Frank Calzon: No more `Open hand' -- Obama must get tough with Castros

[Mika]

No more `Open hand' -- Obama must get tough with Castros
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/14/1578167/no-more-open-hand-obama-must-get.html#ixzz0lDXMImKe

BY FRANK CALZON

[e-mail]

President Barack Obama is coming to Miami, and American Alan Gross remains in prison in Cuba. Gross was distributing telephones and laptops to Jewish organizations in Cuba when he was arrested Dec. 5. Since then he's been accused, but never formally charged, of spying for the United States.

For a month the regime refused to allow American diplomats to visit Gross, who was working with the U.S. Agency for International Development in a congressionally mandated program to promote democracy in Cuba. Gen. Raúl Castro perversely declared Gross's arrest proved Obama's offer to extend an ``open hand'' to regimes willing to ``open their closed fist'' was a sham.

President Obama has tried ``open hand'' diplomacy in Cuba to no avail. He lifted restrictions on Cuban-American remittances and visits. When the regime complained of Christmas lights at the U.S. mission in Havana, they were turned off. The State Department called off distribution of a Penguin biography written for children about President Obama. It acquiesced to Cuban demands that dissident leaders not be invited to functions with members of the foreign diplomatic corps. Havana enforces many restrictions on U.S. diplomats; there are no similar measures on Cuban diplomats here.

Havana's response to this diplomacy was to snub Obama's request that it reduce the high tax it imposes on remittances (a real windfall for the regime); and Cuba joined Venezuela's Hugo Chávez in vilifying Obama. The Castros also propagate the falsehood that while others try to help the victims of Haiti's earthquake, the United States uses the catastrophe to occupy Haiti and abuse its people.

When is enough, enough?

Negotiations are taking place to win Gross' release, and Havana wants the United States to end its AID-financed programs promoting democracy and free information in Cuba. Unforgivably, those programs were placed on hold for months, and today function in a very limited way. The regime is prepared to hold Gross hostage to end the programs permanently, and its fist is as hard as ever.

But Washington has options to obtain Gross' release, and to prevent the Castros from arresting and holding other traveling Americans hostage. Instead of asking what the regime wants in exchange for releasing Gross, America should be telling Havana what consequences it faces if it doesn't release Gross. He is not the first foreigner to be arrested distributing information or forbidden tools of world communication, but the others were released and expelled.

That Havana chooses to make Gross an issue suggests that the Castros think they can bully the president. Here are things Washington can do to win Gross's release:

• Set a deadline for his release, warning that if he is not, all American travel to Cuba will be suspended because Americans aren't safe in Cuba.
• Announce the full resumption of AID's pro-democracy program, keeping faith with Congress, which has funded it, and with commitments made to Florida Sen. George LeMieux last year.
• End the impunity enjoyed by Cuban officers who murdered Americans in international airspace by turning in their names to Interpol.
• Increase the power of Radio Martí to overcome Cuban jamming and issue an executive order for aircraft broadcasting TV Martí to fly into international airspace so that Cubans know what is going on.
• Within the constraints of American law, treat and hold Cuban spies under the same conditions as Gross is being held.
• Impose the same housing and other restrictions on Cuban diplomats that American diplomats suffer in Cuba.
• Review the reduction of staff and closing of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba and the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., a measure feared by the regime.
• Distribute through American embassies abroad a White Paper on the Obama administration's efforts to reach out to Havana and the Castros' negative responses. Their hostility has been demonstrated by their actions and unrelenting campaigns of disinformation.

The arrest of Gross is an outrage, as is the continuing abuse of the Cuban people. Failing to react strongly serves to feed the Castro brothers' sense of impunity and to embolden their continued thuggish behavior.

Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Arlington, Va.

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[Judi Lynn]

1. Frank, tell it to your friends in Havana, why not? No more open hand from the U.S.

Posted on Tue, Jul. 22, 2008
Funding for free Cuba is frozen
BY FRANCES ROBLES

Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.
In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.

In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba.

~snip~
The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.

More:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x6293

[flamingdem]

5. So they tried to examine the funding in 2008, Berman included - but it continued? nt

[Mika]

7. Gotta court the intrasigent exile vote (& contributions), at any cost to the taxpayers.

The ol' gov grants --> campaign funding loop.

On this side of the Gulf Stream it has always been about this (the money).

The various professional anti Cuba ditto bots provide the cover for this.

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[Judi Lynn]

2. Recommending for stout, nasty little man with anger management problems, Frank Calzon.

What a colossal jackass you are, Frank.

Recommending.

[subsuelo]

4. i just love the charge against the Castros that they "propagate falsehoods" n/t

[protocol rv]

6. They don't?

Why does the Cuban government forbid the existence of a free press independent of communist government control? I suspect it's because they want as much control over what the people get to know as possible. And why would they do this? Because they present the people with a fiction. Did you see the movie "V" by the Wachowsky brothers? It's about the lies governments fabricate to justify their hold on power. This type of abuse is very prevalent when a dictatorship such as the ones the communist oligarchs have set up in Cuba clings to power for over 50 years, and molds reality to serve and preserve this hold on power. They are corrupt, venal, and don't deserve such power, and in time I'm sure they will lose it. History shows these regimes are eventually destroyed by their own internal corruption.

[Mika]

8. Cuban history shows that abusive regimes are thrown out in a revolution.

And that's just what the Cuban people did against the US backed blood soaked Batista regime. A pox on your bigoted opinion of Cubans in Cuba now, who you assume tolerate the so called abuses of the current system. Cubans would be rising up en masse if they truly felt that way. But they don't. Cubans feel empowered by their involvement with/in their government. Their revolution is constant, but for survival sake, for their sovereignty's sake, they must move cautiously to avoid the destruction brought about by disaster capitalists who, wherever they roam, seek opportunities to do their thing.

Of course, one must spend some time there to truly understand this. Too bad that Americans are banned by the corrupt American regime from traveling to Cuba to see for themselves.

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[protocol rv]

9. The Cuban regime uses a very repressive system

We must recall the Soviet Communist Party ruled for a little more than 70 years. They did so via one of the most repressive and murderous systems known in recent times. The Castro regime received a lot of training and information from the Soviets, and it also benefits because so many Cubans who would otherwise lead the revolution (the true revolution, not that sclerotic, outdated, and rotten thing you call revolution) against the communist oligarchs have left the country, or have been jailed or killed.

The message I get from Cubans I meet in Venezuela, and in other countries, from reading, and from visitors who don't happen to be communists wearing blinfolds, is that the Cuban people are indeed alienated, don't feel they can say much, and don't agree with the communist system. They are ready for change, just like the people of Eastern Europe overwhelmingly voted to kick the communists out, and good riddance, they said. But in Cuba change is stopped by a group of corrupt oligarchs who want to keep power no matter what.

So you see, history shows the time will come for communism to end in Cuba. And since in this world there is no justice, nor is there a god to punish the guilty, it's possible those same oligarchs who today rule Cuba with an iron fist will be the noveau riche capitalists who run companies and live in the mansions they stole, with a veneer of "democracy" to give them sufficient cover, and of course foreign multinationals will come on down, make deals with these former "communist leaders" and will feed - they always feed.

This is what happened to a large extent in the former Soviet Union, and i don't see why Cuba has to be different. For all I know these communist thieves, corrupt and nasty as they are, will go unpunished, and will be the kings of robber capitalism. Or maybe the Cuban people will be able to get them off their backs - and change can take place in such a way that the people benefit, and not the usual suspects benefit. Who knows?

[subsuelo]

3. WE TURNED OFF OUR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS FOR YOU!!!!

yeah sure, I buy this garbage.

[Vogon_Glory]

10. Calzon Is Someone the President Can Ignore

Mr. Calzon is someone the President can ignore. Mr. Calzon's faction has traditionally voted Republican and even if President Obama walked their narrow line and jumped through all their constrictive hoops, Mr. Calzon and his friends would still denounce him as a leftist and beat their drums for a right-wing Republican in 2012 (Or even 2016). Mister Calzon fails to realize that as a long-function part of the "conservative"/Republican machine, his faction is not a fit for a forward-looking, progressive coalition trying to move ahead with the US's relations with the Caribbean.

Mr. Calzon will have to console himself with his pictures of Dubya, Poppy Bush, and Ronald Reagan.

:dem:

[flamingdem]

11. Frank Calzon is set to receive a huge chunk of funding via Freedom House nt

[protocol rv]

12. US has good relations with "the Caribbean"

The US doesn't have good relations with the Castro government. The Cuban government isn't "the Caribbean". I doubt they are the Cuban people anymore. They are an oligarchy made up of Communist Party Members.

[EFerrari]

13. Hey Mika, tonight a local PBS station is running a piece, "The Museums of Cuba"

and one of them was a library full of scrapbooks from when 100,000 teachers fanned out across the island and taught 1,000,000 people to read and write. The scrapbooks are filled with letters to Fidel that, they say, were like the final exam for each student. Castro said he would eradicate illiteracy in one year and he did.

I've never heard this story.

[Judi Lynn]

14. You might find this helpful, it's a condensed look at the subject I found in 2001,

while looking for information on the great revolutionary literacy effort. I was impressed by this jubilant photo taken during a celebration when they believed they had reached an enormous literacy goal. The people in the crowd are waving giant pencils!

http://www.communitytechnology.org.nyud.net:8090/cuba/thumbnails/cubaphotos-540lit.jpg
I had heard long ago about the teachers spreading out across the island, going to each house, taking the little laterns with them so they could all study together in the evening after their days were finished. I was horrified in learning some teachers had been killed, but I didn't learn until years later that some South Florida "exiles" had been leading the men who tracked down the teachers and tried to get rid of them one way or another. It was their goal to keep the revolution from being able to meet its goal of achieving full literacy on the island.

The 1961 literacy campaign
http://www.communitytechnology.org/cuba/photos.html

[EFerrari]

15. Thank you for the link. The program I watched had footage

of those young people and their giant pencils! LOL, they were so great. Also footage showing the shelves and shelves of scrapbooks with all those letters.

[Mika]

16. I've seen it. Most excellent episode.

I have to say that the couple of letters that the archivist read were truly touching. The greatest gift in their life was the opportunity to learn to read and write and do simple math - so they could now read news, books, and understand their vote and count their money for the first time in their lives.

The Cuban literacy project is one of the true wonders of the world. Plenty of info on google.

It was undertaken by young educated volunteers who went out into the countryside, up the mountains, to the farthest reaches in Cuba to teach the 85% of the population that was completely illiterate. Not only did this create literacy countrywide, but it also was the training ground for the rising generation of leadership who saw first hand the benefits of the empowerment of education and government action run by the grass roots.

This legacy in Cuban history has bestowed honor to the teaching professions in Cuba. To become a teacher is to become an honored member of one's community. Cubans have built more schools every year since the revolution even in the most austere of times.

FYI, in Miami's exile community there are celebrated "freedom fighters" in Cuba and Miami who gained fame by fighting the efforts of the revolution (literacy) by murdering some of these fine young teachers in the early years. Some of these murderers were caught and are still in jail - their wives now marching with the "ladies".
The bots here have no idea of who/what they are supporting by supporting these cretins - or worse - maybe they do. :puke:

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