Cuban defectors: why do they call it “political asylum” when they actually mean “more money”?

Published by J.Parra – August 27, 2009A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Three Cuban basketball players – Georvis Elías Sayus, Grismay Paumier, Taylor García and Geofry Silvestre– decided to defect from the national team while in Grand Canary Island, claiming that “they could not make any progress in Cuba”.“We had made up our mind since we took the plane in our country”, said Sayus, one of the team’s most experienced players.
“We planned everything together with Geofry. We wished to keep doing what we like to do. And we don’t want to have a dispute about political issues, but we could not stand it any longer; in Cuba we were not able to develop our basketball skills”. So to develop their basketball skills they asked for “political asylum”. Surreal, especially as they don’t want to have a “dispute about political issues”.

What’s funny is that some spiteful journalists and anti-Cuban propagandists encourage them, cover their case in their newspapers and don’t even have the decency to disclose the real motives behind their alleged “political asylum”. Small wonder, when the ultimate goal has always been to destroy the Revolution.These individuals ask for “political asylum” just because they want to make more money, and I assume they will get it.
Wishing to be better at what you do is no doubt an absolutely legitimate aspiration; what’s immoral and despicable is to request a “political asylum” never granted to others who are really persecuted in their countries, as in the case of Colombia.Well, I propose that all engineers, architects, athletes, writers, artists, etc. from all over the Third World to show up at the embassies of the rich countries to ask for “political asylum” in order to make progress in their professions.
I also propose to the thousands of men and women who arrive in Spain from the Third World that they should do the same. Do not authenticate your papers. There’s a simpler solution: ask for political asylum so you can make progress.The anti-Cuban propaganda, the blatant counterrevolutionary misinformation, and the journalistic trash written by the most evil-minded reporters of this country will continue to call those who leave Cuba “political refugees”.
I wonder whether they also refer to the Spaniards who live in Cuba as “political refugees” who escaped from capitalism and the Bourbon regime and took refuge in a socialist country.Allow me to state my disrespect, even at the risk of being “politically incorrect”, for those who pretend to be considered as “political refugees” when all they want is more money.http://www.larepublica.es/javierparra/?p=228

Cuba: Gold and Silver in Triple Jump (F) Final

Berlin, Aug 17 (Prensa Latina) The Cuban triple jump female competitors Yargelis Savigne and Mabel Gay gave the first medals to Cuba in the World Cup in Berlin Monday by winning the gold and silver, respectively.
Savigne, 24 years old, achieved 14.95 meters in the fifth beat of jumps to repeat her title in Osaka, Japan in 2007 and be ratified as the best in the season in the specialty.
Gay achieved 14.61 meters, her better performance of the year, and assured a silver medal for which very few experts bet before the competition.
Among the big losers there was Russian Tatyana Lebedeva who finished sixth with 14.37 meters, while her countryfellow Anna Pyatykh took the bronze with 14.58.
Jamaican Trecia Smith finished fifth with 14.48 meters and Brazilian Gisele of Oliveira twelfth with 14.19.
The analysts considered Savigne the favorite to take the gold medal in the World Cup, but few hoped Gay reached the podium.
In the female triple jump competition the results were distant of those gotten one year before by the participants in the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, won by Cameroon s Francoise Mbango-Etone, who finished with 15.39 meters. In the Olympic Games, Savigne achieved 15.05 but could not pass of the fifth position.
In the Japanese city Cuba got also a silver medal thanks to hammer thrower Gipsi Moreno and a bronze medal with female discus thrower Yarelis Barrios.

Reflections by Comrade Fidel THE YANKEE BASES AND THE LATIN AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY

The concept of nation emerged from the combination of common elements such as history, language, culture, costumes, laws, institutions and others related to the material and spiritual life of human communities.
Bolivar, who worked the great heroic deeds that turned him into ‘The Liberator of peoples’ during his struggle for the freedom of the peoples of the Americas, urged them to create what he called “the greatest nation in the world: less for its extension and riches than for its liberty and glory.”
In Ayacucho, Antonio José de Sucre waged the last battle against the empire that for more than 300 years had transformed much of this continent into a royal property of the Spanish Crown.
That was the same America that tens of years later, after being divided in part by the rising Yankee imperialism, was called by Martí ‘Our America.’
We should remember once again that on May 19, 1895, a few hours before dying in combat for the independence of Cuba, the last bastion of Spanish colonialism in the Americas, Jose Marti prophetically wrote that everything he had done and would was to “…to timely prevent, with the independence of Cuba, that the United States could expand over the Antilles and fall with that additional force over our American lands."
In the United States, where the recently liberated thirteen colonies did not take long to expand disorderly to the West in their quest for land and gold, while exterminating indigenous populations, until they reached the Pacific coast, the agricultural and slave States of the South competed with the industrial States of the North that exploited wage labor in an attempt to create other States to protect their economic interests.
In 1848 Mexico was robbed of more than 50 per cent of its territory during a war of conquest launched against that country that was then militarily weak. The conquerors occupied the capital and imposed humiliating peace conditions. Mexico’s big reserves of oil and gas, which remained in the territory that was robbed, would later on be supplied to the United States for more than a century and in part they continue to be so now.
The Yankee filibuster William Walker, encouraged by “the manifest destiny” declared by his country, landed in Nicaragua in 1855 and proclaimed himself as President, until he was expelled by the Nicaraguans and other Central American patriots in 1856.
Our National Hero realized how the destiny of Latin American countries was being shattered by the rising United States Empire.
After Marti’s death in combat there was a military intervention in Cuba at a time when the Spanish army had already been defeated.
The Platt Amendment, which granted that powerful country the right to intervene in the Island, was imposed on Cuba.
The occupation of Puerto Rico - which has lasted for 111 years now- a country so called “Free Associated State” that is neither free nor a State, was another consequence of that intervention.
The worst was still to come for Latin America, as was confirmed by the ingenious premonitions of Marti. The growing empire had decided that the canal that would link the two oceans would go through Panama and not through Nicaragua. The Panama isthmus, the Corinth dreamed of by Bolivar as the capital of the biggest Republic of the world envisaged by him would be a property of the Yankees.
Despite that, the worst consequences were still to come in the course of the 20th century. With the support of the national political oligarchies, the United States became the owner of the resources and the economies of Latin American countries. Military interventions multiplied; military and police forces fell under the US aegis. The Yankee transnationals took control over the fundamental productions and services, banks, insurance companies, foreign trade, railways, ships, warehouses, electricity services and telephone services. Others, to a greater or lesser degree, were finally controlled by them.
It is true that the sharp social inequities led to the emergence of the Mexican Revolution in the second decade of the 20th century, which became a source of inspiration for other countries. The Revolution made it possible for Mexico to make progress in different areas. But the same empire that in the past devoured much of the Mexican territory is devouring today important natural resources it still keeps, cheap labor, and is even forcing the Mexican people to shed its own blood.
The NAFTA is the most brutal economic agreement imposed on a developing country. For the sake of brevity, it will suffice it to point out that the US Government has just stated that at a moment when Mexico has been hit by a double blow, not only because of its economic slowdown, but also because of the effects of the AH1N1 virus, the US would probably want to see a more stable economy before engaging in a long discussion about new commercial negotiations. And of course, not a single word is said about the fact that, as a consequence of the war unleashed by drug trafficking - for which Mexico has deployed 36 000 troops-, almost 4 000 Mexicans have died in 2009. The same phenomenon repeats itself to a greater or lesser degree in the rest of Latin America. Drugs not only cause serious health problems; they are also a source of violence which is causing lot of pain in Mexico and Latin America as a consequence of the insatiable US market, which is an infinite source of the hard currency that is used to foment the production of cocaine and heroine. It is the country that supplies the weapons used in that ferocious and unadvertised war.
Those who die in the territory between Rio Grande and the farthest corners of South America are all Latin Americans. Thus, the general violence is breaking new records of deaths. The victims, mostly because of drugs and poverty, surpass the figure of 100 000 a year in Latin America.
The empire does not wage the struggle on drugs within its borders; it is doing so in the Latin American countries.
In our country we do not grow coca or poppy. We efficiently combat those who attempt to introduce drugs in our country or use Cuba as a transit point. The number of persons who die as a result of violence is decreasing every year. And for that we do not need Yankee soldiers. The struggle against drugs is a pretext to establish military bases in the whole hemisphere.
Since when the vessels of the 4th Fleet and modern combat planes are used to combat drugs?
The true objective is to control the economic resources, the markets, and to struggle against social changes. Was there any need to re-establish that fleet which was demobilized after the Second World War, more than 60 years later, when the cold war is over and the USSR no longer exist? The arguments used for the installation of seven air and naval bases in Colombia are an insult to intelligence.
History will not forgive those who have been so disloyal to their own peoples or those who resort to the exercise of sovereignty as a pretext to harmonize this with the presence of Yankee troops. What sovereignty they refer to? The one conquered by Bolivar, Sucre, San Martin, O’Higgins, Morelos, Juárez, Tiradentes and Martí? None of them would have accepted such a repugnant argument to justify the granting of military bases to the Armed Forces of the United States, an empire far more dominant, powerful and universal than the Crowns of the Iberian Peninsula.
If as a consequence of such agreements promoted illegally and unconstitutionally by the United States, any government in that country uses those bases, as was done by Reagan during the dirty war, and Bush at the time of the Iraq war, to provoke an armed conflict between two sister nations, this would be a big tragedy. Venezuela and Colombia were born together in the history of the Americas, after the battles of Boyacá and Carabobo, under the leadership of Simon Bolivar. The Yankee forces could promote a dirty war as they did in Nicaragua, and even recruit soldiers of foreign nationalities trained by them and attack any country, but the combatant, brave and patriotic people of Colombia would hardly let itself be dragged into a war against a brother people like the Venezuelan.
The imperialists would be making a mistake if they equally underestimate the other Latin American peoples. None of them would agree with the presence of Yankee military bases; none of them will stop expressing its solidarity with any Latin American people that is been attacked by the imperialism.
Martí admired Bolivar very much, and he was not wrong when he said: “And that is how Bolivar is in the sky of America: vigilant and frowning…still wearing his campaign boots; because what he did not do, remains to be done still today: because Bolivar still has things to do in the Americas.”

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 9, 2009
6:32 p.m.

Silvio Rodríguez: Still Singing Challenging Songs

(PL) Art as a continual challenge keeps on being the premise of Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, who in an interview shortly after the release of a Cancionero (Songbook), published by Ojalá publishing house, said: I am still interested in challenge.
His new songbook comprises more than four hundred tunes- one hundred of them unknown_ It also brings forward pieces included in his forthcoming disc.
This Songbook, illustrated with drawings made by the artist himself, summarizes four decades of constant task in song-writing, and piles up such popular themes as Sueño con serpiente, Pequeña Serenata diurna, La Maza, and Ojala, among other charismatic titles.
José Marti, whose imprint appears in some of his pieces, exerted great influence on his works and way of thinking, thus his acknowledging words concerning The Golden Age as one of his first readings; especially the release published by Emilio Roig in 1953 on occasion of Martí s centennial.
That historian had the good idea of introducing the book with a foreword depicting Martí s ethics from a very early stage. From that reading, the Martí accompanying me is the human being, the son, the friend, the comrade he was, plus the patriot endowed with cosmopolitan spirit. I am also taking his substantial and beautiful stanzas with me.
Songbook, a volume completing the artist s autobiographical portrait, bears many photos depicting various stages. Rodríguez points out the importance of lyrics- or poetry-, that he started to enjoy being a kid thanks to his father, a farmer who used to read Darío, Martí, Nicolás Guillén and others. His readings- he comments- went on with authors who shook me twice with abandon , such as Cuban José Zacarías Tallet, Eliseo Diego and Rubén Martínez Villegas, whom he regards a bedside one nowadays. Also César Vallejos, who condemned me to eternal fascination and Saint-John Perse.
On the last author in the aforementioned lineup, he tells an anecdote: I was in the barracks, and a rookie in love with the exuberant images was reading Perse out loud, and I became infested with it right away until now. Then he lent me a marvelous bilingual edition of Shakespeare s sonnets, which I stupidly gave him back 20 years later.
Love is a recurrent topic in Rodríguez s compositions so he wonders what human coupling would be all about without the so-called love songs, which are like a connecting thread toward all times and places; an inextinguishable theme renewed by each human group and stage with their characteristics.
Even his testimonial lyrics, far from any voluntarism and highfalutin tones, move along a string which is both intimate and confidential. Ever since I was a boy, I went into the street to support the revolutionary process enthusiastically, but when I started to sing I avoided making pamphlets. I am the kind of person who cannot put up with flattering what he respects.
Silvio, who concedes to have praised exceptionally- Canción urgente a Nicaragua being a good example-, affirms that the we identifying songs should be the need on the singer s part to say that he is part of a collective dignity.
He also says that from the very beginning he thought that songs topics and vocabulary had to be enlarged as they both seemed stale to him. Therefore, he looked for words that were seldom used to make songs with them. The search led him to expressions discriminated against by the prevailing morale. Hence, La era está pariendo un corazón was said to be counterrevolutionary because for some people the word to bring forth was immoral, much more if it was used in a song. That is , he said, declaring that I tried to sing and cry, live, love, war, pain, was little less than a sacrilege.
Last May 4, Rodríguez s visa to the United States for attending the homage paid to folk musician Pete Seeger on his 90th birthday was delayed so much, that he could not take part in it. Apart from being discriminated against, he adds: We have been at loggerhead for many years, and that has conditioned both parties. In the US, many mechanisms keep on working on the obsolete meaning of the cold war. The same happens in Cuba, but mollified by the fact that we have been the country historically attacked.
I would like to see what share of that change proclaimed by the new US administration is allotted to the Cubans living in Cuba. I would not like to believe that the good will of that government is only for those who want to live there or those who think like them.
Songbook puts forth tunes of his upcoming album Second date, among them, Tonada del albedrío, a song devoted to Che.
Silvio regrets that the collapse of Eastern Europe was followed by a media war distorting the meaning of human freedom and reducing the hopes of social changes to the most fateful experiences of real socialism . According to his view, Che is among the revolutionary examples that globalization is trying to wipe out, and Tonada del albedrío deals with three key aspects of Che s thinking.
Lastly, the troubadour, who made his debut one day after being discharged from military service on a prime-time TV program called Música y Estrellas, in 1967, bets on a new challenge: I must concede that I am still interested in singing what is challenging; what is forbidden is interesting, above all, when it goes beyond the little game of watching if you dare .

The author is a renowned Argentinean poet.

Who Pays for Yoani Sánchez’s Blog Therapy?

By Norelys Morales Aguilera

Some experienced bloggers argue that personal blogs are a therapy. For Yoani Sánchez, the therapy for her frustration is a clever communications product that is keeping right-wing, counter-revolutionary and other anti-Cuba elements really happy.
An objective look at the site and the author, as becomes serious journalism, raises many a suspicion.
Among the millions of blogs on the Internet on just about any subject, it cannot be a chance occurrence that Generation Y may have been chosen by Grupo Prisa, as is not the prominence surrounding any opinion by this madam, elevated to the rank of "an authorized voice" by the Spanish newspaper El País for any insult it may want to hurl at Cuba. Stepping over other arrivistes with no lesser “merits,” Yoani perfectly suits the needs of her employers in the cyber-dissidence: being a sort of “virtual contractor” who is on the scene yet avoids the “repression and censorship,” in the Cuban case, allowing her to grant interviews left and right and to post stuff on her site peacefully without disruption, as has been reported by the foreign press in Havana, even make surveys, as Yoani herself has explained.
Reviewing the arguments raised by fellow Cubans like M. H. Lagarde and Rosa Miriam Elizalde, some questions come to mind. These are not intended to be uncomfortable, just obvious.
1) How comes the US Treasury Department issued the order—accomplished on the spot—to vanish more than 80 websites somehow related Cuba on grounds that they promoted trade with the island and “violated U.S. law,” and it has not taken note of the money traffic via Yoani’s Internet site?
Generation Y carries in a prominent place a link to purchase Yoani’s book Cuba libre in Italian. This is something that anyone can do through PayPal, except a Cuban living in Cuba, because it contravenes regulations contained in the US blockade against the island, which is very clear regarding the prohibition on electronic commerce.
Many journalists without a steady job would certainly love to “have the skills” to use the administration tools and services, with payment gateway for electronic money transfers using credit cards. And let no one be mistaken: Generation Y has its Copyright © 2009 - All Rights Reserved, something no Cuban blogger can do from the Island
2) Who designed the blog’s technical support? Who is in charge of its maintenance? How much does it cost to customize this software? The site’s technical support, which serves this one blog almost exclusively, is the type of tool that is specially designed by a computer expert, whose annual salary is not going to be paid by Yoani through her royalties. Her “patriotism” does not go that far, although money would not be the problem for her.
According to data from Internet domains about the Desde Cuba portal, which hosts Yoani’s blog, it uses the Joomla system. This is a complex management system for dynamic websites and a content management system, whose modules can only be enabled by someone with advanced knowledge of computers. And this is, of course, not madam’s case.
3) While the Generation Y blog seems simple in its design, a blogger’s eye quickly finds this is no ordinary blog from the point of view of its technical requirements.
It has versions in 18 languages (not a simple translator installed by any blogger), a high traffic, with hundreds of comments under each post, and resources for Internet advertising and to store the site’s memory for a long time. Such features can only be kept by means of abundant funds. Just to handle the traffic that the page generates and the GBs of stored comments, in addition to the administration services, Generation Y would need to count on money, especially with servers in Europe, which are not free!
4) Who is Josef Biechele, Yoani’s old friend who for years has been charitably in charge of the Desde Cuba server outside of the country? He certainly must know how to subsidize the portal, hosted in a server of the company Cronon AG Regensburg, a subsidiary of Germany’s Strato.
If you visit the web site of this Internet provider at http://www.cronon-isp.net/index.html you will see that a common user, in this case a blogger, could not be among its clients.
The menu is not shown nor the price list, or the terms and characteristics of services. Why is it indicated that one needs to write to this "Professional IT-Services" company and directly ask how much it would cost to host a site there? This means that the service is offered via a direct contract and not promoted.
Cronon AG, it seems, does not rely in publicity and is confident enough that its potential clients will find the company online or come to it via recommendations. This highly unusual or exclusive approach to the telecommunications market raises suspicions regarding its client list.
5) Who pays for what Cronon AG reports as the features of its servers, in German? These are presented as follows:


• Total area of more than 3500 m2 (of net exhibition space)
split in 6 halls

• Bandwidth: External connections: 2 x 20 Gbit/s for the Freenet backbone, 1 x 10 Gbit/s for the DE-CIX Frankfurt, smaller connections of bandwidth of up to 155 Mbit

• 1 GBit input and output transport

• Start/Electric System:
48 and 230 volts in all ambits
Multiple redundant UPS units (split for each the 230 and 48 volts)

• Emergency power sources: 4 x diesel engines and 2 x diesel reserve engines
One megawatt power (6 megawatts total benefit)

• 45.000 litres of continually preheated gas oil in storage, readily available in 40 seconds

• 6 dedicated stations with a 1 megawatt transformer

• Access control:
24/7 segurity
Card reader
Anticipation
Surveillance
CCTV
Written registration
This speaks of a server that can use “external connections: 2 x 20 Gbits/s.” In other words, it is not just another provider.
Even supposing that “the first world is full of these servers,” when applied to the Cuban reality by the grace of the US blockade—which is never criticized by Yoani—it shows that the site hosting the Generation Y blog has 60 times the bandwidth that the whole of Cuba has available for all its Internet users!
6) What was the company used to obtain the domain registration of Yoani’s blog? Well, it was simply GoDaddy, the company preferred by the Pentagon to register the sites it uses for its cyber war. GoDaddy is the anonymous, safer way to purchase a domain in the United States, the company says.
Why anonymous if such a registration is not expected to imply any crime? Why using the same strategy the Pentagon uses? How does Super Yoani manage to prevent GoDaddy from canceling her domain, just like another US registration company did in the case of dozens of sites which promoted cultural events and trips to Cuba? Why isn’t anybody talking of the restrictions Cuba faces—even under the Obama administration—in terms of e-commerce, thanks to the US blockade?
7) Interestingly enough, Yoani’s blog was the first one to promote the subversive Granpa Internet news service, at the address http://www.granpa.info
She did not bother to disguise her relations with the Granpa sponsors who for this particular registration followed the same procedures used for the hosting and registration of the Generation Y blog in Europe-based servers.
The Granpa domain was created on June 9, 2009 under anonymous owners. Its server is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The owner of the account that paid for the domain registered the address of a credit card in the fiscal safe heaven of Grand Cayman, according to public Internet registration data. The IP address hosting the site is 82.103.135.163, which belongs to the ISP Easyspeedy Networks.
Granpa is an exclusive service for Cuba, with the particularity that anyone can register a phone number working on the island without the approval of its owner. Those who own cell phones in Cuba do not receive any access code to confirm their acceptance to receive daily headline news, picked from three fiercely anti-Cuba papers: El Nuevo Herald of Miami and Cubaencuentro and Penúltimos Días of Spain.
Actually, this service is meant to send mass messages, even if the user has not requested, in open violation of standards protecting the privacy of Internet users and anti-spam regulations. As it is well known, international sms services are not a free choice for cell phones.
The Vodafone site, a provider of telecommunication services in Spain, shows that sending messages to other countries in Europe and abroad ranges between 1.16 and 2.50 Euros a message. You can check it at http://www.vodafone.es/particulares/tarifas/viajar-al-extranjero/sms-mms/euros.
Considering these rates, how much are these mass sms services from Europe to Cuba, under which bases are they sent, and who is financing them?
8) How many bloggers in the world have Spain’s Grupo Prisa as their manager? Why has Prisa, which is supposedly undergoing a hard financial crisis, been able to purchase Noticias 24—the most aggressive website against the Venezuelan government—and to pay Yoani a 15,000-Euro prize? No less than via the Ortega y Gasset Prize, traditionally granted to personalities in the field of arts, with a rich record in that field of knowledge, which is absolutely not the case here.
How comes Italy’s Rizzoli publishing house paid 50,000 Euros to an unknown “writer”? Such an amount of money was never given to, say, Alejo Carpentier, Jose Lezama Lima, or any other unquestionable figures of Cuban literature. The list adds some 100 other prizes, including a recent mention at the Maria Moors Cabot, of the University of Columbia.
I do not intend to accuse Yoani of being a mercenary, No way! She has already accused herself! The image they have designed for her is even supported by her lying self-proclamation of being a revolutionary, only that she is disappointed and frustrated, and all that goes because of her “suffering” and her therapy on her blog, which someone pays for, on account of her “great patriotic sacrifices” (money has no homeland).
Aren’t all those aforementioned facts reasons to think of a sophisticated kind of marketing strategy against Cuba? Could her blog have such large visibility without a strong economic support, hidden behind prizes?
Yoani does not speak to the average Cuban citizen, who might tell her to get lost, but she voices her whining through messages designed following the principles of the Pentagon’s cyber war, with wicked interests that we can not suppose she ignores, as she cannot ignore those financing the therapy for her frustrations.

Reflections by comrade Fidel: SEVEN DAGGERS AT THE HEART OF THE AMERICAS

I read and reread data and articles written by smart personalities, some better known than others, who publish in various media outlets drawing the information from sources nobody questions.
Everywhere in the world, the people living on this planet are taking economic, environmental and war risks due to the United States policies but no other region of the world as threatened by such grave problems as that country’s neighbors, that is, the peoples of this continent south of that hegemonic power.
The presence of such a powerful empire --with military bases, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers; modern warships and sophisticated fighter planes that can carry any type of weapons, deployed in every continent and ocean; with hundreds of thousands of troops and a government that claims absolute impunity for them-- is the most important headache for any government, be it a leftist, rightist or center government, an allied of the United States or not.
The problem for those of us who are its neighbors is not that it is a different country with a different language. There are Americans of every color and background. They are people just like us with all kinds of feelings, in one sense or another. What is dramatic is the system that has been developed there and imposed on everyone else. That system is not new to the use of force and to the domination methods that have prevailed throughout history; what is new is the time we are living. Approaching the issue from a traditional perspective would be a mistake and no one would benefit. Reading and getting acquainted with the ideas of the advocates of the system can be very educational for it helps to become aware of the nature of a system which builds on a continuous appeal to selfishness and to the peoples’ most basic instincts.
Without convictions about the value of conscience and its capacity to prevail over instincts, it would not be possible to even speak of a hope for change in any period of the very short history of man. Neither would it be possible to understand the formidable obstacles lying in the way of the different political leaders of the Latin American or Ibero-American nations in the hemisphere. In any case, the peoples living in this part of the world in the last tens of thousands of years until the famous discovery of the Americas had no traits of the Latin, Iberian or European peoples and their features resembled more those of the Asian peoples where their ancestors had come from. Today, we can find them on the faces of the indigenous people in Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Chile, a country where the Araucanians wrote enduring pages. In certain areas of Canada and Alaska they still preserve their indigenous roots as purely as they can, but in the continental United States a large part of the ancient peoples was exterminated by the white conquerors.
As everybody knows, millions of Africans were uprooted from their land and brought to work as slaves in this hemisphere. In some countries like Haiti and a large part of the Caribbean Islands their descendants make up the majority of the population, and in some other countries they add up to large segments. In the United States, there are tens of millions of people of African descent who, as a rule, are the poorest and most discriminated against.
For centuries that country claimed privileged rights over our continent. At the time of Jose Marti, it tried to impose a single currency based on gold, a metal whose value has been the steadiest through history. In general, international trade was based on gold; but that is not the case today. From the days of Nixon’s administration, world trade developed on the basis of the paper money printed by the United States, the dollar, a currency worth today about 27 times less than in the early ‘70s; one of the many ways to dominate and defraud the rest of the world. At the present moment, however, other currencies are taking the place of the dollar in international trade and in the hard currency reserves.
Then, while the value of the empire’s currency is decreasing, its military forces’ reserves are increasing and the state-of-the-art technology and science monopolized by the superpower are largely directed to weapons development. Presently, it is not only the thousands of nuclear missiles or the modern destructive power of conventional weapons, but the guided planes piloted by robots. This is not just a fantasy. Some of these aircraft are being used in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Recent reports indicate that in a relatively near future, by the year 2020, --long before the Antarctic icecap melts-- the empire plans to have among its 2500 war planes, 1100 fifth-generation F-35 and F-22 fighter-bombers. Just to give an idea of that potential, suffice it to say that the aircraft used at the Soto Cano base in Honduras to train that country’s pilots are F-5, and the ones supplied to the Venezuelan air force --prior to Chavez-- and to Chile and other countries, were small F-16 squadrons.
Even more significant is the empire’s plan for the next 30 years anticipating that every U.S. combat aircraft, from fighter planes to heavy bombers and tanker planes are piloted by robots.
Such a military might is not a necessity of the world; it is a necessity of the economic system that the empire imposes to the world.
Anyone understands that if the robots can replace the combat pilots, they can also replace the workers in many factories. The free-trade agreements that the empire is trying to impose on the countries of this hemisphere mean that these workers will have to compete with the advanced technology and the robots of the Yankee industry.
Robots do not go on strike; they are obedient and disciplined. We have seen on TV machinery that can pick up apples and other fruits. The question could also be asked to the American workers. Where will the jobs be? What is the future that capitalism without borders, in its advanced development stage, assigns to the people?
In light of this and other realities, the leaders of UNASUR, MERCOSUR, the Rio Group and others cannot but analyze the very good question raised by Venezuela: What’s the meaning of the military and naval bases that the United States wants to set up around Venezuela and in the heart of South America? I remember that a few years back, when relations between Colombia and Venezuela, two sister nations bound by geography and history, grew dangerously tense Cuba quietly promoted significant steps leading to peace between them. Cuba will never encourage war between sister nations. Historic experience, the manifest destiny claimed and applied by the United States and the weak accusations against Venezuela about weapon supplies to the FARC, combined with the negotiations aimed at granting to the U.S. Armed Forces seven places in that territory to be used by their air and naval troops, are leaving Venezuela no other choice but to invest in weaponry the resources it could use for the economy, social programs and cooperation with other countries of the region having less resources and development. Venezuela’s military build-up is not aimed against the fraternal people of Colombia but against the empire which already tried to overthrow its Revolution and today intends to set up its sophisticated weapons near the Venezuelan border.
It would be a serious mistake to believe that only Venezuela is being threatened. Actually, every country in the south of the continent is under threat. Not one of them will be able to avoid the issue as some of them have already stated.
The present and future generations will pass judgment on their leaders for the way they conduct themselves at this moment. It is not only the United States, but the United States and the system. What does it offer? What does it want?
It offers the FTAA, that is, the early ruin of our countries: free transit of goods and capital, but not free transit of people. They are now afraid that the opulent consumerist society is inundated by poor Hispanics, indigenous people, black, mulatto or whites who cannot find jobs in their own countries. They return everyone who commits an offense or that they do not need; quite often these people are killed before they enter that country or returned like animals when they are not necessary. Twelve million Latin American or Caribbean immigrants remain in the United States illegally. A new economy has emerged in our countries, especially in the smallest and poorest: that of remittances. In times of crisis, this strikes mostly the immigrants and their families. Parents and children are separated, sometimes forever. If the immigrant is of military age, he is given the chance to enlist for fighting thousands of miles away from home “on behalf of freedom and democracy,” and if they do not get killed, on their return they are given the right to become US citizens. Then, as they are well trained they are offered the possibility of a contract, not as official soldiers but as civilian soldiers for the private companies that provide services to the imperial wars of conquest.
There are other extremely serious dangers. There are always news of immigrants from Mexico and other countries of our region dying as they try to cross the U.S.-Mexican border. The number of victims each year widely exceeds the totality of those who lost their lives in the almost 28 years of existence of the famous Berlin Wall.
But what is most incredible is that there is hardly any news in the world about a war that is taking thousands of lives every year. In 2009, more Mexicans have been killed than the number of American soldiers who died during Bush’s war on Iraq in the course of his administration.
The cause of the war in Mexico is the largest drug market in the world: the United States market. But there is no war going on in the American territory between the U.S. police and the military fighting the drug-traffickers. The war has instead been exported to Mexico and Central America, but especially to the Aztec country which is closer to the United States. Dreadful images of dead bodies are shown on TV while news keep coming in of people murdered in the surgery rooms where their lives were being saved. None of these images originates in the U.S. territory.
Such a wave of violence and bloodshed is expanding through the countries of South America, affecting them to a lesser or greater extent. Where does the money come from if not the endless source of the U.S. market? Likewise, consumption tends to expand to the rest of the countries in the region causing more victims and direct or indirect damages than AIDS, malaria and other illnesses put together.
The imperial plans of domination are preceded by huge sums of money assigned to the task of deceiving and misinforming the public. For this purpose, they have the full complicity of the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie, the rightist intelligentsia and the media.
They are experts in spreading news of the politicians’ mistakes and contradictions.
The fate of mankind must not be left in the hands of robots turned into people or people turned into robots.
In the year 2010, the U.S. government will promote its policy through the State Department and USAID spending 2.2 billion dollars –12 percent more than the Bush administration received in the last year of its second term-- and almost 450 million of them will be used to prove that the tyranny imposed on the world means democracy and respect for human rights.
They constantly appeal to the human beings’ instinct and selfishness; they despise the value of education and conscience. The resistance put up by the Cuban people throughout 50 years is evident. Resistance is the weapon that peoples can never give up. The Puerto Ricans were able to stop the military exercises in Vieques by standing on the site of the firing range.
Bolivar’s homeland is today the country they are most worried about for its historical role in the struggle for the independence of the peoples of the Americas. Cubans working there as healthcare and informatics specialists, educators, physical education and sports professors, agricultural technicians and specialists in other areas should do their best to fulfill their internationalist duty to prove that the peoples can put up a resistance and carry forward the most sacred principles of human society. Otherwise, the empire will destroy civilization and even the human race.


Fidel Castro Ruz
August 5, 2009
11:16 a.m.

Cuba: More than Ever USAID Continues Investing in Subversion

By: Jean-Guy Allard

There’s an imperial offensive against the progressive Latin America which is growing stronger now towards the countries members of ALBA. In Cuba, not only the annexionist investments of Washington have not diminished, but they have grown and intensified through new technologies and means. Thus is affirmed by the Venezuelan investigator Eva Golinger when analyzing how the current North American administration is still trying to destabilize the Cuban Revolution through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). With such ends, says Golinger, the USAID carries out investments in the destabilization of the Cuban Revolution using two formats, explains the specialist who has been devoted during the last decade to study and expose the North American mechanisms of interference and subversion in Latin America. "Their main financing sources come from the Economic Support Fund, a financial division of the Department of State that finances USAID projects", she asserts. This fund has contributed 65 330 000 dollars to the so-called transition towards democracy in Cuba during the last two years. For year 2010, an extra of 20 million dollars are destined. According to USAID terminology, the money already delivered during years 2008 and 2009, an amount of 10 million dollars were directed to the area of "human rights", seven millions to promote "the political competition" and almost 49 millions for the "civil society."
It’s interesting that USAID also opened an Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) for Cuba late in 2007, with the objective of carrying out "a work with the youth" and the “independent initiatives of media", points out the investigator. "To this purpose, they have contributed an additional fund of 8 383 000 dollars since 2008. The OTIs are USAID divisions dedicated to respond to political crisis in a quick fashion, in order 'to solve them' in favor of North American interests". The OTI manages liquid funds of dollars "in larger amounts, without undergoing much revision or accounting before the North American congress". One of these OTI offices was established in Venezuela in August 2002 to promote and consolidate the forces opposing the Bolivarian Revolution. Ever since, the OTI has financed and helped to create more than 450 NGO and political groups with funds exceeding the 60 million dollars.
This money is basically used to fuel conflicts and support the White House’s concealed interests.
THE "IRREGULAR WAR"
USAID, the agency that began as the financial arm of the Department of State in year 1962 to take care of "humanitarian" issues, has become during the 21st century one of the main actors of the "counterinsurgency" under Washington’s new doctrine of Irregular Guerra. "Early in 2009 this doctrine was signed by the recently appointed president of the United States, Barack Obama, as part of his new politics of 'smart power', a politics that uses military power together with diplomacy, culture, communication, economic power, and politics." There are two great points of difference the traditional War and the Irregular War: the objective and tactics, asserts the Venezuelan-American lawyer. "The Traditional War pursues as objective the defeat of opponent armed forces, and the main tactics is the use of military power in its most traditional form, the combat and bombing. The Irregular War has as main goal the control over the civil population and the neutralization of the State, and its main tactics is 'counterinsurgency' which is the use of indirect and asymmetric techniques, like subversion, infiltration, psychological operations, cultural penetration, and military deceit". During the 21st century, the USAID has developed divisions within the agency that work together with the Pentagon, like the offices of Conflicts Management, Transition, and Reconstruction, Democracy and Governability, and Initiatives towards a Transition which are reorienting their work towards "counterinsurgency" efforts.
"Hence, the USAID has become the actor and main investor of the destabilization and penetration in the 'civil society' in countries strategically important for North American interests". In the case of Latin America, the figures of USAID financial investment in political groups and in the "promotion of democracy" are overwhelming. THE NED AND ITS CHAIN DE MERCENARY NGO
On the other hand, NED that was founded to do the work carried out by the CIA, but with a more legitimate image, has contributed 1 435 329 dollars to promote the destabilization in Cuba this year.
Thus explains Golinger when enumerating the groups benefited by this North American fund: Afro-Cuban Alliance (ACA), 82 080 dollars; Association Encounter of Cuban Culture, 225 000 dollars; Center for a Free Cuba (Frank Calzon), 54 222 dollars; Center for the International Private Company (CIPE), 157 526 dollars; the Committee for the Free Trade Unionism (CFTU), 150 000 dollars; the Democratic Governing body of Cuba, 275 000 dollars; CubaNet News, 42 000 dollars; Universal Dissident of Puerto Rico, 40 000 dollars; International Group for the Social Corporative Responsibility in Cuba, 236 730 dollars; People in Need (PIN), 129 451 dollars; People in Peril Association (PIPE), 43 320 dollars.
The great majority of these messy collections of organizations, groups, and small groups have been related in the past to CIA activities.
In spite of the promises, change of administration or not, Washington still continues to waste yearly hundred of millions dollars of taxpayer's money in this dirty war against Latin America.
There’s an imperial offensive against Latin America going on which is intensifying in these moments against the countries members of ALBA” said Golinger.
"One of the manifestations of this aggression is the so-called counterinsurgency as tactics to penetrate and infiltrate communities and promote the destabilization", highlights the author of the Chavez Code and The Imperial Spiderweb, the repertoire of intelligence activities of Washington in the continent and the world.
Cubasi Translation Staff

Cuban Children Photo Exhibit in Japan

Tokyo, Aug 4 (Prensa Latina) A total of 140 Cuban children from different educational centers will exhibit their photos in this capital as part of a project fostered by Japanese photographer Hiraku Nagatake.
The initiative includes the exhibition of instant photos in the Tokyo Gallery Walk and the Konica Minolta Plaza this month.
The children went out to the street and took photos of the environment, in which was their first contact with photography. The images reflect the novel curiosity and talent of the authors.
Wonder Eyes Project is a creative and educational project by Nagatake, who has already started such an experience in Japan, Timor Leste, Uzbekistan, Australia, Brazil, Mozambique, Russia and other countries.

US Official Forced Hemingway to Flee Cuba

Havana, Aug 3 (Prensa Latina) Writer Ernest Hemingway left Cuba suddenly in July, 1960, forced by the US ambassador, says Cuban expert in the US literature bronze god's work.
There has been much speculation about his death in US territory, and also about the causes that led the famous writer to leave La Vigia farm in this capital, leaving all his belongings there, including some of his unfinished novel manuscripts.
Biographers of the writer hold that such decision was due to his frustration, faced with the Cuban Revolution.
However, expert Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of Ernest Hemingway Museum, asserted that Philip Wilson Bonsal, then US ambassador to Cuba, forced Hemingway to leave the Island, Juventud Rebelde daily said.
The director of the museum, located at La Vigia farm, has based her hypothesis on data found in "Running with the Bulls," a book by Hemingway's last secretary Valerie Dunby-Smith, now Valerie Hemingway.
Hemingway's last secretary, who became his daughter-in-law, because she married his son Gregory after the writer's death, stated it clearly in that text."
She also holds that when the writer arrived in the United States on July 25, 1960, he did not go to his shack in Sun Valley, but stayed in New York and traveled to Spain few days later on August 4.
Besides, he left all his unfinished work here, and a writer does not leave his work behind, even less a writer like Hemingway.
The expert also said the famous US writer had always returning in mind. It was not only about the material things he left.
Hemingway loved La Vigia farm. It was his place for writing and that to which he always returned. It was the place he was proud of.
He said he had 18 different kinds of mango trees there and it was close to Havana and Cojimar, where he used to go sailing on his yacht Pilar.
She also recalled that Hemingway never had problems with the Cuban government, even when he was in the United States, he talked to some of his friends to ask about his possible return and they said he could come back whenever he wanted to.
In one of his books, we found an armband of the 26 de Julio Movement, to which he contribute money.
Hemingway, winner of the 1954 Literature Nobel and the 1953 Pulitzer prizes, shot himself twice in the head on July 2, 1961. Such event is still being the subject of debates nowadays.