This Landau article was so good to read after the rigid but usual anti-Castro speech by Scott Simon on NPR this morning.

ZNet Commentary http://www.zmag.org
Fidel: father of modern Cuba February 23, 2008
By Saul Landau

Cubans, even in Miami, will admit that Fidel Castro changed their lives. Their departure to the US is testimony to some of the failings of the Cuban revolution, but while Castro remains alive, he will use his agile mind to improve the Caribbean isle's experiment in socialism.


Fidel decided to retire from almost half a century of leadership this week. I saw him last in April 1961. "The worst is over," he told the person next to me in the hallway. "The issue is developing socialism." Poking his finger into my chest, he asked about the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, and the state of poverty in the areas -- far worse than anything Cubans went through.

His worldly concerns stand in stark contrast to Cubans who daily headed north for more prosperity.

Last May in Havana, some whose fathers served in Angola, asked me about life in the United States. Those in their 20s and 30s felt frustrated. Some had the PhDs and Masters degrees and worked at jobs beneath their education and skill levels. The biggest complaint was how they spent parts of their day "resolviendo" problems of material existence.

Last year, a veterinarian who drove a taxi in Havana asked me if the United States was indeed the paradise that she and her friends imagined, that wonderful place seen in movies. Letters from friends and family who had migrated indicated that most of them liked it better. I told her that in Miami I saw Cubans cleaning toilets and mopping floors at the airport while others drove Cadillacs.

"Which one will you be?"

She shook her head. She didn't know. She would think more about leaving.

In Miami, I asked a waitress in a Cuban restaurant. You want to return to Cuba?

"Some days," she replied. "I felt less tense there, although I got anxious trying to get food, soap, shampoo. Who knows?

Cubans arrive each week in Florida, but not all the new arrivals enter Paradise. Indeed, rapid social mobility for people without U.S. college degrees -- the vast majority of immigrants -- has slowed to a crawl. According to a Brookings Institution study, in 2004 "only 15 percent of Miami's households are in that income bracket ($34,000 and $51,000)," compared to 20% nationally.

For African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians median household income in Dade County was at least $20,000 less than "white median household income." Cubans fare somewhat better. The original anti-Castristas, Batista supporters, moneyed and professional classes, came with material assets and education. Their children and grandchildren benefited from their original and accumulated wealth -- some of it stolen from the Cuban Treasury. Batista military officials hijacked planes and ships to haul stolen loot to Florida shortly before the revolutionaries seized power. Rather than charge them with theft and airplane and ship hijacking, the U.S. government welcomed them and never returned the stolen money.

Subsequent migrations brought the less affluent many of whom have joined Miami's immense underpaid class in underpaid service and retail trades. The Brookings study revealed that "wages, regardless of industry sector or occupation type, are lower in Miami-Dade than elsewhere."

A native New Yorker, driving through Miami slums, doesn't get it. The monster-sized airport, the flashy hotels and modern office buildings, the art deco Miami Beach area speak to affluence. In almost all black Liberty City and Little Haiti one doesn't see rotting tenements, the trademark of northeast cities. Nor do homeless people huddle over subway grates in mid winter ice. Yet, in 2004, Miami ranked as the city with the lowest median household income: $24,031. Newark, NJ ranked second poorest with $26,309. The national median income is $42,000.

Some 10 million people drop in and out of the Miami area during the year. Millions of others know it from the Miami Vice series, where cops and drug dealers dress in super mod outfits, or from CSI Miami in which expensive technology dominates the set. Miami tourism promoters sell beaches and weather. The celebrity-rich own homes and yachts there. The hotels thrive on conventions and cruise ships await the eager vacationers who might spend one night at a five star hotel before boring themselves into a stupor at sea.

The rich adore the place. At DeVito's restaurant in South Beach (yes, Danny's place) the entrees range from $40-60 -- not counting drinks or salads or deserts. On Valentine's Day the tables began filling early. Those who peel the onions and potatoes and dump the restaurant's garbage don't earn the price of a meal for an eight hour shift. Miami's media median household income ranks lowest in the country: $23,483.

Some of the low income earners came from Cuba. Some of the homeless are also Cubans. One Cuban woman, a "Peter Pan" kid -- a CIA-Catholic Church operation that removed thousands of Cuban kids from their parents to the United States in the early 1960s -- said she "rediscovered my Cuba." Her first return visit in 1994, during very difficult economic times, "showed me that the values on the island were better, more caring. In the United States if you're poor you have few resources. In Cuba you have some safety net and you always have family."

"Poverty in every childhood poisons the brain," Paul Krugman opened his February 18 New York Times column, quoting a report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In the United States poor kids feel like outcasts and therefore suffer "unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impact their neural development."

One understands poverty in most third world countries. Even though income disparity is wildly askew, the total wealth remains insufficient to provide each citizen with basic needs. In the United States, Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty did reduce the rate of poverty from 23 to 14%. "But progress stalled thereafter," wrote Krugman.

I think of the smug criticisms of Cuba's inability to provide sufficiently for all of its citizens while Washington poured untold hundreds of billions into wars in Vietnam and Iraq. I think of the hundreds of billions poured into ridiculous weapons systems that defended no one against anything and never will and the little uniformed kids singing the anthem outside of a Cuban school in Havana and little Cuban-American kids in Miami whose parents ort parent has yet to rise above the poverty line.

The anti-Castroites won't have Fidel to kick around any more, but the "post Castro" era features Raul Castro still in charge and few basic institutional changes in the forecast.

In Miami, I'd seen the same desperate Edward Munch Silent Scream look on Cuban faces that I'd witnessed in Havana. A woman waiting for the bus stared vacantly into space as if her lover had left her, her kids had died, and she just didn't know if she could continue. In Miami I saw a similar expression on a tired middle-aged woman serving the Cuban coffee through a window. She complained her feet hurt, she couldn't subsist on $9 an hour, and her husband only made $12 an hour as a security guard. "How can we live like this?" she asked me or herself.

"Do you think about going back?

She shrugged. A non-starter! She, like 1.5 other million Cubans had made a decision to leave and they have to live with it. Some love it, some accept it, and some regret it. All will admit that Fidel Castro changed their lives.

How will Cubans assess him now that he can't carry out the duties of office because of health? In nearly half a century Castro led Cuba from U.S. informal economic colony into nationhood -- sovereignty. Cubans defeated a 1961 U.S.-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, followed by thousands of CIA-led terrorist attacks and survived the 1962 Missile Crisis. By the 1970s, Cubans began to enjoy good health and high levels of education -- unique for most third world countries.

When Castro went to the hospital in July 2006, nothing changed in Cuban daily life. The revolution exacted a price: divided families, absence of procedural freedoms and a struggle against harsh reality since the Soviet collapse.

Castro has become an interesting literary figure in his recuperation. Castro's will, vision, and perseverance helped put Cuba on the stage of history -- despite great efforts from Washington to keep it down. For this, Castro stands as David against Goliath.

That Cubans risk their lives to leave the island for better opportunities in Florida show that Cuban socialism is struggling, but far from dead. While Castro remains alive, even bed-ridden, he will use his agile mind to improve the world's last experiment in socialism.

His successors will be chosen from a pool of capable men and women. Raul in his late 70s will not endure much longer. Look for Carlos Lage and people from his generation to assume leadership; government will become more committee-style.

Fidel was the father of modern Cuba. Think of the thousands of Cuban names etched in honor-rolls throughout the world in science, medicine, sports, art, film, literature and music. Cuban doctors saved lives in Pakistan, Vietnam, throughout Africa the Middle East and Latin America.

Under Castro, a nation without strategic resources changed history in southern Africa. In 1987-8, Cuban troops in Angola defeated the apartheid South Africa forces and thus forced the opening that allowed Nelson Mandela to become President. A Cuban tank unit fought in the 1973 Middle East war. Castro's ideological sons now serve as elected presidents of several Latin American countries America; more distant relative govern other countries -- ones the U.S. used to control.

The U.S. isolated Cuba in the 1960s. Now, Cuba relates to the rest of the hemisphere -- save for the United States. Castro also changed the United States by exporting his enemies -- to his larger enemy. In turn, Cuban-Americans in Florida, especially in the 2000 elections, changed U.S. destiny.

Saul Landau is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and a senior fellow of the Transnational Institute. His latest book is A Bush and Botox World. His latest film is We don't play golf here! And other stories of globalisation (winner of best activist video award at S.F. Video Fest).

Progreso Weekly, 21 February 2008

Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship

Well, here they come: the wannabe Rommels, the gaggle of generals, safely retired, to lay siege to Donald Rumsfeld. This week, six of them have called for the Secretary of Defense's resignation.

Well, according to my watch, they're about four years too late -- and they still don't get it.

I know that most of my readers will be tickled pink that the bemedalled boys in crew cuts are finally ready to kick Rummy in the rump, in public. But to me, it just shows me that these boys still can't shoot straight.

It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell?

It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Condoleezza?

It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who declared that Al Qaeda and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr. Cheney?

Yes, Rumsfeld is a swaggering bag of mendacious arrogance, a duplicitous chicken-hawk, yellow-bellied bully-boy and Tinker-Toy Napoleon -- but he didn't appoint himself Secretary of Defense.

Let me tell you a story about the Secretary of Defense you didn't read in the New York Times, related to me by General Jay Garner, the man our president placed in Baghdad as the US' first post-invasion viceroy.

Garner arrived in Kuwait City in March 2003 working under the mistaken notion that when George Bush called for democracy in Iraq, the President meant the Iraqis could choose their own government. Misunderstanding the President's true mission, General Garner called for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base. "It's their country," the General told me of the Iraqis. "And," he added, most ominously, "their oil."

Let's not forget: it's all about the oil. I showed Garner a 101-page plan for Iraq's economy drafted secretly by neo-cons at the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon, calling for "privatization" (i.e. the sale) of "all state assets ... especially in the oil and oil-supporting industries." The General knew of the plans and he intended to shove it where the Iraqi sun don't shine. Garner planned what he called a "Big Tent" meeting of Iraqi tribal leaders to plan elections. By helping Iraqis establish their own multi-ethnic government -- and this was back when Sunnis, Shias and Kurds were on talking terms -- knew he could get the nation on its feet peacefully before a welcomed "liberation" turned into a hated "occupation."

But, Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab.

On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, "Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired."

Rummy replaced Garner, a man with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq, with green-boots Paul Bremer, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. Bremer cancelled the Big Tent meeting of Iraqis and postponed elections for a year; then he issued 100 orders, like some tin-pot pasha, selling off Iraq's economy to U.S. and foreign operators, just as Rumsfeld's neo-con clique had desired.

Reading this, it sounds like I should applaud the six generals' call for Rumfeld's ouster. Forget it.

For a bunch of military hotshots, they sure can't shoot straight. They're wasting all their bullets on the decoy. They've gunned down the puppet instead of the puppeteers.

There's no way that Rumsfeld could have yanked General Garner from Baghdad without the word from The Bunker. Nothing moves or breathes or spits in the Bush Administration without Darth Cheney's growl of approval. And ultimately, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's chiefly in command.

Even the generals' complaint -- that Rumsfeld didn't give them enough troops -- was ultimately a decision of the cowboy from Crawford. (And by the way, the problem was not that we lacked troops -- the problem was that we lacked moral authority to occupy this nation. A million troops would not be enough -- the insurgents would just have more targets.)

President Bush is one lucky fella. I can imagine him today on the intercom with Cheney: "Well, pardner, looks like the game's up." And Cheney replies, "Hey, just hang the Rumsfeld dummy out the window until he's taken all their ammo."

When Bush and Cheney read about the call for Rumsfeld's resignation today, I can just hear George saying to Dick, "Mission Accomplished."

Generals, let me give you a bit of advice about choosing a target: It's the President, stupid.


**********
Read more about the untold story of General Garner and the secret war plans in ARMED MADHOUSE, by Greg Palast, to be released June 6 (US) and July 6 (UK). View Palast's interview with Garner for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com

Former Head Of Star Wars Program Says Cheney Main 9/11 Suspect

Former Head Of Star Wars Program Says Cheney Main 9/11 Suspect
Official version of events a conspiracy theory, says drills were cover for attacks

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | April 4 2006

The former head of the Star Wars missile defense program under Presidents Ford and Carter has gone public to say that the official version of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory and his main suspect for the architect of the attack is Vice President Dick Cheney.

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President's Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country's foremost experts on National Security.

Bowman worked secretly for the US government on the Star Wars project and was the first to coin the very term in a 1977 secret memo. After Bowman realized that the program was only ever intended to be used as an aggressive and not defensive tool, as part of a plan to initiate a nuclear war with the Soviets, he left the program and campaigned against it.

In an interview with The Alex Jones Show aired nationally on the GCN Radio Network, Bowman (pictured below) stated that at the bare minimum if Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were involved in 9/11 then the government stood down and allowed the attacks to happen. He said it is plausible that the entire chain of military command were unaware of what was taking place and were used as tools by the people pulling the strings behind the attack.

Bowman outlined how the drills on the morning of 9/11 that simulated planes crashing into buildings on the east coast were used as a cover to dupe unwitting air defense personnel into not responding quickly enough to stop the attack.

"The exercises that went on that morning simulating the exact kind of thing that was happening so confused the people in the FAA and NORAD....that they didn't they didn't know what was real and what was part of the exercise," said Bowman

"I think the people who planned and carried out those exercises, they're the ones that should be the object of investigation."

Asked if he could name a prime suspect who was the likely architect behind the attacks, Bowman stated, "If I had to narrow it down to one person....I think my prime suspect would be Dick Cheney."

Bowman said that privately his military fighter pilot peers and colleagues did not disagree with his sentiments about the real story behind 9/11.

Bowman agreed that the US was in danger of slipping into a dictatorship and stated, "I think there's been nothing closer to fascism than what we've seen lately from this government."

Bowman slammed the Patriot Act as having, "Done more to destroy the rights of Americans than all of our enemies combined."

Bowman trashed the 9/11 Commission as a politically motivated cover-up with abounding conflicts of interest, charging, "The 9/11 Commission omitted anything that might be the least bit suspicious or embarrassing or in any way detract from the official conspiracy so it was a total whitewash."

"There needs to be a true investigation, not the kind of sham investigations we have had with the 9/11 omission and all the rest of that junk," said Bowman.

Asked if the perpetrators of 9/11 were preparing to stage another false-flag attack to reinvigorate their agenda Bowman agreed that, "I can see that and I hope they can't pull it off, I hope they are prevented from pulling it off but I know darn good and well they'd like to have another one."

A mainstay of the attack pieces against Charlie Sheen have been that he is not credible enough to speak on the topic of 9/11. These charges are ridiculed by the fact that Sheen is an expert on 9/11 who spends hours a day meticulously researching the topic, something that the attack dogs have failed to do, aiming their comments solely at Sheen's personal life and ignoring his invitation to challenge him on the facts.

In addition, from the very start we have put forth eminently credible individuals only for them to be ignored by the establishment media. Physics Professors, former White House advisors and CIA analysts, the father of Reaganomics, German Defense Ministers and Bush's former Secretary of the Treasury, have all gone public on 9/11 but have been uniformly ignored by the majority of the establishment press.

Will Robert Bowman also be blackballed as the mainstream continue to misrepresent the 9/11 truth movement as an occupation of the fringe minority?

letter to Pinelands Commission

To: Betty Wilson, Chair of the NJ Pinelands Commission
March 24,2006

Dear Betty,

My husband and I attended the informational meeting held in Stafford (3/21) by the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, Save Barnegat Bay and OC Sierra Club.

In 1965 my husband and I moved to this area after reading about the Pinebarrens and the small towns of Southern New Jersey. Two years later we moved into a log cabin (c.1934) in a wooded area off Pancoast Rd., Warren Grove and were able to buy the cabin and surrounding 13 acres in the 1980's. We have naturally been very concerned with the rampant development in Ocean County, which has speeded up exponentially in the last twenty years. This all seems so far from the original Pinelands Act and work of the Pinelands Commission in agreement with the Townships. The development in Stafford has been especially and most crudely commercial, without any feeling or regard for the natural integrity of the area. Here in Warren Grove we experience the continuing degradation of the wildlife - flora and fauna - that as a Pinelands Village it was meant to protect. The wildflowers and native plants that existed in profusion along roadsides, fields and our streams have vanished from most of the area. The snakes, and many small mammals that were common, are now rare. The bird population has also shifted.

Development in this whole area west of the Parkway, already out of control, should be capped. The proposed development in the Stafford landfill area would not only eliminate the wildlife in that area, it would be the death of Warren Grove. One house in there and there will be no stopping.

I urge you and the Pinelands Commission not to allow any housing in the Stafford landfill and business park area.

Sincerely,

Jean Vogrin

save Stafford

STOP RAMPANT
OVERDEVELOPMENT
in Stafford Township !!!

You are invited to attend a
Citizens’ Rally & Information Session


Tuesday, MARCH 21, 2006
@ 7:00 PM

At the new
Holiday Inn
151 Rt. 72 East

Come exchange your views and learn about:

_ The Huge Development planned for the Stafford Landfill, just west of GSP and just south of Route 72. Learn about the proposed 500 + homes and 680,000 sq. ft. of commercial/retail/office space; how it will diminish your quality of life; and what you can do.

_Rampant Overdevelopment throughout Stafford. Learn what further overdevelopment is proposed and how you can reduce it. Today’s population = 24,000. Projected 2025 population = 30,000. Learn about Stafford’s proposed town “center”, and the “hamlet” and golf course proposed for Mayetta. And more.

LEARN WHAT YOU CAN DO - MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

Event sponsored by Save Barnegat Bay, Pinelands Preservation Alliance, and the Sierra Club.
Need a babysitter? We’ll have one there, in the same room.

MUCH MORE at www.savebarnegatbay.org
Questions: email or phone 732-830-3600

Please distribute copies of this flyer. It can also be downloaded from www.savebarnegatbay.org

Stacy

Don't forget Stacy's pic. She was a real hero. If she hadn't stood up at the first meeting, it would have appeared that no one supported Lily and the second meeting might never have been held.

  

teacher- Lily McBeth (see below)

  

Lily McBeth, teacher now rehired by Eagleswood Board

Last night Louise (below) and I went to an Eagleswood Bd. of Ed meeting to support our tai chi teacher who has two small children in the school and was the only one to speak out at a previous meeting in support of their decision to rehire a substitute teacher who is now transgendered. There were ads in the local papers to alert parents to come out and defend their children against this atrocity. It turned out that the ad backfired -- more came who supported the teacher including several past students and parents of students. Everyone who got up to speak spoke with real feeling but emotionally in control. The board had given strict limitations as to religious content and insulting speech besides there were three very impressive looking state troopers posted at the exits. They also had another speaker first, a teacher who gave a report on the schools just completed anti bullying campaign. Really set the tone. The place was full of TV cameras and reporters. It was amazing and fascinating. I heard on the radio this morning that the Board stood by it's original decision!

It seemed as if the main group of objecting parents were from a specific church. The all expressed a fear that their children would be "confused" if they heard about it or recognized the teacher from the past and this might have some damaging effect on their lives. I spoke to one father who claimed his constitutional rights were being denied and his wife who said she would keep her child out of school if the teacher were teaching his class. I suggested that young children are open and usually adapt if their parents are calm about the issue. Learning tolerance is like learning a language -- much more effective if the student is young. By high school, it's often too late.

J