BBC to interview Cuban Five lawyer

11 December 2008


The Cuba Solidarity Campaign is delighted to announce that Leonard Weinglass, US Attorney for the Miami Five, will be live on BBC Radio 5 on Thursday 17 January 2008.

Weinglass will guest on the Simon Mayo show next Thursday at 2.15pm UK time.


Rob Miller, CSC Director said: “The Cuba Solidarity Campaign organised a very successful UK tour for Leonard Weinglass in December 2007, during which time he spoke MPs, trade unionists and addressed hundreds of people at meetings throughout the country. Leonard’s recent interview in the Guardian following this tour, and now a national interview with the BBC, will do even more to highlight the injustices of the Miami Five's case to a new and wider audience.

"CSC is committed to do everything possible to further publicise the campaign in the Britain and apply maximum pressure in the UK and the international community to ensure that these five heroes are returned to their families."


Tune in to BBC Radio 5 on Thursday 17 January at 2.15pm, or go online to:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/ to hear the show live.



 http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news.asp?ItemID=1236




See also in Great Britain and Ireland:

 http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/

 http://www.ratb.org.uk/

 http://www.cubansarecoming.org/

 http://www.cubasol-manch.org.uk/

 http://www.cymru-cuba.cjb.net/

 http://www.cubasupport.com/






"I Saw Him Full of Dignity"

Graciela Ramirez Cruz told Granma after returning from a visit with Cuban Five member Gerardo Hernandez in the Victorville, California prison

DEISY FRANCIS MEXIDOR

"What did I want to do? I wanted to take him by the hand and run out of there with him. He’s not the person to be in that horrible place," Graciela Ramirez Cruz, coordinator of the International Committee to Free the Cuban Five, told Granma.
Ramirez was still visibly moved by the experience of her recent visit to Gerardo Hernandez, one of the five Cubans imprisoned in the US since September 12, 1998 for trying to prevent terrorist attacks against their country.
What was the first thing you said when you saw him?
I was unable to say anything more than his name and give him the only hug you’re allowed when you arrive at the prison.
What was his reaction?
My visit hadn’t been possible to realize at an earlier date and it was something pending. At the same time I felt a great sadness because I felt that Adriana [Gerardo’s wife] should have been there in my place. For eight years she has been cruelly denied permission to see him. Sadness because men like him shouldn’t be in jail, not for nine years or one second.
Gerardo hugged me like a sister he hadn’t seen in a long time but knew she would eventually come to visit him.
I had him in front of me in his khaki colored uniform and full of dignity; tall and firm like a palm tree.
"You finally came!" he said with that Cuban grace that characterizes him and that they could never take away from him.
Can you describe the place where Gerardo is?
US prisons are known for their coldness, their sophisticated security systems and the grey color that prevails everywhere. Victorville doesn’t escape that description.
Near the prison is a small town surrounded by a security cordon. Empty wooden houses are fenced in.
I ask why nobody is around. They explained to me that there were escapes of a toxic substance and the town had to be evacuated. The substance is dangerous and there is fear that it would spread if the houses are destroyed. The empty houses really give a ghostly air to the surroundings.
To reach the penitentiary you have to travel on a dusty road in the middle of a kind of desert, but the prison is surrounded by mountains.
You see several huge towers with telescopic lookouts at a prudent distance, which indicates that the entrance is near. Once there one faces a fortified complex divided into different units, a sort of compact totally grey cement and steel mass surrounded by thick wires. There are no windows, which gives an even greater feeling of enclosure.
Did you give him anything? Did they let you go in with a pencil and paper?
No. The regulations at the US penitentiary system are very strict; they don’t let you take anything to the prisoner. I had to leave my personal handbag at the gate.
After the routine search where you even have to take off your shoes, the officers took us to another area —I speak in plural because accompanying me were Alicia Jrapko and Bill Hackwell, essential in these long years of battle for the Cuban Five.
There, we lined up and they marked us one by one with an identification number on one of our forearms, which was detected by way of a laser lamp.
And the place where the visits take place?
The prisoners are not allowed visits in places with any privacy, much less outside. Everything takes place in a large enclosed room with artificial lighting where you lose a sense of time.
The room has small tables and plastic chairs, also grey. Of course, you are always being watched by several officers that can reprimand or even interrupt the visit if you touch the prisoner. Other regulations impede, for example, conjugal contact or intimacy with their wives.
What did you talk about?
It’s incredible how much he knows about what’s happening in Cuba and the world. He didn’t have one complaint despite knowing how difficult his situation is. He only said "everything is normal" and asked to talk about the letters that are held up and about Adriana.
He also asked me about a boy in Las Tunas with whom he has established a special communication. He asked me to thank Maria Orquidea, a woman from Cienfuegos, for the complete transcription of each program Una luz en la oscuridad (A light in the darkness) from Radio Rebelde.
He is anxious to read the book Desde la Soledad y la Esperanza, recently released by the Captain San Luis publishing house. He asked me several times to transmit his gratitude to all the people who are helping spread the truth and working so that sooner than later justice allows them to return to their country.
What work does he do at the prison?
He told me pieces for the arms industry are given a finish there but that he had asked to be assigned to another job, one that contribute less to war, and he was transferred to the prison garbage collection.
What surprised you about Gerardo?
Everything surprised me: starting from the attention he puts on each story; how he switched from Spanish to English to dialogue with us; the depth of his analysis on the international scene; the effort he makes so that each letter arrives with something special to its destination; the constant concern about his people and the enormous capacity for affection that emanates from him in the middle of such solitude.
Gerardo also has this special ability for the right joke at the right moment, which he used at the end to take the knot out of our throats as we were leaving.
When we departed, he put his hands on his chest and said: "Thanks for everything you are doing for the Five and our people…" "Tell them I am well, and give them all a big, strong hug for me."


 http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art01.html








Over a million recover their eyesight thanks to Operation Miracle

Forty-nine ophthalmological centers, 82 surgical posts and 876 professionals are part of the program at present.

By: Luis Garcia Arango, journalism student

2008-01-12 |



JAGÜEY GRANDE, Matanzas.- Operation Miracle has made possible operations on 1,003,288 patients at 49 ophthalmological centers in 31 countries on three continents by the end of 2007. This is part of a humane effort to turn into a reality Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez’s dream of surgically operating on six million people affected with eyes problems by 2016.
The news was disclosed at a National Ophthalmological Scientific Workshop, in session at Mariscal Antonio Jose de Sucre Hospital in Jagüey, Cuba, where over 500 specialists in the field are participating.
«Cuba is one of the most advanced countries in ophthalmology,» said Dr. Reynaldo Rios, Deputy Director of Pando Ferrer Hospital. «This progress is confirmation that our country is admired by the world for its example of solidarity,» he added.
Specialists and interns discussed 300 research papers of high scientific value. Among the issues dealt with by the five committees were refractive surgery, cornea and cataracts; glaucoma, neuro ophthalmology, vitreousretina and poor sight; pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus, ocular oncology and ergophthalmology.
Medical training, healthcare management and health economics, as well as ophthalmology, and medical bioethics are some of the new technologies discussed in the sessions.
The workshop, sponsored by the faculty of ophthalmology and the Pando Ferrer Institute, also gathers directors of national centers in countries involved in the Operation Miracle program as well as the coordinators of such missions in Ecuador and Argentina.
Operation Miracle —which was created in July 2004 as part of agreements under the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Americas (ALBA)— is served by 49 ophthalmological centers, 82 surgical posts and 876 professionals.
Dr. Odalis Curbelo, director of the Santa Cruz de la Sierra center in Bolivia, conveyed her experiences in work that contributed to operations on more than 70,000 Bolivians from April 2006 to the end of 2007.
Seven thousand patients —of whom 2,510 have undergone cataracts surgery— have been operated on at the Mariscal Antonio Jose de Sucre Center inaugurated 14 months ago.


 http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/cuba/2008-01-12/over-a-million-recover-their-eyesight-thanks-to-operation-miracle/








And with That, Fidel Stepped Down

By: Pascual Serrano

Email:  digital@jrebelde.cip.cu

2008-01-10 |


Affter seventeen months since the Cuban President Fidel Castro stepped down for health reasons, people in Spain are wondering what the situation in Cuba is now; few believe that normality and institutional order reign. This does not mean that what happened —or did not happen— on the island has been something accidental or surprising; rather, it is an example of the ignorance and disinformation that the international community suffers from concerning Cuba.
For decades we have been hearing about the imminent collapse of Cuban socialism, about a popular rising against its rulers and unbearable mass desperation. However, since his illness forced Fidel Castro to delegate his responsibilities as head of state, government officials have functioned normally, the parliament has met regularly, in October two rounds of local elections took place without incident and virtually without abstention, and on January 20 legislative elections will be held.
On the other hand, in nearby Belgium —with the corporate media and analysts commenting little— the country has been without a government for months, and continues to rely on an interim administration.
In Cuba, none of the prophetic forecasts of destabilization, boatpeople crises or demonstrations on the Malecón came to pass. The obsession of some people to present a country as one without institutions has been so demented that they have ended taking the issue of whether Fidel Castro is or is not the head of state to the Spanish Supreme Court. This an act of absurd and arrogant interference can only serve to awaken understandable indignation on the other side of the Atlantic.
Cuba has witnessed impeccable institutional government. Its president delegated his responsibilities for health reasons. He has reserved himself to playing the role of temporary adviser to the degree his illness allows him. He has been substituted by First Vice-president Raúl Castro, around whom are drawn the highest-ranking government officials. On January 20 there will be parliamentary elections, in which it is known that Fidel will be a candidate, which indicates that he is interested in maintaining a role in Cuban politics – as this could be no other way. Meanwhile, thousands of community and workplace meetings have been held across the island to discuss and debate peoples’ concrete problems; these generated almost two million proposals that will be addressed by those responsible. At the end of December, ten working commissions of the parliament analyzed and debated the main economic and budgetary issues facing the country. Critical topics such as the production and distribution of food, labor efficiency, productivity and discipline, and the energy situation were approached —without Fidel Castro’s presence— in another example of political normality.
While some continue with their Cuban destabilization fantasies, the country has been able to produce half of the oil that it consumes – its historical economic nightmare. Its commercial relationship with the region is unprecedented: as demonstrated though its involvement in PetroCaribe, ALBA, international educational and healthcare missions, bilateral agreements with numerous countries, etc. In foreign policy, its annual claim against the blockade by the United States has reached the greatest support in the history of UN General Assembly votes.
Cuba has been the country most victimized by lies and deceit. They say that there is repression though no one has ever seen the police charging against demonstrators; many in the opposition live better than government ministers; it is alleged that Internet is forbidden, though it is used at no cost by free by students, teachers, doctors, journalists... While they accuse the country of being governed by a few communist dinosaurs, its senior diplomat is 44 years old; and while they say that there are no elections, people vote voluntarily, through a vote secret ballot and with a turnout of 96 percent.
Of course Cuba has many problems, uncertainties and needs for change. These relate principally to housing, transportation and the improvement of food production for the public. However, these are problems that have already been shown to be more easily solved though socialism than under capitalism. With housing, the solution is to build; while in Spain the market fails to solve this problem even though two million houses stand empty. Transportation is easier for Havana to solve; it can institute a good network of buses or trams, despite these having collapsed in market economies in cities such as Caracas or Mexico City. With food, the challenge is to begin to farm half of the country’s arable land that today lies fallow. It is true that there are also problems of inefficiency and graft, but in Cuba no one pockets millions of dollars by rezoning land, as is committed in Spain. No government minister spends 150,000 Euros on trips in private airplanes nor 183,000 on «protocol,» as did Eduardo Zaplana (as revealed by journalist Alfredo Grimaldos in his last book). To convince citizens to work efficiently in the socialist system is not easy. Under capitalism it is sufficient to confront people with starvation to motivate them to work. One of the challenges facing Cuba is to find incentive mechanisms that do not generate insulting and intolerable inequalities. That discussion has not been avoided; Raúl Castro approached it clearly in his speech this past July 26.
Those who are obsessed with overthrowing Cuban socialism and beginning the looting made a mistake over the decades by planning for Castro's absence, and they have made another mistake now since nature has distanced him from government affairs. There are so many the lies about Cuba that even the liars have begun to believe there own. The upshot is that they clearly understand nothing.

(Taken from Rebelión:  http://www.rebelion.org )






See also:

 http://www.elacm.sld.cu

 http://www.cuba-humanidad.org

 http://www.cubacoop.com

 http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/index.html

 http://18thcubacaravan.blogspot.com/

 http://www.ifconews.org

 http://www.cubainformacion.tv/

 http://www.cubanradio.cu

 http://www.antiterroristas.cu/index.php?tpl=./interface.en/design/home.tpl.html

 http://www.freethefive.org

 http://www.granma.cu/miami5/ingles/index.html