Boise News

This quote is the scariest thing I've read in a long time.

“Listen, you give me enough French fries, disco records and Levis and get rid of the State Department and we can get rid of the entire diplomatic corps. We can change the world,” Otter said.

He used to be a Congressman. I guess that helps explain our status in the world these days.

“[L]ife inside the post-industrial cocoon of Western democracy has made people incapable of imagining life inside a totalitarian system. With affluence comes not only the loss of imagination, but also the loss of historical memory.”

The socialist ideal was supposed to remove distinctions of class and race. A planned economy, by and for “the people,” was to produce material prosperity and economic and social justice, without harming the environment. It failed miserably. Tens of millions were killed in the attempt to achieve this, but as Lenin said, “one must break eggs to make an omelet.”

Take for example the perpetuation of the cult of Che Guevara. His image, bearded and bereted, adorns t-shirts and posters. Walk into almost any American high school (or university) and you’ll find a student wearing one. Next time you see one, ask the wearer this: How would your friends react if you wore a swastika on your shirt?

Che Guevara was a totalitarian. He achieved only disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist Cuba. But Che was an ally of those favoring a state modeled on the Soviet Union’s police state. His faction won.

Che organized and directed the Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's concentration camps -- the system used to lock away political dissidents and later gays and AIDS victims. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a “popular” movement that failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. Though held up as a martyr of freedom and social justice, Che was an enemy of liberty and tolerance.

What a bunch of losers reading and commenting on this crap. The 30ish guy "wanted money to travel" huh? Well where is he going to go? FYG he is NOT ALLOWED TO GO ANYWHERE. The incredibly inept system he lives in tells him what he can have (nothing) tells him what he can eat (crap) Where he can live and what he can do. What kind of life is that?? Go ahead hypocrites. Go and live there. I dare you.

CUBA: THE TUGBOAT MASSACRE OF JULY 13, 1994

By Maria C. Werlau

March 2007

In 1994, popular dissatisfaction with the Castro regime had deepened as Cuba endured a severe economic crisis amidst continued repression. Although the country’s laws forbid citizens from leaving without government authorization and punishes violations with years of prison, attempts to escape by any means had been growing exponentially.

On July 13, 1994, at around three in the morning under the cover of darkness, around seventy men, women, and children boarded the recently renovated tugboat “13 de Marzo. ” They planned to escape the island by making the ninety-mile journey across the Straits of Florida, hoping to reach freedom in the United States. Many also sought the means to send help back to the family they were leaving behind.

Eduardo Suárez Esquivel (Eddy), a computer engineer who had attempted unsuccessfully to flee on several occasions, came up with the idea. Obsessed with the idea of finding a way out of Cuba, he convinced his brother in law, Fidencio Ramel Prieto, to take the tugboat and serve as skipper. Ramel, who was in charge of operations at the Port of Havana, served as one of its Communist Party secretaries and had twenty-five years of commendable service at the port. This gave him access to the tugboat, which belonged to the state enterprise Empresa de Servicios Marítimos. With all vessels in Cuba under government ownership and tightly controlled to prevent escapes, this access was no small feat. Raúl Muñoz, a friend and fellow port worker who had been harbor pilot of the “13 de Marzo” and was now the pilot for another tugboat, was recruited to pilot the tugboat for the escape. Several more men joined in to develop the plot.

The plan included numerous family members and close friends. Only Ramel had the entire list of the approximately fifty two passengers who were to go on the journey. The organizers were divided into groups and each had a leader. Each leader was in charge of getting his respective group to the pier on the designated day. To keep maximum secrecy, the children were told they were going on an excursion.

On three previous occasions, a date had been chosen, but the escape had been aborted when insiders working at the port announced unexpected security measures deemed unfavorable. Unbeknownst to them, government authorities had been receiving information of the plan, in all probability by infiltrators. The spies are suspected to have been part of the actual planning group -in fact two did not show up for the departure. But, the information may have leaked out to spies through relatives who knew of the plot.

On the designated date, the group quietly boarded the tugboat in the middle of the night and the motors were started. Unexpectedly, people who were not on the list showed up, a few others who were to come did not. It was 3:15 A.M. when they began to make their way out of Havana’s harbor. Immediately, a tugboat belonging to the same state enterprise initiated a chase.

The pursuing vessel first tried to drive the “13 de Marzo” into a dock. When that proved unsuccessful, it rammed it, attempting to push it towards the reefs by the mouth of the harbor near the Morro Castle. As its crew maneuvered skillfully, the “13 de Marzo” avoided the attacks and kept sailing forward. People at nearby piers and at the Malecón, Havana’s seawall, witnessed the attack and were yelling to let them go.

Just as the “13 de Marzo” cleared the harbor, two other tugboats that had been waiting for them in the dark, joined the chase. With their water cannons, they started spraying high pressure jets at the escaping vessel. The wooden “13 de Marzo” was now being hounded by three modern, larger, and heavier tugboats made of steel –the “Polargo 2,” “Polargo 3,” and “Polargo 5.” They were respectively commandeered by Jesús Martínez Machín, a man named David, and one called Arístides.

As the “13 de Marzo” sailed ahead, the pursuing tugboats kept spraying high-pressure water and getting in its way to make it stop. After around forty-five minutes, when the “13 de Marzo” had reached approximately seven miles out to sea, the pursuing tugboats began ramming it. Although the “13 de Marzo” had stopped and signaled its willingness to surrender and turn back, the relentless attack continued. The pilot of the “13 de Marzo” attempted to radio an SOS, but the pounding water had damaged the electrical equipment. A vessel belonging to the Cuban Coast Guard had arrived on the scene, a Soviet-built cutter referred to as "Griffin." But, it stayed back, simply observing the spectacle.

The adults brought out the children on deck to see if this would deter the incessant jet streams and collisions. In desperation, parents held their children up in the air and pleaded for their lives, putting them in front of the powerful reflector lights pointed at them. But, the attackers disregarded their cries and continued to bombard the powerless passengers with the high pressure water. The mighty streams scattered them all over deck, ripped clothing off, and tore children from their parents’ arms. Some were swept into the ocean immediately.

In a frantic attempt to find safety, some passengers went below deck to the cargo hold and the machine room, many carrying children. The "13 de Marzo" was now taking in water from the incessant ramming. Although it had stopped its engine, the “Polargo 5” rammed it decisively one last time and it began to sink. The doors to the machine room and cargo hold were blocked by the water. With the passengers pinned down, they desperately pounded on the walls and ceilings as the children wailed in horror. Frantically, Raúl, the pilot, tried unsuccessfully to open the trap door on deck as it was quickly filling up with water. Unable to make it budge, silence soon took over. Those trapped below had all drowned.

It was around 4:50 A.M. when the tugboat sank seven miles northeast of Havana harbor. Panic gripped the stunned survivors. Mothers tried to hold on to their children to prevent them from drowning, screaming for husbands and other relatives to help. They all clung to life in high seas in the dark of night. Many floated atop a large refrigeration box, others hung onto anything that floated by or simply treaded water.

The three boats then began circling the survivors, creating wave turbulence and eddies for around forty-five minutes. It was obvious they wanted to make sure no one would be left alive to bear witness to the horror. María Victoria García, who lost her ten-year old son, husband, and many other close family members later related: “After nearly an hour of battling in the open sea, the boat circled round the survivors, creating a whirlpool so that we would drown. Many disappeared into the seas... We asked them to save us, but they just laughed." One of the tugboats attempted to run over the floating refrigeration box holding many survivors. Fortunately, it was unsuccessful.

All of a sudden, the attackers stopped and the tugboat crews told survivors to swim toward the Cuban Coast Guard ships on the scene. Once on board, they noticed that a merchant ship with a Greek flag was close by, approaching Havana harbor. Survivors believe this is was what made the attackers stop unexpectedly. Several Coast Guard vessels then moved in to rescue those who were left.

The exhausted groups of rescued passengers were kept at high seas almost until around 11A.M. When the order was received, they were all taken to a Naval Base at Jaimanitas, near Havana, where many high-ranking members of the military had gathered. The men were put into one cell and left there. The women and children were put it another cell, where they were interrogated. Early that evening the women and children were sent home and the men were taken to Villa Marista, Havana’s State Security headquarters. Some were kept in detention several weeks and released to domiciliary detention. Two were kept for eight months. They were all given psychotropic drugs, visited by psychologists, and subjected to interrogations at all hours with the purpose of making them relay the story as an accident.

Reports of the number of victims varied from the start. Because some who were supposed to make the journey did not show up while many others unexpectedly joined in, the exact number who boarded and of those who perished remains uncertain. Finally, only thirty seven people, individually identified, were confirmed missing by their grieving families and the thirty one survivors. Many were related; most came from four neighborhoods of greater Havana -Cotorro, Guanabacoa, Marianao, and Arroyo Naranjo. Four more persons may have perished if, in fact, seventy-two passengers boarded, but they remain unidentified.

Despite intimidation and harassment, many survivors immediately denounced the premeditated ramming of the “13 de Marzo” and the deliberate aggression against them while they were unarmed and in no position to seriously resist capture. They recounted how the pursuers appeared to be taking orders from the Cuban Coast Guard cutter and that, at one point, a helicopter had flown over the scene.

The escapees never imagined their lives had been in danger. Even Ramel’s son, who worked for State Security and survived, reported never thinking they would suffer more than imprisonment if they were stopped. Unknowingly, however, they were taking a much larger risk than they had bargained for. Earlier that year, on April 28th, the tugboat “Polar 12” had been commandeered in Havana harbor and taken to Key West, Florida, with sixty-eight persons on board. On June 17th another tugboat, "The Mar Azul," had also been taken to Florida with seventy-four persons on board. Reportedly, both tugboats had been pursued by Cuba’s Coast Guard, rammed by its vessels in international waters, and attacked with machine guns even though they carried many women and children as passengers. Because information in Cuba is tightly controlled and all media is owned by the government, these incidents were unknown on the island.

The Cuban government reported that thirty-two people drowned and thirty one were rescued, but a list of victims was not provided. No bodies were returned to their families for burial and, if any were recovered, their location remains unknown. In fact, the authorities expressly refused to conduct search operations for the bodies. At State Security headquarters, agents mocked desperate relatives seeking bodies and told them that their loved ones were nothing more than “counter-revolutionary dogs.”

When news reached the outside world, Rafael Dausá, the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, declared that survivors’ accounts were “science fiction” and blamed the incident on the “thieves who stole the boat.” Granma –government newspaper and organ of the Communist Party- published the official version of the events - that the three pursuing vessels “had attempted to intercept the “13 de Marzo” and the maneuvers undertaken to that effect had resulted in a regrettable accident that had made the boat sink.” In a subsequent story titled “Capsized tugboat robbed by anti-social elements,” Granma blamed the "irresponsible act of piracy” on counter-revolutionary radio stations of the “Miami nest of maggots” (referring to Cuban exiles) and on the United States’ failure to abide by immigration agreements. A Granma editorial of July 23rd 1994 was titled “A bitter lesson for the irresponsible.” In a speech on July 26th, Raúl Castro, the head of Cuba’s Armed Forces, insisted that the tugboat was destined to sink because it had not been seaworthy and praised the Cuban Coast Guard for trying to prevent that. Cuban radio stations, which are all government owned, repeated similar explanations. Finally, on August 5, 1994, in a three hour speech, Fidel Castro publicly praised the perpetrators for their exemplary behavior and patriotic acts and emphatically declared that they had no intentions to sink the boat.

Attempting to feed the cover-up, some of the imprisoned survivors were paraded in front of cameras to tout the government line and insist that the tragedy was their entire fault. Manipulated into apologizing publicly, they had, among other things, been told that the populace was ready to lynch them for killing so many children.

Apparently, the international community’s reaction soon tempered the Cuban government’s defiant tone. World leaders, including the Pope, made statements denouncing the deplorable incident and expressed condolences to the victims. Cuba’s Ministries of Interior and of Foreign Relations promised an investigation. Unsurprisingly, it has never been heard of again. Subsequent attempts by family members of victims and human rights activists on the island to open judicial processes via official legal channels have been ignored. In fact, the head of the operation, tugboat pilot Jesús González Machín, is said to have received a "Hero of the Cuban Revolution" award from the government.

Numerous reports by international organizations have condemned the massacre. On July of 1994, Amnesty International had called on the Cuban government to carry out an investigation of the incident and to bring justice if any government affiliate was involved. In 1997, Amnesty reported that there was sufficient evidence to indicate that it had been an official operation and that, if events occurred in the way described by several of the survivors, those who died were victims of extrajudicial execution. In June of 1995 the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Cuba requested from the Cuban government an investigation and called for those responsible to be processed and the families of victims to be compensated. On October of 1996, the United Nations denounced the absence of an investigation. That same month, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (O.A.S.) released a Special Report declaring that the Cuban state was responsible for premeditated murder.

Over time, as more survivors and witnesses left the island and their accounts were pieced together, it became apparent that the Cuban government had planned the murder. It was evident that spied had been infiltrated who offered early and detailed knowledge of the preparations. Reportedly, once the plot was known, the decision had been made at the highest levels of government to not foil it by arresting the organizers or closing the entrance to Havana harbor. Instead, they would be allowed to steal the tugboat, so it could be sunk and an enduring lesson could be delivered to prevent further escapes from the island.

To cover up government involvement, only civilian vessels were employed in the attack and while only Coast Guard vessels rescued survivors. The O.A.S. report indicates that while this type of manipulation has been common Cuban government practice, “the attack against defenseless civilians was planned, orchestrated, and directed by the Communist Party and State Security with the direct participation of both.”

On the island, survivors and family members of those who died were initially denied information and put under constant surveillance. Many were dismissed from their jobs. They have continued to endure systematic harassment by the authorities. Over the years, all survivors except one have managed to go into exile, some in voyages by raft. All bear the marks of deep trauma, feelings of senseless loss, and a sense of outrageous injustice.

On the island, the Cuban government continues to imprison, threaten, and intimidate those who seek to peacefully protest the sinking and remember those who died, usually in small ceremonies on the anniversary of the attack. Government-organized mobs, the Rapid Response Brigades, habitually scream insults and hit participants. To prevent commemorative activities, members of political and human rights groups are arrested, mobs harass them and even intrude in their homes, and extensive police operations are mounted. Just this past February 27th 2007, five peaceful activists kept under arrest since the July 13, 2005 memorial were tried for public disorder. René Montes de Oca, Emilio Leiva, Lázaro Alonso, and Manuel Pérez Oria were sentenced to two years imprisonment and Roberto Guerra Pérez to one year and eight months. The defendants declared that they had merely attempted to render tribute to the tugboat victims and only screamed at attackers of the Rapid Response Brigade to not hit them while they formed a human chain to protect themselves.

What is perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this tragedy is that, as with similar cases in the past, it has been largely ignored by world media. As a result, international public opinion remains essentially unaware of the systematic attacks perpetrated by the Cuban government on defenseless civilians trying to flee Cuba. Sadly, many world governments, leaders, and celebrities shamelessly disregard the most basic standards of accountability for the Cuban government. The Castro regime continues to enjoy a free pass to trample on the most fundamental rights of its citizens, including the most precious -the right to life. ♣

See attached report in link provided below for formatted version that includes List of Survivors, Photos and Brief biographical entries for all victims, and Bibliographic Sources.

THE VICTIMS

37 MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD

Abreu Ruíz, Angel René. Age: 3. Alcalde Puig, Rosa María. Age: 47. Almanza Romero, Pilar. Age: 31. Alvarez Guerra, Lissett María. Age: 24. Anaya Carrasco, Yaltamira. Age: 22. Balmaseda Castillo, Jorge Gregorio. Age: 24. Borges Alvarez, Giselle. Age: 4. Borges Briel, Lázaro Enrique. Age: 34. Carrasco Sanabria, Martha Mirilla. Age: 45. Cayol, Manuel. Age: 56. Enríquez Carrazana, Luliana. Age: 22. Fernández Rodríguez, María Miralis. Age: 27. Feu González Rigoberto. Age: 31. García Suárez, Joel. Age: 20. Góngora, Leonardo Notario. Age: 28. González Raices, Amado. Age: 50. Guerra Martínez, Augusto Guillermo. Age: 45. Gutiérrez García, Juan Mario. Age: 10. Levrígido Flores, Jorge Arquímedes. Age: 28. Leyva Tacoronte, Caridad. Age: 5. Loureiro, Ernesto Alfonso. Age: 25. Marrero Alamo, Reynaldo Joaquín. Age: 48. Martínez Enriquez, Hellen. Age: 5 Months. Méndez Tacoronte, Mayulis. Age: 17. Muñoz García, Odalys. Age: 21. Nicle Anaya, José Carlos. Age: 3. Pérez Tacoronte, Yousell Eugenio. Age: 11. Perodín Almanza, Yasser. Age: 11. Prieto Hernández, Fidencio Ramel. Age: 51. Rodríguez Fernández, Xicdy. Age: 2. Rodríguez Suárez, Omar. Age: 33. Ruíz Blanco, Julia Caridad. Age: 35. Sanabria Leal, Miladys. Age: 19. Suárez Esquivel, Eduardo. Age: 38. Suárez Esquivel, Estrella. Age: 48. Suárez Plasencia, Eliécer. Age: 12. Tacoronte Vega, Martha Caridad. Age: 35.

Che's "ideals worth dying for" are on display in the killing fields of Cambodia, the rural areas of China, and North Korea. Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic put it well:

"Pose this question at an Upper West Side dinner party: What was worse, Nazism or Communism? Surely, the answer will be Nazism ... because Communism had an ideal of the good. This, despite the fact that communist revolutions and communist regimes murdered ever so many more millions of innocents and transformed the yearning of many idealists for equality into the brutal assertion of evil, a boot stamping on the human face forever."

The author of this piece is an archetype aptly descripbed by Thomas Sowell:

"Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don't know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields."

9,240 victims, and counting
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | January 4, 2006

THE LONGEST-RULING despot in the world is Fidel Castro, who seized power in Cuba 47 years ago this week. Like most dictators, Castro is a brazen liar, especially about his own regime. This, for example, is what he told an international conference in Havana in April 2001:

''There have never been death squads in our country, nor a single missing person, nor a single political assassination, nor a single victim of torture. . . . You may travel around the country, ask the people, look for a single piece of evidence, try to find a single case where the Revolutionary government has ordered or tolerated such an action. And if you find them, then I will never speak in public again."

One would have to be willfully blind -- a useful idiot, in Lenin's phrase -- to believe such a reeking falsehood. But when it comes to Castro, useful idiots have never been in short supply. From Norman Mailer to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Jesse Jackson to Ted Turner, a long line of admirers has swooned over the bearded tyrant, lavishly praising his wisdom and charm -- and never showing the slightest interest in his real record: cruelty, repression, and a death toll in the tens of thousands.

But Castro's mocking challenge -- ''try to find a single case" -- is not going unanswered. The Cuba Archive project (http://www.CubaArchive.org) is working to document the cost, in human life, of more than five decades of Cuban dictatorship. The New Jersey-based archive's tiny staff has set itself the monumental task of identifying every man, woman, and child killed by Cuba's rulers since March 10, 1952, the day Batista ousted the island's last democratically elected president. Meticulously, impartially, the archive's researchers are assembling the evidence that Castro claims doesn't exist -- victim by victim, one death at a time.

It is heartbreaking work. The revolution's victims have died in front of firing squads and been beaten to death by government goons; they have been sunk while at sea and shot down while flying; they have been killed for resisting communism at home and killed when sent to fight for communism abroad. In the hands of Castro's jailers, some have been driven to suicide; many more have disappeared.

It is also slow and painstaking work. Each death entered into the archive must be confirmed by at least two independent sources and documented, to the extent possible, with photographs, eyewitness testimony, and the recollections of survivors. ''We don't want to just record names and numbers," says Maria Werlau, the president of the Cuba Archive. ''We want to tell each story. We want the world to know the magnitude of the Cuban tragedy."

So far the archive has catalogued the deaths of 9,240 victims of the Castro regime. Who were they? Sister Aida Rosa Perez, who was sent to prison as an ''enemy of the revolution" and died of heart failure brought on by torture and hard labor. Estanislao Gonzalez Quintana, who died in police custody four days after being detained for ''unlawful economic activity"; his corpse was visibly bruised and had a deep gash in the forehead. The three Garcia-Marin Thompson brothers, who sought asylum at the Vatican embassy in Havana, only to be seized by Interior Ministry troops and executed after a summary hearing. Mrs. Alberto Lazo Pastrana, who died with her three children when the boat on which they were trying to leave Cuba was sunk by the Cuban navy; the mother was eaten by sharks and the children were never seen again. Carlos Alberto Costa, a 29-year-old American, who was shot down by a Cuban jet fighter as he flew an unarmed plane on a search-and-rescue mission over international waters in 1996.

Plus 9,230 others.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Werlau and the archive's research director, Armando Lago, an economist who has spent years analyzing the costs of the Cuban revolution, expect the total number of deaths to be far higher. As many as 77,000 Cubans may have lost their lives trying to escape the island; their deaths, too, will eventually be added to the archive.

Werlau, who lived in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, saw firsthand how international awareness of human rights atrocities helped Chile reinstate its democracy. ''The Castro regime executed more people in just its first three years than the Pinochet regime killed or 'disappeared' in its entire 17 years in power," she says. ''Yet Castro's victims, who number so many times more -- and who include not just political opponents but entire families assassinated for trying to flee -- remain unknown, ignored, or forgotten.

''We just had to do something about it."

Cuban gets 12 years for anti-Castro graffiti
Mon Apr 23, 2007 2:06PM EDT
HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban dissident who wrote "Down with Fidel Castro" and other opposition slogans on walls of public buildings was sentenced to 12 years in jail, a human rights group said on Monday.

Rolando Jimenez had been held without charges in a jail on the Island of Youth off Cuba's southern coast since his arrest in March 2003, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights said.

Amnesty International declared Jimenez a prisoner of conscience in 2004.

Jimenez, a 36-year-old lawyer, was not allowed to defend himself in court and was sentenced in a secret trial to 12 years for disrespecting the Cuban leader and divulging secrets of the state security police, the rights group said.

Veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, who heads the illegal but tolerated commission, said Jimenez was the second dissident to be tried secretly this month by Cuba's communist authorities.

"This is a clear sign than they are getting tough on dissident activity again," Sanchez said.

Dissident journalist Oscar Sanchez, who reported for a Miami-based Web site called CubaNet, was arrested at his home April 13 and sentenced to four years in jail on a charge of "social dangerousness," he said.

He was not allowed a lawyer and his family was barred from attending the brief trial in the town of Matanzas, unlike previous cases of dissident trials, Sanchez said.

In a March 2003 crackdown, Cuba rounded up 75 dissidents and tried them for collaborating with the United States. Only 16 have been freed, for medical reasons.

Castro's government, in power since a 1959 revolution, says there are no political prisoners in Cuba and labels dissidents "counter-revolutionary mercenaries" on Washington's payroll.

deet - The truth and hard facts hurt - don't they? Hmmmm - when you get yourself off the floor from your little rant consider why all the rafts are only going one way. Must be because they're so free growing up under socialism - leaves them lots of time to worry about how they're going to find the next meal.

Hot DAMN! French fries and levis...and we've got us a diplomatic strategy here! Did Butch REALLY say FRENCH fries??? If he'd only kept that F word out of it, the RNC might have drafted him for President in 2008...it's sounding a helluva lot better than W's current "diplomatic course."

Yo and Soy---
We get your point...We live in a glorious country. It's pretty cool that we have all this freedom of expression and near total economic freedom and can go to Walmart and fill our closets with crap made in third world sweatshops... But, all of that cut and paste and plagiarism could have been edited down to a few points and backed up with links. It's called internet courtesy. Nathaniel's article raises some interesting points...just a glimpse and not particularly glorifying anything. Lighten up, dudes.