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</a></font><font size=4><b><a name="1"></a>U.S. State Department’s latest
prefab Cuban “dissident:” Darsi Ferrer <br>
<br>
</b></font><font size=3>Posted: 24 Mar 2010 11:26 AM PDT<br><br>
<b><i>This morning the U.S. State Department revealed its latest pawn in
the overthrow game it’s 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 Department’s 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?<br><br>
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 I’m guessing that dissidence isn’t a reason for arrest
in Cuba either…treason is, however. Atilio Boron explains:<br><br>
</i>Dissidents or Traitors?</b> –
<a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2010/03/23/cuba-disidentes-o-traidores/">
en español</a><br><br>
<a href="http://www.atilioboron.com">Atilio A. Boron</a><br><br>
<i>Translation: Machetera<br><br>
</i>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, it’s
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 Colombia’s 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 what’s 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, Washington’s policy of recognizing the “legality and
legitimacy” of the coup d’etat 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.<br><br>
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 who’d 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.<br><br>
It’s important to remember that there’s 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 couldn’t be
clearer.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Having said that, a conceptual clarification is necessary. It’s 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.”<br><br>
Let’s examine this closely. In Norberto Bobbio’s 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.<br><br>
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?”<br><br>
In order to answer this, let’s 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.<br><br>
In Chile’s case, Article 106 of that country’s 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.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Article 214 of Argentina’s 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.”<br><br>
It’s 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<i>* An abbreviated version of this article was published by Página/12
(Buenos Aires) on March 23, 2010<br><br>
<br>
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