Saul Landau: "Cell Phones Will Liberate Cuba! Pigs Will Fly"

[magbana]

PROGRESO WEEKLY/Landau: Cell phones will liberate Cuba! Pigs will fly!

PROGRESO WEEKLY
Jun 5 - 11, 2008
Cell phones will liberate Cuba! Pigs will fly!

By Saul Landau

Epitaph offered for Bush’s future grave stone:
What’s the word
For dropping beneath
What’s considered absurd?
That level of humor
When one laughs
At someone else’s tumor?
What seems idiotic
W proudly calls
his realist politik.

On May 21, President George W. Bush announced a dramatic new change in Cuba policy. In addition to food, Bush declared, U.S. companies can now dispatch cell phones to Cuba. Bush demanded that Cuba’s government apply more reforms, not just those allowing wider access to digital technology. Bush called for real democracy and his kind of free market economic change on the island and then declared a “day of solidarity” with the Cuban people. He put on his most empathetic look to remind his audience of the jailed dissidents, people whose political views diverged from those of Fidel and Raul Castro.

Several Cubans wrote me that the President made a sick joke. When a man who has tried to withhold goods, investment and services from Cubans declares solidarity with his victims, one said, it’s even worse than Bush saying he stood hand in hand with the Katrina victims. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque dismissed Bush’ solidarity rhetoric and his cell phone policy as ridiculous, especially in light of the release of a video taped by Cuba’s state security agency showing Michael Parmly, chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, passing an envelope of money to a leading dissident, Martha Beatriz Roque. The Cubans also released a taped phone conversation with Parmly (they called it a phone orgasm) in which the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba gushes loudly to the dissident, admiring her “provocation.” He meant she attracted publicity in the U.S. media and once again embarrassed the Cuban government.

As if! Most people involved in Cubanology understand that the laugh’s on Bush. He demanded severe rules about transferring money from U.S. citizens to Cubans, especially from a government official who gets the money from a convicted felon. The money Parmly handed to Martha Beatriz Roque on tape came from Santiago Alvarez, creator of the Fundación Rescate Jurídico, a private Miami-based foundation whose account the money came from. U.S. diplomats in Cuba say they simply provide humanitarian assistance (books, radios, tape recorders and other items) through U.S. government-funded USAID to the families of “political prisoners” and “independent journalists” in Cuba.

Alvarez collaborated with the plots of Luis Posada Carriles, who orchestrated the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976. Declassified documents point directly at Posada and his collaborator Orlando Bosch. So, too, has Posada become overwhelmingly implicated in Havana hotel bombings in 1997. Cubans recorded Alvarez’s phone conversations with his subordinate, giving him orders to plant explosives at Havana’s Tropicana Night Club.

In March 2003, State Security arrested Beatriz Roque along with a larger group of other “dissidents,” people who claimed to be independent journalists, writers and librarians. A Cuban court convicted her and the other “dissidents” of taking money from U.S. programs designed to overthrow the Cuban government and constitution.

In July 2004, Cuba released her on health grounds. The money Parmly gave to her came from Alvarez’s foundation. How cute, the terrorist sends money to supposedly peaceful dissidents in Havana. Poor Parmly, I think, a genuinely nice man who became a true believer in an asinine cause who, thankfully, will have served his three year tour by summer’s end.

As Chief U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Parmly provided help and succor to “dissidents” -- insuring they had sufficient food, telephone and other communications’ services and now, it turns out, money as well.

In 2006, he boasted about his activities in support of dissidents. He had almost a religious fervor in his voice when he described how he dedicated his working days to them

I asked him to tell me how he distinguished between a true dissident and a Cuban state security agent.

He looked down and said: “I try not to think about that.”

My question derived from the fact that when Cuba put 75 dissidents on trial in 2003, 12 moles surfaced to testify damningly against them, revealing their material connections to members of the U.S. government. Indeed, some of the witnesses had earned accolades in the United States as among the most articulate members of the dissident community. Nestor Baguer, for example, was the acknowledged dean of “the independent journalists” until the moment he acknowledged he worked for Cuba’s security forces and described how his fellow “independents” relied totally on U.S. funding and distribution sources.

I wondered why, after deeply penetrating the “dissident” group, Cuba bothered to try them unless to reveal the extent of its penetration and thus alert Washington to the futility of efforts to support them. But Bush doesn’t notice hints; and he responds aggressively to all situations.

In late May, he challenged Cuban President Raul Castro’s “seriousness”. “If he is serious about his so-called reforms, he will allow these phones to reach the Cuban people.” Bush referred to a hare-brained scheme to send cell phones to Cuba, a nation that has spent almost fifty years living under a U.S. trade embargo designed to punish Fidel Castro. In fact, the embargo helped Fidel consolidate power and subsequently mobilize the population against U.S. policies. By depriving the revolutionary island of its natural and closest trading partner, Washington simply made life materially miserable for the Cuban people.

Now, while having assigned more staff to monitor U.S. citizens’ travel to Cuba -- and for Cuban-Americans who can visit close relatives only once every three years -- Bush suddenly got an epiphany. Cell phones will become his Aladdin’s lamp. Cell phones will liberate the Cuban people. Technology is truly wonderful. How such a scheme will work -- well, let the experts figure out the details.

Few Cubans will fall for Bush’s appeal. They know him as the man who kissed the butt of the arch right wing in Miami, the pro Batista crowd, those who arrived with stolen wealth or who had suffered from the revolution the expropriation of their large estates. Many of those anti-Castro Cubans who support the hard line came to Miami in 1959-60. Most have no remaining close family in Cuba, so felt no compunction in pushing Bush to restrict family visits for Cubans and curtail remittances as well.

These Cubans, now in their geriatric phase, don’t see contradictions in George Bush when he says “he who harbors a terrorist is as guilty as the terrorist.” Indeed, hundreds of them attended a dinner honoring Posada who lives comfortably in Miami -- as does Bosch. Both enjoy routine accolades from admirers -- including three Republican Members of Congress: Ileana Ros Lehtinen and Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Indeed, Bush will make few converts in Cuba. Like most of his foreign policies, the Bush Cuba plan to direct Cuba’s post-Fidel transition failed miserably. The transition occurred without incident as Bush bellowed threats and demands. His tight embargo did not deter billions of dollars in investments from China, Venezuela, Brazil and other countries who find Cuba’s resources -- especially nickel and newly discovered oil -- attractive. The embargo has failed to dislodge or weaken the Cuban government for nearly half a century.

When the quintessentially establishment Council on Foreign Relations calls for an end of the embargo on Cuba and a rejection of the century-old hegemony policy toward Latin America, one knows that a glimpse of 21st Century reality has entered Washington’s collective policy mind.

For nearly fifty years, U.S. policy toward Cuba has emphasized punishment as the answer to a disobedient or upstart regime. No need to recite the litany of aggressive moves, from a trade embargo and travel ban, through barely covert terrorist operations. Now Bush throws cell phones into the mix. Does he think Cubans will call each other on these cute little toys and share their common complaints, then assemble en masse at Raul Castro’s next rally and throw the phones at him? Or does Laura have stock in the phone manufacturing company? If so, an engineer better make them compatible with the Cuban phone system -- which is no mean feat.

There is a zany quality to Bush’s cell phone epiphany. Did he suffer a brain spasm that flashed a message? “Technology will free Cuba.” In addition, he offered solidarity with the Cuban people whose lives he has made worse. Bush only dramatizes how far Washington has removed itself from reality. The United States needs a Cuba policy, not a divine manifestation from Bush following his daily gym workout. To make this happen, two ingredients are necessary: reason and the courage to act on it. Of the aspiring presidential candidates, only Obama has demonstrated his ability to reason on this issue -- sort of. His courage? We’ll see, I hope.

Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow who has made three TV films with Fidel, available through [e-mail].

[Judi Lynn]

1. Saul Landau is tremendous. Looking forward to reading this later tonight.

Thanks a lot, magbana.