Castro signs pope's condolence book:Hundreds of Cubans have gone to the Va

http://www.bbg.gov
"We Will Succeed" -- BBG Chairman Tomlinson Announces Initiative to Improve Radio and TV Martí Delivery to Cuba
At a press briefing this morning in Miami, Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, joined by Office of Cuba Broadcasting Director Pedro Roig and fellow BBG Governor Joaquin Blaya, issued the following statement concerning Radio and Television Martí:

"We have been working diligently to strengthen the signals of Radio and TV Martí, to allow the people of Cuba access to uncensored news and information. As part of this effort, I am pleased to announce that we will soon undertake testing to see if TV Martí can be sent to the Cuban people by satellite. This would allow viewers in Cuba to receive the TV Martí signal via state of the art satellite technology through free-to-air reception. Free-to-air means that the satellite signal is not encrypted and can be viewed by anyone with a dish and an ordinary digital receiver. Radio Martí's signal would also be included in the transmission.

Hispasat will provide a powerful signal with a footprint that fully covers all of Cuba and nearly all of Latin America. Satellite receivers now on the island that are able to receive direct-to-home, free-to-air can be easily tuned to receive the signal. According to various commercial sources, satellite dishes are being used by more and more Cubans, and the numbers continue to rise. Moreover, we expect that as a powerful television signal with reliable, objective news and information becomes available to the Cuban people, it will inevitably find viewers. If we build it, they will come.
(snip/...)

National and Public Libraries


I also visited the National Literacy Museum and the Jose Marti National Library in Havana, provincial public libraries in Havana, Villa Clara, Sancti Spiritus, Ciego de Avila, Camaguey, Las Tunas and Holguin and a municipal public library in Banes. Brief notes, and photographs, of these libraries can be found at Appendix 2. What I found in every case were excellent libraries, staffed by dedicated librarians, offering relevant services to their communities.

Larry Oberg and his group also visited the Jose Marti National Library, as well as provincial public libraries in Havana and Santiago de Cuba and municipal public libraries in Matanzas, Cardinas and Varadero. Here are Larry's views about these libraries :

"The Cuban librarians that I met were, with a few exceptions, highly professional, talented and capable. They are committed to professional excellence and are clearly abreast of current trends in North American and European librarianship.

The Jose Marti National Library and the major provincial and city libraries are busily preparing for automation.

Most of the libraries that we visited have clear collection development policies and standards. The national library collects materials on all topics and does not limit its collections to materials that support the ideology of the Cuban government. They actively solicit, for example, copies of materials published by dissident Cuban authors who reside abroad.

Cuban librarians take their outreach obligations seriously and have invested heavily in bookmobiles and branch libraries in isolated rural locations. They are particularly committed to making library services available to rural Cuban children.

School libraries are ubiquitous in Cuba. Almost all elementary and secondary schools have libraries and librarians (we might compare this to the situation in the US). We spoke at length with a group of second graders in a Matatanzas elementary school who asked bright and intelligent questions of us."

For further information about Larry's trip, contact him at Mark O. Hatfield Library, Williamette University, Salem, Oregon, loberg@williamette.edu.
(snip/)

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo threatened by US for living in Cuba


By Anthony Boadle | Reuters

A U.S. resident who had spent 22 years in a Cuban prison for opposing communism and returned to the island to work for democracy now faces a U.S. jail threat for violating travel restrictions.

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, a Cuban exile who returned in 2003, has been warned by the U.S. Treasury Department that he could be fined $250,000 or sent to prison for 10 years for staying in Cuba in violation of sanctions intended to isolate the government of Fidel Castro.

"They don't understand: I am not a tourist in Cuba, I am an activist working to establish a legal space for an independent opposition," Gutierrez Menoyo said on Tuesday in an interview.
(snip)

But in August 2003, Gutierrez Menoyo announced on a visit to Cuba that he was staying in Havana to try to open an office for his political group, called Cambio Cubano, and build a moderate opposition to what he calls Castro's "socialist dictatorship."

The Cuban government has not legalized his status, but it tolerates his presence and invited him to a conference on Cuban migration. It renewed his Cuban passport and allowed him to travel twice to the United States.

U.S. authorities did not take lightly to Gutierrez Menoyo's return to Cuba, and froze the bank account of his Miami-based political group.

In November 2004, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces sanctions on Cuba, warned him in a letter that he could face prosecution for violating restrictions on travel to Cuba.
(snip/...)

Brothers to the Rescue was founded in the early 1990s, when large numbers of Cubans began leaving the island on rafts headed for the US. The group of volunteer pilots patrolled the waters around Cuba looking to rescue the immigrants. But since an agreement between the US and Cuba stemmed the flow of immigrants last year, Brothers to the Rescue has focused on more overtly political actions against the Cuban government. On Jan. 9 and 13 of this year, small planes from Florida dropped leaflets over Miami; an official statement published in the weekly trade union newspaper Trabajadores warned that any future flights would meet with a stronger response from the Cuban government. According to Inter Press Service, Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto admitted at the time having distributed half a million pamphlets over Havana urging residents to take "nonviolent direct action" against the government of President Fidel Castro .

Retired Adm. Eugene Carroll of the Center for Defense Information said on the night of Feb. 24 that during a visit to Cuba 10 days earlier, Cuban authorities asked him and others in his group how the US government would react if Cuba shot down exile planes that violated Cuban airspace. Carroll said he took the question as an indication that Cuban military officials were considering such an action. He said he told the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) about it when he returned.

Carroll was in Cuba Feb. 5-9 leading a delegation of four former US military personnel and two civilians, including former US ambassador to El Salvador Robert White, now with the Center for International Policy. A key focus of their trip was a tour of the partly-finished Juragua nuclear facility in Cienfuegos province. Carroll told the press: "There is nothing in Cuba that threatens US security," and said he and the other delegation members "did everything possible to convince that there is no possibliity the US will invade Cuba."
(snip/...)

1. A SINGLE WELL-TIMED ACT OF PROVOCATION HAS PUT THE ISSUE OF CUBA RIGHT BACK INTO THE CENTER OF WASHINGTON POLITICAL DEBATE. In this new context, the Helms/Burton bill is being rushed to a vote in Congress. It is clear that the majority of the Senate considers the bill excessive, unenforceable, and an affront to both the U.S. business community and our international trading partners. But Congress will likely pass the bill anyway, given the current climate in Washington. The newly-strengthened version of the bill will make the U.S. blockade of Cuba even harder to lift. We pray that the bill will be defeated, and we urge all possible work to this end.
   
   
2. WE DO NOT CONSIDER BROTHERS TO THE RESCUE A "HUMANITARIAN" ORGANIZATION. It was founded in the office of the notorious Cuban American National Foundation. It is directed by an "ex"-CIA agent who was involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the contra war in Nicaragua. Along with Radio Marti propaganda, it helped to stimulate the exodus of thousands of rafters who risked (and often lost) their lives to leave Cuba.
   
   
3. THE FLYOVER ON FEBRUARY 24 WAS JUST ONE IN A SERIES OF 1700 MISSIONS OF VIOLATION OF CUBAN TERRITORY BY BROTHERS TO THE RESCUE. Their flights have been part of a tradition of hostile penetration of Cuban territory that goes back 33 years. In 1971, a Cessna flew over Havana scattering grenades that killed eight people. Cessnas from Miami have sprayed phosphorus on sugar fields; bombed sugar cane mills and tourist hotels; dropped off weapons, explosives, and infiltrators on Cuban territory; scattered leaflets urging people to rise up against their government; buzzed parks and residential neighborhoods to intimidate common citizens. All these attacks were carried out by mercenary Cessnas, not by military planes.
   
   
4. Every attack on Cuba since the Bay of Pigs has been made by so-called "civilian" vehicles. Cuba has submitted reports on 25 specific incursions from Florida into Cuban territory in the last 20 months. These have been reported through all appropriate diplomatic channels, to both the U.S. government and the International Civil Aeronautics Agency. The U.S. government has been well aware that planes from Florida have been violating U.S. aviation regulations and international law. But nothing has been done to stop or sanction the violators. The U.S. government has a responsibility not to harbor terrorists. But Brothers to the Rescue is still being allowed to operate from the U.S. -- even though it has broken national and international laws and regulations. Up until now, the Cubans have reacted to these repeated violations with restraint. The incursions have continued and increased. Cuba might well have assumed that the U.S. was tolerating an escalation of terrorism, since nothing was being done to stop it. The Brothers to the Rescue pilots chose to ignore repeated warnings -- not only that they were in Cuban airspace, but that they were flying over a restricted military zone. (Public records show that a military airport and a naval base are in the area. How many times would a foreign and hostile Cessna be allowed to fly over a U.S. military base?)
   
   
5. CONFUSING CAUSE AND EFFECT. According to international law, any nation whose territory is violated has the right to self-defense -- in the same way that an individual has the right to say no to a molester. We are not unconditionally defending Cuba's actions on 2/24, and we deeply regret the loss of lives. But we feel strongly that if Brothers to the Rescue had not violated international law on 2/24, pilots' lives would not have been lost. If there were no U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, then Saturday's events would never have happened. If relations between our two nations were normalized, there would be no pretext for fly-overs or other terrorist provocations. The U.S. is not at war with Cuba. U.S. citizens are not well served by letting our foreign policy be dictated by the special interests of a small number of self-interested provocateurs in Miami.
   
   
6. WE ARE CALLING ON CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS, AND ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL, TO JOIN US IN A VIGIL OF PRAYER, REFLECTION, AND FASTING DURING THIS LENTEN SEASON. We are praying for reason in Washington; we are asking our leaders not to be consumed by this new wave of vengeance. Matthew 17:21 says that there are some kinds of evil that only come out by prayer and fasting. We are deeply conscious of the suffering which has been inflicted on 11 million Cuban neighbors by our government's meanspirited policy.
   (snip/...)

http://www.cubasolidarity.net/planes2.html

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New York Times Letter to the Editor: An Illegal Action?
"The Cuban Shootdown" (New York Times, Feb. 27, 1996) cites unspecified "civil aviation conventions" as authorizing the penetration of Cuban airspace by low performance aircraft chartered by Cuban political activists.

But the Chicago Convention of 1944, Article 3, not only excludes "state aircraft" from its purview, but says that aircraft used in military services "shall be deemed to be state aircraft."

I know of no other international aviation convention that is even arguably pertinent. It is possible to argue that dropping political leaflets and supporting a foreign country's political dissidents is not "military," as the term might be strictly construed, but neither is it "civil," as that term might be equally construed.

The intent of the parties to the convention was to encourage air transportation by "general aviation": corporate executives, vacationers and so on.

If it were construed to allow political overflights, Cuban aircraft would presumably be free to drop electioneering material in, say, Wilmington, N.C., when Senator Jesse Helms is running for re-election.

There are many other legal factors to be weighed before taking as firm a position as you seem to encourage.

For example, if the United States knowingly allows its territory to be used as a base for "irregulars" to commit acts of armed force against Cuba, questions of "aggression" under a definition adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 would have to be discussed.

The "inherent right" of self-defense has often been argued by the United States to rest on international practices accepted as law since 1837, when a British anticipatory incursion into New York State provoked diplomatic correspondence.

The United Nations Charter's apparent limitation of that "inherent" right to cases of an "armed attack" might even be met in the Cuba case; and if not, questions of the authority of the United Nations Security Council would be raised.

An analogy to the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983 is not appropriate, since that aircraft was a clearly civil aircraft, while the Brothers to the Rescue flight was one in a series of political actions, and its flight plan was deliberately false. It is too early to condemn the Cuban action as illegal, just as it is too early to support it.

Alfred P. Rubin
Prof. of International Law Tufts University Medford, Mass.
Feb. 28, 1996

• Castro decided to send troops to Angola on November 4, 1975, in response to the South African invasion of that country, rather than vice versa as the Ford administration persistently claimed;
  
  
• The United States knew about South Africa's covert invasion plans, and collaborated militarily with its troops, contrary to what Secretary of State Henry Kissinger testified before Congress and wrote in his memoirs.
  
  
• Cuba made the decision to send troops without informing the Soviet Union and deployed them, contrary to what has been widely alleged, without any Soviet assistance for the first two months.

(snip)

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Testifying before Congress in 1976, Kissinger stated "We had no foreknowledge of South Africa's intentions, and in no way cooperated militarily." In Years of Renewal Dr. Kissinger also denied that the United States and South Africa had collaborated in the Angolan conflict; Gleijeses' research demonstrates that they did. The book quotes Kissinger aide Joseph Sisco conceding that the Ford administration "certainly did not discourage" South Africa's intervention, and presents evidence that the CIA helped the South Africans ferry arms to key battlefronts. Contrary to what Kissinger alleges in his memoirs, the first Cuban military advisers did not arrive in Angola until late August 1975, and the Cubans did not participate in the fighting until late October, after South Africa had invaded. The book also reproduces portions of a declassified memorandum of conversation between Kissinger and Chinese leader Teng Hsiao-p'ing to show that China had refused U.S. entreaties to continue participating in Angola because of South Africa's involvement, not because the U.S. Congress refused to allocate further funding for the covert war, as Kissinger claimed.
(snip/...)

In assessing the motivations of Cuba's foreign policy, Cuba's relations with the Soviet Union, and the nature of the Communist threat in Africa, Gleijeses shows that CIA and INR intelligence reports were often sophisticated and insightful, unlike the decisions of the policymakers in Washington.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summaries of the Cuban documents, and several declassified U.S. records relating to Cuba and Africa, follow......
(snip)

Document 4

December 3, 1975, White House Memorandum of Conversation with Chinese Officials, “The Soviet Union; Europe; the Middle East; South Asia; Angola” (Document obtained by National Security Archive, from National Archives Record Group 59. Records of the Department of State, Policy Planning Staff, Director’s Files (Winston Lord), 1969-1977, Box 373).

This conversation between President Gerald Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chinese Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p’ing demonstrates that high-ranking Chinese officials refused U.S. entreaties to continue their participation in Angola because of South Africa’s involvement. Vice Premier Teng states, “As I mentioned to you just now, the primary problem is the involvement of South Africa. If you can get South Africa out of Angola as soon as possible, or find some other means to replace South Africa on the southern front, this would be good. We are in no position to help except in the north through Zaire.” Kissinger later argued in his memoirs, Years of Renewal (p. 893), that the reason behind the end of Chinese involvement was the U.S. Congress’ refusal to continue funding the covert war.

Monday, 25 February, 2002, 15:32 GMT
Obituary: Jonas Savimbi, Unita's local boy

By Chris Simpson
Former BBC correspondent in Angola

Fighting against an Angolan Government which deployed thousands of Cuban troops and enjoyed strong support from the former Soviet Union, Unita's cause was taken up by apartheid South Africa and by the United States under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior.
(snip)

Savimbi formed Unita after failing to find common ground with other nationalist movements, notably the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

Savimbi's critics say Unita's military campaigns against the Portuguese regime were fictitious and later published documents linking Savimbi to Portuguese intelligence, suggesting he was a paid informer.
(snip)

Savimbi, once a self-proclaimed Maoist, described Unita as having embarked on its own "long march" at this point, recovering slowly from defeat and betrayal to rediscover itself as a movement, drawing on the courage of a few dozen survivors.

But Unita's survival owed much to its alliance with South Africa, which remained at war with Angola for much of the next 15 years, and to the US.
(snip)

Unita drifted back to war following the 1994 peace
The conflict which followed was infinitely worse than anything which had gone before, with thousands of civilians perishing.
(snip)

A former backer in Washington once conceded ruefully: "Savimbi is probably the most brilliant man I've ever met, but he's also dangerous, even psychotic".
(snip/)

Moxico, Angola Jonas Savimbi One of Africa's most
notorious traitors, a cia backed counter-revolutionary
, terrorist and murderer of hundreds of thousands of African
Peoples is dead, and not far from where he was killed, he
was buried.

......when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog ... then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.
(snip/...)

No evidence was found that there was a terrorist training base on Grenada or that Cubans intended to take over the island. Reporters who examined the warehouses cited by the president said there were Soviet-made weapons and ammunition but that the warehouses were no more than half full and many of the weapons out-of-date. Whether the Americans were in danger remained in dispute after this war of a few days was over. A New York Times report stated, "Several assertions offered by officials as evidence that the danger justified the invasion have proven to be inaccurate." (New York Times, 11/6/83)
(snip/...)

Seeing the obvious, that the U.S. government was not taking action to stop Miami-based terrorism, the Cubans opted in the 1990's to send their own intelligence officers to Florida under cover as exiles to provide warnings on coming terrorist actions. There they infiltrated some of the exile groups and were reporting back to Havana, including information on planned illegal over-flights of Cuba by Brothers to the Rescue.

>>>Still, the Cuban government hoped that the U.S. could be convinced to take action against Miami-based terrorists. So in 1998 Cuba delivered to the FBI voluminous information they had collected on U.S.-based terrorist activities against Cuba. But instead of taking action against the terrorists, the FBI then arrested 10 members of a Cuban intelligence network whose job was to infiltrate the terrorist organizations. Later the 5 Cuban intelligence officers running the network were tried in Miami, where conviction was guaranteed, for conspiracy to commit espionage and for not having registered as agents of a foreign power. They had never asked for nor received a classified government document or classified information of any kind, yet they were given draconian sentences, one of them two life terms. The inhuman treatment of these unbending prisoners ordered by Washington, designed to destroy them mentally and physically and turn them against Cuba, sets world records for sordid, deranged punishment. Demand for their freedom is the main political topic in Cuba today.<<<
(snip/...)

1919–83, president of Cuba (1959–76). A prosperous lawyer, he participated in Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement and was imprisoned (1958). He escaped and fled to Mexico, returning to Cuba after Castro’s triumph (1959). As minister of laws (1959) he helped to formulate Cuban policies. He was appointed president in 1959. Intelligent and competent, he wielded considerable influence. In 1976 the Cuban government was reorganized, and Castro assumed the title of president; Dorticós was named a member of the council of state.

January 17 / 18, 2004

Meet Our New Saddam
Introducing Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan
By SADIK H. KASSIM

Introducing Islam Karimov, one of Washington's most recent allies in the War on Terror. The neo-Stalinist autocrat presides over Uzbekistan, a vast mineral and oil rich country strategically located in central Asia. A country where dissidents are boiled alive (1); where having an Islamically sanctioned beard can get you arrested (2); where torture is widespread. In short, a country where human rights abuses are occurring on "a massive scale," (3) financed in part by the American taxpayer.
(snip)

Uzbekistan's cooperation with Washington has not gone unrewarded. In March 2002, Messrs Bush and Karimov formally met for 45 minutes in the White House. The meeting produced a five point strategic partnership between the two countries. Among other things, in exchange for continued use of Khanbad, the agreement granted Uzbekistan $500 million in aid and credit guarantees (6), $25 million for military assistance, $18 million for "border security assistance", and $1 million in policing assistance (7). These concessions were made to one of America's "foremost partners in the fight against terrorism (8)" despite the State Department's own declaration that, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with a very poor human rights record (9)."

According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2003 World Report3, the Karimov led government violates, on a systematic level, basic rights "to freedom of religion, expression, association and assembly." HRW notes that Karimov has used the pretext of the "War on Terror", to pursue a campaign whose aim is to squelch opposition. Specifically, the government has arrested and tortured thousands of independent Muslims, including minors. HRW and other human rights organizations estimate that there are between 7,000 and 10,000 prisoners held on religious and political charges. Most recently, forensic evidence has been revealed suggesting that Karimov's government boiled to death two Muslim prisoners after they refused to stop praying.
(snip/...)

Because the U.S. embargo is not only a blockade of food and medicine but also a stranglehold on the transmission of information, I was suffering from a similar sort of ignorance when it came to the lives of these Cubans. Together we created impromptu information exchanges. And through these friendships I learned of a Cuba rarely covered in the U.S. media. I met people who had volunteered in the 1961 Literacy Campaign when one hundred thousand Havana residents moved to the countryside to teach the peasants to read. Several volunteers were murdered by counterrevolutionary peasants who, most Cubans believe, were paid by the CIA. I heard a trova or political folk singer criticize Fidel Castro at the National Symphony. I met a doctor who had been living in Africa along with thousands of other Cuban physicians who offered free medical care to the poor. And I learned about Operation Peter Pan. This story has parallels to the Elian crisis and perhaps at one time could have elicited similarly strong emotions, but it is a story that even today, nearly 40 years later, remains locked away in the confidential files of the CIA.
(snip/...)

His first trip outside the Vatican as pope was in early 1979 to Mexico, which for more than half a century was ruled by vehemently anti-clerical regimes.

Under pain of prison, nuns were forbidden to wear habits and priests could not appear in a cassock and Roman collar outside what church property had not already been confiscated by the government. But when hundreds of bishops and priests began arriving at Mexico City airport from other countries in clerical garb, the local clergy took courage from some of the first words the new pope had uttered from St. Peter's balcony: "Be not afraid."

They suddenly appeared on the streets in full religious regalia _ "prayerfully defiant," as my college classmate Bishop John McGann from Brooklyn quipped _ and the government did nothing. Except for some police, who cautiously blessed themselves when the pope passed, just as police did some years later when John Paul II set foot in former altar boy Fidel Castro's Cuba.
(snip)

Pope in Mexico

...criticism should never ignore the fact that Cuba's primary service to the world has been to provide living proof that it is possible to conquer poverty, disease and illiteracy in a country that was grossly over-familiar with all three. That is a pretty big service. The fact that it has been delivered in the face of sustained hostility from an obsessive neighbour makes it all the more stunning.
(snip)

Those who think that Cuba will roll over and be trampled on when Castro eventually goes are, I believe, grossly mistaken. Cuba will continue to evolve pragmatically, as it has done beneath the rhetoric for 40 years, in order to defend the integrity of its achievements. The tragedy is that the evolutionary process - not least in regard to the liberal freedoms - could be so much more rapid and comfortable, if only the US would learn to co-exist a little more graciously.

Given Florida's status as a hair's-breadth deliverer of Republican power, that is probably a vain hope. Yet the contradictions of the US position, in terms of its own rational self-interest, are so extreme as to demand reappraisal. Even the Bush administration has had to ask itself how, while engaged everywhere else in its holy war against terrorism, it can sustain the outrageous Cuban Adjustment Act, which gives haven as political refugees to anyone, including hijackers, who reaches American shores for any reason from Cuba.
(snip/...)