Posted on 04/14/2002 4:36:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
This is a LINK to articles since April 21, 2001 about Cuba and the communist threat - CHILDREN'S CODE At this LINK is a LINK to many Elian articles. Below I will post similar articles since the FR format changed and locked posts to this LINK. Please add what you wish to this thread.
Eyes Wide Open--[Excerpts] The Los Angeles kids, chosen for their photographic skills and their ability to work with others, represented the Venice Arts Mecca, a nonprofit organization that brings volunteer artists together with youngsters from low-income families to nurture their creativity in areas ranging from literary arts to photography. They looked. They listened. They photographed. And they took notes for their journals.
…….Before embarking on their adventure, the kids--who were joined by two young people from Washington, D.C., and accompanied by adult mentors--studied the sociopolitical history of South Africa, including apartheid. All were Latino or African American or a mix of the two, and were encouraged to think about their own identity, their own experiences with racism.
……..Before embarking on their adventure, the kids--who were joined by two young people from Washington, D.C., and accompanied by adult mentors--studied the sociopolitical history of South Africa, including apartheid. All were Latino or African American or a mix of the two, and were encouraged to think about their own identity, their own experiences with racism.
…..At the conference exhibit hall, the L.A. kids mounted a photo exhibition showing the underbelly of America. There were bleak images of life on an Indian reservation, of the homeless in Los Angeles. It was an eye-opener to some South Africans, who thought everyone in America was rich. "They were absolutely shocked," said Lynn Warshafsky, executive director of Venice Arts Mecca.
In turn, the L.A. group was surprised at the degree of anti-American sentiment, something they had to process. "They had to ask themselves questions they'd never asked before" about how others see them, Warshafsky said.
……..For Eamon, the highlight was hearing Fidel Castro speak. "I had thought of him as seriously evil. I realized he's not evil, he's doing what he thinks is best. He has this sort of demeanor about him. Whether you like him or not, you respect him. It opened my eyes." [End Excerpts]
In a joint statement Thursday, the two countries condemned terrorism as well as the sanctions. They also called for establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homeland. The statement called for cooperation at the United Nations as well as in the Group of 77 countries and the Non-Aligned Movement. Iran currently heads the G-77, an association of developing countries. They agreed also to continue cooperation in pharmaceuticals and medical training.
Before departing Iran, Castro stopped off at the north Tehran home of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Iranian revolution. He was shown a short film on Khomeini's life and visited his library before heading on to the airport. Earlier in his visit, Castro had laid a wreath at Khomeini's grave.
U.S. sanctions have been in place against Iran since the revolution. Washington severed ties and imposed sanctions after Muslim militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
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March 17, 2001- Cuba's Castro Says Venezuelan Chavez Speaks for Him *** Hailing the Venezuelan leader's "spirit and enthusiasm", the veteran Cuban president said Chavez would address the U.N. conference in Mexico as president of the Group of 77, which represents more than 130 developing countries. "No other voice could be better than yours to defend the interests of the (Group of) 77. ... You will have the possibility of putting forward the point of view of the progressive people of the world," Castro added.
Chavez, hosting a special 100th edition of his "Hello President" show lasting nearly seven hours, also received calls of congratulation from Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo and the Dominican Republic's president, Hipolito Mejia. The Cuban leader's public praise for Chavez was certain to infuriate political opponents of the Venezuelan leader and his self-proclaimed "Bolivarian Revolution". ***
Burdsall, who moved to Cuba in 1955, is one of more than a dozen Americans who call this communist island home, still clinging to the ideals of a socialist revolution as capitalism expands its hold around the globe. "I would like to be a good communist but I don't think they exist," the white-haired fiery grandmother says. "Socialism, however, is a good step toward that perfect society; it's an interim."***
Castro, speaking before a national TV audience, insisted Fox lied about the Cuban leader's hasty departure last month from a U.N. aid summit in Monterrey, Mexico. Cuba said at the time that Mexico, working on behalf of the United States, pressured Castro to either stay away from the summit or make himself scarce before President Bush (news - web sites) arrived. Mexican President Vicente Fox and Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda both denied pressuring Castro to leave. "They were all lying left and right," Castro said.
The Cuban president played a tape of a private telephone conversation he had with Fox on the eve of the summit, in which Fox clearly urged Castro to leave the meeting early and urged him "not to attack the United States or President Bush." On the tape Fox asks Castro to make his presentation at the summit and to return to Cuba on Thursday "so that you don't make Friday complicated for me." Bush was scheduled to arrive on Friday. Making public the tape was a clear break with presidential protocol. Castro said the aftermath "of telling these truths could be that diplomatic relations are severed." ***
"If anyone could prove that such a conversation never took place, and that those were not President Fox's words, I would firmly offer my immediate resignation to all my positions and responsibilities at the head of the Cuban state and revolution," Castro declared. "My honor would not permit me to continue at the head of this country," he added to the statement, which was broadcast live on state radio and television across the island.***
As a matter of fact, two days before this conversation, Castro had told reporters he may not attend the conference and that Hugo Chavez could speak for him. ______________March 17, 2002 - Cuba's Castro Says Venezuelan Chavez Speaks for Him***"Even if I don't go, we, I, feel represented in your words," Castro told Chavez in a telephone call during a marathon live broadcast of the Venezuelan leader's weekly "Hello President" television and radio program. ***
In an attempt to limit the political damage, Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, had earlier declined an invitation to appear before a hearing of the committee today on the IRA's relationship with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [Farc] narco-terrorists. "Colombian authorities assert that not only has the IRA operated in the former safe haven on behalf of the Farc, but also the Iranians, Cubans, and possibly Eta [Basque terrorists], among others," a summary of the committee's report said.
The inquiry was launched last summer after James Monaghan and Martin McAuley, both convicted of IRA offences, and Niall Connolly, Sinn Fein's representative in Cuba, were arrested in Bogota and charged with aiding the Farc. "Colombia is a potential breeding ground for international terror equalled perhaps only by Afghanistan, and the IRA findings are the strongest among these global links because of the arrests of the three Irish nationals and the accompanying evidence," said the summary.***
Castro said he reluctantly made the conversation public to prove his assertion that Mexican authorities discouraged him from attending a U.N. poverty summit in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, then had him leave early, so his visit there would not coincide with that of U.S. President George W. Bush. "The government of Mexico does not record nor does it divulge the content of conversations, much less those previously agreed upon as private," the Mexican government said in a statement.***
Monday night, Castro accused Fox of caving in to U.S. pressure. The harsh words follow last Friday's vote at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where Mexico was one of eight Latin American countries that supported a resolution calling for greater political and human rights in Cuba.
In news conferences and interviews last month, both Fox and Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castañeda denied pressuring Castro. Pro-Cuba opposition legislators in Mexico tried for weeks to make Castañeda testify before congress about Castro's hasty, huffy exit from the conference. Now they want Fox to explain before congress or on national television. ''This demonstrates that President Fox lied to the Mexican people. How can we support a president who lies?'' said Congressman Sergio Acosta Salazar of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, the second-ranking member of the Foreign Relations Commission in the lower house of Mexico's National Congress.
For more than seven decades before Fox, Mexico was run by the left-leaning Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, in its Spanish initials), which grew out of the Mexican revolution of 1910-17. Acosta's leftist party splintered off from the PRI, and both parties are assailing the conservative Fox. Sen. Silvia Hernandez, a PRI leader and the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Commission, also called on Fox to explain himself. PRI governments stayed out of Cuba's domestic affairs, and in return Castro did not fund or support leftist revolutionaries in Mexico -- the country from which he launched his own rise to power -- as he did elsewhere in Latin America.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Fox administration began firing back. Foreign Secretary Castañeda denied that he or Fox had lied and said Castro was not pressured. What was asked of Castro, he said, was also asked of the United States: that both countries put aside their rivalries to avoid hijacking the development summit.
In a radio interview, Castañeda suggested that Castro feels threatened at home by his growing isolation in Latin America and by growing global support for universal principles of human rights. ''In effect the isolation of the government of Fidel Castro grows greater every day,'' Castañeda said. ``This resolution in Geneva came not from the Czechs but from Latin Americans.'' Throughout much of Castro's four-decade rule, the United States has sponsored U.N. resolutions condemning the lack of democratic rights in Cuba. In recent years, former communist countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland have sponsored the resolutions, but this year Uruguay took the lead and was backed by six other Latin American nations on the Human Rights Commission; Venezuela voted against and Brazil and Ecuador abstained. Even Chile, led by Socialist Ricardo Lagos, joined the call for democracy in Cuba.
''Castro has pretty much burned all his bridges,'' said Ana Maria Salazar, a former Clinton White House official now teaching at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) in Mexico City. [End]
Mexico Accuses Cuba of Blackmail ****"The problem was not Bush," Castaneda said. "The problem was that Castro had threatened, through his acts, to dedicate himself to internal politics in Mexico." Castaneda cited planned meetings with Mexican news media and anti-globalization protesters. Castaneda said Fox also wanted to avoid having Castro disrupt the summit by squabbling with the United States or protesting the "Consensus of Monterrey," an agreement on financial aid for poor nations that had been signed by virtually all of the nations at the event. Castaneda claimed that while Cuba had accepted the document without major protests two months earlier, Castro planned to "make a scandal" over it in Monterrey.
In nightly state television broadcasts this week, Cuban officials have showered Castaneda with insults, calling him "diabolical." Castro has suggested that Fox is a "decent" but naive dupe of Castaneda. Fox said Wednesday he has changed his country's foreign policy "in a radical way" since becoming the first opposition party candidate to win Mexico's presidency. In addition to Mexico's traditional focus on noninterference in other nations' affairs, Fox said Thursday that human rights "are universal and are above political and ideological interests."***
…. o Has prison changed you from a human and political point of view?
It's impossible for someone to go through prison and not change his way of acting or thinking. What needs to be specified is in what direction: for good or for bad? It's an extraordinary experience. Politically speaking, imprisonment has strengthened my convictions about the justice of my struggle to achieve democratic changes in Cuba. In prison, one gets to know in depth the system's injustice and true measure. On the human side, my faith in God has increased. He has opened my eyes to the struggle that we must wage to change the material and spiritual conditions of prison life. This element must be incorporated into the struggle for democratic changes.****
…… What could Bush do? He could take several measures that would give Fox something to show at home, such as giving legitimacy to ID cards Mexican consulates are handing out to Mexican undocumented workers in the United States or submitting migration legislation to Congress to get Washington to focus on the issue. If the Bush administration won't put its full political weight behind the hemisphere-wide free trade zone, and if it's not going to rescue bankrupt countries, the least it should do is help the best performers in the region become democratic and free market success stories. Otherwise, there won't be an incentive for others to follow in their steps. ***
For Idelfonso Brooks, 59, a retired Cuban naval officer, working against the government he once supported has resulted in harassment from the state security police.
Brooks, a member of Paya's Christian Liberation Movement who collected signatures for the project, said his problems started in February 2001, when police left a citation on his front door, summoning him for questioning.
He said when he arrived, police chastised him for being involved with Paya and the Varela Project. He said they asked how a man who had spent almost 30 years in the navy, then more than a decade working in another government department, could "turn [his] back on the revolution."
On New Year's Day, he received another summons. This time, he said, police stood him against a wall in the station, and screamed and cursed at him. He said they called him and Paya homosexuals. They called him a liar and a traitor. They scribbled "criminal" on a piece of paper and made him wear it on his chest. They threw him into a cell and kept him in custody for nearly seven hours.
"They said they were going to hurt my son and my granddaughter, who live in Miami," said Brooks, a small man whose severe vision problems forced him to retire early.
"If I had any doubt about what I was doing in this movement, I didn't anymore," Brooks said, bursting into deep, uncontrollable sobs.
"I never in my whole life thought that the revolution I dedicated my life to could do something like this," he said. "I feel so guilty. We Cubans have hurt so many other Cubans. After 43 years [of Castro], I have only suffering and I see no future. But maybe if this project works we will have reconciliation. All this hate must end." ……..
Paya said one more strategic obstacle looms: The National Assembly is now saying that all 10,000 signers must appear before a notary public to notarize their signatures. Paya said he had a strategy for dealing with that, but would not reveal it until the signatures arrive at the assembly.
Asked if he were dreaming to think that he could outmaneuver Castro, Paya smiled.
"If you don't have dreams, you can't get results," he said. [End Excerpts]
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