Cuba: Bay of Pigs Pt. 2 in the Works?
From the UK's Independent (only a dozen US rags have sought fit to print that we are preparing for another round of regime change). If you don't beleive me, check the first section's title = HASTENING CHANGE IN CUBA: TRANSITION, NOT SUCCESSION
Among other things, the Commission recommends immediate privitization of health care, education and real estate - meaning millions can be kicked out of their homes, colleges, and hospitals. It also would make ANY US-based humanitarian assistance to Cuba, like the 80 year old World Council of Churches aid program, illegal. Furthermore a classified section is menacingly attached to this report.
Bush Urged To Intervene After Castro’s Death
July 3, 2006
A new high-level report (leaked here) due for publication later this week urges the United States government to begin preparations to intervene in Cuba in the event President Fidel Castro’s death. The goal is to help spawn a speedy transition on the island towards "democracy and political freedom".
The recommendations, which include the creation of an $80m (£43m) fund to promote democracy in Cuba, are contained in the latest report compiled by the Commission for Assitance to a Free Cuba, created by President George Bush three years ago.
A classified annex to the document lists future measures the US should consider further to undermine the regime of Mr Castro, who has led the island since 1959. The report’s release, probably this Wednesday, is certain further to aggravate already tense relations between the two governments.
The president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, condemned the report over the weekend, describing its publication as an act of war. "What’s most important is that they admit to a secret plan to overthrow another government," Mr Alarcon told reporters. "What on earth could the secret part say when the public part violates all kinds of international law?"
...
In addition to the two-year $80m fund, the US should also be ready to spend $20m a year on pro-democracy programmes, the panel said.
To what degree the US can expect to influence events is open to question given its efforts over the past four decades to isolate and punish Cuba’s leaders. In recent years, Mr Bush has moved to tighten a US embargo, for instance by limiting the amount of money Cuban exiles can send to family back home.
posted by leftside at
10:48 AM
11 Comments:
The cuban people will be free and stolen property will be returned, despite the continued efforts of dictator-apologists like yourself. They might even have the kind of elections we've seen in Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico right there in Cuba. That'd dissappoint a pure socialist like yourself, but it'd sped up the reality check you need so bad. How will you explain your support for Castro to millions of cubans who will suddenly find their lives better off? I'm looking forward to that trip. Sign me up.
Hunger Strike for Internet Access in Cuba
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/opinion/14981763.htm
Do you support US military intervention in Cuba?
Do you support the forcible overturning of socialist principles like free health care for all, free (all level) education and job-training for all, pensions for all?
I say forcible because the Cuban people have already voted on what system they prefer - 98.9% supporting socialism becoming an 'irrevocable' part of the Constitution.
Farinas (your hunger striker) is not protesting ack of internet access in Cuba. He is protesting to demand, as he wrote to Fidel, “that Empresa de
Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A. install an Internet connection at my home, as it has for a privileged few from the Government”. I wonder what the reaction of our government would be if poor people demanded the same thing in this, or any other country? He is asking for FREE internet usage. I know Cubans are used to things being provided for free - and the internet has been opened up to more and more people. But technological and financial (embargo related) constraints forces the government to provide access fairly and according to priorities of the State.
Isn't it amazing how a dictator can pull 98.9% of the vote for something he believes in?
Saddam managed to win his elections with 100% of the vote. The people of Iraq must have REALLY liked him!
To be honest, I'm surprised Fidel allowed 1.1% to vote against socialism! But I guess you have to weed out the infidels somehow.
Castro is not Saddam. No one gets tortured, killed or even jailed for dissent.
The 98.9% is legitimate. Nothing that I have ever read questioned that 8.1 million signatures were gathered in the 4-day period by the country's mass organizations. The Constitutional referendum took place after the largest marches in Cuban history (9 million marchers were estimated). Reporters in Havana at the time showed the long lines to sign their name.
I know it seems impossible here, where division is a permanent and natural part of our system, but Cuba is a remarkably unified country. You feel it walking through the streets and talking to people. There may be petty disagreements about this or that, but virtually NO ONE wants to turn back the clock to US sytem capitalism there. I once found secret US University polling that found this too, but I can't at the moment.
But they do get jailed for being homosexual, correct?
Mark, that is absolutely incorrect and has NEVER been the case in Cuba. There was a time (6- years or so in the 60s) when homosexuals were not allowed in the military. Since there was universal service, gays along with pacifists and the incapable, were given other jobs for the revolution in agriculture or whatever. But the main (pre-Revolution) laws against gays have been taken off the books, or are not enforced.
Leftside, homosexuals were rounded up and incarcerated in Cuba. Read some history, fella. Most supporters of the revolution admit that UMAP was not good for the revolution:
The 1959 Cuban Revolution improved living conditions for the vast majority of Cuba's people. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, Cuban homosexuals continued to face discrimination.
Between 1965 and 1968, homosexual men were incarcerated in UMAP (Military Units to Aid Production) camps where they faced brutality and attempts to turn them into "real" men.
(http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/172.html)
Even ardent supporters of Castro admit to the history of post-revolutionary discrimination against homosexuals. Your absolutely committment to denying any wrongdoing by Castro shows either you are naive or complicit.
I'm sure you'll spin even UMAP, but really, that would be disgusting even for you I would hope.
As to your earlier comments, one can support universal healthcare and literacy, while also supporting universal suffrage. Castro is the oldest living dictator in the world. He's not still in power because the people want him, he's still in power because he...still wants to be in power. Do you support Kim Jung Il's lifetime presidency in N.Korea? Can't you see what might...possibly...just maybe...wrong with a system that perpetuates one man's vision, one man's rule...forever?
I never said I supported UMAP, nor denied there was discrimination. I was saying that no one was imprisoned for being gay. UMAP may have been many things, but it was not incarceration - and it was not solely aimed at gays. Again, it was a way for gays to contribute in other ways than the military. But certianly machismo attitudes and laws from the pre-Revolution days did carry over. But today they are gone and the government actively supports the rights of gays - something I wish our own government would do.
For caring so much about the plight of gays, I would expect to have an expression of support for the equal rights of gays in general and in the military, from you and Mark.
No I don't suport Kim Jong Il in N Korea. I am not a Stalinist. But I don't believe in term limits, either. I believe Cuba is a democracy and its leader is an authentic expression of the will of the Cuban people, both indirectly through the legislative voting and just based on polls, my reading of experts and my own coversations with the Cuban people. He is a truly unique and capable leader for the Cuban people.
"UMAP may have been many things, but it was not incarceration"
Jesus.
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