U.S. military aircraft transmit Radio and TV Martí to Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Sun, Aug. 22, 2004




TARGETING CASTRO


U.S. military aircraft transmit Radio and TV Martí to Cuba


Cuban-American lawmakers cheered Saturday as U.S. military aircraft transmitted Radio and TV Martí to Cuban audiences -- one of the Bush administration's new tactics to undermine the Castro regime.
(snip)

Martínez said White House staffers called to deliver the news that C-130 cargo planes had managed to override jamming efforts by the island's communist government.

President Bush allocated $18 million in May to pay for the flights, though lawmakers said the frequency and timing of future broadcasts would remain classified.

''It's a wonderful day for the enslaved Cuban people, and I'm sure Castro is enraged and finding new and devious ways to block the transmissions,'' said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9463711.htm



Ileana Ros-Lehtinen"

[mitchtv]

1. Follow the money

emptying the treasury for this bunch of worms and agents of terror is disgusting.time to repeal the Cuban Readjustment Act.

[daleo]

2. Eighteen million more, down the drain

Decade after decade of nonsense.

[Mika]

8. That's on top of the $25 million for Radio & TV Marti

$33 million will buy a lot of votes in Florida.


Keep in mind that Cubans in Cuba can tune in to all of the anti Castro programming from Miami TV and radio stations they could want to hear.

Been there, seen it myself.

[Spinzonner]

3. Yeah, that'll work

The crowning tactic to 40+ years

[hadrons]

4. I guess the military will be airing recruiting ads

someone should ask dumb-as-rocks Ileana Ros-Lehtinen if any of the aid that people here want to send to loved ones in Cuba can go thru or is Dumbya's policies holding them up

Castro could stay in power another 40 years if his body holds out with the Keystone Cops running them in Miami

[Malva Zebrina]

5. He's protecting our freedoms.

harrassing a country for nothing but political gain. He is using our troops , the ones he smears when convenient to the maintenance of his own power, as his own personal brown shirted army, who naively believe they are defending our freedoms.

The only ones whose freedoms are being taken away are American citizens who are forbidden to travel outside their own country to Cuba or else be penalized. That in and of itself, in a country that is supposed to be a freedom loving Republic, is outrageous.

[LivingInTheBubble]

6. Broadcasting propaganda isnt devious, but blocking it is... NT

[thebigidea]

7. ok, you try broadcasting a channel in the US or UK without a license

See how far you get before you get blocked, fined, and imprisoned.

[BiggJawn]

9. So Castro just cranks up the power....

On his jamming transmitters.

What a fucking waste of my money. Oh, well, this is from a bunch of limp-dicks who thought it was worth 75 Mega-bucks to find out about a blow job....

[Mika]

10. Castro this Castro that. WTF!!??

Castro seared into the brains of so many DUers sounds just like Ileana Ros Lehtinen.

:puke:

Pathetic


Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that Castro did this Castro did that Castro will do this Castro will do that





FYI, there is more than one Cuban in Cuba.

[BiggJawn]

11. Take a breath, DUDE!

I'd tell you what I REALLY think about your reply, but we have this rule against personal attacks.

Yes, "Castro this and that"
In case you have forgotten, Castro is the leader of Cuba.
What, you suggesting that Elian Gonzalles will order the jammers cranked up?

Take a Chill Pill. In fact, take the whole damn bottle.

[Mika]

12. Actually, Ricardo Alarcon is the leader of Cuba's gov

But then, you knew that already. Right?


To you, Castro = Cuba's gov. Big mistake. Convenient way to ignore the government of the people of Cuba though.


The US is violating international law with this action. The government of Cuba will take action, not Castro.





Take your own bottle of chill pills, it'll keep the numb going.



:hi:

[BiggJawn]

13. So Castro is Irrelevant.

Thanks for correcting me (sarcasm)

So lemme ask you, do you make a habit of also correcting people who make the "mistake" of equating Bush with the US government?

I ask this because I see a BUTTLOAD of "Bush this and that" going on here, but you're nowhere to be found.

Anyway, as to your assertion that the US s violating International law with these broadcasts, I'm sympathetic, but I will bet Mikey Powell is not losing a lot of sleep over some whining from the ITU concerning the USIA's "violations".

And if R. Marti is illegal, what was the justification for RFE and R. Libertad? Were'nt they illegal, too?

[Mika]

15. BiggJawn. I don't want to make a fight with you

I don't have enough time to correct all of the mis-assumptions here, nor do I want to.

You keep inferring that I said things that I haven't said.

Nowhere did I say that Elian would be running jamming ops.
Nowhere did I say that Castro was irrelevant.

But, you did say that Castro was in charge of the jamming ops,
"So Castro just cranks up the power....On his jamming transmitters."

and then this beaut,

"Yes, "Castro this and that""



BiggJawn, my "Castro this Castro that" post wasn't a personal attack on you. It was an observation of the constant buying into and repetition of the single minded tunnel vision demonization of 'one man (Castro) = Cuba' line used by so many uninformed Americans so often.


Far too many have Castro on the brain (and its not by accident).


If we are going to move forward from the US/Cuba confrontation then we must deal with some truth. Cuba has a government that represents the Cuban people, not Castro. How will we ever move forward if we mistakenly perceive and repeat US gov anti Cuba propaganda when we refer to Cuba as "Castro's Cuba" and "Castro's jammers" etc? It sounds like Ileana Ros lehtinen line of crap. Its disingenuous and lends credibility to their lies, in addition to allowing the ugliest of repugs to control the language of the (our) discussion.

[BiggJawn]

28. And thus we're still friends....

I don't wanna pick a fight with you either.
Sorry for being an asshole, and sorry for stuffing words under your fingers.

You do make a very good point, and all I can offer in line of defense that is that Castro is still the most visible emblem or symbol of Cuba. And now I see where that plays right into the "Miami Exiles" hands.

But let me ask you again, since I thought I did actually have some understanding of international telecom matters, what makes R. Marti illegal when RFE wasn't?
Is it that Marti uses TV and radio channels allocated for US domestic broadcasting? That's the only thing I can come up with.

[IndianaGreen]

14. Nothing like broadcasting the Cuban version of Faux!

This is a total waste of taxpayer's money just like the idiotic Radio and TV Martí, that have been broadcasting to a non-existing audience since the Reagan Administration.

[Mika]

16. Radio & TV Marti make Faux look liberul.

The audience TV&Radio Marti is intended for is the radical rightwingnut Miamicubans.

Cubans don't need R&TV Marti to hear anti Castro broadcasts. They can simply scan their radio & TV dials and tune in an abundance of Miami and Panama based anti Castro broadcasts. NONE of that is jammed.

[donsu]

17. and the bushgang is using chemtrails to enhance transmission

how much can our atmosphere take..............

simply for propaganda's sake?

[Mika]

18. A black ops hole to pour our money into

Miami Herald (Free reg req)

TV Martí: Too much money, too little gain

by Robert Barry, former deputy director of Voice of America and was involved in the original planning for TV Martí.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/9094003.htm?

We have spent $100 million on TV Martí programs that no one in Cuba has seen, complained a spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation, following the recent announcement of the findings of the Presidential Commission on Cuba policy.

This is exactly what I predicted in 1989 when Charles Wick, director of the U.S. Information Agency, put me in charge of a task force to develop options for TV Martí. I was then the deputy director of the Voice of America and drew on information from engineers and specialists from around the U.S. government.

The option to broadcast TV signals from Cuba from a balloon tethered over the Florida Keys was the least bad idea we came up with. But given the laws of physics, it was clear that the signal would never get through. Jamming TV signals requires only a small fraction of the power required to transmit them. We made it clear to Wick and the late Jorge Mas Canosa, then CANF president, that there was little chance that TV Martí would ever be seen in Cuba. Fourteen years later, the $100 million-plus spent on TV Martí has bought some jobs for supporters of the CANF and some Republican votes in Florida elections. But they have certainly changed no minds in Cuba.

-

Finally, there is the matter of cost. There is no new money involved here, so the $18 million will come out of existing programs, including funds for public diplomacy and assistance to Haiti, both in critically short supply. In 1989, reimbursing the Defense Department for use of a C-130 and its crew of 11 would have burned up $18 million pretty fast. In addition, the decision apparently has been made to acquire a dedicated aircraft for the purpose. In 1992, the price tag for a C-130 equipped for this mission would have been $70 million, not to mention the costs of contracting for crew and maintenance.

This comment is from one of the original planners of this misdirection of our tax dollars.

[Judi Lynn]

19. If your Congressman tries to move against their pet projects

the Miami hardright, hardline "exiles" can cost him/her his/her job, too, as in the case of Colorado's Rep. David Skaggs:

(snip)
Skaggs deserves notice and credit for doing something no member of Congress from South Florida, from either party, has had the courage to do: publicly declare that TV Martí is a farce and that funding for it should cease. “It is, by any fair and objective analysis, a joke,” Skaggs offers during a recent interview. “And it is all the more hilarious — or offensive — because of the high soberness of those who attempt to defend it.”

Those defenders of TV Martí, and of its sister operation Radio Martí, have been at odds with Skaggs since 1993. That was the year Skaggs, as a newly appointed member of the House Appropriations Committee, was snooping around in hopes of cutting wasteful government spending and stumbled upon the budgets for both the Martís. “I was looking for places to save some money that wasn’t being spent well in order to shift it to areas that seemed to be of greater need,” he recalls.

At the time, Radio Martí’s signal was not only weak and ineffective, but Skaggs says he had serious concerns that the station’s hiring practices and programming were being controlled by Cuban exiles in Miami, most notably the late Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the influential Cuban American National Foundation and chairman of the presidential advisory board overseeing both stations. So in 1993 Skaggs set out to eliminate funding for the Martís and walked right into the buzz saw of the Cuban-American lobby, which marshalled its forces to maintain funding for the stations. And as a warning to Skaggs and any other representatives who might try to mess with the Martís in the future, the stations’ supporters attempted to cut from the federal budget projects in Skaggs’s Colorado district. Leading the charge was Miami’s Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who had just been elected to the House.

Skaggs was astonished by the onslaught; he commented at the time: “It’s a set of tactics I have not encountered in politics before. I have encountered my share of hardball, but it’s a little more brazen than I have seen.” Time has not changed that view.

“There has always been a defensiveness on the part of the proponents of the Martís that, in my mind, the lack of merit of the whole operation,” he says. “I think they well know that this is a fairly tenuously justifiable operation. And so the very vehemence with which they launch into opposition whenever challenged reveals how fragile they realize this proposition is.”
(snip/...)

http://www.westword.com/extra/defede1.html


Colorado Rep. David Skaggs is calling it quits after twelve years, six of them battling TV Martí.

[Mika]

20. These so called "exiles" have stolen more money than Chalabi's "exiles"

Considering how many decades they have been sucking at the American taxpayers teat.

[AirAmFan]

21. Why don't they just broadcast from Guantanamo? Doubtless that would

violate treaties and international law, but the current WH doesn't much care about treaties or international law. At least broadcasting from a fixed location would probably be much cheaper.

[Judi Lynn]

22. That would remove control of the stations from the Miami Cuban mafia.

AS it is now, the hardline right-winger "exiles" operate all programming, all staffing, and all other aspects.

You'd get a fight from them you'd never forget if you tried to get them to give it up.

On edit:

Radio Free Miami
Welcome to the new Radio Marti, dragged into the swirl of local exile politics, more quarrelsome than ever, and growing increasingly irrelevant
BY KATHY GLASGOW
[e-mail]

(snip)
No one expected that Radio Marti's relocation to Miami from Washington would go smoothly. Since its creation in 1983, the short-wave station, which beams its broadcasts to Cuba, has been a controversial pull toy, tugged at one end by Washington and the other by Miami's Cuban exile community, principally businessman and power broker Jorge Mas Canosa. At the heart of the struggle was a desire to control its programming and the subsequent influence on Cubans living under Fidel Castro's regime. In other words, control of an arm of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba.
Anyone watching (or listening) knew that, with the station finally splashing into Miami's overheated political cauldron, substantial and perhaps bloody change was ahead.

No one could predict the end of the story. Certainly no one anticipated that Mas Canosa, a prevailing presence at Radio Marti since the station's inception and its most powerful lobbyist for the funding that continues to pour out of Washington, would die suddenly last November at the age of 58. With his death, a leadership gap cracked open and the future of Radio Marti became a wild card in the already turbulent world of Miami's exile politics.

Although the station is still in transition, it is clearly being steered in new directions by Herminio San Roman, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) -- which oversees daily operations -- and Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera, Radio Marti's new director. Some changes are quite innovative, such as the use of more interviews with independent journalists living in Cuba. But critics of other changes -- less news, more talk, and more and more talk that sounds exactly like AM exile radio -- are speaking about the "Miamization" of Radio Marti.

An El Nuevo Herald columnist, Puerto Rican journalist Marta Rodriguez, weighed in on the subject May 13. "Those who listen barely recognize the programming, confusing it with that of other well-known, strident Miami stations," wrote Rodriguez. "The recently appointed directors of have acted rapidly to ... offer a radio menu that, curiously, responds more to local political interests and their own than to the tastes of their island audience."
(snip/...)

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1998-06-04/feature2.html

[Radius]

23. Iran?

Cuba jammed satellite signals we used to send pro-democratic programming to Iran.

University students and opposer's of the mullahs rioted and were put down violently.

Could be payback, or something completely unrelated to Cuba's politics.

Mika probably deserves some slack. I lived in south Florida and met and worked with lots of Cuban immigrants. Some had family members who were killed and tortured (rape, shock, bone breaking beatings) by Castro's regime. Most Cuban Americans do not like the Cuban government.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Actually, Cuba did NOT jam the signals.

This message board discussed that in depth way back when.

Maybe someone who has the time will locate some articles to help you.

Cuba OFFICIALLY was found COMPLETELY unrelated to that jamming, as anyone should have known when the _Bush administration launched those charges.

It was proven otherwise, and there was NO APOLOGY from _Bush, of course.

On edit:

Did it myself, instead. Took a quick trip to google, found the following, although others might have something else to add, as this is by far, not the only source:

Aug 22, 2003

Cuba blows the whistle on Iranian jamming
By Safa Haeri

The Islamic Republic of Iran might lose one of its very few friends in the world, Cuba, which, according to American officials, has officially informed them that the Iranian embassy in Havana was the source of jamming programs send out by US-based Iranian radio and television stations aimed at mainland Iran. The jamming related to Telestar-12, a commercial communications satellite orbiting at 15 degrees west, 22,000 miles above the Atlantic, which carries programs by the American government as well as by Iranian radio and television stations based in the US aimed at mainland Iran. The interference began on July 16, coinciding with the start of a new wave of pro-democracy protests led by Iranian students in Tehran against the country's clerical leaders.

At first, it was believed that the Cuban government, acting on demands from Iran's ayatollahs, was jamming the US government and private Persian-language radio and TV broadcasts into Iran, as the stations, based mostly in Los Angeles, had attracted an impressive popularity within Iran.

Satellite-broadcasting experts said at the time that since Tehran could not jam the Telstar-12, due to its stationary position, it made the request for friendly Cuba to do it instead.

But on Wednesday a spokeswoman for the US State Department said that Havana had informed them that the jamming was made by the Iranians in Cuba, using a compound in a suburb of the capital belonging to the Iranian embassy.

According to a source, the Cubans have now shut down the facility and presented a protest note to the Iranian government in Tehran, and the jamming stopped earlier this month. "Cuba informed us on August 3 that they had located the source of the interference and had taken action to stop it," Jo-Anne Prokopowicz of the State Department said.
(snip/...)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH22Ak03.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While you're at it, Radius, maybe your friends could tell you how we might get access to authentic articles discussing the rape, bone-breaking beatings, etc., suffered by the relatives of your Miami Cuban friends.

Surely you recognize some of us are skeptical about taking it on the word of a new poster with friends in Miami. Many of us have been studying Cuba at least as long as it's been since Elián was held prisoner in Little Havana.

[Radius]

25. OK not trying ruin your day

My point was not as simplistic as Cuba bad bush good. Has nothing to do with the pres.

My point was that these operations can be used for other purposes.

I worked in Miami one summer 94, washing dishes and busing tables. I made friends whose parents talked about these things. These were their accounts. These people were not political, they were just getting by.

Here are some others:
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=americas&c=cuba

BTW you can go to Radio Shack and buy the equipment to build a multi band transmitter and point it at a com satellite. Their positions are available online. Step the signal up to several thousand watts and use a directional antenna. Go to DC and do this, see how long it takes a helicopter to show up. The Cubans have sigint capability and if it took them more than two hours to shut it down they were complicit. Convenient to disavow all knowledge..

Just my opinions, you do not have to take anything from them..

[Mika]

26. OK. Two can play that game

Except that the US plays the torture game much "better" than Cuba.


Bush Administration Lawyers Greenlight Torture
Memo Suggests Intent to Commit War Crimes
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/07/usdom8778.htm

Or

http://hrw.org/doc/?t=usa_prisons

--


So, I guess that Cuba should start broadcasting to the enslaved American people too then?


But Cuba doesn't. Once again the Cuban government takes the high road and doesn't violate international law in the process.

Cubans entrust us Americans to take care of our own problems in our own country.

We should trust the Cuban people to form their own society and government.

[Radius]

27. Try It

Go to a major city where you live and point a high powered transmitter at a communication satellite and see how long it takes you to be arrested.

Personally, I could care less about Cuba's politics. They can broadcast all they want here. There is no reason they can not buy air time or even beam in satellite channels. Speech flows better without communism.

Suggests intent is a funny expression. Lawyers can express so much without saying anything. I know plenty of people who have served federal time. It sucks, they were not tortured. Prison sucks, but it is not supposed to be club med..

Since the collapse of the motherland Cuba is left with an unpleasant choice. When Castro croaks it can become a western trading partner, or isolate its self with countries like north Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe.

Expressing dissent in the US will not get you jailed or killed. The Cuban coast guard is not stopping a flood of Mexican immigrants coming to join the workers paradise.