Pro-Cuba group says U.S. seized Canadian computers

[Judi Lynn]

Pro-Cuba group says U.S. seized Canadian computers
Fri Jul 29, 2005 6:53 PM EDT
E

HAVANA (Reuters) - A religious group that gathers humanitarian aid for Cuba urged U.S. authorities on Friday to release 12 Canadian computers seized at the U.S-Mexican border under American sanctions against Cuba's communist government.

The 43 boxes of computer equipment donated by Canadians were en route to Cuba in an annual caravan organized by the Pastors for Peace group when they were seized last week by U.S. border officials at McAllen, Texas.

"The seizure of the computers by the Commerce Department shows a new effort by the U.S. government to strengthen the blockade against Cuba," the Rev. Tom Smith told reporters.
(snip)

American members of the solidarity caravan face arrest and fines of up to $10,000 for violating the U.S. sanctions on Cuba when they return to the United States over the weekend.

U.S. Reps. Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano, New York Democrats who oppose the embargo, urged Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez to permit the release of the computer equipment.
(snip/...)

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-29T225400Z_01_N29467933_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CUBA-USA-COMPUTERS-COL.XML

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Why does this smell like a setup?

I don't like the Cuban blockade business and have no problem with these people sending aid, but since Canada has a trading relationship with Cuba, what was the point of sending this stuff via the US when they could send it directly?

Cuba is a fairly popular tourist destination for Canuckistanians, and I believe there are even direct flights there, and certainly cargo ships, so there would be no problem getting the stuff there the way they get other stuff there.

But, they wouldn't have nearly as much publicity if they bypassed the US and avoided the near certainty of having the stuff impounded, would they?

[Mika]

2. They are showing solidarity with the PfP against asinine policy

Showing solidarity with the majority of Americans who feel that US policy against Cuba is wrong.


Majority of American Likely Voters Favors Ending Cuban Embargo, Foreign Policy Association/Zogby Poll Reveals


From the lead link,

U.S. Reps. Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano, New York Democrats who oppose the embargo, urged Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez to permit the release of the computer equipment.

"If the Bush administration does not wish to help the people of Cuba, I appeal to them to get out of the way," Rangel said in a statement on Wednesday. "Let others prove the compassion that the administration has often claimed as its own."

The White House last year tightened sanctions on Cuba by restricting visits and cash remittances from relatives living in the United States, in an effort to undermine what it calls one of the world's last "outposts of tyranny."

Critics of the trade embargo say the sanctions have failed to achieve democratic change in Cuba and only hurt the Cuban people, not Castro's government.

[formercia]

3. Exactly

they could have put it on a cargo plane to cuba in Canada but they did it for the publicty. The computers might have been expendable junk.

[pretzel4gore]

4. jackbooted armbandits

no matter the facts, that's how the US comes of....woody guthrie musta been canadian? abbie hoffman too! hunter thompson was from mexico! wow....jesse james was a bolivian hero turns out!
grim stonefaced toothpick chewers are now the face of the US....

[iverglas]

7. forgive my tardiness in replying -- but what was your point?

"The computers might have been expendable junk."

Sure, they MIGHT have been. And pigs might fly. Why would someone engage in such pointless speculation ... when FACTS are so easy to find?

The quickest little google-news search for cuba canada computers gets us this, just f'r instance:

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BA837D8BB-D75D-477E-9CA4-A85BF0FC2637%7D&language=EN

Here´s a brief history of the Caravans that began in 1992 as told by Canada´s TML Daily: With each Friendshipment caravan, with each successive effort to challenge the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, the U.S. government has been compelled to back down, to relent, to soften its enforcement of the blockade. As this chronology demonstrates, active nonviolence has been a winning strategy: The First Friendshipment Caravan Traveled in November 1992. 100 caravanistas carried 15 tons of simple humanitarian aid -- powdered milk, medicines, Bibles, bicycles, and school supplies. The U.S. government had never before seen a direct grassroots challenge to the blockade, and they responded with force. CNN cameras filmed U.S. Treasury officers assaulting a Catholic priest who was carrying Bibles to take to Cuba. Our emergency response network, and the CNN coverage, prompted thousands of calls to Washington from around the U.S.; the caravan was allowed to cross.

... Friendshipment VI (1996) Was supposed to be a simple "mini-caravan" to deliver a shipment of 400 donated medical computers -- 286s and XTs, nearly obsolete by U.S. standards. These computers were to serve as communications terminals for an island-wide medical information network, which would make it possible for Cuban doctors to locate scarce medicines and have access to consultation and treatment data. The U.S. government, in its most brutal confrontation to date, attacked the caravan and seized all the computers.

... As the Fast continued, the campaign for the release of the computers reached unprecedented levels. International organizations from Europe, Africa, and Latin America pledged that they would send a total of 1400 computers, in solidarity with Cuba and with the Fast for Life. As pressure from our national network mounted, 70 members of Congress joined the effort and actively advocated for the release of the computers. The Treasury Secretary and the National Security Adviser received so many phone calls from our supporters that they had to change their phone numbers. White House staffers indicated that, at the height of the campaign, the White House was receiving a phone call every four minutes demanding that the computers be released and sent to Cuba. On Day 94 of the Fast, the U.S. Treasury Department released the computers to the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church. They were delivered to Cuba in September 1996, and now make up 40% of the INFOMED network, where they provide life-giving medical information for Cuban doctors.

It seems that one complacent uninformed USAmerican's "expendable junk" is some Cuban's chance at survival.

The computers (Pentiums in a later year) were part of the on-going focus of the Caravans: to get various medical supplies and equipment to Cubans in need of them.

Yes, it was part of a publicity campaign. And the problem with that is ...?

Without such publicity, the great USAmerican public will never know (even the little it is likely to actually learn) about the horrible impact of the vicious US embargo on ordinary people in Cuba.

[pinerow]

12. Canuckistanians????...what the hell is that...I know many Canadians

who object strenuously to the term "Canuck"...sheesh

[iverglas]

14. I was being my polite Canuckistani self

I considered it, and I decided that in the context, the speaker was intending to appropriate the voice of those who say such things -- it was about us pinko commies doing unUSAmerican things like visiting Cuba. So I figured it was intended to be in invisible quotation marks.

However, I should have gently corrected the gentle poster on his usage.

Nationals of Iraq are "Iraqis", not "Iraqians".

The pinko commies to your north are "Canuckistanis", not "Canuckistanians".

Of course, if the voice of those who say such things was being appropriated, *they* probably *would* say "Canuckistanians" ...

You have to understand, to start with, what hoots and hollers and guffaws the whole "Soviet Canuckistan" thing prompted on chesterfields all across the nation up here. In my house, we just about fell off ours, gasping for air as our faces turned red from the mirth. And that's not sarcasm or any of that other devious Canuckistani stuff that makes you wonder what we're really thinking about you (or is that the French?), and our amusement wasn't really stemming from that dry self-deprecating Canadian sensibility and the appreciation of a good joke on us. It was just downright hilarious. Kinda like folk art, it was, in its naive simplicity, its simple naïveté. Out of the mouths of morans ... pearls. It would have been swinish not to give them the respect and admiration they deserved!

[pinerow]

15. I stand humbly corrected...

nt

[iverglas]

17. don't come all over Canuckistani on me now

That was just my theory, after all. Wasn't meant as a "correction", just an alternative perspective.

I'm sure there are USAmericans who use the term as a genuinely pejorative label, and others who use it just because they're people who don't feel called upon to consider anyone else in anything they do. It's just that the word is so snicker-inducing** that my own tendency is either to laugh at or to laugh with. Even if it were used pejoratively or ignorantly, it would make the user too much of a laughing stock to be paid much attention to. That really is how a lot, I'd venture to say a majority, of my fellow Canuckistanis would react.


** (Hey, it's a "k" word, and an "uck" word at that; Vaudeville would have loved it. ... I was browsing through UK census records on line yesterday, trying to dream up new silly names to search for that my Monck ancestors may have been mis-transcribed as ... I've got Mouck, Monak, Morck ... and I ran across someone allegedly born in Fuckley, Yorkshire. Vaudeville would have loved that one too, even if it couldn't have used it.)

[Judi Lynn]

5. Would imagine it has something to do with legal aspects of the embargo

and other laws like Helms-Burton. It's forbidden for things made in the U.S. to end up directly in Cuba, as even some scanner or other hospital equipment can be made in Europe, and prohibited from use in Cuba if it has even one small part in it which is American in origin.

This is American law. I don't have time right now to go looking for more on it, but I can come back later and post an example.

[1monster]

6. Well, that is okay, then, because almost nothing is made in the USA

anymore except for fast food hamburgers. Using the :sarcasm: icon, because we don't have an :irony: icon.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Cuba embargo faces new critics

Cuba embargo faces new critics

August 4, 2005

BY VANESSA ARRINGTON
ASSOCIATED PRESS

HAVANA -- American liberals have long criticized the U.S. government for maintaining a Cold War-era embargo against communist Cuba. But these days, conservative American farmers, businessmen and some Republican lawmakers are just as likely to oppose the U.S. policy limiting trade with the island.

As Congress voted down amendments to the policy last week, those pushing for more interaction with Cuba questioned how the embargo can endure.

"Will someone please explain this policy to me?" asked Dwight A. Roberts, president of the U.S. Rice Producers Association, at a recent news conference in Havana after describing financial losses to thousands of rice growers when U.S. restrictions were tightened.

U.S. food and agricultural products can be sold to Cuba on a cash-only basis under an exception to the embargo created in 2000. But a new U.S. rule adopted this year makes Cuba pay for goods in full before the cargo leaves U.S. ports, forcing the country to seek other markets and harming U.S. business, Roberts said.
(snip)

The group says opinion polls show most U.S. citizens support a change in Cuba policy.
(snip/...)

http://www.freep.com/news/nw/cuba4d_20050804.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The odd arrangement for payment for the narrow assortment of items American farmers can sell to Cuba was concocted after _Bush was selected, working with the Cuban right-wing "exile" faction. It was a triumph of duplicity. The arrangement which was used previously, fashioned in 2000, after Cuba was devastated by a hurricane, and lost its food in storage, was itself very harsh, but allowed Cuba to pay cash upon delivery of agricultural items.

The new arrangement, also forbidding credit to Cuba, to American farmers' great dismay, requires payment prior to shipment. This means the materials are formally Cuba's property, and the "exile" spokemen have intimated it is their intention to intercept the shipments and claim them in lieu of their property which they left behind in Cuba when they got the hell out of there during and after the revolution. Some of them undoubtedly feared what would happen to them at the hands of the citizenry without their corrupt Batista government to protect them, like the private army/death squad owner, a politician and newspaper publisher, Rolando Masferrer ("Masferrer's Tigers") who got blown up, anyway,carbombed, in Florida, for his troubles.

They have already managed to use the American courts to lay claims to at least one airplane which was hijacked and flown to the U.S. from Cuba by a man who didn't have the patience to go through the ordinary legal immigration channels. That airplane was handed over as part of a settlement to a woman who sued a man, who married her, who came to Florida to spy on some Cuban "exile" terrorists, to try to block their next attacks on Cuba. She claimed Cuba and the man used her for political reasons, and she wanted satisfaction. She got the airplane, courtesy of the conniving "exiles."

They are opeating as pirates, and would use the U.S. court system to grab the shipments of corn, rice, vegetables, fruit, cattle, chickens going to Cuba if Cuba formally owns them at the time they leave the U.S. Easy to see why Cuba hangs back now from these transactions.

[Judi Lynn]

9. The Youth Cultural Association Versus the Agency of Rap (Cuba)

The Youth Cultural Association Versus the Agency of Rap

By DANA STEVENS
Published: August 3, 2005
This short documentary about the growing hip-hop movement in Cuba, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, follows five hip-hop groups as they struggle to put together the ninth annual Havana Hip-Hop Festival. Whether because of government censorship or simple lack of means, most of these artists can perform and record their music only in cramped family apartments, hunched over their computers, as relatives burst in to complain about the noise. The festival, a yearly outdoor concert in Almendares Park, is their one chance to reach large audiences, including record companies and foreign media outlets.

Forum: Movies
As several artists make clear, Cuban rap is at a crossroads as it transforms from a form of underground protest music into a state-sanctioned cultural enterprise. The film traces the increasingly bitter division between commercially successful groups that have recorded and traveled outside the country under the auspices of a government ministry, the Agency of Rap, and the more subversive acts that have remained underground, loosely banded into a group known as the Youth Cultural Association. In several scenes, the rappers gather to engage in fierce debates about the relative merits of these two organizations. There are also heated discussions about the implications of importing an American cultural expression like rap into the Cuban political context.

The film's soundtrack is chockablock with infectious, cleverly worded songs in which familiar slogans about struggle and revolution are refashioned into anthems of rebellion against Communist orthodoxy. Yet these conscientious young rappers are also wary of the music industry outside Cuba. Many bemoan the current state of hip-hop in America, whose lyrics they see as materialistic and complacent (though one scene from a shoot outside Havana makes it clear that music videos in Cuba can be every bit as vapid as those on MTV).

The film, which opens today in Manhattan, concludes with a too-short sequence featuring the performances at the festival itself, which include a lesbian feminist collective called Krudas, or Raw Girls, and all-male groups with idealistic names like Hermanos de Causa (Brothers of the Cause) and Familias Cuba Represent. Though it could do with fewer talking-head interviews and more extended clips from these impassioned live performances, "Young Rebels" is essential viewing for anyone interested in rap music, free speech issues or the youth culture of contemporary Cuba.
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/movies/03rebe.html?
(Free registration required)

[pinerow]

16. I generally agree with you on most things...however

the argument favoring the importation of mysogynistic lyrics and the overly materialistic entitiy that is "American Rap"...just look what regaaetton is wreaking on my beloved Puerto Rico.

[TroubleMan]

18. Only some rap is like that

That's just corporate rap that's on the radios. Don't let it fool you into thinking that's what rap's about.

In fact it's the antithesis of what it's about. It's just that big companies saw a market for it and perverted it.

In the last few years, the percentage of what I call "bling bling" rap has greatly risen, but it's not what hip hop's about.

[Judi Lynn]

19. It might help to take another look at this area from the article:

Yet these conscientious young rappers are also wary of the music industry outside Cuba. Many bemoan the current state of hip-hop in America, whose lyrics they see as materialistic and complacent......

I've been reading about these folks for several years by now, and have seen programs on pbs, and cable stations which have spotlighted Cuban girl and boy groups, and they do seem interesting, pinerow. Sorry to hear what's happened in Puerto Rico.

These young peeps do seem to have a line of dialogue going from which they comment about everything in their culture, and they take on the aspects of their goverment they think need work, as well, and the residual remnants of racism (remembering Cuba was simply a SLAVE colony for a long time and continued severe problems through Batista's overthrow). (I often have wondered if Batista ever learned the very wealthy people he hoped to ingratiate himself with in Cuba had pure distain for him due to his mixed racial background.)

Sintimiento Rapero, Santiago de Cuba

El Rap, Havana

Cuban hip-hop: The rebellion within the revolution



Anonimo Consejo (Anonymous Advice
is one of approximately 500 hip-hop
groups from Cuba.

By Simon Umlauf
CNN Headline News
Monday, November 25, 2002 Posted: 3:33 PM EST (2033 GMT)
(CNN) -- A rebellion has taken root in Cuba, nourished by a stifling trade embargo, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and racial inequality.

But these rebels use lyrics, not guns, and they dance instead of march. Hip-hop is the rebellion within the revolution.

Its soldiers are Cuban rappers, (raperos). Their missions are poverty and racism.

There are an estimated 200 hip-hop groups in Havana with another 300 scattered throughout the rest of the island. The groups range from kids rapping in the streets, to artists performing in clubs, to a small number recording in studios.
(snip/...)

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/11/22/hln.hot.hit.cuban.hip.hop/

[Judi Lynn]

10. Aid group returns quietly from annual trip to Cuba

Posted on Mon, Aug. 01, 2005

Aid group returns quietly from annual trip to Cuba
Associated Press


HIDALGO, Texas - A humanitarian group that travels each year to Cuba to protest the U.S. economic blockade returned to the United States on Monday without incident, organization officials said.Members of Pastors for Peace had prepared for their belongings to be confiscated or to even be arrested after returning through Mexico from Cuba, said spokeswoman Ellen Bernstein. The group skirts U.S. travel restrictions to the impoverished island by flying from Mexico.

When the group crossed the Hidalgo/Pharr International Bridge into Mexico on July 21, U.S. Customs officials seized 43 boxes filled with computer and other electronic equipment.
(snip)

"They got an aggressive, intensive interrogation by officials, more than was warranted or necessary," said the Rev. Lucius Walker, the group's founder. "The trip to Cuba was overwhelmingly positive."

Walker said group officials will keep trying to get back the equipment that was seized.Pauza said federal officials hadn't yet decided what to do with it.

"It's hard to imagine how the government can continue to justify the seizure of these items. The equipment is intended for use by children with special needs," Bernstein said.

(snip/...)

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/12278022.htm
(Free registration required)

[FreeStateDemocrat]

11. If they were going to Vietnam (55,000 dead Americans) it would be OK.

If we can trade with communist Vietnam and China why do we boycott Cuba, there is no logical or moral reason to discriminate against the Cuban people, just corrupt politics.

[pinerow]

13. Well Said!!!

nt