Castro Advises Chavez: Attack Women

Castro's advice to Hugo Chavez during his month-long stay in Havana:

Attack female opponents of the regime.

From Venezuela's El Universal:

MP María Corina Machado assaulted after bicentennial parade

A mob attacked deputy María Corina Machado (Independent-Miranda state) when she left the military parade staged on Tuesday at Los Próceres promenade, southwest Caracas, to commemorate the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence.

Lieutenant Colonel (Army) Marcos Álvarez was injured as a stone hit him on the head, while Machado was hit on the face with a bottle.

Sound familiar?

From Reuters:

Cuban police haul protesting "Ladies in White" away

Cuban police grabbed members of the opposition group "Ladies in White" by their hair, dragged them into a bus and drove them away to break up a protest march on Wednesday.

The white clothes the women traditionally wear were smeared with mud as they resisted policewomen forcing them into a bus. Government protesters shouted insults at them for the second day in a row.

In Fear of Biscet (and Bono)

Last week, during U2's concert in Miami, Bono dedicated a song to Cuban pro-democracy leader Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet.

It seems Bono's praise and Dr. Biscet's celebrity power has frazzled Cuba's dictatorship.

This week, Dr. Biscet was ordered to check-in monthly with the Castro regime's police -- a tool of intimidation.

But as Bono proclaimed: "We are watching!"

Castro's Blind Eye to Human Trafficking

By Olivia Snow of The Heritage Foundation:

Shame on Cuba: Blind Eye to Human Trafficking

"If the girls give me trouble I hurt them." These are the words of human trafficker Aktham Zuhair Salem Madanat. Known for trafficking girls from Cuba to the United Kingom, Madanat had no qualms about openly discussing how he lured 10- and 11-year-old girls into the sex trade. In fact, Madanat is one of many involved in the lucrative human trafficking market throughout Cuba and beyond.

In order to fight human trafficking, the State Department annually presents its Global Trafficking in Persons Report, a survey of 184 countries that measures compliance with human trafficking regulations specified in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).

The 2011 Report places Cuba and Venezuela on the Tier 3 list.

The Tier 3 designation is reserved for countries that do not comply with the minimum requirements in TVPA. Noncompliant countries receiving U.S. assistance can be sanctioned.

Cuba's placement on Tier 3 is both warranted and necessary. Because prostitution is not criminalized for anyone over the age of 16, it is difficult to track child prostitution in Cuba. Economic malfeasance in Cuba has forced many young women into the sex-for-sale industry. Cuba's tourism industry generated around $2 billion just in the past year, and illicit sex is a burgeoning part of the tourism industry profile. In fact, it has been suggested that the Cuban government even encourages sex tourism as a source for foreign cash that keeps the communist regime afloat.

Fidel and Raul Castro have turned a blind eye to sex tourism and human trafficking. One of Fidel Castro's flippant brush-offs included the following:

"There are no women forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist…Those who do so do it on their own, voluntarily and without any need for it. We can say that they are highly educated hookers and quite healthy…"

Such cynical views have landed Cuba a spot on Tier 3. Cuba's blind eye toward sex tourism and human trafficking appears contradictory in a society where the state regulates virtually everything else.

Venezuela, home to Castro ally Hugo Chávez, also experiences high levels of trafficking, where of the 40,000 to 50,000 sex trafficked children, 78 percent are girls between the ages of 8 and 17. Venezuela's placement on Tier 3 is the result of a failure to enforce existing trafficking laws or enact new anti-trafficking legislation.

Despite the large number of youth affected by human trafficking, Cuba and Venezuela continue to turn a blind eye to an age-old problem. It is striking how far these anti-American regimes will go to defy the U.S. in its efforts to eliminate the vestiges of modern-day slavery.

The Continuous Black Spring

From the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):

After the Black Spring, Cuba's new repression

When the last of 29 journalists jailed in a notorious 2003 crackdown was finally freed this year, it signaled to many the end of a dark era. But Cuban authorities are still persecuting independent journalists through arbitrary arrests, beatings, and intimidation.

Juan González Febles, director of the independent news website Primavera Digital, was running an errand last spring when he came upon a news story: Police were climbing onto his neighbors' roofs in Havana to remove satellite television dishes that the government considers illegal because they pick up uncensored stations from abroad.

When Febles started taking pictures with his cell phone, officers quickly arrested him and took him to a neighborhood police station, where he was held for seven hours and made to erase all of his photos of the dish seizures, a highly unpopular police activity. Febles, a former librarian who took up independent journalism in 1998 and now runs the overseas-hosted website, told CPJ that he has become accustomed to detentions, which number in the dozens over the years, but that he is still bothered that his phone is tapped and that he's followed by security agents in the streets. The agents sometimes stop him, Febles said, and relay what they've heard in his private phone conversations.

Such is the state of repression in Cuba today. As President Raúl Castro's government seeks greater international engagement, it has freed in the last year more than 20 imprisoned independent journalists and numerous other political detainees who had been held since the notorious Black Spring crackdown of 2003. Government officials talk of political and economic reform, pointing to a plan to introduce high-speed Internet service to the island this summer. But though the government has changed tactics in suppressing independent news and opinion, it has not abandoned repressive practices intended to stifle the free flow of information.

A CPJ investigation has found that the government persists in aggressively persecuting critical journalists with methods that include arbitrary arrests, short-term detentions, beatings, smear campaigns, surveillance, and social sanctions. Today's tactics have yet to attract widespread international attention because they are lower in profile than the Black Spring crackdown, but the government's oppressive actions are ongoing and significant.

CPJ examined government activities in March and April 2011, two months with sensitive political milestones, and found that journalists were targeted in more than 50 instances of repression. The majority of cases involved arrests by state security agents or police officers, according to CPJ research and documentation by the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation and Hablemos Press, a news agency that focuses on human rights. Most frequently, these journalists were detained on their way to cover a demonstration or political event and were held in local police stations for hours or days. In at least 11 cases, the arrests were carried out with violence, CPJ research shows.

During this period, more than a dozen journalists endured house arrest, preventing them from reporting on the Communist Party Congress in April and the eighth anniversary in March of the Black Spring crackdown that led to the imprisonment of dozens of journalists and dissidents. Although no journalists have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the last year, Cuban authorities in May ominously sentenced six political dissidents to prison sentences of two to five years.

Read the whole report here.

In My Humble Opinion, Pt. 33

From The Hill:

DNC boss, President at odds on Cuba policy

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), tapped by President Obama to head the Democratic National Committee, is a hard-liner on Cuba, which means the chairwoman of the organization intent on reelecting the president disagrees with Obama on a foreign policy issue that is electorally sensitive in a swing state.

Wasserman Schultz's tough approach toward the Communist regime, including her firm position on the Cuba embargo, has helped solidify her popularity within Florida's powerful Cuban-American community, but it differs greatly from Obama's more lenient stance towards the Castro government.

If the White House thought Wasserman Schultz's new role as Obama's top cheerleader would, in and of itself, win over Cuban-American voters wary of Obama's Cuba policy and put that vital swing state in the president's column in 2012, some leading experts on Cuba-U.S. relations have words of warning for the president's team.

"[Wasserman Schultz] wields great credibility amongst the Cuban-American community. She's an honorary Cuban-American. If she were the one running for president, she would do extraordinarily well in our community," said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee. "However, the president's policies of easing sanctions and unilateral concessions to the Castro regime are likely to be judged on their own."

Claver-Carone, a former Treasury Department attorney, said Wasserman Schultz's new prominence within the Democratic Party "certainly provides the Cuban-American community comfort." But he was quick to predict that neither her popularity nor her new role as presidential promoter will temper the suspicions of Cuban-American voters toward Obama's Cuba positions.

"Obama's policies of unilaterally lifting sanctions is already spilled milk that's tough to put back into the glass," Claver-Carone wrote in an email.

Castro Scrambles for Gaddafi

By Rachel Marsden in Hudson New York:

Fidel Castro's Secret Libya Rants

Now that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for alleged crimes against humanity following about 100 days of coordinated NATO military action, it is worth examining the communiqués that Cuban leader Fidel Castro shared with his embassies throughout the world.

The documents of February 21st and 23rd, 2011, pre-date any NATO military action, all while predicting the international intervention and pre-emptively decrying the "crime that NATO is getting ready to commit against the Libyan people."

Castro would have the world believe that in destabilizing a dictator, the Libyan people themselves would be victimized by an international coalition of bullies. Harkening back to the good old days of the Libyan Revolution of 1969, Castro goes so far as to praise the Libyan dictator's role as revolutionary leader who overthrew a "corrupt monarchy," as though the alternative since has been significantly preferable.

Overlooking any possible actions on the part of Gaddafi himself – including allegations of rape and worse, which now constitute the reasons for the ICC arrest warrant that may ultimately be the cause of Gaddafi's removal from power – Castro prefers to focus on a more economic explanation for any NATO invasion: oil.

"Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world," he writes. "It was their main weapon when they decided easily to liquidate the Cuban Revolution as soon as the first just and sovereign laws were passed in our Homeland: depriving it of oil."

Castro then proceeds to explain how Libya's petroleum wealth has made it worth invading for NATO. That might make a feasible argument, were it not outside the realm of reality.

Libyan oil represents less than 1% of America's oil supply – hardly great "wealth" for the USA. And, as "Yankee transnationals" in the form of several American companies are already there and have been for a while, America does not have to invade Libya along with its NATO allies to get its hands on Libyan oil. If Castro thinks America is really in the business of invading oil-rich countries just to get for free what they can already freely access, then perhaps he would like to explain why the USA has yet to invade Canada – its largest oil exporter—which would be a lot more worthwhile.

Castro's rant about imperialist oil-grabbing as NATO's hidden justification for military action conveniently negates the example that his own comrades, the Russians, have already set.

Conveniently neglecting to call out Putin, Medvedev and the Russian oligarchy for imperialist political and economic takeover of sovereign states, such as the Ukraine in the interest of oil, Castro also apparently fails to see that this is the strategy used effectively by the Russians. With the exception of perhaps the Georgia conflict a few years ago, Russia has, in recent years, managed successfully to practice imperialism purely through economics. No military action required.

If Castro were arguing that America, via NATO efforts, is set on turning Libya upside down to replace the current regime with pro-American bootlickers for its own greater economic good, then he might have a point. But he keeps his rant focused entirely on oil rather than more general economic possibilities and opportunities – and therein lies the problem with his reasoning. There is currently no evidence to suggest that, even if the Gaddafi regime is replaced by a fully pro-American leadership, the USA's cut of Libyan oil would increase substantially, or at least enough to justify an increasingly unpopular war by a Nobel Peace Prize winning American president with precarious popularity. If Gaddafi is ousted, it will be on human rights grounds, because, like Syria's Bashar al-Assad, he resorted to violence against his own people in the wake of the Arab Spring, when people in every other oppressed regime around him were overthrowing their leaders.

A positive and likely outcome of his ouster may possibly be a more open economic field with possibly increased trade between democracies and new Libyan leaders. Castro is confusing cause with effect.

If Castro thinks – as he states – that Libya's great wealth grew from oil sales, then he should be thrilled at the possibility of it having the potential for even more growth as the result of a post-Gaddafi expanded trade market. Instead, seems as if he could not be more sullen about the idea.

As with everything Castro says and does, the situation in Libya, as he views it, is less about reality and more about his own projections and pet gripes.

Obama Licenses Corporate Jets to Cuba

While U.S. President Barack Obama aggressively targets corporate jet owners and carriers (in rhetoric and taxes), his Treasury Department keeps licensing corporate and personal jets for travel to Castro's Cuba.

But wait a minute -- wasn't Obama's Cuba policy aimed at family, religious and academic travel?

Either those family travelers, missionaries and students are doing really well -- or Obama's Cuba policy is disingenuous.

Here is a short-list of some the corporate jet providers authorized for travel to Cuba by the Obama Administration:

Omega World Travel, Personal Jet Charter, Corporate Air Charters, Golden Airlines, Gulfstream Airlines, National Jets, Universal Aviation, and most recently, Malone Charters.

Perhaps these corporate jets are intended for those licensed under Obama's new "people-to-people" category -- e.g. Harvard Alumni Association, Corcoran Gallery of Art and Insight Cuba's expensive tour junkets.

Yet, it's hard to imagine these "people-to-people" travelers interacting with ordinary Cubans -- as their specific license requires -- when they can't even share a plane with ordinary people.

What a farce.

Chavez's P.R. Man: Bill Delahunt

It seems former U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) has begun a public relations campaign to salvage his old friend, Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez.

From the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C.:

Delahunt to U.S. Congress: "Come to Venezuela, I Think You'll Be Surprised"

Former U.S. Congressman William Delahunt said that relations between the U.S. and Venezuela will improve because there is the will and a mutual interest for that to occur.

In an interview with the Venezuelan newspaper Ultimas Noticias, Delahunt said, "That will exists between Caracas and Washington because this relationship is sincerely very important for both countries and I think it will happen if we work on it."

The former Democratic congressman thinks that to come to an understanding, it is necessary "to avoid strong rhetoric and put aside the myths and erred perceptions that we have."

"I would say to my former colleagues (in the U.S. Congress) that they should come to Venezuela, to talk, with an open mind. I think you'll be surprised," he added.

Delahunt thinks that it is important that both governments work to return ambassadors to each others capitals.

The former Massachusetts representative is optimistic that relations between the U.S. and Venezuela will improve in the future, just as they have between Caracas and Bogota.

Delahunt indicated that during his visit to Venezuela, which will last until Monday, he will meet with members of the National Assembly, both from the opposition and pro-government parties, "to promote that the inter-parliamentary Boston group be revived."

The Boston group was created in 2002 to strengthen relations between Venezuela's National Assembly and the U.S. Congress. According to Delahunt, "I thought it was very useful." He proposed that the group to use the opportunity to add former legislators and prominent citizens from both countries.

While the initiative comes to life, Delahunt is preparing a plan of activities over the next few months to develop the U.S.-Venezuela Groups of Friends, a non-political group made up of individuals from various sectors of both countries to promote better understanding in the bilateral relationship.

Here Come the Oil "Experts"

Reuters's Havana bureau has put out a one-sided story on "experts" warning that the U.S. needs to engage the Castro regime on oil drilling.

It's entitled -- "U.S. must step up Cuba oil spill readiness: experts"

So who are the (three) experts consulted?

They are anti-U.S. policy activists Robert Muse and Phil Peters, who use any issue (excuse) to lobby against sanctions -- whether it's oil drilling or selling chicken parts.

(Note to Reuters: These aren't unbiased "experts," so it's disingenuous to conceal their activism.)

And of course, Jorge Pinon, the former BP-Amoco oil executive on a decade-long quest to facilitate oil drilling for Cuba's dictatorship.

(Note to Reuters: It's disingenuous to conceal that Pinon is a former oil executive with an agenda.)

They are some of the same "experts" that five years ago were warning U.S. lawmakers that the Chinese were speculating off Cuba's coasts. And thus, using it as a ruse to lobby for the U.S. to lift sanctions -- so American oil companies could "beat them to it."

Back then, Dick Cheney famously fell for the "China ruse" -- and consequently had to retract.

As we all know, the Chinese never drilled.

For these "experts", preventing Castro from drilling is not an option -- as the Reuters story reveals:

"[T]he administration has not taken what many experts consider the most critical step -- meeting directly with the Cubans to develop joint safety regulations and protocol."

That's right -- the most critical step for these "experts" is not to prevent a Castro petro-dictatorship, it's to facilitate a Castro petro-dictatorship.

Why?

Here's the troubling reason (or despite the fact that):

"'It goes without saying that energy independence is critical for the political and economic future survival of the island nation,' said Jorge Pinon, an expert on Cuban oil at Florida International University."

(Sadly, Pinon has even adopted the Castro regime's insulting lingo of equating itself with the "island nation".)

Basically -- because "energy independence" is key for the survival of the Castro regime, particularly as "Chavez dependence" becomes increasingly unsustainable.

How's that for an agenda?

Political Arrests More Than Double

According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights (CCHR), there have been 1,727 documented political arrests by the Castro regime during the first half of 2011.

That's a 110% increase from the same period last year.

More "reform" you can't believe in.

The Hard-Liners

On the eve of July 4th, we thought it would be appropriate to reproduce the following opinion editorial (and important reminder):

Are Cuban-Americans "Hard-Liners"?

by Mauricio Claver-Carone
The Washington Times
May 21, 2008

The nation's mainstream media and political pundits rarely miss an opportunity to attach the label of "hard-liner" to Cuban-American critics of the dictatorship.

That begs a question: Are Cuban-Americans fairly labeled as "hard-liners"?

Indisputably, the Cuban-American community has maintained its uncompromising support for complete political freedom and democracy in Cuba. Cuban-Americans have consistently and ardently opposed any political or commercial engagement with Cuba's regime until it meets conditions set out in the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act passed by Congress in 1996. Those essentially are: Immediate release of all political prisoners; recognition and respect for fundamental human rights set out by international accords; and legalization of opposition political parties, an independent news media and independent labor unions.

HBO's popular new TV series, "John Adams," about our nation's Founding Father and second president, offers some significant historical perspectives on what "hard-liners" can achieve.

The enlightened and inspiring debates of the Second Continental Congress of 1775 included the likes of such "hard-liners" and "radicals" — as some historians now refer to them — as John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Adams and Jefferson, who became our third president, adamantly rejected all negotiations with the British monarch until the God-given freedoms of the American people were fully recognized.

Those early debates also provide some perspective about the "moderates" of the time, such as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and John Rutledge of South Carolina. They advocated dialogue and reconciliation as embodied in the "Olive Branch Petition" — also known as the "Humble Petition" — to King George III. The petition sought only limited economic and political concessions, rather than absolute emancipation. The British monarch's rejection of the petition allowed the "hard-line" views of Mr. Adams to prevail and led directly to the democratic underpinnings of this great society.

During the course of the American independence movement, a "hard-line" approach also developed and became the basis for the 19th Century abolitionist movement that sought the immediate and absolute emancipation of all slaves. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who founded the abolitionist periodical "The Liberator" in 1839, was white and drew upon his deeply religious convictions. Frederick Douglass, who founded "North Star" in 1847 was a former slave, who drew upon personal tragedy and a lifetime of resolute resistance. While the two only differed in their backgrounds and the source of their inspiration, both were vitriolic in their opposition to slavery and uncompromising in their support for emancipation.

Douglass summarized his political philosophy as follows: "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."

Garrison concluded: "With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

It is inarguable that after Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, his tyranny trampled the fundamental human rights of the people of Cuba. Today the Cuban people do not have the benefit of free press that Garrison and Douglass placed at the service of the abolitionist cause. Neither do the Cuban people have the ability to somewhat gather as America's Founding Fathers did to debate the form of government and rally popular support for independence. Yet Cubans share the same goal and desire for freedom and political rights.

Americans of all origins should find it fair and easy to conclude that not only are Cuban Americans uncompromising "hard-liners" on the issues of freedom and full emancipation of Cuba but also that there is no reason to back away from that hard line.

It is, after all, a most American tradition.

CHC: The following short clip brilliantly re-enacts one of the debates between the "moderate" John Dickinson and the "hard-liner" John Adams.

Please watch:

Chavez in Castro's Magic Mountain

Great column by former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda:

The secretive guest at Castro's Magic Mountain

Chavez's secret convalescence in Havana gives the countries a chance to work out a Plan B

The news photo is evocative: the ancient Fidel Castro at the bedside of the ailing Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, who is currently convalescing in an extended, secretive stay in a Havana hospital.

Perhaps they are discussing the misdeeds of imperialism and the enduring virtues of Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti.

In any event, the scene brings to mind Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, perhaps the greatest novel of the 20th century. Set in the Swiss Alpine village of Davos on the eve of the First World War, the novel revolves around the illness, recovery or death of a dozen or so patients of tuberculosis or "consumption", all secluded in a sanatorium on the slopes of the magic mountain.

Memorable characters inhabit the novel — Madame Chauchat; the grief-stricken Mexican woman known as Tous-les-Deux; and of course the protagonist, Hans Castorp. But at the novel's core are the endless conversations between two patients, Lodovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta, respectively the Italian idealist and the Jesuit cynic, about war, morality, life, death and the saving of Castorp's soul.

Admittedly it's a leap from Chavez to Castro.

Mr Castro and Mr Chavez are not Thomas Mann's creations, and it is doubtful that their exchanges match the philosophical and historical musings of the German novelist. But what is almost as extraordinary is the notion of two strongmen — one a brutal dictator, the other a wannabe autocrat — incapacitated by old age or ill health in the only place where the nature of their ailments can be kept secret.

There Mr Castro and Mr Chavez can try to deal with the consequences of their own demise, given their mutual dependence. In Mr Castro's case, at least, we know he has been ill for nearly five years, though largely recovered now; he is almost 85 years old and lucid only on and off (according to people who have been with him recently); and he no longer runs Cuba on a daily basis.

We don't know what his prognosis may be or how much influence he wields on his "younger" brother Raul, now 80.

In principle, Raul is committed to significant change in the island's ramshackle economy — while conserving total power.

We know much less about Mr Chavez, which is the whole point of the Havana convalescence. Whatever else may be true, the Venezuelan caudillo's claim that he will spend weeks in Cuba because of an emergency operation on a pelvic abscess is not credible.

Cuba isn't respected for its hi-tech, top-level medical expertise. We can better evaluate Cuban social medicine or its barefoot doctors when international comparisons become possible.

Whatever ails Mr Chavez — from prostate cancer to a minor infection — is a mystery. So the explanation for his undergoing treatment in another country is secrecy.

The only other country in the world where the health of a president remains a state secret is North Korea, a bit far from Venezuela.

If nothing is seriously wrong with Mr Chavez (perhaps aside from an ailment that might cause personal embarrassment, given macho considerations), unpublicised healthcare in Havana will allow him to keep everything under wraps and return home triumphantly, whenever medical and political criteria coincide.

Contrariwise, if Mr Chavez is terminally ill, his Cuban connection will enable him and the Castro brothers to plot a course for the future that hopefully — for the trio at least, if not for the peoples of their two nations — ensures continuity of policy and alliances.

Many bets have been lost in the past half-century over claims that Cuba cannot survive without one or another essential prop. Surely Cuba depends on a massive Venezuelan subsidy — hard currency and cheap oil in exchange for Cuban doctors, athletics coaches and security personnel. The loss of that subsidy could well be an insurmountable challenge to the Castro regime's survival.

Similarly, the very notion of chavismo without Chavez may well be chimerical. He has no viable successor, and all the Cuban intelligence and security agents in Caracas would likely prove unable to put Humpty Dumpty back together again in the form of Mr Chavez's older brother, Adan; or his vice- president, Diosdado Cabello; or his former cabinet minister and head goon, Jesse Chacon.

If that is the case, Havana and Caracas have a problem. Mr Chavez came to power 12 years ago. With the exception of the Castros, he is the longest-standing current chief of state in Latin America.

Presidential elections are scheduled in Venezuela for December next year. But the disappearance of the lieutenant-colonel would either force an early vote or create a power vacuum where anything could happen. The Cubans would have scant influence on the outcome, but their fate may largely depend on it. No wonder the Castros want to keep Mr Chavez alive and under their wing, at least until he recovers, or they all come up with Plan B.

Meanwhile, we can just guess what ails Mr Chavez, and what the tropical Naphta and Settembrini are holding forth about on an island "mountain" that is hardly magical any more.

Alina Goes to Hollywood

From Variety:

'Il Postino' director finds 'Daughter'

Michael Radford to helm Cuban historical drama

Brit director Michael Radford ("Il Postino") will helm Mankind Entertainment's historical drama "Castro's Daughter."

"Daughter" is being produced by Mankind's John Torres Martinez and Joe Lamy. The screenplay was written by Bobby Moresco ("Crash") and centers on Alina Fernandez, exiled daughter of Fidel Castro.

She fled Cuba in 1993 disguised as a Spanish tourist and later wrote her memoir "Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba." Fernandez lectures at colleges and appears as a commentator on news shows.

Radford's credits include his adaptation of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four."

Filming is expected to take place in Puerto Rico. Casting will begin in the coming months.

Mankind Entertainment is an Austin-based specialty film company founded by Martinez and Lamy. Martinez previously managed a Texas based entertainment law firm and Lamy develops commercial real estate in the Austin area.

Independent Journalists Under Siege

From Reporters Without Borders:

Authorities step up harassment of independent news center

The Cuban authorities are waging a campaign to intimidate Hablemos Press, a Havana-based independent news center, presumably because of its criticism of the government. In the past three months, 14 of its correspondents have been threatened and 10 have been briefly detained on at least one occasion.

According to Hablemos Press director Roberto Jesús Guerra Pérez, the situation began to deteriorate during the 6th Congress of the Cuban Communist party in April, when new economic and social measures were announced. Security agents banned journalists from leaving home throughout the congress, Guerra said.

The hounding of Hablemos Press is typical of the plight of independent journalists in Cuba, where civil liberties are universally flouted. A new crackdown has been launched on anyone trying to express dissident views. Journalists are being subject to repeated arrests and brief spells in detention with the aim of reducing them to silence.

"The measures announced during the 6th Congress must be accompanied by an opening-up on human rights and democracy issues," Reporters Without Borders said. "We call for the legalization of independent media that are not controlled by the state, an end to the criminalization of dissident views, access for all Cubans to an unfiltered Internet and the repeal of all laws that restrict media freedom. The government must also honor its international obligations by ratifying the two UN conventions on civil and political rights that it signed in 2008."

"This is a psychological war," Guerra said, referring to the harassment of journalists. "They are trying to silence us by means of death threats, incitement to leave the country with our families, and repeated detention and interrogation, often lasting more than four hours at a stretch."

According to a report that Guerra provided to Reporters Without Borders, the legal basis on which many independent journalists have been arrested and detained is a provision of Law 88 on the Protection of National Independence and the Cuban Economy, also known as the "gag law." Under this provision, anyone who is deemed to have caused serious harm to the economy by cooperating with foreign media can be sentenced to two to eight years in prison. Many journalists were arrested under the same provision during the "Black Spring" of 2003.

Calixto Ramos Martínez Arias, who has been a Hablemos Press correspondent since 2009, was arrested twice in May. The second time he was arrested, on 16 May, he spent 75 hours in police custody on the orders of a state security official, although no grounds were given. After destroying his ID card, the state security official said he would shoot Martínez in the head the next time he saw him in the police station. Martínez was repeatedly deported from Havana to Camaguey in 2010 because of his journalistic work.

Jorge Alberto Liriano Linares, the Hablemos Press correspondent in Camagüey, was physically attacked by state security agents while covering a demonstration organized by the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Human Rights Union in 3 June, suffering bruising to the ribs and cuts to the face and body. He was then held for eight hour in a state security unit, where he received no medical treatment. He says he was subjected to "psychological torture and systematic mistreatment."

Carlos Ríos Otero and Sandra Guerra have been threatened by both state security agents and members of the national police in Havana. Ríos has been arrested twice. Guerra was detained for more than 48 hours in her home by a total of 20 agents. Stones were thrown at the home of Jaime Leygonier Fernández after he wrote an article that was very critical of the government.

Yoandris Gutiérrez Vargas, Enyor Díaz Allen and Raul Alas Márquez have all been detained twice. Gutiérrez was arrested on 17 and 22 June while covering dissident Jorge Cervantes' hunger strike in Santiago de Cuba. Díaz was arrested in Guantánamo, where he was also physically attacked by government supporters during the 6th Congress. Alas was arrested in Cielo de Avila.

Magaly Norvis Otero Suárez, a journalist who works for both Hablemos Press and Miami-based Radio Martí, was insulted on 7 June, She also keeps a blog in which she reports arbitrary arrests and other human rights abuses.

Four prisoners – Alexander Suárez Torres, Carlos Amir Cárdenas Cartava, Jorge Félix Otero Morales and Ramón Arias Acosta – suffered a deterioration in prison conditions after providing Hablemos Press with information. Suárez and Cárdenas were transferred from Havana to prisons in Camagüey. Otero and Arias were confined to punishment cells.

Finally, the dissident cyber-journalist Guillermo Fariñas, winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2010, was detained yet again on 27 May and was held for 12 hours at the provincial police operations headquarters along with 11 other dissidents.

The Cuban people are still denied the right to receive and impart information and several journalists have been forced to leave the country. On World Refugee Day on 20 June, Reporters Without Borders paid tribute to those journalists who, after being forced to flee their country, continue to work as journalists and thereby defy those who tried to silence them.

Freedom First or Business First?

From The New York Times:

Freedom First or Business First?

By Mauricio Claver-Carone

Current U.S. policy toward Cuba conditions economic engagement with the Castro regime on its respect for basic human rights and enactment of genuine political and economic reform.

This policy can be described as "freedom first." It is often labeled a failure by American foreign-policy elites and some in the media because the Castro regime, a brutal and bankrupt totalitarian dictatorship led by a handful of octogenarians, refuses to acknowledge human rights or to accommodate political or economic reforms.

Yet few in the Western Hemisphere — even left-leaning governments — seek to emulate Cuba's political or economic model. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez is, perhaps, an exception, but even he is hamstrung by the Venezuelan people's absolute rejection of Cuba's totalitarianism.

Conversely, the United States' "business first" policy of economic engagement toward China's dictatorship has helped turn what was, in the 1970s and 1980s, a fragile, disoriented and struggling regime desperately seeking a way out of its failed communal agrarian economy, into one of history's most repressive but lucrative dictatorships.

China is now the pièce de résistance in the eyes of the world's tyrants. For the Chinese people, however, things could have turned out better.

Following Mao Zedong's death in 1976, a wave of mostly political — not economic — reform movements spread across China. The Democracy Wall Movement, which began with people spontaneously posting signs demanding political reform and democracy on a Beijing wall, spread quickly. Hundreds of thousands of students and activists took up the cause and courageously pushed the limits of official tolerance with demands for free expression, democratic processes and open criticisms of the Communist Party, a movement that culminated on June 4, 1989, in the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The tepid response from the international community then allowed aspirations for democratic reform to be supplanted by the economic aspirations and priorities of multinational corporations and their "official" Chinese business partners.

Today, the lure of China's $6 trillion economy overshadows that country's dismal human-rights record and has served to consolidate the ironclad, one-party rule.

Now, when the United States wants to effectively defend the basic human rights of the Chinese people, it must first and foremost calculate and consider the potential impact on interest rates in the United States, lest China's tyrants feel slighted and start selling off U.S. Treasury notes.

As it economically holds the United States hostage, the Chinese regime, thus, seems to have it all: a monopoly on power, subservient economic elites, overflowing bank accounts and sovereign funds, and an unchecked right of repression.

None of this could have happened without the complicity of the United States, which generously opened its markets to China's near slave-like labor, helping create a manufacturing powerhouse. The United States is now competing economically with a monster it created and facing blowback when dealing with its national security and foreign policy priorities from Pakistan to Iran.

Worse, the new and growing wealth of China's ruling class has spurred neither democratic reform nor greater respect for human rights. Over the last month, China's regime has undertaken one of the most brutal and widespread crackdowns on dissent since Tiananmen Square. The crackdown has even led the Economist magazine to begrudgingly conclude: "In the short term at least, these troubling developments undermine the comforting idea that economic openness necessarily leads to the political sort."

"Comforting idea"? Comforting to whom? The idea that economic engagement leads to political reform is often and simply proffered to assuage public concerns and the sometimes guilty consciences of those who know they'll profit from transacting business with brutal tyrants. It's not been comforting for the countless Chinese democracy advocates imprisoned and tortured, or to the families of those executed over the years.

So which of the two repressed nations — Cuba or China — is the most likely to emerge a democracy? Or become the first to demonstrate respect for basic human rights?

Will it be the economically powerful Chinese regime, with its dissident movement now desperately struggling to overcome the gargantuan charm of its repressor's wealth thanks to the United States' focus on "business first"? Or will it be the bankrupt, octogenarian Cuban regime of the Castro brothers, with its growing dissident movement led by youthful figures who have managed to garner and hold the world's attention — thanks to the leverage provided by the United States' focus on "freedom first"?

Time will identify the real policy failure. In the meantime, two wrongs won't make things right for any of those oppressed by dictators around the world.

Mauricio Claver-Carone is a director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC in Washington and formerly served as an attorney with the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Searching for Sovereignty and Independence

Defenders of the Castro regime -- and the Castro regime itself -- always seek to justify its 52-year totalitarian dictatorship with their favorite argument of "sovereignty and independence."

Yet, Hugo Chavez has been physically "governing" Venezuela from Cuba for the last three weeks and not a peep.

(Castro even set up a remote office for Chavez's cancer announcement yesterday, with a Venezuelan flag, a portrait of Bolivar and all.)

Actually, Castro's been de facto governing Venezuela for almost 12 years and not a peep.

Moreover, Cuba was de facto governed by the Soviet Union for over 30 years (with a formal allegiance "legally" sworn by Castro's 1976 Constitution) and not a peep.

Anyway, you get the point (and hypocrisy).

According to El Universal, here's how Venezuelan's feel about Chavez's remote rule:

About 59 percent of Venezuelans disagree with the fact that President Hugo Chávez is governing from Cuba, according to a poll conducted by pollster Venezuelan Institute for Data Analysis (IVAD) between June 16 and June 21.

Yet, the silence is deafening.