25 years after the Berlin Wall was torn down: A Celebration of Freedom

Don't let them tell you the Berlin Wall fell. It was torn down.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall

25 years ago today the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961 with barbed wire fence followed by a 100 mile wall and more than 300 watch towers to spot and shoot escapees and the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

In Germany, this was not a passive top down process or the Berlin Wall falling as a result of gravity and inertia. It bears repeating that it was torn down by courageous Germans.

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down at least 136 Germans were extrajudicially executed by the East German border guards just for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is The Berlin Wall Museum that offers a complete listing of the 136 known victims with details about them and their deaths.

Chris Gueffroy shot and killed crossing the Berlin Wall February 5, 1989

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968 and shot dead on February 5, 1989 trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies “Harmonie“ and “Sorgenfrei” on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. Dead at 20 years of age for the crime of wanting to live in freedom. A memorial column commemorating Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online.


On the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall being torn down U2 sang at the Brandenburg Gate and on the 25th anniversary the performance that stands out is Peter Gabriel's singing a cover of David Bowie's song Heroes which has lyrics that make allusion to the Berlin Wall:

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads
(over our heads)
And we kissed,
as though nothing could fall
(nothing could fall)
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes,
just for one day

It is an appropriate song for the occasion. Prior to the start of the song the pictures of the victims who were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall from 1969 through 1989 were shown on a giant outdoor screen. Walking through the Berlin Wall Memorial and listening to the names of the victims and seeing them is a powerful experience that all who visit the German capital should experience.

Google made public a video on the 25th anniversary showing where pieces of the Berlin Wall have been placed around the world and in Miami a piece of the Berlin Wall was unveiled in a ceremony at Miami Dade College in Downtown Miami.

Time for Cubans and Cuban Americans to stop being crabby

Don't touch the Cuban Adjustment Act but broaden The Magnitsky Act to include China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam.

This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and of the year that international communism made its dramatic withdrawal from Europe and two years later saw the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day. It was the return of freedom to a great part of Europe.

However it is also the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre where American officials and industry looked the other way and carried on business as usual following a massacre of thousands of Chinese students and workers who had taken a stand for freedom. The price of that treachery is all around us to see today.

One place where nothing seemed to have taken place was in Cuba. This raises an obvious question: Why not? There are numerous factors but one that is not often raised is the "Crab effect." Friends of mine who had arrived from Cuba in the 1990s described Cubans as crabs in a bucket about to be cooked and eaten, but rather than collaborate to free themselves any time one of the crabs was about to escape the bucket  the other crabs would drag the escaping crab down.

For example, when Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, the Havana-based leader of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, spoke out on behalf of dialogue and debate in Cuba and in the Miami exile community, Jorge Mas Canosa condemned him at a rally broadcast to Cuba over Radio Marti as a traitor. However, it was later made public that the CANF leader was engaged in back channel dialogues with the Castro dictatorship in 1992 with the socialist government of Spain acting as a mediator.

Today, there are voices calling for a reconsideration of the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA). This is ironic because one of the long term goals of the Castro dictatorship is to get rid of CAA which sets Cuba apart from the rest of countries in the hemisphere. This is because Cuba is the only country in the hemisphere were its citizens do not have a right to enter and exit their own country freely but must rely on the permission of the dictatorship. A huge number of Cubans are still not allowed to return to their homeland.

Instead of placing the Cuban Adjustment Act into play a better approach would be to push for legislation that bars Cuban human rights abusers from entering the United States. The bill would place visa bans and asset freezes on Cuban officials involved in human rights abuses and could be patterned after the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act that was passed in 2012 that targets Russia. In addition to Cuba the new bill could also include Belarus, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe and be an opportunity for unity between freedom movements.

It is true that Cuban intelligence seeks to penetrate and divide both the opposition in Cuba and in the diaspora but there is also a need for more solidarity and less envy within ranks of the opposition leadership. Furthermore instead of punishing Cubans who want to visit relatives, while they are still able to for the time being, one should pursue a policy that seeks to end the granting of visas to human rights violators in Cuba. There is a situation in which victims of persecution are denied Visas while their oppressors are quickly granted Visas to the United States and this has nothing do with the Cuban Adjustment Act. Its time to change and for the better. Barring rights violators from entering the United States while at the same time protecting the persecuted.  Otherwise on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall we may still be asking why is Cuba still under a dictatorship?

The Secret of the Powerful Cuban Exile Lobby in Washington D.C.

What Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans don't like to admit

The dictatorship in Cuba has now been in power for 55 years and for most of that time economic sanctions have been in place.

What is known as the Cuban Embargo began On January 3, 1961 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower suspended trade with Cuba, a few days after his administration broke diplomatic relations with the country. The embargo on Cuba since its inception has meant restrictions on trade and travel to the island by U.S. citizens and in practice has been a partial embargo. Over the decades these sanctions have been loosened and tightened depending on the circumstances at the time.

There was no Cuban exile or Cuban-American lobby until the 1980s and the lobby’s greatest effort involved seeing that Cubans on the island be provided with uncensored news in what would become known as Radio/TV Marti. At the time Radio Free Europe/Radio had been broadcasting to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union since 1950 but not to Cuba or China. Radio Marti was established in 1983 (TV Marti in 1990) and Radio Free Asia in 1996.

The ban on U.S. imports from Cuba remains but U.S. exports to Cuba have been going on since 1992 with the amounts dramatically increasing since 2002 reaching its peak in exports to Cuba under the Bush Administration in 2008.

President Bill Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in September of 2000 and a month later signed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act and opened cash and carry trade with the Castro dictatorship at the end of his Administration. At the time of its passage, Fidel Castro said "his country would not buy 'even a grain of rice' under the current terms."

The Cuban dictator ended up buying much more than a grain of rice under those terms. Between 2000 and 2013 American companies have sold $4.689 billion dollars in goods to the Castro regime on a cash and carry basis. Despite the 2003 crackdown on dissidents known as the Black Cuban Spring where the Bush Administration tightened sanctions on being able to travel to Cuba and set limits lower on remittances sent to the island. However, nothing was changed in the cash and carry sales made by U.S. companies to the Castro regime. Towards the end of the Bush Administration in August of 2008 the Cuban government announced that the United States was its fifth leading trading partner.

Despite loosening restrictions further under the Obama Administration agricultural trade with Cuba had dropped to 363.3 million dollars in 2011 and figures for 2012 showed a improvement with sales to the island at 457.3 million dollars. In 2013 agricultural trade dipped to 348,747,293.00 but at the same time there was a dramatic increase in the purchase of pharmaceuticals from 234,718.00 dollars in 2012 to 2,184,370.00 in 2013. However, it did not make up for the decline in Agricultural sales to Cuba. This is not a total embargo but a partial one in which the United States is one of Cuba’s top trading partners. As of the reporting year of 2013 total trade with Cuba since 2001 under TSRA amounts to $4,689,621,948.00

Meanwhile countries that do not have sanctions in place, which includes restrictions on granting credits such as Russia, Venezuela, China, Japan, Spain, Argentina, France, Romania, Brazil, Italy, and Mexico are owed billions of dollars. Russia is forgiving $29 billion dollars of debt that the Castro regime owed it and Mexico is waiving 487 million dollars of debt owed by the regime in Havana.

Where do you think the United States would be on this list if sanctions were lifted and credits became available to the Castro regime? How much would U.S. taxpayers have to shell out?
 
When the Pro-Castro lobby and their allies in the Chamber of Commerce that are very powerful try to sell normalizing relations with Castro the facts always get in the way. For partial example read on:

• On July 15, 2013 Panama captured a North Korean flagged ship from Cuba smuggling arms provided by the Cuban government in violation of international sanctions. The weapons were hidden under bags of sugar. A total of 25 standard shipping containers (16 forty – foot and 9 twenty foot) and 6 trailers were found for a total of about 240 tons of arms and related material among which were found: 1. Surface to air missile systems 2. Radar systems 3.Two Cuban MiG fighters
• As mentioned earlier Cuba is a bad credit risk and the dictatorship oversees a population of 11 million souls trapped in a highly centralized communist economy. Foreigners doing big business in Cuba can only do business with the Cuban dictatorship. Even the hiring of employees is controlled by a government agency that also receives their paycheck. Businessmen are regularly jailed for years as a tactic to avoid having to pay them and to expropriate them.
• Arresting and holding hostage since December 2009 Alan Gross, an American citizen because he was trying to provide uncensored internet access to the local Jewish community in Cuba.
• Extrajudicially executing U.S. citizens over international airspace on February 24, 1996 which was the reason for the tightening and codification of sanctions in the Helms-Burton Bill.
• The Castro dictatorship engaging in and supporting international terrorism over the past five decades which is the reason that Cuba is on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. 

The secret that the Chamber of Commerce and the Pro-Castro lobby do not want you to know is that there is no powerful Cuban exile lobby. There is a David and Goliath battle going on but when it comes to money the anti-Castro Cuban exiles are David in a battle with Goliath's such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A question to ask yourselves is how can three Cuban American U.S. Senators out of 100 and four Cuban American congresspersons out of 435 dictate Cuba policy? The answer is they can’t. What has shaped the current U.S. policy boils down to the facts in evidence and what serves the best interests of the United States.What these legislators and free Cubans are doing is helping to get the facts out in the midst of the onslaught of pro-Castro and corporate propaganda.

Remembering Missing Cuban Journalist on International Day to End Impunity

"What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse." - Isabel Allende

Missing since 2004: Omar Darío Pérez Hernández

 The Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 2013 passed by consensus a resolution on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity. The resolution includes a call to make the International Day to End Impunity an official UN day, to be commemorated each year on 2 November. Today is the first time it is being observed.


On the Inaugural International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, IFEX asks:

If killing journalists is killing the messenger, what message are governments sending when their killers get away with it? 

Ending impunity for crimes against journalists, media workers and others is a critical priority for the 88 civil society groups that compose IFEX, the global network that defends and promotes freedom of expression.

On this day wish to remember one case of an independent journalist who went missing in Cuba more than ten years ago and who had received threats from state security. His family following his disappearance in December 2003 was intimidated into silence. His name is Omar Darío Pérez Hernández.

Omar can be seen briefly in a video conducting an interview with students expelled from university for signing the Varela Project. One of the youths interviewed Harold Cepero would die on July 22, 2012 alongside Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in circumstances that would lead one to believe they were murdered by state security.

The Terrible Precedent Set By Congressman Joe Garcia

The past two years have been turbulent ones for Congressman Joe Garcia and his staff. An absentee ballot scandal in 2012 led his chief of staff, long time friend and confidante Jeff Garcia to a ninety day prison sentence as part of a plea agreement. Other staffers were being investigated by authorities and in order to avoid possible legal entanglements have agreed through their attorneys to extend their statute of limitations.  At the same time officials are reported to be looking into the role the 2010 Joe Garcia congressional campaign played in the placing of a tea party ringer candidate into the race in order to divide up the Republican vote. Despite all of this and Congressman Garcia hiring of a criminal defense attorney, David Markus, he claims to no longer be under investigation but news accounts say different. This is not the Florida 26th Congressional District's first rodeo, but when candidates get desperate in a heated campaign they do things sometimes that harm others and later come back to haunt them.

Joe Garcia did something on October 27, 2014 that no Cuban-American congressperson has ever done by placing a Cuban dissident in a paid political advertisement as an endorsement to advance his own candidacy. The campaign's press release was clear:  "Today, the Joe Garcia for Congress campaign announced that ... Guillermo “El Coco” Fariñas, ... had declared his support for Representative Joe Garcia. Unfortunately, it also turns out to not to be true or as one blogger declared "bogus."  Fariñas in a statement issued today stated:

"I, at no time of the advertisement in question appear asking for a vote for either of the two candidates in particular, therefore, it is clear that I am  not meddling in said elections."

Over twitter "El Coco" stated:

"The statements emitted about Joe García are a personal criteria and not a Political Campaign. The same opinion I would have said about his opponent."

At the same time another dissident, while supporting Fariñas's right to his opinion expressed grave concerns about Joe Garcia as:

"a person who is promoting what the people do not need to be free ... the policy promoted by Joe Garcia lamentably seeks closeness with the regime and not the opposition ... and that is what a great part of the Cuban people and opposition think."

Unlike other members of the Cuban-American congressional delegation Joe Garcia is the only one who has accepted campaign donations from avowed supporters of the Castro dictatorship. The FEC reports show [Francisco Aruca of Marazul] donated $5,000 to Garcia in 2012 and attorney Ira Kurzban, who legally represents Fidel Castro and his interests in the United States gave $3,700 to Garcia. There are others who on camera declare their support and sympathy for Fidel Castro and give thousands to Joe Garcia's campaign such as John Cabañas whose video appears at the top of the page.

Until October 27, 2014 no member of congress had engaged in using a dissident to advance their political campaigns in a paid political advertisement. This sets a terrible precedent that I hope is never repeated. If in the future candidates are dividing dissidents in Cuba over partisan races in the United States and relegating the cause of Cuban freedom to a talking point then historians will look back to the Joe Garcia for Congress and their actions on October 27, 2014 and say this is where it started, and it will be a great shame.

I will be voting for Carlos Curbelo in this election and recommend all fair minded people who are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, etc. to do the same and demonstrate that this course of action is a vote loser and hopefully stop this becoming a trend.

Ira Kurzban, who legally represents the abuser himself, Fidel Castro, and his interests in the United States and gave $3,700 in donations. - See more at: http://www.politicalcortadito.com/2014/07/29/what-hypocrite-joe-garcia-didnt-tell-cuban-dissident-he-met/#sthash.Ne7aUiKI.dpuf

Ira Kurzban, who legally represents the abuser himself, Fidel Castro, and his interests in the United States and gave $3,700 in donations. - See more at: http://www.politicalcortadito.com/2014/07/29/what-hypocrite-joe-garcia-didnt-tell-cuban-dissident-he-met/#sthash.Ne7aUiKI.dpufattorney Ira Kurzban, who legally represents the abuser himself, Fidel Castro, and his interests in the United States and gave $3,700 in donations.