[skatetokil]

Alexis, I understand peru had a pretty large scale land titling program recently. Is it still ongoing? How do you think it helped people in shantytowns. You mention that they "own" their homes, but do you consider them owners even if they dont have govt titles?

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

Alexis, I understand peru had a pretty large scale land titling program recently. Is it still ongoing? How do you think it helped people in shantytowns. You mention that they "own" their homes, but do you consider them owners even if they dont have govt titles?

yes, its still going on. among all the informality in here... defacto ownership of some piece of land and a small house is usually accepted as "ownership". given a few conditions (like land ownership in which the house is set isnt contested).
i´d consider (and society as well) somebody living in an improvised house an owner, as long as the land is public unclaimed and unused land. even with no titles. imagine the concept of a "settler" in the US in the wild west... its not so far from that.
the informality around here supports these defacto arrangements and there is a whole set of unwritten rules about them.

there are laws (from many years ago) that make defacto owners, legal owners (with titles and everything) after a number of years, although bureaucracy tends to be the biggest hurdle. the present program is not so much about the laws, but about making the process more accesible and affordable to people.

the whole idea behind that, is de soto´s idea of making shantytown home owners worth of bank credit.

 

[rockwool]

"Show me a third world country that provides, cares and distributes the limited wealth it has, for the majority of its citizens, better."
You answered no question there, Sparky. Why dont you live there?

Because it's to ****ing poor due to the illegal UN critisiezed US blockade.

"perhaps you and your family should move to Iraq"
Why? I like the US. I realize it isnt perfect, and I do not present it as such. I have spent enought time in SW Asia this life, and do not ever care to go back. For anything, or anyone.

It was also a stupid question wasn't it? We enjoy the economic freedom we have, making this comparatively big amount of cash we are, that is subsidezed by the people of poorer nations, and we still want to travel and do stuff with that money no matter how unjust it is that people starve due to this system that we so much enjoy, don't we?

"Shouldn't you consider all facts from all sides before you judge?"
Hellloooo Pot, this is Kettle calling. Have you considered ALL the "facts" about the US before you made your informed decisions?

It's major Tong to you, grounded to your seat in Babylon poor sober groundcontrol.
The use of the word ALL has to be taken with a grain of reality. Of course, only God knows ALL. We, as humans, have to settle with a humble attitude that there are things we might have missed, even though we can't figure out what they are at the moment, but this is not the case here as skatetokil, luckily for us, has shown.

"I haven't said a word about how any of you have been raised and taught by your parents"
Nor did I. As Hilary Clinton reminded us, "It takes a village." Like it or not, we are raised as much by the community around us as we are by our family. YOU are the one who said "I am speaking against a thing that you have had beaten into you since you was born." You were suggestiong something other than indoctrination, via forced or voluntary means?

To make it clear, I was speaking about the truths spewed out by the o'so powerful mainstream media brainwash, which nobody can hide from, and the like wise subconciously effective propaganda of the too trusted politicians of your country (this goes for mine as well though)

Thinking you/we aren't major victimes of the above is utterly naive and ignorant.
Indoctrination, yes, "beaten into you" was a figurative speach. Also, brainwash don't actually mean some dudes are scrubbing you with scotch brite. Both things meant that the lies you have been told about Cuba have been repeated soo many times that they've become true.
The mind actually works that way. Check that up, I double dare you!!

"Yes, I dislike the politics of the US and I have never tried to hide it."
You dislike the politics of the GOP. And no one buys off on the American Dream anymore. 'Cept the millions of people living in other countries who want to come here.

Trust me on this one, as the heavy critic of US policies I am, I would probably take a greater pleasure than most if the foreign politics of the Democarats really were any different from the Republicans.
Remember, we have to separete rethorics from pratice. Only the latter counts.

Billions, not millions of people like to leave poverty behind them just as you wish for a rase. Difference is that they wich for enough food, education and adequate health care. You wish for a new bike cus last years is one whole year old now...

One guy? Dang. Wow. Guess you showed us. Wow. One guy.

20%? Dang. Wow. Guess you showed us. Wow. 20%. How many do you think immigrated here? Probably a few more than 20%. Just a thought. Maybe 23% or so. Maybe a few more...

You didn't ask to be shown more. You thought it never had hapened and I proved it had. Eat it.

20% is a lot in 50 years if you ask me, but figures don't show that much without a comparison. I know Sweden has by far more immigrants than any other Nordic country. What's the equivalent % of the US (since your into dick comparissons)?

To paraphrase Voltaire, "Although I do not agree with a single word that you say, I shall defend to my last breath your right to say it"
And that is the difference between you and me, my friend...

But I'm the guy standing up for mute David over here, while you're a cheerleader for nukulur Goliath!!!

The reason what I say is so radical and unheard of to you is because the "side I'm on" can't get its word thrugh at all in both our countries (even more so in yours). So even though your will is good, it hasn't helped as you're not aware of the strucktures that supresses the voices of the little man. But don't give up, I see changes coming.

 

[rockwool]

99% of almost nothing is still almost nothing.

if you are pretty much responsible of the fact there is virtually NOTHING to "distribute", yet you distribute 99% of everything, it still means you are a failure.

The less there is the more important there is to distribute it equally.

GDP (purchasing power parity):
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
$167.3 billion (2005 est.)
GDP (official exchange rate):
Definition Field Listing
$69.81 billion (2005 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
6.4% (2005 est.)
GDP - per capita (PPP):
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
$6,000 (2005 est.)

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/pe.html

Seems like you don't have that much eather. The difference is that some 15% or so of your population earn the majority of that GDP, so that leaves the biggest proportion with maybe even less GDP - per capita than they have on Cuba...

GDP (purchasing power parity):
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
$268.3 billion (2005 est.)
GDP (official exchange rate):
Definition Field Listing
$348.1 billion (2005 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
2.7% (2005 est.)
GDP - per capita (PPP):
Definition Field Listing Rank Order
$29,800 (2005 est.)

Using your way to count, in Peru you have nothing compared to the great mighty industrial nation of Svedala.
Figures speak for them selves, you need a revolution.

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sw.html

 

[LordOpie]

I wish you thirdworlders would stop complaining so much.

Ruins my beer and TV shows.

 

[rockwool]

Political violence is about as evil as it gets. In that sense, Cuba loses in my book.

That lovable teddy bear el Che is thought to have personally executed around 300 people, and ordered the deaths of thousands more. Preists, landlords, government officials etc etc. Maybe they were scumbags, I don't know, but its a shame when ideology trumps human empathy.

If the political elite is distributing and caring for its people equally then what is it but out of love and empathy for their average fellow countrymen?
Political violence? Have you ever heard of a demonstration being beat down by the ****in police? That happens in Sweden yearly. Of course the're only leftists getting beat so that's cool with wheel of fortune watching Svensson..

Ché, the guy that could have worn a suit and settled a good life exploiting the people as any politician has done in that hemisphere, put his blue colour gear on and went out to help build a home for the homeless of Bolivia.. What a corrupt guy. Suits on the other hand, don't bother with getting dirty, and I don't know for what they executed Saddam Hussein for as he didn't fire them gas grenades on the Kurds. That was privates in green uniformes.

Priests, if they are Catholic or Orthodox, landlords and politicians are scumbags. When your kids can't sleep because of hunger, you go out and fight the corrupted out of empathy for yours and the kids of the neighbourhood.

The USA constantly treatening Cuba with invasion is political violence against 11million people.

 

[rockwool]

Thats not to say that the US government isnt just as guilty, we just tend to stand a little farther away from our victims.

Thank you.

ideology sometimes has to. You cant accomplish alot of things without force.

Sure you can, but you have to be left alone by the bully to develop in peace.

 

[rockwool]

I wish you thirdworlders would stop complaining so much.

Ruins my beer and TV shows.

See, that's what I'm talking about. Have you heard Black Flags song TV-party (I think that's what it's called)?

 

[rockwool]

what? childen in school uniforms????????!!!!!!!
of course they cant be frauds then!

Well, I don't see why not if its peaceful enough. We have no police or military standing around during election time in Sweden. Don't know how it is in Greece during elections only that I sometimes see police guarding different places with H&K 9mm submachine guns. Never seen that in Sweden.

the % of home-owners in shanty towns is WAAAAAAAAAY larger than in suburban or urban areas in Lima. in fact, everyone who lives in a shanty town, owns his "home".
what does it means? higher living standards in shanty towns???? nope. it means this people are so poor, they cant afford to rent a decent housing unit, thus they get a bunch of carboard somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and make a semi-permanent tent, fully owned and paid for.

thing is, in your european mindset, "home-owner" means "he who owns a home" and by home you think "a decent place usually made of bricks, or wood and sheetrock", and maybe you even associate the word with "fully paid mortage"... not a bunch of cardboard and plastic supermarket bags to waterproof cobbled together.

Ohh come on, what do you take me for, an aristocrat?
I don't doubt you about how it is in Lima, but to my knowledge, that type of housing on Cuba was adressed by the revolution.


Good night everybody.

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

The less there is the more important there is to distribute it equally.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/pe.html

Seems like you don't have that much eather. The difference is that some 15% or so of your population earn the majority of that GDP, so that leaves the biggest proportion with maybe even less GDP - per capita than they have on Cuba...

funnily, the present per capita is a result of the introduction of some cuba-like meassures in the first half of the 80s. market control, nationalization, debt default, etc, etc
after almost 25 years, we are back to the same nominal gdp percapita. (NOT even adjusted by inflation).

this year is going to close on almost 8% growth, after 5 years of 5+% growth. give it enough time, until the poor´s standard of living improves until the peruvian relative poor have a decent absolute living standard.

if today´s poor have it pretty bad... its more a consequence of the introduction of cuban-style reforms in the 80s. (and also in the 60s-70s under a socialist military whacko), and you can also put some blame on him on why there was no middle class for almost 20 years. what middle class is going to survive 7 digit cumulative inflation and rampant unemployment?

 

[JohnE]

RW, I am not the "cheerleader for the nulular Goliath" by any means. Just a realist who has heard as much as you have about Cuba, and reached a much different conclusion. No one will change your mind, nor will you change anyone heres mind. But still, anyone wanna give RW the persistence award? This would have been a much better discussion over a bunch of beers...
I'm out (Although I do not admit defeat!), used up enough life here, battle on, boys!

 

[skatetokil]

yes, its still going on. among all the informality in here... defacto ownership of some piece of land and a small house is usually accepted as "ownership". given a few conditions (like land ownership in which the house is set isnt contested).
i´d consider (and society as well) somebody living in an improvised house an owner, as long as the land is public unclaimed and unused land. even with no titles. imagine the concept of a "settler" in the US in the wild west... its not so far from that.
the informality around here supports these defacto arrangements and there is a whole set of unwritten rules about them.

there are laws (from many years ago) that make defacto owners, legal owners (with titles and everything) after a number of years, although bureaucracy tends to be the biggest hurdle. the present program is not so much about the laws, but about making the process more accesible and affordable to people.

the whole idea behind that, is de soto´s idea of making shantytown home owners worth of bank credit.

Interesting stuff. My father worked with de soto for 20 years or so, and now we're putting together a microfinance and title registration company that should be off the ground in the next year or so.

As you say, the bureaucracies often stand squarely in the way of development. They and their elite buddies profit from the rules being complicated, difficult and expensive to comply with because it allows them to distribute rights arbitrarily and extract bribes from applicants.

I also consider informals to be homeowners, but if the bank doesnt then they're out of luck. Microfinance is a good stopgap, but without meaningful collateral their interests rates will always be too high. 50%+ is not uncommon in these markets, and it's even worse if they are borrowing from informal moneylenders.

 

[rockwool]

Im not defending the current actions of our government, Im just saying that there are situations in which it's acceptable to dispatch of political enemies for the greater good.
Nuremberg?

I recently saw a documentary and they mentioned the Nurnberg trials in it. It was about what they were convicted for, it was something else than I and people in general think it was. Something smelled rotten about it though, but I don't remember the details and I don't remember which documentary it was.

You cant just decide to buy a car in cuba unless it is a pre 59 car or you have a special govt permit. Those are almost impossible to get unless you are an employee of the govt or you have some connections.

There's a perfectly good explanation to why they limit car ownership; they have a shortage of oil, partially because the country is poor, and partially because of you know who.. Thanks to Hugo Chavez though, they have a bilateral exchange program where Venezuela supplys them with oil in exchange of doctors, nurses (and maybe medicines and teachers, don't remember). Due to the shortage, they have to prioritize the industry and the common needs.

As far as home ownership, you and I are talking about different things. If by "own" you mean "there is no landlord," yes, many own their homes after they pay their 10% of income in rent to the state. Some may have even been given homes as encouragement to move to certain parts of the island (as in, away from havana), I'm not sure about the details of those arrangements. However, if by own you mean "can dispose of as they wish," I repeat that nobody owns any real estate. The term they use is "legal posessor" of an asset, but transfer, use as collateral, and subdivision, development and sale are all more or less impossible.

K, thanks for clearing that out.

Say you want to move out of your parents house. You go to the government housing office, stand in line, and explain your need. You then may or may not be contacted (depending on whether you are on the list) within the next few years and offered an apartment. The result is that most people just live with their parents forever. 3 generations in 1 apartment is not uncommon at all.

I recognize that from Greece where the shortage of housing is bigger than is Sweden. Kids usually live with their parents until they get married, and the grand parents are always living with one of their kids as that is the way they do there. Senior citizen group housing (in one form or another), which is the normal thing in Sweden, is to my my knowledge non existant. It may exist but it's not the common thing. Different cultures.

I suppose you could say that the housing crunch in Havana was a result of poverty, but it really started as a government policy before 1993. The government viewed Havana as dangerous, a center of independent thought and existing organizations that were impossible to monitor and control. (They also borrowed a soviet model of urban development that was uniquely unappealing to cubans - the city is ringed by huge and desolate tracts of identical apartment blocs that are widely hated and in serious disrepair). Their goal was to depopulate the city, or at least keep it from growing, by encouraging people to move to secondary cities and small towns scattered across the island. When they had the soviet sugar daddy, so to speak, they were able to incentivize migration to these other poles, but after the money ran out, people reverted to their natural and historical pattern of migration and started abandoning the rural areas/new cities in the east for the capitol.

There are a lot of things about what you've mentioned that they are completely upfront with, like the surveilance of different organizations. I also know that they from my union which is anarcho-syndicalistic.

I attended a union seminar where the members talked over if we should as a union support the independent anarcho-syndicalistic union of Cuba, even though our critisism would be used in the mainstream media propaganda, and if it was a backstab to the revolution which we all supported, or if it was a duty do do so and if it was a progressive thing for it.

Personally I was against letting our constructive critisism be used by the Empires propaganda machine as long as Cuba wasn't left to prosper, and was under any threat from the US or foreign power. There was less harm done that way.

About the ghettos you were talking about, every country has them, and in every country they are filled with more problems than in the rest of the society. Ask the French Arabs about theirs.

I find my self explaining some of the most obvious stuff that you can find in every country.. And some of the other stuff you've brought up I find to be nessesary for Cubas protection against US infiltration/destabilization/occupation. Third thing is that all western countries are surveiling organizations, politicaly involved individuals and what not.

All these things are wrong, but they are there as a reaction to something, not as an unprovoked action because the governing elite wants to be totalitarian, supress the people and steal of them. Dont you agree?

 

[rockwool]

yes, its still going on. among all the informality in here... defacto ownership of some piece of land and a small house is usually accepted as "ownership". given a few conditions (like land ownership in which the house is set isnt contested).
i´d consider (and society as well) somebody living in an improvised house an owner, as long as the land is public unclaimed and unused land. even with no titles. imagine the concept of a "settler" in the US in the wild west... its not so far from that.
the informality around here supports these defacto arrangements and there is a whole set of unwritten rules about them.

there are laws (from many years ago) that make defacto owners, legal owners (with titles and everything) after a number of years, although bureaucracy tends to be the biggest hurdle. the present program is not so much about the laws, but about making the process more accesible and affordable to people.

the whole idea behind that, is de soto´s idea of making shantytown home owners worth of bank credit.

They have similar problems in Brazil. There are some farming land occupying movimentos that with the support of the law have claimed unused land but they still haven't got the legal papers. Rich land owners are fighting them and I don't know why Lula hasn't solved the problems yet.

 

[skatetokil]

Cuba would not be a poor country if not for the excesses of socialism, so I dont really see poverty as an excuse for the draconian social controls.

The cuban governments total disregard for the incentives its policies produce is incredibly destructive, and its reliance on force, "reeducation" community based coersion, and conformity to achieve its ends is really quite repulsive.

 

[ohio]

The cuban governments total disregard for the incentives its policies produce is incredibly destructive, and its reliance on force, "reeducation" community based coersion, and conformity to achieve its ends is really quite repulsive.

You obviously, just like, don't understand, or something, man.

 

[rockwool]

funnily, the present per capita is a result of the introduction of some cuba-like meassures in the first half of the 80s. market control, nationalization, debt default, etc, etc
after almost 25 years, we are back to the same nominal gdp percapita. (NOT even adjusted by inflation).

this year is going to close on almost 8% growth, after 5 years of 5+% growth. give it enough time, until the poor´s standard of living improves until the peruvian relative poor have a decent absolute living standard.

if today´s poor have it pretty bad... its more a consequence of the introduction of cuban-style reforms in the 80s. (and also in the 60s-70s under a socialist military whacko), and you can also put some blame on him on why there was no middle class for almost 20 years. what middle class is going to survive 7 digit cumulative inflation and rampant unemployment?

Ohh c'mon man, Peru doesn't get any special treatment from the WTO/World Bank/US than any other 3rd world country. If you don't comply with their liberal agenda, you pay!

In another way Peru doesn't differ from other 3rd world countries is that it hasn't gotten any richer either. In 2006 the UN released figures about this thing, the rich get richer while the poor not only get poorer but they also multiply..

You can't blame that on socialistic economic politics of them countries eater as all of them are ruled by the WTO/World Bank who forced those countries to sell out all their prosperous state owned companies and natural recources.

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

In another way Peru doesn't differ from other 3rd world countries is that it hasn't gotten any richer either. In 2006 the UN released figures about this thing, the rich get richer while the poor not only get poorer but they also multiply..

believe it or not, poverty, as in how poor the poor are, and how many, % and absolute, there are is going down, basically as a result of undoing all the prevoius lefty policies.

Poverty in Peru is high, with a poverty threshold level of 48% of the total population. However, the level is reducing slowly and it is expected to diminish to 20% of the population within 10 years. In 2006, a new phenomenon of rebirth of the medium class began, during 2006-2007 it is expected that the growth of employment will be stronger outside the capital reducing considerably the levels of poverty.

You can't blame that on socialistic economic politics of them countries eater as all of them are ruled by the WTO/World Bank who forced those countries to sell out all their prosperous state owned companies and natural recources.

you CAN definately blame socilalistic economic policies with the failure of most of south-america, regardless of foreign intervention.
the correlation is so strong is pretty hard to make case for them not being cause-effect.

prosperous state entreprises?? most, but a select few state owned enterprises (basically those in idiot-proof markets) like chile´s codelco, or the oil companies used to turn deficits year after year, besides offering a TERRIBLE service.

when my folks got a phone number, back in the early 80s... the telephone company was a public company, with ridiculously low prices, say 8 dollars a month in todays money.
thing is, they waited literally 4.5 years, after they paid and signed the contract before they got the telephone line. back then, you could also bribe your way for $3000 to get a telephone in 6 months. what about it the service went down?? it could be like that for days or weeks, nobody to complain about.
like most other state owned companies, it failed at every level, run on deficits funded by taxes, so in the long run it didnt save people any money.. and the service sucked beyond anything you can imagine. loose-loose situation for most clients/owners.

 

[skatetokil]

agree.

problem is, most of the IMF sponsored privatizations were such hatchet jobs you end up with private monopolies offering crappy service rather than public ones. I've heard some interesting ideas about structuring the share offerings so that all the workers become part owners, but there is still some professional management and public accountability. I like that a lot better than the "lets sell it to my cousin Fulano" approach.

 

[rockwool]

RW, I am not the "cheerleader for the nulular Goliath" by any means. Just a realist who has heard as much as you have about Cuba, and reached a much different conclusion. No one will change your mind, nor will you change anyone heres mind. But still, anyone wanna give RW the persistence award? This would have been a much better discussion over a bunch of beers...
I'm out (Although I do not admit defeat!), used up enough life here, battle on, boys!

Thanks, I find persistance be a good quality. That don't say I couldn't change my mind over anything I for the moment am so sertain of. And I'll have with you any time. Strong beliefes won't be changed this easily. But every time I show to you guys how the US acts/is, I plant something in your brains, a memory of something.

Even if it doesn't conform with your own views, it will, more or less, be remembered some time when you deal with the things we've talked about. A rememberance that at some time when adequate information has been obtained, will lead to questioning. Questioning because you with notice that the details in the "official" story won't add up.

As Noam Chomsky put it, "there is a war on information", which means that they control us through putting up false images of how things are (instead of military force like back in the days), and the only way to fight this is through information, or taking the red pill. This is one of the most essential things that the movie Matrix is about.

I'm not discussing because I want to win discussions, I want to spread the word, each one teach one. But put me on a bike and I will show you competitiveness.
Thing is, a lot of things I have claimed about Cuba have been, more or less, affirmed by skatetokil, and other things have been added by him. That should be more than enough for anybody to start questioning things, not convince, I wouldn't expect that, but questioning the stuff that have been spoken against.

I don't think you're one of the wicked. I belive you when you say you're a realist, so belive me when I say that I view my self as a realist too. But remember, things we don't know of, or enough, are always unreal, or at least questionable and hard to believe.

Cuba would not be a poor country if not for the excesses of socialism, so I dont really see poverty as an excuse for the draconian social controls.

The cuban governments total disregard for the incentives its policies produce is incredibly destructive, and its reliance on force, "reeducation" community based coersion, and conformity to achieve its ends is really quite repulsive.

Exesses like that they let loads of students from the 3rd world studdy there on full scholarship?
Like when they sent more doctors to Pakistan than Medicins Sans Frontieres did, after that big earth quake that killed thousands?
Like that they went to all the distant places that the other doctors refused to go to?
Like that those doctors stayed there when winter came after a month or so, while the MSF left?
Like when they offered the Katrina victimes humanitarian help (but got no answer...)?

That is sharing what you have, even if you just have a little to give. A very beautifull act that I support to 100%. Solidarity.

The rest I have already answered.

You obviously, just like, don't understand, or something, man.

He has actually backed my ramblings pretty good.

you CAN definately blame socilalistic economic policies with the failure of most of south-america, regardless of foreign intervention.
the correlation is so strong is pretty hard to make case for them not being cause-effect.

Alex, I don't remember which countries that were on that UN list of the poorest 30 getting poorer. Peru might not have been in it, it is besides the point. I'm glad if you're not! Point was that it's going even more to hell for a lot of countries due to the IMF/World Bank/US.

Which socialistic governments/countries are you talking about? Only ONE has ever existed in L.A.
Allende wasn't allowed to sit long enough before the US finished him off. Chavez had 6 years in power before the US tried to oust him too. Nicaragua had an expensive US backed war run against them for 10 years. And don't forget Yougoslavia... Only Cuba has been left to prosper in peace.

What ever other L.A. countries had, was variations of market economy. Terrible service from state owned companies is not a socialistic phenomenon.

agree.

problem is, most of the IMF sponsored privatizations were such hatchet jobs you end up with private monopolies offering crappy service rather than public ones. I've heard some interesting ideas about structuring the share offerings so that all the workers become part owners, but there is still some professional management and public accountability. I like that a lot better than the "lets sell it to my cousin Fulano" approach.

Workers as part owners is good as it is motivating and gives a whole other sence of responsibility.

 

[LordOpie]

 

[rockwool]

We still make the best rum, no matter how much $$$ Bacardi spends on advertizing.

 

[skatetokil]

Havana Club rocks my world.

As for "socialist" governments in Latin America, you are correct that few have adopted the title, but many have adopted the idea of state-led development through public spending. The notion of developent (or happiness) by decree is firmly entrenched.

The expansive welfare states of the continent redistribute wealth in so many directions nobody has any idea how to reform them without causing the starvation of a fourth of the population.

Same goes for the U.S. come to think of it.

 

[rockwool]

Below are some exerpts from a book Noam Chomsky called something in the way of "the best book in its field".

Killing Hope
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
by William Blum

I will start with the references so you can see on what level this book is.

30. CUBA 1959 to 1980s
1. Khrushchev Remembers (London, 1971) pp. 494, 496.
2. Time, 2 November 1962.
3. Cited by William Appleman Williams, "American Intervention in Russia: 1917-20", in David Horowitz, ed., Containment and Revolution (Boston, 1967). Written in a letter to President Wilson by Secretary of State Robert Lansing, uncle of John Foster and Allen Dulles.
4. Facts on File, Cuba, the U.S. and Russia, 1960-63 (New York, 1964) pp. 56-8.
5. International Herald Tribune (Paris), 2 October 1985, p. 1.
6. New York Times, 23 October 1959, p. 1.
7. Facts on File, op. at., pp. 7-8; New York Times, 19, 20 February 1960; 22 March 1960.
8. New York Times, 5, 6 March 1960.
9. David Wise, "Colby of CIA — CIA of Colby", New York Times Magazine, 1 July 1973, p. 9.
10. A report about the post-invasion inquiry ordered by Kennedy disclosed that "It was never intended, the planners testified, that the invasion itself would topple Castro. The hope was that an initial success would spur an uprising by thousands of anti-Castro Cubans. Ships in the invasion fleet carried 15,000 weapons to be distributed to the expected volunteers." U.S. News & World Report, 13 August 1979, p. 82. Some CIA officials, including Allen Dulles, later denied that an uprising was expected, but this may be no more than an attempt to mask their ideological embarrassment that people living under a "communist tyranny" did not respond at all to the call of "The Free World".
11. Attacks on Cuba:
a) Taylor Branch and George Crile III, "The Kennedy Vendetta", Harper's magazine (New York), August 1975, pp. 49-63
b) Facts on File, op, at., passim
c) New York Times, 26 August 1962, p. 1; 21 March 1963, p. 3; Washington Post, 1 June 1966; 30 September 1966; plus many other articles in both newspapers during the 1960s
d) Warren Hinckle and William W. Turner, The Fish is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (Harper & Row, New York, 1981) passim.
12. Branch and Crile, op. cit., pp. 49-63. The article states that there were in excess of 300 Americans involved in the operation, but in "CBS Reports: The CIA's Secret Army", broadcast 10 June 1977, written by Bill Moyers and the same George Crile III, former CIA official Ray Cline states that there were between 600 and 700 American staff officers.
13. New York Times, 26 August 1962, p. 1.
14. John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition) p. 278.
15. Branch and Crile, op. cit,, p, 52.
16. The Times (London), 8, 10 January 1964; 12 May, p. 10; 21 July, p. 10; 28, 29 October; The Guardian (London), 28, 29 October 1964.
17. Washington Post, 14 February 1975, p. C31; Anderson's story stated that there were only 24 buses involved and that they were dried and used in England.
18. Branch and Crile, op. cit., p. 52.
19. New York Times, 28 April 1966, p. 1.
20. Branch and Crile, op. cit., p. 52
21. Washington Post, 21 March 1977, p. A18.
22. Hinckle and Turner, p. 293, based on their interview with the participant in Ridgecrest, California, 27 September 1975.
23. San Francisco Chronicle, 10 January 1977,
24. Bill Schaap, "The 1981 Cuba Dengue Epidemic", Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington), No. 17, Summer 1982, pp. 28-31
25. San Francisco Chronicle, 29 October 1980, p. 15.
26. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington), 13 January 1967, p. 176.
27. Coven Action Information Bulletin (Washington), No. 22, Fall 1984, p. 35; the trialof Eduardo Victor Arocena Perez, Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, transcript of 10 September 1984, pp. 2187-89.
28. See, e.g., San Francisco Chronicle, 27 July 1981.
29. Washington Post, 16 September 1977, p. A2.
30. Ibid., 25 October 1969, column by Jack Anderson.
31. Reports of the assassination attempts have been disclosed in many places; see Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), 20 November 1975, pp. 71-180, for a detailed, although not complete, account. Stadium bombing attempt: New York Times, 22 November 1964, p. 26.
32. New York Times, 12 December 1964, p. 1,
33. Ibid., 3 March 1980, p. 1.
34. Terrorist attacks within the United States:
a) Jeff Stein, "Inside Omega 7", The Village Voice (New York), 10 March 1980
b) New York Times, 13 September 1980, p. 24; 3 March, 1980, p. 1.
c) John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (London, 1981), pp. 251-52, note (also includes attacks on Cuban targets in other countries)
d) Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington), No, 6, October 1979, pp. 8-9.
35. The plane bombing:
a) Washington Post, 1 November 1986, pp. A1, A18.
b) Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots (New York, 1987), p. 379c) William Schaap, "New Spate of Terrorism: Key Leaders Unleashed", Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington), No. 11, December 1980, pp-4-8.
d) Dinges and Landau, pp. 245-6.
e) Speech by Fidel Castro, 15 October 1976, reprinted in Toward Improved U.S,-Cuba Relations, House Committee on International Relations, Appendix A, 23 May 1977. The CIA documents: Amongst those declassified by the Agency, sent to the National Archives in 1993, and made available to the public. Reported in The Nation (New York), 29 November 1993, p. 657.
36. Dangerous Dialogue: Attacks on Freedom of Expression in Miami's Cuban Exile Community, p. 26, published by Americas Watch/The Fund for Free Expression, New York and Washington, August 1992.
37. Ibid., passim. Also see: "Terrorism in Miami: Suppressing Free Speech", CounterSpy magazine (Washington), Vol. 8, No. 3, March-May 1984, pp. 26-30; The Village Voice, op. cit.; Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington}, No. 6, October 1979, pp. 8-9.
38. New York Times, 4 January 1975, p. 8.
39. San Francisco Chronicle, 12 January 1982, p. 14; Parade magazine (Washington Post), 15 March 1981, p. S.
40. The Village Voice, op. cit.
41. Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onis, The Alliance That Lost Its Way: A Critical Report on the Alliance for Progress (A Twentieth Century Fund Study, Chicago, 1970) p. 56.
42. Ibid,, p. 309; the list of Alliance goals can be found on pp. 352-5.
43. Ibid., pp. 226-7.
44. New York Times, 26 December 1977, p. 37. See also: Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975) p. 380 (Editors Press Service).
45. Tad Szulc, Fidel, A Critical Portrait (New York, 1986), pp. 480-1.
46. Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York, 1962, paperback edition) pp. 416-17.
47. Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1975), p. 289.
48. Marc Edelman, "The Other Super Power: The Soviet Union and Latin America 1917-1987", NACLA'S Report on the Americas (North American Congress on Latin America, New York), January-February 1987, p. 16; Szulc, see index.
49. Szulc, pp. 427-8.
50. Miami Herald, 29 April 1996, p.l

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Chapter:

30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s
The unforgivable revolution

In the American lexicon, in addition to good and bad bases and missiles, there ate good and bad revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were good. The Cuban Revolution is bad. It must be bad because so many people have left Cuba as a result of it.

But at least 100,000 people left the British colonies in America during and after the American Revolution. These Tories could not abide by the political and social changes, both actual and feared, particularly that change which attends all revolutions worthy of the name: Those looked down upon as inferiors no longer know their place. (Or as the US Secretary of State put it after the Russian Revolution: the Bolsheviks sought "to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth.")3

The Tories fled to Nova Scotia and Britain carrying tales of the godless, dissolute, barbaric American revolutionaries. Those who remained and refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new state governments were denied virtually all civil liberties. Many were jailed, murdered, or forced Into exile. After the American Civil War, thousands more fled to South America and other points, again disturbed by the social upheaval.

How much more is such an exodus to be expected following the Cuban Revolution?—a true social revolution, giving rise to changes much more profound than anything in the American experience. How many more would have left the United States if 90 miles away lay the world's wealthiest nation welcoming their residence and promising all manner of benefits and rewards?

After the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, we learned that there are also good and bad hijackings. On several occasions Cuban planes and boats were hijacked to the United States but they were not returned to Cuba, nor were the hijackers punished. Instead, some of the planes and boats were seized by US authorities for non-payment of debts claimed by American firms against the Cuban government.4

But then there were the bad hijackings— planes forced to fly from the United States to Cuba. When there began to be more of these than flights in the opposite direction, Washington was obliged to reconsider its policy.

Bombing and strafing attacks of Cuba by planes based in the United States began in October 1959, if not before.6 In early 1960, there were several fire-bomb air raids on Cuban cane fields and sugar mills, in which American pilots also took part—at least three of whom died in crashes, while two others were captured.

The State Department acknowledged that one plane which crashed, killing two Americans, had taken off from Florida, but insisted that it was against the wishes of the US government.7 In March a French freighter unloading munitions from Belgium exploded in Havana taking 75 lives and injuring 200, some of whom subsequently died.

The United States denied Cuba's accusation of sabotage but admitted that it had sought to prevent the shipment.8
And so it went ... reaching a high point in April of the following year in the infamous CIA-organized invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Over 100 exiles died in the attack. Close to 1,200 others were taken prisoner by the Cubans. It was later revealed that four American pilots flying for the CIA had lost their lives as well.9

Despite the fact that the Kennedy administration was acutely embarrassed by the unmitigated defeat—indeed, because of it—a campaign of smaller-scale attacks upon Cuba was initiated almost immediately.

Throughout the 1960s, the Caribbean island was subjected to countless sea and air commando raids by exiles, at times accompanied by their CIA supervisors, inflicting damage upon oil refineries, chemical plants and railroad bridges, cane fields, sugar mills and sugar warehouses; infiltrating spies, saboteurs and assassins ... anything to damage the Cuban economy, promote disaffection, or make the revolution look bad ... taking the lives of Cuban militia members and others in the process ... pirate attacks on Cuban fishing boats and merchant ships, bombardments of Soviet vessels docked in Cuba, an assault upon a Soviet army camp with 12 Russian soldiers reported wounded ... a hotel and a theatre shelled from offshore because Russians and East Europeans were supposed to be present there ...11

These actions were not always carried out on the direct order of the CIA or with its foreknowledge, but the Agency could hardly plead "rogue elephant".

It had created an operations headquarters in Miami that was truly a state within a city—over, above, and outside the laws of the United States, not to mention international law, with a staff of several hundred Americans directing many more Cuban agents in just such types of actions, with a budget in excess of $50 million a year, and an arrangement with the local press to keep operations in Florida secret except when the CIA wanted something publicized.12

Title 18 of the US Code declares it to be a crime to launch a "military or naval expedition or enterprise" from the United States against a country with which the United States is not (officially) at war. Although US authorities now and then aborted an exile plot or impounded a boat—sometimes because the Coast Guard or other officials had not been properly clued in—no Cubans were prosecuted under this act. This was no more than to be expected inasmuch as Attorney General Robert Kennedy had determined after the Bay of Pigs that the invasion did not constitute a military expedition.15

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The commando raids were combined with a total US trade and credit embargo, which continues to this day, and which genuinely hurt the Cuban economy and chipped away at the society's standard of living. So unyielding has the embargo been that when Cuba was hard hit by a hurricane in October 1963, and Casa Cuba, a New York social club, raised a large quantity of clothing for relief, the United States refused to grant it an export license on the grounds that such shipment was "contrary to the national interest".14

Moreover, pressure was brought to bear upon other countries to conform to the embargo, and goods destined for Cuba were sabotaged: machinery damaged, chemicals added to lubricating fluids to cause rapid wear on diesel engines, a manufacturer in West Germany paid to produce ball-bearings off-center, another to do the same with balanced wheel gears—

"You're talking about big money," said a CIA officer involved in the sabotage efforts, "when you ask a manufacturer to go along with you on that kind of project because he has to reset his whole mold. And he is probably going to worry about the effect on future business. You might have to pay him several hundred thousand dollars or more."15

One manufacturer who defied the embargo was the British Leyland Company, which sold a large number of buses to Cuba in 1964. Repeated expressions of criticism and protest by Washington officials and congressmen failed to stem deliveries of some of the buses. Then, in October, an East German cargo ship carrying another 42 buses to Cuba collided in thick fog with a Japanese vessel in the Thames.

The Japanese ship was able to continue on, but the cargo ship was beached on its side; the buses would have to be "written off", said the Leyland company. In the leading British newspapers it was just an accident story.16 In the New York Times it was not even reported. A decade was to pass before the American columnist Jack Anderson disclosed that his CIA and National Security Agency sources had confirmed that the collision had been arranged by the CIA with the cooperation of British intelligence.

17 Subsequently, another CIA officer stated that he was skeptical about the collision story, although admitting that "it is true that we were sabotaging the Leyland buses going to Cuba from England, and that was pretty sensitive business."18
What undoubtedly was an even more sensitive venture was the use of chemical and biological weapons against Cuba by the United States. It is a remarkable record.

In August 1962, a British freighter under Soviet lease, having damaged its propeller on a reef, crept into the harbor at San Juan, Puerto Rico for repairs. It was bound for a Soviet port with 80,000 bags of Cuban sugar. The ship was put into dry dock and 14,135 sacks of sugar were unloaded to a warehouse to facilitate the repairs. While in the warehouse, the sugar was contaminated by CIA agents with a substance that was allegedly harmless but unpalatable.

When President Kennedy learned of the operation he was furious because it had taken place in US territory and if discovered could provide the Soviet Union with a propaganda field-day and could set a terrible precedent for chemical sabotage in the cold war. He directed that the sugar not be returned to the Russians, although what explanation was given to them is not publicly known.

19 Similar undertakings were apparently not canceled. The CIA official who helped direct worldwide sabotage efforts, referred to above, later revealed that "There was lots of sugar being sent out from Cuba, and we were putting a lot of contaminants in it."20
The same year, a Canadian agricultural technician working as an adviser to the Cuban government was paid $5,000 by "an American military intelligence agent" to infect Cuban turkeys with a virus which would produce the fatal Newcastle disease. Subsequently, 8,000 turkeys died.

The technician later claimed that although he had been to the farm where the turkeys had died, he had not actually administered the virus, hut had instead pocketed the money, and that the turkeys had died from neglect and other causes unrelated to the virus. This may have been a self-serving statement. The Washington Post reported that "According to U.S. intelligence reports, the Cubans—and some Americans—believe the turkeys died as the result of espionage."21
Authors Warren Hinckle and William Turner, citing a participant in the project, have reported in their book on Cuba that:

During 1969 and 1970, the CIA deployed futuristic weather modification technology to ravage Cuba's sugar crop and undermine the economy. Planes from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the California desert, where hi tech was developed, overflew the island, seeding rain clouds with crystals that precipitated torrential rains over non-agricultural areas and left the cane fields arid (the downpours caused killer flash floods in some areas).22

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In 1971, also according to participants, the CIA turned over to Cuban exiles a virus which causes African swine fever. Six weeks later, an outbreak of the disease in Cuba forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.

The outbreak, the first ever in the Western hemisphere, was called the "most alarming event" of the year by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.23
Ten years later, the target may well have been human beings, as an epidemic of dengue fever swept the Cuban island.

Transmitted by blood-eating insects, usually mosquitos, the disease produces severe flu symptoms and incapacitating bone pain. Between May and October 1981, over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities, 101 of which were children under 15.24

In 1956 and 1958, declassified documents have revealed, the US Army loosed swarms of specially bred mosquitos in Georgia and Florida to see whether disease-carrying insects could be weapons in a biological war. The mosquitos bred for the tests were of the Aedes Aegypti type, the precise carrier of dengue fever as well as other diseases.25

In 1967 it was reported by Science magazine that at the US government center in Fort Detrick, Maryland, dengue fever was amongst those "diseases that are at least the objects of considerable research and that appear to be among those regarded as potential BW [biological warfare] agents."26

Then, in 1984, a Cuban exile on trial in New York testified that in the latter part of 1980 a ship travelled from Florida to Cuba with

a mission to carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war, which later on produced results that were not what we had expected, because we thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces, and it was used against our own people, and with that we did not agree.27

It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man thought that the germs would somehow be able to confine their actions to only Russians, or whether he had been misled by the people behind the operation.

The full extent of American chemical and biological warfare against Cuba will never be known. Over the years, the Castro government has in fact blamed the United States for a number of other plagues which afflicted various animals and crops.28

And in 1977, newly-released CIA documents disclosed that the Agency "maintained a clandestine anti-crop warfare research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of countries throughout the world."29

The ingenuity which went into the chemical and biological warfare against Cuba was apparent in some of the dozens of plans to assassinate or humiliate Fidel Castro.

Devised by the CIA or Cuban exiles, with the cooperation of American mafiosi, the plans ranged from poisoning Castro's cigars and food to a chemical designed to make his hair and beard fall off and LSD to be administered just before a public speech.

There were also of course the more traditional approaches of gun and bomb, one being an attempt to drop bombs on a baseball stadium while Castro was speaking; the B-26 bomber was driven away by anti-aircraft fire before it could reach the stadium.31

It is a combination of such Cuban security measures, informers, incompetence, and luck which has served to keep the bearded one alive to the present day.
Attempts were also made on the lives of Castro's brother Raul and Che Guevara. The latter was the target of a bazooka fired at the United Nations building in New York in December 1964.32

Various Cuban exile groups have engaged in violence on a regular basis in the United States with relative impunity for decades. One of them, going by the name of Omega 7 and headquartered in Union City, New Jersey, was characterized by the FBI in 1980 as "the most dangerous terrorist organization in the United States".33

Attacks against Cuba itself began to lessen around the end of the 1960s, due probably to a lack of satisfying results combined with ageing warriors, and exile groups turned to targets in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

During the next decade, while the CIA continued to pour money into the exile community, more than 100 serious "incidents" took place in the United States for which Omega 7 and other groups claimed responsibility. (Within the community, the distinction between a terrorist and a non-terrorist group is not especially precise; there is much overlapping identity and frequent creation of new names.)

There occurred repeated bombings of the Soviet UN Mission, its Washington Embassy, its automobiles, a Soviet ship docked in New Jersey, the offices of the Soviet airline Aeroflot, with a number of Russians injured from these attacks; several bombings of the Cuban UN Mission and its Interests Section in Washington, many attacks upon Cuban diplomats, including at least one murder; a bomb discovered at New York's Academy of Music in 1976 shortly before a celebration of the Cuban Revolution was to begin; a bombing two years later of the Lincoln Center after the Cuban ballet had performed ...34

The single most violent act of this period was the blowing up of a Cubana Airlines plane shortly after it took off from Barbados on 6 October 1976, which took the lives of 73 people including the entire Cuban championship fencing team. CIA documents later revealed that on 22 June, a CIA officer abroad had cabled a report to Agency headquarters that he had learned from a source that a Cuban exile group planned to bomb a Cubana airliner flying between Panama and Havana. The group's leader was a baby doctor named Orlando Bosch.

After the plane crashed in the sea in October, it was Bosch's network of exiles that claimed responsibility. The cable showed that the CIA had the means to penetrate the Bosch organization, but there's no indication in any of the documents that the Agency undertook any special monitoring of Bosch and his group because of their plans, or that the CIA warned Havana.35

in 1983, while Orlando Bosch sat in a Venezuelan prison charged with masterminding the plane bombing, the City Commission of Miami proclaimed a "Dr. Orlando Bosch Day."36

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Although there has always been the extreme lunatic fringe in the Cuban exile community (as opposed to the normal lunatic fringe) insisting that Washington has sold out their cause, over the years there has been only the occasional arrest and conviction of an exile for a terrorist attack in the United States, so occasional that the exiles can only assume that Washington's heart is not wholly in it.

The exile groups and their key members are well known to the authorities, for the anti-Castroites have not excessively shied away from publicity. At least as late as the early 1980s, they were training openly in southern Florida and southern California; pictures of them flaunting their weapons appeared in the press.39

The CIA, with its countless contacts-cum-informers amongst the exiles, could fill in many of the missing pieces for the FBI and the police, if it wished to. In 1980, in a detailed report on Cuban-exile terrorism, The Village Voice of New York reported:

Two stories were squeezed out of New York police officials ... "You know, it's funny," said one cautiously, "there have been one or two things ... but let's put it this way. You get just so far on a case and suddenly the dust is blown away. Case closed.

You ask the CIA to help, and they say they aren't really interested. You get the message."" Another investigator said he was working on a narcotics case involving Cuban exiles a couple of years ago, and telephone records he obtained showed a frequently dialed number in Miami. He said he traced the number to a company called Zodiac, "which turned out to be a CIA front." He dropped his investigation.40

In 1961, amid much fanfare, the Kennedy administration unveiled its showpiece program, the Alliance for Progress. Conceived as a direct response to Castro's Cuba, it was meant to prove that genuine social change could take place in Latin America without resort to revolution or socialism.

"If the only alternatives for the people of Latin America are the status quo and communism," said John F. Kennedy, "then they will inevitably choose communism."41

The multi-billion dollar Alliance program established for itself an ambitious set of goals which it hoped to achieve by the end of the decade. These had to do with economic growth, more equitable distribution of national income, reduced unemployment, agrarian reform, education, housing, health, etc.

In 1970, the Twentieth Century Fund of New York—whose list of officers read like a Who's Who in the government/industry revolving-door world—undertook a study to evaluate how close the Alliance had come to realizing its objectives.

One of the study's conclusions was that Cuba, which was not one of the recipient countries, had

come closer to some of the Alliance objectives than most Alliance members. In education and public health, no country in Latin America has carried out such ambitious and nationally comprehensive programs. Cuba's centrally planned economy has done more to integrate the rural and urban sectors (through a national income distribution policy) than the market economies of the other Latin American countries.42

Cuba's agrarian reform program as well was recognized as having been more widesweeping than that of any other Latin American country, although the study took a wait-and-see attitude towards its results.43

These and other economic and social gains were achieved despite the US embargo and the inordinate amount of resources and labor Cuba was obliged to devote to defense and security because of the hovering giant to the north.

Moreover, though not amongst the stated objectives of the Alliance, there was another area of universal importance in which Cuba stood apart from many of its Latin neighbors: there were no legions of desaparecidos, no death squads, no systematic, routine torture.
Cuba had become what Washington had always feared from the Third World—a good example.

Parallel to the military and economic belligerence, the United States has long maintained a relentless propaganda offensive against Cuba. A number of examples of this occurring in other countries can be found in other chapters of this book.

In addition to its vast overseas journalistic empire, the CIA has maintained anti-Castro news-article factories in the United States for decades. The Agency has reportedly subsidized at times such publications in Miami as Avarice, El Mundo, El Prensa Libre, Bohemia and El Diario de Las Americas, as well as AIP, a radio news agency that produced programs sent free of charge to more than 100 small stations in Latin America.

Two CIA fronts in New York, Foreign Publications, Inc, and Editors Press Service, also served as part of the propaganda network.44

Then Castro revealed himself to be cut from a wholly different cloth. It was not to be business as usual in the Caribbean. He soon became outspoken in his criticism of the United States.

He referred acrimoniously to the 60 years of American control of Cuba; how, at the end of those 60 years, the masses of Cubans found themselves impoverished; how the United States used the sugar quota as a threat.

He spoke of the unacceptable presence of the Guantanamo base; and he made it clear enough to Washington that Cuba would pursue a policy of independence and neutralism in the cold war. It was for just such reasons that Castro and Che Guevara had forsaken the prosperous bourgeois careers awaiting them in law and medicine to lead the revolution in the first place. Serious compromise was nor on their agenda; nor on Washington's, which was not prepared to live with such men and such a government.

A National Security Council meeting of 10 March 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing "another government to power in Cuba".45 This was before Castro had nationalized any US property.

The following month, after meeting with Castro in Washington, Vice President Richard Nixon wrote a memo in which he stated that he was convinced that Castro was "either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline" and that the Cuban leader would have to be treated and dealt with accordingly.

Nixon later wrote that his opinion at this time was a minority one within the Eisenhower administration.46 But before the year was over, CIA Director Allen Dulles had decided that an invasion of Cuba was necessary. In March of 1960, it was approved by President Eisenhower.4'

Then came the embargo, leaving Castro no alternative but to turn more and more to the Soviet Union, thus confirming in the minds of Washington officials that Castro was indeed a communist. Some speculated that he had been a covert Red all along.

In this context, it's interesting to note that the Cuban Communist Party had long supported Batista, had served in his cabinet, and had been unsupportive of Castro and his followers until their accession to power appeared imminent.48

To add to the irony, during 1957-58 the CIA was channeling funds to Castro's movement; this while the US continued to support Batista with weapons to counter the rebels; in all likelihood, another example of the Agency hedging its bets.49

If Castro had toned down his early rhetoric and observed the usual diplomatic niceties, but still pursued the policies of self-determination and socialism which he felt were best for Cuba (or inescapable if certain changes were to be realized), he could only have postponed the day of reckoning, and that not for long.

Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, Mossadegh of Iran, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana, and other Third World leaders have gone out of their way to avoid stepping on Washington's very sensitive toes unnecessarily, and were much less radical in their programs and in their stance toward the United States than Castro; nonetheless, all of them fell under the CIA axe.

In 1996 it was revealed that in August, 1961, four months after the Bay of Pigs, Che Guevara had met with Richard Goodwin, President Kennedy's assistant special counsel, at an international gathering in Uruguay. Guevara had a message for Kennedy.

Cuba was prepared to forswear any political alliance with the Soviet bloc, pay for confiscated American properties in trade, and consider curbing Cuba's support for leftist insurgencies in other countries. In return, the US would cease all hostile actions against Cuba.

Back in Washington, Goodwin's advice to the president was to "quietly intensify" economic pressure on Cuba. In November, Kennedy authorized Operation Mongoose.50

the end.

 

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Easterners have for millenias seeked for enlightment. It was something most of them needed several rebirths to find.

Knowledge on the other hand can be obtained comparatively easily if you know where to look.

 

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I want to show you this as it is a good and also pretty fresh example of how media worked out during the April 2002 coup in Venezuela, and why Cuba don't want to have a "free press".

Hugo Chávez, the Media and Everybody Else

Saturday, Jan 20, 2007

By: Nicki Mokhtari and Larry Birns - COHA

* OAS Secretary General Insulza and Chávez both straying from their mandates
* Nationalization leading to a mixed economy
* RCTV yellow journalism at its finest
* Venezuelan leader would be wise to slow down his revolutionary pace, putting his boundless energy into further institutionalizing yesterday’s reforms rather than piling new ones upon a nation hardly able to grapple with his tempo.
* Chávez, the great anti-hero when it comes to astute public relations

“Dr Insulza is quite an idiot, a true idiot […] He’s playing the role of viceroy for the empire.” Echoing his inflammatory UN speech a few months back, in which he called President Bush the “devil” and on another occasion, “a donkey,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez lashed out at OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza, after the latter clearly strained protocol by denouncing Caracas’ decision to not renew the transmitting license of a rabidly anti-Chávez TV broadcasting station last December.

Following his landslide victory in the presidential ballot on December 3, with 63 percent of the vote, Chávez is embarking on a series of new initiatives involving the firing of officials now out of favor, insulting foreign officials like the unfortunate Insulza, and attempting to fortify the essential principles embodied in his “Bolivarian Socialism” by ruling by decree in certain designated areas for the next 18 months.

A few hours before taking the oath of office on January 10 for his third term, he set the nation’s polemical tone by declaring his intention to nationalize the country’s “strategic sectors,” which include the country’s most publicly- traded company Compania Anónima Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela (CANTV), the electricity and gas sectors, and four lucrative Orinoco basin oil drilling operations.

This would allow for the four foreign owners to be minority share owners in each instance. Chávez’s dizzying spate of new plans has been received as dead weight by his various detractors, who accuse him of taking Venezuela back to the bad old days of mixed economy, before the Clinton and Bush administrations had discredited the amalgam of private and public corporations known as a mixed economy.

Rather, Washington insisted on privatization and total market accessibility. However, what the latter peddled as pure gold in terms of benefits to Latin America more often than not turned out to be base lead. But at the same time, Chávez has boldly demonstrated his personal courage, or perhaps imprudence, by staking out a renewed commitment to his Bolivarian Revolution and initiating his new presidency with a rash of socialist initiatives.

Political Retribution
On December 28, 2006, during his annual “greeting” speech to the National Armed Forces (FAN), President Chávez boldly announced the government’s decision not to renew the broadcasting license of the privately-owned television station, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) when the matter comes up next March.

For the opposition, as well as the outside world, Chávez’s controversial delouse of initiatives attracted a good deal of criticism because it would end 53 years of broadcasting by the nation’s most far-right TVchannel-one famous for its yellow journalism, total absence of professional standards, and its venomous and grossly unprofessional criticism of the current regime.

In Venezuela, as in most democracies, the nation’s broadcasting standards are specified and governmentally-regulated by the licensing process. When properly used, it can be relied upon to regulate the content of televised programs in order to serve the public and maintain high journalistic standards.

It can also be mobilized to suppress rightful criticism of authoritarian actions by state officials by threatening retribution. In Venezuela, regulation has been accomplished by means of an independent regulatory body named the National Telecommunications Commission, which issues broadcasting permits.

Hunting down RCTV
After a series of warnings, Venezuelan officials reminded media organizations that state broadcasting licenses issued to privately owned media are subject to periodical revalidations, based upon, if need be, a popular survey conducted by the authorities.

Marcel Granier, principal owner of RCTV, who for years had engaged in a host of deadly conspiracies against the government, argued that his channel’s employees should be allowed to continue working “without following the dictates of the regime’s propaganda.”

The temptation to strike down upon Granier proved irresistible for Chávez. His administration has insisted that its policy toward RCTV conforms to existing organic law, and its officials deny that they plan to “revoke or expropriate” the private channel.

But decision to badger the unruly media facility has been widely seen by Venezuelan government’s detractors as a political sanction, as Chávez has accused RCTV of plotting against him.

Media Wars and Political Retaliation
Soon after his election in 1998, Chávez became the target of a fierce media barrage which eventually led to the staging of a short-lived coup against him on April 11, 2002. The failed coup attempt mainly involved anti-government protests in Caracas which left 13 dead and was followed by a military-enforced “resignation” of Chávez the next day.

The nature of the media coverage during the coup attempt artfully created the impression that Chávez had willingly stepped down and that Pedro Carmona had been appointed interim leader, when in fact Chávez had been abducted and was acting under duress.

Immediately prior to the April coup, Venevisión, RCTV, Globovisión and Televen synchronized their responses by substituting their regular television programming with anti-Chávez speeches and propaganda calling for viewers to take to the streets in protest against his government.

Some of the TV notices encouraged anti- Chávez protestors to prevent his return, with messages that proclaimed: “Venezuelans, take to the streets on Thursday, April 11 at 10am. Bring your flags. For freedom and democracy. Venezuela will not surrender. No one will defeat us.”

In addition to airing over 700 pro-strike advertisements, the independent TV networks aggressively backed the coup-plotters by replacing its news programming with cartoons in order to sedulously avoid any mention or running any footage depicting the later rising up of pro- Chávez forces, and the military’s subsequent decision to restore him to power.

By revealing their arch political bias and deliberately refusing to air as well as restore objective programming after the coup had demonstrably failed, several TV stations, led by RCTV, grossly and purposely misrepresented the facts, thereby nullifying the public’s right to have access to uncensored coverage.

As underlined by Venezuela specialist Eva Golinger, “the private media not only played an active role in promoting, justifying and later executing the coup, but also intentionally kept breaking news and critical information concealed from the Venezuelan viewing public.” This was hardly an example of “All The News That’s Fit To Print,” the operating credo of the New York Times.

Venezuelan Media: a Powerful Oligarchy
Diversity of sources and public access to news and information have long been recognized as fundamental necessities to a truly functioning democracy. However, Venezuela is characterized by an unbalanced situation where the media monopoly creates “information” and then selects its audiences and levels of distribution.

The media outlets overwhelmingly are owned by a wealthy elite, which has displayed a rare eagerness to repeatedly burlesque the Chávez’s achievements while ever-ready to destabilize the country in order to weaken this government’s ability to effectively rule and for the economy to thrive.

The private Venezuelan media anti-Chávez line-up landscape consists of five privately owned major television channels – Venevisión, Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), Globovisión, Televen and CMT –and nine out of the ten major national newspapers available to the public. These include El Universal, El Nacional, Tal Cual, El Impulso, El Nuevo País and El Mundo.

The five private television networks control at least 90 percent of the market, with smaller private stations controlling another five percent. These media monopolies broadcast to more than four million television screens in Venezuela. As early as 1999, some 95 percent of the nation’s media was expressing its opposition to Chávez.

Walking the Plank
In addition to Venevisión (the largest station in the country) the billionaire Cisneros family, dubbed the Rupert Murdoch of Latin America, owns over 70 other media outlets in 39 countries. These include DirecTV Latin America, AOL Latin America, Caracol Television (Colombia), the Univisión Network in the U.S., Galavisión, and Playboy Latin America.

In the absence of a credible and united political opposition, ideologically-driven Venezuelan media conglomerates rapidly expanded in the public arena with their own, often heated agendas, giving up all pretenses at objectivity.

As almost all of these media facilities belong to a privileged economic elite, it was likely that their interests would not coincide with the attitudes of the general public, nor would they necessarily represent the attitudes and values of the nation’s poor majority. At the time of the 2002 coup, when Chávez was pawned off by an unprincipled media blitz, disbelief was growing in the golpista explanation of his willing resignation.

As rumors of funding from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy and State Department’s AID surfaced, the underrepresented but pro-Chávez lower class took to the streets to call for the coup-plotters to set their president free.

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Does Chávez Overstep His Bounds?
A number of NGO’s, including Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, have voiced often unwarranted or slanted criticism of Chávez’s alleged violation of freedom of speech and press.

The Paris-based reporters’ group, whose initiatives uncannily often are found to be congruent with U.S. policy goals, called Chávez’s free speech record a “serious attack on editorial pluralism” and urged the Venezuelan government to “reconsider its stance and guarantee an independent system of concessions and renewal of licenses.”

“Reporters” main problem, however, was that they had little evidence to document their case, which was colored more by their distinct ideology than the facts on the ground. The Secretary General of OAS, for his part, strained his mandate of office as well by warning that the possible closing of RCTV and other anti-government TV networks by authorities could palpably damage democracy in Venezuela.

However, Secretary General Insulza might have taken note of the Principles on Freedom of Expression compiled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which clearly states that monopolies or oligopolies in the ownership and control of communications media “…conspire against democracy by limiting the plurality and diversity which ensure the full exercise of people’s right to information.”

By not recognizing the danger that may arise when a powerful oligarchy controls most of the media, which is clearly the case in Venezuela, Insulza joins the braying voices of the press establishment that ignore the issue of the professional responsibilities of the mainstream media, which were as clearly violated by Venezuela’s owners as by Chávez.

Building the Socialism of the 21st century
Although Chávez insists that his proposed path of nationalization is being purposely misunderstood by a number of western democracies, it should be seen as a component in a broader scheme. Chávez has ambitiously inaugurated a new phase called the “National Simón Bolivar Project of 2007-2021,” whose main objective is the building of the “Socialism of the 21st century.”

This transformation will hinge on five main “motors” of the revolution: a special “enabling” law, further constitutional reform, popular education, reconstruction of the organs of state power, and an explosion of communal power.

As an ardent supporter of Fidel Castro, Chávez strongly believes that the state has to assume a leading role and pervasive authority over some “sectors of the means of production,” in order to make the Venezuelan revolutionary process irreversible.

Newly appointed Telecommunications Minister, Jesse Chacón, justified CANTV’s proposed nationalization on the grounds that the company had attempted to block competitors, while at the same time controlling 83 percent of Venezuela’s Internet market.

He later conveyed the government’s eagerness to equably extend IT coverage by including some of the more remote areas of the country. Singling out the proposed takeover of CANTV, he underlined that this step did not imply the nationalization of “all the telecommunication sector.”

Breaking Bridges: Chávez’s Fractious Path
Chávez also has declared his ambition to implement a constitutional amendment to strip the Central Bank of its autonomy. With his political allies solidly in control of the National Assembly, he is confident that he will obtain the authority to rule by presidential decree, which will help him enact a “set of revolutionary laws.”

Although there are some external justifications behind Chávez’s decision to consolidate his power – particularly regarding the unremitting propaganda and confrontational rhetoric generated by a coalition of rightist social and economic actors, his desire to modify the constitution to allow for indefinite presidential re-election should be seen as an act of excess on his part that is being artfully used by his detractors to increasingly describe him as a Fidel-like dictator.

Chávez’s worst enemy could be himself. Be they his rhetoric directed against José Miguel Insulza, or the vulgarity of his relationship with the outlandish president of Iran and other reprehensible Middle East ideologues, his actions have shown a lack of capacity for self-censorship and a recurrent inability to discipline himself.

Chávez often goes far beyond his actual intentions, and these joshing extensions tend to cost him valuable alliances and the achievement of vital goals. A less radical, more disciplined approach involving a greater reliance upon both legal as well as providential procedures might have produced better results for his own professed goals including punishing broadcasters – such as the RCTV management – for that organization’s complete lack of integrity and its squalid abduction of the journalist profession.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Resarch Associate Nicki Mokhtari and COHA Director Larry Birns
January 19th, 2007

Original source / relevant link:
Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)

Pretty effing good article if I may say my self.