[News] State Departments latest prefab Cuban dissident
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Mar 25 10:59:10 EDT 2010
http://machetera.wordpress.com/
U.S. State Departments latest prefab Cuban dissident: Darsi Ferrer
Posted: 24 Mar 2010 11:26 AM PDT
This morning the U.S. State Department revealed
its latest pawn in the overthrow game its
playing with Cuba: Darsi Ferrer, a Cuban doctor
currently under arrest in Cuba, to whom it
granted Honorable Mention in its 2009 Defender of
Freedom Award sweepstakes. A few questions come
to mind. Who won First
Prize? Second? Third? Is this sweepstakes the
State Departments best kept secret, only pulled
out for public display when Washington worries
that the media buzz is starting to dry up on its
prefabricated Cuban dissidence campaign or the
hunger strike recruitment is flagging?
The story put out by the anti-Cuba lobby on
Ferrer is that he was arrested for possessing a
couple of bags of stolen cement but that this is
a cover for the real reason for his arrest, which
has more to do with his dissident
activities. I have no idea what Ferrer was
actually charged with but Im guessing that
dissidence isnt a reason for arrest in Cuba
either
treason is, however. Atilio Boron explains:
Dissidents or Traitors?
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2010/03/23/cuba-disidentes-o-traidores/>en
español
<http://www.atilioboron.com>Atilio A. Boron
Translation: Machetera
The free press" in Europe and the Americas - the
one that lied shamelessly about the existence of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or described
the putschist regime of Micheletti in Honduras as
interim ? has redoubled its ferocious campaign
against Cuba. As a result, its important to
distinguish between the true reason for it, and
the pretext. The first, which establishes the
global framework for this campaign, is the
imperial counter-offensive launched near the end
of the Bush administration, and whose most
resounding example was the reactivation and
mobilization of the Fourth Fleet. Contrary to the
predictions of certain gullible people, this
policy, dictated by the military-industrial
complex, was not merely continued but reinforced
by the recent treaty signed by Obama and
Colombias President Uribe, through which the
United States is to be granted the use of at
least seven military bases in Colombian
territory, diplomatic immunity for all U.S.
personnel affected by these operations, license
to bring in or remove any kind of cargo without
authorities in the host country being able to
register whats coming in or going out, and the
right of U.S. expeditionary forces to enter or
leave Colombia using any kind of i.d. card
whatsoever attesting to their identity. As if
all that were not enough, Washingtons policy of
recognizing the legality and legitimacy of the
coup detat government in Honduras and the
subsequent fraudulent elections is yet one more
example of the perverse continuity that links
policies implemented by the White House,
regardless of the skin color of its principal
occupant. And in this general imperial
counter-offensive, the attack and destabilization
of Cuba plays an extremely important role.
These are the true, underlying reasons. But the
pretext for this renewed attack was the fatal
outcome of the hunger strike of Orlando Zapata
Tamayo, now reinforced by an identical action
initiated by another dissident, Guillermo
Fariñas Hernández and one which will no doubt be
followed by those of other participants and
accomplices of this aggression. As is well
known, Zapata Tamayo was (and continues being)
presented by these media of mass deception as
Noam Chomsky adequately described them ? as a
political dissident when in reality he was an
ordinary prisoner whod been recruited by the
enemies of the Cuban revolution, and
unscrupulously used as a mere tool of their
subversive projects. The case of Fariñas
Hernández is not the same, but even so, it holds
certain similarities and deepens an argument that
must be viewed with complete seriousness.
Its important to remember that theres a long
history to these attacks. They began at the very
triumph of the revolution but, as official and
formal policy of the United States government,
they began on March 17, 1960, when the National
Security Council approved a Covert Action
Program against Cuba, proposed by the then CIA
Director, Allen Dulles. Partially declassified
in 1991, this program identified four main
courses of action, with the first two being
opposition building and the launching of a
powerful propaganda offensive in order to
strengthen and make credible that opposition. It couldnt be clearer.
After the resounding failure of these plans,
George W. Bush created a special commission
within the State Department itself, in order to
promote regime change in Cuba, a euphemism to
avoid the phrase promote
counter-revolution. Cuba has the dubious
privilege of being the only country in the world
for which the State Department has designed a
project of this sort, thus confirming the
unhealthy Yankee obsession with annexing the
island, and on the other hand, confirming that
José Martí was right when he warned our people
about the dangers of U.S. expansionism. The
first report from this commission, published in
2004, had 458 pages and explained in the most
minute detail everything that should be done to
introduce a liberal democracy, respect human
rights and establish a market economy in
Cuba. To carry out the plan, $59 million dollars
a year was budgeted (in addition to the money set
aside for undercover action) of which, according
to the proposal, $36 million was earmarked for
the fomenting and financing of dissident
activities. In summary, what the press presents
as a noble and patriotic internal dissidence
seems rather to be the methodical application of
the imperial project designed to complete the old
dream of the U.S. rightwing: a definitive takeover of Cuba.
Having said that, a conceptual clarification is
necessary. Its no accident that the mainstream
press speak so casually of political dissidents
incarcerated in Cuba. But are they political
dissidents or something else? It would be
difficult to say for all of them, but it is an
absolute certainty that the majority of those who
are in prison are not there for being political
dissidents but for something far more serious: treason.
Lets examine this closely. In Norberto Bobbios
famous Diccionario de Política [Political
Dictionary], the political scientist Leonardo
Morlino defined dissent as any kind of
disagreement without stable organization, and as
such, non-institutionalized, that does not try to
exchange an incumbent government for another,
much less topple the existing political
system. Dissent is expressed solely through
exhortation, persuasion, criticism, pressure,
always with non-violent methods, in order to
induce decision-makers to prefer certain options
over others or to modify preceding decisions or
political directives. Dissent never questions
the legitimacy or fundamental rules upon which a
political community is based, but only very
specific rules or decisions. (pp.
567-568). Further on, he points out that there
is a threshold that, once crossed, turns dissent
and dissidents into something else. The
threshold is crossed when the legitimacy of the
system and the rules of the game are questioned,
and violence is used: or when intentional
disobedience becomes a norm; or finally, when
disagreement is institutionalized in an
opposition that may include the toppling of the
system among its objectives. (p. 569). In the
former Soviet Union, two of the most notable
political dissidents, whose actions were
consistent with the definition suggested above,
were the physicist Andrei Sakharov and the writer
Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn; the same
applies to Rudolf Bahro in East Germany and Karel
Kosik in the former Czechoslovakia. In the
United States, the outstanding example from the
middle of the last century is Martin Luther King,
and in the Israel of our time Mordechai Vanunu,
the nuclear scientist who revealed the existence
of the atomic arsenal in that country and was
condemned as a result to eighteen years in prison
without the free press taking note of the affair.
The Cuban dissidence, unlike that of Sakharov,
Solzhenitsyn, Bahro, Kosik, King and Vanunu, fits
in the latter definition because its purpose is
the subversion of constitutional order and the
toppling of the system. Furthermore, and this is
the essential point, it is trying to do so by
putting itself at the service of a powerful
enemy, the United States, which for fifty years
has gone after Cuba using every imaginable
medium; with an integrated blockade (economic,
financial, technological, commercial, computing),
with permanent aggressions and attacks of all
kinds and with migratory legislation developed
exclusively for the island (the Cuban Adjustment
Act) which encourages illegal immigration to the
United States by endangering the lives of those
who wish to reap its benefits. While Washington
constructs a new wall of shame along its border
with Mexico in order to stop the influx of
Mexican and Central American immigrants, it
grants every imaginable benefit to those who,
coming from Cuba, set foot on its territory. Can
those who receive money, advice and directions
from a country that is an objective enemy of
their homeland and act in congruence with its
aspiration to precipitate a regime change that
would put an end to the revolution really be considered political dissidents?
In order to answer this, lets leave Cuban laws
to the side for a moment and look at the laws
established by other countries. Article III,
Section 3 of the constitution of the United
States says that Treason against the United
States, shall consist only in levying War against
them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving
them Aid and Comfort. The punishment for this
crime rests in the hands of the U.S. Congress; in
1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in
the electric chair, accused of treason for
supposedly having adhered to their Enemies by
revealing the secrets of atomic bomb manufacture to the Soviet Union.
In Chiles case, Article 106 of that countrys
Penal Code establishes that Anyone who from
within the territory of the Republic conspires
against its foreign security in order to
encourage a foreign power to declare war on
Chile, will be punished with a life sentence in a
maximum security prison. If war has begun, the
penalty will be increased to a death sentence.
In Mexico, a country that has been victimized
throughout its history by U.S. interventionism in
its internal affairs, Article 123 of its Penal
Code defines a wide variety of situations as
treason, such as acts against the independence,
sovereignty or integrity of the Mexican nation
with the goal of subjecting her to a foreign
person, group or government; take part in hostile
actions against the nation, through warlike
actions at the orders of a foreign state or
cooperation with it in any way that could harm
Mexico; receive any benefit, or accept a promise
to receive it, with the goal of realizing any of
the acts indicated in this article; accept a job,
task or commission on behalf of the invader and
dictate, agree or vote in such a way as to
support the intruding government and weaken the
national one. The penalty for the commission of
these crimes is, depending on the circumstances,
imprisonment for from five to forty years.
Article 214 of Argentinas Penal Code says that
[Treason] shall be punished with imprisonment
for ten to twenty-five years or life, and in one
or another case, absolute perpetual imprisonment,
unless the act has not been covered in another
provision of this code, all Argentineans or
anyone who owes obedience to the Nation by reason
of their employment or public function, who takes
up arms against it, who unites with its enemies
or lends them any aid or comfort.
Its not necessary to continue with this brief
review of comparative legislation in order to
understand that what the free press calls
dissidence is that which in any country in the
world starting with the United States, the
great promoter, organizer and financier of the
anti-Cuban campaign ? would be plainly and simply
characterized as treason, and none of the accused
could ever be considered a political
dissident. In the case of the Cubans, the great
majority of the so-called dissidents (if not all)
are involved in the crime of uniting with a
foreign power that is openly hostile to the Cuban
nation and of receiving from its representatives
- diplomats or otherwise - money and all kinds of
logistical support in order to, ass the Mexican
legislation points out, support the intruding
government and weaken the national one. In
other words, in order to destroy the new social,
political and economic order created by the revolution.
Washington would not characterize a group of its
citizens any other way, had they been receiving
resources from a foreign power that had been
hounding the United States for half a century
with the directive to subvert the constitutional
order. None of the above mentioned genuine
dissidents brought an infamy of this kind upon
their countries. They were relentless critics of
their governments, but never did they put
themselves at the service of a foreign state
whose ambition was to oppress their
homeland. They were dissidents, not traitors.
* An abbreviated version of this article was
published by Página/12 (Buenos Aires) on March 23, 2010
Freedom Archives
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415 863-9977
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