Posted on Wednesday, 10.03.12
Chávez's defeat could have major impact in Cuba
By Juan Tamayo
jtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
Cuba would undoubtedly suffer a devastating economic punch if Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez, whose subsidies to Havana are estimated at more
than $4 billion a year, loses his reelection bid Sunday.
But a Chávez defeat has a long-shot chance of carrying a thin silver
lining, some analysts say. It could boost Cubans who favor deeper
economic reforms so that their country can stand on its own two feet and
might even fuel domestic desires for free elections in the island.
Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski has made it clear that
if he wins the vote, his oil-rich nation will halt the massive
assistance that the socialist Chávez has been providing to his foreign
allies.
"Not one drop of free black gold will leave the country," Capriles said
to the French Liberation newspaper in a recent interview. Polls in the
nation of 30 million people have split in their predictions for a winner
in Sunday's balloting .
Venezuela pays Havana an estimated $5.1 billion a year for the services
of the 30,000 Cuban medical personnel, 15,000 teachers, and other
advisors deployed in the South American nation, according to documents
obtained recently by El Nuevo Herald.
The payments – estimated at $114 billion or $113,333 for every Cuban
deployed in Venezuela and 4.4 percent of the island's Gross National
Product in 2010 – arrive in Cuba in the form more than 100,000 barrels
of oil per day plus cash and shares in Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.
(PDVSA), the Venezuelan government's oil monopoly.
In turn, the Cubans have helped Chávez stay in power, providing the
backbone of the free medical and educational services that have made his
"21st century socialism" popular among Venezuela's poor.
Havana's dependence on Chávez is so profound that Fidel Castro, who has
not been seen in public since March, reportedly has been writing letters
to the Venezuelan president urging him to make sure he stays in power.
"If the counterrevolution manages to … get you out of there and grab the
people's power, the persecution and destruction will be widespread. They
will not forgive anyone," Castro wrote in one letter, according to a
recently published book.
A Chávez defeat also might push Cuba toward adopting deeper economic
reforms than those currently espoused by island ruler Raúl Castro, said
Pedro Burelli, a Chávez critic who follows developments in Caracasand
Havana.
"It would kill any ideological illusions left in Cuba for socialism in
Venezuela," Burelli said, while strengthening the voice of those Cubans
who want more reforms and weakening "those who want to preserve the
current antiquated system."
Even a Chávez victory in a closely fought ballot Sunday might push Cuba
toward moderation, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban government
analyst now lecturing at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School
of International Studies.
Given the relative pluralism of Venezuelan politics, Havana should seek
"more fluid relations" with all political forces in the South American
country "beyond its logical ideological preference," Lopez-Levy said in
an email to El Nuevo Herald.
The narrow gap predicted between Chávez and Capriles, the academic
added, also should teach Cuba to avoid "a repeat of the excessive
dependence on a single market, as happened until 1960 with the United
States and afterwards with the USSR."
The competitive Venezuelan balloting might even eventually help to
promote "more competitive elections in Cuba," Lopez-Levy added.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/03/3032157/chavezs-defeat-could-have-major.html
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
1, 2, 3, 4… The Census!
1, 2, 3, 4… The Census! / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado
Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado, Translator: BW, Translator: Espirituana
The Antillean archipelago's authorities say that "In Cuba, we all
count", and that's why from the 15th to the 24th of September all of the
homes of the country will be visited to gather census information. I
understand that the census is a statistical operation that should be
carried out every 10 years and that it is important for determining,
among other things, the number of people who make up a group or state.
Also,it is a primary source for obtaining other basic social, economic,
and demographic data about a society. But I ask myself, who accounts for
the Cuban emigrants dispersed throughout the world that are part of our
nation?
In recent days, an "information supplement" on the Population and
Housing Census, published by the National Office for Statistics and
Information, appeared under my door. It explains to citizens what the
"mission" of the census is and shows the questionnaires that the data
collectors, called enumerators, will fill out. Among the notable items
is question 16, which asks how many land lines and mobile phones there
are in a residence. As the only telephone company that provides service
to all Cubans living on the archipelago, doesn't ETECSA, which also
happens to be state-owned,have these figures?
In this census task, like in the two previous ones carried out by the
government,there will be inquiries regarding the condition of the houses
and their construction and general characteristics.I hope this will
result in some benefits for society! Because there is no use knowing,
for example, the serious problems existing in the houses and in their
maintenance(that is already well-known and we have been putting up with
them for years, because the necessary resources have not been assigned
to them), if a sustained constructive assistance is not designated and
assigned to the renovation and rehabilitation of the impoverished
housing inventory in Cuba.
I remember the first time the government carried out that statistical
task.It was in the 70s, when they had more than a decade in power.It's
been ten years since the last census and the results were not made known
to the population, let alone did they produce any benefits or
improvements in the average Cuban's life. Development and efficiency are
not achieved with state inquiries, but with the political will of
governments, with real motivations for the citizens and incentives in
all spheres of society. That should be a natural and systematic
practice, attentive to the law and always directed to the benefit of
everyone, not just a group. Modernity is not reached just with
information or by decree.
It is good to keep control of our inputs and outputs, whether they be
material or intangible, individual or collective. Every demographic
investigation relating to the totality of people by province,
municipality, city or different urban and rural areas — by sex and age,
average educational level, marital status, active working population,
etc. — is important for the development of government policies. On this
occasion, they mix the population census with "the short-term and
medium-term economic and social plans especially for the appropriate
guidelines for the Party's and the Revolution's economic and social
policies". This opportunistic mixture conjures up in my mind, like an
animated cartoon, a leader who without planning lies down on the bottom
of his political boat to try to patch or plug the holes in the bottom
with his body. Because he is being left without extremities…
For a militarized society, deformed by this government in the degrading
tradition of having to have even one's underwear counted when one is
going to emigrate, to have "regulations" about what one should eat or
wear, to have someone decide what one should read, to "be transported"
generally according to the needs and interests of the state, to be
watched by those in charge of one's block or by the police, to have
someone predetermine what radio stations one should listen to and what
TV channel one should watch, whom one should disregard and whom one
should believe, in the end produces a population sunk in a sustainable
defenselessness and indolence, unaware of its rights, and as a result,
easier to subdue and direct.
So let's count: 1, 2, 3 at the dictatorship's "conga-line pace"*, for
whose manipulations and campaigns to stay in power indefinitely, but not
for the exercise of our fundamental freedoms, "in Cuba, we all count".
*Translator's note: The original Spanish is a quote from an old Cuban song.
Translated by: BW, Espirituana
11 September 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/1-2-3-4-the-census-rosa-maria-rodriguez-torrado/
Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado, Translator: BW, Translator: Espirituana
The Antillean archipelago's authorities say that "In Cuba, we all
count", and that's why from the 15th to the 24th of September all of the
homes of the country will be visited to gather census information. I
understand that the census is a statistical operation that should be
carried out every 10 years and that it is important for determining,
among other things, the number of people who make up a group or state.
Also,it is a primary source for obtaining other basic social, economic,
and demographic data about a society. But I ask myself, who accounts for
the Cuban emigrants dispersed throughout the world that are part of our
nation?
In recent days, an "information supplement" on the Population and
Housing Census, published by the National Office for Statistics and
Information, appeared under my door. It explains to citizens what the
"mission" of the census is and shows the questionnaires that the data
collectors, called enumerators, will fill out. Among the notable items
is question 16, which asks how many land lines and mobile phones there
are in a residence. As the only telephone company that provides service
to all Cubans living on the archipelago, doesn't ETECSA, which also
happens to be state-owned,have these figures?
In this census task, like in the two previous ones carried out by the
government,there will be inquiries regarding the condition of the houses
and their construction and general characteristics.I hope this will
result in some benefits for society! Because there is no use knowing,
for example, the serious problems existing in the houses and in their
maintenance(that is already well-known and we have been putting up with
them for years, because the necessary resources have not been assigned
to them), if a sustained constructive assistance is not designated and
assigned to the renovation and rehabilitation of the impoverished
housing inventory in Cuba.
I remember the first time the government carried out that statistical
task.It was in the 70s, when they had more than a decade in power.It's
been ten years since the last census and the results were not made known
to the population, let alone did they produce any benefits or
improvements in the average Cuban's life. Development and efficiency are
not achieved with state inquiries, but with the political will of
governments, with real motivations for the citizens and incentives in
all spheres of society. That should be a natural and systematic
practice, attentive to the law and always directed to the benefit of
everyone, not just a group. Modernity is not reached just with
information or by decree.
It is good to keep control of our inputs and outputs, whether they be
material or intangible, individual or collective. Every demographic
investigation relating to the totality of people by province,
municipality, city or different urban and rural areas — by sex and age,
average educational level, marital status, active working population,
etc. — is important for the development of government policies. On this
occasion, they mix the population census with "the short-term and
medium-term economic and social plans especially for the appropriate
guidelines for the Party's and the Revolution's economic and social
policies". This opportunistic mixture conjures up in my mind, like an
animated cartoon, a leader who without planning lies down on the bottom
of his political boat to try to patch or plug the holes in the bottom
with his body. Because he is being left without extremities…
For a militarized society, deformed by this government in the degrading
tradition of having to have even one's underwear counted when one is
going to emigrate, to have "regulations" about what one should eat or
wear, to have someone decide what one should read, to "be transported"
generally according to the needs and interests of the state, to be
watched by those in charge of one's block or by the police, to have
someone predetermine what radio stations one should listen to and what
TV channel one should watch, whom one should disregard and whom one
should believe, in the end produces a population sunk in a sustainable
defenselessness and indolence, unaware of its rights, and as a result,
easier to subdue and direct.
So let's count: 1, 2, 3 at the dictatorship's "conga-line pace"*, for
whose manipulations and campaigns to stay in power indefinitely, but not
for the exercise of our fundamental freedoms, "in Cuba, we all count".
*Translator's note: The original Spanish is a quote from an old Cuban song.
Translated by: BW, Espirituana
11 September 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/1-2-3-4-the-census-rosa-maria-rodriguez-torrado/
Castro vs. Castro
Castro vs. Castro / Ivan Garcia
Ivan Garcia, Translator: Unstated
If we compare the style of governance of the Castros during their
respective terms in office from a bird's eye view, we would make a
serious mistake in believing the two autocrats are much the same.
You don't need a magnifying glass to see the differences. What are the
similarities? Well, the duo have authoritarianism in their genes. And
they see democracy as their major enemy.
While Fidel Castro acted like a true visionary, father of the country
and shopkeeper of the neighborhood, his brother prefers to exercise
power from behind the scenes. Castro I was an impetuous hurricane. He
never kept still. On any given morning he was capable of mobilizing all
the means of production in the country for a banana harvest.
Overriding the national budget, he ordered the construction of a
biotechnology center. Believing himself to be a world-class statesman,
he devised a plan to abolish Latin America's external debt.
His vocation was that of a warrior. He handled the various conflicts in
Africa as though he were the supreme commander. He personally directed
the military campaign in Angola from a mansion in Havana'sNuevo Vedado
district.
He controlled everything down to the last detail. He knew the amount of
asphalt needed to build an airport runway and the exact number of
chocolates and sardines his troops consumed.
In domestic affairs he governed with the mentality of a shopkeeper. He
ran some numbers on his calculator and decided to purchase refrigerators
that he thought would be most effective in launching the energy revolution.
He could recite from memory the exact number of energy-saving lightbulbs
the country had to import. And the benefits of Cerelac. And the amount
of concrete required to build one-hundred daycare facilities.
Fidel Castro was an autocrat. A narcissist his entire life. Even in
retirement he cannot be constrained. Now at times he predicts atomic
disasters and swears he has discovered a formula—the moringa plant—that
will satisfy all of humanity's food needs.
His supporters consider him to be the most important statesman of the
twentieth century; his detractors think he is certifiably insane. His 47
years governing Cuba were marked by predictions of war against "Yankee
imperialism" and mass demonstrations condemning those who chose to leave
the country.
When the mood struck him, he would storm TV studios and give long
lectures on a variety of topics. But the figures do not lie; Fidel
Castro was a bad administrator of the nation.
By the time he was forced to give up power due to illness, Cuba's
economic statistics had contracted in the extreme. Sugar production, the
mainstay of the economy for centuries, was at the level it was in 1910.
Cities were run-down and needed painting. Streets were filled with
potholes. Drug dispensaries were empty. Free health care and education
remained in place, but they were of poor quality and headed downhill.
The transfer of power to General Raúl Castro on July 31, 2006 occurred
without popular consent. He was hand-picked by his brother.
Since the end of the 1990s many sectors of the economy have been run
byRaúl Castro's men, the military's businessmen. It is a closed circuit
of olivegreen-khaki-clad executives who have devised methods for
entrepreneurial advancement, which they apply to their industries and
businesses.
Raúl Castro has quietly buried the notion of volunteerism and the
anarchy of his brother under thirty feet of earth. He has also shut down
ludicrous government agencies like the Ministry for the Battle of
Ideas—a monument to ineffectiveness—and restructured the administrative
apparatus.
He has cleaned house as much as possible. Fidel Castro's trusted men
were either retired or went down in disgrace. Schools in the
countryside—cradles of unwanted pregnancies and a burden on the national
budget—were shut down.
The general has not taken these measures as a prelude to serious and
profound reform. No. They are simply temporary cures intended to
stimulate the functioning of a moribund economy.
The expansion of self-employment and the sale of houses and old Russian
cars are not starting points for the implementation of liberal
methodologies. The objective is to throw out ridiculous laws. Castro II
is focused on the maintaining the continuity of the system.
To achieve this, he needs two things: dollars and the removal of the
heavy weight of excessive state control. In the pursuit of efficiency
and a rise in productivity he has come up with a plan in which a million
and a half workers will lose their jobs.
If Fidel Castro seemed like an idealist, his brother has his feet
planted firmly on the ground. The future, as foreseen by Castro II, is a
capitalism practiced among friends which would allow them to control the
country's main economic levers.
Raúl is not betting on anachronistic Marxist treatises. He prefers
Putin's Russia. And he admires the economic growth achieved through
capitalist means of the Chinese giant.
The general knows that, to perpetuate the work of Fidel, it is essential
that there be an efficient economy which can satisfy the aspirations of
the average Cuban, who wants to live in a decent house and have enough
to eat.
To achieve this without losing power while keeping the opposition at bay
is the goal. The differences betweenRaúl and Fidel are procedural.
Castro I was more about revolution, the third world, mass rallies,
applause and anti-Yankee rhetoric. Castro II is about doing things out
of sight, without too much noise.
The general hopes that the work started by his brother and continued by
him might last a hundred years. Or a little longer.
Photo from a blog by Tania Quintero.
September 30 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/castro-vs-castro-ivan-garcia/
Ivan Garcia, Translator: Unstated
If we compare the style of governance of the Castros during their
respective terms in office from a bird's eye view, we would make a
serious mistake in believing the two autocrats are much the same.
You don't need a magnifying glass to see the differences. What are the
similarities? Well, the duo have authoritarianism in their genes. And
they see democracy as their major enemy.
While Fidel Castro acted like a true visionary, father of the country
and shopkeeper of the neighborhood, his brother prefers to exercise
power from behind the scenes. Castro I was an impetuous hurricane. He
never kept still. On any given morning he was capable of mobilizing all
the means of production in the country for a banana harvest.
Overriding the national budget, he ordered the construction of a
biotechnology center. Believing himself to be a world-class statesman,
he devised a plan to abolish Latin America's external debt.
His vocation was that of a warrior. He handled the various conflicts in
Africa as though he were the supreme commander. He personally directed
the military campaign in Angola from a mansion in Havana'sNuevo Vedado
district.
He controlled everything down to the last detail. He knew the amount of
asphalt needed to build an airport runway and the exact number of
chocolates and sardines his troops consumed.
In domestic affairs he governed with the mentality of a shopkeeper. He
ran some numbers on his calculator and decided to purchase refrigerators
that he thought would be most effective in launching the energy revolution.
He could recite from memory the exact number of energy-saving lightbulbs
the country had to import. And the benefits of Cerelac. And the amount
of concrete required to build one-hundred daycare facilities.
Fidel Castro was an autocrat. A narcissist his entire life. Even in
retirement he cannot be constrained. Now at times he predicts atomic
disasters and swears he has discovered a formula—the moringa plant—that
will satisfy all of humanity's food needs.
His supporters consider him to be the most important statesman of the
twentieth century; his detractors think he is certifiably insane. His 47
years governing Cuba were marked by predictions of war against "Yankee
imperialism" and mass demonstrations condemning those who chose to leave
the country.
When the mood struck him, he would storm TV studios and give long
lectures on a variety of topics. But the figures do not lie; Fidel
Castro was a bad administrator of the nation.
By the time he was forced to give up power due to illness, Cuba's
economic statistics had contracted in the extreme. Sugar production, the
mainstay of the economy for centuries, was at the level it was in 1910.
Cities were run-down and needed painting. Streets were filled with
potholes. Drug dispensaries were empty. Free health care and education
remained in place, but they were of poor quality and headed downhill.
The transfer of power to General Raúl Castro on July 31, 2006 occurred
without popular consent. He was hand-picked by his brother.
Since the end of the 1990s many sectors of the economy have been run
byRaúl Castro's men, the military's businessmen. It is a closed circuit
of olivegreen-khaki-clad executives who have devised methods for
entrepreneurial advancement, which they apply to their industries and
businesses.
Raúl Castro has quietly buried the notion of volunteerism and the
anarchy of his brother under thirty feet of earth. He has also shut down
ludicrous government agencies like the Ministry for the Battle of
Ideas—a monument to ineffectiveness—and restructured the administrative
apparatus.
He has cleaned house as much as possible. Fidel Castro's trusted men
were either retired or went down in disgrace. Schools in the
countryside—cradles of unwanted pregnancies and a burden on the national
budget—were shut down.
The general has not taken these measures as a prelude to serious and
profound reform. No. They are simply temporary cures intended to
stimulate the functioning of a moribund economy.
The expansion of self-employment and the sale of houses and old Russian
cars are not starting points for the implementation of liberal
methodologies. The objective is to throw out ridiculous laws. Castro II
is focused on the maintaining the continuity of the system.
To achieve this, he needs two things: dollars and the removal of the
heavy weight of excessive state control. In the pursuit of efficiency
and a rise in productivity he has come up with a plan in which a million
and a half workers will lose their jobs.
If Fidel Castro seemed like an idealist, his brother has his feet
planted firmly on the ground. The future, as foreseen by Castro II, is a
capitalism practiced among friends which would allow them to control the
country's main economic levers.
Raúl is not betting on anachronistic Marxist treatises. He prefers
Putin's Russia. And he admires the economic growth achieved through
capitalist means of the Chinese giant.
The general knows that, to perpetuate the work of Fidel, it is essential
that there be an efficient economy which can satisfy the aspirations of
the average Cuban, who wants to live in a decent house and have enough
to eat.
To achieve this without losing power while keeping the opposition at bay
is the goal. The differences betweenRaúl and Fidel are procedural.
Castro I was more about revolution, the third world, mass rallies,
applause and anti-Yankee rhetoric. Castro II is about doing things out
of sight, without too much noise.
The general hopes that the work started by his brother and continued by
him might last a hundred years. Or a little longer.
Photo from a blog by Tania Quintero.
September 30 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/castro-vs-castro-ivan-garcia/
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
American Alan Gross, jailed in Cuba, may have cancer: lawyer
American Alan Gross, jailed in Cuba, may have cancer: lawyer
Reuters
Reuters/Reuters - Jailed U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) contractor Alan Gross, (R), poses for a picture during a visit
with Cuban Jewish Community leader Adela Dworin, (C), and David
Prinstein, …more
HAVANA (Reuters) - Alan Gross, the American government contractor jailed
in Cuba for crimes against the state, could be suffering from an
untreated cancer, according to an independent review of his medical
records, his U.S. lawyer said on Tuesday.
"Gross has a potentially life-threatening medical problem that has not
been adequately evaluated to modern medical standards," U.S.-based
radiologist Alan Cohen said in a statement released by Gross attorney
Jared Genser.
Genser said Cohen had reviewed CT and ultrasound scans performed by
Cuban doctors of an unidentified mass behind Gross's right shoulder,
which wife Judy Gross cited after a recent visit to her husband.
The Cuban physicians diagnosed the mass as a "hematoma" and told Gross
in May that it would disappear within a few months, according to Genser.
As Gross has lost 105 pounds (47 kg) since his arrest in December 2009,
Cohen concluded Gross's right-shoulder mass is in urgent need of proper
medical evaluation, including an MRI "and potentially a biopsy,
preferably in a facility in the United States, immediately."
A "soft tissue mass in an adult who has lost considerable weight must be
assumed to represent a malignant tumor unless proven to be benign," said
Cohen.
The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Cohen's statement, but
previously has said Gross was in "normal" health.
Gross, jailed in Cuba since December 3, 2009, is serving a 15-year
sentence for illegally providing Internet equipment and service to Cuban
Jewish groups under a U.S. program promoting political change that the
Cuban government considers subversive.
His arrest stalled a brief period of progress in U.S.-Cuba relations
that have been mostly bad since Cuba's 1959 revolution that brought
Fidel Castro to power and turned the island communist.
The latest doctor's report was seized upon by Genser and Judy Gross, who
have been demanding that Cuba allow an independent medical expert to
examine Gross.
"Cuban government doctors are either guilty of gross professional
negligence or they are intentionally hiding what could be a lethal
condition," Genser said.
"President Castro, I beg you not to let my husband die on your watch.
Your country claims to have such a wonderful health care system - yet
why have your doctors misdiagnosed him and failed to order the right
tests to determine what is actually happening?" Judy Gross said.
"Please let us have Alan diagnosed by a doctor of his choosing before it
is too late," she said.
Cuba prides itself on its medical system, which provides free care to
all, but suffers from equipment and medicine shortages the government
blames on the long-standing U.S. trade embargo against the communist island.
Gross has asked Cuba to let him go home for two weeks to visit his
mother and daughter, both of whom have cancer. He has promised to return
and serve his sentence, but Cuba has not responded.
Cuba has said it proposed talks with the United States about resolving
the Gross case but has received no answer. It has hinted at the
possibility of a swap of Gross for five Cuban agents imprisoned in the
United States, a deal Washington has rejected.
It said that Gross could be in a prison but is serving his time in a
military hospital.
(Reporting By Jeff Franks and David Adams in Miami; editing by Philip
Barbara)
http://news.yahoo.com/american-alan-gross-jailed-cuba-may-cancer-lawyer-052226211.html;_ylt=A2KJ3CeqAmtQJzgAs3vQtDMD
Reuters
Reuters/Reuters - Jailed U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) contractor Alan Gross, (R), poses for a picture during a visit
with Cuban Jewish Community leader Adela Dworin, (C), and David
Prinstein, …more
HAVANA (Reuters) - Alan Gross, the American government contractor jailed
in Cuba for crimes against the state, could be suffering from an
untreated cancer, according to an independent review of his medical
records, his U.S. lawyer said on Tuesday.
"Gross has a potentially life-threatening medical problem that has not
been adequately evaluated to modern medical standards," U.S.-based
radiologist Alan Cohen said in a statement released by Gross attorney
Jared Genser.
Genser said Cohen had reviewed CT and ultrasound scans performed by
Cuban doctors of an unidentified mass behind Gross's right shoulder,
which wife Judy Gross cited after a recent visit to her husband.
The Cuban physicians diagnosed the mass as a "hematoma" and told Gross
in May that it would disappear within a few months, according to Genser.
As Gross has lost 105 pounds (47 kg) since his arrest in December 2009,
Cohen concluded Gross's right-shoulder mass is in urgent need of proper
medical evaluation, including an MRI "and potentially a biopsy,
preferably in a facility in the United States, immediately."
A "soft tissue mass in an adult who has lost considerable weight must be
assumed to represent a malignant tumor unless proven to be benign," said
Cohen.
The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Cohen's statement, but
previously has said Gross was in "normal" health.
Gross, jailed in Cuba since December 3, 2009, is serving a 15-year
sentence for illegally providing Internet equipment and service to Cuban
Jewish groups under a U.S. program promoting political change that the
Cuban government considers subversive.
His arrest stalled a brief period of progress in U.S.-Cuba relations
that have been mostly bad since Cuba's 1959 revolution that brought
Fidel Castro to power and turned the island communist.
The latest doctor's report was seized upon by Genser and Judy Gross, who
have been demanding that Cuba allow an independent medical expert to
examine Gross.
"Cuban government doctors are either guilty of gross professional
negligence or they are intentionally hiding what could be a lethal
condition," Genser said.
"President Castro, I beg you not to let my husband die on your watch.
Your country claims to have such a wonderful health care system - yet
why have your doctors misdiagnosed him and failed to order the right
tests to determine what is actually happening?" Judy Gross said.
"Please let us have Alan diagnosed by a doctor of his choosing before it
is too late," she said.
Cuba prides itself on its medical system, which provides free care to
all, but suffers from equipment and medicine shortages the government
blames on the long-standing U.S. trade embargo against the communist island.
Gross has asked Cuba to let him go home for two weeks to visit his
mother and daughter, both of whom have cancer. He has promised to return
and serve his sentence, but Cuba has not responded.
Cuba has said it proposed talks with the United States about resolving
the Gross case but has received no answer. It has hinted at the
possibility of a swap of Gross for five Cuban agents imprisoned in the
United States, a deal Washington has rejected.
It said that Gross could be in a prison but is serving his time in a
military hospital.
(Reporting By Jeff Franks and David Adams in Miami; editing by Philip
Barbara)
http://news.yahoo.com/american-alan-gross-jailed-cuba-may-cancer-lawyer-052226211.html;_ylt=A2KJ3CeqAmtQJzgAs3vQtDMD
In freedom of online speech, U.S. and Cuba at opposite extremes: Freedom House report
In freedom of online speech, U.S. and Cuba at opposite extremes: Freedom
House report
By Zach Dyer
The United States and Cuba are at opposite extremes of Freedom House's
Freedom on the Net 2012 report. According to the New York-based
organization, the United States was ranked the second most "free"
country in the world for online expression, while Cuba was listed as the
second to worst.
Freedom House ranked 47 countries as "free," "partly free," or "not
free" for its 2012 report, which surveyed six countries in the Americas
-- Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and the U.S.
While the U.S. scored near the top of the list, Freedom House warned the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act
(PIPA) -- which have been temporarily derailed -- had the potential to
threaten freedom of speech online. The report also cited the renewal of
controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act and legal ambiguities about
information stored in the "cloud" as cause for concern.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Freedom House rated Cuba as one of
the worst countries in the world for online freedom of expression. The
report charged that President Raul Castro has taken a different tack
from his brother, Fidel, in dealing with dissident web access, relying
on prohibitively high costs for connectivity and a lack of
infrastructure rather than long-term prison sentences to limit
unregulated use of the Internet.
Despite the Orwellian limitations independent journalists and bloggers
face in Cuba, individuals have found ways around the regime's firewalls.
The report details how young Cubans are turning to Twitter and blogs to
voice their critiques of the government and talk about their daily lives.
Meanwhile, Mexico ranked 19 in Freedom House's assessment and stood out
for the role organized crime played in the country's steep decline in
Internet freedom. Online journalists and bloggers used to enjoy relative
safety but 2011 saw the first drug-related killings of bloggers who
denounced organized crime in cities like Nuevo Laredo.
Mexican officials have also cracked down on the use of social media,
especially in Veracruz and Tabasco where bills were introduced to
criminalize spreading false rumors via social networks like Twitter.
Brazil and Argentina enjoy a relatively high level of online free speech
but their records were marred by aggressive use of the courts to
restrict online speech. In Venezuela, the second lowest scoring country
in the region after Cuba, the biggest threats to online speech were
cyberattacks. The pro-government organization N33, for instance, has
harassed opposition journalists and politicians by hacking into their
Twitter and e-mail accounts.
The report found that freedom on the net does not always translate into
a free press, noting significant disparities between the relative
freedom of online speech and the much more restrictive and dangerous
state of press freedom in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela.
Read the full Freedom on the Net 2012 report here.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/inline_images/FOTN%202012%20FINAL.pdf
http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-11575-freedom-online-speech-us-and-cuba-opposite-extremes-freedom-house-report
House report
By Zach Dyer
The United States and Cuba are at opposite extremes of Freedom House's
Freedom on the Net 2012 report. According to the New York-based
organization, the United States was ranked the second most "free"
country in the world for online expression, while Cuba was listed as the
second to worst.
Freedom House ranked 47 countries as "free," "partly free," or "not
free" for its 2012 report, which surveyed six countries in the Americas
-- Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and the U.S.
While the U.S. scored near the top of the list, Freedom House warned the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act
(PIPA) -- which have been temporarily derailed -- had the potential to
threaten freedom of speech online. The report also cited the renewal of
controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act and legal ambiguities about
information stored in the "cloud" as cause for concern.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Freedom House rated Cuba as one of
the worst countries in the world for online freedom of expression. The
report charged that President Raul Castro has taken a different tack
from his brother, Fidel, in dealing with dissident web access, relying
on prohibitively high costs for connectivity and a lack of
infrastructure rather than long-term prison sentences to limit
unregulated use of the Internet.
Despite the Orwellian limitations independent journalists and bloggers
face in Cuba, individuals have found ways around the regime's firewalls.
The report details how young Cubans are turning to Twitter and blogs to
voice their critiques of the government and talk about their daily lives.
Meanwhile, Mexico ranked 19 in Freedom House's assessment and stood out
for the role organized crime played in the country's steep decline in
Internet freedom. Online journalists and bloggers used to enjoy relative
safety but 2011 saw the first drug-related killings of bloggers who
denounced organized crime in cities like Nuevo Laredo.
Mexican officials have also cracked down on the use of social media,
especially in Veracruz and Tabasco where bills were introduced to
criminalize spreading false rumors via social networks like Twitter.
Brazil and Argentina enjoy a relatively high level of online free speech
but their records were marred by aggressive use of the courts to
restrict online speech. In Venezuela, the second lowest scoring country
in the region after Cuba, the biggest threats to online speech were
cyberattacks. The pro-government organization N33, for instance, has
harassed opposition journalists and politicians by hacking into their
Twitter and e-mail accounts.
The report found that freedom on the net does not always translate into
a free press, noting significant disparities between the relative
freedom of online speech and the much more restrictive and dangerous
state of press freedom in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela.
Read the full Freedom on the Net 2012 report here.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/inline_images/FOTN%202012%20FINAL.pdf
http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-11575-freedom-online-speech-us-and-cuba-opposite-extremes-freedom-house-report
A liberal view of tyranny at distance
A liberal view of tyranny at distance
By Michael Moynihan
11:30 AM Tuesday Oct 2, 2012
In 1933, as Joseph Stalin was busy purging his enemies and building a
murderous cult of personality, the New York-based left-wing magazine The
Nation advised readers interested in travelling to Moscow that
Intourist, the Soviet Union's official travel agency, employed as tour
guides "very interesting and attractive young women without hats",
skilled in correcting misinformation spread by the capitalist media.
Although the hatless apparatchiks from Intourist limited sightseeing to
approved destinations - Ukraine, at the apogee of its brutal famine, was
off-limits - they were nevertheless adept at obtaining "special permits"
from the predecessor of the KGB, which, The Nation noted, "far from
being a band of terrorist police, is an extremely able and intelligent
organisation, always glad to help tourists".
Even long after Stalin's crimes were revealed in Nikita Khrushchev's
1956 secret speech, the migratory "fellow traveller" persisted,
shuffling between failed utopias and dropping in at model collective
farms and labour camps.
During the Cold War, this sort of ideological tourism was almost
exclusively a progressive domain; the sugar-cane plantations of Cuba
heaved with vacationing European and American companeros, but few
free-market acolytes turned up in Augusto Pinochet's Chile to witness
pension privatisation or marvel at his market liberalisation programme.
Even in the Soviet Union's final days, Hungarian-American academic Paul
Hollander noted, a number of companies still offered educational trips
to Cuba, Vietnam, Grenada, and Nicaragua. And years after the 1989 fall
of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union,
ideological dead-enders could still join expensive "reality tours" of
Fidel Castro's Cuba or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
These days, the young and progressive book travel online, eschewing tour
groups and specialised travel agents. This leaves the task of a
travellers' political education to guidebook empires like Rough Guides
and Lonely Planet, both of which - while offering what Lonely Planet
calls "honest and objective" advice on where to find the perfect pisco
sour in Peru or that slice of beach paradise in Cambodia - provide
detailed, polemical asides on the political history and culture of the
countries under review.
Lonely Planet was started in 1975, when the British hippie
husband-and-wife team Maureen and Tony Wheeler self-published a guide to
cheap travel in South-east Asia.
Mark Ellingham, also British, founded the competing Rough Guides in 1982
after finding existing guidebooks too thin on the "politics and
contemporary life" of travel destinations.
Both companies have been astoundingly successful. Rough Guides has sold
more than 30 million books over the past 25 years, transforming itself
from a publisher of travel guides into a global business empire,
producing television programmes, music albums, and dozens of other
titles (like The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories).
In 2010, Lonely Planet, now wholly owned by BBC Worldwide, sold its
100-millionth book. It too has branched into television, radio, and
magazines.
Both guidebook empires have also made their founders very rich - Lonely
Planet was sold for well over $100 million - though this has induced a
certain amount of introspection.
Lonely Planet's Wheeler now says he feels guilty about travelling
because of the airline industry's contribution to global warming.
And Ellingham, who has published The Rough Guide to Climate Change, says
his business "must encourage travellers to travel less". They may be
wealthy, making their money off an industry that's causing grievous harm
to the Earth, but they certainly haven't left their liberal politics behind.
To establish the quality of the political education they're serving up
to a new generation of travellers, it's useful to begin by skimming
their guidebooks for undemocratic countries like Cuba, Iran, North
Korea, and Syria.
There's a formula to them: a pro forma acknowledgment of a lack of
democracy and freedom followed by exercises in moral equivalence,
various contorted attempts to contextualise authoritarianism or
atrocities, and scorching attacks on the US foreign policy that
precipitated these defensive and desperate actions.
Throughout, there is the consistent refrain that economic backwardness
should be viewed as cultural authenticity, not to mention an admirable
rejection of globalisation and American hegemony. The hotel
recommendations might be useful, but the guidebooks are clotted with
historical revisionism, factual errors, and a toxic combination of
Orientalism and pathological self-loathing.
It's not just the wacky colonel who got the benefit of the doubt. Has
the media convinced you that the burqa is an instrument of oppression?
Lonely Planet: Afghanistan, in a rare bit of what appears to be Taliban
nostalgia, explains: "The burqa can be seen as a tool to increase
mobility and security, a nuance often missed in the outside world's
image of the garment. Assuming that a burqa-clad woman is not empowered
and in need of liberation is a naive construct."
Western media outlets have misinformed us on Iran as well. Lonely
Planet: Iran assures travellers to the Islamic Republic that "99% of
Iranians - and perhaps even [President] Ahmadinejad himself" aren't
interested in a nuclear conflict with Israel.
The West's misreading of Cuba is an old staple for this crowd, and a new
generation of lefty guidebooks doesn't fail to disappoint on this score.
The Rough Guide to Cuba, for example, even has a kind word for the
draconian censorship implemented by the Castro regime, lecturing us that
it's "geared to producing (what the Government deems to be) socially
valuable content, refreshingly free of any significant concern for high
ratings and commercial success".
Sure, the guidebook says, one can read dissident bloggers like Yoani
Sanchez, but beware that opponents of the regime can be "paranoid and
bitter" and are "at their best when commenting on the minutiae of Cuban
life [and] at their worst when giving vent to unfocused diatribes
against the Government".
We've also apparently got it all wrong when it comes to Cuba's notorious
Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), a Stasi-like network
of neighbourhood-level informers that monitors and informs on
troublesome dissidents like Sanchez.
Lonely Planet: Cuba thankfully assures tourists that the group is, in
fact, a benign civic organisation: The CDR are "neighbourhood-watch
bodies originally formed in 1960 to consolidate grassroots support for
the revolution [and] they now play a decisive role in health, education,
social, recycling and voluntary labour campaigns".
Why all the bending over backward to excuse the world's most thuggish
regimes?
For the guidebook writer, as well as the starry-eyed travellers who buy
them, there is no characteristic more desirable in foreign travel than
"authenticity" - places uncorrupted by the hideousness of Western
corporate advertising and global brands - and many of these pariah
states are the only destinations that offer it.
Lonely Planet enthuses that Cuba possesses a "uniqueness [that] is a
vanishing commodity in an increasingly globalised world". Indeed, the
dictatorship protects its citizens from the poison of consumerism in a
manner other states might want to emulate:
"Almost completely cut off from the maw of McDonald's, Madonna and other
global corporate-cultural influences, Cuba retains a refreshing
preserved quality. It's a space and place that serves as a beacon for
the future - universal education, health care and housing are rights
people the world over want, need and deserve."
Writing in The Ecologist, a venerable British environmentalist journal,
Brendan Sainsbury, co-author of Lonely Planet: Cuba, contends that there
is purity in Cuban penury:
"Falling into step alongside pallid, overweight and uncoordinated
Western wannabes out on two-week vacations from Prozac and junk food,
the Cubans don't just walk; they glide, sauntering rhythmically through
the timeworn streets like dancers shaking their asses to the syncopated
beat of the rumba. Maybe the secret is in the food rationing."
There is an almost Orientalist presumption that the citizens of places
like Cuba or Afghanistan have made a choice in rejecting globalisation
and consumerism. From the perspective of the disaffected Westerner,
poverty is seen as enviable, a pure existence unsullied by capitalism.
Sainsbury refers to Cuban food as "organic" and praises the Castro
brothers' "intellectual foresight [that] has prompted such eco-friendly
practices as nutrient recycling, soil and water management and land-use
planning".
Meagre food rations and the 1950s cars that plod through Havana's
streets, however, don't represent authenticity or some tropical version
of the Western mania for "artisanal" products, but, rather, failed
economic policy. It's as much of a lifestyle choice as female
circumcision is in Sudan.
At the same time, formerly totalitarian countries that have undergone
market reforms and economic growth are often upbraided by guidebook
writers for betraying their revolutionary ideals.
As living standards rise in Asia, the authentic travel experience is
harder to come by. Writing on the Rough Guides website a few years ago,
Ron Emmons, co-author of The Rough Guide to Vietnam, expressed his
disappointment at the diminished power of the communist economy in
Hanoi, sighing that his "first impression of Vietnam was a Pepsi advert
splashed across the side of a shuttle bus. After centuries of valiantly
fighting off invaders by land, sea and air, Vietnam had finally
succumbed to Western influences."
Even more surprising is the existence of guidebooks for walled-off North
Korea, where government chaperones hover over every aspect of a
traveller's itinerary.
Lonely Planet, which offers a small section on the Hermit Kingdom in its
South Korea book, noted that in his later years the North Korean leader
Kim Jong Il (who routinely announced his intention to engulf Seoul in a
"sea of fire") showed a "pragmatism and relative openness to change"
that had been absent in the famine years of the 1990s.
And Bradt, a British publisher that offers the only dedicated
English-language guide to North Korea, effuses about the desolate, gray
capital of Pyongyang as "a city without parallel in Korea, or Asia".
In sunlight, the streets and squares, without a fleck of dust, can
literally dazzle.
"Pyongyang reputedly has 58m2 of green belt per citizen - four times the
amount prescribed by the United Nations, and in spring its hills heave
with green."
Perhaps it's no surprise then that Bradt also has a unique take on North
Korea's successful quest for nuclear weapons at a time when millions of
its people were starving:
"The most common arguments in the Western media are that the aggressive
little dictatorship sought all along to build a nuke and use it as a
bargaining chip for more aid - which sidesteps the fact that the DPRK
was being threatened by a nuclear mega-power with which, someway by
mutual consent, it was not at peace."
Regardless, there is little cause for concern, according to Bradt,
because the "allegations about the uranium enrichment" are most likely a
figment of overheated American imagination, from the same people who
"cooked up the WMD intel against Iraq".
So what gives? The writers employed by publishers like Lonely Planet and
Rough Guides aren't "cleanskins," dropped into a country and instructed
to familiarise themselves with the local culture and report back their
findings, but rather professional travellers, enamoured of the places
they're tasked with cataloguing. (Well, except Thomas Kohnstamm,
perhaps, who admitted in 2008 that he had written Lonely Planet:
Colombia without having ever set foot in the country. He was, however,
dating "an intern in the Colombian Consulate".)
These besotted individuals possess a remarkable ability to be forgiving
of those they love, and scathing about those they hate.
While Rough Guides enthuses about Cuba's health-care system and
equivocates about Havana's totalitarian government, it has no problem
defining American culture as a "combination of a shoot-from-the-hip
mentality with laissez-faire capitalism and religious fervour [that] can
make the USA maddening at times".
One could see this sort of knee-jerk leftism as archaically charming, if
it weren't so insidious.
After all, beyond tacitly endorsing the countries they visit, tourists
also pour money into them. Take Lonely Planet's guide to Burma, a
country that languished for almost four decades under a military junta
which imprisoned thousands of dissidents and left millions of citizens
in poverty.
In 2008, Britain's Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents six
million British workers, threatened a boycott of Lonely Planet if it
didn't withdraw its Burma edition; according to the TUC's petition, the
book sent a "strong message of validation to the brutal military regime".
Lonely Planet pointed out that the guide warned readers of the ethical
dilemma by noting that forced labour was used to develop tourist sites
and that "activists claim that tourism dollars help directly fuel
government repression". But it refused to pull the guide.
With Burma's junta relaxing its grip on power and Nobel Peace
Prize-winning activist Aung San Suu Kyi encouraging tourism, Rough
Guides, which said in 2008 that it felt "wrong" to publish a Burma
edition, is currently reconsidering.
The problem with guidebooks to countries like Cuba, Iran, and North
Korea is not that they encourage travel to rogue regimes (the American
travel ban to Cuba and the lack of tourism in North Korea have done
little to unseat either government), but that they consistently
misinform tourists about the nature of those countries.
The solution isn't to stop travelling, but to travel wisely, not
mistaking grinding poverty for cultural authenticity or confusing
dictatorship with a courageous rejection of globalisation.
So go to Cuba. Try to get that visa to North Korea. Visit Tehran. Just
make sure to throw your guidebooks in the trash before you do.
* This article first appeared in Foreign Policy magazine. Lonely Planet
responded: "We strongly refute any suggestion that we have any political
affiliation or bias, and in particular that we are sympathetic to
repressive regimes. The quotes from our guides that Michael Moynihan
uses... are selective, taken out of context, and do not represent Lonely
Planet's comprehensive, balanced view."
- AP
By Michael Moynihan
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10837689
By Michael Moynihan
11:30 AM Tuesday Oct 2, 2012
In 1933, as Joseph Stalin was busy purging his enemies and building a
murderous cult of personality, the New York-based left-wing magazine The
Nation advised readers interested in travelling to Moscow that
Intourist, the Soviet Union's official travel agency, employed as tour
guides "very interesting and attractive young women without hats",
skilled in correcting misinformation spread by the capitalist media.
Although the hatless apparatchiks from Intourist limited sightseeing to
approved destinations - Ukraine, at the apogee of its brutal famine, was
off-limits - they were nevertheless adept at obtaining "special permits"
from the predecessor of the KGB, which, The Nation noted, "far from
being a band of terrorist police, is an extremely able and intelligent
organisation, always glad to help tourists".
Even long after Stalin's crimes were revealed in Nikita Khrushchev's
1956 secret speech, the migratory "fellow traveller" persisted,
shuffling between failed utopias and dropping in at model collective
farms and labour camps.
During the Cold War, this sort of ideological tourism was almost
exclusively a progressive domain; the sugar-cane plantations of Cuba
heaved with vacationing European and American companeros, but few
free-market acolytes turned up in Augusto Pinochet's Chile to witness
pension privatisation or marvel at his market liberalisation programme.
Even in the Soviet Union's final days, Hungarian-American academic Paul
Hollander noted, a number of companies still offered educational trips
to Cuba, Vietnam, Grenada, and Nicaragua. And years after the 1989 fall
of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union,
ideological dead-enders could still join expensive "reality tours" of
Fidel Castro's Cuba or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
These days, the young and progressive book travel online, eschewing tour
groups and specialised travel agents. This leaves the task of a
travellers' political education to guidebook empires like Rough Guides
and Lonely Planet, both of which - while offering what Lonely Planet
calls "honest and objective" advice on where to find the perfect pisco
sour in Peru or that slice of beach paradise in Cambodia - provide
detailed, polemical asides on the political history and culture of the
countries under review.
Lonely Planet was started in 1975, when the British hippie
husband-and-wife team Maureen and Tony Wheeler self-published a guide to
cheap travel in South-east Asia.
Mark Ellingham, also British, founded the competing Rough Guides in 1982
after finding existing guidebooks too thin on the "politics and
contemporary life" of travel destinations.
Both companies have been astoundingly successful. Rough Guides has sold
more than 30 million books over the past 25 years, transforming itself
from a publisher of travel guides into a global business empire,
producing television programmes, music albums, and dozens of other
titles (like The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories).
In 2010, Lonely Planet, now wholly owned by BBC Worldwide, sold its
100-millionth book. It too has branched into television, radio, and
magazines.
Both guidebook empires have also made their founders very rich - Lonely
Planet was sold for well over $100 million - though this has induced a
certain amount of introspection.
Lonely Planet's Wheeler now says he feels guilty about travelling
because of the airline industry's contribution to global warming.
And Ellingham, who has published The Rough Guide to Climate Change, says
his business "must encourage travellers to travel less". They may be
wealthy, making their money off an industry that's causing grievous harm
to the Earth, but they certainly haven't left their liberal politics behind.
To establish the quality of the political education they're serving up
to a new generation of travellers, it's useful to begin by skimming
their guidebooks for undemocratic countries like Cuba, Iran, North
Korea, and Syria.
There's a formula to them: a pro forma acknowledgment of a lack of
democracy and freedom followed by exercises in moral equivalence,
various contorted attempts to contextualise authoritarianism or
atrocities, and scorching attacks on the US foreign policy that
precipitated these defensive and desperate actions.
Throughout, there is the consistent refrain that economic backwardness
should be viewed as cultural authenticity, not to mention an admirable
rejection of globalisation and American hegemony. The hotel
recommendations might be useful, but the guidebooks are clotted with
historical revisionism, factual errors, and a toxic combination of
Orientalism and pathological self-loathing.
It's not just the wacky colonel who got the benefit of the doubt. Has
the media convinced you that the burqa is an instrument of oppression?
Lonely Planet: Afghanistan, in a rare bit of what appears to be Taliban
nostalgia, explains: "The burqa can be seen as a tool to increase
mobility and security, a nuance often missed in the outside world's
image of the garment. Assuming that a burqa-clad woman is not empowered
and in need of liberation is a naive construct."
Western media outlets have misinformed us on Iran as well. Lonely
Planet: Iran assures travellers to the Islamic Republic that "99% of
Iranians - and perhaps even [President] Ahmadinejad himself" aren't
interested in a nuclear conflict with Israel.
The West's misreading of Cuba is an old staple for this crowd, and a new
generation of lefty guidebooks doesn't fail to disappoint on this score.
The Rough Guide to Cuba, for example, even has a kind word for the
draconian censorship implemented by the Castro regime, lecturing us that
it's "geared to producing (what the Government deems to be) socially
valuable content, refreshingly free of any significant concern for high
ratings and commercial success".
Sure, the guidebook says, one can read dissident bloggers like Yoani
Sanchez, but beware that opponents of the regime can be "paranoid and
bitter" and are "at their best when commenting on the minutiae of Cuban
life [and] at their worst when giving vent to unfocused diatribes
against the Government".
We've also apparently got it all wrong when it comes to Cuba's notorious
Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), a Stasi-like network
of neighbourhood-level informers that monitors and informs on
troublesome dissidents like Sanchez.
Lonely Planet: Cuba thankfully assures tourists that the group is, in
fact, a benign civic organisation: The CDR are "neighbourhood-watch
bodies originally formed in 1960 to consolidate grassroots support for
the revolution [and] they now play a decisive role in health, education,
social, recycling and voluntary labour campaigns".
Why all the bending over backward to excuse the world's most thuggish
regimes?
For the guidebook writer, as well as the starry-eyed travellers who buy
them, there is no characteristic more desirable in foreign travel than
"authenticity" - places uncorrupted by the hideousness of Western
corporate advertising and global brands - and many of these pariah
states are the only destinations that offer it.
Lonely Planet enthuses that Cuba possesses a "uniqueness [that] is a
vanishing commodity in an increasingly globalised world". Indeed, the
dictatorship protects its citizens from the poison of consumerism in a
manner other states might want to emulate:
"Almost completely cut off from the maw of McDonald's, Madonna and other
global corporate-cultural influences, Cuba retains a refreshing
preserved quality. It's a space and place that serves as a beacon for
the future - universal education, health care and housing are rights
people the world over want, need and deserve."
Writing in The Ecologist, a venerable British environmentalist journal,
Brendan Sainsbury, co-author of Lonely Planet: Cuba, contends that there
is purity in Cuban penury:
"Falling into step alongside pallid, overweight and uncoordinated
Western wannabes out on two-week vacations from Prozac and junk food,
the Cubans don't just walk; they glide, sauntering rhythmically through
the timeworn streets like dancers shaking their asses to the syncopated
beat of the rumba. Maybe the secret is in the food rationing."
There is an almost Orientalist presumption that the citizens of places
like Cuba or Afghanistan have made a choice in rejecting globalisation
and consumerism. From the perspective of the disaffected Westerner,
poverty is seen as enviable, a pure existence unsullied by capitalism.
Sainsbury refers to Cuban food as "organic" and praises the Castro
brothers' "intellectual foresight [that] has prompted such eco-friendly
practices as nutrient recycling, soil and water management and land-use
planning".
Meagre food rations and the 1950s cars that plod through Havana's
streets, however, don't represent authenticity or some tropical version
of the Western mania for "artisanal" products, but, rather, failed
economic policy. It's as much of a lifestyle choice as female
circumcision is in Sudan.
At the same time, formerly totalitarian countries that have undergone
market reforms and economic growth are often upbraided by guidebook
writers for betraying their revolutionary ideals.
As living standards rise in Asia, the authentic travel experience is
harder to come by. Writing on the Rough Guides website a few years ago,
Ron Emmons, co-author of The Rough Guide to Vietnam, expressed his
disappointment at the diminished power of the communist economy in
Hanoi, sighing that his "first impression of Vietnam was a Pepsi advert
splashed across the side of a shuttle bus. After centuries of valiantly
fighting off invaders by land, sea and air, Vietnam had finally
succumbed to Western influences."
Even more surprising is the existence of guidebooks for walled-off North
Korea, where government chaperones hover over every aspect of a
traveller's itinerary.
Lonely Planet, which offers a small section on the Hermit Kingdom in its
South Korea book, noted that in his later years the North Korean leader
Kim Jong Il (who routinely announced his intention to engulf Seoul in a
"sea of fire") showed a "pragmatism and relative openness to change"
that had been absent in the famine years of the 1990s.
And Bradt, a British publisher that offers the only dedicated
English-language guide to North Korea, effuses about the desolate, gray
capital of Pyongyang as "a city without parallel in Korea, or Asia".
In sunlight, the streets and squares, without a fleck of dust, can
literally dazzle.
"Pyongyang reputedly has 58m2 of green belt per citizen - four times the
amount prescribed by the United Nations, and in spring its hills heave
with green."
Perhaps it's no surprise then that Bradt also has a unique take on North
Korea's successful quest for nuclear weapons at a time when millions of
its people were starving:
"The most common arguments in the Western media are that the aggressive
little dictatorship sought all along to build a nuke and use it as a
bargaining chip for more aid - which sidesteps the fact that the DPRK
was being threatened by a nuclear mega-power with which, someway by
mutual consent, it was not at peace."
Regardless, there is little cause for concern, according to Bradt,
because the "allegations about the uranium enrichment" are most likely a
figment of overheated American imagination, from the same people who
"cooked up the WMD intel against Iraq".
So what gives? The writers employed by publishers like Lonely Planet and
Rough Guides aren't "cleanskins," dropped into a country and instructed
to familiarise themselves with the local culture and report back their
findings, but rather professional travellers, enamoured of the places
they're tasked with cataloguing. (Well, except Thomas Kohnstamm,
perhaps, who admitted in 2008 that he had written Lonely Planet:
Colombia without having ever set foot in the country. He was, however,
dating "an intern in the Colombian Consulate".)
These besotted individuals possess a remarkable ability to be forgiving
of those they love, and scathing about those they hate.
While Rough Guides enthuses about Cuba's health-care system and
equivocates about Havana's totalitarian government, it has no problem
defining American culture as a "combination of a shoot-from-the-hip
mentality with laissez-faire capitalism and religious fervour [that] can
make the USA maddening at times".
One could see this sort of knee-jerk leftism as archaically charming, if
it weren't so insidious.
After all, beyond tacitly endorsing the countries they visit, tourists
also pour money into them. Take Lonely Planet's guide to Burma, a
country that languished for almost four decades under a military junta
which imprisoned thousands of dissidents and left millions of citizens
in poverty.
In 2008, Britain's Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents six
million British workers, threatened a boycott of Lonely Planet if it
didn't withdraw its Burma edition; according to the TUC's petition, the
book sent a "strong message of validation to the brutal military regime".
Lonely Planet pointed out that the guide warned readers of the ethical
dilemma by noting that forced labour was used to develop tourist sites
and that "activists claim that tourism dollars help directly fuel
government repression". But it refused to pull the guide.
With Burma's junta relaxing its grip on power and Nobel Peace
Prize-winning activist Aung San Suu Kyi encouraging tourism, Rough
Guides, which said in 2008 that it felt "wrong" to publish a Burma
edition, is currently reconsidering.
The problem with guidebooks to countries like Cuba, Iran, and North
Korea is not that they encourage travel to rogue regimes (the American
travel ban to Cuba and the lack of tourism in North Korea have done
little to unseat either government), but that they consistently
misinform tourists about the nature of those countries.
The solution isn't to stop travelling, but to travel wisely, not
mistaking grinding poverty for cultural authenticity or confusing
dictatorship with a courageous rejection of globalisation.
So go to Cuba. Try to get that visa to North Korea. Visit Tehran. Just
make sure to throw your guidebooks in the trash before you do.
* This article first appeared in Foreign Policy magazine. Lonely Planet
responded: "We strongly refute any suggestion that we have any political
affiliation or bias, and in particular that we are sympathetic to
repressive regimes. The quotes from our guides that Michael Moynihan
uses... are selective, taken out of context, and do not represent Lonely
Planet's comprehensive, balanced view."
- AP
By Michael Moynihan
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10837689
Cuba Replaces Chief of Farming Co-Ops
Cuba Replaces Chief of Farming Co-Ops
HAVANA – Orlando Lugo Fonte, the long-time president of Cuba's National
Association of Small Farmers, was relieved of the post he had occupied
since 1987, official media said on Monday.
The decision was made during the plenary meeting of the National
Committee of the association, known as ANAP, which was held on Sunday
and presided over by Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura,
according to an article published in Communist Party daily Granma.
"The plenary session considered and particularly acknowledged the
exemplary and dedicated work by Lugo Fonte during the years he directed
the organization," the article said.
Lugo Fonte, a member of the guerrilla army that brought Fidel Castro to
power in 1959, helped found the Cuban Communist Party and has had seat
on the Central Committee since 1980 and a place in the Cabinet for the
last 26 years.
He is succeeded by ANAP No. 2 Felix Gonzalez Viego, 50, as head of the
organization, which has 331,874 members.
The replacement comes after last week's replacement of Liudmila Alamo as
head of the Young Communists Union.
Since Gen. Raul Castro formally assumed the presidency in February 2008,
he has made numerous changes in his Cabinet, the most recent ones
involving the ministers of computer science and communications and of
basic industry.
ANAP was created on May 17, 1961.
Its basic structure consists of 1,089 farming and ranching cooperatives.
It is also comprised of 3,242 credit and service cooperatives, which
maintain individual ownership of land and other means of production.
The reform plan pushed by Raul Castro to "update" the socialist model
includes the restructuring of the agricultural sector to increase food
production, a matter considered to be a national security issue because
the country spends more than $1.5 billion a year to import 80 percent of
the food it consumes.
The handing over of land to individuals and co-ops is one of the main
elements in revitalizing Cuban agriculture undertaken by Gen. Castro,
who succeeded ailing older brother Fidel. EFE
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=596945&CategoryId=14510
HAVANA – Orlando Lugo Fonte, the long-time president of Cuba's National
Association of Small Farmers, was relieved of the post he had occupied
since 1987, official media said on Monday.
The decision was made during the plenary meeting of the National
Committee of the association, known as ANAP, which was held on Sunday
and presided over by Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura,
according to an article published in Communist Party daily Granma.
"The plenary session considered and particularly acknowledged the
exemplary and dedicated work by Lugo Fonte during the years he directed
the organization," the article said.
Lugo Fonte, a member of the guerrilla army that brought Fidel Castro to
power in 1959, helped found the Cuban Communist Party and has had seat
on the Central Committee since 1980 and a place in the Cabinet for the
last 26 years.
He is succeeded by ANAP No. 2 Felix Gonzalez Viego, 50, as head of the
organization, which has 331,874 members.
The replacement comes after last week's replacement of Liudmila Alamo as
head of the Young Communists Union.
Since Gen. Raul Castro formally assumed the presidency in February 2008,
he has made numerous changes in his Cabinet, the most recent ones
involving the ministers of computer science and communications and of
basic industry.
ANAP was created on May 17, 1961.
Its basic structure consists of 1,089 farming and ranching cooperatives.
It is also comprised of 3,242 credit and service cooperatives, which
maintain individual ownership of land and other means of production.
The reform plan pushed by Raul Castro to "update" the socialist model
includes the restructuring of the agricultural sector to increase food
production, a matter considered to be a national security issue because
the country spends more than $1.5 billion a year to import 80 percent of
the food it consumes.
The handing over of land to individuals and co-ops is one of the main
elements in revitalizing Cuban agriculture undertaken by Gen. Castro,
who succeeded ailing older brother Fidel. EFE
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=596945&CategoryId=14510
Documentary exposes poverty in Cuba
Documentary exposes poverty in Cuba
Written By: Vanessa Remmers
October 1, 2012
There is a place in Havana where the drains run brown and green sludge
gathers around an old refrigerator at the water's edge. A onesie dries
on a clothesline as a child grabs a rusted window frame to swing over a
cracked pipeline.
Some say this was where the rich kept their horses before the Revolution
— a family now lives where a trough once stood. Others say this is where
the slaves lived.
But for Duniesky Canton Fernandez, this place was once home. For his
father, it is still home.
Fernandez's father is one of 155 inhabitants living in the 43 units of
Solar 11, a public housing unit declared uninhabitable by the Cuban
government. Forty-seven of Solar 11's inhabitants are 15 years old or
younger.
"I already was familiar with this solar, as my father lives there and
one of these tiny places actually belongs to me, and I wasn't surprised
at all at the living conditions because I was raised in a solar,"
Fernandez said in an email.
Fernandez, now 30 years old, returned to his childhood home in order to
film a documentary that draws attention to the living conditions of a
population quickly disappearing from Cuban and international attention.
Fernandez filmed the documentary, "Solar 11," along with his Instituto
Superior de Arte classmate Maria Elena Perez.
Although the living conditions did not surprise Fernandez, an interview
with Maritsa and Yasser, a couple four years younger than Fernandez and
living in Solar 11, stuck with him.
"[Both] live a life of necessity but still conserve happiness and
charisma typical of the Cuban," Fernandez said in an email.
Perez, 25, comes from a different background than Fernandez. She
describes her family as an orchestra, her father a documentary filmmaker
and her mother a dentist. When she stepped into the world of those who
live in the solar, she was stepping into a new world.
"My reaction was like an explorer who sits at home and has not seen the
elephant in her garden. Because the place is huge and more than 155
people live there," Perez said in an email.
One of the last images of the documentary is an old woman painting the
words "Live Fidel C.D.R. #11" while she notes that 101 of Solar 11's 155
inhabitants are 15 to 64 years old.
CDR, the Committee of the Defense of the Revolution, was a network of
neighborhood committees established by Fidel Castro in 1960 to root out
anti-revolutionary activity immediately following the overthrow of
Fulgencio Batista.
Fernandez says that, ironically, the organization has created an
atmosphere of neighbor spying on neighbor.
For some of the Solar 11 inhabitants who lived through the revolution,
the public housing and the CDR operating within the solar are not so
bad. Yet some of the younger Solar 11 inhabitants dream of getting out.
"Generations have lived different stages of the same process, so the
older generation has declined [to move] in their faith and courage to
stay there," Perez said in an email. "On the other hand, the new
generation is experiencing the transformation of the place because of
its growth. They don't recoil from their existence there, it's part of
their daily lives."
When the documentary won an American University contest, Duniesky and
Perez were granted a trip to the United States, making them two of the
first Cuban students to visit America.
The Middle Passage Project at the College of William and Mary, which
explores the effects of the transatlantic slave trade and is spearheaded
by Professor Joanne Braxton, sponsored the student's trip to the College.
Perez entered the College classroom with a large smile and a loud,
"Buenos tardes." Fernandez was quieter, but offered a polite "hola" as
their American University host introduced them to the College students
whose class they were shadowing.
"The opportunity to show a Cuba different from the one the world
imagines," Fernandez said of his desire to come to America.
Although both Fernandez and Perez appreciated the freedom of expression
and information while in America, both thought the United States should
change its role in regard to developing countries like Cuba.
"Politics is not my forte, but I understand that if someone big wants an
apple, we should all cling to the tree where we live. So a change of
role would not hurt," Perez said in an email.
The materialism of America was another culture shock.
"The biggest difference is the money," Perez said in an email. "I think
some people are as connected to their environment as they are to their
own lives. Others lack this connection, because they see only the
surface of the culture they are supposed to emulate, like being good
students or reaching the pinnacle of success in their careers."
Perez and Fernandez returned to Cuba last week. Perez hopes to revisit
Solar 11, but this time with the goal of advocating for better living
conditions. Fernandez plans to continue to improve the collective
reality through documentary work.
"Cuba is my mother and a mother is accepted. I like Cuban culture, the
warmth of her people, their constant laughter, even when something
hurts," Perez said in an email. "Cuba needs a mental revolution … an
exorcism of her ills. I'd like to change what hurts. What she does not
see."
http://flathatnews.com/2012/10/01/documentary-exposes-poverty-in-cuba/
Written By: Vanessa Remmers
October 1, 2012
There is a place in Havana where the drains run brown and green sludge
gathers around an old refrigerator at the water's edge. A onesie dries
on a clothesline as a child grabs a rusted window frame to swing over a
cracked pipeline.
Some say this was where the rich kept their horses before the Revolution
— a family now lives where a trough once stood. Others say this is where
the slaves lived.
But for Duniesky Canton Fernandez, this place was once home. For his
father, it is still home.
Fernandez's father is one of 155 inhabitants living in the 43 units of
Solar 11, a public housing unit declared uninhabitable by the Cuban
government. Forty-seven of Solar 11's inhabitants are 15 years old or
younger.
"I already was familiar with this solar, as my father lives there and
one of these tiny places actually belongs to me, and I wasn't surprised
at all at the living conditions because I was raised in a solar,"
Fernandez said in an email.
Fernandez, now 30 years old, returned to his childhood home in order to
film a documentary that draws attention to the living conditions of a
population quickly disappearing from Cuban and international attention.
Fernandez filmed the documentary, "Solar 11," along with his Instituto
Superior de Arte classmate Maria Elena Perez.
Although the living conditions did not surprise Fernandez, an interview
with Maritsa and Yasser, a couple four years younger than Fernandez and
living in Solar 11, stuck with him.
"[Both] live a life of necessity but still conserve happiness and
charisma typical of the Cuban," Fernandez said in an email.
Perez, 25, comes from a different background than Fernandez. She
describes her family as an orchestra, her father a documentary filmmaker
and her mother a dentist. When she stepped into the world of those who
live in the solar, she was stepping into a new world.
"My reaction was like an explorer who sits at home and has not seen the
elephant in her garden. Because the place is huge and more than 155
people live there," Perez said in an email.
One of the last images of the documentary is an old woman painting the
words "Live Fidel C.D.R. #11" while she notes that 101 of Solar 11's 155
inhabitants are 15 to 64 years old.
CDR, the Committee of the Defense of the Revolution, was a network of
neighborhood committees established by Fidel Castro in 1960 to root out
anti-revolutionary activity immediately following the overthrow of
Fulgencio Batista.
Fernandez says that, ironically, the organization has created an
atmosphere of neighbor spying on neighbor.
For some of the Solar 11 inhabitants who lived through the revolution,
the public housing and the CDR operating within the solar are not so
bad. Yet some of the younger Solar 11 inhabitants dream of getting out.
"Generations have lived different stages of the same process, so the
older generation has declined [to move] in their faith and courage to
stay there," Perez said in an email. "On the other hand, the new
generation is experiencing the transformation of the place because of
its growth. They don't recoil from their existence there, it's part of
their daily lives."
When the documentary won an American University contest, Duniesky and
Perez were granted a trip to the United States, making them two of the
first Cuban students to visit America.
The Middle Passage Project at the College of William and Mary, which
explores the effects of the transatlantic slave trade and is spearheaded
by Professor Joanne Braxton, sponsored the student's trip to the College.
Perez entered the College classroom with a large smile and a loud,
"Buenos tardes." Fernandez was quieter, but offered a polite "hola" as
their American University host introduced them to the College students
whose class they were shadowing.
"The opportunity to show a Cuba different from the one the world
imagines," Fernandez said of his desire to come to America.
Although both Fernandez and Perez appreciated the freedom of expression
and information while in America, both thought the United States should
change its role in regard to developing countries like Cuba.
"Politics is not my forte, but I understand that if someone big wants an
apple, we should all cling to the tree where we live. So a change of
role would not hurt," Perez said in an email.
The materialism of America was another culture shock.
"The biggest difference is the money," Perez said in an email. "I think
some people are as connected to their environment as they are to their
own lives. Others lack this connection, because they see only the
surface of the culture they are supposed to emulate, like being good
students or reaching the pinnacle of success in their careers."
Perez and Fernandez returned to Cuba last week. Perez hopes to revisit
Solar 11, but this time with the goal of advocating for better living
conditions. Fernandez plans to continue to improve the collective
reality through documentary work.
"Cuba is my mother and a mother is accepted. I like Cuban culture, the
warmth of her people, their constant laughter, even when something
hurts," Perez said in an email. "Cuba needs a mental revolution … an
exorcism of her ills. I'd like to change what hurts. What she does not
see."
http://flathatnews.com/2012/10/01/documentary-exposes-poverty-in-cuba/
Cuban physicians desert in fear of Chávez's electoral defeat
WELFARE | Some 31,777 physicians were in Venezuela early in February
Cuban physicians desert in fear of Chávez's electoral defeat
Since May, 80 Cuban doctors have deserted Venezuela, revealed sources
close to health program Misión Barrio Adentro
In 2011, at least 700 Cuban physicians around the world abandoned the
missions provided for under the agreements between the communist Cuban
Government and other with 66 countries (Photo: Rony Vargas)
FRANK LÓPEZ BALLESTEROS | EL UNIVERSAL
Monday October 01, 2012 12:33 PM
Cuban officials coordinating Venezuelan health program "Misión Barrio
Adentro" are worried about the numerous desertions taking place in
Venezuela. It is believed that as many as 80 Cuban physicians have left
the country on a monthly basis over the last 90 days, ahead of October 7
presidential election. Furthermore, the exodus may exceed the figure
recorded in 2011 (500 doctors).
"Some 22 physicians, including me, deserted the program in different
parts of the country in just one week in May (...) It has been at least
80 people per month," commented Yumar Gómez, a Cuban physician who is
now in Miami.
In 2011, at least 700 Cuban physicians around the world abandoned the
missions provided for under the agreements between the communist Cuban
Government and other 66 countries. As many as 500 of those physicians
were in Venezuela, cited "Barrio Afuera," an organization that supports
Cuban physicians seeking to leave "Barrio Adentro."
"Many believe things are not alright. Some have left because they
believe that President Chávez is far from winning the election and his
defeat is imminent. Let me tell you this... many do not want to return
to Cuba," Gómez asserted.
Early in February President Chávez said that there are 44,804 Cubans
working in seven social programs (commonly known as missions) since 2003.
Nevertheless, on October 22, 2010, in an unusual press conference, Cuban
Ambassador to Venezuela Rogelio Polanco said that there were "40,000
people cooperating, 30,000 of which are serving as doctors." Thus, 4,804
(12%) additional people arrived in the country in two years.
TWITTER: @FRANCHUTERIAS
http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/121001/cuban-physicians-desert-in-fear-of-chavezs-electoral-defeat
Cuban physicians desert in fear of Chávez's electoral defeat
Since May, 80 Cuban doctors have deserted Venezuela, revealed sources
close to health program Misión Barrio Adentro
In 2011, at least 700 Cuban physicians around the world abandoned the
missions provided for under the agreements between the communist Cuban
Government and other with 66 countries (Photo: Rony Vargas)
FRANK LÓPEZ BALLESTEROS | EL UNIVERSAL
Monday October 01, 2012 12:33 PM
Cuban officials coordinating Venezuelan health program "Misión Barrio
Adentro" are worried about the numerous desertions taking place in
Venezuela. It is believed that as many as 80 Cuban physicians have left
the country on a monthly basis over the last 90 days, ahead of October 7
presidential election. Furthermore, the exodus may exceed the figure
recorded in 2011 (500 doctors).
"Some 22 physicians, including me, deserted the program in different
parts of the country in just one week in May (...) It has been at least
80 people per month," commented Yumar Gómez, a Cuban physician who is
now in Miami.
In 2011, at least 700 Cuban physicians around the world abandoned the
missions provided for under the agreements between the communist Cuban
Government and other 66 countries. As many as 500 of those physicians
were in Venezuela, cited "Barrio Afuera," an organization that supports
Cuban physicians seeking to leave "Barrio Adentro."
"Many believe things are not alright. Some have left because they
believe that President Chávez is far from winning the election and his
defeat is imminent. Let me tell you this... many do not want to return
to Cuba," Gómez asserted.
Early in February President Chávez said that there are 44,804 Cubans
working in seven social programs (commonly known as missions) since 2003.
Nevertheless, on October 22, 2010, in an unusual press conference, Cuban
Ambassador to Venezuela Rogelio Polanco said that there were "40,000
people cooperating, 30,000 of which are serving as doctors." Thus, 4,804
(12%) additional people arrived in the country in two years.
TWITTER: @FRANCHUTERIAS
http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/121001/cuban-physicians-desert-in-fear-of-chavezs-electoral-defeat
‘Anti-Capitalism’ That Falls Short
'Anti-Capitalism' That Falls Short
October 1, 2012
"Scratch an extremist and you will find an opportunist" — V.I. Lenin
Pedro Campos
HAVANA TIMES — The little expression "anti-capitalist" is very much in
vogue today "We're anti-capitalists." Our position is "anti-capitalist."
Our revolutionary program is "anti-capitalist." "Down with the
capitalist enemy." "Death to the capitalists." This is how many people
express themselves. Yet reading and listening to some of these
"anti-capitalists," I'm amazed to find that they defend state capitalism.
Don't ask for names. More than once I have explained: the ideas must be
fought, not individuals.
What falls short in this "anti-capitalism" — which doesn't extend to the
operation of the Cuban government — are the people who dare to accuse
those of us who criticize state capitalism as being in league with the
"imperialist enemy" or favoring "capitalist restoration." What nonsense!
Those of us who hold socialist positions are ideologically and
politically confronting the state capitalism that exists in Cuba, though
concealed as "state socialism." Precisely what we seek is to transform
this state capitalism" into a more participatory and democratic
socialism, where the workers and the people are those who decide how to
reproduce their lives and all the laws that affect them, while
preventing the restoration of the old regime of exploitation by private
capitalists, imperialist corporations, and Creole land owners and
oligarchs – as occurred everywhere that "state socialism" was attempted.
In the specific case of Cuba, as we have reiterated, such restoration
would lead to neocolonial dependency, which would be nothing less than
our real or virtual annexation to the northern giant, which wants us as
an unconditional ally and yet despises us.
The advocates of state capitalism don't know that they're working for
annexation in the long run.
Our positions are reflected in our programs, proposals and actions.
Whether people are unfamiliar with them or have class limitations for
understanding them is another matter; workers who are exploited under
wage-labor statism will understand this quickly and well. This is why
some bureaucrat said to be careful with these ideas of "autogestion" or
self-management because they're like cocaine, addictive.
Many of us have already had our anti capitalism and our anti-imperialism
put to the test in direct confrontation against their forces in the
countries and cities of imperialism itself. This is unlike some of those
"pro-state capitalist 'anti-capitalists,'" dedicated to defending it,
without rhyme or reason, from their positions within the state, with the
people's resources, enjoying all types of media perks and privileges –
with all of this having been done in the name of "socialism and the
working class."
"Socialism" learned by rote
Indeed, as Professor Jorge Luis Acanda has pointed out, the
"prostitution of language" has led quite a few journalists,
intellectuals, politicians, activists and "leaders" to employ the terms
of political economy without the slightest attachment to their content
as historically recognized by socialists.
They call something "socialism" that has never been socialist; they
consider something to have been a "social revolution" when it was only a
political revolution; they consider "the enemy" to be anyone who doesn't
think like them; they confuse "social revolution" with the government, a
party and the state.
All of this confusion — introduced into the language of the social
sciences by the neo-Stalinists — is in part what has led such
"anti-capitalists" to be supporters of state capitalism and defend it to
the hilt, with their eyes closed and fangs bared, like bloodthirsty
zombies, without the least consideration, without knowing or
investigating the essences of the positions they call "contaminated,"
with no idea of who they're accusing.
Clearly… the problem is that they never linked capitalism with wages.
When they studied capitalism in college (if they studied capitalism),
nobody told them that capitalism is a social relation of production
linked to wage-labor exploitation. And if they ever had Capital in their
hands, it was for reading excerpts under the guidance of their teacher.
For these "anti-capitalists," capitalism is evil and exploitative,
because that's what they've heard ever since when that were kids. They
never knew why. They simply believe that "capitalism is evil because
it's evil; therefore anyone who looks like they're defending something
that has to do with capitalism is my enemy." From this, they end up
viewing almost all of humanity living under capitalist regimes as being
the enemy.
Knee-jerk tendencies
Because of that same ignorance, a guard at the Presidio Modelo Prison in
the era of the Batista dictatorship allowed the prisoners to read
Capital, thinking it was a work in support of capitalism. Extremes meet.
Such "anti-capitalists" don't differentiate between democratic,
authoritarian or fascist capitalists. To these people, all of them are
enemies just the same.
It was because of this that the alliance between the socialists and the
democrats was rejected and that the policies of the Comintern under
Stalin helped Hitler come to power in Germany. It was because of an
underestimation of the strength of the democrats and maintaining his
alliance with the neo-Stalinist conservative-hounds of state capitalism
in the USSR that Gorbachev ended up being the victim of a coup by his
"comrades" on the Politburo.
Those who delve into history only to know what happened, without
recognizing the lessons of the past for the present, can contribute much
to the knowledge of the past, but little to the development of the
present and the future.
We have "anti-capitalists" who are so "anti-capitalist" that they reject
everything that comes from capitalism (except for its sophisticated
products, which they consume and enjoy to the utmost, thanks to the
perks provided by state capitalism). But for them, the human values that
led to the triumph of capitalism over feudalism "have no validity under
socialism." They see capitalism— and socialism as well — as having
landed on the earth in alien spacecraft (complete with ETs), and having
nothing to do with what previously existed.
They don't know, never knew, never wanted to know, nor was it of any
interest to the neo-Stalinists, whether productive forces and production
relations of socialism and its values had been developing within the
capitalist core.
Struggling to maintain special privilege
How long will this infantile disorder of the left continue? How long
will these senseless insults go on, these accusations of collusion with
the imperialist enemy? How long are some of these people going to keep
on disrespecting differences, even "pro-capitalist" positions, though
they don't share them?
How long are they going to continue considering the term "democracy"
exclusively as the political system of the bourgeoisie? How long are
they going to consider human rights and democratic values achieved by
the humanist struggles over the ages to be bourgeois?
Could it be that the bureaucracy that controls state capitalism and its
means of production and distribution is well served by this prostitution
of language in that it allows them to continue trying to confuse the
workers with their "socialism" that never was? Do they really want
socialism to be an economic and political model that is rejected by the
workers and people in general?
Everyone makes their own judgments. It's true that there's much
confusion and ignorance, but what's apparent in some of these
"anti-capitalist" extremists is the most vulgar opportunism.
—–
To contact Pedro Campos, write: perucho1949@yahoo.es
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79469
October 1, 2012
"Scratch an extremist and you will find an opportunist" — V.I. Lenin
Pedro Campos
HAVANA TIMES — The little expression "anti-capitalist" is very much in
vogue today "We're anti-capitalists." Our position is "anti-capitalist."
Our revolutionary program is "anti-capitalist." "Down with the
capitalist enemy." "Death to the capitalists." This is how many people
express themselves. Yet reading and listening to some of these
"anti-capitalists," I'm amazed to find that they defend state capitalism.
Don't ask for names. More than once I have explained: the ideas must be
fought, not individuals.
What falls short in this "anti-capitalism" — which doesn't extend to the
operation of the Cuban government — are the people who dare to accuse
those of us who criticize state capitalism as being in league with the
"imperialist enemy" or favoring "capitalist restoration." What nonsense!
Those of us who hold socialist positions are ideologically and
politically confronting the state capitalism that exists in Cuba, though
concealed as "state socialism." Precisely what we seek is to transform
this state capitalism" into a more participatory and democratic
socialism, where the workers and the people are those who decide how to
reproduce their lives and all the laws that affect them, while
preventing the restoration of the old regime of exploitation by private
capitalists, imperialist corporations, and Creole land owners and
oligarchs – as occurred everywhere that "state socialism" was attempted.
In the specific case of Cuba, as we have reiterated, such restoration
would lead to neocolonial dependency, which would be nothing less than
our real or virtual annexation to the northern giant, which wants us as
an unconditional ally and yet despises us.
The advocates of state capitalism don't know that they're working for
annexation in the long run.
Our positions are reflected in our programs, proposals and actions.
Whether people are unfamiliar with them or have class limitations for
understanding them is another matter; workers who are exploited under
wage-labor statism will understand this quickly and well. This is why
some bureaucrat said to be careful with these ideas of "autogestion" or
self-management because they're like cocaine, addictive.
Many of us have already had our anti capitalism and our anti-imperialism
put to the test in direct confrontation against their forces in the
countries and cities of imperialism itself. This is unlike some of those
"pro-state capitalist 'anti-capitalists,'" dedicated to defending it,
without rhyme or reason, from their positions within the state, with the
people's resources, enjoying all types of media perks and privileges –
with all of this having been done in the name of "socialism and the
working class."
"Socialism" learned by rote
Indeed, as Professor Jorge Luis Acanda has pointed out, the
"prostitution of language" has led quite a few journalists,
intellectuals, politicians, activists and "leaders" to employ the terms
of political economy without the slightest attachment to their content
as historically recognized by socialists.
They call something "socialism" that has never been socialist; they
consider something to have been a "social revolution" when it was only a
political revolution; they consider "the enemy" to be anyone who doesn't
think like them; they confuse "social revolution" with the government, a
party and the state.
All of this confusion — introduced into the language of the social
sciences by the neo-Stalinists — is in part what has led such
"anti-capitalists" to be supporters of state capitalism and defend it to
the hilt, with their eyes closed and fangs bared, like bloodthirsty
zombies, without the least consideration, without knowing or
investigating the essences of the positions they call "contaminated,"
with no idea of who they're accusing.
Clearly… the problem is that they never linked capitalism with wages.
When they studied capitalism in college (if they studied capitalism),
nobody told them that capitalism is a social relation of production
linked to wage-labor exploitation. And if they ever had Capital in their
hands, it was for reading excerpts under the guidance of their teacher.
For these "anti-capitalists," capitalism is evil and exploitative,
because that's what they've heard ever since when that were kids. They
never knew why. They simply believe that "capitalism is evil because
it's evil; therefore anyone who looks like they're defending something
that has to do with capitalism is my enemy." From this, they end up
viewing almost all of humanity living under capitalist regimes as being
the enemy.
Knee-jerk tendencies
Because of that same ignorance, a guard at the Presidio Modelo Prison in
the era of the Batista dictatorship allowed the prisoners to read
Capital, thinking it was a work in support of capitalism. Extremes meet.
Such "anti-capitalists" don't differentiate between democratic,
authoritarian or fascist capitalists. To these people, all of them are
enemies just the same.
It was because of this that the alliance between the socialists and the
democrats was rejected and that the policies of the Comintern under
Stalin helped Hitler come to power in Germany. It was because of an
underestimation of the strength of the democrats and maintaining his
alliance with the neo-Stalinist conservative-hounds of state capitalism
in the USSR that Gorbachev ended up being the victim of a coup by his
"comrades" on the Politburo.
Those who delve into history only to know what happened, without
recognizing the lessons of the past for the present, can contribute much
to the knowledge of the past, but little to the development of the
present and the future.
We have "anti-capitalists" who are so "anti-capitalist" that they reject
everything that comes from capitalism (except for its sophisticated
products, which they consume and enjoy to the utmost, thanks to the
perks provided by state capitalism). But for them, the human values that
led to the triumph of capitalism over feudalism "have no validity under
socialism." They see capitalism— and socialism as well — as having
landed on the earth in alien spacecraft (complete with ETs), and having
nothing to do with what previously existed.
They don't know, never knew, never wanted to know, nor was it of any
interest to the neo-Stalinists, whether productive forces and production
relations of socialism and its values had been developing within the
capitalist core.
Struggling to maintain special privilege
How long will this infantile disorder of the left continue? How long
will these senseless insults go on, these accusations of collusion with
the imperialist enemy? How long are some of these people going to keep
on disrespecting differences, even "pro-capitalist" positions, though
they don't share them?
How long are they going to continue considering the term "democracy"
exclusively as the political system of the bourgeoisie? How long are
they going to consider human rights and democratic values achieved by
the humanist struggles over the ages to be bourgeois?
Could it be that the bureaucracy that controls state capitalism and its
means of production and distribution is well served by this prostitution
of language in that it allows them to continue trying to confuse the
workers with their "socialism" that never was? Do they really want
socialism to be an economic and political model that is rejected by the
workers and people in general?
Everyone makes their own judgments. It's true that there's much
confusion and ignorance, but what's apparent in some of these
"anti-capitalist" extremists is the most vulgar opportunism.
—–
To contact Pedro Campos, write: perucho1949@yahoo.es
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79469
Cuba: Victories, Cholera and Our Neighbors
Cuba: Victories, Cholera and Our Neighbors
October 2, 2012
By Haroldo Dilla Alfonso*
HAVANA TIMES — Cuba's leaders like decisive and overwhelming victories,
which is what they have proclaimed to the world for five decades. While
it's true that they've never been able to overcome economic
inefficiencies, they did achieve crushing military victories several
times, from the Bay of Pigs to Cuito Cuanavale (in Angola).
Accustomed as they are to taking part in such triumphs, in late August
the Ministry of Public Health proclaimed that they had won their war
against cholera after suffering a final toll of 417 people infected and
three dead.
This was a big mistake, because vibrio cholerae isn't so easily overcome
– even less so when relying on quickly organized campaigns. Cholera is a
disease that has a low mortality rate because the cure is relatively
simple, nevertheless it's exceedingly difficult to eradicate.
To do so requires a lot of time and care, much more than what the Cuban
health authorities could provide. Therefore cholera has returned to the
island, or — better said — it has reappeared, having never really left.
A first conclusion about how the cholera epidemic broke out in Cuba
would be the deplorable sanitary conditions in the region, not because
the infection has occurred, which can sometimes happen for a host of
reasons, and regardless of one's class or status.
In the Dominican Republic, for example, a wedding party of Venezuelan
millionaires was infected during the festivities in a country estate,
where they dined on infected ceviche. Though no one died, the toilets of
Caracas were under a tremendous siege for several days.
Nor can a conclusion be made because three patients died in Cuba, which
is a very low number and indicates the promptness of the island's health
care services.
But the fact that four hundred people became infected in such a short
time does demonstrate the magnitude that should induce the government to
focus its allocations on the provision of an improved water supply and
better sanitation conditions in these regions, which remain among the
poorest in the country.
The other issue is the origin of the ailment. There had been no cholera
in the Caribbean for over a century.
It reappeared in Haiti a couple of years ago not because the poverty of
the Haitians created it, but because UN troops — particularly a Nepalese
contingent — sowed it in the Artibonite River from their poorly
constructed latrines. Since then it has killed more than 7,000 people
and sickened nearly 600,000.
From there it's likely that it was carried in the intestines of a Cuban
internationalist aid worker or in a fish that made its way to the town
of Manzanillo. So far this hasn't been explained, so I suspect that it
was an internationalist aid worker.
I haven't been following or keeping up with the epidemic, I'm not a
doctor. But I think this issue forces us to think more seriously about
Cuba's relations with Haiti, a topic I've addressed several times before.
The history of eastern Cuban has always been linked to Haiti. In 1900
there began arriving in our country hundreds of thousands of Haitian
workers, who's labor made possible the great harvests of the 1920s. Many
of them were temporary and were repatriated when the harvest ended, but
others remained in the country.
In 1931, the census counted almost 80,000 of them. In 1953 — when the
flow was for the most part had stopped, many had assumed Cuban
citizenship — they numbered 28,000. The descendants of these people, who
maintain a long-term cultural ingredient, are currently estimated at
about 80,000.
Haitian cultural vitality — one of the greatest riches of this country —
can be seen in the eastern region, where people of that origin still
populate many of the old still existing sugarcane towns and constitute
the leading parts of the unforgettable programs of the Caribbean
festivals in Santiago de Cuba.
I'm sure that the current demographic situation in Cuba could induce the
reactivation of migratory flows. At the same time that Haiti continues
to lose population from emigration, all of eastern Cuba (especially its
southern side) is experiencing depopulation due to low growth rates and
migration from eastern Cuba to Havana (while Havanans are migrating to
south Florida).
Across the island the population is aging and stagnant or in a process
of absolute reduction.
The island of Cuba needs a workforce, especially if it continues the
current process of economic liberalization and privatization of
agricultural land. Many Haitians could find a stimulus to emigrate to
Cuba, where currently many thousands of Haitians already live,
particularly in the southeastern region; there, their customs and
religious beliefs wouldn't be strange in the least.
This wouldn't make us unique, because Haitians have spread throughout
the Caribbean, forming strong communities in the Dominican Republic, the
Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos, Guadeloupe, Cayenne, and of course in
Miami – where they live in segregated neighborhoods (residential
segregation is a fact of that city, particularly in Little Haiti). In
all these places they are key pieces of the local economies.
This is why what cholera indicates is more than an epidemic. It's a
relationship that will grow and will require special handling. It will
not be solved in a quick and crushing victory, like the one that
supposedly befell vibrio cholerae earlier this year but that still
haunts us from the quagmire of Manzanillo.
—–
(*) Originally published by Cubaencuentro.com
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79536
October 2, 2012
By Haroldo Dilla Alfonso*
HAVANA TIMES — Cuba's leaders like decisive and overwhelming victories,
which is what they have proclaimed to the world for five decades. While
it's true that they've never been able to overcome economic
inefficiencies, they did achieve crushing military victories several
times, from the Bay of Pigs to Cuito Cuanavale (in Angola).
Accustomed as they are to taking part in such triumphs, in late August
the Ministry of Public Health proclaimed that they had won their war
against cholera after suffering a final toll of 417 people infected and
three dead.
This was a big mistake, because vibrio cholerae isn't so easily overcome
– even less so when relying on quickly organized campaigns. Cholera is a
disease that has a low mortality rate because the cure is relatively
simple, nevertheless it's exceedingly difficult to eradicate.
To do so requires a lot of time and care, much more than what the Cuban
health authorities could provide. Therefore cholera has returned to the
island, or — better said — it has reappeared, having never really left.
A first conclusion about how the cholera epidemic broke out in Cuba
would be the deplorable sanitary conditions in the region, not because
the infection has occurred, which can sometimes happen for a host of
reasons, and regardless of one's class or status.
In the Dominican Republic, for example, a wedding party of Venezuelan
millionaires was infected during the festivities in a country estate,
where they dined on infected ceviche. Though no one died, the toilets of
Caracas were under a tremendous siege for several days.
Nor can a conclusion be made because three patients died in Cuba, which
is a very low number and indicates the promptness of the island's health
care services.
But the fact that four hundred people became infected in such a short
time does demonstrate the magnitude that should induce the government to
focus its allocations on the provision of an improved water supply and
better sanitation conditions in these regions, which remain among the
poorest in the country.
The other issue is the origin of the ailment. There had been no cholera
in the Caribbean for over a century.
It reappeared in Haiti a couple of years ago not because the poverty of
the Haitians created it, but because UN troops — particularly a Nepalese
contingent — sowed it in the Artibonite River from their poorly
constructed latrines. Since then it has killed more than 7,000 people
and sickened nearly 600,000.
From there it's likely that it was carried in the intestines of a Cuban
internationalist aid worker or in a fish that made its way to the town
of Manzanillo. So far this hasn't been explained, so I suspect that it
was an internationalist aid worker.
I haven't been following or keeping up with the epidemic, I'm not a
doctor. But I think this issue forces us to think more seriously about
Cuba's relations with Haiti, a topic I've addressed several times before.
The history of eastern Cuban has always been linked to Haiti. In 1900
there began arriving in our country hundreds of thousands of Haitian
workers, who's labor made possible the great harvests of the 1920s. Many
of them were temporary and were repatriated when the harvest ended, but
others remained in the country.
In 1931, the census counted almost 80,000 of them. In 1953 — when the
flow was for the most part had stopped, many had assumed Cuban
citizenship — they numbered 28,000. The descendants of these people, who
maintain a long-term cultural ingredient, are currently estimated at
about 80,000.
Haitian cultural vitality — one of the greatest riches of this country —
can be seen in the eastern region, where people of that origin still
populate many of the old still existing sugarcane towns and constitute
the leading parts of the unforgettable programs of the Caribbean
festivals in Santiago de Cuba.
I'm sure that the current demographic situation in Cuba could induce the
reactivation of migratory flows. At the same time that Haiti continues
to lose population from emigration, all of eastern Cuba (especially its
southern side) is experiencing depopulation due to low growth rates and
migration from eastern Cuba to Havana (while Havanans are migrating to
south Florida).
Across the island the population is aging and stagnant or in a process
of absolute reduction.
The island of Cuba needs a workforce, especially if it continues the
current process of economic liberalization and privatization of
agricultural land. Many Haitians could find a stimulus to emigrate to
Cuba, where currently many thousands of Haitians already live,
particularly in the southeastern region; there, their customs and
religious beliefs wouldn't be strange in the least.
This wouldn't make us unique, because Haitians have spread throughout
the Caribbean, forming strong communities in the Dominican Republic, the
Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos, Guadeloupe, Cayenne, and of course in
Miami – where they live in segregated neighborhoods (residential
segregation is a fact of that city, particularly in Little Haiti). In
all these places they are key pieces of the local economies.
This is why what cholera indicates is more than an epidemic. It's a
relationship that will grow and will require special handling. It will
not be solved in a quick and crushing victory, like the one that
supposedly befell vibrio cholerae earlier this year but that still
haunts us from the quagmire of Manzanillo.
—–
(*) Originally published by Cubaencuentro.com
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79536
Cuban foreign minister slams US over embargo
Posted on Monday, 10.01.12
Cuban foreign minister slams US over embargo
By CLAUDIA TORRENS
Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS -- Cuba's foreign minister told the U.N. General Assembly
on Monday that the United States is keeping Cuba on its list of states
that sponsor terrorism in order to justify its embargo on the Caribbean
nation.
Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said the list's purpose "is to fabricate
pretexts to increase the persecution of Cuba's financial transactions
and justify the blockade policy which has caused invaluable human and
economic damage."
He said Cuba remains ready to normalize relations with the U.S. and
criticized Washington's 50-year embargo on the island.
Rodriguez also accused the U.S. and "some" European governments of
seeking to overthrow the Syrian government, saying the U.S. and its
allies have "armed, financed and trained opposition groups, and resorted
to using mercenaries."
Other Latin American officials speaking at the United Nations emphasized
the region's rise against what they called imperial and U.S. domination.
Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil all
have leftist or left-of-center governments.
"Progressively the domination that the imperial powers and their
multinationals have imposed on our development is being overcome," said
Venezuela's U.N. ambassador Jorge Valero.
Rodriguez also mentioned the new attitude in Latin America and lashed
out at Washington's treatment of the island nation.
"The United States' policy toward our region, whether the government is
Republican or Democrat, is in essence the same," he said.
U.S. State Department spokesman William Ostick said he wouldn't respond
to Rodriguez's comments.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/01/3029406/cuban-foreign-minister-slams-us.html
Cuban foreign minister slams US over embargo
By CLAUDIA TORRENS
Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS -- Cuba's foreign minister told the U.N. General Assembly
on Monday that the United States is keeping Cuba on its list of states
that sponsor terrorism in order to justify its embargo on the Caribbean
nation.
Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said the list's purpose "is to fabricate
pretexts to increase the persecution of Cuba's financial transactions
and justify the blockade policy which has caused invaluable human and
economic damage."
He said Cuba remains ready to normalize relations with the U.S. and
criticized Washington's 50-year embargo on the island.
Rodriguez also accused the U.S. and "some" European governments of
seeking to overthrow the Syrian government, saying the U.S. and its
allies have "armed, financed and trained opposition groups, and resorted
to using mercenaries."
Other Latin American officials speaking at the United Nations emphasized
the region's rise against what they called imperial and U.S. domination.
Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil all
have leftist or left-of-center governments.
"Progressively the domination that the imperial powers and their
multinationals have imposed on our development is being overcome," said
Venezuela's U.N. ambassador Jorge Valero.
Rodriguez also mentioned the new attitude in Latin America and lashed
out at Washington's treatment of the island nation.
"The United States' policy toward our region, whether the government is
Republican or Democrat, is in essence the same," he said.
U.S. State Department spokesman William Ostick said he wouldn't respond
to Rodriguez's comments.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/01/3029406/cuban-foreign-minister-slams-us.html
Doctor: US man imprisoned in Cuba may have cancer
Doctor: US man imprisoned in Cuba may have cancer
JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press
Updated 6:11 a.m., Tuesday, October 2, 2012
globeDownload the seattlepi.com mobile apps for iPhone and Android.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A doctor says an American man imprisoned in Cuba may
have a cancerous growth on his shoulder, contradicting the Cuban
government's stance that his health is normal.
A lawyer for Alan Gross said Tuesday in a statement that an independent
physician reviewed medical records sent by Cuba. The doctor says that
the mass must be assumed to be cancerous unless proven otherwise.
Alan Gross' wife, Judy Gross, released a statement begging Cuban
President Raul Castro not to let her husband "die on your watch" and
asking that he be allowed to be diagnosed by a doctor of his choosing.
Gross, a 63-year-old U.S. government subcontractor from Montgomery
County, Md., has been in prison in Cuba since late 2009. His case has
become a sticking point in U.S.-Cuba relations.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Doctor-US-man-imprisoned-in-Cuba-may-have-cancer-3912092.php
JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press
Updated 6:11 a.m., Tuesday, October 2, 2012
globeDownload the seattlepi.com mobile apps for iPhone and Android.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A doctor says an American man imprisoned in Cuba may
have a cancerous growth on his shoulder, contradicting the Cuban
government's stance that his health is normal.
A lawyer for Alan Gross said Tuesday in a statement that an independent
physician reviewed medical records sent by Cuba. The doctor says that
the mass must be assumed to be cancerous unless proven otherwise.
Alan Gross' wife, Judy Gross, released a statement begging Cuban
President Raul Castro not to let her husband "die on your watch" and
asking that he be allowed to be diagnosed by a doctor of his choosing.
Gross, a 63-year-old U.S. government subcontractor from Montgomery
County, Md., has been in prison in Cuba since late 2009. His case has
become a sticking point in U.S.-Cuba relations.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Doctor-US-man-imprisoned-in-Cuba-may-have-cancer-3912092.php
Namibia: Cuba Offers Pricy Deal
Namibia: Cuba Offers Pricy Deal
Tagged: Education, External Relations, Health, Latin America and Africa,
Namibia, Southern Africa
By Denver Kisting, 2 October 2012
THE Namibian taxpayer will fork out N$70 million to finance the training
of 100 doctors in Cuba over six years, if a proposal to be discussed
with Cuba is approved. Under the agreement it will cost the country
N$705 000 to train one doctor in Cuba.
The cost of training a doctor in South Africa, China, Russia or Bulgaria
is estimated at about N$498 000.
However, Namibia can only send a limited number of students to countries
like South Africa because of quota systems there.
Should the Namibian government decide to increase the number of medical
students in Cuba to 250, the cost will be reduced to N$622 500 per
student over six years, the agreement stipulates.
At the end of 2011, 22 Namibian students had completed their medical
training abroad, while 26 are expected to complete their training by the
end of this year.
Currently, Government has 336 medical students at various institutions,
including the medical school of the University of Namibia (Unam).
Of the 247 medicine and pharmacy students at the Unam medical school,
about 82% are Namibians while about 18% are international students, says
Unam spokesperson Utaara Hoveka.
According to a document seen by The Namibian, Health Minister Richard
Kamwi has expressed concern about the number of qualified Namibian
doctors - especially those working for the State.
"Currently, many of the Namibian-trained doctors are not able to work
and stay longer in the public service, because of the wages that are not
market related as well as the burden of repayment of loans to [the
Ministry of] Education."
Andrew Ndishishi, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and
Social Services, last week confirmed that a training agreement with Cuba
was on the cards.
Yesterday, when again approached for comment, he said: "No, no, I don't
want to talk to you. Whatever I say is not important."
Last week, The Namibian reported that the two countries were also
negotiating a deal for medical personnel that would cost the taxpayer
N$1,3 million per person over a two-year period - close to 50% more than
the current agreement.
Currently, the fee is N$647 621 per person. There are 52 Cuban medical
personnel in the country as part of the current agreement.
The fees Cuba wants to charge Namibia for medical personnel from that
country "have no relation whatsoever with the prevailing market rates
applicable in the public service within southern Africa as a whole", a
document seen by The Namibian states.
Because of this, there is a fear that the local market will be
destabilised, the document warns.
Destabilising the market would push up the cost of medical care, which
is already high, it warns.
Moreover, there are concerns that the new agreement will add fuel to the
fire in the public servants' wage talks.
About this in relation to training Namibian doctors, the document seen
by the newspaper states: "If one compares what is required to pay for a
Cuban doctor to work for only a period of two years as per the new
agreement, the investment of the training of 250 Namibian doctors who
will remain here permanently is therefore attractive."
The document further states that "Namibia may indicate its willingness
to pay a fair price but it must be comparable to the domestic labour
market and may not be introduced abruptly but gradually to avoid [a]
negative effect on our budgeting system and to prevent potential labour
disputes which may disrupt service delivery."
http://allafrica.com/stories/201210020497.html
Tagged: Education, External Relations, Health, Latin America and Africa,
Namibia, Southern Africa
By Denver Kisting, 2 October 2012
THE Namibian taxpayer will fork out N$70 million to finance the training
of 100 doctors in Cuba over six years, if a proposal to be discussed
with Cuba is approved. Under the agreement it will cost the country
N$705 000 to train one doctor in Cuba.
The cost of training a doctor in South Africa, China, Russia or Bulgaria
is estimated at about N$498 000.
However, Namibia can only send a limited number of students to countries
like South Africa because of quota systems there.
Should the Namibian government decide to increase the number of medical
students in Cuba to 250, the cost will be reduced to N$622 500 per
student over six years, the agreement stipulates.
At the end of 2011, 22 Namibian students had completed their medical
training abroad, while 26 are expected to complete their training by the
end of this year.
Currently, Government has 336 medical students at various institutions,
including the medical school of the University of Namibia (Unam).
Of the 247 medicine and pharmacy students at the Unam medical school,
about 82% are Namibians while about 18% are international students, says
Unam spokesperson Utaara Hoveka.
According to a document seen by The Namibian, Health Minister Richard
Kamwi has expressed concern about the number of qualified Namibian
doctors - especially those working for the State.
"Currently, many of the Namibian-trained doctors are not able to work
and stay longer in the public service, because of the wages that are not
market related as well as the burden of repayment of loans to [the
Ministry of] Education."
Andrew Ndishishi, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and
Social Services, last week confirmed that a training agreement with Cuba
was on the cards.
Yesterday, when again approached for comment, he said: "No, no, I don't
want to talk to you. Whatever I say is not important."
Last week, The Namibian reported that the two countries were also
negotiating a deal for medical personnel that would cost the taxpayer
N$1,3 million per person over a two-year period - close to 50% more than
the current agreement.
Currently, the fee is N$647 621 per person. There are 52 Cuban medical
personnel in the country as part of the current agreement.
The fees Cuba wants to charge Namibia for medical personnel from that
country "have no relation whatsoever with the prevailing market rates
applicable in the public service within southern Africa as a whole", a
document seen by The Namibian states.
Because of this, there is a fear that the local market will be
destabilised, the document warns.
Destabilising the market would push up the cost of medical care, which
is already high, it warns.
Moreover, there are concerns that the new agreement will add fuel to the
fire in the public servants' wage talks.
About this in relation to training Namibian doctors, the document seen
by the newspaper states: "If one compares what is required to pay for a
Cuban doctor to work for only a period of two years as per the new
agreement, the investment of the training of 250 Namibian doctors who
will remain here permanently is therefore attractive."
The document further states that "Namibia may indicate its willingness
to pay a fair price but it must be comparable to the domestic labour
market and may not be introduced abruptly but gradually to avoid [a]
negative effect on our budgeting system and to prevent potential labour
disputes which may disrupt service delivery."
http://allafrica.com/stories/201210020497.html
Cuba Anxiously Eyes Venezuelan Election
Cuba Anxiously Eyes Venezuelan Election
Ben Cohen | @BenCohenOpinion 10.01.2012 - 12:47 PM
Over the last week, indications have emerged from Venezuela that the
fourteen year rule of President Hugo Chavez may be coming to an end this
Sunday, when voters will choose between El Comandante and his dynamic
opposition rival, Henrique Capriles. There are the polls from local
companies like Datanalisis and Consultores 21 which show that Capriles
has slashed Chavez's lead, and may even be edging ahead. There is the
large pool of "undecided" voters—anywhere between 10 and 20 percent—who
will probably vote for Capriles, but are too afraid to let a pollster
know. And there was the opposition rally in Caracas yesterday which drew
tens of thousands onto the streets of the capital, all chanting "You See
It! You Feel It! President Capriles!"
Perhaps the most striking suggestion that change is in the air came from
a group of Cuban doctors who were sent to Venezuela under the Misión
Barrio Adentro, a Chavez-financed social welfare program whose core
purpose is to lock up the votes of poorer Venezuelans for the current
regime. Back in 2006, the George W. Bush administration, having
registered the large number of Cuban medical personnel working on such
solidarity missions in countries like Venezuela, created the Cuban
Medical Professional Parole program to assist those wishing to defect.
Now, the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal reports (English translation
here) that the Cubans are deserting their posts at a rate of 80 per
month, in large part because they anticipate a Capriles victory in
Sunday's election.
"Many see that things are not going well and have brought forward their
decision to desert because they think the defeat of Chávez is imminent,"
Yumar Gomez, a doctor who found his way to Miami, told El Universal.
"And let me tell you… many don't want to go back to Cuba." Delia Garcia,
a Cuban nurse, added: "Our leaders tell us that Chávez is not certain
for October and say that the rate of desertions is now accelerating.
That's why I'm leaving. If there isn't going to be any more misión in
Venezuela, where will they send us then? To Burundi?"
The revelation that Havana's communist rulers aren't betting on a Chavez
victory is another welcome boost for the Capriles campaign. After all,
Chavez has never looked as vulnerable as he does now. His grandiose
public works schemes are coming undone through the incompetence and
corruption that inevitably accompanies the stuffing of political
appointees into state-owned companies. For example, FONDEN, a
Chavez-controlled fund that has spent $100 billion of Venezuelan oil
revenue over the last seven years while bypassing the approval of the
country's congress, has come under fire for a range of misdemeanours,
from abandoned building projects to the purchase of Russian fighter
jets. And after a series of devastating fires and explosions at various
oil installations, including one at the Amuay refinery in August in
which more than 40 people were killed, it is hard to find a single
Venezuelan who retains faith in PDVSA, the national oil company milked
as a cash cow by Chavez.
As talk of an opposition victory on Sunday gathers pace, so does
speculation that Chavez will consult the playbook of his close friend,
the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and manipulate the election,
perhaps by intimidating voters in areas that lean towards Capriles, or
even by stealing it outright. Last week, the Spanish newspaper ABC
claimed that Chavez has been readying revolutionary militias, modeled on
the feared Basij units in Iran, for mobilization in the event that he is
defeated.
Still, as Diego Arria, the former Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN and a
leading opposition figure, pointed out in a recent interview with New
York's WABC radio, such action is unlikely to be successful without the
backing of the Venezuelan armed forces. And so far, Venezuela's military
commanders, mindful that Chavez may shortly succumb to the cancer eating
away at him, have stated that they will respect the choice of the voters.
Is the Chavez era coming to an end? One would be foolhardy to make that
exact prediction, but even so, the signs all point to the Comandante
emerging from Sunday's election chastened, and the opposition further
empowered.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/01/cuba-anxiously-eyes-venezuelan-election/
Ben Cohen | @BenCohenOpinion 10.01.2012 - 12:47 PM
Over the last week, indications have emerged from Venezuela that the
fourteen year rule of President Hugo Chavez may be coming to an end this
Sunday, when voters will choose between El Comandante and his dynamic
opposition rival, Henrique Capriles. There are the polls from local
companies like Datanalisis and Consultores 21 which show that Capriles
has slashed Chavez's lead, and may even be edging ahead. There is the
large pool of "undecided" voters—anywhere between 10 and 20 percent—who
will probably vote for Capriles, but are too afraid to let a pollster
know. And there was the opposition rally in Caracas yesterday which drew
tens of thousands onto the streets of the capital, all chanting "You See
It! You Feel It! President Capriles!"
Perhaps the most striking suggestion that change is in the air came from
a group of Cuban doctors who were sent to Venezuela under the Misión
Barrio Adentro, a Chavez-financed social welfare program whose core
purpose is to lock up the votes of poorer Venezuelans for the current
regime. Back in 2006, the George W. Bush administration, having
registered the large number of Cuban medical personnel working on such
solidarity missions in countries like Venezuela, created the Cuban
Medical Professional Parole program to assist those wishing to defect.
Now, the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal reports (English translation
here) that the Cubans are deserting their posts at a rate of 80 per
month, in large part because they anticipate a Capriles victory in
Sunday's election.
"Many see that things are not going well and have brought forward their
decision to desert because they think the defeat of Chávez is imminent,"
Yumar Gomez, a doctor who found his way to Miami, told El Universal.
"And let me tell you… many don't want to go back to Cuba." Delia Garcia,
a Cuban nurse, added: "Our leaders tell us that Chávez is not certain
for October and say that the rate of desertions is now accelerating.
That's why I'm leaving. If there isn't going to be any more misión in
Venezuela, where will they send us then? To Burundi?"
The revelation that Havana's communist rulers aren't betting on a Chavez
victory is another welcome boost for the Capriles campaign. After all,
Chavez has never looked as vulnerable as he does now. His grandiose
public works schemes are coming undone through the incompetence and
corruption that inevitably accompanies the stuffing of political
appointees into state-owned companies. For example, FONDEN, a
Chavez-controlled fund that has spent $100 billion of Venezuelan oil
revenue over the last seven years while bypassing the approval of the
country's congress, has come under fire for a range of misdemeanours,
from abandoned building projects to the purchase of Russian fighter
jets. And after a series of devastating fires and explosions at various
oil installations, including one at the Amuay refinery in August in
which more than 40 people were killed, it is hard to find a single
Venezuelan who retains faith in PDVSA, the national oil company milked
as a cash cow by Chavez.
As talk of an opposition victory on Sunday gathers pace, so does
speculation that Chavez will consult the playbook of his close friend,
the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and manipulate the election,
perhaps by intimidating voters in areas that lean towards Capriles, or
even by stealing it outright. Last week, the Spanish newspaper ABC
claimed that Chavez has been readying revolutionary militias, modeled on
the feared Basij units in Iran, for mobilization in the event that he is
defeated.
Still, as Diego Arria, the former Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN and a
leading opposition figure, pointed out in a recent interview with New
York's WABC radio, such action is unlikely to be successful without the
backing of the Venezuelan armed forces. And so far, Venezuela's military
commanders, mindful that Chavez may shortly succumb to the cancer eating
away at him, have stated that they will respect the choice of the voters.
Is the Chavez era coming to an end? One would be foolhardy to make that
exact prediction, but even so, the signs all point to the Comandante
emerging from Sunday's election chastened, and the opposition further
empowered.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/01/cuba-anxiously-eyes-venezuelan-election/
Monday, October 1, 2012
The Individual Facing International Law
The Individual Facing International Law / Cuban Law Association, Argelio
M.Guerra
Argelio M. Guerra, Cuban Law Association, Translator: Unstated
With regards to the most basic concept on the subject of a legal
relationship, defined as those who participate in the relationship and
have the ability to claim rights and assume obligations, we can assume
that if this legal relationship is of an international character, then
the subjects are participating in these international relations have
rights and duties, and that they exercise them within the framework and
on the basis of international law.
Both classic international law as well as the most contemporary
international public law assume that sovereign states are the principle
subjects of international law, and this is the case because these
subjects are the only ones endowed with sovereignty and in whose will to
be bound by international order rests the foundation of the sources of
international law. It is also true that the current recognition and
widespread practice of establishing the individual as an immediate and
direct subject of international law in those situations that affect his
life, his work, his freedom.
This tendency has become larger since the second half of the 20th
century in which the horrors and crimes of the Second World War
established the ability of the individual to be a subject of
international law.
The League of nations tried to set a minimum paradigm on matters of
Human Rights to be guaranteed by states, and the United Nations elevates
those to a new dimension for perpetrators of genocide to answer for such
outrages in international order.
The International Criminal Court was established for this reason and it
refers in its statutes to the obligations of the individual person, who
is endowed with the ability to hold accountable a state that fails to
comply with its obligations under International Law.
September 25 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/the-individual-facing-international-law-cuban-law-association-argelio-m-guerra/
M.Guerra
Argelio M. Guerra, Cuban Law Association, Translator: Unstated
With regards to the most basic concept on the subject of a legal
relationship, defined as those who participate in the relationship and
have the ability to claim rights and assume obligations, we can assume
that if this legal relationship is of an international character, then
the subjects are participating in these international relations have
rights and duties, and that they exercise them within the framework and
on the basis of international law.
Both classic international law as well as the most contemporary
international public law assume that sovereign states are the principle
subjects of international law, and this is the case because these
subjects are the only ones endowed with sovereignty and in whose will to
be bound by international order rests the foundation of the sources of
international law. It is also true that the current recognition and
widespread practice of establishing the individual as an immediate and
direct subject of international law in those situations that affect his
life, his work, his freedom.
This tendency has become larger since the second half of the 20th
century in which the horrors and crimes of the Second World War
established the ability of the individual to be a subject of
international law.
The League of nations tried to set a minimum paradigm on matters of
Human Rights to be guaranteed by states, and the United Nations elevates
those to a new dimension for perpetrators of genocide to answer for such
outrages in international order.
The International Criminal Court was established for this reason and it
refers in its statutes to the obligations of the individual person, who
is endowed with the ability to hold accountable a state that fails to
comply with its obligations under International Law.
September 25 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/the-individual-facing-international-law-cuban-law-association-argelio-m-guerra/
A War They Don’t Talk About
A War They Don't Talk About / Regina Coyula
Regina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
Not having been in the Fajardo Hospital since its repairs, I was told
that the Emergency Room was the most significant of the improvements.
The Latin American students cared for Rafael Tuesday night, he'd had a
fever since the previous day. They ordered urgent blood and urine tests.
It didn't occur to any of them to acknowledge him. The supervisor of the
three students was a young as they were so I suppose he's doing his
social service or perhaps he's a student too, who knows.
Waiting for the results of the tests allowed me to observe the national
apathy that has really set in in that place. The lack of lights, the
trail of dirt on the enamel painted wall, so easy to maintain with a
damp cloth, cigarette butts on the floor under a sign that says No Smoking.
The waiting area seems to be a place for drunks to sleep it off, or the
homeless, whose grimy aspect contributes to the bad impression.
Inevitably, I wondered if the Hospital Director would pass through after
the re-opening.
As the results of the tests were inconclusive, and as my son didn't show
any signs of improvement, the doctors said he would be kept under
observation for any changes.
The next day two medical students went from house to house, thermometer
in hand, checking for fevers. I let them in and they took Rafa's
temperature which was 102F. In the afternoon a new doctor came to the
house from the clinic in my neighborhood and scolded me for not properly
using the steps of the health care system (did you know? the family
doctor is the primary caregiver and the hospital is the third step). He
repeated the urgent order for tests, including a platelet count in the
polyclinic (second step of the health care system), and made an
appointment for the first clinic hour the following day.
I also accompanied Rafa on that occasion and saw what they did. The
doctor took his blood pressure, pulse, listened to his lungs, looked in
his eyes, opened his mouth, pulled up his shirt and looked carefully at
his skin. That gave me confidence, what I would had expected the night
at the Fajardo emergency room.
"We have to wait for the tests to come back but this is dengue. Home
care, rest, liquids, no aspirin, and repeat the tests in two days. These
platelets are very low and the skin color is irregular."
Dengue. This is a war that is not spoken of. The School of Medicine has
begun classes but the students and doctors who would normally be seeing
patients are in the different steps of which I already spoke, handling
cases about which the statistics are kept confidential, but they don't
appear to be diminishing.
The media carries on about the life cycle of the aedes aegypti mosquito,
and thus the responsibility of citizens in its proliferation. Flowerbeds
and vacant areas overgrown with weeds, water leaks, potholes,
insufficient garbage collection, and abundant rains are a losing
combination. There are no public ads about the inability to respond to
this accumulation of problems, not even one article. What can't be fixed
won't be talked about, seems to be the orientation.
As an aside: I hope Dr. Naybí will have long stay in our clinic.
September 24 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/a-war-they-dont-talk-about-regina-coyula/
Regina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
Not having been in the Fajardo Hospital since its repairs, I was told
that the Emergency Room was the most significant of the improvements.
The Latin American students cared for Rafael Tuesday night, he'd had a
fever since the previous day. They ordered urgent blood and urine tests.
It didn't occur to any of them to acknowledge him. The supervisor of the
three students was a young as they were so I suppose he's doing his
social service or perhaps he's a student too, who knows.
Waiting for the results of the tests allowed me to observe the national
apathy that has really set in in that place. The lack of lights, the
trail of dirt on the enamel painted wall, so easy to maintain with a
damp cloth, cigarette butts on the floor under a sign that says No Smoking.
The waiting area seems to be a place for drunks to sleep it off, or the
homeless, whose grimy aspect contributes to the bad impression.
Inevitably, I wondered if the Hospital Director would pass through after
the re-opening.
As the results of the tests were inconclusive, and as my son didn't show
any signs of improvement, the doctors said he would be kept under
observation for any changes.
The next day two medical students went from house to house, thermometer
in hand, checking for fevers. I let them in and they took Rafa's
temperature which was 102F. In the afternoon a new doctor came to the
house from the clinic in my neighborhood and scolded me for not properly
using the steps of the health care system (did you know? the family
doctor is the primary caregiver and the hospital is the third step). He
repeated the urgent order for tests, including a platelet count in the
polyclinic (second step of the health care system), and made an
appointment for the first clinic hour the following day.
I also accompanied Rafa on that occasion and saw what they did. The
doctor took his blood pressure, pulse, listened to his lungs, looked in
his eyes, opened his mouth, pulled up his shirt and looked carefully at
his skin. That gave me confidence, what I would had expected the night
at the Fajardo emergency room.
"We have to wait for the tests to come back but this is dengue. Home
care, rest, liquids, no aspirin, and repeat the tests in two days. These
platelets are very low and the skin color is irregular."
Dengue. This is a war that is not spoken of. The School of Medicine has
begun classes but the students and doctors who would normally be seeing
patients are in the different steps of which I already spoke, handling
cases about which the statistics are kept confidential, but they don't
appear to be diminishing.
The media carries on about the life cycle of the aedes aegypti mosquito,
and thus the responsibility of citizens in its proliferation. Flowerbeds
and vacant areas overgrown with weeds, water leaks, potholes,
insufficient garbage collection, and abundant rains are a losing
combination. There are no public ads about the inability to respond to
this accumulation of problems, not even one article. What can't be fixed
won't be talked about, seems to be the orientation.
As an aside: I hope Dr. Naybí will have long stay in our clinic.
September 24 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/a-war-they-dont-talk-about-regina-coyula/
A poor diagnosis
A poor diagnosis
September 29, 2012
Francisco Castro
HAVANA TIMES — I never knew his nationality, and I don't remember his
name. But none of that is important. It's only that he was on-call at
the hospital that day; and from among all the doctors, he was the one
called on to attend to me.
About two weeks ago my eyes became bloodshot. I figured that it was due
to being tired, a lack of sleep, or reading in low light. Still, every
day it got a little worse, so I decided to go see a specialist.
The facility, popularly known as "La Ceguera" (the Blindness Hospital)
was recommended to me as being the best in its field; so even though I
felt the usual distress one does when going to a place like this, I had
the assurance that it would be staffed by trained professionals.
When my turn came, I went into the examination room and I found one
female physician attending to a patient and this young man, most likely
a foreign medical student, who asked me to come over to him.
After the first exam of my bare eyes, followed by a few routine
questions, he asked me to sit behind some equipment so that he could
check my eyes in more detail. And after much thought, he determined that
the redness was due to damaged corneas.
He prescribed me some eye drops, which I had to immediately apply in the
infirmary, in addition to directing me to keep a bandage over my left
eye for 24 hours. The next day I would have to do the same thing with
the right eye, but he said I could have that done at a polyclinic in my
neighborhood to avoid having to make the longer trip back to the hospital.
Though held in suspense by his diagnosis, and with half of my vision
lost, I went home. The next 24 hours were the most uncomfortable I had
ever experienced. I broke several things in the house and I could hardly
sleep, thinking about the imminent danger of losing my eyesight and all
that this would entail.
The next day at my clinic, the ophthalmologist — full of concern after
hearing my story — removed the patch. But after examining me, he
immediately said, with a slight smile, that all I had was conjunctivitis.
He prescribed several medications and told me to do special washes and
to put on compresses. He requested to see the earlier doctor's
prescription again and asked if he was Latin America. I said yes, and —
with a shake of his head — he ended his questioning.
A week later I was almost cured but I still went back to my
ophthalmologist at the nearby clinic, as he had asked. At the end, when
saying goodbye, along with a handshake, the doctor smiled and said: "So
much for the damaged corneas."
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79396
September 29, 2012
Francisco Castro
HAVANA TIMES — I never knew his nationality, and I don't remember his
name. But none of that is important. It's only that he was on-call at
the hospital that day; and from among all the doctors, he was the one
called on to attend to me.
About two weeks ago my eyes became bloodshot. I figured that it was due
to being tired, a lack of sleep, or reading in low light. Still, every
day it got a little worse, so I decided to go see a specialist.
The facility, popularly known as "La Ceguera" (the Blindness Hospital)
was recommended to me as being the best in its field; so even though I
felt the usual distress one does when going to a place like this, I had
the assurance that it would be staffed by trained professionals.
When my turn came, I went into the examination room and I found one
female physician attending to a patient and this young man, most likely
a foreign medical student, who asked me to come over to him.
After the first exam of my bare eyes, followed by a few routine
questions, he asked me to sit behind some equipment so that he could
check my eyes in more detail. And after much thought, he determined that
the redness was due to damaged corneas.
He prescribed me some eye drops, which I had to immediately apply in the
infirmary, in addition to directing me to keep a bandage over my left
eye for 24 hours. The next day I would have to do the same thing with
the right eye, but he said I could have that done at a polyclinic in my
neighborhood to avoid having to make the longer trip back to the hospital.
Though held in suspense by his diagnosis, and with half of my vision
lost, I went home. The next 24 hours were the most uncomfortable I had
ever experienced. I broke several things in the house and I could hardly
sleep, thinking about the imminent danger of losing my eyesight and all
that this would entail.
The next day at my clinic, the ophthalmologist — full of concern after
hearing my story — removed the patch. But after examining me, he
immediately said, with a slight smile, that all I had was conjunctivitis.
He prescribed several medications and told me to do special washes and
to put on compresses. He requested to see the earlier doctor's
prescription again and asked if he was Latin America. I said yes, and —
with a shake of his head — he ended his questioning.
A week later I was almost cured but I still went back to my
ophthalmologist at the nearby clinic, as he had asked. At the end, when
saying goodbye, along with a handshake, the doctor smiled and said: "So
much for the damaged corneas."
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79396
Really? Cubans Never Joke About the Revolution?
Yoani Sanchez - Award-winning Cuban blogger
Really? Cubans Never Joke About the Revolution?
Posted: 09/30/2012 10:01 pm
The year: 2050. The regime: still in power. The Coppelia ice cream
stand, the most famous in Cuba, is in ruins, and tree roots have played
havoc with the granite floor. Amid the rusty iron columns a couple of
guys are trying to light a fire. They are rubbing two sticks together in
the most primitive way. Moving their hands compulsively, desperately.
Suddenly one looks up and predicts, "This is about to come crashing
down. I imagine in the coming months they're going to cut the stick
ration in half... then how will we light a fire?"
This joke, which has been around for a couple of decades already, is
re-circulating lately after certain statements by the former Minister of
Culture, Abel Prieto. During a gathering at the Dulce María Loynaz
center in Havana, he asserted that "Cubans don't have a single joke that
refers to the Revolution, nor to denunciations, prisoners of conscience,
and ousted officials . He immediately added that the national jokes
rather "talk about scarcities or emigration" but "in a benevolent way,
forgiving, without rancor or bitterness."
Such ingenuous pronouncements provoked laughter, even among those
present, despite the official character of the site. The words of the
current "Advisor to the President of the Council of State and Ministers"
(i.e. Raul Castro) spread quickly, generating derision inside and
outside the country. In Cuba-themed forums and sites internauts posted
an avalanche of old and new jokes that refer to the prevailing system on
the Island. Spontaneous anthologies of everything that has made us
laugh; inventories of jokes that have caused us to snicker, even in the
darkest moments. No one wants to suggest they can't remember at least
one joke about the system, the leaders in power, or the ideology of the
Communist Party.
There is everything. From the usual stories where "Fidel Castro arrives
in hell and finds other presidents there..." to the typical jokes
starring Pepito, that mischievous boy who appears in many humorous
stories. Nicknames, anecdotes, puns and wisecracks that made history
have all been dusted off. A festival of derision detonated by the
categorical statement of the former minister. As if Cubans had been
expecting something completely ridiculous to make them laugh. And
they've split their sides over it. Because there seems to be a direct
relationship between the seriousness of the problems and the ingenuity
of our humor, so in times of crisis hilarity wins. The nineties were
marked by scarcities and abundant jokes; prodigious in both problems and
humor.
Politics has been one of the main themes of popular jokes, along with
sex and death. So it's more than little naive to think that a political
process that has lasted 53 years wouldn't be the subject of scorn and
sarcasm. What's more, few governments have sparked as many jokes as the
one led by Fidel Castro, and now his brother Raul Castro. It's just that
they never found a place in the official media, nor on humorous State TV
shows, or in the official newspaper supplements of cartoons and jokes.
So they circulated orally, unwritten.
It was in the years of the Special Period when Pepito started talking
insistently about food. Every week there would be a new story where our
crafty eternal child referred to food shortages or the culinary
inventions appearing on our plates. He threw sharp darts of humor
against government mismanagement and against its stubbornness in not
allowing farmers markets or the possession of hard currency.
His jokes narrated the dark present and predicted a worst future. Like
the one where the irreverent boy is sitting at the table and before
trying the first bite he asks his mom, "Is it true that you once fried
the floor rags and ate them like they were steak?" The stern lady just
sniffed in annoyance. But the boy returned to the charge. "Mommy, is it
true that they sold some monster meat on the food ration and called it
"skinless dogs?" A long silence, and then in response the mother shouts
angrily, "Shut up Pepito and eat your lizard!"
Stories like this have come to our ears this week, after Abel Prieto
opened the Pandora's Box of jokes. Just to prove the contrary, people
have called on their memories and exercised their facial muscles.
But the funniest thing of all is that this man who is now an advisor to
the president stars in one of the most famous Cuban jokes of the last
two decades, one built on the fact that his last name is a slang word
for "black." It is a play on words that criticizes racism in the police
along with the constant persecution of the black market. To the question
of, "Who has been the minister most talked about in Cuba"... the answer
is simply "Prieto"... thanks to what the cops say in the street:
Prieto... whaddya have in that sack? And then comes the prolonged
laughter, the cruel mockery.
With popular jokes, it's better not to get involved, or to try to
restrict them. Because they can fight back with a barrage of ridicule, a
flood of humor.
Translating Cuba is a compilation blog with Yoani and other Cuban
bloggers in English.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/really-cubans-never-joke_b_1927732.html
Really? Cubans Never Joke About the Revolution?
Posted: 09/30/2012 10:01 pm
The year: 2050. The regime: still in power. The Coppelia ice cream
stand, the most famous in Cuba, is in ruins, and tree roots have played
havoc with the granite floor. Amid the rusty iron columns a couple of
guys are trying to light a fire. They are rubbing two sticks together in
the most primitive way. Moving their hands compulsively, desperately.
Suddenly one looks up and predicts, "This is about to come crashing
down. I imagine in the coming months they're going to cut the stick
ration in half... then how will we light a fire?"
This joke, which has been around for a couple of decades already, is
re-circulating lately after certain statements by the former Minister of
Culture, Abel Prieto. During a gathering at the Dulce María Loynaz
center in Havana, he asserted that "Cubans don't have a single joke that
refers to the Revolution, nor to denunciations, prisoners of conscience,
and ousted officials . He immediately added that the national jokes
rather "talk about scarcities or emigration" but "in a benevolent way,
forgiving, without rancor or bitterness."
Such ingenuous pronouncements provoked laughter, even among those
present, despite the official character of the site. The words of the
current "Advisor to the President of the Council of State and Ministers"
(i.e. Raul Castro) spread quickly, generating derision inside and
outside the country. In Cuba-themed forums and sites internauts posted
an avalanche of old and new jokes that refer to the prevailing system on
the Island. Spontaneous anthologies of everything that has made us
laugh; inventories of jokes that have caused us to snicker, even in the
darkest moments. No one wants to suggest they can't remember at least
one joke about the system, the leaders in power, or the ideology of the
Communist Party.
There is everything. From the usual stories where "Fidel Castro arrives
in hell and finds other presidents there..." to the typical jokes
starring Pepito, that mischievous boy who appears in many humorous
stories. Nicknames, anecdotes, puns and wisecracks that made history
have all been dusted off. A festival of derision detonated by the
categorical statement of the former minister. As if Cubans had been
expecting something completely ridiculous to make them laugh. And
they've split their sides over it. Because there seems to be a direct
relationship between the seriousness of the problems and the ingenuity
of our humor, so in times of crisis hilarity wins. The nineties were
marked by scarcities and abundant jokes; prodigious in both problems and
humor.
Politics has been one of the main themes of popular jokes, along with
sex and death. So it's more than little naive to think that a political
process that has lasted 53 years wouldn't be the subject of scorn and
sarcasm. What's more, few governments have sparked as many jokes as the
one led by Fidel Castro, and now his brother Raul Castro. It's just that
they never found a place in the official media, nor on humorous State TV
shows, or in the official newspaper supplements of cartoons and jokes.
So they circulated orally, unwritten.
It was in the years of the Special Period when Pepito started talking
insistently about food. Every week there would be a new story where our
crafty eternal child referred to food shortages or the culinary
inventions appearing on our plates. He threw sharp darts of humor
against government mismanagement and against its stubbornness in not
allowing farmers markets or the possession of hard currency.
His jokes narrated the dark present and predicted a worst future. Like
the one where the irreverent boy is sitting at the table and before
trying the first bite he asks his mom, "Is it true that you once fried
the floor rags and ate them like they were steak?" The stern lady just
sniffed in annoyance. But the boy returned to the charge. "Mommy, is it
true that they sold some monster meat on the food ration and called it
"skinless dogs?" A long silence, and then in response the mother shouts
angrily, "Shut up Pepito and eat your lizard!"
Stories like this have come to our ears this week, after Abel Prieto
opened the Pandora's Box of jokes. Just to prove the contrary, people
have called on their memories and exercised their facial muscles.
But the funniest thing of all is that this man who is now an advisor to
the president stars in one of the most famous Cuban jokes of the last
two decades, one built on the fact that his last name is a slang word
for "black." It is a play on words that criticizes racism in the police
along with the constant persecution of the black market. To the question
of, "Who has been the minister most talked about in Cuba"... the answer
is simply "Prieto"... thanks to what the cops say in the street:
Prieto... whaddya have in that sack? And then comes the prolonged
laughter, the cruel mockery.
With popular jokes, it's better not to get involved, or to try to
restrict them. Because they can fight back with a barrage of ridicule, a
flood of humor.
Translating Cuba is a compilation blog with Yoani and other Cuban
bloggers in English.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/really-cubans-never-joke_b_1927732.html
Ignore Raúl Castro’s siren song
Posted on Monday, 10.01.12
Ignore Raúl Castro's siren song
BY JAIME SUCHLICKI
Suchlicki@miami.edu
The Cuban leadership in Havana continues to try to woo the U.S.
administration into providing unilateral concessions to Cuba. The
embargo and the travel ban will be ended, they believe, as a result of
internal pressures and a more accommodating Obama administration.
The latest attempt comes via Louis Farrakhan, the Muslim-American leader
who met this month with Gen. Raúl Castro in Havana. "Raúl Castro asked
me," said Farrakhan, "to let the world know that Cuba is ready to talk
with the U.S. authorities." The same statement has been repeated
recently by several Cuban officials.
Yet the issue is not about talking. The avenues for engagement between
Cuba and the U.S. have never been closed. The U.S. and Cuba signed
anti-hijacking and migration accords. They talk at the U.N., in
Washington, and at cocktail parties. For the U.S. to change its policies
there has to be a willingness on the part of the Cuban leadership to
offer real concessions in the area of human rights and political change.
No country changes its policies without a substantial quid pro quo from
the other side.
We seem to cling to an outdated economic determinism in trying to
understand events in other societies and the motivations of their
leaders. Despite economic difficulties, Raúl Castro does not seem ready
to provide meaningful and irreversible concessions for a U.S.-Cuba
normalization. He may release and exile some political prisoners; he may
offer more consumer goods and food to tranquilize the Cuban population;
but no major structural reforms that would open the Cuban economy and no
political openings.
Raúl's legitimacy is based on his closeness to Fidel Castro's policies
of economic centralization and opposition to the U.S. He cannot now
reject Fidel's legacy and move closer to the U.S. A move in this
direction would be fraught with danger. It would create uncertainty
among the elites that govern Cuba and increase instability as some
advocate rapid change while others cling to more orthodox policies. The
Cuban population also could see this as an opportunity for mobilization
to demand faster reforms.
Raúl is also unwilling to renounce the support and close collaboration
of countries like Venezuela, China, Iran and Russia in exchange for an
uncertain relationship with the U.S. At a time when the U.S. is seeking
regime change in the Middle East, Raúl's policies are more likely to
remain closer to regimes that are not particularly friendly to the U.S.
and that demand little from Cuba in return for generous aid.
Raúl is no Deng Xiaoping and no friend of the U.S. He has been the
world's longest-serving (48 years) minister of defense. He presided over
the worst periods of political repression and economic centralization in
Cuba and is responsible for numerous executions after he and his brother
assumed power. While in Mexico and the Sierra Maestra before reaching
power, Raúl also executed several "enemies."
Raúl has been a loyal follower and cheerleader of Fidel's anti-American
policies and military interventions in Africa and elsewhere. In 1962
Raúl and Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev conspired to surreptitiously
introduce nuclear missiles into Cuba. Raúl supervised the Americas
Department in Cuba approving support for terrorist, guerrilla and
revolutionary groups throughout Latin America. In 1996 he personally
ordered the shooting down of two Brothers to the Rescue unarmed civilian
planes in international waters, killing three U.S. citizens and one
Cuban-American resident from Florida.
I try to teach my students that not all problems in international
relations can be solved. Some require the use of force; others,
significant patience; still others, diplomacy and negotiation. In the
case of Cuba, we should wait for the passing of the gerontocracy in
power now and hope for a new, more flexible leadership later.
Jaime Suchlicki is professor and director, Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami and the author of "Cuba:
From Columbus to Castro and Beyond."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/01/3025115/ignore-raul-castros-siren-song.html
Ignore Raúl Castro's siren song
BY JAIME SUCHLICKI
Suchlicki@miami.edu
The Cuban leadership in Havana continues to try to woo the U.S.
administration into providing unilateral concessions to Cuba. The
embargo and the travel ban will be ended, they believe, as a result of
internal pressures and a more accommodating Obama administration.
The latest attempt comes via Louis Farrakhan, the Muslim-American leader
who met this month with Gen. Raúl Castro in Havana. "Raúl Castro asked
me," said Farrakhan, "to let the world know that Cuba is ready to talk
with the U.S. authorities." The same statement has been repeated
recently by several Cuban officials.
Yet the issue is not about talking. The avenues for engagement between
Cuba and the U.S. have never been closed. The U.S. and Cuba signed
anti-hijacking and migration accords. They talk at the U.N., in
Washington, and at cocktail parties. For the U.S. to change its policies
there has to be a willingness on the part of the Cuban leadership to
offer real concessions in the area of human rights and political change.
No country changes its policies without a substantial quid pro quo from
the other side.
We seem to cling to an outdated economic determinism in trying to
understand events in other societies and the motivations of their
leaders. Despite economic difficulties, Raúl Castro does not seem ready
to provide meaningful and irreversible concessions for a U.S.-Cuba
normalization. He may release and exile some political prisoners; he may
offer more consumer goods and food to tranquilize the Cuban population;
but no major structural reforms that would open the Cuban economy and no
political openings.
Raúl's legitimacy is based on his closeness to Fidel Castro's policies
of economic centralization and opposition to the U.S. He cannot now
reject Fidel's legacy and move closer to the U.S. A move in this
direction would be fraught with danger. It would create uncertainty
among the elites that govern Cuba and increase instability as some
advocate rapid change while others cling to more orthodox policies. The
Cuban population also could see this as an opportunity for mobilization
to demand faster reforms.
Raúl is also unwilling to renounce the support and close collaboration
of countries like Venezuela, China, Iran and Russia in exchange for an
uncertain relationship with the U.S. At a time when the U.S. is seeking
regime change in the Middle East, Raúl's policies are more likely to
remain closer to regimes that are not particularly friendly to the U.S.
and that demand little from Cuba in return for generous aid.
Raúl is no Deng Xiaoping and no friend of the U.S. He has been the
world's longest-serving (48 years) minister of defense. He presided over
the worst periods of political repression and economic centralization in
Cuba and is responsible for numerous executions after he and his brother
assumed power. While in Mexico and the Sierra Maestra before reaching
power, Raúl also executed several "enemies."
Raúl has been a loyal follower and cheerleader of Fidel's anti-American
policies and military interventions in Africa and elsewhere. In 1962
Raúl and Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev conspired to surreptitiously
introduce nuclear missiles into Cuba. Raúl supervised the Americas
Department in Cuba approving support for terrorist, guerrilla and
revolutionary groups throughout Latin America. In 1996 he personally
ordered the shooting down of two Brothers to the Rescue unarmed civilian
planes in international waters, killing three U.S. citizens and one
Cuban-American resident from Florida.
I try to teach my students that not all problems in international
relations can be solved. Some require the use of force; others,
significant patience; still others, diplomacy and negotiation. In the
case of Cuba, we should wait for the passing of the gerontocracy in
power now and hope for a new, more flexible leadership later.
Jaime Suchlicki is professor and director, Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami and the author of "Cuba:
From Columbus to Castro and Beyond."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/01/3025115/ignore-raul-castros-siren-song.html
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