From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 01:57:37 EDT
>. Add to this the fact that, despite an annual >quota established by treaty for a minimum of 20,000 legal immigrants from >Cuba, since October (the beginning of the year), the US Interests Section >had by March given out only 505 visas. Add to that recent statements from >US officials that they would view a mass illegal emigration from Cuba as a >threat to national security, the demands in Miami that Cuba be next after >Iraq and Rumsfield's comment that there was no intention of attacking Cuba >'now'---- and you can understand why Cuba might feel that the US was >attempting to provoke an incident in order to justify an attack. >As Fidel told the >foreign participants to the Marx conference at an unannounced evening >gathering (and subsequently told a Mexican journalist), the choice was >between those deaths and many more which would result from the US plan to >provoke an immigration crisis which would be used 'as a pretext for a naval >blockade, which would inevitably lead to war'. Michael, this is what I don't understand. Please explain. The US encourages hijackings by not prosecuting or returning hijackers; hijackings escalate and very illegal immigration explodes; Bush then rallies the US populace for a war against Castro in order to democratize Cuba so that illegal emigration ceases? I just don't see Bush selling such a justification to the US populace or thinking that he has any chance of imposing his regime in Cuba. Now Nicky writes: >If the Cuban government can indeed rely on >widespread popular support, and if the opposition is small and unpopular, >why the "necessity" to resort to violent suppression of all internal >dissent? There seems to me a fundamental contradiction in the calls for >internal repression by comrades who in the same breath remind us that the >Cuban people are, in general, grateful to Castro for all that he has done >for them. If Cubans are so grateful that they would defend their >government, and if Castro believed this, then he would have little to fear >from setting in motion a process of democratic reforms. I don't think Nicky addresses what Fred and others are saying. Unpopular minorities can make history or at least coups. Especially ones backed by the most powerful and richest capitalist country (at least for the next several months) led by a president whose brother's re-election fortunes could well depend on turning the screws on a harassed country and who has attempted to put Otto Reich in positions of power. What is a piddling sum for the US could go a long way in Cuba. And Diego is surely correct that US backed forces would take Cuba backwards, especially regarding the security for the poorest workers and the most vulnerable. I can understand the impassioned pleas to this list. At very little cost to itself, the US can wreak havoc on Cuba. This should not be underestimated. We don't want our words to be as cynically naive as Reich's or Cason's--do we??!! I don't know how consciously complicit with the US were those who have been killed or imprisoned. A week does seem a very short time to establish in a reasoned way that all those found guilty were aware that they were dupes for the US and that their organizations were funded and controlled by the US. Yours, Rakesh
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