Chavez calls for the creation of a world defense network

[Minstrel Boy]

Chavez calls for the creation of a world defense network

A call to intellectuals and progressive artists to create a world defense network was made in Caracas by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the inauguration of the In Defense of Humanity World Conference. Chávez offered the Venezuelan capital as the headquarters for such an initiative when addressing some 400 participants from more than 50 countries who responded to the broadbased call from Cuba and Venezuela to take part in this event to find new alternatives in the battle against neoliberal thinking.

What takes places in Latin America over the next few years could have powerful repercussions for the rest of the planet, affirmed the president, according to a report from the Prensa Latina news agency.

He stated that the network of intellectuals could be linked with the project for Standing Congress of the Peoples in order to form a joint response to the challenges currently facing humanity.

In that respect, he specified that throughout the continent the resurgence of a growing force can be seen among the youth, the landless, indigenous peoples and intellectuals. He elaborated on the fact that international problems today do not have national solutions and for that reason there is a need for a world movement.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/diciembre/juev2/50chavez.html

South America saw some of the worst of neoliberalism, first. One of the few signs of encouragement in the world today is the emergence of vigorous progressive leadership on that continent. That's not only good news for South America, but it just might help save us all.

[NEOBuckeye]

1. neoliberal = neoconservative

FYI for those who don't already realize this.

[Minstrel Boy]

2. I think of them as complimentary applications of the same imperialism.

Neoliberal is the economic boot trampling on the face of humanity, and neoconservative the military.

[arikara]

24. Thanks for the simple clarification!

n/t

[vet_against_Bush]

158. God, don't use that word in public! Call it something else....

Enoug liberal bashing in my word the way it is!

[IndianaGreen]

175. the liberal in neo-lib is more like the lib in Libertarian

there is nothing "liberal" about neoliberalism, which is has roots in Ayn Rand.

[imenja]

191. acutally it's Adam Smith

classical liberalism means promoting free markets, and referred to talking down mercantalist, colonial restrictions.

neo-liberalism seeks to resurrect some of those same ideas and policies.

[everclear]

3. neoliberal = most of congress

profit over people

[Just Me]

61. Neoliberal represents "profit over people"? BAH!!!

I don't even know of a person or group who has personified themselves as "neoliberals" unlike the "neoconservatives" who CLEARLY embrace profit and power over people.

If I were to define a "neoliberal" it would be a progressive who has surrendered way too many principles in the course of negotiations with the hard right-wing. In other words, a "neoliberal" would be a "liberal" with no spine or heart.

On the other hand, those who call themselves "neoconservatives" are really "neoliberals" because they believe they KNOW what is the best course for all humanity and are willing to do anything to justify their utopian dream (where "all our children will sing" per Prince of Darkness Perle).

[IllegalCombatant]

73. PROFIT OVER PEOPLE - NEOLIBERALISM AND GLOBAL ORDER by Noam Chomsky

excerpts from the book...

Neoliberalism and the Global Order
Consent without Consent
Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order
The Zapatista Uprising

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ProfitsOverPeople_Chom.html

that will bring ya up to speed on what a neoliberal is better than i ever could.

clinton and the DLC are perfect examples of neoliberals that anyone can recognize once the terms are properly defined.

:hi:

[Just Me]

87. Ewww,...OH,...flame my ass for being a member of humanity,...

,...rather than "target" for capitalistic destruction.

I AM A HUMAN BEING.

I will neither serve you or condemn you.

I want to walk with you, towards an unknown future.

What do you want?

[IllegalCombatant]

91. huh?

r u drinking, tonight? if so, have one on me ;-> :toast:

[Just Me]

92. Can't handle being human?

Then, hang onto that which will die without you,..."STUFF".

I'll bet you have no truly intimate, trusting, building relationships.

[IllegalCombatant]

93. it certainly is rough these days

i think you are mistaking me for a neoCON or neoLiberal, please adjust your fire, i'm just pass'n the word ;->

[Just Me]

94. Fine. Just contol being "trigger-happy".

MOST of us,...want to live in peace.

[IllegalCombatant]

95. likewise

peace

[Just Me]

150. Yeah,...sorry. The label thingy just bugs the beegeezus outta' me.

Especially when the label is misleading. And the "neo" labels are totally misleading because they cover up the actual political/philosophical orientation involved.

Language is so important. Accuracy is imperative in these days of pumped up propaganda,...and when I hear BS "neo" labels which are falsely attached to political/philosophical affiliations it just makes my head explode.

So,...sorry I busted a vein. I'm trying to avoid being pissy for the next four years,...but, it's hard work LOL really hard work!!!

[CAcyclist]

167. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Artemis Bunyon]

118. You're the one who has his facts skewed.

You invented a definition of neoliberalism that has no relation to the actual meaning of that word, and then you get upset when somebody who DOES know the definition uses it in the proper way.

[Tinoire]

120. That's harsh

because there's still truth to what Just Me wrote. It depends how you're looking at it.

The Leo Strauss ass-holes are indeed looking for their version of utopia where "all our children will sing" per Prince of Darkness Perle.

Just listen to that schmuck Wolfowitz whose prepared to annihiliate the entire Muslim world. He's been seriously dating an Arab woman for the last 3 years at least- in fact she's an Arab Muslim Feminist known as an "expert in the process of democracy". (Hmmm... Wonder how one becomes an "expert in the process of democracy"? Any ideas?) Somewhere in their warped little minds they are pushing for their warped version of utopia.

Check this out:

In fact, there is a woman from whom Wolfowitz does draw support and backing for his views, but she comes from a very different — and unexpected — background. His closest companion and most valued confidantes is a middle-aged Arab feminist whose own strongly held views on instilling democracy in her native West Asia have helped bolster his resolve.

Shaha Ali Riza is a senior World Bank official who was born in Tunis, grew up in Saudi Arabia and holds an international relations masters degree from St Anthony’s College, Oxford. Close acquaintances of the couple have told The Daily Telegraph that she is romantically linked with Wolfowitz, 61, a fellow divorcee with whom she has been friends for several years.

Even by the discreet standards of Washington’s powerful inner circle, it is a remarkably closely guarded secret. They rarely go out as a couple openly or demonstrate affection publicly, according to friends who are aware of the relationship. They attend low-key Washington social events and visit friends’ homes together and Riza also sometimes goes to official functions and dinners with him, but is not identified as his partner, an acquaintance said.

(snip)
http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/8/2/10037/36792

A little more here: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=49495&d=7&m=8&y=2004

=================

Shaha Riza, Senior Gender Specialist, World Bank, has specialized in Middle East Studies and has carried out field research in a number of Arab countries. Immediately before joining the World Bank she worked at the US National Endowment for Democracy where she set up and led the Endowment’s Middle East Programs. Since joining the World Bank in 1997, she has worked with the Middle East and North Africa Social and Economic Development Group as the Senior Gender and Civil Society coordinator in the office of the MENA Chief Economist. As of July 2002, she has acted as the Manager for External Affairs and Outreach for the World Bank’s MENA region.



Seems Lantos (-D) is promoting her too

Found an interesting profile of Wolfie here too:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041101fa_fact

[Voltaire99]

4. Clinton, of course, personifies neoliberalism. (n/t)

[Swamp Rat]

5. I thought that was Reagan

I agree about Clinton though... well, he did throw us a few more bones than Reagan. Clinton=Compassionate Conservative?

[Occulus]

6. Well...................... in retrospect..............................yes.

[Minstrel Boy]

10. M. Moore calls Clinton America's greatest Republican President. n/t

[Swamp Rat]

11. I agree with him, but I'll modify it a little:

Clinton is America's greatest Republican President in my lifetime.

[Bono71]

76. I'll take Clinton over Moore anyday. It is hard to argue with

Clinton's record...Lewinsky notwithstanding.

He did a lot for this country.

[Sterling]

168. It is hard to argue with Clinton's record

Not really if you think about it. He did a lot to set the stage for what we face now. Selling out media regulation, NAFTA he may not have dreamed up PNAC but he and his ilk sure set the stage for it nicely.

[IndianaGreen]

176. DOMA, Plan Colombia, Balkan War, Don't Ask-Don't Tell

Sure, when comparing Clinton to Bush, he looks mighty fine, but that is only relative.

[AP]

7. Clinton gave Chávez room to breath.

[Judi Lynn]

21. Sorry, I mis-posted. I 'll save my info. for a later thread.

Very embarrassing!

I became drifty and started thinking of the fact Clinton had actually eased the U.S./Cuban relations until Jose Basulto arranged to take his flyers into Cuban air space and get some killed.

Strange sense of timing. It ended all the progress Clinton made up to that point.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

26. Clinton also put Aristide back in Haiti for Bush* to knock down again.

The few people who knew of this year's US coup in Haiti have forgotten it with all the Iraq and election hoopla.

Clinton gave the corporateers a lot but not Haiti.

[Judi Lynn]

28. Bush was able to bathe that island in blood, and no one spoke out

No one had the power to be heard. Clinton clearly believed, along with the majority of Haitians that Aristide was the elected, rightful President who had the interests of the people at heart.

Damned shame.

[Tinoire]

63. You might appreciate this. Chavez re Clinton

(though you've probably already read this)

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez: Interview
An exclusive interview with Greg Palast for BBC Television's Newsnight
Thursday, May 2, 2002



Palast: Nevertheless you must have known that your actions in rebuilding OPEC into a real - powerful - organisation had to upset the government of the United States and put you in hot water with the American government; that rebuilding OPEC, which was due to your actions, had to incur the wrath of the American government?

Chávez: The truth is that when our government came to power, even before then, we were in touch with countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico (which is not from OPEC but very close to us here) and all the other OPEC members, in order to find a price balance. The price was way too low, it was $7 per barrel, which was almost a gift. I once gave this speech, initiating the OPEC conference here in Caracas, and I said something that made everybody laugh but it's absolutely true: a barrel of oil costs $14-15 (this was in 1999) while a barrel of whisky costs 10 times that! A barrel of wine costs far more. A barrel of ice-cream costs three times a barrel of oil - sunscreen, which women especially use on the beach, a barrel of that costs three times more than a barrel of oil. And it's not right that the price of oil is so low. This is about finding a fair price, one that is convenient for everybody from the consumers to the producers, in order to incorporate sustainability into the oil business.

Well, sincerely, I don't see how that policy could incur wrath in countries like the US or England, and I've tried to explain that policy to the leaders of almost every developed country. In London, for example, we held a meeting, the first time ever that an OPEC president has had a meeting with the national energy agency there, in which we talked for roughly three hours. I have spoken about this matter with Prime Minister Blair and President Chirac, with President Aznar, with the King of Spain, with President Putin, President Clinton, President Sampaio, with almost every leader of the developed world, Prime Minister Chrétien, the Prime Minister of Japan, trying to explain that it's also important for them to have a balance in the market, that we cannot fall again into that price volatility, when the prices were shooting to $40 and falling to $5.

It is convenient for everyone to have a fair and balanced price, so we in Venezuela produced the 'bands' system that got approved, which was a floor of $22 and a ceiling of $28, that's our strategy. And I believe that it favours the developed countries as well because it eradicates price uncertainty and gives security to their oil supply. I'll tell you something, President Clinton, the first time we met -

Palast: But Clinton isn't Bush.

Chávez: Well, I'm talking abut Clinton, whom I had the opportunity to speak with on three different occasions. The first time we met, he didn't understand the bands system, or to be more honest he didn't like it. They wanted low prices. But the third time we talked, he shook my hand and told me, "Chávez, I like the bands!" He had got it. He understood that a balanced price was necessary for the United States also. A balance between supply and demand of crude oil.

(snip)

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=184&row=2

[AP]

70. Well, that made me smile.

I have no illusions about Bill Clinton, I'd like to think. But I do like him, and I was getting nervous until I got down to the end.

Someone else posted here months ago some quotes from Clinton's press secretary basically saying that Clinton saw that Chávez was trying to build up some wealth for the poor and the US likes that.

I'm sure there must be something the US under Clinton did that wasn't helpful for VZ, but I have yet to hear it.

[Tinoire]

96. Lol. I'm sure of it too but

no matter how many pebbles I throw at Clinton and how vehemently I disagree with certain things that occurred under him (Yugoslavia, Iraq, WTO) I am still in utter admiration of him.

Chavez seems quite fond of him.

Here's another one but it doesn't really talk much about Clinton ( read the whole thing, not just my snips- it's very well written and parts make you smile... like the elitist lady who never touched bricks)

Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton's Band
Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President

by Greg Palast

There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.'

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

(snip)

Maybe it's the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the White House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of oil. It was a 'Goldilocks' plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel.

But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three top oil industry lobbyists.

(snip)

But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton's ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- enemy.

So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will of the Venezuela electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez' government "legitimate." Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

(snip)

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0816-03.htm

[George_S]

8. Thanks, didn't know that.

Real liberals need to get their language together.

[FULL_METAL_HAT]

15. Yes, was frustrating in naming the secret cabal AGAINST the NeoCons

On one side you have the "Liberals", and on the other side, there's the "Conservatives" (Clinton mentioned this dichotomy at the dedication to his library (liberal library??)*)* But the idealogies espoused by the * administration come from the school of thought<sic> called both Neo-Liberal, and Neo-Conservative!

However, their cabal is in little doubt, no matter what neo- they are called, and their overall actions can easily be called regressive.

So given that for every action, there is an equal and opposite re-action... the secret cabal working AGAINST the regressive neoconservatives (aka neoliberals) are called <drumroll please...>

Neo-Progressives

So whenever discussing "those other folks" working in their own secret ways, cloistered away in their own super-secret secured location, you can safely call them

The Neo-Progressive Cabal

They'll appreciate not getting it all confused!

;^)

All the best,

FULL_METAL_HAT

This is my computer. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My computer is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it, as I must master my life. Without me my computer is useless. Without my computer, I am useless. I must fire my computer true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will. Before God I swear this creed. My computer and myself are defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviours of my life. So be it .. . until there is no enemy ... but peace. Amen.

*
Liberal ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, generous, from Old French, from Latin lberlis, from lber, free. See leudh- in Appendix I.

Library ETYMOLOGY: Middle English librarie, from Anglo-Norman, from Latin librrium, bookcase, from neuter of librrius, of books, from liber, libr-, book.

[imenja]

106. delete

delete

[imenja]

108. neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism are quite different

Both neo-liberals and neo-conservatives advance what we might label a conservative agenda, but the ideologies are not the same. Neo-conservatism speaks primarily to foreign policy concerns, while neo-liberalism advocates economic opening or liberalization.

Neo-liberalism is an economic/ political ideology that involves selling off state owned industries and opening ports to foreign trade.
Neo-liberalism was the dominant political trend of the 1990s. It resulted in dramatic economic change in Brazil under Fernando Enrique Cardoso and temporary economic gains in Argentina. In Argentina, neo-liberalism turned out to be an unmitigated disaster and led (though I don't know enough about economics to claim a causal link) to Argentina's economic meltdown--probably the worst economic collapse in Latin American history. In Brazil, neo-liberalism brought some real benefits, but did not sufficiently ease the great disparity between rich and poor.
The term neo-liberal stems from the classic definition of liberalism--adherence to free market principles, a la Adam Smith. We use the terms liberal and liberalism very strangely in this country--to mean what we imagine as left-leaning policies. In my view, this speaks to the narrow political spectrum in this country that allows only limited political differences and does not critique the foundation of the capitalist system--as though "liberals" were somehow the limits of possible leftist ideology.

Neo-conservatism is something quite different. It advocates the US advance a muscular foreign policy. The US should not be afraid to
exercise it's military dominance and should use war to advance what they see as the spread of democracy around the world. They also shun international organizations such as the UN and other alliances they see as restricting the unbridled use of American power. A group of former Democrats who left the party as it turned away from advancing an interventionist foreign policy were the first to use the term neo-conservative to identify themselves. They called themselves "neo" since they were new conservatives. Their ideology is also strikingly different from the traditional small government conservatives or the Christian right.
Venezuela is one of a number of Latin American nations that has turned away from the neo-liberal policies of the 1990s. Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia are additional cases. There is a clear leftward trend in Latin America. At any point in the twentieth century, this would have been a major cause for alarm by the US government, since it saw Latin America as a key battleground in the Cold War. Bush has essentially neglected the region and the US is losing economic and political influence there--probably a very good thing for Latin Americans in the long run.
As a side note, I wouldn't be so quick to embrace Chavez. He has delivered very little of what he promised to the poor of Venezuela.

[IndianaGreen]

111. PNAC = PPI

two sides of the same fascist coin.

[JohnLocke]

172. Uh...no (nt).

[deutsey]

9. Viva Chavez!

:thumbsup:

[GHOSTDANCER]

47. Hugo mixin it up................chica chica slim chavez

<http://www.smh.com.au/text/ffximage/2004/03/08/hugo_chavez,0.jpg>

[Carolab]

12. Chavez is a visionary thinker

and a true populist

VIVA HUGO

[seemslikeadream]

13. Hugo Chavez - Bush's Nemesis- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

from Tinoire

The Revolution will NOT be Televised. Required Viewing
Required viewing for all Progressive DUers!!!! (yeah, yeah, so sayeth I for the first time ever!))

Absolutely amazing from a cinematographic/artistic point of view and the story! -I just can't say enough! You MUST see it!

On April 12th 2002 the world awoke ((Remember Older DUers??)) to the news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been removed from office and had been replaced by a new interim government. What had in fact taken place was the first Latin American coup of the 21st century, and the world's first media coup...
The violence was sparked by a Supreme Court decision
---


The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Documentary Feature
Screening in Special Screenings
US Premiere
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a feature length documentary on Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. Over the course of 7 months, from January to July 2002, the filmmakers secured unprecedented access to film Chavez in his daily life. During this time, there was a coup and the filmmakers were the only crew inside the presidential palace at the time. They were also the first there for his triumphant return some 48 hours later. On the 11th April 2002, the world awoke to the news that President Hugo Chavez had been removed from office and had been replaced by a new self-appointed "interim" government. News report after news report carried stories of the mayhem in Caracas, where 11 people had been killed in what were alleged to have been bloody street battles between Chavez supporters and an opposition march. Viewers all over the world were led to believe that Chavez had ordered the killings, and had therefore been forced to resign. What had in fact took place was the first coup of the twenty first century, and the world's first media coup. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a thrilling insight into President Chavez and the power of globalized media.

Total program length: 74 mins
http://www.sxsw.com/film/screenings/index.php?dvsearch= ...




SYNOPSIS

IN THEATRES: NOVEMBER 5, 2003 (NY)

"Don't be poisoned by their lies," says Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the last line of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED, referring to the way that the media corrupts the truth for the purpose of political persuasion. And thus the immediacy of this documentary--which consists of fast-moving footage captured during a two-day period in April 2002 when Chavez was kidnapped from the presidential palace in Caracas and the media announced a successful coup--serves simply as a good example of media manipulation. Using television news clips, the film shows how the privately owned Venezuelan media attacks Chavez, comparing him to Fidel Castro and accusing him of mental instability. Washington chimes in, accusing Chavez of being in cahoots with Columbian narco-terrorists. But the documentary also establishes Chavez's position as the people's president. He put in place a democratic constitution and promised to redistribute the nation's significant wealth--Venezuela is the world's fourth largest exporter of oil--to benefit the poor, who represent 80 percent of the population. And from there, the media reports against him sound like cards being played in the oil game.

The Irish filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Brian, were inside the palace making a routine documentary about Chavez when the coup began. Meanwhile, a million Chavez supporters gathered in the streets outside demanding that their leader be restored. Within 48 hours, their pleas were answered and Chavez was president again. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED offers a fascinating inside perspective on both Chavez's popularity and the way that media can bastardize the truth for political gain.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/revolution_will_not_be_televised/about.php?rtp=1

The Banff Rockie Awards 2003 were announced in Canada last night and the Global Television Grand Prize / Grand Prix Global was awarded to Chavez - Inside the Coup, Power Pictures Ltd. in association with RTÉ/ The Irish Film Board/BBC/ZDF/ARTE/NPS/CoBo/ YLE.


The documentary, which depicted the overthrow and return to power of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in a coup in 2002, was directed by Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain and produced by David Power of the Galway-based independent company. The company had secured unique access to President Chavez for an observational documentary and were with him in the Presidential Palace in Caracas when the coup took place.

http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/banff_release.htm
----
<snip / good info re oil & Venezuela>

Washington's hostility towards Venezuela became more pronounced, with senior officials questioning President Chavez' 'commitment to democracy' – this from a US administration that required the intervention of the Supreme Court to enjoy 'electoral' success!


Nonetheless, President Chavez' domestic opponents - driven by the kleptocracy that ran PDVSA - had found new friends abroad.
After the coup, it would emerge that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an agency of the US government, had quadrupled its funding for Venezuelan 'democrats' (the opposition) in the year leading up to the coup. NED funding of the opposition totalled $877,000.

<snip / oil>

US Oil Supply Threatened
But it was events in the Middle East that may well have compelled the coup plotters to act when they did. Israeli actions in Occupied Palestine, during the early months of 2002, resulted in widespread international condemnation and anger. Attention focused on the United States – Israel's chief source of financial and political support.

<snip / oil>

http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/backgrd/oil.htm


US officials have been glaringly faint in their praise for Chavez's triumphant return. Condoleezza Rice, US national security adviser, expressed her hope that Chavez "takes this opportunity to right his own ship which has, quite frankly, been moving in the wrong direction for some time."
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gamal15.html


---

Of course, a US state department official is trained to hear the sound of an oil well tap turning from several thousand miles away. Chavez is no friend to the US. He went on television to denounce the US bombing of civilians in Afghanistan, brandishing pictures of dead children. He is a public friend to Fidel Castro. It wasn't mentioned here, but he has had his meetings with Saddam Hussein and Gadafy. In Bush's list of those "either with us or against us", he's with the axis of irritants. "We are concerned with some of the things said by President Chavez, and his understanding of what a democratic system is about," said Colin Powell, with the hemmed in anger of a boss who has an employee he wants to sack, but the union won't let him.

<snip>

The world's press carried reports that could have been written by the coup leaders themselves, and, because they were based on these pictures, to a certain extent they were. This film punctured every lie. The world accused the pro-Chavez crowd of carrying out the shootings; O'Briain and Bartley's camera proved it wasn't so, filming the victims almost before they hit the ground. The coup leader Pedro Carmona's speech about this "profoundly democratic process" and Colin Powell's parroting of Carmona's lie was inter-cut with film of the police shooting at protestors. As Carmona was on CNN declaring that the "the country is in a state of total normality", the camera was in the palace from which he had just been ousted. It followed the palace guard as they moved to strategic positions, took the building back and reinstated Chavez.

<snip>

http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/review.htm

Hours after Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez had been ushered from his office into military detention, his successor, Pedor Carmona Estanga, a former oil executive and head of the country’s largest business organization, committed a series of monumentally authoritarian acts. With the stroke of a pen, without a mandate from the public, backed only by the authority vested in him by the country’s generals, Carmona dissolved the congress, disbanded the Supreme Court, closed the Attorney-General’s and comptroller's offices, repealed 48 laws that shifted some of the country’s wealth from the elite and oligarchs to the country’s poor, and ripped up the constitution. Were there ever a model for autocratic rule, this was it.
President George W. Bush remarked, "Now the situation will be one of tranquility and democracy." The New York Times, doing its best to mimic the Newspeak of George Orwell’s 1984, declared, "With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be-dictator."

<snip>

In November, the US foreign policy establishment convoked a meeting to decide what to do about Chavez. He had chastised Washington for fighting terrorism with terrorism, cozied up to Cuba, refused to cooperate in the US war on Colombian guerillas, and committed a monumental heresy: He resisted the IMF, and wondered why a country with the Western hemisphere’s largest oil reserves, should be teeming with poor. The IMF let it be known that it would support a transitional government.

<snip>

With the stroke of a pen, Carmona, a man no one elected, cancelled land reform, cancelled free health care and education up to university, and cancelled a constitution that had taken away the oligarchs’ power to dominate the country at the expense of the majority, 80 percent of whom live in poverty, the country’s massive oil wealth beyond their reach.
<snip>

Before the generals ousted Chavez, US Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded Chavez correct "his understanding of what a democracy is." Apparently, democracy isn’t rule by the people.
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans49.html

<snip>

Venezuela is the fourth largest producer of oil, and the corporate elites whose political power runs unfettered in the Bush/Cheney oligarchy appear interested in privatizing Venezuela's oil industry. Furthermore, the establishment might be concerned that Chavez's `barter deals' with 12 Latin American countries and Cuba are effectively cutting the U.S. dollar out of the vital oil transaction currency cycle. Commodities are being traded among these countries in exchange for Venezuela's oil, thereby reducing reliance on fiat dollars. If these unique oil transactions proliferate, they could create more devaluation pressure on the dollar. Continuing attempts by the CIA to remove Hugo Chavez appear likely.

<snip of really excellent article>

http://www.mediamonitors.net/williamclark1.html

Here is a list of BBC articles from that period:

http://www.fightthebias.com/Resources/Rec_Read/Dictator_In_The_Making.htm

For the past few years, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been meeting with the enemies of the United States including Libya and Iraq. His behavior otherwise is disturbing as well. Below is a small timeline of recent events in Venezuela.


Here is a complete, albeit Anglo, rendition of the happening…..

For the past few years, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been meeting with the enemies of the United States including Libya and Iraq. His behavior otherwise is disturbing as well. Below is a small timeline of recent events in Venezuela.





Hugo Chavez
2003

01/04/2003 Two shot dead in Venezuela clashes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2625997.stm
01/04/2003 In pictures: Venezuela strike chaos
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2555283.stm
01/03/2003 Country profile: Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profi...

2002
12/24/2002 Venezuela strikers reject \'truce\' offer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2602777.stm
12/21/2002 Britons warned to leave Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2597371.stm
12/16/2002 Violence flares in Venezuela protests
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2581805.stm
12/15/2002 Chavez opponents mass on streets
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2576561.stm
12/12/2002 Venezuelans living on the brink
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2568267.stm
12/11/2002 In pictures: Venezuela panic
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2565727.stm
12/11/2002 Venezuela crisis deepens
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2563981.stm
12/06/2002 Strikes threaten to cripple Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2548509.stm
12/05/2002 In pictures: Venezuela on strike
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2547619.stm
11/30/2002 Venezuelan dissident generals sacked
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2529905.stm
11/19/2002 Troops disperse Venezuela protest
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2493171.stm
11/07/2002 Chavez fights referendum plans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2413563.stm
11/05/2002 Dozens injured in Caracas clashes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2402717.stm
10/23/2002 Army officers urge Venezuela rebellion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2348217.stm
10/20/2002 Chavez \'foils assassination plot\'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2344973.stm
10/06/2002 Another Venezuela coup attempt \'foiled\'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2303199.stm
09/08/2002 Chavez pushes through oil for Cuba
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2245333.stm
08/19/2002 Chavez vows to fight opposition
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2204144.stm
08/03/2002 Street clashes engulf Venezuela\'s capital
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2169623.stm
07/10/2002 Carter\'s Venezuela bid fails
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2120064.stm
06/25/2002 Chavez warns against more coup plots
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2061680.stm
06/21/2002 Chavez defiant in face of protests
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2056090.stm
05/27/2002 Venezuelan coup leader given asylum
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2009907.stm
05/12/2002 Venezuelans march against Chavez
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1982275.stm
05/07/2002 Rift in Venezuelan society
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_corr...
05/06/2002 Venezuela president names new cabinet
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1970022.stm
05/03/2002 Venezuela minister warns of new coup
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1965230.stm
04/20/2002 New boss for Venezuela\'s oil giant
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1940672.stm
04/17/2002 Chavez opposition sceptical of change
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1934304.stm
04/15/2002 Currency plunges on Chavez return
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1930481.stm
04/14/2002 Analysis: After the would-be coup
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1929498.stm
04/14/2002 Analysis: Venezuela\'s crippled economy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1925514.stm
04/14/2002 In pictures: Chavez defies opponents
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1925248.stm
04/14/2002 Chavez poised for comeback
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1928700.stm
04/14/2002 Venezuela interim president resigns
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1928700.stm
04/13/2002 Latin America ambivalent over ouster
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1927390.stm
04/12/2002 Venezuela press condemns \'autocrat\' Chavez
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/media_repor...
04/12/2002 Venezuela\'s political disarray
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1926185.stm
04/12/2002 Analysis: Venezuela\'s crippled economy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_192500... /
04/12/2002 Venezuela president forced out
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1925161.stm
04/12/2002 Venezuela military challenge president
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1924864.stm
04/07/2002 Venezuela president sacks oil executives
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1916181.stm
03/21/2002 Clashes erupt on Venezuela streets
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1884700.stm
02/27/2002 Venezuela divided over Chavez
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1845680.stm
02/14/2002 Venezuela\'s currency in freefall
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1818558.stm

2001
12/16/2001 Chavez forces capitulation of banks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1713761.stm
12/10/2001 Venezuela\'s Chavez faces labour wrath
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1701778.stm
08/12/2001 Castro visits Venezuelan ally
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1486212.stm
08/11/2001 Castro visits Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1486150.stm
05/25/2001 China urges stronger ties with Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1349795.s...
04/17/2001 Venezuela backs China in US/China aircraft collision
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1280995.stm
04/16/2001 Venezuela supports China\'s human rights record
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1280094.s...
04/15/2001 Venezuela welcomes Chinese President Jiang
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1279440.s...

2000
12/05/2000 US looking into alleged Chavez mischief
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1056878.stm
10/26/2000 Castro arrives in Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/991921.stm
10/15/2000 Army general named as head of Venezuelan federal oil company
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/973614.stm
09/29/2000 Iran-Iraq talks in Caracas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/948985.stm
09/21/2000 Chavez seeks more power
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/935580.stm
09/03/2000 Chavez supports Bolivia against Chile
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/858999.stm
08/19/2000 Venezuela\'s Chavez sworn in again
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/885063.stm
07/31/2000 Cuba delighted at Chavez victory
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/860320.stm
07/15/2000 Chavez military critic arrested
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/834545.stm
03/01/2000 Retired Venezuelan military officers denounce Chavez\' political use of military forces
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/662871.stm
02/02/2000 Chavez demands international respect for Venezuela as a sovereign country
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/628687.stm
01/14/2000 Venezuela rejects US military aid after disaster
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/603235.stm

1999
12/23/1999 In pictures: Venezuela\'s devastation
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/576821.stm
12/19/1999 In pictures: Venezuela\'s flood chaos
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/571928.stm
12/16/1999 Venezuela backs new constitution. - Opponents say authoritarianism on it\'s way
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/566096.stm
12/13/1999 Venezuela Cardinal says Chavez is \'\'like Mussolini\'\'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/564002.stm
11/11/1999 Venezuela suspends scores of allegedly corrupt judges
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/515303.stm
11/05/1999 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/431320.stm
10/25/1999 Venezuela\'s Chavez defends his reforms. Critics say he is too powerful
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/505490.stm
08/27/1999 Venezuela\'s Congress vows defiance after being stripped of power
08/03/1999 Constitutional rewrite begins in Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/411029.stm
07/12/1999 Cuban foreign minister visits Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/392688.stm
02/05/1999 Venezuela\'s Chavez wants coup officers reinstated
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/272659.stm

1998
10/01/1998 Anti-Chavez alliance in Venezuela fails
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/183949.stm
06/17/1998 Venezuela jails are worst in world
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/114405.stm

[NEOBuckeye]

16. Chavez is a hero as far as I'm concerned

Anyone with the gravitas to stand up to the Big Oil & Big Money World Empire deserves our support and admiration, as people who are opposed to the Bush Administration and all the evil for which it stands.

[rockedthevoteinMA]

19. Second that!

I want to move to there if things get any worse here - though I am afraid that people will hate me because I'm an Murican.

[Minstrel Boy]

18. Thanks for the great data dump, seems.

Wish Tinoire was still around these parts.

[Tinoire]

27. I'm back

:)

Expect more data dumps in the interests of peace and justice

:loveya:

[Judi Lynn]

29. Hi, Tinoire! It's just great seeing your name here again.

Very important event.

I just saw someone yesterday remembering your phenomenal posts. You were gone but not forgotten!

[Tinoire]

31. :blush:

Thank you. From a warrior like you that means a lot.

I'm glad to be back partnering with you to fight the neo-'creep'. It's so good to be back! Thank you for the WARM welcome! :loveya:

VIVA CHAVEZ!

VIVA ARISTIDE!

VIVA THE POOR PEOPLE OF THIS WORLD WHO WERE NOT CREATED TO SHOULDER THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN FOR 40-70 YEARS OF A MISERABLE COFFEE-PICKING EXISTENCE!

"She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores,
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores."

Countee Cullen

[Judi Lynn]

36. Breathtaking. Thank you for posting this intense, wonderful work.

I'm so curious about why he hasn't been recognized widely in the States, but I have no doubt he's known elsewhere!

You've brought a whole "new" writer to explore. I'm saving this link now, and I'm going to find out more about this man.

The first link I've seen says the following:

Alain Locke wrote in Opportunity (Jan. 1926): "Ladies and Gentlemen! A genius! Posterity will laugh at us if we do not proclaim him now. "

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cullen/life.htm

I'm sure glad you didn't let any more time go by before posting this material here for those of us who just DIDN'T KNOW yet.

[Tinoire]

43. His poetry touched me very deeply when I was 12

A truly unrecognized great but "forgotten" poet.

====
(snip)

Cullen was also at the center of one of the major social events of the Harlem Renaissance: On 9 April 1928 he married Yolande Du Bois, only child of W E. B. Du Bois, in one of the most lavish weddings in black New York history. This wedding was to symbolize the union of the grand black intellectual patriarch and the new breed of younger Negroes who were responsible for much of the excitement of the Renaissance. It was an apt meshing of personalities as Cullen and Du Bois were both conservative by nature and ardent traditionalists. That the marriage turned out so disastrously and ended so quickly (they divorced in 1930) probably adversely affected Cullen, who remarried in 1940. In 1929, Cullen published The Black Christ and Other Poems to less than his accustomed glowing reviews. He was bitterly disappointed that The Black Christ, his longest and in many respects most complicated poem, was considered by most critics and reviewers to be his weakest and least distinguished.

From the 1930s until his death, Cullen wrote a great deal less, partly hampered by his job as a French teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High. (His most famous student was James Baldwin.) But he wrote noteworthy, even significant work in a number of genres. His novel One Way to Heaven, published in 1934, rates as one of the better black satires and is one of the three important fictional retrospectives of the Harlem Renaissance, the others being Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring and George S. Schuyler's Black No More. Cullen's The Medea is the first major translation of a classical work by a twentieth-century black American writer. Cullen's contributions to children's literature, The Lost Zoo and *Christopher Cat, are among the more clever and engaging books of children's verse, written at a time when there was not much published in this area by black writers. He also completed perhaps some of his best, certainly some of his more darkly complex, sonnets. He was also working on a musical with Arna Bontemps called St. Louis Woman (based on Bontemps's novel God Sends Sunday) at the time of his death from high blood pressure and uremic poisoning on 9 January 1946.

For many years after his death, Cullen's reputation was eclipsed by that of other Harlem Renaissance writers, particularly Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and his work had gone out of print. In the last few years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in Cullen's life and work and his writings are being reissued.

(snip)

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cullen/life.htm

====

Here's another one I love:

Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

[Judi Lynn]

44. His books are being sold on the internet now!

http://www.usedbookcentral.com/texis/ubc/searchbooks,author,Cullen_Countee.html

I'll bet they'll be appreciating but FAST now more people are finding out about him.

Americans have largely been indifferent to poetry, unless it's limericks. Takes too much time, means you have to get quiet, and concentrate, and it's a price many are simply unable or unwilling to pay.

It leads people deeper, inwardly when a lot of them would prefer to stay right on the surface!

Really looking forward to learning more about this man. Glad to have this new viewpoint to think about, Tinoire. He was very passionate about life and each step. He dared to consciously struggle with the fears that stupid people try to deny, to ignore, push out of the way, while they actually start gaining on them!

I really liked this part of the Loss of Love:I have no will to weep or sing,
No least desire to pray or curse;
The loss of love is a terrible thing;
They lie who say that death is worse.

[Minstrel Boy]

30. Great news

And DU will be better for it. It's been missing one of its finest info-warriors.

:grouphug:

[Tinoire]

32. You are very kind- It was reading your blog this morning

that made me cross the line because I had sworn off "useless talking" & gotten disgusted at the "creep" I've been seeing here over the last year but this morning I realized that I had no right to abandon people like you and Judy Lynn... and I also realized that exposing the information had made more of a difference than I thought and was worth continuing to do, no matter what the personal sacrifice.

God bless you Minstrel Boy! :loveya:

[Minstrel Boy]

34. fight the "creep'!

There's a lot of useless talking here, and more all the time, that inspires nothing but wringing of hands. We need more of the kind that inspires clenching of fists. And that's what you do.

[ret5hd]

62. i am so glad to see your screen name again.

[Tinoire]

97. Thank you!

I'm really blushing here but thanks! I am really looking forward to participating again in all the scintillating conversations that made DU what it now is :)

Thanks ret5hd!

[WarNoMore]

33. So glad to have you back.

Your posts always add so much to the discussion. Thanks.

[Tinoire]

35. Haha Klutz! I remember you!

Good to see you still around! I'll try to live up to your assessment though I must tell you that I no longer have the luxury I once had of spending hours compiling information.

Here's to a happier, more informed, future for us all :toast:

[seemslikeadream]

45. So good to see you, Tinoire! Remember this?

Go America. Just GO! GO AWAY! / My response to your powerful post


But these light-skinned people, descendants of the Old Colonials, and their darker skinned "house niggers"

living in these houses

and riding these very rare horses in Haiti on jump courses most Upper-class Americans can only dream of

thought it was worth it

to send School of the Americas thugs like these to kill our own countrymen

and bring the Ton-Ton Macoute Republican/DLC-loving tortures back.

These people, very dark-skinned as you can see, disagreed.

This boy will die from it

This girl, still alive, dreams of a better world
http://www.sakapfet.com/photocontest/2003/images/entries/Mariejo%20Mont-Reynaud,%20Palo%20alto,%20CA/The%20%20Red%20Kivet,%20Fort%20Kampon,%204hrs%20Hike%20from%20Leogane.jpg
Be afraid America. We will gracefully carry our burden but we shall expose your shame once again, just as in 1804.
http://www.sakapfet.com/photocontest/2003/images/entries/Andre%20Boulmier,%20Meyrin%20Switzerland/Commerce%20de%20Proximite,%20Port-au-Prince.jpg
because our children, too, have a right to dreams & rightful expectations of a decent life
http://www.sakapfet.com/photocontest/2003/images/entries/Jermain%20J%20Merola,%20Jacquet%20Haiti/Haut%20de%20Kenscoff1.jpg
We shall not forgive you or the evil bogeymen you bought

We shall not forget the boys you slaughtered

all in the name of Americans and Haitian collaborators who live in homes like this

So take your ass-hole

Take your DLC

Take your God-damned imperialistic military

And get the fuck out of my country

No need to fly your Stars and Stripes

because we have our own flag of which we are sufficiently proud, & which means things through its colors which give you NIGHTMARES

& a constitution that REALLY meant something and liberated South American countries from 'subsidizing' your way of life

Haiti, not America, was the first "Free" Republic in the Western Hemisphere but it galls America, built on the blood & sweat of slaves, to acknowledge that a bunch of slaves whooped imperialistic ass.

18 May, 2004 denouncing the US occupation of Haiti
Tens of thousands of Haitians took to the streets on May 18 to call for the return of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and for an end to the country’s foreign military occupation.
Haitian police units backed up by U.S. Marines fired in the air and into crowds, killing at least one demonstrator. Saintus “Titus” Simpson, 23, of Delmas 33 was shot in the head, spilling his brain, as demonstrators approached the central Champ de Mars square.
Marguerite Laurent of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership cited sources saying that at least four people died. “One Haitian woman seized the fourth body that fell next to her and refused to give it to the Marines,” Laurent reported. “She removed all her clothes to show she had no weapons while Marines surrounded her at gunpoint. She cursed in Kreyol, calling on the revolutionary ancestors and shouting “Liberte ou lamo!” (Liberty or death!) She picked up the body herself and put it on her bare back, daring the Marines to kill her also while she carried it away.”

<snip>

The night before the march, U.S. helicopters flew and hovered low all over the city, Washington’s now common form of psychological warfare in Haiti.

<snip>

http://www.haitiprogres.com/eng05-19.html


:hi: I've missed you

[Tinoire]

51. Bringing tears to my eyes my friend

That paled in comparison to the one you wrote that I was answering! Thank you for caring so much. It's people like you that make me happy to be back though I do blush that praise...

:teary-eyed: :hug:

[IllegalCombatant]

78. gulp - very powerful

thanks for sharing :toast:

each 1 teach 1

[Tinoire]

98. Marine?

Army here...

Welcome to DU Illegal Combatant :toast:

[IllegalCombatant]

102. no

navy... i just picked it to go along with my nic. little poor-mans psyop's :evilgrin:

:hi:

peace

[Tinoire]

104. Lol ok...

How long ago were you in? Hope you're not still in!

[IllegalCombatant]

105. got out in 88

pilot rescue swimmer/bm3

[Tinoire]

113. Cool

Glad you're out!

[AP]

49. Yeah!!!

[Tinoire]

53. AP!

My Edwards-supporting friend from whom I learned so many useful FACTS!

How are you doing? It's good to see you because I'm looking forward to learning more from your posts :hug:

[Darranar]

58. Welcome back, Tinoire!

:hi:

[Tinoire]

60. Darranar!

What a joy to see you! You have no idea! :hi:

[Just Me]

64. I celebrate the return of your passion and talent!!!

:hi:

We have so much work to do.

Here's a big :hug: and :bounce:

[Tinoire]

65. Oh we do, we do!

And I'm glad it's with people like you because then I know there's hope :hug:

I'm happy to be back...

It feels like I'm "home" again.

Sleeves rolled up and ready to work- just point me in the right direction my friend ;)

Here's to our goals of peace and justice!!

:toast:

[Just Me]

69. I am a lone voice,...that only has strength in humanity's common cause.

You and I add strength to both humanity and ourselves.

So happy to "read" LOL you! :toast:

Time to spread the passion for humanity!!!

:bounce:

[Tinoire]

114. A lone voice, lol

My friend, you have enough voices for 10! I am really looking forward to getting my donor star back and doing on search on all the posts I missed :)

It's good to know there are people like you in this world!

[IllegalCombatant]

74. semper fi

:loveya:

peace

[Just Me]

88. I don't think so. You betray the grade. You are sick. n/t

[IllegalCombatant]

90. what's your problem?

or did u mispost?

[Tinoire]

99. Naw... you guys are just miscommunicating

unless I missed something from other threads. Think it had to do with neo-liberal. It's unfortunately something we haven't discussed much around here but we really need to start. If you're like I think you are, you and Just Me are on the same sheet of music already.

Time to start taking back terms and not allowing certain political groups to confuse the issues by putting our terms in their name. I always like to focus on the NEO part and not the liberal part because throwing liberal in there was deliberately designed to conceal the real aims of those pursuing the New World Order.

[IllegalCombatant]

101. i figured that

cause i had no clue what i said to piss her/him off :shrug:

BTW: though these days i'm much more focused on the CON part i will not hold fire against folks who supposedly represent weTHEpeople while at the same time furthering the ends of their corporate masters.

you are right the neo prefix is certainly the common-link between the 2 evils ;->

good to have you back :toast:

peace

[Tinoire]

107. It's deliberately confusing and misleading

It took me a while to catch on back when I didn't know the personalities and the think tanks, but thanks to DU, I got a remarkable education and started putting 2+2 together. It's kind of blatant when you see all the self-professed (neo)Liberals who support war, occupation, destabilizing governments to steal resources and advance the New World Order. They use two wedge issues to paint themselves as Liberals (a mixture of gay rights, abortion, and a few votes for the environment as long as we're talking trees and not depleted uranium). Posters like Hedda Foil, Eloriel, Stephanie did brilliant work on the DLC and other neo-Liberal organizations that have been collaborating with the neo-Cons every step of the way- down to signing PNAC documents and leading the war charge. Trouble is few of them call themselves neo-Liberals and it's up to us to expose them and call them what they are- Neos who supplement the neoCons military ventures with economic manipulation... To wit, the lovely NED with its Democratic and Republican branches but all of it Neo and working towards the same goals.

Well, that's my simple take.

[IllegalCombatant]

109. Thank GORE he 'INVENTED' the INTERNET's!

:evilgrin:

well put, as usual :toast:

[Tinoire]

115. Damn can't edit my post.

That shouldn't be "two wedge issues" but I think the drift is still there. Thanks. Amazing how even our labels they steal and pervert. Of course, real conservatives are probably complaining about the same thing.

And yes, I thank Gore everyday for inventing the internetS ;)

Uhh -- I hear there's rumors on the, uhh, Internets that we're gonna have a -- draft. We're not going to have a draft. Period.

Astounding... Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, Missouri, Oct. 8, 2004
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/audio.shtml

[JohnLocke]

171. Welcome back

:hi:

[Tinoire]

177. Thanks John! It's good to be back! Forgive my ignorance

(I'm feeling like Rip Van Winkle!) but what does the orange ribbon signify? One of these days I think I'm going to go in the ribbon business ;)

:hi:

[Carl Brennan]

164. Hugo is a hero. Thanks for a great post sld.

:toast:

[Sara Beverley]

14. Move the UN to Venezuela, make drastic changes and go from there. OR

Develop a truly international body reflective of the planet in its power structure where no one nation can stand as an obstacle to peace and policies that most of the world wants. Bring the leaders of the so-called "axis of evil" to the table with full rights and responsibilities and the protection of the world body and see if they don't become full partners in the global peace and prosperity. That's usually all most leaders want is to acknowledged and accorded the respect that our own leaders expect. Saddam sitting at the table of nations instead of sanctioned and bombed into oblivian may have been a different person. He certainly was different to us when we were his allies...he could do no wrong to us. Same is true of Castro. I find Castro's interest in the welfare of disadvantaged peoples beyond his own nation to be admirable and I wonder what ideas Castro, Lula, and Chavez might shape for the world and this hemisphere? But of course, our capitalistic-corporate whores will not allow this. "Dissing and destruction" is all we know.

[bin.dare]

20. years off but "South America takes first step to a union of nations

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=589587


The Peruvian highland town of Ayacucho, where fine-fleeced vicuñas roam wild along the snowline, is already a focus of South American history.

Here, in December 1824, forces loyal to Simon Bolivar, the independence hero, drove the Spanish conquistadors from the lands they had dominated for three centuries. Next Thursday, on the 180th anniversary of the battle, the presidents of all South American nations will sign a declaration that could prove historic in its own right.

Taking a first concrete step towards Bolivar's own dream, they will sign a "fundamental charter" to give birth to the South American Community of Nations. It is time, they say, for their own European Union-style economic and political grouping.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Excellent article you linked. Thanks. n/t

[VegasWolf]

17. Why do Freepers hate Chavez! n/t

[Carl Brennan]

38. Because they fear a country

that is not controlled by the multi-nationals and the precedent it might set. That is why the Bushies are willing to take political risks to destabilize Chavez. They hate seeing any country slip their yoke. Power to the people is the nemesis of corporatism.

[PurityOfEssence]

23. against whom, one might ask...

and that would be us.

I'll bet Junior foams at the mouth at the mere mention of the man's name. He's certainly one of the most effective reformist politicians on the world stage today, and he's got my respect.

I hope he's looking over his shoulder, though...

[arikara]

25. In a world that really needs them...

Chavez is a true hero! South America will show the world how to get rid of all these neo-maniacs.

[Carl Brennan]

37. I love this. I love seeing these smaller

countries asserting themselves on the world scene. As it stands today Venezuela, by the fact that they have a democratically elected president, has the moral authority for such a move.

Neo-liberalism or Trilateralism must be fought not only by the exporting countries but by people of concious in the industrialized ones. Chavez alludes to this by including "intellectuals". We now see what globalization is doing to our own people as they die in the Iraq war. Don't let the neo-liberals turn this into an us against them scenario.

In many ways this is reminiscent of the 70's when exporting countries tried to organize to resist Trilateralism in its infancy.


The Founding Fathers would have smiled on Chavez. Here is a country that has empowered itself with the principles of democracy. A strong Venezuela is good for the United States.

[Judi Lynn]

39. No doubt you're right. Chavez has had the courage and morality

to look at this situation in Venezuelan towns and indicate he doesn't think this is the way it has to be, and he's going to do something about it.



His predecessors didn't mind the suffering and hopelessness of the poor whatsoever, as long as they didn't have to see them. If they got unruly, as in the case with the recent President Carlos Andres Perez, they'd just have the state police mow them down.

Chavez is going to lift them up. That offends rightwingers.

[sweetheart]

40. money talks, bullshit walks

Someone's gotta pay this world defense network, and somebody's gotta
supply them with arms. Mr. Chavez has the odds stacked against him
.... ever so slightly. ;-)

I would not take him seriously, as a world leader. Oh dear, we don't
need any left-dictators championing liberal democracy. If venezeuala
did not have oil, it would be isolated militarily by the USA like
north korea and its leader villified like Kim Jong Il, who for his
faults, generally spares mainstream media his musings.

[Judi Lynn]

41. It's been mentioned here already when visitors brought it up

that dictators are not overwhelmingly elected by the people in their countries.

They manage to have their supporters slide them into place, either violently or otherwise, bypassing normal procedures altogether.

It would be helpful if you'd take the time to post some of your many sources for your claim that Chavez is actually a dictator.

[Minstrel Boy]

42. Here's your hat -

what's your hurry?

Chavez is calling for a network of "intellectuals and progressive artists" to combat neoliberal thought. A war of ideas, not arms.

"we don't need any left-dictators championing liberal democracy."

After two elections, a coup overturned by popular will, a referendum, dominance of regional elections, there is no leader in the world with the democratic mandate of Hugo Chavez.

Know what I think you need, sweetheart? A radical rethink of the meaning of "liberal democracy," and of the significance of Chavez and the Bolivarian movement. If you don't recognize the light they provide, then you don't recognize the darkness that's falling.

The line in Venezuela is drawn as starkly as anywhere in the world.

Chavez or Bush - which side are you on?
Danilo Anderson or his assassins - which side are you on?
The poor or the oligarchs - which side are you on?
Liberty or slavery - which side are you on?

[sweetheart]

46. eats hat :-)

no problemo. Such characters much be challenged before welcomed, IMO. His motives are suspicious, considering his ways of controlling
power. Left dictators are no better. He better turn out to be what
he's putting out. He'll do nothing but undermine the legitimate left
otherwise.

[AP]

50. What are his "ways of controlling"?

And what do you think his motives are?

And what's your evidence that he's a dictattor?

And just even for the sake of argument, say he did turn out to be something very different from what he appears to be. How in the world would that have impact on the left? John Kerry didn't even embrace him. I can't think of a popular "movement" anywhere left of center which wraps up any of its indentity in Hugo Chávez. I acutally wish your concern WERE an actual risk. There should be an anti-neoliberal left movement in the US which, if not wraps its identity with him, at least talks about the issues Chávez raises.

I have literally NEVER heard a discussion about him on NPR or any show aired on my NPR station which takes an editorial position anywhere to the left of the one you take in your post above. In fact the attitude you express above is the one that dominates what little 'liberal' discussion there is of him, and positions to the right of yours dominate every other discussion of Venezuela I've ever heard in the popular media.

So I really have to say, Don't Cry for Hugo, Sweetheart. You could have been immortal...

[Tinoire]

55. Hi Sweetheart!

Looking forward to engaging you more on this because Chavez is one of my heroes ;)

Have you seen the film motorcycle diaries? Not about Chavez but about Che Guevara's early days when he took a motorcycle ride across Latin America and his conscience was awakened. It's an amazing film- highly recommended! As is "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" which is about Chavez but older.

Good to see you on this board. Was afraid I'd have to go chase you down on Pravda ;)

Peace

[Ima]

57. Sweetheart..read this before you decide

http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:IY6Ug7GQNPUJ:www.alternet.org/story/19585+Hugo+Ch%C3%A1vez&hl=en

I knew Chavez would win the referendum when I met Olivia Delfino in a poor Caracas barrio that our international election delegation visited. Olivia came running out of her tiny house and grabbed my arm. "Tell the people of your country that we love Hugo Chavez," she insisted. She went on to tell me how her life had changed since he came to power. After living in the barrio for 40 years, she now had a formal title to her home and a bank loan to fix the roof so it wouldn't leak. Thanks to the Cuban dentists and a program called "Rescatando la sonrisa" – recovering the smile – for the first time in her life she was able to get her teeth fixed. And her daughter is in a job training program to become a nurse's assistant.

Getting more and more animated, Olivia dragged me over to a poster on the wall showing Hugo Chavez with a throng of followers and a list of Venezuela's new social programs that read: "The social programs are ours, let's defend them." Then slowly and laboriously, she began reading the list of social programs: literacy, health care, job training, land reform, subsidized food, small loans. I asked her if she was just learning to read and write as part of the literacy program. That's when she started crying. "Can you imagine what's it has meant to me, at 52 years old, to now have a chance to read?" she said. "It's transformed my life."

Walk through poor barrios in Venezuela and you'll hear the same stories over and over. The very poor can now go to a designated home in the neighborhood to pick up a hot meal every day. The elderly have monthly pensions that allow them to live with dignity. Young people can take advantage of greatly expanded free college programs. And with 13,000 Cuban doctors spread throughout the country and reaching over half the population, the poor now have their own family doctors on call 24-hours a day – doctors who even make house calls. This heath care, including medicines, is all free.

The programs are being paid for with the income from Venezuela's oil, which is at an all-time high. Previously, the nation's oil wealth benefited only a small, well-connected elite who kept themselves in power for 40 years through an electoral duopoly. The vast majority in this oil-rich nation remained poor, disenfranchised, and disempowered. With the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 on a platform of sharing the nation's oil wealth with the poorest, all that has changed. The poor are now not only recipients of these programs, they are actively engaged in running them. They're turning abandoned buildings into neighborhood centers, running community kitchens, volunteering to teach in the literacy programs and organizing neighborhood health brigades.

[Tinoire]

59. "Hugo Chavez is Crazy!"

Thanks for posting that. Here's another one I love:

Hugo Chavez is Crazy!
July 01, 2003
Greg Palast


(snip)

Look at the Chronicle/AP photo of the anti-Chavez marchers in Venezuela. Note their color. White.

And not just any white. A creamy rich white.

I interviewed them and recorded in this order: a banker in high heels and push-up bra; an oil industry executive (same outfit); and a plantation owner who rode to Caracas in a silver Jaguar.

And the color of the pro-Chavez marchers? Dark brown. Brown and round as cola nuts – just like their hero, their President Chavez. They wore an unvarying uniform of jeans and T-shirts.

Let me explain.

For five centuries, Venezuela has been run by a minority of very white people, pure-blood descendants of the Spanish conquistadors. To most of the 80 percent of Venezuelans who are brown, Hugo Chavez is their Nelson Mandela, the man who will smash the economic and social apartheid that has kept the dark-skinned millions stacked in cardboard houses in the hills above Caracas while the whites live in high-rise splendor in the city center. Chavez, as one white Caracas reporter told me with a sneer, gives them bricks and milk, and so they vote for him.

Why am I explaining the basics of Venezuela to you? If you watched BBC TV, or Canadian Broadcasting, you'd know all this stuff. But if you read the New York Times, you'll only know that President Chavez is an "autocrat," a "ruinous demagogue," and a "would-be dictator," who resigned when he recognized his unpopularity.

Odd phrasings – "dictator" and "autocrat" – to describe Chavez, who was elected by a landslide majority (56 percent) of the voters. Unlike our President.

(snip)

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=230&row=1

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

66. And where have you been? : - ) n/t

[Tinoire]

100. Jeez! What a picture!

It's going to give me nightmares :)

I was recuperating and getting certain aspects of my life in order as well as disconnecting my on-line persona from my real identity.

Plus things were a little too unpleasant here when we were all expected to zip it up for Kerry. I understood the rationale but knew I wouldn't be able to zip it up. Then I needed to wait until most of the "I told you so" was out of my system because I have no quarrel with people who saw things differently at the time. But I still don't want to hear any apologetics now.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

124. I know exactly what you mean. Sorry about the nasty image. ;- )

[Tinoire]

127. So you show it to me again lol!

Urgh, what a nasty, deliberately nasty little man!

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

128. It's my new sig line until I find something even more disgusting. n/t

[Tinoire]

178. Oh lol! Don't take it away- I was just teasing!

It's ghastly and disgusting but lol, it's so.... spot on!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

136. He aleady has been turning out to be what he claims to be

[Carl Brennan]

54. Another fine post MB.

:toast:

[rman]

89. Where did you get the idea that Chavez is a dictator?

Democracy in Venezuela comes much closer to its Renaissance ideal (self-rule of the people) then what we have in the west.

It's very simple: The vast majority of the population of Venezuela is poor thanks to decades of corporatist rule. Chavez does many things that *really* help the poor, much unlike Bush's "no child left behind" and "new freedom initiative". So the vast majority of the people love Chavez and they voted for him - twice. In between they had a little bloodless revolution to get Chavez back after the corporatists' coup.

[FoundInTheMaise]

48. Chavez is so beautiful

How can one out do such a beautiful guard of our freedoms?

[Bono71]

52. Cuba---that land of opportunity.

[AP]

68. Or the land of no opportunity for ITT, Chiquita, and gambling industry.

Is your glass half full or half empty?

[Bono71]

72. I think the guy that murdered thousands of his own countrymen

(including the entire family of my parrish's priest, for the horrible crime of being Catholic) has a little to do with the coutry's plight, sanctions notwithstanding.

Whatever you think of Chavez, it is truly a joke that Cuba is a part of some kind of "rights" campaign.

[IllegalCombatant]

75. like bush

[Bono71]

77. Fine, like Bush, if you like. But we have a hell of a lot more

freedom in this country under * than Cuba ever had under Castro. He is a devil in every sense of the word, and defending him by naming another devil is just plain dumb.

[IllegalCombatant]

79. the enemy of my enemy

isn't always your friend is true but i don't know what liberties you are referring to so please spell them out ALSO last i looked the people of CUBA seemed to have better standards for their populations health, education, security than we do here it home has something dramatically changed?

has someone threatened them with total annihilation with WMDs to force a STATE OF EMERGENCY or somet'n :shrug:

tia :toast:

[Bono71]

80. Here is one small anectdotal story...

Rene Gonzales (8) went to play with his friends who lived about half a mile down his street. When dusk game, his friend's mother walked him home to a house where they found, murdered, his:

1)Mother
2)Father
3) 3 sisters (the youngest being 2)
4) 2 brothers
5) Grandfather
6) His next door neighbor.

You see, they were Catholic, and Castro suspected them as being loyal to the pope. Cool, huh?

You mentioned Cuba's healthcare as a positive for the country, and it is...but the mass murders comitted by Castro and his regime (in power for several decades...can you say DICTATOR?) will never be forgotten or forgiven by history.

Bush sucks, no doubt about it. But I am afraid your hatred for all things republican have clouded your judgment of Castro...

[IllegalCombatant]

81. bush sr. helped kill jfk

next

Bush didn’t pull the trigger, but he supervised E. Howard Hunt, who did.

1) E. Howard Hunt: Hunt was the leader of the Watergate burglars, a band of CIA-funded Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban terrorists and assassins. In 1978, Spotlight magazine published an article saying that Hunt was in Dallas the day JFK died and had murdered Kennedy. Hunt sued and lost!! The jury decided he did it. (Mark Lane, Plausible Denial, 1991, Thundermouth Press, page 332) (LINK13)

2) 5 days after the Kennedy assassination, J Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, and signed a memo(LINk14, bushmemo.jpg), naming “George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” as an apparent supervisor of the bands of CIA-funded Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban terrorists and assassins. Bush acknowledges the memo is real. The title of the memo is “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”. Why would J. Edgar Hoover name it that? (LINK15)

3) George de Mohrenschildt was an important witness in the first Kennedy assassination. He got Lee Harvey Oswald the job in the School Book Depository. He was murdered the day he was supposed to testify about the assassination. Found in his phone book were George Bush’s name, and Bush’s company name.(LINK16)

4) There is every indication that Bush recruited Hunt for the Watergate burglaries. Bush set up the slush fund that paid $1,000,000 in bribes to the burglars, his friends contributed the money, and he laundered it.(LINK17)

more...
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/bush_killed_jfkjr.htm

least i provided a link for my "anectdotal story" :evilgrin:

[Bono71]

83. You don't have to believe me (or my priest who

is about as liberal as they come, minus the issue of choice). But you know, deep down, that Castro is a monster. If you don't know this, that of course, is your problem.

[Carl Brennan]

82. You just assume that Castro did these things. Person I need

some sources or I'm calling it Bullshit!

[Bono71]

84. Ummm...read any number of books on Castro...or if you like,

read the newspaper articles from a few years back regarding the dissidents who hijacked a ship (to flee to the US) and were summarily executed...

Do you think you could complain about Castro the way you complain about Bush in this country? How many mass demonstrations do you think Castor allows?

Why, in your opinion, do you think Castor has stayed in power for nearly 5 decades? In 4 years do you think Bush will step down, or will he simply impose martial law and stay around for a few more decades?

Puhlease...links my azz...learn some history.

[Carl Brennan]

86. One helluva alot of lies have been told by the corporate owned Press.

You need sources.

How many mass demonstrations would occur in the US if a country 100 times its size terrorized it for 40 some years????? If Bush had his way he would shut down every expression of the public will he could.

THAT is the question you anti-Castro people ignore with a religiousity that borders on fanaticism.

As far as I'm concerned you are blowing smoke.

Bring up a few of these articles.

[Judi Lynn]

134. I just scanned backwards trying to determine how a thread about Chavez

was shifted to the off-ramp and focused on a bunch of gusano bald-faced, slimey lies! You can be sure when a gusano/a feels he's really in control, they love to start spraying the message board with childish, outlandish, and stupid ravings about Fidel Castro.

Since the U.S. rightwing officials have kept a travel ban in place, Miami riffraff imagine they can say ANYTHING and no one will be able to challenge it. They could say that Fidel Castro comes out of his house every morning, dressed in a kimono, carrying a lunchbucket, and skips backwards down the street. Might as well! The majority of Americans haven't been able to put one foot inside Cuba, due to our own policies (while coming and going freely to China, VietNam, Russia, etc.).

Do you remember when Elián was help captive by his bizarre drunken greatuncle Lázaro Gonzalez in Little Havana that whenever reporters got too close to the lunatics for interviews wierd things would float up like:

1.Castro eats babies
2. Children in Cuba belong to the State
3. The people in Georgetown who gave a dinner for Elian were Santería worshipers, the proof being someone had taken a photo over their fence of a LAWN GNOME and sent it to Newsmax claiming it was a Santería deity.
4. Dolphins surrounded Elián and protected him.
5. The Virgin Mary appeared in the bathroom mirror in Lázaro's house.

The list is endless. Throwing around grotesque ravings and rantings always serves to suck in the mentally twisted, and keep everyone's minds off the important issues which need to be addressed. You've probably noticed this furtive behavior pattern! It's a natural expression of truly impaired personalities.

Rightwing ravings only are taken seriously by the mentally infirm. Anyone else has the common sense to recognize them immediately.

Whenever you see a poster regress, imagining he is in his element, starting to use the word "Castor" in place of "Castro," you realize you're reading the ruminations of a Cuban rightwingnut "exile" or his dependent, who never finally gained independent thought. It seemed so damned odd to me during the Elián days when Miami grubs tossed "Castor" around freely on message boards, and then I realized they are the only ones who do it. It tells you who they are. No one else does it.

When you try to ask them for confirmation of their assertions, they change the subject. In this case, it would have to be changing the subject BACK to the subject of the thread!



One of these men is a bloodthirsty idjit.

[Carl Brennan]

139. Wow! That is some fine insightful writing JL.

:toast:

[Judi Lynn]

160. Carl! I'm still lost in thought about all those many Castro murders.......

You don't think the esteemed guests may have been, in confusion, referring to the atrocities committed by the Fulgencio Batista reign of terror, do you?

Just found something in google which is interesting, and enlightening:

In December, 1957:

A weekly news magazine, Revista Carteles, reports that twenty members of the Batista government own numbered Swiss bank accounts, each with deposits of more than $1 million.

American firms make profits of $77 million from their Cuban investments, while employing little more than 1 percent of the country's population.

By the late 1950’s, American capital control:
90% of Cuba’s mines
80% of its public utilities
50% of its railways
40% of its sugar production
25% of its bank deposits

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/time/timetbl3b.htm

(This source is seriously simplified: only the bare outline of the history, but interesting enough!)

[Carl Brennan]

165. hmmmm, I think you are onto something there. But never under

estimate the power of faith based history. You just have to close your eyes, tap your feet three times and say I do believe in ghosts.

[Bono71]

145. If anyone is nuts, it is someone who fails to look at a situation

for what it really is.

The truth:

1) Bush lied and started a war.
2) Castro is a dictator, and is responsible the murder of many
3) Chavez has nice rhetoric but is a far cry from progressive leaders in Europe and other parts of the world.

This is the truth. Deal with it.

[Judi Lynn]

157. Still waiting to read some of the wealth of information you have

regarding the mass murders by Fidel Castro. I really want to see this, as it has NEVER turned up anywhere in history books. NOT ONCE. Simply taking your word for it doesn't work here.

Chavez has had to confront situations far, far different from anything going on in Europe. He has had to work from a decadent aging formerly colonialist government structure which, as we ALL know, and someone already pointed out in this thread, has had less than 10% of the population owning practically the entire country, and the vast majority of people desperately far worse off than THEY would be if the entire group were transported to Europe, and capable of taking advantage of more democratic, fairer circumstances for the entire population.

Could you tell me where in Europe you will be able to find people stacked on top of each other in horrid shacks on the sides of hills, subject to mudslides and fires which wipe them out in the thousands?
Just where in Europe would I look for this?



This has happened in country stolen by Spanish colonialists, as in many other L. A. countries, and the native citizens made virtual strangers in their own land. Where will you find a silimilar condition in Europe with which to realistically compare?

We all see the truth, and we see what some people have been trying to do with it, too.

[Tinoire]

179. Whoa! What a roll you're on! KUDOS!!!!!

:toast: Well said!

[Carl Brennan]

85. Sources? I need to see sources for all of these crimes

Castro has supposedly committed. A more likely scenario IMO is that the CIA did this shit to get people to think exactly like you and spread these stories. I think the government was behind 9/11 and the CIA has a long history of destabilizing governments that don't cowtow to the multinationals. Doing the kinds of crimes you are talking about is not beyond them.

We need to clear this up.

[imenja]

121. Try Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch

Amnesty International: http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-cub/index
Human Rights Watch:
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=americas&c=cuba

It's not very difficult to check out the status of human rights in Cuba if you make an effort. You can start with the above organizations. The UN also has information available.

I am troubled by a disturbing tendency of Americans to think only in black and white and not consider the evidence that makes all issues such as these far more complicated than many would like to take time to think about. That Castro has resisted US domination does not make him an unvarnished hero. Clearly, he brought many material benefits to the Cuban people in the first two decades of his rule, but those improvements were subsidized by the Soviet Union. Cuba actually became even more dependent on sugar exports under Castro than it had been under Batista. With the collapse of the USSR, Cuba's funds dried up and the country entered serious economic crisis. It has since improved somewhat, due largely to promoting tourism--the very industry Castro denounced as exemplary of Cuba's exploitation by the US in the 1950s.

Like the dictator before him, human rights and democracy mean little to Castro. The fact that hundreds of thousands--perhaps it's millions--of Cubans have left that country suggests that many don't believe it to be a land of opportunity. Only the first generation of exiles were predominantly members of the plantation elite. To dismiss the experiences of those emigrants is unwise. Castro was once very popular in Cuba. My understanding is that is no longer the case.
I believe we should grant Cubans, Bolivians, Venezuelans, and other nationals the same respect we do for ourselves. Like Americans, they have a right to an elected government that does not jail people for political speech or execute dissidents. That the government is socialist does not excuse human rights violations any more so than if it were a right wing dictatorship. Bono71 offered a perspective based on his own family's experience. You should consider that carefully and read additional sources before you dismiss him so quickly.

[Bono71]

125. Sorry, Imenja. Your post is far too rational for an internet

message board. Don't you understand that (like George Bush likes to say) at the Democrat Underground, you're either for the "leftists" (including murderous dictators) or you're against the leftists. There is no room for anything other than Black and White thinking.

Cheers.

[Carl Brennan]

131. You still haven't provided a goddamn thing to back up your

claims about Castro butchering children. :eyes:

[imenja]

140. Willful ignorance is inexcusable

I did not claim Castro butchers children. I asked you to use your mind, to think, to read. Willful ignorance is inexcusable. If you refuse to consider evidence and new information, you behave precisely as the Right Wingers who support Bush have done. Start reading through some of the links I provided. Go to the UN site. Listen to people with first hand experiences under Castro and combine that with academic readings. You have a responsibility to educate yourself.

[Carl Brennan]

147. Imenja, the question is directed to Boner. nt

[Bono71]

152. You love ad hominem attacks. So intelligent. You refuse

to admit the truth. I have neither the time nor the inclination to provide internet links to the homicides Castro's regime has committed. You have already been pointed to places where you can find such testimonials, if you don't want to read these thing, that is your choice. But in the end, you know, deep down, he is a killer. Just like Bush.

[Carl Brennan]

154. You don't have anything boner. That is why you are bouncing

around this topic like a ping-pong ball.

"But in the end, you know, deep down, he is a killer".

You tryin' to convert me to your faith based history now? :eyes:

[Name removed]

155. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Carl Brennan]

162. Talk about losing it. What happened to yer Christian ethic my man?

:eyes:

[Tinoire]

180. LMAO! "Faith based history"!!

That gets an

A+!

That's about what it boils down to when agenda-driven people try to play but don't have the requisite knowledge to intelligently participate in a discussion.

So amusing in childish, transparent attempts to derail progressive consensus...

Yep, Castro's a killer - Batista told me so!

Chavez is an 'autocrat' (don't know what it means, barely know how to spell it) but if it comes from the White House, it must be true!

Oh where's the compassion???

[Carl Brennan]

130. I'm familiar with these links. That is not what I am asking Bono about.

Albeit indirectly I address these oddities in a number of replies in this topic.

The Cuban authorities have justified their actions against the 75 dissidents tried in April of last year as a need to defend themselves against provocations and threats posed to its national security by the United States. While Amnesty International believes that nothing can justify the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience or other violations of fundamental rights and continues to condemn Cuba for these violations, it also recognizes the negative effect of the US embargo on the full range of human rights in Cuba, and therefore calls on the US to review its policy.

For some reason people who read these reports fail to read these parts. As I have said a thousand times Cuba is under siege.

We pick at stuff like this while Iraq is turned into a wasteland and prisoners in GTMO, Abu Graib and elsewhere are abused in the name of national security and then we try to call Cuba an island of oppression. Totally hypocritical. The US has no moral authority.

I want you to point me at something you have written expressing outrage at the US's suppression of human rights in this regard.

[Bono71]

143. Ok...Cuba is under seige...and Castro is still a dictator...

and you, my friend, are on the wrong side of history.

[Carl Brennan]

148. Agreed, finally. I am on the wrong

side of history; specifically "faith based" history, which seems to be the only history you know.

But where in the Bible does it say Castro is a baby murderer?

[Bono71]

153. I can honestly admit,

I have no idea what you are writing about. What in the name of Adam, does "faith based" history have anything to do with Castro?

Castro always justified his purges with a reason. Usually, the reason is the dissident (or average Joe) was a spy for the United States. Sometimes, like in the instance I wrote about, the average Joe was in league with someone else -- the pope.

What Castro did, early on, was to try to figure out what types of people would be threats to his regime. If you had any type of influence, you were either 1) imprisoned or 2) killed. It was that simple.

Oh, and in many cases, your family was killed, too.

[imenja]

182. Why is suppressing human rights okay for Castro but not Bush?

Neither is acceptable. I agree completely that the US government under George Bush, especially but sadly also under most previous administrations, has no moral authority on human rights. But I am a human being with a conscience. I find it very difficult to stand back and watch others justify human rights violations. Jailing dissidents for political views is wrong, regardless of who does it. Obviously the embargo has negative effects on Cuba, but Castro also gets a great deal of mileage from it since he can use it as a scapegoat for his countries economic problems. The embargo is sheer lunacy. After nearly 45 years, it's obvious that it has not worked in it's proponents desired goal of removing Castro from power.
I accept political suppression and human rights violations from no one. There are basic human values that should not be violated: the right to free speech, political organization without suppression, and to live without the threat of political violence, and representative government (if that is what the people of that nation choose). I would also argue that poverty in a land of plenty such as our own is also an unconscionable human rights violation, as is much of the economic and social injustice that characterizes our society.
Why is it so difficult for people to think in terms that are not entirely black or white? You're either with us or against us? It saddens me that such ideas are as prevalent on the left as the right. Before reading these blogs, I would not have thought it possible.

[CAcyclist]

170. Lots of Black and White Thinking to Go Around

It's possible to admire a leader who is trying to help his people even if the methods are not always those we would choose. And condemning Castro because Amnesty International has issues with him doesn't mean much unless you locate the AI argument and present it here. AI has complaints against many, many countries, not the least of which includes the US.

Nobody here is excusing anything, but true democracy means that people are not judged and condemned based on flimsy evidence.

[Tinoire]

103. Uh Bono

If Castro had any problems with people for the horrible crime of being Catholic, there would be nobody left in Cuba; Catholicism was and still is the predominant religion in Cuba.

Btw, Fidel Castro attended three Jesuit institutions. College Lasalle, Colegio Dolores and Colegio Belen. After law school he joined the Orthodox or Christian Democrat party (a Roman Catholic Party). Castro was working for and with the Jesuits who were very much into liberation theology and supported his revolution. Google one of Castro's strongest advocate Father Pedro Arrupe.

I hope you're not getting your information from US propaganda.

Maybe what you meant was "rich elitist Catholics" who loved Batista and wanted to keep the poor oppressed :shrug: They're alot like the rich elitist Catholic Haitians- you know all those light-skinned descendents of the plantation owners who never quite got over sharing the country's resources with the darkies.

[imenja]

122. many refugees are not rich

This unidimensional view of politics is disturbing. The first generation of Cuban exiles following the revolution were wealthy plantation owners, but most of the subsequent exiles were not, especially those who came in the 1990s. You don't have to rely on US propaganda to have reservations about Castro. A basic reading of Latin American history would be a start. You can also visit the websites of human rights organizations. I provide links in my post below, which also offers further details.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1041164&mesg_id=1048074

[Tinoire]

126. Nice way to dodge the question

We were talking about persecution of Cubans for the "horrible crime of being Catholic". Please document the horrible persecution of Catholics for their crime of being Catholic and then please explain why if Castro were persecuting Catholics, it's still the predominant religion of Cuba and so openly practiced that the Pope went down for a 2 day visit where he was very well received.

I just loved Castro's visit to the Vatican- you know the respectful one which contrasted sharply with Chimp Boy's visit, didn't you?

Please don't presume to ask this Latin American to go learn Latin American history. We know very well who our heroes are and how the class system works.

Viva Castro!

Viva Che!

Viva Chavez!

[Bono71]

129. Ummm, all Castro needed was an excuse...and in 1972, his

excuse was "Being in line with the Vatican over the ideals of the revolution."

By the way, Che Gueverra was so bloody, Castro had to call him off (he loved to execute people, a little too much, even for Castro).

[Carl Brennan]

133. And again you have NO sources for your claims.

:eyes:

[Bono71]

142. Ummm...go to amnesty international...you'll find plenty...

or do you listen to Amnesty only when they bash your own country.

[Carl Brennan]

146. NO! Your claims. Bono. Your claims! nt

[Bono71]

151. Willful blindness, my man. Forget what I wrote...but please

pay attention.

[imenja]

138. I provided links and sources for you to read

I did not dodge the question. I hope you read my other post that I provided you a link to. What I asked you to do is take some time to read and think about the issue. My other posts contain links to Amnesty International and Human Rights watch.

By the way, Bono71 is also Latin American, and his family is Cuban. I teach Latin American history, but what I refuse to do is dismiss the experiences of students or colleagues of mine that have first hand experience under Castro's government. Like most academics in Latin American studies, I was taught a fairly--though not entirely--uncritical view of the Castro government. After hearing the experiences of many Cuban exiles, I had to change my view of the regime. Education, after all, requires an open mind and a determination to seek out the truth (or truths).

One very readable book I like to use to teach the revolution is Christina Garcia's novel, _Dreaming in Cuban_. What is great about that novel is that it depicts a single family divided by the revolution and ideas about the United States. It provides an opportunity to consider various sides of the issue.

One thing I will never forget is a student who told me about a member of his family--an old mad, so grieved by exile, unable to return to Cuba yet never at home in the US, that he committed suicide after first wrapping himself in the Cuban flag. That left a profound impact on me and prompted me to think carefully about the issue and consider respectfully and seriously the experiences of Cuban exiles.

[Judi Lynn]

163. Reading your post reminded me of something I read in Bardach's book

Cuba Confidential, Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana written by the former N.Y. Times reporter, Ann Louise Bardach. She was also one of the two reporters who conducted a well publicized interview with criminal scumball mass murderer/bomber Luis Posada Carriles.

From her book, published in 2002:

But there has been a slow but steady shift in the last decade-a nod to the clear majority of Cubans en exilio and on the island who crave family reunification. Since 1978, more than one million airline tickets have been sold for flights from Miami to Havana. Faced with the brisk and continuous traffic between Miami and Havana, hard-liners on both sides have opted to deny the new reality. Anomalies such as the phenomenon of reverse balseros, Cubans who, unable to adapt to the pressures and bustle of entrepreneurial Miami, return to the island, or gusañeros, expatriates who send a portion of their earnings home in exchange for unfettered travel back and forth to Cuba (the term is a curious Cuban hybrid of gusano and compañero,or comrade) are unacknowledged by both sides, as are those who live in semi-exilio, returning home to Cuba for long holidays.
(snip)

Also, on the same page:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolucionario, while those who decided to leave were gusanos (worms) or escoria (scum). In Miami, the rhetoric has also been harsh. Exiles who do not endorse a confrontational policy with Cuba, seeking instead a negotiated settlement, have often been excoriated as traidores (traitors) and sometimes espías (spies). Cubans, notably cultural stars, who visit Miami but choose to return to their homeland have been routinely denounced. Either one defects or is repudiated.

On page XX:

Scores of U.S.-born Cuban-Americans, unfettered by their parents' rage, have sought to engage with Cuba. They travel regularly to the island, often without notifying their families.
Page xviii, Preface
Cuba Confidential

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I bring this up now because I'm curious about why your remarks are at odds with what Ms. Bardach has written, after many trips to Cuba, and enormous investment of time in research.

[imenja]

181. How are my remarks at odds with those comments

My sense from living in Florida and what I've read about Cuba--including the Christina Garcia novel I mentioned--is that the remarks you posted seem accurate.
As I said, I certainly don't claim first hand knowledge on the subject. My caution was to pay attention to those who do rather than callously dismissing their experience because it doesn't fit with one's preconceived world view. I don't see any contradiction with that and what you've posted above.

[Judi Lynn]

187. Thanks for reading the post. Here was the point in placing it:

From your own related material:

One thing I will never forget is a student who told me about a member of his family--an old mad, so grieved by exile, unable to return to Cuba yet never at home in the US, that he committed suicide after first wrapping himself in the Cuban flag. That left a profound impact on me and prompted me to think carefully about the issue and consider respectfully and seriously the experiences of Cuban exiles.

I wrote:

Cuba Confidential, Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana written by the former N.Y. Times reporter, Ann Louise Bardach. She was also one of the two reporters who conducted a well publicized interview with criminal scumball mass murderer/bomber Luis Posada Carriles.

From her book, published in 2002:

But there has been a slow but steady shift in the last decade-a nod to the clear majority of Cubans en exilio and on the island who crave family reunification. Since 1978, more than one million airline tickets have been sold for flights from Miami to Havana. Faced with the brisk and continuous traffic between Miami and Havana, hard-liners on both sides have opted to deny the new reality. Anomalies such as the phenomenon of reverse balseros, Cubans who, unable to adapt to the pressures and bustle of entrepreneurial Miami, return to the island, or gusañeros, expatriates who send a portion of their earnings home in exchange for unfettered travel back and forth to Cuba (the term is a curious Cuban hybrid of gusano and compañero,or comrade) are unacknowledged by both sides, as are those who live in semi-exilio, returning home to Cuba for long holidays.
(snip)

Also, on the same page:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolucionario, while those who decided to leave were gusanos (worms) or escoria (scum). In Miami, the rhetoric has also been harsh. Exiles who do not endorse a confrontational policy with Cuba, seeking instead a negotiated settlement, have often been excoriated as traidores (traitors) and sometimes espías (spies). Cubans, notably cultural stars, who visit Miami but choose to return to their homeland have been routinely denounced. Either one defects or is repudiated.

On page XX:

Scores of U.S.-born Cuban-Americans, unfettered by their parents' rage, have sought to engage with Cuba. They travel regularly to the island, often without notifying their families.
Page xviii, Preface
Cuba Confidential
(snip/)

I posted statements concerning a LARGE traffic between Miami and Cuba prior to _Bush's proclamation a year or so ago concerning closing the former Cuban "exile" travel to and from Cuba. As another post mentioned, even a Bay of Pigs veteran came and went from Cuba, even taking simple vacations there, just as did Elián Gonzalez' desperately-at-odds-with-life, drunken greatuncle Lázaro Gonzalez. Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo has decided simply to return to live in Cuba, heading his own political party.

The first quote indicated that it has been common for Cuban "exiles" to come, to go, to go and stay for a long time, and as we have seen, some return altogether. It has been concealed from ordinary Americans who live outside Florida and haven't known Cuban "exiles" who have had their relatives from Cuba coming to visit them in the States, or who have gone themselves back and forth (concealed from ordinary Americans who have been PROHIBITED from travelling 90 miles to a small island which has NEVER engaged in vicious, bloodthirsty terrorism, actually having been the subject of 40+ long, nasty YEARS of terrorism by the Miami Mafia) that there have been two totally opposite legal realities for Cuban "exiles" and the native-born American citizens concerning travel to Cuba.

The little old man who died of grief, wrapped sadly in his Cuban flag could have, as it must seem, after all, returned to Cuba if he truly felt he wanted to do it. Nothing ultimately prevented it, unless he was a wanted criminal there.

[imenja]

189. Human experiences vary

I spoke of a story that a student told me that affected me. In fact, it prompted me to think seriously about how I view the Cuban government. It took time some time to sink in, but the memory comes back to me from time to time and that, in conjunction with other experiences Cuban exiles have shared with me, has led me to think differently on the issue.

My understanding is that it is not easy for exiles to return to Cuba. I know a Cuban-born historian whose research is on Colonial Cuba. The Cuban government has never granted her a visa to return to Cuba to do research. As a result, her research has been confined to the Council of Indies and ecclesiastical archives in Spain.

If my student's father-in-law had felt free to return to Cuba, if he felt he would have been safe in doing so, I can only imagine that he would have returned home. His dramatic and poignant suicide--wrapped in the Cuban flag--expresses a great deal of pain over his exile. I ask you to please not dismiss his experience but instead think about it, in conjunction with other things you have read.

Another factor in exiles returning to Cuba is the Bush administration's recent restrictions, which limits visits to once a year and further limit the money Cubans can send home to their families. Restrictions are on both sides--by the Cuban and US governments, but the result is a painful situation for Americans with relatives in Cuba.

I admire many of the Castro's economic accomplishments. Fighting hunger, illiteracy, and sickness are great achievements, as are the emphasis his government places on the arts. But from what I know from friends who have traveled to Cuba---academics who are ALL leftists (if you're a Latin Americanist and aren't leftist, you probably work for the CIA. A joke, but it does contain a grain of truth)--is that many, if not most, Cubans would like a change in government. Unfortunately, they don't have that option.

I admire Salvador Allende much more than Castro. He was committed to equality and socialist reform but was also unyielding in his commitment to democracy and free expression. That, in fact, is why Henry Kissinger concluded (in his own memoirs, _The White House Years_) that Allende posed a greater threat to US control of Latin America and capitalist hegemony more generally. Allende, of course, would not be as successful as Castro and would meet his death in a coup in 1973--on September 11. Unlike Castro, he didn't benefit from the protection of the Soviet Union, and without that would be unable to survive US opposition. The Nixon administration ensured his demise and with it brought temporary and bloody end to the longest period of democracy in any Latin American nation. Why, I wonder, are the best leaders always killed?

I am firmly commitment to democracy, free expression, and human rights. If that makes me bourgeois, so be it. I felt differently when I was 18 or 20. I refused to believe that socialist governments like Castro's could be guilty of human rights abuses, that a commitment to equality outweighed electoral choice (Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat, etc...). Over the years, I have read more, listened to people with other points of view, and opened my mind to the realization that history and politics are far more complicated than I had earlier imagined. Yet there are some universal values that must not be violated. Both our own government and Castro's ignores essential human rights far too often.

[CAcyclist]

173. Yes, you did dodge the question

You need to present your evidence and back it up with sources. It is not sufficient to merely present a url.

[imenja]

183. Sources and evidence here

How silly of me to expect that others might be willing to read and investigate the matter for themselves. Obviously I've overestimated my readership.

I assume here you are asking for sources on the issue of human rights rather than basic historical background on the Cuban Revolution. I provide some here from general works and human rights reports. Most of my Cuba books are in my office, so I provide what I can here with the few that I have at home.

Despite the disturbing evidence below, Cuba does not have the worst human rights record in Latin America--not even close. Guatemala, with 200,000 killed between 1954 and 1996 by US backed right-wing military dictatorships bears that horrific distinction. But because it is not the worst does not mean it is acceptable.
Read for yourselves.

This is in rough chronological order but is by no means inclusive:

“By the late 1960s an estimated 20,0000 political opponents of the government languished in prison. In 1965, the government established the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) designed principally to draft dissidents and ‘social deviants’ into the army for ‘rehabilitation.’ The UMAP was disbanded in 1967, but during its two year existence was known to have routinely used torture and corporal punishment on detainees.” By the end of the 1960s, “more than half a million Cubans had resettled in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. By the 1970s, hence, the stability and security of the revolution had been established.” Louis A. Perez Jr., Cuba: Between Revolution and Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 349.

Perez further discusses the many achievements of the Revolution in education, health care, and the standard of living of ordinary Cubans. He, like virtually every textbook or other introductory readings on Cuba, observes those improvements were financed by the Soviets, who bought Cuban sugar at well-above market prices (pp. 355-356). Since it is published in 1988, this particular study does not cover the post-Soviet or “special period.”
Other textbooks on Latin American history (Skidmore and Smith, Charlip and Burns, and Clayton and Conniff) do. That information is too widely known for me to bother repeating here. The economic crisis of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, led to large-scale emigration, and many of those exiles came to South Florida.


Below are excerpts from reports of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. I have included only excerpts from 1976 (the first available in English) and 2003, the most recent.

It would not have ordinarily occurred to me to consult the OAS as a source, but the prominent political scientist Jorge Dominguez, in his bibliographic essay that comprises part of _The Cambridge History of Latin America__ (paper back volume available as Leslie Bethell, ed., Cuba: A Short History (Cambridge, 1993) cites it as an important source. He also directs the reader’s attention to Amnesty International and a number of monographs (p. 165)

FIFTH REPORT OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
ON THE STATUS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA. 1976

http://www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/Cuba76eng/chap.1.htm

Since 1 January 1959, thousands of persons have been shot without trial. From the list of such cases, between 1961 and 1970, we have taken the following, as examples: Lydia Pérez León, died during childbirth in the prison for women in Guanajay, at the age of 21, in January 1961. She was refused medical assistance during a pregnancy with complications. Her husband, also a prisoner in another establishment, hanged himself when he heard about the death of his wife and his son.
Juan Pereira Varela (Juanín). Student, 21 years of age. Arrested in Havanna and shot without trial in Pinar del Rio, on December 17, 1961.
Julio Medina, died at Castillo del Príncipe, of an asthma attack, without receiving medical care.
The following also died in 1974, the exact date of death undetermined: José Pereda, Tomás Aguirre, Ramón Quesada, Julio Hernández, Filiberto Polledo Morales, Gastón Vidal, Manuel Cuevas, and Luis Alvarez Ríos.
All of them, except for Roberto López Chavez, who died on a hunger strike without receiving medical care, were killed with clubs, machetes or bayonets, or shot to death, while the famous compulsory labor plan was being enforced. In 1967, the Isla de Pinos prison was torn down, and the prisoners were distributed among the many places of imprisonment on the island of Cuba. . . . (you'll find many more examples included as part of this 1976 report).


Annual Report of 2003 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights http://www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/2003eng/chap.4a.htm#_ftn16

“ 20. Since publication of the last Annual Report, for 2002, the IACHR has made an exhaustive evaluation of the human rights situation in Cuba. The IACHR notes that the situation of civil and political rights in Cuba has deteriorated substantially as a consequence of the events transpired on March of 2003.

21. On March 18, 2003, Cuban authorities began a week-long crackdown on human rights activists and independent journalists that culminated in the arrest of about 100 activists. They were all taken to the offices of the Department of State Security and subjected to long interrogations and other types of psychological torture.<15> After these interrogations, 73 of the 78 detained human rights activists were charged under Law 88 and Article 92 of the Cuban Penal Code. To these 73 cases were added two more involving two activists who had already been arrested several months earlier: Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet and Jesús Muestafá Felipe. The Prosecutor General of the Republic of Cuba filed motions with the Court requesting sentences that ranged from 15 years in prison to the death penalty in some cases. Summary trials took place starting April 3, 2003, without allowing any time for the defendants’ families to mount a proper defense. Many of the activists were assigned counsel by the State itself. None of the accused was acquitted (although during the hasty trial it was not possible to demonstrate the guilt of any of them with the evidence presented by the prosecution). The 75 persons were sentenced to prison terms of between 6 and 28 years. At this time the 75 human rights activists remain confined in a “maximum lockdown” in punishment cells with limited family visitation (once every three months) and in many cases no access to medical or religious assistance. In addition, most of the prisoners were moved to facilities far removed from their homes. . . .
large number of detainees, tried and sentenced during the wave of repression, were the Cuban citizens who promoted the Varela Project.<16> In 2002, citing Articles 63 and 88<17> of Cuba’s Constitution, a group of Cuban citizens called “Todos Unidos ,” representing more than 140 organizations and coordinated by Osvaldo Payá Sardiñas, presented a petition with 11,020 signatures to the General Assembly of the People’s Power asking for a constitutional referendum to introduce substantive changes in the law. The Varela Project petitions the National Assembly for a referendum on the amendments needed in the laws, preserving the general welfare and respect for human rights.<18> The Cuban authorities’ initial response a few days after the “Varela Project” was presented was a nationwide mobilization in which 800,000 signatures were collected to declare the Cuban Constitution and the socialist system irrevocable. The Commission was also told that prominent notables from the peaceful opposition who signed the Varela Project petition, like Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Elizardo Sánchez, Julio Ruiz Pitaluga, Osvaldo Payá Sardiñas—coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement—,Héctor Palacios Ruiz, and Pedro Pablo Álvarez, were arbitrarily arrested. Cuban authorities confiscated their documents and personal belongings and temporarily prohibited them from leaving the country.”

Note the IAHR calls the repression of Valera activists “one of the most serious suffered by human rights activists and independent journalists since the days of the plantados históricos .”

How are these arrests and executions a reasonable response to the embargo?

[Judi Lynn]

184. The reason the embargo can be blamed for Cuba's dire economic straights

is because suffering is built into the reason for using it. Everyone knows that. Only the slowest could be attracted to this absurd charge which rightwingers attempt to pull out time after time. Punishing Cuban citizens has been on the minds of occassional homicidal fools in the country since 1897, when the Breckenridge Memorandum was penned:

Department of War
Office of the Undersecretary
Washington D.C.

December 24, 1897


(snip)
We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army.
(snip)

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/bmemo.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CIA: Most Cubans loyal to homeland
Agency believes various ties to island bind the majority
By Robert Windrem
NBC NEWS PRODUCER

NEW YORK, April 12 <2000> — Cuban-American exile leaders — and many Republicans in Congress — believe that no Cuban, including Juan Miguel Gonzalez, could withstand the blandishments of a suburban American lifestyle, that he and all other Cubans would gladly trade their “miserable” lives in Cuba for the prosperity of the United States — if only given the chance. Witness House Minority Leader Dick Armey’s invitation to Gonzalez, offering him a tour of a local supermarket. But U.S. intelligence suggests otherwise.


THE CIA has long believed that while 1 million to 3 million Cubans would leave the island if they had the opportunity, the rest of the nation’s 11 million people would stay behind.

While an extraordinarily high number, there are still 8 million to 10 million Cubans happy to remain on the island.
(snip)

The CIA believes there are many reasons Cubans are content to remain in their homeland. Some don’t want to be separated from home, family and friends. Some fear they would never be able to return, and still others just fear change in general. Officials also say there is a reservoir of loyalty to Fidel Castro and, as in the case of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, to the Communist Party.

U.S. officials say they no longer regard Cuba as a totalitarian state with aggressive policies toward its people, but instead an authoritarian state, where the public can operate within certain bounds — just not push the envelope.

More important, Cuban media and Cuban culture long ago raised the banner of nationalism above that of Marxism. The intelligence community says the battle over Elian has presented Castro with a “unique opportunity” to enhance that nationalism.

There is no indication, U.S. officials say, of any nascent rebellion about to spill into the streets, no great outpouring of support for human rights activists in prison. In fact, there are fewer than 100 activists on the island and a support group of perhaps 1,000 more, according to U.S. officials.
(snip)

http://members.allstream.net/~dchris/CubaFAQ019.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

April 26, 2003

Cuba Crackdown:
A Revolt Against the National Security Strategy?
By ROBERT SANDELS

Since becoming principal officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in September 2002, James Cason has increased official U.S. connections with Cuban dissidents. Entering directly into Cuba domestic politics, Cason helped launch the youth wing of the dissident Partido Liberal Cubano. Nowhere in the world, said Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, would it be legal for a foreigner to participate in the formation of a political party. In October 2002, Cason invited a group of dissidents to meet with U.S. newspaper editors at his residence in Havana. Although it has become routine for heads of the U.S. mission to seek out dissidents, it was unusual to meet them at home.

Feb. 24 of this year, he participated in a meeting of the dissident Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society at the home of prominent dissident Marta Beatriz Roque. Also present at the meeting were several reporters to whom Cason repeated his criticisms of President Fidel Castro's government and reaffirmed U.S. support for dissidents.

Cason organized two other such meetings at his residence in March even after receiving a formal complaint from the Foreign Ministry.

In a recent television interview in Miami, Cason said the help he gave dissidents was "moral and spiritual" in nature. But, according to the testimony of several Cuban security agents who infiltrated the organizations that received U.S. support, the Interests Section became a general headquarters and office space for dissidents. Some of them, including Marta Beatriz Roque, had passes signed by Cason that allowed them free access to the Interests Section where they could use computers, telephones, and office machines.

The State Department calls these activities "outreach." However, under the United States Code, similar "outreach" by a foreign diplomat in the United States could result in criminal prosecution and a 10-year prison sentence for anyone "who agrees to operate within the United States subject to the direction or control of a foreign government or official (Title 18, section 951 of the United States Code).
(snip/...)

http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v37/v37_4lh.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

....Sr. Baguer was Chairman of the Cuban Independent Press Association, an organization home to several dissident journalists revered by Canadian media.

It turns out that Sr. Baguer was recruited by the US Interests Section of Havana (the compound that houses American foreign service personnel) to create and/or distort information to feed to American sponsored counter-revolutionary Radio Marti, and to several other journalistic fronts as necessary.

A special open pass gave him 24 hour access to the US facilities including an Internet room where a couple of dozen other phoney ³independents² worked. Sr. Baguer explained that they were told what to write about and paid generously in cash with money smuggled in through couriers. Among his assorted colleagues in disinformation was the alleged exiled poet Raul Rivero, also ³connected² as a writer for the ultra-conservative newspaper, the Miami Herald.

Fortunately for the US Interests Section, Nestor Baguer was a real journalist who knew how to make phoney stories look good. Unfortunately, he was also a double agent for Cuban intelligence(codename Octavio) who¹d been operating undercover successfully since 1960. Should have been a helluva story, but for all the attention he got, Sr. Baguer could have saved his breath. Not only are North American media not interested in the truth about Cuba; when we find it, we kill it.

Consider the good work of Sun Media in the summer of 1999, when Winnipeg played host to the Pan American Games. From the outset, Winnipeg Sun staffers harassed Cuban athletes about their alleged lack of a free press to the point that they almost withdrew from the Games. Castro, who had expected a supportive welcome from Canada, blasted Canadian media and the Sun in particular for unfairly demoralizing Cuban competitors, the national media covered the row, and relations between the two countries quickly hit a new low.

As a columnist for the paper, I challenged the Sun¹s kneejerk anti-Cuba editorial stance and was fired three weeks later. Manitoba¹s Human Rights Commission ruled that the Sun was guilty of discrimination based on perceived political belief and negotiated a settlement of $1000. It was the first time in Canada that a writer had held a publisher accountable for an unfair dismissal on political grounds. Publishers might now have to think twice before firing writers of unpopular material.
(snip/...)

http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v37/v37_4lh.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

US military 'brutalised' journalists

News agency demands inquiry after American forces in Iraq allegedly treated camera crew as enemy personnel

Luke Harding in Baghdad
Tuesday January 13, 2004
The Guardian

The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint to the Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation" of three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq.
The complaint followed an incident in the town of Falluja when American soldiers fired at two Iraqi cameramen and a driver from the agency while they were filming the scene of a helicopter crash.

The US military initially claimed that the Reuters journalists were "enemy personnel" who had opened fire on US troops and refused to release them for 72 hours.

Although Reuters has not commented publicly, it is understood that the journalists were "brutalised and intimidated" by US soldiers, who put bags over their heads, told them they would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and whispered: "Let's have sex."

At one point during the interrogation, according to the family of one of the staff members, a US soldier shoved a shoe into the mouth one of the Iraqis.

The US troops, from the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Falluja, also made the blindfolded journalists stand for hours with their arms raised and their palms pressed against the cell wall.

"They were brutalised, terrified and humiliated for three days," one source said. "It was pretty grim stuff. There was mental and physical abuse."
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1121981,00.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unlike in Chile, El Salvador and other past and present military- dominated Latin American regimes, people are not "disappeared" from their homes; tortured and disfigured cadavers are not found on public roadways as a warning to the rest of the population to keep silent.

There is not (and has not been for over two decades) any major civil strife; no armed bands fighting the government, no massive sweeps and detentions of the general population.

In fact, if the truth were to be told, Cuba's performance in some crucial areas of human rights -- those the Universal Declaration on Human Rights lists under "the economic, social and cultural rights" -- is outstanding by any measure. The absence of poverty, hunger, preventable disease, illiteracy, homelessness and unemployment is impressive even to people and governments not enamored of the Cuban political system.

The fact that Cuba considers food, housing, education, health care and jobs as basic human rights guaranteed in the Constitution puts that system relatively high in the esteem of many human rights buffs, regardless of the limitations on individual civil liberties.

Despite the serious allegations by anti-Castro exiles, most impartial observers give Cuba's judicial and penal system a high rating in comparison to what existed before in Cuba and what exists today in other Latin American countries and in the United States.

And even those who are more concerned with individual rights, the area in which the Cuban system is weakest, generally acknowledge after witnessing the Cuban system first-hand that:

1) infringement of those rights seems to stem basically from the back-to-the-wall position the United States has put Cuba in consistently since its 1959 revolution, and

2) they are not so massive as to warrant more than passing comment from the international community.
(snip)

It was on this basis that the Mexican diplomat questioned the inclusion of Cuba on the HRC agenda.
(snip/...)

http://www.walterlippmann.com/klw-theatre.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The U.S. Embargo and the Wrath of God
by Juan Gonzalez
In These Times, March 8, 1998



Havana: Gilberto Duran Torres couldn't devote much attention to Pope John Paul lI's historic visit here in January. While Cuban journalists and thousands of foreign journalists recorded the pope's every move, Duran and the other doctors at Calixto Garcia Hospital, Cuba's largest and most prestigious medical center, spent another hair-raising week quietly concocting their own miracles-a string of patchwork procedures to keep their patients alive.
Duran is chief of the intermediate care unit. He has worked at the hospital for 25 years, but nowadays he watches helplessly as the country's awesome cradle-to-grave, free medical system slowly disintegrates. Duran's department, for instance, is making do with artificial respirators that are more than 20 years old. . . . "We should have at least 12 for my unit," he says. "We have far fewer, and they are always breaking down. When one goes, we don't have the parts to fix it, so we have to search around the city, find a hospital that's not using theirs, and transport it here." So much of the world's advanced medical equipment and drugs are manufactured by U.S. firms that the three-decade-old American embargo is now literally killing Cubans, according to a 1997 report issued by the American Association for World Health (AAWH) following a year-long investigation.
Back in Washington, the proponents of the embargo insist that needed medical supplies can still get to Cuba. But the 300 page AAWH report, "Denial of Food and Medicine: The Impact of the U.S. Embargo on Health and Nutrition in Cuba," provides startling documentation of dozens of cases in which Cuban hospitals could not secure the medicine and equipment they needed because of the sharp restrictions imposed by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.
Dr. Julian Ruiz, a surgeon at Calixto Garcia, recounts his 15-day search last September for a Z-Stent Introducer, a small contraption that he needed to operate on a man with colon cancer. Not one could be found in the country. The manufacturer of the Z-Stent, Wilson Cooke Medical Inc. of Winston-Salem, N.C., refused to sell it to the Cubans. Ruiz' staff, scouring the world, finally found a Z-Stent they could buy in Mexico. By that time, the man's cancer had spread.
(snip)

Nothing has drawn the Catholic Church and the Cuban government closer together than their mutual opposition to the U.S. blockade of medicine and food supplies to Cuba's people.
"Even in warfare, you don't bomb hospitals and schools," says Patrick Sullivan, the pastor of a church in Santa Clara and the only American priest permanently stationed in the country.
A Cuban official in charge of finding and paying for food from abroad recounted her frustration with the embargo. "To ship a thousand tons of powdered milk from New Zealand, I must pay $150,000, when bringing the same amount from Miami would only cost me $25,000," she says.
While the U.S. government forces Cuba to pay six times more than necessary for children to drink milk and shuts off the supply for medical screening tests, it scurries to sell more Boeing planes to China, to open new Nike factories in Vietnam and even finds ways to ship food to North Korea. The last time anybody looked, these were socialist countries too, at least in name.
After all his homilies criticizing the lack of individual freedom and the evils of communism, the 77-year-old pope, no less a dictator within his church than the 71 -year-old Castro is within his party, still managed in his parting words to condemn the U.S. embargo for striking "the population indiscriminately, making it ever more difficult for the weakest to enjoy the bare essentials of decent living."
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Human_Rights/Cuba_embargo.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm prepared to address the over 40 year old history of the Cuban "exile" pattern of raids, bombings, shootings, against Cuba, the crop burnings, the murders of even people who were "friendly" to the Cuban government going all the way to the streets of Washington D. C., and the Chilean diplomat, Orlando Letellier.

There are many of us who are more than familiar with the vicious, violent, utterly destructive while wildly STUPID behavior of Cuban rightwing exiles throughtout the years after the revolution.

These CUBAN MATTERS would be appropriately dealt with on an actual thread about Cuba, not Hugo Chavez. It's good form to stay with the subject at hand, not to stretch the conversation into a random, roving discussion of anything which comes to one's mind.

[imenja]

185. Have I understood you correctly?

First off, my point was that the embargo does not justify human rights violations--summary executions and political arrests--not that it does not contribute to the desperate state of Cuba's economy. As I stated in another post here, I am strongly against the embargo. I consider it wrong and ineffective. Why should China be granted most favored nation status while Cuba continues to face a Cold War era economic embargo. Clearly the answer lies in the political influence of anti-Castro Cuban Americas.

I also noted that Cuba has no where near the worst history of human rights violations in Latin America. As one of your posts observes--military governments in Chile and Argentina during the 1970s were far more brutal. They, however, are no longer in power. Castro is. And because Cuba does not have the worst human rights record in Latin American history does not mean that its actions are acceptable.

One of the posts you provide also notes: "U.S. officials say they no longer regard Cuba as a totalitarian state with aggressive policies toward its people, but instead an authoritarian state." I imagine that is a great comfort to the Cuban people. Does that mean an authoritarian state is acceptable in our own country, as long as it is not fully totalitarian?

Your quote from Walter Lipmann observes: "In fact, if the truth were to be told, Cuba's performance in some crucial areas of human rights -- those the Universal Declaration on Human Rights lists under "the economic, social and cultural rights" -- is outstanding by any measure. The absence of poverty, hunger, preventable disease, illiteracy, homelessness and unemployment is impressive even to people and governments not enamored of the Cuban political system."

The historians I cited also make the same point, although it is important to understand those economic advantages had eroded greatly with the end of funding from the former Soviet Union. "The special period" has been a time of great economic crisis, and the US embargo has played a role in that. Many Europeans are now investing in Cuba, especially in hotels and tourism. Castro's reinvigoration of tourism has improved the economic situation but resulted in a dual economy--between those who have dollars and those who don't. This has eroded the egalitarian basis of the socialist economy. Yet Cubans are guaranteed a minimum standard of living, something that does not exist in most places in the world. The problem is, that standard has been lowered tremendously since the collapse of the USSR, and it's once renowned health care system has suffered as a result.
Prostitution has also proliferated--as any male who has traveled to Cuba will likely attest to. A sad irony, since in the the period leading up to the revolution and shortly afterward, prostitution provided a rhetorical metaphor for Castro and others in the July 26th movement who saw it as emblematic of Cuba's exploitation and economic prostitution to the US.

I'm not sure what your point is for including information on CIA penetration of dissident groups. Is this supposed to be news to me?
Do you imagine I actually don't know that the US has worked to depose Castro for years? Senate Subcommittee Reports from the 1970s on Assassination plots will provide you with more compelling evidence, albeit historical in nature.

Does the fact that the US opposes Castro mean it is okay for him to jail political prisoners and issue summary executions--as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and IACHR have all documented?

And your point about US abuses in Iraq? That the US ignores decency and human rights means it's acceptable for Castro to do so?
I refuse to condone such activity, regardless of the source. Moral decency forbids it.

[Judi Lynn]

186. In my third article it's mentioned that this payment for services

rendered under these circumstances is actually a crime elsewhere. Why should Cuba be encouraged to overlook something which would bring severe penalties in our own country?

The State Department calls these activities "outreach." However, under the United States Code, similar "outreach" by a foreign diplomat in the United States could result in criminal prosecution and a 10-year prison sentence for anyone "who agrees to operate within the United States subject to the direction or control of a foreign government or official (Title 18, section 951 of the United States Code).

Many DU'ers are very well acquainted with the long history of funding "dissidents" in Cuba, and also aware of the difference between the people actually cranking out propaganda boilerplate for pay, and dissidents who believe that progress in Cuba should be from within the government and society, not managed from Miami and their flunkies, rightwing psychopaths in Washington.

Why was not Elizardo Sanchez pitched into the slammer in the terrifying "dissident" roundup? Why has he been going all over the world giving lectures, etc., and continuing to maintain that Cubans should be the ones involved in Cuba's future, not outsiders?

Why is it sidestepped by Miami Cubans and their associates in Washington that there were government agents who worked FOR YEARS within the "dissident" group and these people provided records of payment by U.S. sources going back a long time. This information was provided during their trials. Only the ones who participated in actions against the Cuban government, in cooperation with U.S. sources were pitched in jail.

You forgot to acknowledge that they've "sprung" quite a few of them not too long after sentencing them.

You did indicate Fidel Castro inappropriately blames the embargo for Cuba's economic problems. That's been a claim tossed round by Miami Cubans forever.

I provided a decent response to that charge. I have far, far more material I will be more than happy to provide.

It's worth noting that your Cuban friend, as you designate Boner set up the highjacking of this thread from Hugo Chavez to Fidel Castro. Two different people, two different lives, two different sets of circumstancies, two different philosophies, from what I can gather.



Elizardo Sanchez

Why is Elizardo Sanchez hated by rightwing Cuban "exiles?" They dispise him. They are following a totally different agenda. They seek a complete seizure of the Cuban government and the power returned to them and their appointees.

Why did Miami Cuban resident and Bay of Pigs veteran, Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo decide a couple of years ago, on a vacation in Cuba, to stay there, and start his own political party, focused on change within the Cuban government? Why has he not been flung into the deep recesses of the darkest cavern? He's doing just fine, from what I can determine.

By the way, he was harrassed and cursed in Miami because he advocated dialogue with Cuba. He seems to be the only one of that group with any respectable intelligence.

[imenja]

190. Hijacked again.

I have no reason to doubt that the US government uses dissidents and the exile community for their own advantage (and vice versa). The US government has always behaved in the most nefarious manner when dealing with Latin America. That is why when pundits proclaimed the invasion of Iraq to be a departure from previous US policy, I knew that to be false. (And no, I did not and do not support the war; I actively protested against it for months before the invasion). Our government has long behaved precisely as it chose in Latin America, deposing governments at will. Of course, previous administrations did not announce their attentions for months in advance on television and in the newspapers as they did with Iraq.

The Miami Cubans may very well argue that Castro blames the embargo on his economic problems, but so do many academics whose research is devoted to Cuba. In fact, this is one of a number of arguments posed for ending the embargo.

Your argument concerning Elizardo Sanchez is a rhetorical strategy I've seen often on DU in other contexts, and I find it somewhat odd. That there exist one or more dissidents who have not been imprisoned by a given government means that political persecution does not exist, or is not important? That Rashid Khalidi or Ali Mazuri did not face arrest validate John Ashcroft’s roundups of Arabs following 9/11? How many people have to be arrested or executed before it matters? Or are such transgressions acceptable as long as you agree politically with the government in question? A commitment to human rights must be a universal principle if it is to have meaning. It cannot be selective.

[Carl Brennan]

132. Also there are alot of Mafiosi who are Sunday go to meetin' regulars.

I can just imagine the CIA controlled US press pumping out propoganda about suppression based on religion.

[Bono71]

156. We lived it. I don't care what the CIA pumps out.

[Judi Lynn]

159. Got something I thought you might find amusing, in this context!

From a quick google grab, an article written a few years ago, when Elián Gonzalez had been pilfered by the Miami mafia:

The NCC and Cuba

By invitation of the Cuban Council of Churches, a (U.S.) National Council of Churches official delegation, headed by the Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, NCC General Secretary, visited Cuba Sept. 2-7, 2000.

Partners for more than 40 years, the two ecumenical councils helped lay the groundwork for Elian Gonzalez's return to his father. Now they meet in a rapidly evolving context – “post-Elian,” as U.S.-Cuban national relations begin to thaw; as Cuba’s churches grow rapidly in membership, witness, service and respect in their society, and as both the NCC and Cuban Council of Churches reach out in new ways to Roman Catholics, Pentecostals and evangelicals.

This NCC Web section offers not only full information about the delegation visit but also a host of other resources for study and action, on Cuba's churches and Ecumenical Movement and on U.S. government policy concerning Cuba.
(snip/)

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:wDb5t3wDnqUJ:www.ncccusa.org/news/cuba/cubaindex.html+Cuba+churches&hl=en

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Carl Brennan]

56. Labels just don't cut it.

We see the labels: Dictator, Democrat, Left, Right, etc. Let's just for a moment dispense with all of these confusing labels and judge the situation by the results. Let's look at who benefits from the DEEDS of a particular policy instead of quibbling about the label.

Take for instance "dictator" Castro. He has been so maligned by the Western Press, particularly the US that it is hard to get past the ingrained prejudices many people have.

When Castro was interviewed by Ms. Baba WaWa, the mother of the up close and personal interview, he asked: "How can a person be free who can't read". He was referring to the fact that the literacy rate in Cuba is very high as opposed to most other countries in S. America. Surely a dictator would not want his population literate so they could read all the bad things about him/her. Also infant mortality and lifespan are much better than in other Latin American countries. Castro nails a very, very important point and begs a very important question: How could all of these good things for people be occuring in a real dictatorship?

Could it be, as I believe it is, that Castro's tight rein on the domestic front is because of the terror war he has been fighting against the US all these years? There are just to many inconsistencies in what we hear from the US Press about Castro's Cuba and what the reality is. Castro really did a number on the international illegal drug trade when he took over Cuba and the people who were the most strongly opposed to him were mafiosi trash like Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello and these sleaze were backed strongly by the CIA that we all, or we should know, was deeply involved in the drug trade nearly from its inception.

Labels simply don't cut it when trying to do anything other than a faith based analysis.

[Darranar]

67. Excellent news!

This is a great idea, hopefully it will result in something.

[Minstrel Boy]

71. related story today:

President Hugo Chavez Frias calls for the creation of a world defense network

Sunday, December 05, 2004

News services are reporting a call to intellectuals and progressive artists to create a world defense network, made by President Hugo Chavez at the Teresa Carreno theater inauguration of the 'In Defense of Humanity' World Conference which ends today, Sunday, in Caracas.

...

"What takes places in Latin America over the next few years could have powerful repercussions for the rest of the planet," Chavez Frias said. "The network of intellectuals could be linked with a project for a 'Standing Congress of the Peoples' to form a joint response to challenges currently facing humanity."

Throughout the South American continent, the resurgence of a growing force can be seen among the youth, the landless, indigenous peoples and intellectuals. International problems today do not have national solutions and for that reason there is a need for a world movement.

In Mexico, in October 2003, intellectual Pablo Gonzalez Casanova had suggested the idea of the network for the 'In Defense of Humanity' movement ... and it was taken up again in January this year by artists who conceived the idea of an international conference.
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=23840

[radric]

110. I'm guessing..

Chavez will become President-For-Life in the not too distant future. Sooner rather than later if his arms purchases are expeditied. That's how these things usually work.

[Tinoire]

117. Can't. No neo- NED support

Now just what is it about Chavez that makes you think of people like Duvalier who were propped up as President for Life by US regimes? Pray do explain how you believe these things usually work because I'm very curious about your world view.

Usually to be President for Life in the Western Hemisphere, you need to be backed by the NED, something Chavez definitely isn't after having the nerve of caring for the poor.

[imenja]

112. The enemy of my enemy?

Is your admiration for Chavez because he opposes Bush or do you think he has brought benefits to the people of Venezuela?
Since coming to office--and before when he was in the military and launched an unsuccessful coup to come to power--Chavez has spoken boldly. He dislikes the Bush administration, for lots of good reasons. But it seems to me that is not enough to call him a hero. I'll leave that for the people of Venezuela to decide. He's clearly a mixed bag, ultimately more talk than action, but he does at least speak to the concerns of the poor, which distinguishes him from many previous Venezuelan leaders.
I think it should be pointed out that the article liked above is form Granma--the official paper of the Cuban Communist Party. How readers choose to evaluate it is for them to decide, but they should be aware of the source and its point of view.

[Minstrel Boy]

116. "I'll leave that for the people of Venezuela to decide."

And so they have. You seem resistant to hear them.

[imenja]

119. I'm not resistant

What I asked is your reasons for considering him a hero. Would you care to share them?
I should also point out that by that same measure, the people of the US have decided GWBush is a great man. Obviously, many of us disagree.
My post was not intended as an act of hostility. I would like to know more about why you admire Chavez. I know a number of Latin American leftists that dislike him a great deal, but I'd appreciate hearing your point of view.

[Carl Brennan]

137. Where and when did MB call Chavez a hero?

:shrug:

[imenja]

141. you're right, it was neo-buckeye

[Minstrel Boy]

161. I guess I hadn't.

My oversight.

Chavez is my hero.

Even more scandalous, I also like Fidel Castro and his beard. :evilgrin:

[rman]

123. Why i admire Chavez

I'll tell you why i admire Chavez if you tell me why you think he is "clearly a mixed bag". Because that is not clear to me at all.

Also i'd suggest you be aware of the sources and their point of view that make out Chavez to be a thug.

As MB pointed out, the people of Venezuela have decided Chavez is their hero - twice, or three times if you include the mini revolution after the coup.

===

Vheadline
Why doesn't President Hugo Chavez Frias just leave?
Gustavo Pereira
July 25, 2004

Radio Nacional de Venezuela (RNV) Gustavo Pereira writes: For the following reasons, Chavez has been the only president, against which, since the first day of his government (and way before that) the most ferocious opposition has been unleashed.

Lies, slander, diatribes, lockouts, general strikes, coup d' etats, oil sabotages, media totalitarianism, efforts to damage our economy, campaigns to discredit the government abroad, guarimbas, being despised upon, racism and class hatred.
All of this has cost the country thousands of millions of dollars, damaged the economic apparatus, produced the closing of thousands of hundreds of thousands of small companies, and managed to have caused thousands of workers to be thrown on the street.

However, look at what has been achieved:

(a selection)

- The Chavez administration prohibited the payment of school enrollment fees, which allowed all of the poor to enroll their kids in school. Over half a million of excluded Venezuelan kids came back to the classrooms.

- It reopened and equipped technical schools.

- It doubled the education budget from 3% to 7% of the GDP · It created and repaired in just four years, more schools than those that were repaired in the previous twenty.

- despite a destabilizing campaign from public officials and opposition governors and the crisis generated by the coup and the oil sabotage, it has refurbished and equipped hospitals and ambulatories.

- water pipes and water treatment plants which bring drinking water have been built for the first time for over half a million Venezuelans who had never had it

- thousands of filthy slums were exchanged by decent housing facilities and millions of individuals has been treated by Mission Barrio Adentro the Bolivar Plan 2000

- the privatization of the Social Security was avoided, in order for the most needy to have access to free hospital and quality medical services.

- in just three years (1999-2002) built over ninety thousand decent housing facilities (not mouse holes) for the people, at a 12% fixed interest rate during 20 years. This constitutes almost double of housing facilities that the IV republic built in 10 years.

- with the creation of the People's bank, the Woman's bank and other financial institutions (Fondapfa, Foncrei, Fondemi, Industrial bank, Development bank, etc) has democratized credit and the micro-credit to those who could never access it.

- The Chavez administration approved the land reform bill, which gave productive lands, credits and technical assistance to farmers and cooperatives of our deserted country fields.

- Chavez, as he had promised in his first campaign, called all Venezuelans to a Constitution Assembly, which, with ample collective participation, approved the most democratic constitution of our continent, a constitution that was submitted to referendum by the people in a process never before seen in the history of Venezuela.

- Chavez proposed, for the first time in our history, the figure of the recall referendum, which allows for the Venezuelan people to express their will freely after half of the constitutional presidential period has passed.

===

Venezuelanalysis.com
Venezuela's Economy Up by 30% in First Quarter of 2004
May 19, 2004
By Martin Sanche
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1275

Caracas, Venezuela. May 19 (Venezuelanalysis.com).- According to preliminary numbers issued by the Central Bank, the Venezuelan economy grew by 29.8% during the first quarter of 2004 when compared to the same period last year.

In the first quarter of 2003, the world fifth biggest oil exporter suffered the devastating effects of a lock-out, strike and sabotage of the national oil industry, organized by opponents of President Hugo Chavez in an unsuccessful effort to oust him. The opposition's actions caused a historic GDP drop of 27.8%. Oil-related economic activity dropped 47% during that period.

According to the Central Bank report, in the first quarter of 2004, oil-related economic activity grew by 72.5%, while non-oil activity increased by 18.9% compared to the same period last year when it dropped 19.2%. The oil sector benefited from increased demand of oil and refined products, as well as the increase in production by private companies that operate in the country in joint ventures with Venezuela's state oil company.

The non-oil sector also experienced significant growth. Manufacturing grew by 48%, construction by 19.5%, commerce by 27.9% and transportation and warehousing by 25.3%.

(more)

[Judi Lynn]

169. We needed this info.! Thanks. I haven't seen any rebuttals, either.....

Positive information in another article:

VENEZUELA: Education for revolution


Jo Williams

Since its election in 1998, the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez has implemented a range of mass social programs aimed at eradicating widespread poverty, and at reversing the systematic social exclusion of millions of Venezuelans.

Known as “missions”, these programs have included a mass literacy and primary school completion campaign known as Mission Robinson, a drive to expand high school graduation known as Mission Ribas, and the expansion of access to higher education through Mission Sucre.

In the 1999 constitution, adopted by popular vote, education was codified as a basic human right. Before that, access to education was very different for the poor than for the rich and middle classes.

Since the late 1980s, a wave of neoliberalism led to gradual privatisation of Venezuela’s already limited public education system, and added new fees to basic education, driving more poor people out of the system. A November 11 report by Gregory Wilpert, posted on Venezuela Analysis, explains that roughly 17% of Venezuela's children were excluded from the education system by the late 1990s, either because they couldn't afford to attend, or because they lived in an area with no schools. Ten years ago, illiteracy was officially 9%, or roughly 2 million people, primarily in rural and indigenous communities and among poor inner-city families. In reality it is likely to have been much higher. It was almost 60% amongst indigenous people.

The missions have been implemented quickly, and on a huge scale, with a consequently large deployment of resources. They have involved new infrastructure as well as the reform of elitist educational institutions. According to Wilpert, under the Chavez government, the number of children attending schools increased by roughly 1.5 million between 1999 and 2002. Although figures vary, under Chavez at least 3000 schools have been either built or transformed into “Bolivarian schools”, which offer three meals a day, staff dentists and doctors, recreational facilities and free transport to and from the urban slum areas. The Bolivarian schools are free, but access is restricted to those most in need.
(snip/...)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/609/609p14.htm

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

135. See that's why I admire him

[VegasWolf]

144. Chavez is calling for a network of "intellectuals and progressive artists"

damn, that is soo NOT bush.

[neweurope]

149. *Dream* Germany leaves the NATO

...and becomes part of a real defense network...

*wakes up suddenly with the thought that it's too late already for Chavez' idea.*

Nevertheless: Go, Venezuela, go!

[Judi Lynn]

166. Just found something about CIA cranking out bogus stories

in a google search, thought maybe someone here might find this interesting:

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit


debt of Cuba to Venezuela was reported as $142 million. By May 28
this figure as cited by industry sources had shrunk to $63 million.
It would appear from the "conservative news and information" piece
immediately below (May 24) that the story began in the Venezuelan
daily El Nacional.


It's an old trick of the CIA to plant stories in the foreign press
that then make their way back into the US via republication, the
original source suitably obscured from the dummies in the USA. It
looks like el Nacional, the anti-Chavez press and Cheney's contacts
in Venezuela's oil industry are very busy poisoning the waters -- not
only sowing confusion about the Cuba-Venezuela relationship, but also
doing a little damage to the economies of both nations.


Since the Miami Herald is saying that Cuba's been told Venezuela's
oil "isn't free," the Cuban response is probably supposed to be that
Cuba's medical care for Venezuelans isn't either. It's no accident
this is happening as Hugo Chavez is traveling to OPEC nations
attempting to secure a firm oil-price hike. Two people not likely to
be fooled by this are Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.-- NY Transfer]


source - TownHall.com "Conservative News and Information" - May 24, 2002
http://www.townhall.com/news/politics/200205/FOR20020524g.shtml
(snip/...)

~~~~ link ~~~~

[Judi Lynn]

174. World Forum of Intellectuals and Artists in Venezuela Ends with Pledge of

World Forum of Intellectuals and Artists in Venezuela Ends with Pledge of Permanent Anti-Globalization Office in Venezuela

Monday, Dec 06, 2004
By: Robin Nieto - Venezuelanalysis.com

Caracas, December 6, 2004--The World Forum of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity closed yesterday with words from Argentine Nobel peace prize laureate, Adolfo Perez Esquivel and President Hugo Chavez and a concert that included Cuban music legend, Pablo Milanes.

President Chavez pledged to provide an office and resources in Venezuela to initiate a "network of networks" of social organizations and institutions around the world working to build alternative models of development in the face in globalization.

Chavez made the announcement at last night's event, which took place in downtown Caracas, was free of charge, and attended by the approximately 350 intellectuals and artists, Venezuelan government cabinet members, and over two thousand spectators.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nobel peace prize winner for his work in raising the issue of human rights violations in Latin America, read the final conclusions of the forum, entitled "The Caracas Declaration." The declaration outlines the need to build a front of global resistance against the project of domination that today is imposed by the current government of the United States of America and global organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"Let's get to work intensely," Chavez said. "Let's put the ideas concluded at this forum to work, let's make it a reality."
(snip/...)

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1437

[Judi Lynn]

188. US wrestles with Venezuela policy

Last Updated: Tuesday, 7 December, 2004, 09:56 GMT

US wrestles with Venezuela policy
By Iain Bruce
BBC News, Caracas


"What's her name?" quipped President Hugo Chavez, as he came out from voting in Venezuela's local elections last month. "Condolences Rice?"

He referred to an interview the White House national security adviser had given a few days earlier.

"She says Chavez is a real problem. Yes, I'm a problem. But if Chavez is a problem, an infinitely bigger problem for the world is the government of President Bush."

He accused Ms Rice of demonstrating "profound ignorance and insensitivity" towards Latin America and of being "the true imperialist who thinks they rule the world".
(snip)

In Mr Porras' words to the BBC: "They have to understand that democracy and social welfare can in no way be a danger to US interests."
(snip/)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4072533.stm