Fidel Castro

Fighting for Freedom of Music in Cuba

by Ivan Osorio on February 1, 2010 · 1 comment

in Culture, International, Personal Liberty

At Freemuse.org, Kristina Funkeson reviews the documentary film Cuba Rebelion!, which chronicles the underground music scene that has been thriving in Cuba in recent years, despite the government’s disapproval.

To get accepted by the state owned musical companies the groups need approval by the Cultural Ministry. One of the refused groups isQva Libre. Despite being one of the most ambitious and popular groups they are not signed at any record label.

Since the music played on Cuban radio stations mostly consists of traditional music, such as salsa, the alternative music scene is spread through word of mouth. The musicians witness about how music videos often are censored and that there is nothing to do about it.

“I’m fed up with it”, says Gorki Luis Águila Carrasco from Porno Para Ricardo in the film. He has spent more than four months in a maximum security prison without a trial. According to him, people are put into prison only “for making art which is not politically correct”. He will never forget the terrible conditions and how he suffered in jail.

Despite the persecution, Gorki has consistently refused to tone down his criticism of the Castro regime. As he noted in a reason.tv interview last year, police came into his band’s rehearsal space and arrested him for “pre-criminal behavior.” Luckily, his case got substantial international attention, which put pressure on the regime. That helped get him released, something that Gorki described as unprecedented. The video of the full interview is below (disclosure: I translated for the subtitles).

Racist, Communist, America-Bashing Obama Adviser Resigns, Over Wacky 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

by Hans Bader on September 7, 2009 · 1 comment

in Energy, Environment, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Obama’s racist, communist, America-bashing Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, has resigned after revelations that he was a 9/11 “Truther,” who believed that George Bush may have been behind the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

But Obama has long been aware of Jones’ extremism, wacky statements, and arrest record, which would have come to light months ago during the White House vetting process, as former White House staffer Jeffrey Lord and National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy note. The Secret Service would have investigated Jones’ past and Marxist views and informed Obama about them.

As the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York noted, most of the media systematically ignored revelations about Jones’ disturbing past and extremist views, seeking to prevent damage to the Obama Administration. Despite weeks of controversy over Jones’ extreme views on talk radio, blogs, and Fox News, newspapers like the New York Times, and TV networks like ABC and NBC, refused to cover the controversy until after Jones resigned, while the Washington Post and CBS covered the story only when his resignation was imminent.

Slate journalist Mickey Kaus, who voted for Obama but has been critical of the Administration, ridicules newspapers like the New York Times for deliberately concealing the Van Jones controversy in order to protect the Obama Administration. “‘Readers of the print edition will never have heard of the presidential appointee so controversial the President had to dump him. Is this a milestone in the decline of the NYT?’ . . .It seems this may be just another installment of the NYT’s running feature, ‘You Know That Guy You’ve Never Heard About? Well, He’s Gone.’”

Jones is a race-baiter, “self-avowed communist” and Truther who believed that George Bush may have been behind the 9/11 attacks.

Why even a Democratic White House would hire Jones is beyond understanding. In 1998, Jones defended Al Qaeda and bashed Bill Clinton. Why would Obama even think of hiring someone who said a few years ago that he was part of a “global struggle against the U.S.”?

Jones has also glorified convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, in a campaign that likened supporters of the murdered police officer to the KKK.

Jones, who set up a group that is orchestrating advertiser boycotts of Obama’s media critics, was until recently a “member of a radical communist group that was dedicated to ‘organizing a revolutionary movement in America.’”

Jones also claimed that mass murder is a white characteristic, saying that the Columbine killers would not have committed their crimes had they not been white. “‘You’ve never seen a Columbine done by a black child,’ Jones, who’s African-American, said in the 2005 video. ‘Never. They always say, “We can’t believe it happened here. We can’t believe these suburban white kids.” It’s only them.’”

Many officials in the Obama Administration are sympathetic to Marxist regimes. For example, Obama’s appointee to be the FCC’s “diversity officer” is Mark Lloyd, a big fan of Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez has shot unarmed demonstrators, Lloyd has called socialist Venezuela a model, praised its authoritarian leader’s “incredible revolution” and defended his attacks on independent media.

Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press. Valenzuela is a big supporter of imposing sanctions on Honduras, which ousted its left-wing would-be dictator. Americans for Limited Government says that “Arturo Valenzuela has never met a Marxist dictator that he didn’t embrace.” ALG’s assessment of Valenzuela is echoed by liberal Latin America expert Martin Edwin Andersen.

The Obama Administration is extremely hostile to non-communist Honduras and its democratically-elected legislature, demanding that they allow the return to power of Honduras’s bullying ex-president and would-be dictator. The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many experts, such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, Stanford’s William Ratliff, and “even left-liberal analysts.”

The Obama Administration cites the UN’s support for the bullying ex-president to justify demanding that Honduras allow him to return. But the UN is openly biased in favor of left-wing dictators.

The UN has just declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, the “World Hero of Solidarity.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today.

So it’s not surprising that the UN backs Honduras’s bullying ex-president Manuel Zelaya, given his fondness for left-wing rhetoric. (Two months ago, soldiers acting on orders of Honduras’s Supreme Court arrested Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers. After the Court quite legally declared that Zelaya was no longer president, he was duly replaced by Honduras’s Congress with a civilian, the Congressional Speaker).

The Obama Administration recently decided to impose sanctions on Honduras, and indicated it will not recognize future democratic elections in Honduras unless Honduras first lets ex-president Zelaya return to power.

“Green jobs” is a scam and excuse for vast amounts of corporate welfare, as is the cap-and-trade “global warming” scheme backed by Obama, which would rip off the public and do nothing to protect the environment, while enriching politically-connected companies like General Electric and destroying millions of jobs.

UN Declares Dictator Fidel Castro a “World Hero”

by Hans Bader on September 4, 2009 · 14 comments

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The UN has declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, the “World Hero of Solidarity.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today.

The award was presented to Castro by the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann. D’Escoto Brockmann also successfully lobbied the Obama Administration to demand that Honduras allow the return to power of its ex-president and would-be dictator, Manuel Zelaya. (Two months ago, soldiers acting on orders of Honduras’s Supreme Court arrested Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers. After the Court quite legally declared that Zelaya was no longer president, he was duly replaced by Honduras’s Congress with a civilian, the Congressional Speaker). The Obama Administration recently decided to impose sanctions on Honduras, and indicated it will not recognize future democratic elections in Honduras unless Honduras first lets ex-president Zelaya return to power.

Marxism seems to be back in fashion in Washington these days. Obama’s green jobs czar is the race-baiter Van Jones, a “a self-avowed communist” and Truther who believed that George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks. Jones, who is busy orchestrating advertiser boycotts of Obama’s media critics, was until recently a “member of a radical communist group that was dedicated to ‘organizing a revolutionary movement in America.’”

The race-baiting liberal Congresswoman Diane Watson (D-CA) recently praised Fidel Castro as a genius who “kicked out the wealthy” from Cuba.

Many officials in the Obama Administration are sympathetic to Marxist regimes. For example, Obama’s appointee to be the FCC’s “diversity officer” is Mark Lloyd, a big fan of Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez has shot unarmed demonstrators, Lloyd has called socialist Venezuela a model, praised its authoritarian leader’s “incredible revolution” and defended his attacks on independent media. Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

By contrast, the Obama Administration is extremely hostile to non-communist Honduras and its democratically-elected legislature, demanding that they allow the return to power of Honduras’s bullying ex-president and would-be dictator. The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many experts, such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and Stanford’s William Ratliff.

Turn out the lights, the party’s over… and tomorrow start the same old thing again.

by Anthony Atchison on August 3, 2009

in International, Personal Liberty

Cuba has become more and more destitute since the revolution and has fallen on hard times since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a period also known as the “Special Period”. ( Efrén Córdova)

A recent Economist article entitled “Flickering lights” describes how the current economic slump has forced the Cuban government to ration electricity in a new austerity program for businesses. One cause of the Cuban budget deficit is falling price of nickel. The price of this important Cuban export has fallen from about US$23.00 in May 2007 to around US$7.15 in late June 2009 (Kitcometals.com), which in a state controlled economy means that Cuba is facing a budget shortfall. The brownouts occurring are caused directly by Cuba’s inability to pay for government programs enacted by President Raul Castro.

I had written earlier, in the blog post, ¿Can We Be Amigos?, that there will be no meaningful change in Cuba’s attitude towards the U.S. until real democratic progress is made in that country. President Obama extended the olive branch at the Summit of the Americas, and more recently the Organization of American States  voted to lift Cuba’s 47-year suspension from the regional bloc, with the U.S. requiring Democratic reform. The economist article stated that,

Fidel Castro, reiterated his country’s long-held line that it did not want to be in what it calls an imperialist grouping.

This confirms that the Castro brothers are not interested in promoting Cuba in the Latin American community, but instead their own ideology. I would like to think that the Cuban people would want to participate in the OAS meetings and discussing, making progress, and promoting causes for all of Latin America. Until the Cuban government allows its people’s voices to be heard each summer and each economic downturn they will unfortunately have these same shortages.

Americas Summit: Two Views

by Silvia Santacruz on April 21, 2009 · 1 comment

in International, Politics as Usual, Trade

Abajo! (“Down!”) was the response given by the friendly, bronzed-skinned middle-aged Cuban man who chatted with my husband and me over Cuban coffee on Calle Ocho, downtown Miami, when asked about Fidel Castro.  This discussion and our interaction with many other proud Cuban Americans occurred during a recent visit to Miami, just prior to the Fifth Summit of the Americas.

His sentiment against the 50-year-old communist dictatorship is the tenor among many Cubans living in Florida who disapprove of the Castro brothers’ administration.  It is but one example of how the American media choose to focus on President Obama’s conciliatory approach to the region [especially Cuba].  Meanwhile, Latin American newspapers are praising Obama and hoping for a hemispheric alliance.

“If the United States wants, it has the chance to write a new chapter in history, not of interference, but of cooperation, building things with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean,” asserted Brazilian President Lula da Silva, as reported in the Bogota, Colombia-based El Tiempo newspaper.

On the other hand, WSJ Mary Anastasia O’Grady authored a column yesterday titled Summit of Americas: A Missed Opportunity.

“Mr. Obama had to know that the meeting [the Summit] is used by the region’s politicians to rally the base back home by showing that they can put Uncle Sam in his place.  Realizing this, the American president might have arrived at the Port of Spain prepared to return their volley.  They have, after all, tolerated and even encouraged for decades one of the most repressive regimes of the 20th century.  In recent years, that repression has spread from Cuba to Venezuela, and today millions of Latin Americans live under tyranny.  As the leader of the free world, Mr. Obama had the duty to speak out for these voiceless souls. In this he failed.”

Thus, there are two views of the fifth Americas Summit.  The one reported in the region describes a successful Summit with an open door to do business, while the American view, when not praising the president’s efforts to be liked, questions Obama for not defending his nation’s main principle: freedom.

One positive outcome from this Summit is that the region got Obama’s attention early on and his administration is currently reviewing the Colombia trade agreement, a huge leap from his prior campaign statements to his organized labor supporters.  Finalizing this agreement would bolster a strong U.S. ally in a region where anti-Americanism is on the rise.  Read WSJ’s New Movement on Colombia Trade Pact

Soderbergh: Historically Illiterate or Willfully Ignorant?

by Ivan Osorio on January 8, 2009 · 1 comment

in Culture, International

In a new interview, Steven Soderbergh, the incredibly overrated Hollywood director whose new paean to the disgusting Che Guevara is getting a lot of attention these days, claims an ignorance of history that, if willful, smacks of seeking to avoid ugly facts — and if not, is just plain dumb.

When I started, though, I had a blank slate, which was either a perfect way to start, or a terrible way to start. I really didn’t know anything, and I’m not Latino, so I was truly a kind of agnostic about Che.

Agnostic? Now imagine if someone described himself as “agnostic” toward, say, Joseph Stalin. Moreover, whatever else he was, Che Guevara was a major historical figure, so not knowing anything about him should be a source of embarrassment to any allegedly educated adult.

Soderbergh portrays the making of his film as a process of discovery on its subject, for which he should be congratulated. Yet his description of this “process” seems selective and confused. Soderbergh’s explanation of his treatment of the most infamous episode in Che’s life — his directing of firing squads at the La Cabaña prison– meanders between meaningless contortions, antiseptic amorality, and self-congratulation at his talking to detractors.

I’m going to Miami tomorrow, and you know, there’s a lot of discussion about what happened after the revolution at La Cabaña, and why isn’t there more of that. It’s interesting to talk about. I like to talk about it. There are obviously people who are very anti-Che and for whom there’s just no amount of atrocity you could show that would satisfy them.

He is a murderer to them. He is irredeemable, and it’s hard. And sometimes you can have a reasonable conversation about it, and I can talk to them about context. And I can talk to them about balance and my reasons for showing the two periods that I show, and addressing the issues of the executions in the way we do. But some people literally can’t… Like I was having a discussion with this journalist in Europe, and he said, “I don’t know how you can make this film and not address the executions.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” And he said, “Well, you know, those things happened.” And I said, “It’s in the film. It’s in the UN. He says in a close-up, ‘We execute people. We’ve never denied it, and we’re going to keep executing people because this is a fight to the death.’” I go, “Did you not see that?” And he was like, “I don’t remember that.” And I thought, “Wow. Wow. How do you not remember that?” The point being that Che knew that killing is part of this, and he was willing to kill and willing to be killed. So now it just becomes a matter of balance.

Balance? Again, imagine the reaction if someone sought to bring “balance” to a cinematic treatment of the Gulag.

In the end, Soderbergh comes across as the kind of self-styled intellectual who would minimize atrocities by depicting their authors as “complicated” figures — as if the notion that murdering your political opponents is wrong weren’t in fact simple.

For a dose of sanity, see Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s book. The Che Guevara Myth. As Vargas Llosa noted in a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor last summer:

While it is true that he executed hundreds “from the Batista regime,” he also executed people not connected to the regime. Javier Arzuaga, the Basque chaplain who served at “La Cabaña” at the time, told me that among the 800 prisoners there were some journalists, businessmen and merchants.

Guevara sent many young Latin Americans to their deaths thinking they were martyrs for a secular religion. With the exception of Cuba, every revolution he set up was crushed, including guerrilla efforts in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, and his homeland, Argentina, where Guevara’s followers brought about a military reaction that cost tens of thousands of lives. He also meddled in the Congo in 1965, where he allied himself with two butchers—Pierre Mulele and Laurent Kabila. Eventually, he had to flee the country. His fatal incursion in Bolivia failed to ignite a peasant revolution and caused the deaths of many companions, as well as his own.

Guevara’s other feats include setting up forced labor camps (Guanahacabibes, 1961). He helped turn Cuba into a Soviet puppet, and he ruined the island’s economy, first as head of the Central Bank, and then as minister of industry by diverting resources to industries that collapsed soon after they were created. He also reduced the sugar harvest (Cuba’s mainstay) by half, thereby creating the need for severe food rationing.

In the end, Che’s global revolution-making cost him his own life at an early age. In this regard, his admirers have a point that he left this world with much unfulfilled potential: Imagine how many more people he could have killed.

The Goldwater Century

by Ivan Osorio on January 2, 2009

in Culture

When Barry Goldwater and Frank Sinatra both passed away in 1998, it felt to me like the 20th century was truly coming to an end. Wish we had them around now.

Yesterday, Fidel and Raul Castro marked half a century in power — so two generations of Cuban adults on the island have known no government but dictatorship at the hands of one Castro or the other.

This is naturally offensive to anyone who values freedom and democracy in any meaningful sense, so, a good antidote to the Castro brothers’ celebration of tyranny is the centennial of Barry Goldwater’s birth. Blogger  Todd Seavey notes on Goldwater’s 1964 presidential run:

That year the Republican platform was so explicitly pro-free enterprise and anti-big government you’d think Ayn Rand wrote most of it. Goldwater lost bigtime to the architect of much of our subsequent big-government despair — Lyndon Johnson — but inspired a generation of later activists, to whom much of the credit goes for whatever success America’s had in avoiding European-style social democracy, at least until roughly now.

The story of Goldwater’s trailblazing candidacy making Reagan’s election in 1980 and the Republican takeover on Congress in 1994 possible has been told many times, but no matter. His influence on the politics of the century his life spanned — like that of Sinatra on its culture — will always be worth celebrating.