Cuba’s Ladies in White commended on International Women’s Day

Christian Solidarity Worldwide commends Cuba’s Ladies in White for their courage on International Women’s Day:

CSW commends the courage of the Ladies in White on International Women’s Day  08/03/2013
On International Women’s Day, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) commends the courage of the Ladies in White, the Cuban women’s non-violent protest movement.

The Damas de Blanco (Spanish), or Ladies in White, is an opposition movement in Cuba comprising the wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents. Every Sunday the women attend Mass dressed in white, to symbolize peace, and then walk silently through the streets of their town or city. They are often harassed or arrested on their way to Mass, and members of their group have been threatened.

The Ladies in White movement was formed in 2003, just two weeks after the Black Spring, the Cuban government’s mass crackdown on dissidents and journalists, which resulted in 75 being detained. Since 2010, all of the Black Spring prisoners have been released, mostly into exile in Spain, following dialogue between the government and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. However, there are still political prisoners in Cuba and the Ladies in White are still active and growing in number.

In 2005 the Ladies in White were jointly awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament, along with Reporters without Borders and Nigerian human rights lawyer Huawa Ibrahim. The Cuban government barred the group’s leaders from travelling to France to accept the award.

In 2012, one of their members, Caridad Caballero, a journalist and activist, sought refuge in the United States following months of harassment by the Cuban authorities. She was also arrested on a number of occasions. The authorities particularly targeted her religious faith, blocking her from participating in any religious activities at Jesus Christ the Redeemer Catholic Church in the Pueblo Nuevo neighbourhood of Holguin.

Caballero and other members of the Ladies in White were among hundreds of Catholic dissidents who were imprisoned for the duration of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Cuba in March 2012. CSW documented a dramatic increase in violations of freedom of religion or belief in Cuba in 2012. While Roman Catholic churches reported the highest number of violations, mostly involving the arrest and arbitrary detention of parishioners attempting to attend church activities, other denominations and religious groups were also affected.

CSW’s Advocacy Director Andrew Johnston said, “On International Women’s Day we commend the courage of the Ladies in White in standing up for justice and human rights, keeping the spotlight on the prisoners of conscience in Cuba. CSW urges the international community to continue raising human rights concerns with the Cuban government, including the harassment and imprisonment of human rights activists.”

Cuba: Imprisoned independent journalist begins second hunger strike

Via the Institute for War & Peace Reporting:

Cuban Journalist on Second Hunger Strike

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias spent 33 days on prison protest in November-December.

 

Cuban journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias began a hunger strike on March 6 to demand his immediate release.

News of his hunger strike reached the outside world via political prisoner Ramón Alejandro Muñoz González, held at the same jail, who telephoned the Hablemos Press agency on March 8.

Martínez Arias has been in jail since September, accused of insulting Raúl and Fidel Castro, the current and past presidents. (See Five Months On, Cuban Journalist Still Held for Castro “Insult”.)

His first hunger strike began on November 10 and ended 33 days later only because his family begged him to stop. He was demanding to be treated as a political prisoner. (See Cuban Journalist Pressured to End Hunger Strike.)

At the end of January, Martínez Arias was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. His case was submitted to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on December 12.

On March 16, Martínez Arias will have been in jail for six months, still with no date set for a trial.

Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez is an independent journalist and founder of the Hablemos Press news agency in Cuba.

Lying in State Taken to a Whole New Level

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Phony Cortege in Caracastan: Castronoid Advisers in Venezuela Must Have Split Their Sides Laughing…..

That was quite a show last Wednesday in Caracastan: tens of thousands of Venezuelans following the casket of Hugo Chavez, straining to touch it, or merely get a glimpse of it. That swarm of sycophants showed the world that Hugo was no monster, but rather a saint, beloved by his people. The world’s press covered the event in detail, and the images made their way around the globe.

April fool! Only it’s not April yet….

Poetic justice,  even if unintentional, is still poetic justice.  The casket was empty. Yes, empty.  So say some Venezuelan military officials.  All of those thousands upon tens of thousands of red-clad idolaters offered worship to an empty coffin, just as they had to a lying buffoon and his empty promises, while he was alive.  It was yet another cheap trick, the final lie in a long string of carefully crafted lies fervently believed by many Chavistas.

And it all smells too strongly of Castro — so strongly, in fact, that it must be true.

ABC Spain reports that sources within the military hierarchy of Venenozuela have confirmed that the real details surrounding the death of Hugo Chavez were hidden from the public and that much of what unfolded in the past few days has been a carefully orchestrated charade.

Here are the bare details:

Hugo Chavez died in Havana, around 7 am on Tuesday morning.

At noon, vice president Maduro and other top government officials had a tense meeting and then held a news conference, at which Maduro pretended that Chavez was still alive, but fighting for his life.

When the death of Chavez was finally announced around 4:30 pm, his copse was still in Havana, and was not flown to Caracas until after dark.   Maduro, however,  led the world to believe Chavez had died at the military hospital in Caracas.

The plane carrying Chavez’s remains landed at a small  air base, La Carlota, and the corpse was immediately taken to a small military hospital known as El Hospitalito, which is 7 kilometers across town from the large military hospital where Maduro claimed that Chavez had died. From there the corpse was secretly whisked to the Military Academy.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a coffin was brought to the large military hospital, and some heavy weights were placed inside, to create the illusion that it contained a corpse.

The faked transfer of his corpse from the large military hospital to the Military Academy was carefully planned to create a public spectacle.

The slow seven-hour “transfer” of Chavez’s “corpse” took place in searing tropical heat. Had his yet-to-be-embalmed corpse really been inside that coffin, it would have begun to decompose, perhaps beyond repair.  In the meantime, as the empty coffin made its way through the streets of Caracas, morticians readied the corpse for public viewing and burial.

Once the empty casket reached the Military Academy, it was taken to the basement, where no cameras were allowed – on the pretense that the coffin had to be cleaned up after its grueling manhandling by the people of Caracas. It was there that the switch was made, and Chavez’s corpse, now dressed in a military uniform, was placed in the coffin, carried out by soldiers as the cameras rolled again, and taken to the spot where it would lie in state for public viewing.

Some of those who have seen the corpse say that it looks nothing like the chubby, rosy-cheeked Chavez in those photographs released only a few days earlier, which were supposed to convince the public that all was well with their cancer-stricken president-elect.

So, there you have it: one more lie heaped on a mountain of lies. Does it make a difference? Not really, but if this is all true,  it does seem a very fitting send-off for a monumental liar, and a fitting first step for the liars who are taking his place.

And,even more fitting:  all of this gives a whole new meaning to the expression “lying in state.”

Behind-the-scenes with Hugo Chavez and U.S. Officials

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From the New York Times (no less!)

“American officials say Mr. Chávez, despite his very public denunciations of Washington, worked behind the scenes to keep trade relations between the two countries, especially in the oil sector, strong. They recalled how Mr. Chávez once picked up the phone and dialed an American diplomat to talk policy, an odd move for a leader who more than once barred American ambassadors from Caracas and regularly denounced Washington and its leaders, sometimes using barnyard epithets. “The United States needs to fix this,” Mr. Chávez said during the call, which concerned the ouster of the Honduran president in 2009. “You are the only ones who can.”

One of the most insane policies of our crackerjack State Department recently was the obsession with reinstalling Chavez’ narcotrafficking buddy Mel Zelaya as Honduran “President.” The Yankee big-stick involved bullying, vindictive and counterproductive sanctions against the Micheletti constitutionalists by U.S. State department hardliners at the behest of some influential hardliner lawmakers and officials.

Well, looks like these U.S. hardliners (against the will of the Honduran people as shown in poll after poll) were (are) in the pocket of some very deep-pocketed lobbyists.

That’s former U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt on the left at top, notorious for his counterproductive hard-line vindictiveness against Honduran Constitutionalists. Thanks to Delahunt’s hard-line against the will of the Honduran people it became easier for Castro DGI agents to visit the U.S. than for Honduran businessmen to do likewise. Delahunt’s vindictive obsession with sanctions, his hardline against granting U.S. visas for (genuinely) “people to people” visits from Hondurans to the U.S.–all this hurt mostly the poor Honduran people. His hardline against normalization of relations with Honduras’ constitutional government hurt U.S. exports to Honduras and cost many of our hardworking and patriotic U.S. businessmen. Many Hondurans were also prevented from visiting loved ones because of these vindictive sanctions.

Hugo3

“You are a fraud, Obama!… Go and ask many people in Africa!..You are an Afro-descendant, but you are the shame of all those people!” (Hugo Chavez, 2011)

Oh there was definitely some fraud going on….

Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen Condemn Beating of Pro-Democracy Activist Yris Perez Aguilera by Castro Thugs

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

March 8, 2013

Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen Condemn Beating of Pro-Democracy Activist Yris Perez Aguilera by Castro Thugs

Washington, D.C. – Yesterday in Santa Clara, Castro’s thugs viciously beat Yris Perez Aguilera, head of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement and wife of pro-democracy leader Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (“Antunez”), and left her bleeding and unconscious on Prolongacion de Marta Abreu Street. After the beating, Yris has been vomiting blood, is losing sight in one eye, and continues to have bouts of unconsciousness. Her family and friends fear for her life.

Congressmen Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Ileana Ros-Lethinen (R-FL) released the following statement:

Diaz-Balart: “The Castro regime’s thugs have repeatedly targeted Yris for her daring opposition to the dictatorship’s crushing oppression. Yesterday, her simple pleas for liberty were once again met with violence. The true criminals in Cuba are the shameless thugs who perpetuate these brutal human rights abuses against defenseless women such as Yris and the Ladies in White. The Castro dictatorship has the blood of innocents on its hands, and those who carry out their misdeeds will be held accountable for their crimes. I call on the international community to condemn the regime’s brutality against Yris and other pro-democracy activists, and to pray for the health of Yris Perez Aguilera.”

Ros-Lehtinen: “Once again we see the reality of life under the Castro totalitarian dictatorship; peaceful pro democracy activists beaten by Castro’s thugs simply because they dared to walk together in solidarity. And this time, Yris Perez Aguilera, wife of the brave freedom fighter, Jose Luis Garcia Perez Antunez, was beaten so severely that she lost consciousness. The cowardly Castro regime beats innocent women all the time and what does the Obama Administration do in response? More diplomatic entreaties and concessions to this vile and ruthless octogenarian clique of despots that has turned Cuba into an economic and social basket case. I call upon responsible nations to condemn this latest wanton attack and for the State Department to help assure that Yris receives the proper medical care as soon as possible.”

###

Our New CIA Director Swears-In, But…

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You know how I get all a-twitter over irony? Recall it was just a couple days ago Sen. Rand Paul stood for nearly thirteen long hours in filibuster stating over and over again how unconstitutional the Obama administration’s ambiguous drone program is (run by the CIA), most especially the ability to strike non-combatant Americans on American soil without due process. The answer to that is still really not answered as clearly as first thought. Now, jump to today…

John Brennan took his oath of office today. There was no Bible (and I don’t know nuttin’ about all this mumbling that Brennan converted to Islam in Saudi Arabia). No, Mr. Brennan chose the U.S. Constitution.

However, before you rejoice and exhale a deep sigh of secular relief that it was some sign of his patriotism and allegiance to said Constitution, just know that it was an original incomplete draft of the Constitution … and The Bill of Rights was nowhere to be found (bold emphasis mine).

Oh, dear. This is probably not the symbolism the White House wanted.

Hours after CIA Director John Brennan took the oath of office—behind closed doors, far away from the press, perhaps befitting his status as America’s top spy—the White House took pains to emphasize the symbolism of the ceremony.

“There’s one piece of this that I wanted to note for you,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at their daily briefing. “Director Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution that had George Washington’s personal handwriting and annotations on it, dating from 1787.”

[…]

Earnest said Brennan had asked for a document from the National Archives that would demonstrate the U.S. is a nation of laws.

“Director Brennan told the president that he made the request to the archives because he wanted to reaffirm his commitment to the rule of law as he took the oath of office as director of the CIA,” Earnest said.

The Constitution itself went into effect in 1789. But troublemaking blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that what was missing from the Constitution in 1787 is also quite symbolic: The Bill of Rights, which did not officially go into effect until December 1791 after ratification by states. (Caution: Marcy’s post has some strong language.)

That means: No freedom of speech and of the press, no right to bear arms, no Fourth Amendment ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and no right to a jury trial.

How … symbolic?

Why? Why this particular draft? Why not the finished original document with that pesky Bill of Rights included? Hell, why not a current version of the U.S. Constitution with everything amended to date?

brennan2

This would be a good time to remind everyone about how Barack Obama believes the U.S. Constitution is deeply flawed, and to this day stomps all over it and rewrites it in his image.

Cue Pitbull’s response…

When I’m Sixty-Four

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

Need me?

Possibly.

Feed me?

Perhaps.

Medicate me?

Probably not.

They called Sarah Palin a liar because she spoke of death panels, in fact, the death panels topic was labeled “The Lie of the Year” by PolitiFacts in 2009.

Snopes.com called it a lie as well, saying that “no provision of the ‘Obamacare’ health care legislation mandates or authorizes the creation of ‘ethics panels’ to determine which patients should or should not receive various medical treatments, base don the age or other criteria.”

Yet, here we are, the election is over, the damage done, and a death panel by any other name, is a death panel.

Death panels are here.

Obama lied.

Then again, that’s the rule, not the exception.

Reports from Cuba: Walesa: Counsel and Realities

By Miriam Celaya:

Walesa: Counsel and Realities

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Last February 6th a note was posted on the digital space Cubanet regarding a TV Martí interview with Lech Walesa, the renowned Polish trade union leader and undisputed trailblazer of the democratic transition in his country, during his recent visit to Miami. This note summarizes some thoughts Walesa put forth apropos freedom in Cuba and the role of the internal opposition on the island, which has caused mixed reactions among some members of Cuban dissident groups.

Overall, we may or may not be in agreement with Walesa’s opinions, but I don’t think that his interests were particularly directed at mocking the dissidents. This is not an exceptional event either: with regard to the review of the situation in Cuba we know that from time to time someone appears who “knows” better than we do what must be done to end the dictatorship. Interestingly, that someone is seldom a Cuban.

But the matter comes up repeatedly, and this case brings with it other lessons, since the person rendering opinions is a recognized international leader, which implies that he enjoys the self-assurance of authority, in virtue of which his opinions may be assumed by others as absolute truths, or, at least, accepted as priori judgments.

That is why, at the risk of upsetting those who worship the sacred cows of politics and, at the same time, favoring my admiration and respect for Walesa’s extraordinary merits and leadership in the democratic transition of his country, I want to go over his words and discuss them on a personal level. I’m barely one among the thousands of Cubans who nurture independent civic organizations in Cuba, but every citizen is a political subject -even those who are not aware of it- and each individual’s opinion is worth, at least, as much as that of the most prominent leaders.

I do not think, however, that Walesa’s role in Poland’s recent history turn him into a de facto “expert opinion” to assess the Cuban case. In fact, his opinions display great ignorance about Cuba’s situation, about the nature of totalitarian power and about our history and idiosyncrasy.

I seem to feel a certain degree of arrogance, or perhaps a tad personal vanity in the phrase “I tried to give advice to the Cuban opposition but, for some reason, they won’t listen to me”. Without wishing to dismiss the value of Walesa’s political experience, I am not aware that anyone, in the name of the opposition here, has asked him for advice. His position is, as it were, the authoritarian father’s punishment towards a misbehaving child who does not follow the rules, and I must confess that -far from bothering me as a member of the Cuban opposition- at first I thought it even funny: Democratic Cuban colleagues, let’s not toil any more in our long resistance against the regime, we only have to follow Walesa’s advice!

Having said that, in a debate mode, I would like to know how the Polish leader could have commanded such a powerful syndicate as Solidarity in Cuba; a country in which the very government took it upon itself to terminate almost to the core the port movement, plus swept off all which once was industry. Mr. Walesa seems to have no idea that there are no laborers on this Island, only those who survive in the few sugar mills or in the very few shops or factories that have withstood the destructive power of the regime. We don’t have great trade to encourage the existence of port syndicate activity. We can’t begin to compare Casablanca, the modest shipyard in Havana bay with the gigantic complex of shipyards in Gdansk, with thousands of workers, the critical main stage of the Polish transition. Cubans don’t even have a merchant or fishing fleet.

There are only minor vestiges remaining in Cuba of those great cigar factories that were the cradle and the kiln of Cuban syndicalism between the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century. How could labor unionism and a labor leader exist in a country without a labor force where the government lays off 20% of the active labor force without a second thought? And we are not just talking about unions: here, even mere free association is taboo, because, while Cubans have not historically been strong carriers of civic traditions, the Castro dictatorship undertook to void any possibility of social autonomy from the first years following the seizure of power in 1959.

Read more

Hugo’s legacy by the numbers

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From ABC Spain, some disturbing statistics that  no one dared to mention at Hugo’s funeral:

25%
Decline in the production of oil (measured in barrels) during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, due to lack of investments.

90%
of Venezuela’s total income comes from its oil industry. It has the largest oil reserves in the world.  Under Hugo Chávez, production and income have both declined.

100.000
Barrels of oil sold to Cuba every day, at bargain prices way below market value. Venezuela produces 2.8 million barrels a day.16.072
Homicides registered during 2012, a record that can also be measured as 56 murders per 100,000 Venezuelans. It is the second highest murder rate in the world. Number one is Honduras.

25%
Inflation in 2012. In the past seven years, Venezuela has had the highest inflation rates in Latin America, despite controls on prices and exchange rates.

32%
Devaluation of the national currency (Bolívar), decreed in February 2013. Economic analysts forecast even greater devaluations in the near future if Venezuela fails to invest in its oil industry.

50.000
Millions of dollars Venezuela has borrowed from China in the past five years.

1.100
Number of businesses seized by Hugo Chávez during his 14-year dictatorship. These expropriations and the resulting  growth of the government sector have not generated any wealth, but rather increased the overall poverty of Venezuela.

The House That Chávez Built

Javier Corrales in Foreign Policy:

The House That Chávez Built

Hugo Chávez subordinated the needs of Venezuela’s economy to the imperative of keeping himself in power. Now the job of cleaning up falls to his successor.

Love him or hate him, Hugo Chávez was a savvy politician — a point that one might see as ironically confirmed by the timing of his death. For the Venezuelan president leaves the scene at the peak of his political career, but just in time to miss what is likely to be a severe economic downturn. This downturn might have permanently blackened his legacy had he remained alive. It is, in any case, entirely of his making.

Politically, Chávez died at a moment of sky-high popularity among his supporters, in part because of his own ability to portray himself, over the last two years, as a true martyr, a man willing to sacrifice his health and his life for his country, his movement, and his people. At the same time he bolstered his reputation abroad through his lavish dispensation of foreign aid and trade. The Chávez administration’s spending on South-to-South aid in proportion to gross national income, for example, is second only to that of Saudi Arabia. Within Latin America, he learned late in his career that he could develop good relations even with countries on the opposite side of the political spectrum (Colombia, Chile, and Mexico) simply by becoming a leading importer of their goods. Learning to contain his criticisms of other Latin American leaders, as he did also late in his career, also helped.

So should his designated successor, Vice President Nicolás Maduro, actually manage to assume the presidency, he will find himself commanding a remarkable store of political capital. Yet Maduro (or whoever else ends up following in Chávez’s wake) will also inherit one of the most dysfunctional economies in the Americas — and just as the bill for the deceased leader’s policies comes due.

By now it’s widely understood that excessive dependence on commodity exports can distort an economy in fundamental ways. One manifestation of this principle is what has come to be known as “Dutch Disease” (named after the problems faced by the Netherlands as it reaped a windfall from North Sea oil in the 1970s). Dutch Disease occurs when a country that is excessively dependent on commodity exports experiences a price boom. The sudden inflow of foreign currency raises the demand for local currency, yielding an uncompetitive exchange rate. This overvalued exchange rate, if unaddressed, can kill the country’s other exports as well as stimulating an avalanche of imports, which can hurt domestic producers.

Continue reading HERE.

On Hugo’s Monkeyshines

Image: File photo of Venezuela's President Chavez showing the pistols of independence hero Bolivar during a ceremony in Caracashugo
“GOTCHA! didn’t I!…HAH-HA!”

Fidel Castro came within a hair of igniting a worldwide nuclear war, aimed first at destroying the U.S.

Despite his bluster and monkeyshines, this last point was never in Hugo Chavez’ bucket list. Indeed it was the last thing he wanted. Shusssssh–keep this under your hat but: the U.S. is –by far–the biggest customer for Venezuelan oil. Hugo Chavez was our fourth largest oil supplier.

But that’s all behind the scenes. Now on stage we had a first-class vaudeville show:

“Yesterday the devil (President George Bush) came here! Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today….You are ignoramus, you are a burro, Mr Danger. You are a donkey, Mr Danger! You are a donkey, Mr George W Bush! You are a coward, Mr Bush, a killer, a perpetrator of genocide, an alcoholic, a drunk, a liar, an immoral person, Mr Danger. You are the worst, Mr Danger. The worst of this planet! A psychologically sick man, I know it!”

And the gallery ate it up.

Three years into power Castro had already murdered more political prisoners (out of a population of 6.5 million) than Hitler murdered (out of a population of 65 million) in his first six years. Ten years into power Castro had jailed and tortured at a higher rate than Stalin during his Great Terror. Fidel Castro’s lifelong dream as to destroy the U.S.–and came within a hair of it.

So given his teeeenzy attainments (by Castroite standards) in mass-murder, mass-torture, mass-terror and Anti-Americanism, its small surprise that Hugo Chavez amassed only a teeeeeenzy fraction of Castro’s affection from American liberals.

For simply saying the U.N. “smelt of sulfur,” Chavez was censured by prominent New Yorkers. After twice trying to make the entire city smell of charred flesh, his mentor, Fidel Castro, got a reception to shame Simon and Garfunkel’s in Central Park.

Our friends at Townhall help disseminate some items utterly unknown everyplace .0000000000000009 millimeters outside Miami-Dade borders.

(Pero fijense que tipo mas DESCARA’O, este Fontova!…como Chavez esta en las noticias–pues pone su nobre en el titulo del articulo!–que tiene casi NADA que ver con Chavez! En ves el articulo se trata casi todamente de las barbaridades de Fidel Castro!–y el muy sinverguenZON Fontova hasta encuantra manera de insultar a Jeff Flake en algo que los lectores enganados esperaban que se trataba de Chavez!)