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<font size="1"><a href="https://chicagoalbasolidarity.wordpress.com/2021/02/04/write-to-in-these-times-about-their-smear-job-on-cuba-the-western-hemispheres-most-undemocratic-government/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=43873c47-0c1a-446b-bcfd-f34b4399f081">https://chicagoalbasolidarity.wordpress.com/2021/02/04/write-to-in-these-times-about-their-smear-job-on-cuba-the-western-hemispheres-most-undemocratic-government/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=43873c47-0c1a-446b-bcfd-f34b4399f081</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Write to ‘In These Times’ about their smear job on Cuba “the Western Hemisphere’s most undemocratic government”</h1>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">February 4, 2021<br></div>
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<a href="https://chicagoalbasolidarity.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/in-these-times.jpg"><img src="https://chicagoalbasolidarity.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/in-these-times.jpg?w=897" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="425" height="95"></a>
<p><em>InTheseTimes</em>, a well-known liberal journal, runs an article in its <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://inthesetimes.com/magazine/will-biden-end-family-separation" target="_blank">February issue</a> attacking
Cuba in a tone akin to the Trump government. It refers to the
“repression of the Western Hemisphere’s most undemocratic government,”
which they allege to be Cuba. Not Bolsanaro’s Brazil, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.dw.com/en/hundreds-of-chileans-blinded-by-police-since-protests-began/a-51260524" target="_blank">Chile with its police who blind protesters</a>, <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Violence-Threatens-Peace-in-Colombia-United-Nations-Warns-20210122-0004.html">Colombia’s death squad supporting government,</a> <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://afgj.org/ten-years-after-the-coup-solidarity-of-the-peoples-of-the-world-with-honduras" target="_blank">Honduras’ coup regime</a>, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/haiti" target="_blank">Haiti’s hated rulers</a>, nor the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/19wATYyqsHatDqvNQSN_41vJfVoFxfFKO/view" target="_blank">US with its murderous police</a>, but Cuba.</p>
<p>The <em>In </em>These<em> Times</em> article (below) covers, in <em>Voice of America</em> style,
the November San Isidro protest in Havana. There, Denis Solis was
arrested for refusing to appear for a subpoena and for threatening a
police officer. The police did not handcuff him, beat him, tase him,
pepper spray him, nor hold a knee on his neck. Solis previously received
several fines for disturbing the peace and two official warnings for
harassing tourists. He accepted the sentence and did not appeal.</p>
<p>Solis, who declares his love for Donald
Trump, admitted to receiving money from a person associated with attacks
carried out in Cuba. A group of about twenty, the San Isidro Movement
(MSI), soon organized a short “hunger strike” to protest his arrest.</p>
<p>Michael Kozak, undersecretary of the <a href="https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/12/critical-thinking-trump-and-anti-cuba-terrorism-part-1/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">US State Department made statements of support</a> for
the San Isidro Movement. Timothy Zuñiga-Brown, Chargé d’affaires for
the US Embassy in Cuba visited the group on three occasions and
transported some in his car. They received calls of approval from
Secretary of State Pompeo. Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the
discredited OAS, also chimed in to support the action.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the US State Department on November 24 quickly announced a new <a href="http://www.cubanews.acn.cu/cuba/11775-foreign-minister-condemns-us-funding-for-subversion-in-cuba" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">$1 million fund for anti-Cuban government projects</a> that justify allegations of human rights violations in Cuba.</p>
<p>The <em>InTheseTimes </em>article makes no mention of these US government ties or funding to MSI.</p>
<p>Tracey Eaton of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/2020/12/09/democracy-2/" target="_blank">Cubamoneyproject.com</a> wrote,
“An extensive network of groups financed by the US government sends
cash to Cuba to thousands of ‘democracy activists,’ journalists and
dissidents every year.” The US has spent between $20-$45 million dollars
every year since 1996 to fund Cuban groups with the goal of instituting
“regime change” in Cuba.</p>
<p>US Agency for International Development
(USAID) and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have funded at least
54 Cuba “regime change” projects since 2017, with <a href="http://www.cubanews.acn.cu/cuba/11775-foreign-minister-condemns-us-funding-for-subversion-in-cuba">USAID spending $39 million and NED $11 million. </a></p>
<p>Much of this money goes to US government
created media platforms to spread disinformation about Cuban affairs.
Hundreds of internet publications have appeared in Florida since 2017
with “Cuba” as part of their on-line names.</p>
<a href="https://chicagoalbasolidarity.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/us-funding-of-anti-cuban-media2.jpg"><img src="https://chicagoalbasolidarity.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/us-funding-of-anti-cuban-media2.jpg?w=700" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="425" height="328"></a>
<p>Unlike its progressive coverage of movements in the US,<em> InTheseTimes</em> has
maintained a rightwing view on Cuba. Yet, Cuba is heralded around the
world for its work in other countries fighting COVID-19. The Henry Reeve
International Medical Brigade, working in 53 countries providing this
medical care, is proposed for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. The US
government has taken a number of measures to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://en.granma.cu/mundo/2021-01-22/we-are-cuba-viva-the-country-that-insists-on-resisting-and-emerging-victorious" target="_blank">worsen the blockade on Cuba</a>, and also adding the baseless declaration that Cuba is a sponsor of international terrorism.</p>
<p>However<em>, In These Times</em> does not cover the cruelty of the US blockade, the exemplary work of Cuban doctors, nor mention the recent documentary <a href="https://remezcla.com/features/film/war-cuba-doc-miniseries-review/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The War on Cuba</a>. We urge all defenders of the sovereignty of Cuba and other Latin American countries to write to protest to <em>InTheseTimes</em> at <a href="mailto:letters@inthesetimes.com" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">letters@inthesetimes.com</a> or call 773-772-0100.</p>
<p><strong><em> In These Times</em></strong>: <strong>CUBAN DISSIDENTS LOG ON</strong> </p>
<p>by ORLANDO LUIS PARDO LAZO </p>
<p>In a neighborhood of old Havana, whose
name I do not care to remember, a blogger lived for some time. After
years of exclusion, defamation, and violent, arbitrary arrests, he
escaped from the Island of Utopia to the citadel of capitalism on March
5, 2013. It was me, one of the founders of Cuban digital dissidence. A
text-based (more than an action-based) movement, we were freelance
journalists who hoped to democratize the ancient revolution, that living
fossil from the Cold War.</p>
<p> I wrote in the December 2009 In These Times special issue, “Inside Cuba, Voices from the Island”:</p>
<p>Though their work generates controversies
and awards worldwide, Cuban bloggers are largely unknown here. With
Internet access in Cuba restricted to the very few; the nation’s
bloggers function as a kind of guerrilla underground. They work as
independent agents whose existence heralds a civic re-activation that
will modulate the Revolution’s Realpolitik or is that Raulpolitik?</p>
<p>In just the past two years, when least
expected, that 2009 assessment has become obsolete: Cubans are now
allowed to pay in hard currency for slow (and closely monitored)
internet access. But that access was enough for younger generations to
speak up, challenging the guardians of the old orthodoxy, aware that the
world is now their witness in real time.</p>
<p> An action-based (more than a text-based)
collective then began to organize in a neighborhood of Old Havana, the
name of which I do want to recall: San Isidro. Despite the attacks of
the official press (owned by the Communist Party) and the recent
accusations that they are “mercenaries” of Donald Trump promoting a sort
of “soft coup,” the group Movimiento San Isidro (MSI) has expanded its
cultural influence beyond just the eight members listed on its website
to promote freedom of expression in Cuba, among other things.</p>
<p>Of course, these activists will not topple
Castro’s military model. No American citizen, regardless of their
personal views on U.S.-Cuba policy, should imagine that MSI
intellectuals will do (with a couple of mobile phone recharges from
abroad) what Pentagon hawks couldn’t (with billions of dollars). But in
2020, in response to the Cuban government’s authoritarian approach to
Covid-19, many Cubans joined MSI’s provocative campaigns. The campaigns
were aimed at the heart of Cuba’s drama, which is not the affairs of its
northern neighbor but the frustration with a fundamentally conservative
single-party regime.</p>
<p>Susan Sontag once dismissed Communism as
“Fascism with a human face.” In 2009, like a Don Quixote who dreamed the
Plaza de la Revolucion was his windmill, I wrote:</p>
<p> THE STATE HAS NOT YET PASSED SPECIFIC LAWS</p>
<p>against a phenomenon as new as blogging,
although the habit of accusing critical voices of being “capitalism ‘s
useful idiots” or “mercenaries of enemy propaganda” can serve as a brake
on free expression…There are also legal warnings issued for
“peligrosidad predelictiva,” or” dangerous inclination toward
criminality” that [have] been used to arrest and harass , but not
yet convict.</p>
<p>Today, the Cuban regime ‘s laws are being
manipulated to charge the members of MSI with crimes. On November 11,
the rapper Denis Solis was summarily sentenced to eight months in a
maximum-security prison for “contempt.” Solis first ran afoul of the
state after publishing his 2018 protest song ” Sociedad Condenada”
(“Condemned Society”) online. This time Solis called a policeman who had
entered his house without a warrant a “chicken in uniform,” an
encounter he captured on his phone and posted to social media, for which
he was incarcerated.</p>
<p>The government’s treatment of Solis helped
spur hundreds of peaceful protesters to gather outside the Ministry of
Culture in Havana on Nov. 27, 2020, all day long until midnight. The
campaign, calling itself 27N, came together to demand respect for
independent cultural spaces, as well as a stop to all censorship and
coercion against Cuban citizens. A delegation of demonstrators was
reluctantly received by Vice Minister Fernando Rojas, and promises were
made in exchange for clearing the crowd.</p>
<p>The next day, however, that verbal
agreement was broken on national television by Rojas himself, who
ridiculed MSI and threatened to prosecute its members. The leaders of
the Cuban Revolution never directly respond to public pressure. Instead,
they demonize dialogue as a sign of weakness. Consequently, the
harassment has intensified- including the illegal confinement of MSI
members in their homes, who are now detained if they attempt to step
outside.</p>
<p>I am proud knowing that what bloggers
tried 10 years ago has been taken up by MSI. But I also fear that the
new generations might be forced to “commit exile,” as I was. Small “d”
democrats have a moral duty to engage. Otherwise, efforts like MSI and
27N, whose desires defy despotism and whose poetry challenges power,
will collapse under the repression of the Western Hemisphere’s most
undemocratic government.</p>
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