Statement: LA Coalition in Solidarity w/Cuba-21 May 2002 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit [The following statement was delivered as part of a press conference held in Los Angeles on May 21, 2002 by a large and diverse panel condemning George W. Bush's anti-Cuba policies. See related news item.-- NY Transfer] STATEMENT BY JON HILLSON, CO-COORDINATOR, LOS ANGELES COALITION IN SOLIDARITY WITH CUBA As those of nine previous U.S. administrations, President Bush's anti-Cuba sanctions policy will fail to remove Cuba's revolutionary government. More than ever, the White House represents the views of a shrinking minority. The overwhelming majority of the people of the United States, like virtually every government in the world, oppose the U.S. embargo. They reject Washington's travel ban. They favor normalized relations between Washington and Havana. Tens of thousand of U.S. residents of the United States, including thousands of Cuban-Americans, routinely violate federal law to visit Cuba. Millions more want to see Cuba with their own eyes. But President Bush arrogantly pledges to continue violating our constitutional and democratic rights. His threats against Cuba do not intimidate or frighten its courageous people, who are ready, willing, and able to defend the sovereignty they won on January 1, 1959. Despite his thuggish rhetoric, something was missing in the president's speech. He made no mention whatsoever of Cuba's supposed "offensive biological weapons" capacity. Why? The charge was a big slander, a frame-up that could not face the light of day. Washington had no proof because there is none. Every other claim in President Bush's speech is made of the same tissue of lies. The president speaks of "free elections." But when millions of Venezuelans voted in seven elections and referenda over the past three years, approving a government that does not march in lock step with Washington, White House advisors met regularly with those who plotted the coup against the Chavez regime. The U.S. government and media hailed the dirty operation just as the people of Venezuela were preparing to sweep the traitors aside. One hundred years ago, Washington forced the Platt Amendment on Cuba, annexing Havana while imposing U.S. economic control of the island, just as it won independence from Spain. The cardinal sin of the Cuban people is to have liberated themselves from this yoke in 1959. The U.S. economic elite has never forgiven the people of Cuba for the "crime" of becoming architects of their own destiny. We likewise reject the claims of ex-President Carter, Senator Christopher Dodd, the editorialists of the Los Angeles Times, and others who state that lifting the embargo and flooding Cuba with U.S. goods, investments, and tourists will bring "democracy" to the island and end the "totalitarian Castro regime." President Bush insists that the embargo will end only when Cuba adopts "meaningful, market-based reforms," enabling "private employers" to "create more good paying jobs." "Markets have brought prosperity and empowerment," the president said in Miami. Where is this fiction working? How is the magic of the marketplace unfolding in Argentina? In Ecuador? In Mexico? In El Salvador? At Enron? Washington's economic model is exploding in Latin America, and the Cuban people reject it. They will not surrender 43 years of principles and indisputable achievements in health, education, science, and culture for Nikes, Levis, Coca-Cola, and Botox. Infant mortality in Cuba is lower than in Los Angeles. Unemployment in Cuba is 4.1 percent, a tiny fraction of that in Latin America, and below that of U.S. levels. Unrelenting official U.S. hatred of Cuba is based on its profound fear that Cuba provides a potent alternative to the ruin and misery that Washington's economic system has inflicted on the debt-ridden peoples of the region. On May 1, seven million people -- 63 percent of Cuba's population -- mobilized in the streets in support of their government. Everyday in Cuba is a referendum on its economic and social system far more authoritative than the expensive electoral farces supervised by foreign observers who report to their overseers in Washington. President Bush proposes "intervention elections" in Cuba to return it to the time when it was a U.S. maquiladora, a mafia playground, and when the best-known Cuban was Desi Arnaz. The Cuban people have an answer: never again. President Bush and his loyal opposition can try to smear the truth to justify Washington's criminal policies against Havana. They can lie to the people of the United States. They can throw a bone to a dwindling minority of ultra-rightists in Miami. But they cannot reverse the history that the Cuban people have written in struggle, defiance, and dignity. End the embargo, lift the travel ban, normalize relations now! U.S. hands off Cuba. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytact-05.22.02-01:39:14-29178