Comunicado del Comité por la Libertad de los Cinco, Estocolmo
A todos nuestros amigos:
Por orden inmediata de los que mandan en Facebook, el martes 5 de julio tuvimos que transformar nuestro perfil en Facebook en una página,
bajo amenaza de cerrar todo si no se procedía.
Después de realizado el traspaso a una página en Facebook mantenemos la lista de amigos.
Pero ahora todos nuestros amigos son fans, o sea les gusta la página.
La página tiene el mismo nombre que el perfil que cancelaron: FreetheFive Stockholm.
Lamentablemente empezamos de cero, ya que con el traspaso se borraron las publicaciones (enlaces.fotos, videos) que teníamos en el perfil.
Pero ya estamos nuevamente en Facebook, con la firme determinación de seguir utilizando este espacio
para publicar información sobre el acontecer solidario con Cuba y por la libertad de los Cinco.
El tener una página en Facebook tiene limitaciones, ya que dificulta la interacción directa con nuestros seguidores, como la que teníamos siendo un perfil.
Por eso les solicitamos que inviten a amigos a hacerse fans de nuestra página,
para apoyarnos y seguir difundiendo la verdad.
Página bilingüe del Comité por la Libertad de los Cinco. Estocolmo:
www.facebook.com/freethefive.stockholm,
I WAS DETAINED IN LONDON FOR SUPPORTING THE CUBAN FIVE
July 7, 2011 by realcuba
Dear Comrades,
I feel proud and honoured to have met in Havana during the third International Youth Congress in Solidarity with the Cuban Five Anti-Terrorist Heroes in June. I would like to inform you that during my flight back to Africa, Namibia i was detained; first in Spain without any proper explaination and later detained in London for attending and supporting the struggle for the Cuban five. I was only released from detention hours after the Namibian authorities intervened. Hereunder is what actually transpired. On June 16, 2011 , 22H50, I departed from Jose Marti International Airport in Havana
- http://realcuba.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/i-was-detained-in-london-for-supporting-the-cuban-five/,
Regime-Change in a Box
Soft-Powering Cuba
By ROBERT SANDELS
In March, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on a $20 million appropriation for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The money is for democracy promotion schemes in Cuba. Kerry’s purpose was to hold the funds hostage until the State Department responded to a series of questions he had about waste, mismanagement and the general ineffectiveness of the program to actually bring about democracy in Cuba.
USAID grantees in Cuba are soft-power agents engaged in covert subversion. Soft power, as described by its leading academic proponent Joseph E. Nye, Jr., is “getting others to want what you want.” His ideas, however, fell short of assisted regime change.
Here is an example of how USAID money can help Cuba:
Step 1. Give USAID money to grantees like Freedom House to help Cubans document human rights abuses.
Step 2. Send reports of abuses to international human rights organizations.
Step 3. The US Interests Section in Havana reports the discovery of abuses, cites human rights organization, sends information to the State Department.
Step 4. Alarmed, the State Department cites Interests Section, issues scathing report on human rights violations in Cuba.
Step 5. Congress and the Republic of Miami, in righteous indignation, demand more sanctions against Cuba.
Result: USAID money pays handsomely on its initial investment. Now, why would Sen. Kerry not think these programs are cost effective?
Regime-change in a box
In 2009, Alan Gross went to Cuba on USAID money with equipment to set up Broadband Global Area Networks (BGANs), briefcase-size satellite systems for Internet and cellphone communication networks outside of Cuban government control. The cover story was that he was delivering the equipment to the Cuban Jewish community. They never heard of him even though this was his sixth trip.
The New York Times reported that the United States has deployed this “shadow” communications system in Middle Eastern countries to help dissidents plan anti-government movements.
Kerry said that the Cuban programs in general and the BGAN program in particular only irk Cuban authorities and put taxpayers’ money into the hands of Cuban intelligence, which routinely penetrates the “civil society” organizations and dissident groups the money is supposed to support.
Recent covert attempts to flip Cuban officials, hand out communications gear and satellite antennas disguised as surfboards have been failures amply catalogued in a series of exposés broadcast on Cuban television.
Even as the US government and media gamely maintain that Gross, currently serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba, was running an innocent phones-for-Jews program, the State Department doesn’t want to identify USAID contractors for fear they might be arrested like Gross was.
However, there is little likelihood of being arrested for taking cell phones or other real gifts to Cuba. And Miami Cubans can easily purchase cell phone minutes for users in Cuba from the state telephone company Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA). This can be done via the Internet from anywhere in the world using various foreign commercial service.
If the Obama administration was so keen on having Cubans communicate by cell phone, USAID could have used these services openly, cheaply and legally.
Trouble with the cover story
Anti-Castro fanatics accuse Kerry of aiding Cuban communism, revealing a touching belief that these programs actually work. To Kerry’s assertion that internet-in-a-box exploits landed Gross in prison, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) responded that Kerry was giving his approval to the Cuban government’s “iron-fisted tactics” against “defenders of democracy.”
Wait a minute Sen. Menendez. You’re forgetting the cover story about phones for Jews. Are you saying the Jewish community is a dissident organization?
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) turned on Kerry with particular fury, but if she had listened more carefully she might have seen that the two are not far apart. Kerry is not opposed to overthrowing the Cuban government. He is not against subversion. He has always reassured Miami’s Cuban voters that he supports the blockade against Cuba.
Besides, Kerry threw away highfalutin principles by offering to release all but $5 million of the funds.
The argument over the funding is valid only if we accept at face value the stated USAID goals of bringing democracy, freedom and justice to the Cuban people. Evidently, Kerry and Ros-Lehtinen think or pretend that these are the actual goals.
If we go along with the pretense, we have to conclude that the hapless Gross failed to realize that he could have gone to the Internet and loaded up Jewish cell phones with massive quantities of USAID money from the comfort of his home, avoiding prison and the much greater pretend failure of actually depriving them of telephone contact with Jews around the world; so, no more USAID money for him.
Soft power succeeds by failing
Setting aside the pretense, with Gross in prison his pretend failure is transformed into success because Obama and the lesser fanatics can say he was imprisoned for helping Jews exercise their freedom of speech.
Even better, Miami and Washington can argue that Cuba used Gross as an excuse to reject Obama’s generous peace gestures. Far from failing, Gross forces Cuba to take the blame for US aggression. Liz Harper of the US Institute of Peace summed it up nicely writing that the Gross affair “…at best delayed advancements initially sought by the Obama administration."
And of course, had Gross set up clandestine communication networks all over Havana and had the dissidents used them to plan demonstrations, pass around diatribes against the Cuban government and so on, there would likely be another victory for USAID when Cuban intelligence eventually shuts them down (“clamping down on free speech”) and arrests are made (“iron-fisted tactics” against “defenders of democracy”).
Even after it was widely reported that Gross delivered nothing to the Cuban Jewish community and that his luggage contained equipment to undermine the Cuban government, The Miami Herald stuck to the script. Gross was imprisoned, wrote the Herald, “for delivering communications equipment paid for by the U.S. government to Jewish groups on the island.”
If the Cubans were to sabotage every US gesture of friendship, that means they welcome US aggression and subversion. “The Cuban regime increasingly needs an external threat to blame for the country’s problems,” said an unnamed Pentagon official.
Moral: If a lemon gets arrested, make lemonade out of him.
No democracy promotion money for U.S.
For a few million in US taxpayer dollars, Cuba gets programs for “community improvement activities, identifying and addressing community needs,” expanded access “to uncensored information to help Cubans communicate amongst themselves and with the outside world.”
In the empathy-grant category, the State Department is currently seeking proposals to help the disabled, orphans and homosexuals achieve a better life in Cuba.
But while the United States delivers BGANs to Cubans, there is no government program to free its own people from government surveillance; there is no shadow network. Indeed, social media and internet systems in the United States are thoroughly penetrated by intelligence agencies. The FBI now has the capability to plant permanent spyware on personal computers. It can find out who you are with a Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier. It can access communications devices directly through internet service providers and cell towers, which is described as a "comprehensive wiretap system.”
If you worry that electoral democracy in the United States is slipping away, go to Cuba where USAID contractors are dedicated to “finding the legal impediments to democratic elections and suggesting the actions that would be necessary to remove these impediments."
Concerned about the decline of education in the United States? The State Department has a program in Cuba to train “hundreds of students and young adults in critical thinking,” to help them become self-sufficient and to act “independent of government.”
Lockheed Martin: We fix roofs, audit your taxes
Lest it seem from all this spending for other peoples’ needs that US citizens are not getting a fair share of their own tax money, consider the benefits at soft power at home.
For several years, hard-power weapons makers have won Pentagon contracts to deliver soft-power abroad. The Wall Street Journal reported that Robert Stevens, Lockheed Martin’s CEO, wants the company “to become a central player in the U.S. campaign to use economic and political means to align countries with American strategic interests.”
Lockheed-Martin, the Pentagon’s largest weapons contractor, has diversified its portfolio buying companies involved in public relations, surveillance, auditing, and information systems. Many of these contracts have been in support of ongoing military actions in the Middle East and Africa. At the other end of the scale, one of its subsidiaries trained Liberian lawyers and repaired Monrovia’s court house roof.
Some of the same weapons manufacturers have lately been taking market positions in broad swaths of American life. Sandra I. Erwin, writing in the National Defense Magazine, explained that defense contractors were concerned about possible budget cuts and began looking to State Department and other non-defense budgets to diversify their portfolios.
Lockheed Martin has a $33 million contract with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for Webpage and e-services design, auditing and various taxpayer services. It also has a $1.2 billion contract with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for such services as “screener training and checkpoint reconfiguration.
William D. Hartung of the New America Foundation writes that Lockheed Martin has contracts to watch you, audit you, troll for information on you, scan your iris and pat you down at airports; all in a day’s work at the IRS, FBI, CIA, the Post Office, National Security Administration (NSA), the Census Bureau and the TSA.
“As a result, Lockheed Martin is now involved in nearly every interaction you have with the government,” said Hartung. “Paying your taxes? Lockheed Martin is all over it. The company is even creating a system that provides comprehensive data on every contact taxpayers have with the IRS from phone calls to face-to-face meetings.”
The State Department maintains that it underwrites social programs in Cuba to make Cubans independent of oppressive government.
Meanwhile, other government departments are farming out some of their duties to weapons producers who are dependent on government contracts but independent of voter oversight.
This is enough to make a reasonable person conclude that in Cuba, the people need to be made independent of their government while in the United States the government needs to be made independent of its people.
Robert Sandels writes on Cuba for Cuba-L Direct and CounterPunch.
Thanks to Nelson Valdes for pointing to ETECSA’s cell phone pre-payment service.
Young vacationers are welcome in Cuba
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 -progresoweekly
By Manuel E. Yepe
( Veraneantes infantiles bienvenidos en Cuba http://progreso-semanal.com/4/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3574:veraneantes-infantiles-bienvenidos-en-cuba&catid=4:en-cuba&Itemid=3, )
As this summer began, Cubans observed an unusual phenomenon: many children not from the neighborhood played in parks and streets with the local children.
The young visitors turned out to be the children of neighbors who emigrated more or less recently. Their parents had sent them to spend the summer in their old neighborhoods. But they might also have been the children of émigrés who had entrusted the care of their offspring to some close relative during the school holidays.
It is said that the airport terminals, mainly those that welcome travelers from the United States to Cuba, are witnessing remarkably large numbers of children who arrive unaccompanied by adults because their parents entrusted them to the airline crews, or in groups led by one or two adults.
The aim of the senders and hosts of these vacationers is clearly explained beyond the motives of family reunions that exist in many cases. Those who send the children to Cuba are guaranteeing them a safe and economical place where they can fully enjoy the environment in which the parents themselves were born and lived their early childhood.
The hosts, although they assume an enormous responsibility by guaranteeing the welfare and safety of these children, beyond the comforting spiritual stimulus to serve a beloved relative by caring for his or her kids for a relatively long period, generally obtain a material benefit in the form of gifts or some financial stimulating compensation.
It is known that human security, particularly that of the children, is precarious in the United States, especially in areas like Miami, where many Cuban immigrants settled over the past half century, attracted by the inducements to migration implemented by the United States as part of its policy against the Revolution.
On May 6, journalist Bernadette Pardo wrote in the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald an article that said: “... the savagery of criminals has been unleashed in parts of Miami. In recent days, a vandal armed with a sawed-off shotgun assaulted a boy and shot him in the stomach. The victim is still between life and death and has so many lead pellets in his stomach that doctors, after several operations, continue to remove them from his bowels.
"Shortly before, and in another incident, a girl who was at the door of a public library with her laptop was the victim of a group of savages who, not content with robbing her, kicked her until they broke her jaw.
"Several police officers have told me that in areas of Allapatah, Overtown, and Wynwood gangs of boys are terrorizing the residents, especially the most vulnerable: the elderly, children and single women. These gangs have taken over the few parks that are in the area and patrol the streets with impunity, stealing at will.
“[...] Whole sections of our community [...] live in fear of gangs of thugs [...] A woman detective told me that she did not go into a certain neighborhood in Miami to conduct searches because the lieutenant told her that this is very dangerous.”
It's understandable, in light of testimony like this, that those who have gone abroad in search of greater material comfort than their homeland can offer, besieged and attacked as it is for the crime of defending at all costs its independence and sovereignty, resort to the most important achievements of the Cuban revolution, human security, as the environment they want for their children, who are also part of the nation's future.
The invasion of youthful vacationers to enjoy the safety and tranquility breathed in Cuba makes even more ridiculous the accusations of Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who introduced in Congress a legislative amendment aimed at reinstating the prohibitions on travel and remittances imposed by George W. Bush, which would nullify the few amendments on these issues introduced during the administration of Barack Obama, including those that allow these children's holidays in Cuba.
Manuel E. Yepe Menéndez is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is a Professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana.
Shakeups that change mentalities
Wednesday, 29 June 2011 progesoweekly
By Elsa Claro
( Sacudidas para cambiar mentalidades http://progreso-semanal.com/4/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3554:sacudidas-para-cambiar-mentalidades&catid=4:en-cuba&Itemid=3, )
At this point we know that there is slowness in the implementation of measures to changes in the Cuban economy. The Guidelines, although discussed and approved at the level of society, did not penetrate far enough into the minds of many, perhaps because there are inept people in management positions, some resist transformation, and there is an inability to execute.
Those certainties are partly obtained through the assembly process in municipalities and provinces carried out by the Communist Party with its political base in search of obstacles and misunderstandings, and as part of surveys required by the Conference of the CPC, which in January 2012 will bring different topics to debate but also foresees an examination of what will happen to the economy until that point.
Decidedly, reasoning and bad habits are not changed by a ministerial decision or by a claim, urgent though they might be. Notice that the words “order,” “discipline” and “demand” were the most often repeated at those meetings and not because those principles are respected, but because they are passed over with murderous tranquility.
With anthological fatuousness, people set goals. “How is it possible that in the next two months they propose to catch up with what they failed to do in the previous four?” the first secretary of the Morón CP asked at a Party plenum, referring to the paternalistic analyses that revealed that “we have not changed yet, as the top leadership of the country has repeatedly asked us to do.”
Apparently, the issue needs shakeups to accelerate a change in the mentality that pervades and paralyzes the best intentions. On an academic scale, several experts consulted felt that one of the ballasts holding back progress is that the same people who committed the previous outrages are in charge of fixing them – and that is not so simple. No one replaces his ideas from one day to the next.
It seems they are right, because many of these meetings have shown that similar shortcomings are repeated at every site, conspiring against the pursued goals. This is the case, again, of a lack of exigency. That has been an almost constant criticism at each of these events, which also serve to control the conduct of affairs throughout the island, without waiting for a drama to emerge from what should be just a brief farce.
Some constant criticisms target the poor preparation of the contracts. The parties sign, and “bye-bye Lola.” We cannot continue to go on with the practice of making commitments that are later forgotten. Nor can we sustain inertia and lack of initiative. The habit of waiting until everything is placed in our hands requires warnings and permanent vigilance to eradicate.
Negligence – along with her sisters, indiscipline and weak controls – led to lost cattle and not just in Camagüey, a province that leads in cattle production, at a time when we are trying to increase the cattle population nationwide. Only those cooperatives that prepared fodder at the right time could cope with the severe drought that affected most of the country. Those farmers are not from another planet and did not use materials obtained abroad. They simply applied what was invented long ago and has been consolidated by practice.
Something else: news in the media alluded to a satisfactory last harvest, but, compared with the previous ones, we could have achieved higher growth, the experts concluded, when they calculated what was spent and was not done even in places like Villa Clara, which has a tradition of outstanding efficiency. Part of what might have been achieved remained only a possibility. It is worth remembering that when man does not set new goals for himself, he doesn't grow. Nor when he fails to pursue those goals.
The evidence that the much-discussed but decisive subjective aspect imposes itself and foils efforts might bring a lesson to prevent the loss of what we've gained and need to gain. Some people suggest that they'll tackle the problem of not punishing those who squander or fail to fulfill a promise, creating a pernicious sense of impunity.
Mismanagement happens (horrors!) even in strategic issues, prioritized on the basis of basic necessity, which receive the bulk of the official interest and available resources, such as food production, which is moving, but at an easy pace, almost limping.
Farmers are contracted to produce a number of products, but marketing fails. This is about to be resolved, it is true, allowing the farmers to carry their crops to their final destination. This step should allow for a better supply in the markets and prevent price rises on a weak supply. But it is indisputable that, also in this area, it will take more than oxen.
Meanwhile, if there is no cutting-edge technology, we cannot acquire or find foreign partners. Some restraints are explainable but much depends on organization and good effort. This is shown by the fact that similar problems occur with goods that are legally produced but remain on the site where they were produced and not transported to the point of sale, sometimes because – as it happens in agriculture – a convenient inefficiency prevails.
The Party plenum in Matanzas revealed shortcomings of that and a different nature. No one can explain with adequate logic why Varadero, where 40 percent of all tourists go, needs to purchase supplies abroad when they can be obtained in the same province. Matanzas is blessed by good land, an abundant source of water and an adequate infrastructure, but its agricultural yields are way below what that important region needs. The Varadero resort, then, is forced to cut costs and expenses if it wants to achieve real and sustained competitiveness.
How much would the country save if everyone did what he should do and if we eradicated the mentality of a tycoon's son who squanders the fortune he didn't earn?
This might be another proof that the first thing to change is one's mentality. In the press, someone perhaps suffering from naive misunderstanding alluded with disgust to those who earn a lot. Fortunately he had several answers worthy of note:
1. It doesn't worry me that those who produce more earn more.
2. No need to complain if the earnings are the result of sweat. What's harmful is paying money without productive satisfaction, an inadmissible fact that does happen.
The political leaders who are chairing these meetings are aware of the requirements and proposals made by the government of Raúl Castro to revive the Cuban economy and place it on the rails it needs. This can be deduced from the realistic reflection the press is giving about the above process. I might quote the words of the head of the CPC in Havana, to the effect that the country cannot afford to keep sinking its resources on investments, projects and million-dollar plans that are not met or do not yield results in line with the expenditures.
The CPC leader spoke at the expanded plenum of the Party's Municipal Committee in Arroyo Naranjo to the heads of the nuclei of the territory where various companies produce household appliances, concrete and terrazzo, rum and farm crops. Those companies failed to contribute 31 million pesos to the national budget.
Moreover, the country suffers from this contagious disease consisting of unpaid or uncollected debts and warehouses full of construction materials that do not move, at a time when they are much needed. The raw material or the money for salaries and expenses is not lacking. No one is without pay, but payments below results or without productive backing have been detected.
While the change in mindset is indispensable, it is no less imperative to maintain these periodic checks that bring weaknesses to light and allow for corrections.
Finding trash while cleaning and building is a positive thing. We must locate the worst dump sites and learn who dirties his city or doesn't clean up his house, because that also keeps the future from being healthy.
NYT touts Yoani Sanchez: "In Cuba, the Voice of a Blog Generation"
It's worth keeping in mind that this woman left Cuba legally and returned legally, both times with the permission of the Cuban government. These facts are omitted from this New York Times portrait. Of course, the NYT limits itself to "all the news that's fit to print" as it likes to describe its editorial policy.
Sanchez knew what life was like before she returned, and these days she receives "prize" money in the tens of thousands of dollars each year. Since coming back, all she does is write an endless stream of complaints about life in Cuba. She advances not one single proposal to make anything better on the island. Instead of being dubbed the "award-winning blogger", she might be better described as Cuba's "whiner-in-chief".
Washington spends tens of MILLIONS of dollars each year to stimulate destabilization inside of Cuba, promoting indivuals like this. She is only the best-known because she's been the most touted abroad.
Keep in mind that she has never been arrested, never charged with any crime. As far as I know, she doesn't pay taxes on all the money she receives, pays no rent for her apartment, doesn't have a job, pays nothing for health care for herself, her husband and her son, and somehow can afford to go to hotels to go online and sends an endless stream of Twitterings to the universe.
You really do have to wonder:
What has she got to complain about?
Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
=========================
In Cuba, the Voice of a Blog Generation
By LARRY ROHTER <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/books/yoani-sanchez-cubas-voice-of-a-blogging-generation.html>,
Wanted: Managers for democracy programs in Cuba
Filed under News {no comments}
The U.S. Agency for International Development announced earlier this week that it is looking for managers to run its democracy programs in Cuba. The salary range is $89,033 to $136,771 per year. The jobs are based in Washington, D.C.
http://cubamoneyproject.org/?p=2068,
--
- INFOCUBA
+ Comité Internacional por la Libertad de los Cinco Cubanos
paul evrard
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