This must be segue day. The Times also has this profile of Gorki Luis Aguila, the punk rocker who has become a bit of a thorn in the side of the Castro regime, having been arrested for "social dangerousness" last month. The charges were dropped and he was subsequently freed, having been fined for public disorder.
I'm not a fan of punk rock, but it's a fact that repressive governments of both the left and right feel a need to silence artists who defy the orthodoxy.
In the comments to this post in which I take him to task for embezzlement that took place within his organization, Center for a Free Cuba (not by him, but by an employee of his), Frank Calzon advises me to "stay cool."
I stand by what I said. Diplomacy should not be delegated to NGO's, especially not those with political juice whether it's the Iraqi national Congress or the Center for a Free Cuba. Accountability is obviously sloppy and the agendas being set have much more to do with the goals of the NGO's than the nation. Although Congressman Howard Berman has agreed to release some of the funds, I'm still against the program.
As for staying cool, I urge Mr. Calzon to heed his own advice (video is in Spanish):
Hat tip to Michael Froomkin.
If you want to encourage democracy in Cuba, here's a thought: don't privatize the effort.
Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.
In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.
Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.
In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba. [my emphasis]
Rest assured it gets worse:
The executive director of Grupo de Apoyo admitted that an employee used the organization's credit card for thousands of dollars in personal items and then billed them to the grant aimed at bringing democracy to Cuba, Driesler's memo said.
You ain't seen nothing yet:
A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.
My nominee for tone-deaf hypocrite of the year: Frank Calzon, Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba:
Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, stressed that the $500,000 fraud at his organization was not discovered by a federal audit but by Calzon himself. He said Berman, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pushed for the audits because he is against President Bush's Cuba policy.
Not a dime more to this den of thieves NGO. Not one. Honestly, one of the worst curses visited upon our nation is the electoral college system and the idea that our policy on this issue is hostage to a small group of vocal, belligerent and ultimately criminal element is disturbing. Not one thing they have done is helped the cause and freedom and justice in Cuba. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
Last Monday, the New York Times ran this article worth reading about the sentiments of politically left Cuban exiles towards apologists for the dictatorship. Here are a couple of key points I wish some of the apologists would consider:
Cristina Martinez came of age in the Soviet Union, were she was sent to study electrical engineering in 1985 after graduating from high school in Cuba. Her extracurricular lessons were unavoidable, watching as perestroika and glasnost swept through society.
“The press was starting to bring to light everything they had hidden during 75 years of Communism,” she said. “It was a lesson, that this was the future we wanted to go to. This is the light. We had all toyed with the idea of changing the Cuban reality, to criticize it, to make it better.”
But as walls fell and borders opened, Cuba clung to its way. Disillusioned, Ms. Martinez fled to Spain, where she taught at a university for six years. Her politics were leftist enough that her Spanish friends joked she was “the reddest person they ever met.”
Maybe not in New York, where she has lived since 1996, working as a computer systems administrator at an Upper West Side school. Though she still considers herself a liberal who favors the underdog, she is puzzled by the image of Cuba as an international paladin.
“The image is one of the defender of the oppressed and defender of just causes,” she said. “People who understand the Cuban reality know it is not like that. It is not something they would want for themselves or their own country. Or, they are opportunists who use Cuba as a symbol knowing full well what is happening.” [my emphasis]
Ms Martinez is clearly not part of the right-wing Miami cabal that so many on the left find offensive. That highlighted sentence goes to the heart of the matter for me. When I saw Evo Morales speak in September of last year at Cooper Union, when he praised Castro in his speech, an American woman exclaimed, "Viva Fidel." It's to people such as her that this comment should be directed.
And there's this:
I've never accepted the argument that the US or those in Miami will change things in Cuba. Change in Cuba will come from within Cuba. Here's how:
A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.
Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly.
Mr. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles.
Something similar happened in late January when officials tried to impose a tax on the tips and wages of employees of foreign companies. Workers erupted in jeers and shouts when told about the new tax, a moment caught on a cellphone camera and passed along by memory sticks.
“It passes from flash drive to flash drive,” said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who, like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his last name not be used for fear of political persecution. “This is going to get out of the government’s hands because the technology is moving so rapidly.”
This is heartening news. Moreover, it shows the idiocy of the travel ban. I cannot imagine what good restricting American travel to Cuba has done. Indeed, one could make a compelling argument that a movement such as this could very well have gained some momentum earlier.
I certainly hope this is the start of something good, but there are certainly plenty of reasons to remain skeptical:
Cuba signed two U.N. human rights pacts on Thursday that long-time president Fidel Castro, replaced by his brother just four days ago, had refused to endorse for more than three decades.
But the communist-run island's foreign minister said after signing the documents at U.N. headquarters in New York that Havana still shared the reservations expressed by Castro about the pacts and would formally record them in future.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Both went into force in 1976 at the height of the Cold War.
Perez Roque had announced on December 10 Cuba's intention to adhere to the accords. He also said then that Cuba would open its doors in early 2009 to regular international scrutiny by the recently created U.N. Human Rights Council.
Of course, as the Bush administration all too frequently reminds us, it is easy to pay lip service to these agreements. The proof of any improvement will be in how the new administration enforces its commitment to the agreements - if at all and what the specific nature of the rservations are. There's no reason to stop with this, however. It's high time that the Cuban government allowed the ICRC to visit its prisons and allowed independent human rights monitors from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have not been allowed access to Cuba since 1989, to visit.
I'm not holding my breath, but would love to be proven wrong.
As much as I criticize Hugo Chavez for the numerous issues with which I disagree with him, he deserves praise for this initiative:
Few places capture the disarray of this country’s public health system like the Hospital Luis Ortega. Unconscious patients lie on cots strewn near the reception desk. Paint peels from walls neglected for years. Soldiers stand guard to prevent worried relatives gathered on the curb from bursting inside.
But in a recovery room tucked away at the end of a dim corridor, a group of Nicaraguan patients with patches over their eyes offers insight into one of President Hugo Chavez’s most successful health initiatives. Called “Mission Miracle” and now in its fourth year, it provides free eye surgery to Latin America’s poor.
The evolution of the program into a symbol of Mr. Chávez’s political movement across the region illustrates how Venezuela’s leader is intensifying efforts to lift his government’s profile abroad even as he faces criticism at home over social problems.
Honestly, I could care less why he's doing this. I cannot imagine losing my sight, but if I did I would be profoundly grateful to whomever restored my sight. No one should be forced to be blind simply because they are poor.
Health care should be a basic human right. That being said, so should peaceful dissent, which, lest anyone think I'm getting squishy, I don't see people being jailed for the peaceful expression of the need for universal health care in nations that don't have it and allow for peaceful dissent, but people are being jailed for the non-violent expression of their beliefs in a nation that provides for health care for its citizens.
Raul Castro has been chosen to take over his brother's place as supreme leader of Cuba.
One of the facts I wish that the defenders and those who seek to rationalize his 49 years of rule, would explain - assuming that they are even aware - that Fidel Castro was a signatory to the Sierra Maestra Manifesto, which called for, among other things, to restore all the provisions of the Constitution of 1940, which Batista had revoked.
The Constitution of 1940 was a model of progressive thought. It called for the abolishment of latifundia, the implementation of land reform, six weeks paid maternity leave, abolishment of child labor for children under 14, an 8 hour workday for those over 18 (6 hours for those 14-18), one month paid vacation per year, abolished the death penalty except for treason and for military law, and several other provisions that certainly seem to be completely progressive.
It also carried this provision:
ART. 139. To be President of the Republic it is necessary:
1st. To be Cuban by birth, but if this status results from the provision in Clause (d) [i.e., 4th Clause] of Article 12 of this Constitution, it shall be necessary to have served with the armed forces of Cuba in the Wars of Independence for at least ten years.
2nd. To have reached thirty-five years of age.
3rd. To be in full enjoyment of civil and political rights.
4th. Not to have belonged to the armed forces of the Republic in active service during the year immediately preceding the date of designation as presidential candidate.
ART. 140. The President of the Republic shall be elected by universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage, in a single day, for a term of four years, in conformity with the procedure that the law may establish.
The computing of the vote shall be made by Provinces. The number of provincial votes equal to the total of Senators and Representatives, who, in conformity with the law, have the function of choosing the electoral college of the respective Province, shall be counted in favor of the candidate who obtains the greatest number of votes in each of the Provinces, and the candidate shall be considered elected who receives the greatest number of provincial votes accumulated throughout the Republic.
A person who has once held the office may not discharge it again for eight years after having left office. [my emphasis]
So rather than reestablish a constitution that would not provide an indefinite mandate, in defiance with his commitment, Castro chose to abandon a constitution that would have probably been the most progressive in Latin America at that time and instead, created one that cemented his rule for 49 years.
It's not about the health care or the literacy. It's all about the power - and nothing more.
At last, a breath of fresh air and good sense from John Quiggin:
On moral judgements, I’m pretty much an absolutist. Dictators may do some good, but on average less good than democracy, with all its faults. Unless there’s a strong reason to believe otherwise, I’m going to put better-than-average performances under dictatorship down to luck rather than dictatorial merit. And while it’s tempting to give a pass to a dictator who is willing to impose some policy program that seems good to you, but not to the inhabitants of the country concerned, none of us has the kind of infallibility required to justify this. There may be occasions on which dictatorship is the only alternative to civil war and chaos, but any dictator who wants to make such a claim ought, like Cincinnatus (at least in the version I was taught at school), to retire as soon as the immediate crisis is over, and take his chances with the judgement of his successors.
So, even though unappealing people will be celebrating for the wrong reasons, I’m glad to see Castro go. I hope that his brother won’t outlast him long and that Cubans rather than external enemies will be the ones who bring an end to his government. I hope that Cuba will be as lucky in the succeeding governments as Indonesians have been in the governments that followed the downfall of Suharto.
I believe what motivated me more than anything to continue posting in the comments section of Chris Bertram's post, was the obdurate nature of some of the commenters. I was accused of being a Republican (almost bad enough to make me cry) and being on the side of the reactionary right-wing exile community in Southern Florida.
Some are so blind that they choose deliberately not to see.
Before I get into why that is (see below the fold for that and the challenge), I'd like to comment very briefly about the announcement that Fidel Castro is retiring. What will happen? Probably not much, but suffice it to say that Raul Castro's nickname, El Chino, is no coincidence.
Recent Comments