Monty Cantsin
15th January 2004, 08:11
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INTELLECTUALS:
CUBA, THE U.S. AND HUMAN RIGHTS
by James Petras - May 1, 2003
Once again the intellectuals have entered into the center
of a debate - this time over the issues of U.S. imperialism
and human rights in Cuba. "How important is the role of the
intellectuals?", I asked myself as we walked past the Puerto
del Sol in Madrid on a sunny Saturday afternoon ( April 26,
2003 ) and heard the anti-Castro slogans of a few hundred
protestors echoing through the near empty plaza. Despite a
dozen articles and opinion columns by well known
intellectuals in the leading Madrid newspapers, and hours of
television and radio propaganda and endorsements by the
major trade union bureaucrats and party bosses, only
700-800, mostly Cuban exiles turned up to attack Cuba.
"Clearly," I thought, "the anti-'Cuban intellectuals have
little or no power of convocation, at least in Spain."
But the political impotence of the anti-Castro writers does
not mean that intellectuals in general do not play an
important role; nor does the lack of a popular audience mean
that they are without resources, especially if they do have
the backing of the U.S. war and propaganda machine,
amplifying and disseminating their word throughout the
world. In order to come to reason about the debate raging
between intellectuals on the issues of human rights in Cuba
and U.S. imperialism it is important to step back and
consider the role of the intellectuals, the context and
major issues that frame the U.S.-Cuba conflict.
THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUALS
The role of the intellectuals is to clarify the major issues
and define the major threats to peace, social justice,
national independence and freedom in each historical period
as well as to identify and support the principal defenders
of the same principles. Intellectuals have a responsibility
to distinguish between the defensive measures taken by
countries and peoples under imperial attack and the
offensive methods of imperial powers bent on conquest. It is
the height of cant and hypocrisy to engage in moral
equivalences between the violence and repression of imperial
countries bent on conquest with that of Third World
countries under military and terrorist attacks. Responsible
intellectuals critically examine the political context and
analyze the relationships between imperial power and their
paid local functionaries who they describe as "dissidents" -
they do not issue moral fiats according to their dim lights
and their political imperatives.
Committed intellectuals who claim to speak with moral
authority, especially those who lay claim to being critics
of imperialism, have a political responsibility to demystify
power and state and media manipulation particularly in
relation to imperial rhetoric of human rights violations by
independent Third World states. We have in recent times seen
too many self-styled "progressive" Western intellectuals
supporting or silent on the U.S. destruction of Yugoslavia,
the ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 Serbs, gypsies and
others in Kosovo, buying into the U.S. propaganda of a
"humanitarian intervention". All the U.S. intellectuals
(Chomsky, Zinn, Wallerstein etc.) supported the
U.S.-financed violent fundamentalist uprising in Afghanistan
against the Soviet-backed secular government in
Afghanistan - under the pretext that the Soviet Union
"invaded" Afghanistan and the fundamentalist fanatics
entering the country from all over the world were the
"dissidents" defending "self-determination" - an admitted
propaganda ploy successfully executed by the boastful former
National Security Adviser, Zbig Bryzinski. Then and now
prestigious intellectuals brandish their past credentials as
"critics" of U.S. foreign policy to give credibility to
their uninformed denunciation of alleged Cuban moral
transgressions, equating Cuba's arrest of paid functionaries
of the U.S. State Department and the execution of three
terrorist kidnapers with the genocidal war crimes of U.S.
imperialism. The practitioners of moral equivalents apply a
microscope to Cuba and a telescope to U.S. crimes - which
gives them a certain acceptability among the liberal sectors
of the empire.
MORAL IMPERATIVES
AND CUBAN REALITIES:
MORALITY AS DISHONESTY
Intellectuals are divided on the U.S.-Cuba conflict:
Benedetti, Sastre, Petras, Sanchez-Vazquez and Pablo
Gonzalez Casanova and scores of others defend Cuba;
right-wing intellectuals including Vargas Llosa, Savater,
and Carlos Fuentes have predictably issued their usual
diatribes against Cuba; and a small army of otherwise
progressive intellectuals - Chomsky, Saramago, Sontag, Zinn
and Wallerstein - have joined the chorus condemning Cuba,
waving their past critical postures in an effort to
distinguish themselves from the right-wing/State Department
Cuban opponents. It is the latter "progressive" group which
has caused the greatest harm among the burgeoning
anti-imperialist movement and it is to them that these
critical remarks are directed.
Morality based on propaganda is a deadly mix - particularly
when the moral judgements come from prestigious leftist
intellectuals and the propaganda emanates from the far-right
Bush administration.
Many of the "progressive" critics of Cuba acknowledge, in
passing and in a general way, that the U.S. has been a
hostile aggressor against Cuba, and they "generously" grant
Cuba the right to self-determination - and then launch into
a series of unsubstantiated charges and misrepresentations
devoid of any special context that might serve to clarify
the issues and provide a reasoned basis for ."moral
imperatives".
It is best to begin with the most fundamental facts. The
left critics, based on U.S. State Department labeling,
denounce the Cuban government's repression of individuals,
dissidents, including journalists, owners of private
libraries and members of political parties engaged in
non-violent political activity trying to exercise their
democratic rights. What the "progressives" fail to recognize
or are unwilling to acknowledge is that those arrested were
paid functionaries of the U.S. government. According to the
Agency of International Development (AID), the principal
U.S. federal agency implementing U.S. grants and loans in
pursuit of U.S. foreign policy, under USAID's Cuba Program
( resulting from the Helms-Burton Act of 1996) AID has
channeled over $8.5 million dollars to Cuban opponents of
the Castro regime since 1997 to publish, meet, propagandize
in favor of the overthrow of the Cuban government in
co-ordination with a variety of U.S. NGO's, universities,
foundations and other front groups. (Profile of the USAID
Cuba Program - on the AID web site ). The U.S.AID program,
unlike its usual practice, does not channel payments to the
Cuban government but directly to its Cuban "dissident"
clients. The criteria for funding are clearly stated - the
recipients of payments and grants must have demonstrated a
clear commitment to U.S. directed "regime change" toward
"free markets" and "democracy" - no doubt similar to the
U.S. colonial dictatorship in Iraq. The Helms-Burton
legislation, the U.S.AID Cuba Program and their paid Cuban
functionaries, like the U.S. progressive manifesto, "
condemn Cuba's lack of freedom, jailing of innocent
dissidents, and call for a democratic change of regime in
Cuba".
Strange coincidences that require some analyses. Cuban
journalists who have received $280,000 from a Cuba Free
Press -AID front- are not dissidents they are paid
functionaries. Cuban "Human Rights" groups who receive
$775,000 from CIA front "Freedom House" are not dissidents -
particularly when their mission is to promote a "transition"
(overthrow) of the Cuban regime. The list of grants and
funding to Cuban "dissidents" (functionaries) by the U.S.
government in pursuit of the U.S. policy is long and
detailed and accessible to all the progressive moral
critics. The point is that the jailed opponents of the Cuban
government were paid functionaries of the U.S. government,
paid to implement the goals of the Helms-Burton Act in
accordance with the criteria of the U.S.AID and under the
guidance and direction of the head of the U.S. Interest
Section in Havana.
Between September 2, 2002 and March 2003 James Cason, head
of the US Interest Section, held dozens of meetings with his
Cuban "dissidents" at his home and office, providing them
with instructions and guidelines on what to write, how to
recruit, while publicly haranging against the Cuban
government in the most undiplomatic manner.
Washington's Cuban functionaries were supplied with
electronic and other communication equipment by USAID, books
and other propaganda and money to fund pro-U.S. "trade
unions" via the U.S. front, the "American Center for
International Labor Solidarity". These are not well-meaning
"dissidents" unaware of their paymaster and their role as
U.S. agents, since the USAID report states ( under the
section entitled "The US Institutional Context"), "The Cuba
Program is funded through Economic Support Fund, which is
designed to support the economic and political foreign
policy interests of the US by providing financial assistance
to allies (sic) and countries in transition to democracy".
No country in the world tolerates or labels domestic
citizens paid by and working for a foreign power to act for
its imperial interests as "dissidents". This is especially
true of the U.S. where under Title 18 ,Section 951 of the
U.S. Code , "anyone who agrees to operate within the United
States subject to the direction or control of a foreign
government or official would be subjected to criminal
prosecution and a 10 year prison sentence". Unless , of
course, they register as a paid foreign agent or are working
for the Israeli government.
The U.S. "progressive" intellectuals abdicate their
responsibilities as analysts and critics and accept at face
value the State Department characterization of the U.S. paid
functionaries as dissidents striving for "freedom".
Some defenders of the U.S. agent-dissidents claim that the
functionaries received "scandalously long sentences". Once
again empirical myopia compounds mendacious moralizing. Cuba
is on a war footing. The Bush government has declared that
Cuba is on the list of military targets subject to mass
destruction and war. And in case our moralistic
intellectuals don't know it : What Bush, Rumsfeld and the
war-mongering Zionists in the Administration say -- they do.
The total lack of seriousness in Chomsky, Zinn, Sontag,
Wallerstein's moral dictates is that they fail to
acknowledge the imminent and massive threat of a U.S. war
with weapons of mass destruction, announced in advance. This
is particularly onerous given the fact that many of Cuba's
detractors live in the U.S., read the U.S. press and are
aware of how quickly militaristic pronouncements are
followed by genocidal actions. But our moralists are not
bothered by context, by U.S. threats to Cuba immediate or
proximate, they are eager to ignore it all to demonstrate to
the State Department that they not only oppose U.S. foreign
policy but also condemn every independent country, system
and leader who opposes the U.S. In other words, Mr.
Ashcroft, when you crack down on the "apologists" for Cuban
"terror", remember that we are different, we too condemned
Cuba, we too called for a change of regime.
The critics of Cuba ignore the fact that the U.S. has a
two-pronged military-political strategy to take over Cuba
that is already operative. Washington provides asylum for
terrorist air pirates, encouraging efforts to destabilize
Cuba's tourist-based economy; it works closely with the
terrorist Cuban American Foundation engaging in attempts to
assassinate Cuban leaders. New U.S. military bases have been
established in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador
and there is an expanding concentration camp in Guantanomo -
all to facilitate an invasion. The U.S. embargo is in the
process of being tightened with the support of the
right-wing Berlusconi and Aznar regimes in Italy and Spain.
The aggressive and openly political activity of James Cason
of the Interest Section in line with his Cuban followers
among the paid functionaries/ "dissidents" is part of the
inside strategy designed to undermine Cuban loyalties to the
regime and the revolution. The inter-connection between the
two tactics and their strategic convergence is ignored by
our prestigious intellectual critics who prefer the luxury
of issuing moral imperatives about freedom everywhere for
everyone, even when a psychotic Washington puts the knife to
Cuba's throat. No thanks, Chomsky, Sontag, Wallerstein -
Cuba is justified in giving its attackers a kick in the
balls and sending them to cut sugar cane to earn an honest
living.
The death penalty for three ferry boat terrorists is harsh
treatment - but so was the threat to the lives of forty
Cuban passengers who faced death at the hands of the
hijackers. Again our moralists forgot to discuss the rash
acts of air piracy and the plots of others uncovered in
time. The moralists failed to understand why these
terrorists desperadoes are seeking illegal means to leave
Cuba.
Bush's Administration has practically eliminated the
visa program for Cuban emigrants wishing to leave. Visa
grants have declined from 9000 for the first four months of
2002 to 700 in 2003. This is a clever tactic to encourage
terrorist acts in Cuba and then denounce the harsh
sentences, evoking the chorus of 'yea' sayers in the 'Amen'
corner of the progressive U.S. and European intellectual
establishment. Is it simply ignorance which informs these
moral pronouncements against Cuba or is it something else
besides - moral blackmail? , to force their Cuban
counterparts to turn against their regime, their people or
face the opprobrium of the prestigious intellectuals - to
become further isolated and stigmatized as "apologists of
Castro".
Explicit threats by Saramago to abandon his Cuban friends
and embrace the cause of U.S. paid functionaries. Implicit
threats of no longer visiting Cuba and to boycott
conferences. Is it moral cowardice to pick up the cudgels
for the empire and pick on Cuba when it faces the threat of
mass destruction over the freedom of paid agents, subject to
prosecution by any country in the world? What is eminently
dishonest is to totally ignore the vast accomplishments of
the revolution in employment, education, health, equality,
and Cuba's heroic and principled opposition to imperial
wars - the only country to so declare - and its capacity to
resist almost 50 years of invasions. That counts for nothing
for the U.S. intellectuals - that is scandalous!! That is a
disgrace, a retreat in search of respectability after
"daring" to oppose the U.S. war along with 30 million other
people in the world. It is not time to "balance" things
out - by condemning Cuba, by calling for a regime change, by
supporting the cause of the "market oriented" Cuban
functionary-dissidents.
Let us remember the same progressive intellectuals
supported "dissidents" in Eastern Europe and Russia who were
bankrolled by Soros and the U.S. State Department. The
"dissidents" turned the country over to the Russian mafia,
life expectancy declined five years ( over 10 million
Russians died prematurely with the sacking of the national
health system), while in Eastern Europe "dissidents" closed
the shipyards of Gdansk , enrolled in NATO and provided
mercenaries for the U.S. conquest of Iraq. And never among
these current supporters of Cuban "dissidents" is there any
critical reflection on the catastrophic outcomes resulting
from their anti-communist diatribes and their manifestos in
favor of the 'dissidents' who have become the soldiers of
the U.S. Middle Eastern and Central European empire.
Our U.S. moralists never, I repeat, never, ever reflected
critically on their moral failures, past or present because,
you see, they are for "freedom everywhere", even when the
"wrong" people get into power and the "other" empire takes
over, and the millions die from curable diseases and white
slavery rings expand. The reply is always the same: "That's
not what we wanted - we were for an independent, free and
just society - it just happened that in calling for regime
change, support for dissidents, we never suspected that the
Empire would 'take it all', would become the only
superpower, and engage in colonizing the world."
The moral intellectuals must accept political responsibility
for the consequences and not hide behind abstract moral
platitudes, neither for their past complicity with empire
building nor their present scandalous pronouncements against
Cuba. They cannot claim they don't know the repercussions of
what they are saying and doing. They cannot pretend
innocence after all they we have seen and read and heard
about U.S. war plans against Cuba.
The principal author and promoter of the anti-Cuban
declaration in the United States (signed by Chomsky, Zinn
and Wallerstein) was Joanne Landy, a self-declared
"democratic socialist", and lifelong advocate of the violent
overthrow of the Cuban government - for the past 40 years.
She is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR), one of the major institutions advising the U.S.
government on imperial policies for over a half century.
Landy supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Yugoslavia
and the Albanian terrorist group, the KLA - calling publicly
for overt military support - responsible for the murder of
2000 Serbs and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands
of Serbs and others in Kosova. It is no surprise that the
statement authored by this chameleon right-wing extremist
contained no mention of Cuba's social accomplishments and
opposition to imperialism. For the record, it should be
noted, that Landy was a visceral opponent of the Chinese,
Vietnamese and other social revolutions in her climb to
positions of influence in the CFR.
For all their vaunted critical intellect, the "progressive"
intellectuals overlooked the unsavory politics of the author
who promoted the anti-Cuba diatribe.
THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUAL TODAY
Many critics of Cuba speak of "principles" as if there were
only one set of principles applicable to all situations
independent of who is involved and what are the
consequences. Asserting "principles" like "freedom" for
those involved in plotting the overthrow of the Cuban
government in complicity with the State Department would
turn Cuba into another Chile - where Allende was overthrown
by Pinochet - and lead to a reversal of the popular gains of
the revolution. There are principles that are more basic
than freedom for U.S. Cuban functionaries , that is ,
national security and popular sovereignty. There is,
particularly among the U.S. progressive left, a certain
attraction to Third World victims, those who suffer defeats
,and an aversion for successful revolutionaries. It seems
that the U.S. progressive intellectuals always find an alibi
to avoid a commitment to a revolution. For some it is the
old refrain "Stalinism" - if the state plays a major role in
the economy; or it can be mass mobilizations - that they dub
"plebicitary dictatorships", or it can be security agencies
which successfully prevent terrorist activity which they
call a "repressive police state". Living in the least
politicized nation in the world with one of the most servile
and corrupt trade union apparatus in the West, with
virtually no practical political influence outside a few
university towns, the practical intellectuals in the U.S.
have no practical knowledge or experience of the everyday
threats and violence which hangs over revolutionary
governments and activists in Latin America. Their political
conceptions, the yardsticks they pull out to condemn or
approve of any political activity, exists nowhere except in
their heads, in their congenial, progressive, university
settings where they enjoy all the privileges of capitalist
freedom and none of the risks which Third World
revolutionaries have to defend themselves against. A little
modesty, dear prestigious, critical, freedom preaching
intellectuals. Look deep inside and ask yourself if you
would like to be pirated by a Miami-based terrorist
organization. Ask yourself if you would enjoy sitting in a
café in a major tourist hotel in Havana when a deadly bomb
goes off - greetings from the terrorists taking a beer with
the President's brother, Jeb. Think about living in a
country which is on the top of the hit list of the most
violent imperial regime since Nazi Germany - and then
perhaps your moral sensibilities might awaken to the need to
temper your condemnations of Cuban security policies and
contextualize your moral fiats.
I want to conclude by establishing my own "moral
imperatives" - for the critical intellectuals.
1. The first duty of Euro-U.S. intellectuals is to
oppose their own imperial rulers set on conquering the
world.
2. The second duty is to clarify the moral issues
involved in the struggle between imperial militarists and
popular/national resistance and reject the hypocritical
posture that equates the mass terror of one with the
justified if at times excessive security constraints of the
other.
3. To establish standards of political and personal
integrity with regards to the facts and issues before making
moral judgements.
4. Resist the temptation to become a "moral hero of the
empire" by refusing to support victorious popular struggles
and revolutionary regimes which are not perfect which lack
all the freedoms available to impotent intellectuals unable
to threaten power and therefore tolerated to meet, discuss
and criticize.
5. Refuse to set themselves as Judge, Prosecutor and
Jury condemning progressives who have the courage to defend
revolutionaries. The most appalling instance is Susan Sontag
's scurrilous attack on Colombian Nobel Prize winning
novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who she accused of lacking
integrity and being an apologist of Cuban terror (sic).
Sontag made her blood libelous accusations in Bogata,
Colombia. The Colombian death squads working with the regime
and the military kill more trade unionists and journalists
than any place in the world, and do so , for far less than
being an "apologist" of the Castro regime. This is the same
Sontag who was an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S.
imperial invasion and bombing of Yugoslavia, apologist for
the fundamentalist Bosnian regime and who was a silent
witness to the killing and ethnic cleansing of Serbs and
others in Kosova. Moral integrity indeed! The precious sense
of moral superiority found among New York intellectuals
allow Sontag to finger Marquez for the death squads and feel
that she has made a great moral statement.
U.S.-European intellectuals should not confuse their own
political futility and inconsequential position with that of
their counterparts among committed Latin American
intellectuals. There is a place for constructive dialogue
and debate but never personal assaults that demean
individuals facing daily threats to their lives.
It is easy for critical intellectuals to be a "friend of
Cuba" in good times at celebrations and invited conferences
in times of lesser threats. It is much harder to be a
"friend of Cuba" when a totalitarian empire threatens the
heroic island and puts heavy hands on its defenders.
It is in times like this - of permanent wars, genocide and
military aggression, when Cuba needs the solidarity of
critical intellectuals, which they are receiving from all
over Europe and particularly Latin America. Isn't it time
that we, in the United States, with our illustrious and
prestigious progressive intellectuals with all our majestic
moral sensibilities recognize that there is a vital, heroic
revolution struggling to defend itself against the U.S.
juggernaut and that we modestly set aside our self-important
declarations, support that revolution and join the one
million Cubans celebrating May Day with their leader Fidel
Castro?
Any comments, I would like to have a conversation about this topic.
CUBA, THE U.S. AND HUMAN RIGHTS
by James Petras - May 1, 2003
Once again the intellectuals have entered into the center
of a debate - this time over the issues of U.S. imperialism
and human rights in Cuba. "How important is the role of the
intellectuals?", I asked myself as we walked past the Puerto
del Sol in Madrid on a sunny Saturday afternoon ( April 26,
2003 ) and heard the anti-Castro slogans of a few hundred
protestors echoing through the near empty plaza. Despite a
dozen articles and opinion columns by well known
intellectuals in the leading Madrid newspapers, and hours of
television and radio propaganda and endorsements by the
major trade union bureaucrats and party bosses, only
700-800, mostly Cuban exiles turned up to attack Cuba.
"Clearly," I thought, "the anti-'Cuban intellectuals have
little or no power of convocation, at least in Spain."
But the political impotence of the anti-Castro writers does
not mean that intellectuals in general do not play an
important role; nor does the lack of a popular audience mean
that they are without resources, especially if they do have
the backing of the U.S. war and propaganda machine,
amplifying and disseminating their word throughout the
world. In order to come to reason about the debate raging
between intellectuals on the issues of human rights in Cuba
and U.S. imperialism it is important to step back and
consider the role of the intellectuals, the context and
major issues that frame the U.S.-Cuba conflict.
THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUALS
The role of the intellectuals is to clarify the major issues
and define the major threats to peace, social justice,
national independence and freedom in each historical period
as well as to identify and support the principal defenders
of the same principles. Intellectuals have a responsibility
to distinguish between the defensive measures taken by
countries and peoples under imperial attack and the
offensive methods of imperial powers bent on conquest. It is
the height of cant and hypocrisy to engage in moral
equivalences between the violence and repression of imperial
countries bent on conquest with that of Third World
countries under military and terrorist attacks. Responsible
intellectuals critically examine the political context and
analyze the relationships between imperial power and their
paid local functionaries who they describe as "dissidents" -
they do not issue moral fiats according to their dim lights
and their political imperatives.
Committed intellectuals who claim to speak with moral
authority, especially those who lay claim to being critics
of imperialism, have a political responsibility to demystify
power and state and media manipulation particularly in
relation to imperial rhetoric of human rights violations by
independent Third World states. We have in recent times seen
too many self-styled "progressive" Western intellectuals
supporting or silent on the U.S. destruction of Yugoslavia,
the ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 Serbs, gypsies and
others in Kosovo, buying into the U.S. propaganda of a
"humanitarian intervention". All the U.S. intellectuals
(Chomsky, Zinn, Wallerstein etc.) supported the
U.S.-financed violent fundamentalist uprising in Afghanistan
against the Soviet-backed secular government in
Afghanistan - under the pretext that the Soviet Union
"invaded" Afghanistan and the fundamentalist fanatics
entering the country from all over the world were the
"dissidents" defending "self-determination" - an admitted
propaganda ploy successfully executed by the boastful former
National Security Adviser, Zbig Bryzinski. Then and now
prestigious intellectuals brandish their past credentials as
"critics" of U.S. foreign policy to give credibility to
their uninformed denunciation of alleged Cuban moral
transgressions, equating Cuba's arrest of paid functionaries
of the U.S. State Department and the execution of three
terrorist kidnapers with the genocidal war crimes of U.S.
imperialism. The practitioners of moral equivalents apply a
microscope to Cuba and a telescope to U.S. crimes - which
gives them a certain acceptability among the liberal sectors
of the empire.
MORAL IMPERATIVES
AND CUBAN REALITIES:
MORALITY AS DISHONESTY
Intellectuals are divided on the U.S.-Cuba conflict:
Benedetti, Sastre, Petras, Sanchez-Vazquez and Pablo
Gonzalez Casanova and scores of others defend Cuba;
right-wing intellectuals including Vargas Llosa, Savater,
and Carlos Fuentes have predictably issued their usual
diatribes against Cuba; and a small army of otherwise
progressive intellectuals - Chomsky, Saramago, Sontag, Zinn
and Wallerstein - have joined the chorus condemning Cuba,
waving their past critical postures in an effort to
distinguish themselves from the right-wing/State Department
Cuban opponents. It is the latter "progressive" group which
has caused the greatest harm among the burgeoning
anti-imperialist movement and it is to them that these
critical remarks are directed.
Morality based on propaganda is a deadly mix - particularly
when the moral judgements come from prestigious leftist
intellectuals and the propaganda emanates from the far-right
Bush administration.
Many of the "progressive" critics of Cuba acknowledge, in
passing and in a general way, that the U.S. has been a
hostile aggressor against Cuba, and they "generously" grant
Cuba the right to self-determination - and then launch into
a series of unsubstantiated charges and misrepresentations
devoid of any special context that might serve to clarify
the issues and provide a reasoned basis for ."moral
imperatives".
It is best to begin with the most fundamental facts. The
left critics, based on U.S. State Department labeling,
denounce the Cuban government's repression of individuals,
dissidents, including journalists, owners of private
libraries and members of political parties engaged in
non-violent political activity trying to exercise their
democratic rights. What the "progressives" fail to recognize
or are unwilling to acknowledge is that those arrested were
paid functionaries of the U.S. government. According to the
Agency of International Development (AID), the principal
U.S. federal agency implementing U.S. grants and loans in
pursuit of U.S. foreign policy, under USAID's Cuba Program
( resulting from the Helms-Burton Act of 1996) AID has
channeled over $8.5 million dollars to Cuban opponents of
the Castro regime since 1997 to publish, meet, propagandize
in favor of the overthrow of the Cuban government in
co-ordination with a variety of U.S. NGO's, universities,
foundations and other front groups. (Profile of the USAID
Cuba Program - on the AID web site ). The U.S.AID program,
unlike its usual practice, does not channel payments to the
Cuban government but directly to its Cuban "dissident"
clients. The criteria for funding are clearly stated - the
recipients of payments and grants must have demonstrated a
clear commitment to U.S. directed "regime change" toward
"free markets" and "democracy" - no doubt similar to the
U.S. colonial dictatorship in Iraq. The Helms-Burton
legislation, the U.S.AID Cuba Program and their paid Cuban
functionaries, like the U.S. progressive manifesto, "
condemn Cuba's lack of freedom, jailing of innocent
dissidents, and call for a democratic change of regime in
Cuba".
Strange coincidences that require some analyses. Cuban
journalists who have received $280,000 from a Cuba Free
Press -AID front- are not dissidents they are paid
functionaries. Cuban "Human Rights" groups who receive
$775,000 from CIA front "Freedom House" are not dissidents -
particularly when their mission is to promote a "transition"
(overthrow) of the Cuban regime. The list of grants and
funding to Cuban "dissidents" (functionaries) by the U.S.
government in pursuit of the U.S. policy is long and
detailed and accessible to all the progressive moral
critics. The point is that the jailed opponents of the Cuban
government were paid functionaries of the U.S. government,
paid to implement the goals of the Helms-Burton Act in
accordance with the criteria of the U.S.AID and under the
guidance and direction of the head of the U.S. Interest
Section in Havana.
Between September 2, 2002 and March 2003 James Cason, head
of the US Interest Section, held dozens of meetings with his
Cuban "dissidents" at his home and office, providing them
with instructions and guidelines on what to write, how to
recruit, while publicly haranging against the Cuban
government in the most undiplomatic manner.
Washington's Cuban functionaries were supplied with
electronic and other communication equipment by USAID, books
and other propaganda and money to fund pro-U.S. "trade
unions" via the U.S. front, the "American Center for
International Labor Solidarity". These are not well-meaning
"dissidents" unaware of their paymaster and their role as
U.S. agents, since the USAID report states ( under the
section entitled "The US Institutional Context"), "The Cuba
Program is funded through Economic Support Fund, which is
designed to support the economic and political foreign
policy interests of the US by providing financial assistance
to allies (sic) and countries in transition to democracy".
No country in the world tolerates or labels domestic
citizens paid by and working for a foreign power to act for
its imperial interests as "dissidents". This is especially
true of the U.S. where under Title 18 ,Section 951 of the
U.S. Code , "anyone who agrees to operate within the United
States subject to the direction or control of a foreign
government or official would be subjected to criminal
prosecution and a 10 year prison sentence". Unless , of
course, they register as a paid foreign agent or are working
for the Israeli government.
The U.S. "progressive" intellectuals abdicate their
responsibilities as analysts and critics and accept at face
value the State Department characterization of the U.S. paid
functionaries as dissidents striving for "freedom".
Some defenders of the U.S. agent-dissidents claim that the
functionaries received "scandalously long sentences". Once
again empirical myopia compounds mendacious moralizing. Cuba
is on a war footing. The Bush government has declared that
Cuba is on the list of military targets subject to mass
destruction and war. And in case our moralistic
intellectuals don't know it : What Bush, Rumsfeld and the
war-mongering Zionists in the Administration say -- they do.
The total lack of seriousness in Chomsky, Zinn, Sontag,
Wallerstein's moral dictates is that they fail to
acknowledge the imminent and massive threat of a U.S. war
with weapons of mass destruction, announced in advance. This
is particularly onerous given the fact that many of Cuba's
detractors live in the U.S., read the U.S. press and are
aware of how quickly militaristic pronouncements are
followed by genocidal actions. But our moralists are not
bothered by context, by U.S. threats to Cuba immediate or
proximate, they are eager to ignore it all to demonstrate to
the State Department that they not only oppose U.S. foreign
policy but also condemn every independent country, system
and leader who opposes the U.S. In other words, Mr.
Ashcroft, when you crack down on the "apologists" for Cuban
"terror", remember that we are different, we too condemned
Cuba, we too called for a change of regime.
The critics of Cuba ignore the fact that the U.S. has a
two-pronged military-political strategy to take over Cuba
that is already operative. Washington provides asylum for
terrorist air pirates, encouraging efforts to destabilize
Cuba's tourist-based economy; it works closely with the
terrorist Cuban American Foundation engaging in attempts to
assassinate Cuban leaders. New U.S. military bases have been
established in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador
and there is an expanding concentration camp in Guantanomo -
all to facilitate an invasion. The U.S. embargo is in the
process of being tightened with the support of the
right-wing Berlusconi and Aznar regimes in Italy and Spain.
The aggressive and openly political activity of James Cason
of the Interest Section in line with his Cuban followers
among the paid functionaries/ "dissidents" is part of the
inside strategy designed to undermine Cuban loyalties to the
regime and the revolution. The inter-connection between the
two tactics and their strategic convergence is ignored by
our prestigious intellectual critics who prefer the luxury
of issuing moral imperatives about freedom everywhere for
everyone, even when a psychotic Washington puts the knife to
Cuba's throat. No thanks, Chomsky, Sontag, Wallerstein -
Cuba is justified in giving its attackers a kick in the
balls and sending them to cut sugar cane to earn an honest
living.
The death penalty for three ferry boat terrorists is harsh
treatment - but so was the threat to the lives of forty
Cuban passengers who faced death at the hands of the
hijackers. Again our moralists forgot to discuss the rash
acts of air piracy and the plots of others uncovered in
time. The moralists failed to understand why these
terrorists desperadoes are seeking illegal means to leave
Cuba.
Bush's Administration has practically eliminated the
visa program for Cuban emigrants wishing to leave. Visa
grants have declined from 9000 for the first four months of
2002 to 700 in 2003. This is a clever tactic to encourage
terrorist acts in Cuba and then denounce the harsh
sentences, evoking the chorus of 'yea' sayers in the 'Amen'
corner of the progressive U.S. and European intellectual
establishment. Is it simply ignorance which informs these
moral pronouncements against Cuba or is it something else
besides - moral blackmail? , to force their Cuban
counterparts to turn against their regime, their people or
face the opprobrium of the prestigious intellectuals - to
become further isolated and stigmatized as "apologists of
Castro".
Explicit threats by Saramago to abandon his Cuban friends
and embrace the cause of U.S. paid functionaries. Implicit
threats of no longer visiting Cuba and to boycott
conferences. Is it moral cowardice to pick up the cudgels
for the empire and pick on Cuba when it faces the threat of
mass destruction over the freedom of paid agents, subject to
prosecution by any country in the world? What is eminently
dishonest is to totally ignore the vast accomplishments of
the revolution in employment, education, health, equality,
and Cuba's heroic and principled opposition to imperial
wars - the only country to so declare - and its capacity to
resist almost 50 years of invasions. That counts for nothing
for the U.S. intellectuals - that is scandalous!! That is a
disgrace, a retreat in search of respectability after
"daring" to oppose the U.S. war along with 30 million other
people in the world. It is not time to "balance" things
out - by condemning Cuba, by calling for a regime change, by
supporting the cause of the "market oriented" Cuban
functionary-dissidents.
Let us remember the same progressive intellectuals
supported "dissidents" in Eastern Europe and Russia who were
bankrolled by Soros and the U.S. State Department. The
"dissidents" turned the country over to the Russian mafia,
life expectancy declined five years ( over 10 million
Russians died prematurely with the sacking of the national
health system), while in Eastern Europe "dissidents" closed
the shipyards of Gdansk , enrolled in NATO and provided
mercenaries for the U.S. conquest of Iraq. And never among
these current supporters of Cuban "dissidents" is there any
critical reflection on the catastrophic outcomes resulting
from their anti-communist diatribes and their manifestos in
favor of the 'dissidents' who have become the soldiers of
the U.S. Middle Eastern and Central European empire.
Our U.S. moralists never, I repeat, never, ever reflected
critically on their moral failures, past or present because,
you see, they are for "freedom everywhere", even when the
"wrong" people get into power and the "other" empire takes
over, and the millions die from curable diseases and white
slavery rings expand. The reply is always the same: "That's
not what we wanted - we were for an independent, free and
just society - it just happened that in calling for regime
change, support for dissidents, we never suspected that the
Empire would 'take it all', would become the only
superpower, and engage in colonizing the world."
The moral intellectuals must accept political responsibility
for the consequences and not hide behind abstract moral
platitudes, neither for their past complicity with empire
building nor their present scandalous pronouncements against
Cuba. They cannot claim they don't know the repercussions of
what they are saying and doing. They cannot pretend
innocence after all they we have seen and read and heard
about U.S. war plans against Cuba.
The principal author and promoter of the anti-Cuban
declaration in the United States (signed by Chomsky, Zinn
and Wallerstein) was Joanne Landy, a self-declared
"democratic socialist", and lifelong advocate of the violent
overthrow of the Cuban government - for the past 40 years.
She is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR), one of the major institutions advising the U.S.
government on imperial policies for over a half century.
Landy supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Yugoslavia
and the Albanian terrorist group, the KLA - calling publicly
for overt military support - responsible for the murder of
2000 Serbs and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands
of Serbs and others in Kosova. It is no surprise that the
statement authored by this chameleon right-wing extremist
contained no mention of Cuba's social accomplishments and
opposition to imperialism. For the record, it should be
noted, that Landy was a visceral opponent of the Chinese,
Vietnamese and other social revolutions in her climb to
positions of influence in the CFR.
For all their vaunted critical intellect, the "progressive"
intellectuals overlooked the unsavory politics of the author
who promoted the anti-Cuba diatribe.
THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUAL TODAY
Many critics of Cuba speak of "principles" as if there were
only one set of principles applicable to all situations
independent of who is involved and what are the
consequences. Asserting "principles" like "freedom" for
those involved in plotting the overthrow of the Cuban
government in complicity with the State Department would
turn Cuba into another Chile - where Allende was overthrown
by Pinochet - and lead to a reversal of the popular gains of
the revolution. There are principles that are more basic
than freedom for U.S. Cuban functionaries , that is ,
national security and popular sovereignty. There is,
particularly among the U.S. progressive left, a certain
attraction to Third World victims, those who suffer defeats
,and an aversion for successful revolutionaries. It seems
that the U.S. progressive intellectuals always find an alibi
to avoid a commitment to a revolution. For some it is the
old refrain "Stalinism" - if the state plays a major role in
the economy; or it can be mass mobilizations - that they dub
"plebicitary dictatorships", or it can be security agencies
which successfully prevent terrorist activity which they
call a "repressive police state". Living in the least
politicized nation in the world with one of the most servile
and corrupt trade union apparatus in the West, with
virtually no practical political influence outside a few
university towns, the practical intellectuals in the U.S.
have no practical knowledge or experience of the everyday
threats and violence which hangs over revolutionary
governments and activists in Latin America. Their political
conceptions, the yardsticks they pull out to condemn or
approve of any political activity, exists nowhere except in
their heads, in their congenial, progressive, university
settings where they enjoy all the privileges of capitalist
freedom and none of the risks which Third World
revolutionaries have to defend themselves against. A little
modesty, dear prestigious, critical, freedom preaching
intellectuals. Look deep inside and ask yourself if you
would like to be pirated by a Miami-based terrorist
organization. Ask yourself if you would enjoy sitting in a
café in a major tourist hotel in Havana when a deadly bomb
goes off - greetings from the terrorists taking a beer with
the President's brother, Jeb. Think about living in a
country which is on the top of the hit list of the most
violent imperial regime since Nazi Germany - and then
perhaps your moral sensibilities might awaken to the need to
temper your condemnations of Cuban security policies and
contextualize your moral fiats.
I want to conclude by establishing my own "moral
imperatives" - for the critical intellectuals.
1. The first duty of Euro-U.S. intellectuals is to
oppose their own imperial rulers set on conquering the
world.
2. The second duty is to clarify the moral issues
involved in the struggle between imperial militarists and
popular/national resistance and reject the hypocritical
posture that equates the mass terror of one with the
justified if at times excessive security constraints of the
other.
3. To establish standards of political and personal
integrity with regards to the facts and issues before making
moral judgements.
4. Resist the temptation to become a "moral hero of the
empire" by refusing to support victorious popular struggles
and revolutionary regimes which are not perfect which lack
all the freedoms available to impotent intellectuals unable
to threaten power and therefore tolerated to meet, discuss
and criticize.
5. Refuse to set themselves as Judge, Prosecutor and
Jury condemning progressives who have the courage to defend
revolutionaries. The most appalling instance is Susan Sontag
's scurrilous attack on Colombian Nobel Prize winning
novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who she accused of lacking
integrity and being an apologist of Cuban terror (sic).
Sontag made her blood libelous accusations in Bogata,
Colombia. The Colombian death squads working with the regime
and the military kill more trade unionists and journalists
than any place in the world, and do so , for far less than
being an "apologist" of the Castro regime. This is the same
Sontag who was an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S.
imperial invasion and bombing of Yugoslavia, apologist for
the fundamentalist Bosnian regime and who was a silent
witness to the killing and ethnic cleansing of Serbs and
others in Kosova. Moral integrity indeed! The precious sense
of moral superiority found among New York intellectuals
allow Sontag to finger Marquez for the death squads and feel
that she has made a great moral statement.
U.S.-European intellectuals should not confuse their own
political futility and inconsequential position with that of
their counterparts among committed Latin American
intellectuals. There is a place for constructive dialogue
and debate but never personal assaults that demean
individuals facing daily threats to their lives.
It is easy for critical intellectuals to be a "friend of
Cuba" in good times at celebrations and invited conferences
in times of lesser threats. It is much harder to be a
"friend of Cuba" when a totalitarian empire threatens the
heroic island and puts heavy hands on its defenders.
It is in times like this - of permanent wars, genocide and
military aggression, when Cuba needs the solidarity of
critical intellectuals, which they are receiving from all
over Europe and particularly Latin America. Isn't it time
that we, in the United States, with our illustrious and
prestigious progressive intellectuals with all our majestic
moral sensibilities recognize that there is a vital, heroic
revolution struggling to defend itself against the U.S.
juggernaut and that we modestly set aside our self-important
declarations, support that revolution and join the one
million Cubans celebrating May Day with their leader Fidel
Castro?
Any comments, I would like to have a conversation about this topic.