Posted on 06/17/2002 3:31:03 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA (AP) - Red, white and blue national flags and slogans in favor of Fidel Castro dominated street corners in Havana Saturday as the campaign got under way to collect signatures in support of Cuban socialism.
Many people showed up early Saturday at more than 120,000 petition stations across the island. They will remain open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day until noon on Tuesday to gather signatures from registered voters in support of a constitutional amendment declaring Cuba's socialist system is "untouchable" - cannot be changed.
"I just want to get it out of the way," said a 21-year-old student who gave her name only as Adnieska, one of the first who showed up at a signature gathering point in the coastal community of Coijmar, just east of Havana. "I don't want to have to wait."
"I'm in a hurry because I have to go to work," said Karel Maura, a 25-year-old port worker who arrived early at another station.
Many of the stations were set up inside neighborhood headquarters of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the island's largest mass organization with a vigilance committee on each residential block across the country.
Eloy Mendez, 79, right, signs a document to declare the island's four-decade-old socialist system "untouchable," Saturday, June 15, 2002 in Havana, Cuba. Cuban President Fidel Castro estimated at least 7 million of Cuba's 11 million citizens would sign the petition for a constitutional amendment declaring the nation's economic, political and social system cannot be changed. (AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera)
Inside each station was at least one little table and a chair where people could sit and sign their names on a booklet that had room for 105 signatures. Next to their names, the signatories were asked to write down the national identity number that each Cuban is assigned at birth.
"This is the system that we Cubans want," said Maira Pena, a 35-year-old university professor, who signed the document in her Havana neighborhood.
After signing the document himself on Saturday, Castro estimated that the 7 million registered voters would follow suit.
Opposition activists who support a different kind of petition drive, one that gathered more than 11,000 signatures of people requesting a referendum on democratic reforms, expressed doubts that all of registering to support socialism were acting of their own free will.
Many Cubans go along with many official campaigns because of neighborhood pressure, habit, or resignation, they say.
Cubans participate "for the same reasons they always do, for the same reasons they go to the marches," said dissident Vladimiro Roca, a former military pilot and son of a revered communist leader.
"The government obligates them, they have to go," said Roca, who was recently freed from prison after serving five years for criticizing Cuba's Communist Party. "If they don't go, they lose their jobs. And if they lose their jobs, they don't have any other way out."
And Barbara Boxer wants us to believe communism is dead.
Venezuela is heating up as are so many South American countries. The trouble in Colombia has reached unmanageable levels. I don't know about this year seeing the end of this, but something is definately going to give.
With threats to kill public servants FARC halts 30 municipalities as Colombian mayors resign*** About 500 municipal workers -- including town council members, judges, police inspectors and secretaries -- have also quit, Toro said. Ignoring the rebel order can be lethal. When Luis Caro, mayor of the town of Solita, missed a FARC-imposed deadline to bow out earlier this month, he was shot dead by the guerrillas.
Many analysts believe the FARC wants to erase all traces of government from hundreds of towns in order to create a power vacuum, then move in and take control. With more territory under its domain, experts say, the rebel group would be in a stronger position should the Colombian government reopen peace negotiations. "It's a very sophisticated strategy," said Vicente Torrijos, who teaches political science at Rosario University in Bogota, the nation's capital. "What's at stake are the conditions under which a new round of peace talks will be held."
President Andres Pastrana's government is pleading with mayors to stay put, offering them flak jackets, escorts and armored cars. His administration says it cannot accept resignations of public officials coerced by guerrillas at gunpoint. Even so, a domino effect appears to be taking hold. The rebel strategy has proved so effective in the south that the FARC last week extended decrees to parts of Arauca, Cesar and Bolivar states in northern Colombia.
At the Huila state government building in Neiva, an official said she has received letters of resignation from seven of that state's 37 mayors. Moments after she spoke, a nervous mayor burst into the room to announce that he, too, intends to abandon his post. "I have to," said Gentil Bahamon, mayor of the village of Suaza. "Besides, all my employees have resigned, so how can I work?"
Ever since the popular election of local officials began in Colombia in the early 1990s, small-town mayors have come under pressure from the guerrillas, who often outnumber police and army troops in isolated regions. During the electoral campaign two years ago, for example, the FARC met with scores of mayoral candidates to recommend rebel collaborators for city jobs and to demand payoffs from municipal budgets. Over the past 18 months, 14 mayors have been killed and 16 others kidnapped.
Last month, the guerrillas abruptly switched tactics when they began to issue expulsion orders. In some towns, they ordered only mayors to quit. Elsewhere, they told all civil servants to either resign or to simply stop working. "The mayors are bowing to the rebel warnings, because they know that these people are capable of killing them," Toro said. "This could generate an unprecedented institutional crisis, which is what the FARC wants."***
How screwed up do you have to be to feed on your own 'mental excrement'?
I am of the opinion that Ms. Boxer is much nearer to death than communism.
But I can't quite decide if that's good or bad.
To Cuba: Fidel might die, but your signatures may forever cast your country in 3rd World status.
The only people who find this as a positive thing are the Lefties in America and Europe who espouse Socialism, yet live like Capitalists (ref. Boxer, et al).
LOL
Bravo filthy walls and shared poverty!
Bravo squalid and crumbling once-proud capital cities!
Bravo Democracy at the point of a Gun!
Bravo the Left and its Glorious Revolution!
Here's the full unfurled version...
My guess is that it's real. The yellow-star-on-red-background theme is a less-than-subtle hint about where their ideological sympathies lie. Amazing how openly the connection between democrats and socialistic totalitarians is flaunted -- though not particularly surprising. The other day I saw a poster over at DU quoting Lenin in defense of abortion-on-demand. Nobody batted an eyelash.
During the Cold War, the commie sympathizers were never able to destroy the consensus that Communism was evil and had to be combatted. Their only argument was 'co-existence', based on Mutually Assured Destruction, which Reagan debunked. Now that the Marxist are marginalized, they seem 'cute' again. I am always reminded of that scene in Alien when the creature bursts forth from that guy's stomach and scurries across the floor. Someone shouts 'Don't kill it!' So they miss the opportunity to eliminate it when they could. Then it grows and grows...
Marxism ain't dead. It's only incubating. And the psychological malady that underlies it will probably never be wholly eliminated in the human species, so we must be ever vigilant.
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