Pull plug on decades of failed Cuba policy (Tampa Bay Times editorial)

[struggle4progress]

In Print: Friday, February 27, 2009

... The trade embargo against Cuba begun in 1962 under President Kennedy failed to bring down Fidel Castro. The Reagan administration started Radio Marti in 1985 in an effort to promote democracy by countering the island nation's state-run media. Five years later, TV Marti began broadcasting. Now, $500 million later, a critical report from the research arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, reinforces that the Marti broadcasts have failed. In 2004, President Bush put unreasonable limits on family visits to the island. These sanctions have not worked, either.

Change should be on the way. The House approved a spending bill Wednesday that would make it easier for Americans to visit immediate relatives in Cuba, and President Obama has pledged to allow Cuban-American families to visit the island more frequently. Meanwhile, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has issued a new report that reaffirms the failures of the embargo.

The two Marti programs provide the best concrete evidence that the United States has been following an ineffective policy for nearly 50 years. According to the GAO, less than 2 percent of Cuban's 11 million residents polled annually since 2003 said they tuned in to the stations. Not a single respondent in a 2008 telephone survey of nearly 600 Cubans, conducted by a third-nation firm, said they had viewed a TV Marti show in the last 12 months. The joke is that TV Marti is "the world's least-watched news station."

What's more, it appears the political viewpoints of Cuban exiles, which make up the leadership of the stations, have permeated the journalistic judgment. The GAO cited concerns with the lack of balance, objectivity and the use of independent sources in the reporting. During a visit to watch production of a TV Marti broadcast, St. Petersburg Times Latin American correspondent David Adams witnessed editorializing and unsubstantiated allegations about torture and deaths in Cuban jails. A report on the GAO report left out key criticisms ... http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article979539.ece

Budget cuts to support!

[DonCoquixote]

1. Major sea change

Folks, the Tampa Tribune is the Right wing rag in town, for them to say this means even the thickest of heads are seeing something.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. Thanks for that info ... this editorial actually sounds

surprisingly progressive, viewed in that light.

I have never quite understood the rationale for keeping an embargo on tiny and unpowerful Cuba while recognizing fully and encouraging trade, exchanges and everything else with the two largest nations (China and Russia) whose political views we purport not to accept. Not that I do not support having such open relationships: I do. But they serve to put our failed policies toward Cuba in greater relief.

Is it just because we could? Is it because we could never forgive Fidel Castro? Is it because the original group of RW exiles had/has extraordinary political clout? And so forth ...

Thank heavens the numbers of that last are diminishing.

If any one image has most reinforced our national status abroad as a bully, this of the huge USA mounted against tiny Cuba has been it.

And to see Cuba's comparative successes against the chaos, devastation, corruption and insecurity in Colombia (the largest recipient in South American of US foreign aid and support) and those in other countries in the region whose dictatorships we have supported/still support should tell us something ... if we were truly interested in seeing political progress there, instead of simply making the area safe for megacorporations.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Latin American countries have been informing Barack Obama in their earliest

contact with him, reinforced by a Mexican Senate's statement issued this last week, they ALL expect the U.S. to drop that embargo immediately. This certainly only repeats the aging refrain going back at least as far as 1992 in the General Assembly in the United Nations, the WORLD believes the heavy pounding the U.S. has given Cuba all these years must come to an end. Immediately.

Each year the U.N.'s General Assembly votes, almost unanimously, with the exception of the U.S. and Israel, and occassionally the Marshall Islands, Paraguay once, and Uzbekistan (where the leader BOILS his political opponents alive until rendered somewhat DEAD) as those supporting this economic warfare on a tiny nation.

At some point someone of a degree of emotional maturity is going to have to step forward and admit it's not OUR place to demand other countries seek to duplicate our own pattern as their form of government. Their country has been bullied and harrassed, and beseiged by physical acts of terrorism since the people of Cuba overthrew the U.S. supported bloody torture-loving, death-squad using, NON-DEMOCRATIC dictator, bloody Fulgencio Batista who was the literal boss, moving behind a succession of puppet Presidents since his own first Presidency in the 1930's.

The people of Cuba voted with their lives when they overthrew, through great hardship and loss that filthy monster the U.S. had been backing, and supplying, along with the U.S. Mafia. They told us THEN they wanted their OWN government WITHOUT U.S. interference and domination. Why doesn't anyone take the time to find out about this?

As I read earlier tonight, Canada and Europe, whose citizens travel back and forth freely to Cuba have an apathetic view of their government, and they've never worked themselves up into pitched fits about it. Too bad we can't say the same thing here.

Democratic Congressman from Colorado, David Skaggs tried to get this black hole in the U.S. budget (over $30,000,000.00 per year poured out, and blessed in a love offering to the Miami "exiles" to staff, program, manage, operate their two propaganda outlets, Radio and TV Marti) several years ago, got a series of threats from Republican Congressman from Miami, Lincoln Diaz Balart with implication he was going to wreck his career, and he did it. He found ways to destroy the projects David Skaggs was trying to get for Colorado, and once he succeeded, he had the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami take out ads in Colorado's newspapers claiming David Skaggs had failed the state, had lost the projects, and David Skaggs was not elected again.

~snip~
7/1/93 After having funds for Radio and TV Marti deleted in a closed mark-up session, the House Appropriations Committee restores funds for Radio Marti but not TV Marti (CAC, 6/22/93; CM, 6/25/93; MH, 6/25/93). Rep. Diaz-Balart succeeds in cutting $23 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in an effort to repay Rep. David Skaggs (D-CO) for cutting $17.5 million from Radio and TV Marti. Rep. Skaggs complains, "I was greatly disturbed and saddened that the normal business of this House was subject to these retributive tactics. This is an example of how difficult it is to pull the plug on a program, even one as ineffective as this one." Skaggs believes the programs are unnecessary because Cubans are able to view commercial broadcasts from Florida. (MH, 7/3/93) Another Cuban American Member of Congress, first-term Representative Robert Menendez (D-NJ), tells the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call that he intends to monitor projects in the districts of Members who are "obviously on a mission" to oppose the "peaceful diplomacy" programs of Radio and TV Marti: "It could be anyone...For every action, there's a reaction." (CAC, 7/23/92; RC, 7/5/93)

~snip~
7/2/93 Following the conflict between Rep. Skaggs, who cut TV and Radio Marti funding, and Rep. Diaz-Balart, who cut funding for Boulder-based federal programs, CANF sends out a press release announcing "Opposition to Cuba initiative costs Boulder rep pet project," sending Colorado papers to press with news of the Boulder-Miami feud. (MH, 10/13/93)

~snip~
7/10/93 The New York Times publishes an article regarding the deletion of funds for TV Marti and new concerns over the impartiality of Radio and TV Marti. The article quotes Francisco Hernandez, president of the Cuban American Foundation, who asserts that neither Jorge Mas Canosa nor any other CANF official dictates news coverage at Radio Marti. However, Hernandez argues, "Isn't it fair that if we produce 80 percent of the news related to Cuba in this community, we should get 80 percent of the air time?" The article also cites recent interviews with Radio Marti employees who claim they have been forced to lobby for CANF during working hours. (NYT, 7/10/93)
7/20/93 Andrews, Robert 500 Free Cuba PAC
7/20/93 Rep. Skaggs successfully raises a point of order on the House floor to delete $8 million in funding for Radio Marti from the State Department Appropriations bill. (CAC, 7/23/93)
7/21/93 The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, States and the Judiciary, chaired by Sen. Hollings (D-SC) approves in full the administration's request of $28 million for Radio and TV Marti. Sen. Hollings also successfully raises a point of order to delete $3 million for a Boulder-based project under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to retaliate for Rep. Skaggs' earlier actions against Radio and TV Marti. (CAC, 7/23/93; MH, 10/3/93)

More:
http://cuban-exile.com/doc_126-150/doc0146b.html

~snip~
Dealing from principle --- ex-Representative Skaggs

However, in 1993, former Representative David Skaggs (D-CO), in an attempt to trim unnecessary budgetary spending targeted for the Martis, was able to convince his House brethren to block funding for the two operations --- a measure which did not meet the same success in the Senate, where it was inevitably defeated. Skaggs paid a high price for his bold move, and came under withering fire from anti-Havana hardliners. Marti’s congressional supporters, led by none other than treasury plunderer Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart responded with a stark warning that revenge would be exacted on those who might threaten the continuation of the Marti operation, making an example of Skaggs by attempting to slash federal funding for projects in his home district. However, Skaggs refused to give up the fight, and he continued his campaign against the project, in particular its television component, until he retired in 1998. Skaggs admitted, "You know that if you kick the Cuba issue, you're going to have a bad day.” As a result of his personal experience, the Miami New Times reported in a November 12, 1998 article that Skaggs bitterly expressed outrage at the “corruption of United States policy that is inherent in our Cuba policy,” explaining, “by corruption I mean the untoward influence of a relatively small segment of the population in Florida and the money that small segment of the population brings to bear, and how it distorts the policy choices this government makes.”

Not only does the overwhelming influence of the Miami anti-Castro power brokers impede any attempt to reduce funding for the programs, but their political firepower also has diluted efforts which should have been made to reform these broadcasting agencies. According to Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC News, he, along with several other journalists and academics, were asked by former CBS News president David Burke, who in the mid-1990s had the job of overseeing Radio and TV Marti, to report on the project’s accuracy, professionalism and sense of fairness. The group then proceeded to pose the theoretical question, what would happen “if concluded that the influential chairman of the President’s Advisory Broadcasting Board for Cuban Broadcasting, Jorge Mas Canosa, should resign?” The response they received was “no way” --- there was an upcoming election and Congressional candidates heavily dependent on the Cuban-exile vote would be unwilling to risk provoking the hostility of such a powerful group. As a result, Grossman and his colleagues declined the offer, and the potentially revealing document was never executed. Grossman concluded, “ is a folly imposed on us by politically powerful Cuban exile groups that neither party wants to offend.”

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_12/issue_07/opinion_04.html

~~~~~~~~~~~
The people who moved to Miami immediately after the revolution are the ones the Cubans threw out of office, whose racist, narrow, greedy oligarchy made life a living hell for the vast majority of Cubans who were hopelessly unfed, unhoused, untreated medically, and illiterate, living from season to season with NO WORK available to them, no way to make any income at all other than planting and harvesting Cuba's sugar cane.

You've seen their impact on Florida and the U.S. government. It's time to stage our own little revolution and allow the majority of the United States citizens to finally get the chance to make decisions about U.S. policy regarding Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, instead.