Cuba: Anarchist media arise in spite of censorship

Cuba also has many shadows. Until a few decades for example homosexuality was illegal and persecuted, fortunately this changed radically. But the persecution of communist libertarian (Anarchist) ideas and organizations, while less intense than in the past, is still ongoing. Therefore the shy rise of these media is to be welcomed and announced. 

Among these there is an irregular and so far clandestine newspaper ¡Tierra Nueva! (New Earth!), which invites to collaborate to all interested people except those who somehow live of others' work.

Anarchists fought in Cuba side by side with Castro and Che but, after the success of the Revolution, were persecuted by a regime that leaned too much in favor of the authoritarian Stalinist model. 

I can only hope that Cuba preserves the socialization of the economy while improving the grassroots participation and freedom of speech, as I believe is doing already to some extent. Not yet enough obviously.

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Spanish actor Willy Toledo moves to Cuba and speaks out again

Guillermo "Willy" Toledo has won several prizes but he is best known maybe for his compromise with popular struggles in Spain and abroad alike, as well as his blunt honesty. Recently he announced he is moving to Cuba because he feels the need to be in direct contact with the lively dynamics of Latin America. Digital Newspaper Webguerrillero reproduces today an interview[es] with him, of which I translate some small fragments:

They have always told me: "if you like Cuba so much, why don't you move there". Well, I am already in Cuba... I imagine now the chief editors and the lackeys of their masters in the newspapers' redactions squeezing their brains to see how they could discredit me and all they could muster was that one: to publish a photo of a mansion with butlers, chaffeur and swimming pool... and all the fantasized privileges that the Cuban state gives those who defend it... well, it is radical and absolutely false. 

...

I am aware that I have been vetoed [in Spain, because of his compromise with Cuba] for various jobs in TV and cinema. What dimension does this have? I can't say because, excepting all these cases that I know for sure, I will never get to know if they said: "don't give this job to Willy Toledo". I am persuaded that this happens, exactly the same that there are dozens or even hundreds of political prisoners in my country just for expressing their opinions, just for being activists of the Left, of the Revolutionary Left especially, be it in the Basque Country, in Madrid, in Andalusia, in Catalonia wherever... Recently some Catalan Anarchists were arrested just for expressing their opinions in Facebook; that is the democratic state we live in. I am, I have always been very conscious of the consequences that being active in the Left, or the "extreme left" as they say, may carry.

... I keep an eye in Spain and when they need me I will be back there. When everything explodes, because it will explode, there will be a social uprising and there will be a true frontal opposition in the streets against the criminal government ruling in the Spanish state, I will be the first one to join. 

... would not I be a well-known actor I would probably be in jail right now, in prison in Spain; that is the sensation I have, they have tried it a couple of times but I think they calculated that having me in prison is not in their interest... by the moment, because there are many young men and women in jail who never had the media repercussion that there was the two times I was arrested.

Note: he was arrested once at a protest in the Spanish Congress in solidarity against the Moroccan massacre of the Peace and Dignity Camp of Gdeim Izik, West Sahara. Then he was also arrested when participating in a General Strike picket, suffering, as many others, false accusations. 

In the case of the General Strike many comrades who were arrested that very same night were kept prisoners for months in the jails of the Spanish state where - according to the European Union, the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and local anti-torture groups - still today, in the year 2013, prisoners are brutally tortured in police stations and prisons, something that never happened in Cuba. 

Elderly US exile in Cuba officially "targetted for assassination" by Obama

Assata Shakur, 65, exiled in Cuba since 1979 and, in a case similar to that of Mumia Abu Jamal, charged with a dubious police murder, which took place in 1973 in a confusing shooting between Black Panthers and Ohio police. This old case has now been intriguingly revived with the placement of Shakur in the most wanted terrorist list of the White House, which formally allows the imperialist forces to kill her without any further reason. 

Yes, US law today allows for targeted assassination of US citizens at home or abroad, at the whim of the federal authorities who fill that list of "terrorists". 

But why now? Why such a cold, old and nearly forgotten case would be upgraded to "terrorist" category? Glen Ford at argues at BAR that the aim is to target overall the Black Liberation Movement, further criminalizing the most oppressed ethnicity of North America. However I suspect that there is another reason: to create a pretext, a casus belli for military or otherwise forceful intervention against Cuba, whose successful socialist example, where every single citizen has a home, food and free quality healthcare, is felt as a growing threat to the oligarchic rule of the increasingly class-polarized US and European societies, and also for its growing influence in general in the American continent.

Hunger strike to death in Guantanamo concentration and torture camp continues unabated

From The Independent:

Emaciated and frail, more than 100 men lie on concrete floors of freezing, solitary cells in Guantánamo, silently starving themselves to death.

Stripped of all possessions, even basics such as a sleeping mat or soap, they lie listlessly as guards periodically bang on the steel doors and shout at them to move an arm or leg to prove they are still conscious.

The notorious detention centre is in crisis, suffering a rebellion of unprecedented scale, with most of the camp on lockdown and around two-thirds of the 166 detainees on hunger strike.

This week 40 American military nurses were drafted in to try to stem a mass suicide. The last Brit inside, Shaker Aamer, has said he is prepared to strike to his death.

The US administration does its best to keep prying eyes from the unfolding tragedy but the The Independent has obtained first-hand reports.

Twice a day, the 23 most weak are taken into a room. Their wrists, arms, stomach, legs and head are strapped to a chair and repeated attempts are made to force a tube down their noses into their stomachs. It is an ugly procedure as they gag and wretch, blood dripping from their nostrils. “They won’t let us live in peace and now they won’t let us die in peace,” said detainee, Fayiz Al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti held for 11 years without charge.

Four are so ill that they lie in shackles in the hospital wing and insiders predict it is only a matter of time before one perishes.

“It is possible that I may die in here,” said Mr Aamer, 44, through his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, recently. “I hope not, but if I do die, please tell my children that I loved them above all else, but that I had to stand up for the principle that they cannot just keep holding people without a trial, especially when they have been cleared for release,” said the father of four, who remains in Camp 5 despite being approved for release more than five years ago. “Sad to say, torture and abuse continue in Guantánamo Bay and the US is throwing away yet more of its dwindling moral authority,” added Mr Stafford Smith.

The protest, which began on 6 February, has now spread through Camp 6 and Camp 5 with an estimated 100 to 130 taking part. These are not the high value detainees kept in Camp 7, the handful charged with terror offences. The hunger strikers are those who have waited a decade or more without trial, including 86 cleared for release but remain trapped because of restrictions imposed by Congress.

... continue reading at The Independent.