 13 to 5 to scrap the ban outright.

Since the language of the Cuban travel provision approved by the House and Senate was identical, it would not ordinarily have been subject to action by the conference committee, which sought to reconcile differences in bills that finance the Treasury and Transportation departments, advocates say. But Republican committee leaders, including Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, were determined to remove the Cuba measure, aides said.

The legislation might have drawn Mr. Bush's first veto, and risked derailing important appropriations for highway construction, Amtrak, election reform and other programs.

Some Congressional officials said they were appalled that the will of Congress could be thwarted in the back-room negotiations that drive conference committees. Republican leaders have removed Cuba-related language at the same juncture in previous years, though never against such an overwhelming mandate from their colleagues.

"The fact that it could be undermined is mind-blowing, and more reminiscent of the Politburo than Congress," said Steven C. Schwadron, the chief of staff of Representative Bill Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, who has been a driving force behind lifting the travel ban. "It suggests that a handful of people can vaporize the will of the majority." ***

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