Go to http://www.freethefive.org

Go to http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2001-Caribbean-Vol-4/Blum:_Brief_History_of_US_Interventions

Go to my attempt to write a less-than-1000 word book review of Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AEHALOZC9JRS6/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-3283066-5558260?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Go to Cuba http://www.cubalinda.com/

Also contemplate Dissident Voice’s tagline: “A radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice.” Peace for whom? Social Justice for whom? Is social justice anywhere on the planet possible if America is at war? Is what you do in America contributing to ending The War? No need to answer these questions in front of God, the guy in the bathroom downstairs, and everyone who reads DV and stands in awe and sadness before the Cuban Revolution. Just ask yourself.

Since last night, I’ve been having back spasms if I type for very long. I’ll keep my promise to reply to your post above, but you will have to contact me at one of my email addresses: namely, glrowsey@gmail.com.

What has Cuba/Fidel accomplished in 50 years Lloyd? I would say remaining in power is his greatest feat to date, and how is that? As I asked previously, do you really believe the CIA or any other intel agency could not take Castro out?

You’re deluded if you believe the American “left” is not run by the same powerful entities who run the “right.”

Social justice in America? What’s your contribution Lloyd? Belittling my opinions b/c I’m not propping up the gods of the American “left”? Or do you resent me as a “rich American” who could search for treatment to try and save my child? In the glorious words of another American “left” hero - “God damn” me.

Regarding Fidel’s not respecting free speech in Cuba, I think the shouting-”fire”-in-a-crowded-theater exception applies. Except the “fire” in Cuba’s case is not a theater but an entire country, its people, and the enormous progress they’ve achieved in the past forty years.

Your “acquaintance in Havana” may just be right, you know, little evie. And to attribute his continuing commitment to the cause of the Cuban people to personal lechery — much less, in two sentence as marked with clumsiness as with unsupported condemnations of Cuba — is appalling.

Why don’t you clean up your act, evie, then come back to Dissident Voice and make some contributions to social justice in America?

Only thing that bothers me is that for all the praises of Cuba’s accomplishments in education and healthcare (never mind Spain had to send equipment and a surgeon after Fidel’s first 2 surgeries, reportedly a botched colon resection) - they can only find a new president every 50 years.

I’ve an acquaintance in Havana, American, who has worked as a journalist in Cuba for 15 years. Before that a dozen years in Nicaragua. He writes sappy fluff on Castro and the State. My acqaintance is no longer a spring rooster but in a country with poverty such as Cuba he can still attract all the senoritas his Viagra can handle, the beach is perfect and the rum good.

P.S.
If you’re ever held for a few days by Cuban authorities, well-trained in interrogation techniques, and who suspect you of working for the CIA - ya might not be quite so thrilled with Castro’s Cuba.

I flew to Havana in 1998 to deliver personal funds in a moneybelt to the Cuban people and Fidel in memory of Che and Camilo. But only over the past year have I come to realize that the US embargo of Cuba is the longest and most inhumanly effective arms-length treatment of one nation by another since nations began forming in the 14th century. This, because I’m an American who’s been subjected to the insane propoganda bullshit put out about Cuba in America for my entire adult life. And the insanity is worse now, by orders of magnitued, than it’s ever been before.

It would take more time than I have now to lay out the full story, but I do plan to do just that.

Peter

- GL Rowsey

You have to be very careful with reports of ‘official harassment’, since it is very easy in our oh-so-free information system to amp up a threat from some nationalist thugs and turn it into an attack by ‘government agents’. Seriously, we get fed alot of bullshit by our mass media.

Consider that Cubans are free to hear all the crap that America hurls at them - often quoted by none other than Fidel himself in the newspaper Granma. They are not kept brainwashed or deprived of information at all.

The problem with press freedom in Cuba is only on a viewpoint basis, since only ‘pro-Cuban’ viewpoints tend to be given. This is as opposed to our media, that gives a whole load of varying viewpoints on a piece of information that isn’t even factual. You have to decide for yourself which is worse, and remeber that a western-style ‘free media’ in Cuba could very easily be hijacked by the bullshitters who feed information to the American people.

And finally, don’t forget that those journalists in lockup are not locked up because of expressing their opinions. They are among the much vaunted ‘political prisoners’ of Cuba, imprisoned for recieving money from oversees sources, which in all honesty is a very fishy business. The only thing that can be said in their defence is that they have very harsh prison sentences, in a similar vein to hijackers.

Let’s not forget that Cuba has to battle every bloody day with ideas and words to keep itself free of the Empire to the north. It doesn’t mean we must condone the abuses of justice perpetrated there - but we should at least understand the motive behind them: survival of a nation.

I am relieved to finally see an educated report on the complex relationship between Cuba and press freedom. Thank you, professor Philips.

-Aidan.

http://www.freemedia.at/cms/ipi/freedom_detail.html?country=/KW0001/KW0002/KW0018/

World Press Freedom Review
2007
Cuba

By Charles Arthur

Cuba has the most restrictive laws on free speech and press freedom in the hemisphere. The constitution prohibits private ownership of media, and allows free speech and press only if they “conform to the aims of a Socialist society.” Cuba’s legal and institutional structures are firmly under the control of the executive. The country’s criminal code provides the legal basis for the repression of dissent, and in the name of protecting state security, laws criminalising “enemy propaganda” and the dissemination of “unauthorised news” are used to restrict freedom of speech. The 1997 Law of National Dignity, which provides for jail sentences of 3 to 10 years for “anyone who, in a direct or indirect form, collaborates with the enemy’s media,” is aimed at the independent news agencies that send their material abroad.

The few journalists working for independent news agencies, writing articles for foreign websites, or publishing underground newsletters, continued to be routinely monitored, harassed, detained, interrogated, or sometimes imprisoned. Not much changed as a consequence of the hand-over of power from President Fidel Castro to his younger brother, Raúl, in July 2006, but independent journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that official harassment declined in 2007, with fewer detentions and direct threats.

During the year, two journalists were freed from prison, but two more were imprisoned, leaving a total of 24 journalists remaining in long-term detention. Twenty of those in prison were among the 27 journalists arrested in the so-called “black spring” crackdown of March 2003. …