“Detained" Computers Released by US Authorities

Confiscated computer being returned

“It’s difficult for even the US government to enforce the blockade against us, since they know that we are acting on the basis of our moral principles” Rev. Thomas Smith

Responding to both local and international pressure US officials have returned the 32 computers that had been seized at the US - Mexico boarder on July 3. The caravanistas, returning from an eight day visit to Cuba, were handed the confiscated machines as they were being processed at the Hidalgo boarder crossing.

The Caravanistas Blog reports that the computers were then hand-carried across the International Bridge from Hidalgo, Texas into Reynosa, Mexico from where they will be forwarded to Cuba which means that every item of the nearly 100 tons of humanitarian aid collected by the caravan from all across the US will in fact be donated to Cuba.

> More pix

Cuba si computers no

Claiming to be the land of the free is one thing, delivering on it clearly another. The damage done to the US’s self-proclaimed standards, by the Bush régime, is all too evident. Contested claims of freedom notwithstanding the brave are certainly not absent. In challenging the absurd US law banning the travel to Cuba without a license, the caravanistas (and the members of the Venceremos Brigade) are defending a tradition of resistance to tyranny long thought lost to myth.

The caravanistas, ranging in age from 8 to 86, and include Irish, British, German, and Canadian citizens as well as US citizens; exemplify a proud tradition. "As an American,” states the Rev. Thomas E. Smith “I'm always eager to remind Americans of their constitutional rights and of the commitment to the principles of freedom and justice”.

Smith, a Baptist minister from Pittsburgh, insists that his government has used the Cuban Revolution as an excuse to violate the themes of his country's own Revolution. Smith is no stranger to the resistance struggle having been involved with IFCO since his seminary days in the late 1970s, when the organization was fighting the Ku Klux Klan in the Carolinas.

Cuba Five to the fore

On arrival in Cuba contingent leader, Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., himself a victim of US terrorism reiterated the caravanistas support for the five imprisoned Cuban anti- terror fighters which matches the support from a summit of Latin American and Caribbean Parliamentarians meeting in Panama. A statement, issued by the legislators condemned the arbitrary nature of the legal process against the five ‘virtual hostages’.

Participants at the Panama gathering announced several actions to promote the case of the Cuban Five and to confront the US government’s campaign to distort the facts surrounding the case. The statement also notes that the US courts and government are guilty of violating the most elemental rights of the Cuban Five by convicting them of charges that were never proven and then imposing totally disproportionate sentences.

In Cuba the fourth meeting of the Assembly of the Caribbean Peoples has also thrown its weight behind the campaign. The gathering, comprising social and political organizations, farmers, trade unions, workers, women, students, young people, artists, intellectuals, as well as environmental, community, solidarity, and non-governmental organizations from 20 countries in the region, also called for the cessation of the unilateral and arbitrary measures, against Cuba, describing the blockade as a violation of international rights and the UN Charter.

Leonard Weinglass on the Cuban Five

> Pastors for Peace Tour Central Cuba

Humanitarian Goods Seized - Take Action Now!

Busted at the Boarder

Over night word has been received that the Pastors for Peace Caravan, which challenges the U.S. blockade of Cuba on an annual basis, has been stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Pastors for Peace buses are carrying medicines and other materials to show their solidarity with the people of Cuba.

Rev. Thomas Smith, Pastors for Peace spokesperson, told ANSWER, "We've had 31 computers seized by the Customs and Border Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico border. These computers were destined for classrooms, clinic and hospitals in Cuba. These are 31 classrooms, clinics and hospitals that now will not have the opportunity to have computers." Smith vowed to "maintain a demonstration until we get the computers back" and called upon all opponents of the U.S. blockade to take a moment to protest this outrageous and cruel confiscation of humanitarian materials by contacting the following:

1] The US representatives to New Zealand

The Embassy - Wellington

Phone: 04) 462 6000 Fax: 04) 499 0490
Email: wellington.arc@state.gov

The Consulate General – Auckland

Phone: 09) 303 2724 Fax: 09) 366 0870
Email: aucklandacs@state.gov

2] G. W. Bush.
Email:president@whitehouse.gov

3] The Border Patrol, under the Department of Homeland Security, which can be reached at +877-227-5511

4] The Office of Foreign Assets Control which can be reached at + 1-800-540-6322 or ofac_feedback@do.treas.gov

In your phone calls and emails demand the immediate release of all items belonging to the Pastors for Peace Caravan, which have been seized at the U.S.-Mexico border. Let them know that you stand with the Caravan members who are currently protesting at the border, that you oppose the blockade of Cuba.

Take action right now!

More info:
*Pacific Free Press
*19th US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan
*Journey to Cuba with the Pasters
*"Cuba si, bloqueo no"

Blockade Busters

The Caravanistas

Every (northern) summer patriot’s from across North America begin heading south and 2008 is no exception.

Pastors for Peace (the global outreach of the Interreligious Foundation for Communities Organizations), travels to Cuba every year, refusing to accept a license from the U.S. Treasury Department, risking fines, and jail, not just to deliver aid but to break the decades long blockade designed to crush the sovereignty of the Cuban people.

The caravan which is travelling on 15 separate routes, stopping for community meetings along the way, gathering caravanistas and donations, converging on the Texas/Mexico border, to commit civil disobedience, breaking the U.S. Blockade, continuing to the port of Tampico Mexico, where the Mexican dock worker donate their labor loading the donations onto the Cuban ships while the caravanistas fly off to Cuba.

This years Caravan, coincides with the introduction in July 1st of new state regulations in Florida which increase the cost of services and make contacts between national residents in the US nation and relatives in Cuba more difficult.

The new sanctions increase control on trips to Cuba, already limited in 2004 by current US President George W. Bush, and stipulate that agencies located in Florida will have to deposit bonds of up to US $250,000 as a licensing requirement, pay a registration fee of $2,500 and regularly inform the state government on the volume of their business, the number of passengers and the merchandise sent to Cuba

The American Civil Liberties Union has stated that the law ignores the separation between the State’s powers and the federal government, and announced it could challenge its implementation before court.

Among others challenging the Bush regimes draconian laws are the Che Guevara Brigade from Canada and the US Venceremos Brigade.

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Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba 2006 -

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Returning Venceremos Brigadistas 2007

Checkout

> The 26th Southern Cross Brigade (2008-2009)

> The Pastors for Peace Caravan Blog

Allende Keeps Calling for Unity

"Workers of my fatherland, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this critical and bitter moment where treason is attempting to interfere. You should know that sooner or later the greater public paths will be walked upon by the free man to build a better society.

"Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

"These are my last words. Knowing that the sacrifice will not be in vain, I am sure that at least there will be moral sanction that will condemn the crime, the cowardice and the treason."

The last words of President Salvador Allende

September 11, 1973

Thursday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of former Chilean President Salvador Allende (1908-1973)

Allende, founder of the Socialist Party of Chile, dedicated his life to the struggle for the wellbeing of his people, first as a medical doctor and later as a senator and finally as president of the Popular Unity Government.

His exemplary attitude took him to the nation’s highest office, where he died on September 11, 1973, during the coup perpetrated by traitors backed by Washington.

A Predecessor

Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon notes that it’s the example of sacrifice and altruism by men like Allende that underpins Latina America’s current resurgence.

In an article titled "Salvador on my Memory," published in the Punto Final magazine's special edition on marking Allende's centennial, Alarcon states that “Latin America is making a comeback, shrugging off exploitation and the vassalage it has suffered for centuries."

Allende was a forerunner. And like all those ahead of the times, he faced many who misunderstood, criticized and wronged him, yet they could not touch his determination and conviction.

He considered the so-called "Chilean road to socialism" realizable, although he knew, exactly as he denounced thousands of times, that U.S. imperialism and its local allies would not rest in their efforts to derail the process of change they recognized as dangerous and contagious.

Allende was not a utopian or a dreamer. He was a revolutionary entirely committed to the cause of the working class in Chile, to which he devoted and sacrificed his heroic life.

In a bipolar world, in the middle of the Cold War, a broad sector of the Chilean people, the political parties of the left, trade unions, student and youth organizations, the marginalized Mapuche people and some dignified and law-abiding officers within the armed forces, joined Allende in the difficult and risky struggle to transform Chile, within a regional context which included only the Cuban Revolution as an unconditional, trustworthy ally.

Who killed him? It wasn’t Pinochet alone

Nixon, Kissinger and the Central Intelligence Agency have the martyred president’s blood on their hands, as do ITT and other U.S. multi-national corporations. They, all of them, planned and carried out the cunning, fascist September 11, 1973 coup against the Popular Unity government.

With these events began the dark days in Chile and South America of Operation Condor which left thousands dead and disappeared. The coup against Allende was needed in order to implement the sinister Plan Condor, extended across Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, where U.S.- sponsored military dictatorships were imposed.

Re-establishing full diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba was the first foreign policy measure taken by the Popular Unity government, breaking the ironclad blockade of U.S. imperialism and setting the precedent subsequently followed by other Latin American countries which re-established relations with Cuba throughout the 1970’s and 80’s.

Salvador Allende’s solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and his genuine friendship with Fidel characterized the life and work of this exceptional man who, as the years passed, increasingly became a point of reference and an example, someone who was able to see, perhaps prematurely, new and unexplored roads which would enrich and diversify the paths taken by the popular struggle within the historic context of different countries.

Sources (1) (2)

> Allende and his ideas in PowerPoint
> Allende's Government Programme
> Allende’s Last Battle – Fidel
> Chronology of a Junta - 1973 -1989

Reflection by Fidel:
> Salvador Allende: his example lives on (added July 1)

Colombo Declaration: End US Blockade on Cuba

Asia-Pacific Group Demands US End Blockade on Cuba

Nearly 400 participants from 20 countries at the Fourth Asia-Pacific Meeting in Solidarity with Cuba approved the Colombo Declaration in support of the island’s people.

The statement demands “an immediate end to the US economic, financial, and commercial blockade against Cuba."

Delegates from both North and South Korea joined those from India, Laos, Nepal, Australia and New Zealand amongst others, to analyse the achievements of Cuba's revolution in the past 50 years, and the challenges it faces for the future. A Commission on the media and mass communication identified an interesting dichotomy in the demonising approach to international relations of the capitalist countries, compared to the humanising approach of Cuba, whose medical and educational diplomacy has benefitted so many in this region

In his closing speech, S. Nagendra, who headed the organizing committee, said the solidarity event showed that Asia and Oceania, with two-thirds of the world population, support Cuba.

The Colombo Declaration also strongly rejects the unjust imprisonment of the Cuban Five in the US and demands "their immediate release." It notes that the Cubans, who gathered information on terrorist groups operating from US territory against Cuba, were convicted of “false charges” at their 2001 Miami trial.

The Canadian Peace Congress has also added its voice to those condemning the decision of the US Court. In a statement issued June 10 the Congress said that the Court ruling “is a continuation in the 21st century of US imperialism’s cold-war hostility towards the Cuban people for daring to uphold their sovereignty and their right to the economic and political system of their choice”.

The Mythical Cuban-Chinese Oil Connection

Meanwhile back in US disinformation as policy continues to be the modus operandi of the Bush regime. Vice-President Cheney recently told a meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that ``oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We're not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government”.

“Even the communists ”. Cheney contended, “ have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply”. It just so happens however that, as with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi- Al-Qaeda –9/11 links it’s just not true. And if it were true – so what? Cuba, like any other nation, has the right to develop its natural resources whether on land or as part of its exclusive economic zone.

Cheney’s out burst flags perhaps the real objectives in the reestablishment of the US fourth fleet.

Hasta Siempre - Comandante Che Guevara

Ernesto "Che" Guevara June 14, 1928 - October 9, 1967



> A brief personal look at Ché Guevara
> Ché in 1959
> International event in honor of Che’s 80th birthday
> Message for Che’s 80th
> seremos como el Ché
> Che, Beyond the Manual and T-shirt