Camp Havana '07

by simon mcguinness - Free the Miami Five Thu Aug 09, 2007 21:11

Thanks to all those who have spotted the date mix up in the detailed event schedule. The events listed should be read as Friday 7, Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 September, not as shown.

We will post a corrected version just as soon as Indymedia give us access to the file.

Sorry for the confusion. Hope to see you at Camp Havana '07 from 7 to 9 September 2007.

In solidarity,
Camp Havana Organising Committee.

by pat c Sun Aug 12, 2007 21:55

Two of the Miami Five have birthdays in August.

Please sent them a birthday greeting.

René González - born August 13, 1956.

His address is:
René González
#58738-004
F.C.I. Marianna
P.O. Box 7007
Marianna FL 32447-7007

*******************************************

Fernando González - born August 18, 1963.

He is registered in prison as Rubén Campa, so you
have to address the envelope as:
Rubén Campa, #58733-004
F.C.I. Oxford
P.O. Box 1000
Oxford, WI 53952-0505

inside the cards and letters, you can write to him as Fernando.

by Fido Castro Sun Aug 12, 2007 23:01

With all that wonderful Healthcare and Socialist Heaven, thousands risk shark infested waters to flee to the Dispicable capitalist USA every year.

Why the press even had photographs of 1950's lorries converted to rafts being used.

by cable Wed Aug 15, 2007 21:28

could you tell us, what's nearest ferry port for Camp Havana from Gt Britain?

by pat c Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:54

I reckon the nearest ferry port would be Larne. Stranlaor in Scotland. Careful if you get it though. I was once in a carriage load of Orange bandsmen on the train from belfast to larne. THey were passing around bottles of whiskey and cartoon caricatures of Gerry Adams. I drank and laughed in a loyalist manner.

by Great Cthulhu Thu Aug 16, 2007 11:34

Many American conservatives hate Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants, but have a soft spot for Cubans,because they
can use them to imply Cuba's Communist Dictatorship is the same as Social Democracy.

by pat c Thu Aug 16, 2007 14:58

After a long chain of violations, foot-dragging, incoherence in the
carrying out of justice and harsh sentences without justification, on August 20 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals of Atlanta will hold a hearing on the Cuban Five's appeal, another important step in the struggle for their freedom. The defense attorneys will present their arguments in this the third oral hearing since the appeals process began in April 2003.

A delegation of prominent attorneys from several countries including the United States will attend the hearing as witnesses of the process and to show their support. The jurists include: Ramsey Clark, former US attorney general; Cynthia McKinney, former congresswoman, and Juan Guzman the Chilean judge who led the case against ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet. Others to attend the hearing include representatives of the American Association of Jurists of the US and Canada, National Lawyers Guild, International Association of Democratic Lawyers; and jurists from Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Puerto Rico.

by pat c Wed Aug 22, 2007 15:56

Some promising news regarding the Miami 5.

Cuban 5 Hearing Fruitful

Outstanding Chilean Jurist Juan Guzman said the defense team of five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters unfairly imprisoned in United States succesfully showed the prosecution office's bad performance in the process of 2001. Guzman, who attended Monday the presentation of the defense team's allegations before three judges assigned by the US Court of Appeals 11th Circuit in Atlanta, said the team proved that Miami, United States, was not a good place for that trial.

After that process, Fernando Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez and Ramon Labanino, universally known as the Cuban Five, were unjustly condemned to harsh sentences ranging from 15 years to double life imprisonment. The jury was biased and there were allusions by the Attorney General's office that taxpayers were paying for a trial of those "who were trying to destroy United States," stated Guzman in a phone interview to the Cuban roundtable TV program.

The legal expert and former judge in the Chilean Pinochet case said that at the end of the hearing it was clear the jury was far from impartial, rather afraid and ready to rule against the Five.

International Committee to Free the Five coordinator Alicia Jrapko expressed satisfaction with the support of many world figures.

by Larry Fri Aug 31, 2007 01:38

I was a volunteer aid worker in Zambia some years ago. When I sprained my back swinging a hoe in my vegetable garden I was treated at the government hospital by a young female nurse from Cuba. She was one of many Cuban medics doing their stint in town and rural hospitals and clinics in several African countries.

Good luck with your camp.

by Democracy Sat Sep 01, 2007 10:29

The obsession with "healthcare" displayed by supporters of the Castro regime serves to demonstate that they are completely unaware of recent world history, specifically the parrallels with Warsaw Pact dictatorships. In the 1970s and 1980s, Communist countries, East Germany in particular, provided free healthcare to other countries they were seeking to woo, in particuar in Africa. To such an extent that at reunification, East Germany had a far better "cradle to grave" social welfare than the west had.

All that aside, lets look at the other parralels between the DDR and Cuba. All that rational thinking people abhor in the DDR are present in Cuba - an authoritarian dictatorship, an omnipresent secret police and repression service, an embargo on emigration, a lack of free speech, the right to protest or freely associate.

I look forward to Donegal. I'll be the guy with the "Free Cuba" banner. The difference is, I'll mean it.

by Sceptic Sat Sep 01, 2007 10:50

Its not surprising that Cuba should trump its successes in the health area since there is little else to show for half a century of a communist one party State with all the trappings one might expect with that. One could mention lack of freedoms, secret police and constant surveillance of the people, suppression and execution of political dissidents. Whether this “deal” – political freedoms exchanged for health care it is a good one or a necessary one is another matter and there is the fact that the people have been unable to give or withhold their political assent to it. Two points on the doctors however: firstly the regime can set and control their pay and doctors are paid no more than taxi drivers. That is taking and using a power that would not be available to other Governments who must govern by consent. You could run a most excellent heath care system in Ireland or anywhere else if you only had to pay the doctors 30 US dollars a month. The doctors are not in much of a position to protest. Secondly the statistics on Cuban health services are not verified independently and such regimes are prone to exaggerate their “good” data. The data needs to be taken with a good few grains of salt.

by erqwnqr Sat Sep 01, 2007 12:50

Health and Cuba Solidarity activists may be interested in this recent download available from OneBigTorrent.org


¡Salud!
What puts Cuba on the map in the quest for global health
http://onebigtorrent.org/details.php?id=2409

'A timely examination of human values and the health issues that affect us all, ¡Salud!looks at the curious case of Cuba, a cash-strapped country with what the BBC calls ‘one of the world’s best health systems.’  From the shores of Africa to the Americas, ¡Salud! hits the road with some of the 28,000 Cuban health professionals serving in 68 countries, and explores the hearts and minds of international medical students in Cuba -- now numbering 30,000, including nearly 100 from the USA.  Their stories plus testimony from experts around the world bring home the competing agendas that mark the battle for global health—and the complex realities confronting the movement to make healthcare everyone’s birth right.'

by Larry Sat Sep 01, 2007 19:22

While not denying what he (she?) says about the internal social system in Cuba, I'd like to question Sceptic on the snide reference to Cuban doctors only earning the same as taxi drivers.

What salary should taxi drivers be paid? Why should they earn less than doctors?

Are hospital consultants in Ireland overpaid and underworked? Does the salary pecking order and the elaborate job demarcation among hospital workers not fuel the chaotic delivery of health services in Ireland, supposedly one of the richest countries in western Europe?

I worked as a volunteer (not in health) in Africa some years back and can tell Sceptic that African doctors are paid low salaries in the hospital system. They work hard in places that are underequipped, but have professional security and may live in subsidised accomodation provided by hospitals, so their lives are more comfortable than lower grade civil servants and primary schoolteachers, for example. There is a serious skills drain among medical people in Africa - doctors go abroad, preferably to Europe, Australia and North America for vastly higher salaries. Some work in Irish hospitals. Medical missionaries (a declining species) from well-off countries and Cuban volunteer doctors help to fill personnel gaps created by the skills drain.

Cuba is a poor country and needs an accountable system of government with less emphasis on charismatic personalities, and needs inward capital investment that won't interfere in its cultural achievements - that won't undermine the social welfare system in the way it seems to have happened in the former Soviet Union. Good luck again to those attending the Donegal events.

by Sceptic (Mr) Sat Sep 01, 2007 19:53

I was not putting down taxi drivers. Regrets if shortage of space did not permit that qualification last time. However the plain fact is that it is a relatively low skilled job compared to being a doctor. Absent a very controlling and dictatorial government and with any kind of approximation of the wage levels to education, capacity and competency tests that doctors have to go through and doctors will command remuneration towards the top end. I’m not saying the salaries available to consultants in Ireland are justified – what you have there is the consultants organising themselves into a powerful and rather greedy trade union which becomes virtually the sole and monopolistic supplier of consultant services and thus very high pay indeed can be secured. There is no problem with doctors volunteering to work for low pay in Africa or elsewhere – but in general those doctors will have the right to emigrate and most do – a choice which is not available to the generality of Cuban doctors. The fact is that one could not operate the Cuban health servicein its present form without a dictatorship. It’s a high price to pay and it is not necessary. Free countries can and do operate good health services with good remuneration for doctors, including fully public or regulated systems where the entire system might be based on social security or such like. Defenders of Cuba who trumpet its doctors while remaining mute on the character of the regime are unconvincing. That’s not to take away from its value or to insist that a high level of public health services should not be maintained in Cuba if political liberalisation were to take place. The debate about the Irish health system is a separate matter – however to dismiss it as “chaotic” is something of an oversimplification.

by Fonseca Sun Sep 02, 2007 00:38

Cubans flee because the US baits them with unusually lax migration laws that apply to no other nationality on Earth except for Cubans! So Cuba is made to look like a prison!

Every year, many thousands of Mexicans flee to the US - - but they get shot by vigilante's in the desert, or shoved in sweatshops for a few years before being shipped back over the border...

F

by Larry Sun Sep 02, 2007 08:36

Democracy creates conditions for capital investment in well-positioned urban growth centres. Migrant labour drifts to these industrialised cities from the impoversihed provinces and villages. Migrating Mexicans are an obvious example. They migrate initially to the choked city of Mexico itself, and finding no fulfillment there they take the illegal trail to the USA, often with disastrous results. Landless coffee pickers in Brazil are another. Their lives are hazardous, their salaries often exploitative. Sao Paolo and Recife often prove to be hell rather than paradise.

The state capitalist policies of marxist China since Deng Xiao Ping's new economic policies of 1981 have raised living standards of millions of city dwellers while leaving the provinces and villages behind. Many migrant workers in China live hazardously, working in ill-regulated sweatshops and on building projects with minimal safety standards.

Freedom is more than the right to vote. The right to life and the right to communicate rational opinion are probably the two most important rights. After that there are basic human needs like:shelter, food, gainful employment and education. These needs are not recognised formally as rights, not yet. Both capitalist democracy and state regulated marxist capitalism of the Chinese kind fail to deliver on pious utterances about prosperity, comfort and cultural growth.

Cuba's health aid to impoverished Africa does not mitigate the domestic failures of the Cuban Government; but it is effective aid nevertheless. On that basis alone I welcome the Cuban solidarity events planned for Donegal. Our relationship with third world countries needs to transcend ideological differences - Cuba, Zambia, Tanzania, El Salvador all need practical help regardless of what sort of government they each have.

by Sceptic Sun Sep 02, 2007 14:10

Fonseca: The difference between Cuban and Mexican migrants to the US is that former are entitled to political asylum while the latter are not.

Larry: I share you view that Cuban doctors working in poor countries area of value to the people they treat. My gripe is with those who see only the Cuban doctors but ignore the rest of the Cuban reality. The latter is in the direction of official Cuban propaganda which is to drown out all the bad aspects with news of all these doctors and their great work. I suspect that this camp is arranged by people who are ideological bedfellows of the Cuban regime who, like the Cuban regime, promote the health service successes while ignoring the rather base realities underlying the regimes grip on power for so long.

by Larry Sun Sep 02, 2007 15:48

If you or some friends think the Donegal workshops are being organised by whitewashers of Cuba, would you not consider going up there yourselves to hear whatever spiel they're playing? You could then at various psychological moments ask a few polite pertinent questions. Just like you do now and again on this Indymedia website?

by John P Sun Sep 02, 2007 16:10

The Sept 1 poster calling himself/herself Democracy makes very important points about the nature of the Cuban regime . However I think that he/she should consider carefully before wearing that Free Cuba T shirt to Donegal . By saying “ Free Cuba” ,there is a good chance that the people of Glencolumkille will think you are somehow defending the Cuban tyranny, Fidel Castro’s anti gay positions ,the death penalty which he endorses ,the regime’s secret police etc. A clear distinction should be made between the Cuban regime and the people of Cuba. I therefore urge those attending the weekend gathering to wear T shirts with more appropriate slogans. Free the People of Cuba would be far better than Free Cuba as the latter slogan could suggest that its wearer was somehow calling on democratic counties like the United States to stop interfering in the affairs of the tyrannical Cuban regime.

by Harhar Sun Sep 02, 2007 16:27

Thanks John, that's quite funny. You should offer your services to RTE as a comedy writer.

by john p Sun Sep 02, 2007 18:12

I obviously would not support any American intervention in Cuba to overthrow the hateful homphobic dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Furthermore ,as a life-long opponent of the death penalty myself , I would be loath to suggest that even such a gay and lesbian -hating monster as Castro should face the ultimate penalty for his crimes against the people of Cuba . I would certainly call for regime change there ,but that change should come from the people of Cuba -of course with the brave assisance of the millions of those good oppressed Cubans who have been forced to seek refuge in such places as havens of democracy as Miami

by pat c Sun Sep 02, 2007 18:16

In the past the Cuban Government imposed anti gay measures. These included imprisoning people because of their sexual orientation. That was wrong. But it is no longer the situation. Now Lesbians and Gays are able to openly celebrate their sexuality.

Cuba is a friendlier place for LGBTS than the US.

by No paradiso Mon Sep 03, 2007 01:35

pat c

No, sadly gays do not openly celebrate their sexuality in Cuba. OK, there is a scene of sorts but open it is not. It is easy to be gay in Cuba if you are "discreto" but don't even think of PDA's yet alone a gay pride event. The only really open element is the "pengueros" essentially young male companions for hire who ply their trade to the increasing number of western tourists. A blind eye is turned, presumably on the basis of kickbacks to the police and/or its role in attracting the tourist dollar.

And its not even like the internet is available to ease gay interaction. You can't own a computer and even if you did internet and email access is only available through the government owned (and monitored) ISP. All print and broadcast media is government controlled and is persistently homophobic.

While gays (and those testing HIV positive) are no longer routinely incarcerated, Cuba remains a pretty repressive state. For a reliable overview I'll go with Amnesty International's 2007 annual report http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/Cuba

by posted by F Espinoza Mon Sep 03, 2007 13:16

Some links to Cuba Health and Solidarity:

http://www.cubacoop.com

http://www.cuba-humanidad.org

http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/index.html

About Solidarity with the Cuban Five:

Rainbow solidarity for Cuban Five circles the globe

by Leslie Feinberg

Aug. 27, 2007

Reprinted from Workers World

A multinational, multilingual group of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) activists in the United States—the belly of the beast—issued a call in Spanish and English for Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five in mid-January 2007.
The five political prisoners—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González—are collectively serving four life sentences and 75 years in far-flung U.S. penitentiaries. The “crime” they were convicted of is having infiltrated CIA-backed fascist commando groups in order to halt terror attacks against Cuba from U.S. soil.
The Rainbow Solidarity call demands a new trial and freedom for these political prisoners, defense of Cuban sovereignty and self-determination, and a halt to the illegal U.S. acts of war against Cuba—including the economic blockade and CIA-trained, funded and armed attacks by mercenary “contra” armies operating from this country.
This initiative was consciously issued by LGBT and other activists battling oppression based on sexuality, gender expression and sex—one of the targeted progressive movements at whom the imperialist campaign to vilify Cuba had been aimed.
This was not the first act of solidarity with Cuba by left-wing LGBT activists in the United States—not by a long shot. But the response to the Rainbow Solidarity initiative—swift and dramatic—signals a new day for LGBT support worldwide for Cuba.
Within hours and days after the call went out over the Internet, hundreds of individuals and organizations signed on to the call, posted on the www.freethefiveny.org web site (look for the rainbow).
Most exciting was how many of the signers immediately began forwarding the call to their lists.
Volunteers from around the world translated the introduction and call for Rainbow Solidarity to free the Cuban Five into simplified and traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Farsi, Turkish, Greek, Croatian, Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Japanese, French and German. More translations in the works or planned include Swahili, Urdu, Indonesian, Arabic, Korean, Bengali and a streaming video in ASL (American Sign Language).
International endorsements flooded in from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Mexico, Montenegro, New Zealand, occupied Palestine, Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Wales and other countries, and from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Individuals and groups from every state in the continental United States signed on as well—from southern Florida to the Pacific Northwest, Southern California to Maine.
All told, they form an extraordinary and broad arc of a united front. A frequently updated list of signers is posted at www.freethefiveny.org.
Many names on the growing list will be recognizable as well-known LGBT activists and others battling oppression based on sexuality, gender and sex, including women’s liberationists.
This roster also reveals that many of these activists are also some of the hardest-working organizers in movements here and around the world against imperialist war, neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, national oppression, racism, police brutality, prisons and the death penalty, sweatshops and capitalist globalization.
These are also leading activists in the struggle for immigrant rights; women’s liberation, including reproductive rights; jobs; labor union, tenant and community organizing; education; health care and affordable housing; freedom for all U.S. political prisoners and for prisoner rights; liberation of oppressed nations; support for Cuba, and the revolutionary movement to overturn capitalism and build an economy based on planning to meet peoples’ needs.

Expansive political spectrum

Early signers include Teresa Gutierrez, a longtime leader in the struggle to free the Cuban Five; former political prisoner and leading prison abolitionist Angela Y. Davis; Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice; LeiLani Dowell, national coordinator of FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together); Stephen Funk, the U.S. Marine who was the first imprisoned Iraq War conscientious objector; Bev Tang, organizer for Anakbayan, the youth group of Bayan; Gerry Scoppettuolo, co-founder of GALLAN (Pride At Work, Boston); Lani Ka’ahumanu, BiNET USA; anti-imperialist activist Joo-hyun Kang; Atlanta community activist Pat Hussain; Camille Hopkins, director of NYTRO (New York Transgender Rights Organization) of Western New York; transgender activist Moonhawk River Stone; and Jesse Lokahi Heiwa, Queer People Of Color Action.
Rauda Morcos, general coordinator of Aswat-Palestinian Gay Women, signed on. The Puerto Rican Alliance of Los Angeles and its coordinator Lawrence Reyes have endorsed.
Activists Barbara Smith and Margo Okazawa-Rey signed on. The two were among the founders of the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminists of all sexualities who issued a historic 1977 statement against the “interlocking” system of “racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression.”
Former political prisoners Laura Whitehorn and Linda Evans added their names.
Louisville, Ky., filmmaker and activist Sonja de Vries, director of the documentary “Gay Cuba,” and Walter Lippmann, editor-in-chief of CubaNews, signed on. Other activists and organizations working in defense of Cuba added their weight to the call, including Cuba Education Tours, Vancouver, B.C., Canada; Fairness Campaign, Louisville, Ky.; Simon McGuinness, secretary of the Free the Miami Five Campaign, Ireland; Brigitte Oftner, coordinator of the Austrian Free the Five committee; Viktor Dedaj, webmaster of the Cuba Solidarity Project; the Cuba Edmonton Solidarity Committee in Alberta, Canada; the Swiss Cuba Association; Deutsche Kommunistische Partei Cuba Arbeitsgruppe, Germany; and No War on Cuba, Washington, D.C.
Also QueerToday.com and its founder, Mark Snyder; Gordene MacKenzie, GenderTalk Radio and director of Women’s Studies, Merrimack College, Beverly, Mass.
Organizations include the national organization Pro-Gay Philippines; Audre Lorde Project—a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area; FIERCE!—a community organization for Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Queer, and Questioning (TLGBTSQQ) youth of color in New York City; QUIT! (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism); LAGAI-Queer Insurrection; Stonewall Warriors, Boston; Greek Homosexual Community, Athens, Greece; Queertoday.com, Boston, Mass.; and Queers Without Borders, Hartford, Conn.
The Queer Caucus of the National Lawyers Guild; Stephen Whittle, professor of equalities law and the British organization Press for Change at the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan University, endorsed. So did Barbara Findlay, co-chair of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Issues Section, BC Branch, Canadian Bar Association, and the law office of Lenore Rae Shefman, San Francisco, Calif.
Many transgender and transsexual organizations and individuals strengthened the initiative, including Trans Action Canada; three national Italian trans groups: Coordinamento Nazionale Trans FTM, Movimento Identità Transessuale and Crisalide Azione Trans; Matt/ilda a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, editor “Nobody Passes,” San Francisco, Calif.; Cianán Russell, chair of the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance; and the Winona Gender Mutiny Collective.
Endorsers include The National Lavender Green Caucus; Doug Barnes and the Freedom Socialist Party; Starlene Rankin, Green National Committee delegate of the Lavender Caucus of the Green Party of the United States; Orange County Peace & Freedom Party, Anaheim, Calif; and the LGBT Caucus of Workers World Party.
Among the signers are individuals and organizations whose activist work includes the struggle against women’s oppression: Brenda Stokely, a leader of the Million Worker March Movement and NYCLAW; transnational feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center; Women’s Fightback Network, Boston, Mass.; Melinda Clark, local co-founder of Code Pink in Willits, Calif.; Welfare Warriors, Milwaukee, Wis.; League of Women Voters in Montenegro; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) chapters in Washington, D.C.; Rome, Italy; and the Canadian Section in British Columbia.
Many labor activists have added their names and/or the endorsement of their unions, including Pride at Work/GALLAN Boston, Mass., AFL-CIO; Bus Riders Union/Labor Community Strategy Center, Los Angeles, Calif., and Guyanese-American Workers United, New York, N.Y. From Canada, Canadian Union Of Postal Workers, Calgary, Alberta; Canadian Union of Public Employees, Toronto, Ont.; and Hospital Employees’ Union, Burnaby, B.C.
There’s no end in sight to this rainbow.

Grassroots diplomacy

The Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five initiative is also giving voice to individuals who, living in capitalist democracies, have little political input except to be asked to pull a lever for a big-business candidate.
The Rainbow Solidarity call has become a poll that reveals a new grassroots sentiment as signers eloquently register their outrage at the continued imprisonment of the five Cubans and at Washington’s economic and political blockade of Cuba and other illegal and covert acts of war.
Rebecca writes from San Diego, Calif., “Free the Cuban Five!! No more political prisoners!”
David from New York state stresses how biased the trial venue was for the Five: “Five Cubans who were trying to stop the ultra-right terrorist groups in Miami from carrying out violent actions against the people of Cuba. Miami is the one city in the U.S. where the Five certainly could not receive a fair trial.”
Paul says: “As a gay man in South Florida who calls for freedom for our brothers, the Five, I am delighted to see this initiative. THEY MUST BE FREE!”
Tighe supports the five as “those most important defenders of everyone’s right to live without fear of terrorism. The patriotic Cuban Five [are] illegally held political prisoners in a country with the most of its own people behind bars.” Barry, who grew up in Miami, adds the need to organize to close down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo and free all those held there.
“T.” from California, comments: “These five men, fighting against terrorism, have been imprisoned by the U.S. government—‘MY’ government! Jailing heroes and supporting terror, while pretending to do the opposite, is sadly all the public can count on from ‘our’ hypocritical, double-speaking, global corporate-run excuse for a ‘by and for the people’ government.”
Brian states from Newport, Ore.: “I am enraged by the hypocrisy of five innocent men being held in prison under harsh circumstances while known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles goes scot-free. While Bush and cronies spout off that no nation that harbors terrorists will be tolerated with one face, they set a convicted terrorist murderer of at least 73 innocents free with the other, while holding five innocent men in prison.”
Adela, from the Zig Zag Young Women’s Resource Centre Inc. in Queensland, Australia, states, “I want to express my solidarity with the Cuban Five and the Cuban people and Fidel.”
Richard, from Madera, Calif., says succinctly, “It’s way past time to change our policy toward Cuba and the Cuban people.”
Jerry, from Athletes United for Peace, U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities, Nicaragua Solidarity Committee, writes: “These people were trying to prevent an act of terrorism. The country that claims to lead the ‘War On Terror’ is imprisoning them.”
Marcos writes from Bielefeld, Germany, “Free the 5 Cubans now, stop the war on Cuba and the rest of the world!”
Richard, in Jacksonville, Ill., says, “Close Guantánamo, human rights are for humans everywhere.”
Ray from Farmington, Conn., suggests, “Put Cheney and Bush in jail instead of the Cuban Five.”
Yancy, from the LGBTQI Desk of Bayan USA, affirms: “Mabuhi ang panaghiusang international!!! Long live international solidarity!!”

Solidarity is not charity

Eric from Milwaukee reminds, “Ah, the things we gain from solidarity.”
By defending Cuba against imperialist warfare, LGBT activists and organizations in the U.S. and other imperialist countries are breaking with their own ruling classes and extending their own unilateral declaration of peace to a socialist country.
By rejecting anti-communism, the movement against sexual, gender and sex oppression is combating capitalist ideology—a giant step towards liberation.
Cuba has much to teach those who yearn for the right to live and love without fear or censure about what it takes to begin the process of literally eradicating white supremacy, patriarchy and prejudice against same-sex love and gender/sex diversity; what it takes to create a new woman, a new man, a new human being, and new forms of communist comradeship.
The Cuban people fought back against enslavement for half a millennium. For the last half century they have resisted the most powerful slave-master in history, just 90 miles from their shores.
The famous labor union song poses the question sharply: Which side are you on?
Rainbow Solidarity answers: “Cuba, we are with you. Cuba, estamos contigo.”

http://www.freethefiveny.org/

Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Original in: http://www.freethefive.org/updates/Solidarity/SLRainbow...7.htm

See also:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CCdGdpeNps8 Video: "Mission against Terror"

Other websites related:

http://www.antiterroristas.cu

http://www.freethefive.org

http://www.familiesforjustice.cu/interface.en/design/ho....html

http://www.fabiodicelmo.cu/home.asp

http://www.cubainformacion.tv

http://www.cubanradio.cu

http://www.wicuba.org

http://www.freethefiveny.org

http://www.freeforfive.org

http://www.freethecuban5.com

http://www.actionsf.org

http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_...epage

http://www.cubasolidarity.com

http://www.cubasolidarity.net

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

http://www.ifconews.org

http://18thcubacaravan.blogspot.com

http://www.granma.cu/miami5/ingles/index.html

http://www.cubacoop.com

http://www.cuba-humanidad.org

http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/index.html

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7055

In Great Britain, Wales, Ireland:

http://www.ratb.org.uk

http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk

http://www.blackpoolandfyldecsc.org.uk

http://www.cubasol-manch.org.uk

http://www.cymru-cuba.cjb.net

http://www.cubasupport.com

by john d Mon Sep 03, 2007 16:34

So if as a gay man I was to visit Havana and distribute cartoons of Fidel Castro performing an act of gay love ,what would be the response from the Cuban police force? Would my democratic right to publish and distribute such cartoons be tolerated by the junta there? I very much doubt it.
I note with dismay the email address linked to in the above article . The name 'CubaSupport ' leaves the campaign open to the charge that it supports the anti-democratic ,anti-gay Cuban regime . It would be much better to call the group something along the lines of Support the People of Cuba to make the distinction between the cruel Cuban regime and the people of that country who the Cuban junta and its hateful militarist regime suppresses.

by secure hetro Mon Sep 03, 2007 16:55

Leslie Feinberg has researched the anti-Cuban propaganda regarding gay rights in Cuba and has written extensively on the subject.

Far from the Cuba-bashing image put out by ignorant Americans, it turns out that Cuba has a very progressive structure for gay rights, apparently by far the most liberal in Latin America.

Much was made of sanatoria developed for AIDS/HIV sufferers in the 1980s that returned from internationalist duties in Africa, duties that included the liberation of Namibia and the overthrow of Apartheid. At that time there was no cure and no understanding of the nature of the disease so the kind of public health measures adopted are a more humane version of those that will be adopted if (when?) human variant bird flu ever arrives in Europe. Feinberg describes the measures variously as appropriate, proportionate and necessary - just like Cuba's anti-terror legislation, which is also widely criticised by ignorant Americans - (agents of who's government finds such measures inconvenient when they try to plant bombs in hotel lobbies and on civilian aircraft).

Sexual diversity is widely discussed in the 11 daily newspapers that circulate in Cuba. Education programs are shown on state television advising parents worried about their children's emerging sexuality about how to discuss the issues that arise within families on the topic. Soap operas on national TV even contain story lines about such issues as homosexual relationships, transvestism, homophobia and sex change operations (which are free in Cuba).

But, hey, don't take my word for it check out Leslie's research at the link below.

The latest news from Havana is that the Catholic bishops (who else?) are up in arms about the proposed gay unions legislation recently introduced by the government there.

For my money, if they are upset about gender equality legislation then there must be something good going on in Cuba!

by simon mcguinness - Free the Miami Five Mon Sep 03, 2007 17:28

In a major coup for Camp Havana 07 we have managed to secure a copy of the Chuck Feeney sponsored film "Salud!" about the Cuban health care delivered to 70 of the poorest countries of the world.

This feature length film will be supported by two other shorter films on the Cuban health system:

"Let there be Light" about the 100,000 eye operations per year provided for free to all the countries of the Caribbean and described by Prime Minister Gonsalves of St Vincent and Grenadines as:

"... humanity at its best. It has never happened before in the world. An incredible gesture of international solidarity whose impact in the region has been spectacular and touched people's needs directly" ... "the work of God"

and

"On the Slopes of the Himalayas" about the Cuban contribution to the victims of the 2005 Pakistani earthquake. For some victims the first health care they had ever received was supplied by a Cuban volunteer who had hiked for miles over snow-capped peaks to deliver a child or remove a tumour or administer a vaccine. Almost none had ever seen a female doctor and their fame grew as Pakistani women, excluded from access to healthcare for religious and tribal reasons, found lifesaving treatment at the hands of Cuban women doctors.

Grateful Pakistani parents are, apparently, still naming their babies "Cuba" in gratitude within the earthquake zone to this day.

We just know you are going to find these films inspiring and uplifting - a true example of what can be achieved in the world by a small country with limited means but noble aims.

And a challenge to us here in Ireland in so many ways.

Its going to be great!
We are really looking forward to seeing you in Glencolumbkille this weekend.

- The Camp Havana Organising Committee

by pat c Mon Sep 03, 2007 17:42

I was searching for this article. I thought it had been published in the New Stateman. In any case it shows how Cuba has moved forward on LGBT rights whilst Homophobia rules in the Land of the Fee. The full article is at the link.

When it comes to gay rights, is Cuba inching ahead of USA?

By DeWayne Wickham

HAVANA — Years before George W. Bush proclaimed his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages in the United States, the ideologically rigid government of Fidel Castro made a big move in the opposite direction.

It sanctioned the production and viewing of Strawberry and Chocolate, an Academy Award-nominated film about the awkward friendship between a straight man and a gay man — and the homophobia they both had to battle. Since this movie debuted in theaters here in the mid-1990s, the Cuban government's intolerance of homosexuals has given way to a more egalitarian treatment of gays and lesbians. And now this country is on the verge of enacting a law that gives same-sex couples some form of legal status.

"We have to abolish any form of discrimination against those persons," said Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly. "We are trying to see how to do that, whether it should be to grant them the right to marry or to have same-sex unions."

Alarcon said he expects Cuba's communist government will soon enact a law to do one or the other. "We have to redefine the concept of marriage," he said. "Socialism should be a society that does not exclude anybody."

This awakening comes less than a year after President Bush renewed his call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. "Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them, and changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure," Bush said in June.

Just one state, Massachusetts, allows gay marriages. And only four permit some form of same-sex union, which falls short of the definition of marriage but lets gay couples have some legal rights.

by F Espinoza Tue Sep 04, 2007 00:13

Actually the link to the site "saludthefilm" is "dead", but you can try in:

http://www.medicc.org/index.php

http://www.saludthefilm.net

http://www.relocalize.net/salud

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=5613

There is a short video of "Salud" in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjk1ydj3koY

Visit also:

http://www.elacm.sld.cu

http://www.cuba-humanidad.org

http://www.cubacoop.com

http://www.cubainformacion.tv/

http://www.cubanradio.cu

http://18thcubacaravan.blogspot.com/

http://www.ifconews.org

by No paradiso Tue Sep 04, 2007 01:02

pat c

I'm not impressed. So the Cuban government "sanctioned the production and viewing" of one movie about man love. Bully for them. I'd still prefer to live under the US of A system where government sanction is not needed for the production and viewing of movies.

And some political functionary "expects Cuba's communist government will soon enact a law" providing for gay marriage. Well, I'm truly underwhelmed. It hardly propels Cuba ahead of the USA in the gay liberation stakes though.

Secure hetro,

Glad to hear it. Leslie Feinberg has never written any thing critical of Cuba in hir life. Ze is a long time high ranking member of the Workers World Party (a sort of American trotskyite SWP offshoot) and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper. Hir opinions of this Caribbean workers paradise can be taken with a whopping lump of salt. I think I'll rely on Amnesty International for a more objective view.

However Feinberg's recent article on LGBT rights in Cuba http://www.workers.org/2007/world/lavender-red-109/inde....html makes interesting reading. Entertaining reading too! I love the bit at the end where ze turns intellectual contortions of a truly heroic standard to explain why the gay movement doesn't need to come "out" in a socialist society such as Cuba because there is no capitalist system of bosses to come out against. You see in "a socialist country in which the laboring class rules and is trying to build socialism in the liberated turf of a workers’ state" you don't really need independent gay and lesbian organisations Feinberg dismisses Castro's anti gay history by the wonderful catch all excuse of "the onerous tasks Cuba’s revolution faced in uprooting centuries of prejudice about same-sex love. Of course, each poisonous seed had been planted and cultivated by U.S. capitalism and, earlier, Spanish colonialism." Not the revolution's fault at all, you see. Warming to hir task, ze asks: "What would Cuban men who have sex with men, women who have sex with women, and bisexuals, transsexual and transgender Cubans gain by identifying “away” from their own class?" Hmmm, I wonder. Guess it's called FREEDOM.

by Larry Tue Sep 04, 2007 02:50

What's all this using gay liberation as a way to measure the humane credentials of the Cuba government? Granted they shouldn't jail people for being actively gay in private places with other consenting adults. I saw a movie about it in Dublin some years back and was moved.

However, big capitalist countries have enacted gay freedom laws since the 1970s - and still pursue economic, sometimes military policies, harmful to the interests of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. You think such countries are more humane because they allow adults to do anything they like in private, while governments lord it over the poor world?

Gay liberation is one of several issues that has been co-opted by the ruling elites of this world to ingratiate themselves with the opinionated, money spending middle classes i.e. to enhance elite ruling power.

Once again, good luck to the Cuba weekend at Glencolumbkill. Have enlightening workshops and good cultural craic in an authentic gaelic atmosphere. A good place to hold it too - it was a remote neglected part of third world Ireland in the 1950s before the socially radical priest Fr. James McDyer mobilised the community for co-op-based economic developments.

by Sceptic Tue Sep 04, 2007 13:03

It looks like western countries cannot win. If they have an anti gay system they are being repressive. If they do liberalize it is a cynical ploy. Presumably Cuba only liberalized for the purest altruistic motives - not to pander to its libertarian leftists fellow travellers abroad?

by No paradiso Tue Sep 04, 2007 17:48

Using a regimes attitude to LGBT rights is a convenient yardstick of assessing its overall approach to human rights. A bit rough and ready admittedly but the correlation is pretty strong. On the one hand you have the various dictatorships of the left and right which have and continue to persecute and kill gays. On the other end of the spectrum the Scandinavian nations which are probably the most LGBT friendly places on earth also happen to have the world's generally accepted best records on human rights, environmental protection, developing world assistance and social egalitarianism.

The point arises because Cuba is being put forward as an exemplar of all that is good based on its excellent healthcare system and its export of this throughout the world. Yes, credit is due and it is an achievement worthy of praise BUT this should not blind us to the many shortcomings of the Cuban system. Such blindness appears rampant on Indymedia. pat c assures us that "Cuba is a friendlier place for LGBTS than the US." At best, you might be able to argue this if you took some Tennessee backwater as representative of the US but, honestly, this is a ridiculous statement given the open and free nature of LGBT society in the vast majority of the US and not just parts of Florida or California either. Cuba is not a free society for straight or for LGBT. Yes, as unfree societies go, the healthcare is excellent but there's more to life than that. And Cubans are voting with their feet and getting out as fast as they can escape or are allowed. Mostly to the allegedly oppressive USA, that destination of choice for immigrants throughout the world. But the apologists for the Cuban dictatorship have a ready answer for this too. Fonseca says "Cubans flee because the US baits them with unusually lax migration laws that apply to no other nationality on Earth except for Cubans! So Cuba is made to look like a prison!" I mean, come on. Are you saying that if Cuba itself introduced "unusually lax migration laws" for, say, US citizens, that would suffice to make the US look like a prison and lead its citizens to immigrate en masse to Cuba? Let's face it - Cuba IS a prison. You don't have to make it look like one. People flee because of the lack of freedom, the all-pervasive secret police, curbs on free speech. And above all, it doesn't allow its citizens to leave freely - the one sure mark of a repressive dictatorship. None of this is to deny any of Cuba's many achievements, particularly in healthcare, but the world's immigrants aren't exactly flocking there, are they? I wonder why??

by simon mcguinness - Free the Miami Five Tue Sep 04, 2007 22:43

Hmmm ... yes migration is an issue for Cuba as it was in Ireland until recently and, interestingly, for very similar reasons.

We have had an offer from an Irish filmmaker to do a workshop on this very topic at next year’s Camp Havana and will be considering it.

Much dis-information abounds about Cuban migration to the USA (no surprise there then) but in a global context it is one of the lower migrations per head to the USA from Latin America. You can check the figures for yourself on the US Immigrations Service Website (Cuba has a population of 11million for comparative purposes).

And this is in spite of the fact that ALONE AMONG CITIZENS of the planet, ANY Cuban (including a convicted terrorist) who sets foot on US soil is ENTITLED to stay and work there, no questions asked. Just Google “Luis Posada Carilles” for the evidence. If Osama Bin Laden were Cuban he’d be living freely in Miami, he might even be expecting a Presidential pardon on Georgie Boy's last day in Office ... as Posada is.

No other Latinos enjoy such a privilege. Quite the contrary - the USA is currently building a wall between itself and its nearest neighbour to the south. What would happen if every Mexican were entitled to a Green Card just by presenting themselves at the border? I guess Americans would be quick to insist that their government reverse its ridiculous immigration policy.

But Cubans? Well that’s another matter entirely - we want to show them as escapees from a gulag, not migrants, so we'll let them in - but only if the come illegally.

When it comes to gulags … but lets not go there.

Interestingly, Cuban migration to the USA actually fell after the revolution and is still lower today than in pre revolutionary times.

As you can see, all is not what it seems on this topic either.

But that's for another year.

This year the topic is healthcare and Cuba's unsurpassed assistance to the third world.

Lets see if we can't get some competition between countries to provide healthcare for those without it, firstly in their own countries (45million without it in the USA alone – ask Michael Moore) or those in the worlds failed states or in the hundreds of economically disadvantaged states where the majority of the earth’s population actually lives.

Simon McGuinness.

by No paradiso Wed Sep 05, 2007 00:05

Hi Simon,

I will take your word for it that Cuban migration is one of the lower migrations per head from Latin America to the USA. Now I can think of two plausible reasons for that. Firstly, Cuba doesn't allow its citizens to emigrate. Or secondly, they don't want to go. If the Cuban regime genuinely believed it was the second reason, then why not abolish all restrictions on emigration? What a triumph it would be if the Cuban people could be seen to freely choose to stay in their communist paradise and spurn the tawdry attractions of the Land of the Free. Not going to happen though is it? Doesn't that tell you something?

On another note: Yes of course the Miami 5 should be released - I've no problem agreeing with you on that. You will no doubt support the release of the 69 prisoners of conscience whom Amnesty International reported as remaining imprisoned for their political opinions. (Source: Amnesty International Annual Report 2007 http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/Cuba ) Like the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo who was sentenced to three years in 2003 on charges of showing "contempt to the figure of Fidel Castro", "public disorder" and "resistance." Poor Orlando didn't cop on to the fact that he was living in a socialist paradise with excellent healthcare and is now serving a total of 25 years (!) for further acts of "contempt" and "resistance" committed while in prison. Or Juan Carlos González Leiva, who is blind, and was arrested in March 2002 for "disrespect", "public disorder", "resistance" and "disobedience" and spent two years in prison without trial. In April 2004 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, to be served at his home. But then as President of the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights he should really have known better. After all, what had he to complain about? Did he not realise the wonderful healthcare system the revolution had thoughtfully provided for him?

Amnesty also reports that "political dissidents, independent journalists and human rights activists continued to be harassed, intimidated and detained, some without charge or trial." Also reported by AI is an increase in the public harassment and intimidation of human rights activists and political dissidents by quasi-official groups in so-called acts of repudiation.

But, I guess, Simon, "that's for another year. This year the topic is healthcare and Cuba's unsurpassed assistance to the third world."

Quite.

by pat c Wed Sep 05, 2007 17:58

Here is a call to action on behalf of the Miami 5. The full text is at the link.

On September 12th, the struggle to Free the "Cuban Five" enters its tenth year. Gerardo, Ramón, Fernando, René y Antonio are still serving long sentences in US high security prisons. They have been deprived of regular family visits. The US government has denied two of them the right to be visited by their wives at all.

We make a call to all the committees in support of the Five, friends
of Cuba, and all honest justice loving women and men around the
world, to organize events of solidarity with the Cuban Five from
September 12th to October 8th

September 12th: Marks 9 years of the unjust imprisonment of the Five.

October 6th: 31 years since the terrorist bombing of the Cubana
airliner over Barbados.

October 8th: The 40th anniversary of the assassination of Che by the
CIA.

Let us raise our voices from the most diverse actions: marches,
picket lines, public events, video documentary showings, flyer
distributions every where, signs, and other forms of creative actions.

Let us unite our forces to make the condemnation against the empire for all it crimes be unanimous!

FREEDOM NOW TO THE FIVE CUBAN PATRIOTS!

by F Espinoza Thu Sep 06, 2007 00:02

Who are the so called cuban “dissidents”?

The “fair face” the empire intends to display with the promotion of the so called cuban “dissidents” activity is based on lies, interference and hypocrisy.
There isn’t a single group of the so called cuban “independent political dissidents, journalists or human rights activists” functioning independently from the political, ideological, financial and logistical sponsorship of the USamerican government. They are simple instruments in the imperial agenda against Cuba; that many-sided and dirty war context that lasts for almost half a century.
This apparently “fair political face” of the vast imperial activity is only one of the forms stimulated in the integral, many-sided and dirty war against the cuban revolution, and everyone knows perfectly what other forms has been implemented; among them, the sponsor for the well known terrorist activities.
The US government has been always behind every counter-revolutionary action: No “independent cuban terrorist or independent terrorist act” against Cuba exists. From the creation of mercenary bands in the 60’s; the Bays of Pigs invasion; all the other multiple and bloody terrorists actions against the cuban people; the blockade… to the systematic and hypocritical production of all kind of lies…
Terrorists of cuban origin were also actives in other countries. Everyone remembers the “Cóndor Operation” in Latin America, when the US government “helped” dictatorships with the expertise of these terrorists; there are many documents de-classified to consult in the search of information on that activities (*).
Consistently, the empire always protects their cuban american terrorists, like Luis Posada Carriles, the White House “Bin Laden”, in a similar degree as it does also with the so called “independent dissidents”.

But it’s at least very strange that the so called and famous “dissidents” some international medias show us, are nowhere reflected in the daily life inside the cuban society, This flagrant contradiction could be a significant detail for honest people: obviously, the enormous propaganda these little mercenaries deserve on the so called “free press” around the world is only equaled by the other lies about the cuban revolution.
Strangely enough: socialists, socialdemocrats, democrats, christians, liberals, libertarians… are, -according with the current propaganda- vastly represented and of course organised and fighting inside the island against the regime, but nobody could ever see them in action there!
Each one of these phantasmagoric groups also publicites it’s “struggle” by means of numerous sites directly sponsored by the US government, as can be stated reading the salutation’s letters sended to “president Bush”… and the response of “president Bush” included there. In that sites it’s also promoted the “terrible” situation of the “dissidents prisoners of concience” as can be stated from the picture placed in the front page of one of those… Please visit some of this websites:

http://www.asambleasociedadcivilcuba.info

http://www.canf.org

http://www.newcubacoalition.org

But the invisibility of the cuban “dissidents” is also in contradiction with the human inherent hability to endure and resist dictatorship, as it’s said the case of Cuba is… We have only to remember many other peoples that fought against dictatorial regimes all over the world: it was the people on the streets who ousted the chilean dictatorship, or fight oppression in Palestina today, for example. Nothing stops them. Then it cannot be said that’s because the terrible repression that these poor cuban “dissidents” cannot fight for their rights. A more accurate argument is that they are simple a little amount of opportunists persons without convictions and principles, incapables of convincing the honest and revolutionary cubans no matter all the efforts the US government takes on it.
With individuals like that, all the generous sponsorship, all the resources invested on them, all those formative and encourageant encounters in the Usamerican representation in La Habana with the Usamerican representant, Mr. Michael Parmly, will allways be ineffective.
But the imperial hypocritical propaganda helps anyway these poor “dissidents” to become famous. That’s why they receive credit from some groups inside AI, who, with a unilateral analisis, without probes and mainly repeating what the manipulated antiCuban propaganda says, considers them as “political dissidents”, disregarding they were judged for concretes activities related with the mentioned USpolitics against Cuba and not for their “political opinions” or “dissidence”.

In all this context, the Cuban Five demonstrates the cuban necessity to prevent the threat USA sponsored terrorism represents. On the other side, the Cuban Five struggle strippes bare the so called “antiterrorist” USamerican current politic.

Of course Cuba will continue to promote as a principle it’s Solidarity in every “dark corner” of the world. That’s why we talks proudly about cuban medicine; because today the cuban solidarity with the peoples expresses in this form, among others. That’s also why the island counts with the respectul love of the peoples of these sites that have only received from the so called “free and democratic” regimes the opposite: only lies, bombs, explotation, misery. Cuba represents a possibility of hope for many peoples; and that’s also why there are solidarian activities with Cuba as that one going on in Ireland.

Fraternally…

(*) Visit: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm

The picture of “cuban political dissidents” is from the site:

http://www.asambleasociedadcivilcuba.info/pic_pris.htm

"dissidents"

"This will never happen in CUBA"

by No paradiso Thu Sep 06, 2007 00:32

F Espinoza

"But the imperial hypocritical propaganda helps anyway these poor “dissidents” to become famous. That’s why they receive credit from some groups inside AI, who, with a unilateral analisis, without probes and mainly repeating what the manipulated antiCuban propaganda says, considers them as “political dissidents”, disregarding they were judged for concretes activities related with the mentioned USpolitics against Cuba and not for their “political opinions” or “dissidence”."

Is this the best the Cuban apologistas can come up with? Listen up. AI has been around a long time and knows torture, repression, imprisonment without trial and other human rights abuse when it sees it. Throughout the years it has condemned human rights violations in countries of ALL political hues from extreme left to extreme right and many in between. (Including Ireland and USA from time to time) In turn it has been denounced as a tool of the left/right/zionism/communism/fascism/whatever you're having yourself. It is precisely this condemnation of and attack from all quarters that gives the organisation a unique credibility. BTW the Amnesty Annual Report is not the work of some minirity group within AI - it is the organisations official position. Of course if Cuba actually ALLOWED Amnesty to come in and probe for themselves then the risk of "unilateral analysis" based on "manipulated antiCuban propaganda" would vanish wouldn't it? Don't hold your breath though. Truth hurts.

by greg Thu Sep 06, 2007 19:15

http://cia.bzzz.net/cuban_anarchism

small pamphlet on cuba anarchism also mentioning the situation of any political options not being pro castro

by john p Fri Sep 07, 2007 11:41

Interesting to see who F Espinoza is quoting from and linking to. The Workers World is the very same paper that condemned the rights of freedom of expression to those opposing the Islamic mullahs last year when a Danish newspaper bravely stood up for democracy and the free world by publishing innocent cartoons mocking Mohammed . . Cuba just like Iran is a dictatorship. We should certainly support the people of these countries but not the regimes.

by pat c Fri Sep 07, 2007 11:53

It makes no sense to compare Cuba to Iran. Look at the relative freedoms in those societies. Women & gays are not oppressed in Cuba. In Iran women and gays are executed for expressing their sexuality. In Cuba there is some repression of political opponents but they are not tortured or executed.

by No paradiso Sun Sep 09, 2007 23:45

Nope, there is "some" repression of political opponents in countries like Ireland. There is a LOT of repression of political opponents in Cuba. Why people find this hard to accept I just cannot understand. A romantic rose-tinted view of the revolution, perhaps?