An interesting article on Cuba (nice antidote to the slanders the American media feed us). Some highlights:
--- The government is becoming the institutional structure for popular participation in collective decisions about action for social change. This was embodied in the Cuban Constitution, adopted in 1976 with 76% voter approval out of over 90% of eligible voters participating, and amended in 1992 by more than three-fourths of an elected National Assembly as constitutionally required. In June of this year over eight million Cubans, more than four-fifths of the adult population, signed declarations in support of their constitution.
--- Decentralization of political power, which permits and promotes popular participation in decision making, has been going on in Cuba for more than twenty years.
--- Our government has embargoed Cuba, unsuccessfully invaded it, sent agents to assassinate its leaders, and allowed US based terrorists to go to Cuba to destroy its crops, its buildings, airplanes and facilities. Under Helms-Burton it blockades Cuba by threatening and punishing foreigners who dare to do business there. By complex and unrealistic financing limitations it prevents medicine, medical supplies and equipment and nutritional food from reaching Cubans. In Latin America it threatens and punishes nations economically for trading and having normal relations with Cuba, and it rewards nations economically for harming or breaking relations with Cuba. It has lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission for politicizing the Commission on Cuba issues. It conducts a relentless propaganda campaign against Cuba, and it unconstitutionally prohibits its own citizens from traveling to Cuba to learn what is really happening there.
--- Clearly, democracy for Cubans is not a motive for our government's policy. Our government has close, friendly relations with and supports economically many monarchies and other regimes which have never held an election and would never think of holding one. Any reasonable person must wonder what the underlying motive for US-Cuba policy really is. Questions about this must be asked. After all, we're talking about eleven million people living on an island in the Caribbean. If we don't like their political system, why can't we just leave them alone and let them find there own way? Could it be that something is happening on the island that the world's only superpower is afraid of? It seems so. Could our oligarchy fear that if the Cuban revolutionary experiment continues succeeding that it's own drive for world empire will fail by regime change or perhaps even system change here? It seems so.
counterpunch.org
"In Saving Itself, Cuba Saves Others: Democracy and US Policy on Cuba"
by Tom Crumpacker |
