[lbo-talk] Cuba petition

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 2:24 PM -0400 4/15/03, Nathan Newman wrote:
>  >So what if dissident groups in Cuba get money from a foreign power.
>>So did the CPUSA. Did that justify McCarthyism?
>
>-Receiving money from a foreign power makes you subordinate to the
>-said foreign power.
>
>That may be true, although not receiving the money or help often 
>makes you subordinate to your own government.  It's often a bad set 
>of options and I have little criticism of the ANC for accepting help 
>from any foreign governments in their struggle against Apartheid. 
>When you are fighting your own government, even non-violently, 
>getting the resources to do so is often very hard since the local 
>elite has most resources.  "Outside money" is often needed-- whether 
>its unions helping out local unions, "outside agitators" being sent 
>into the civil rights movement, and so on.

"Dissidents" anywhere will never get the same quantity and quality of 
resources as those who are in power.  That alone does not justify 
receipt of donations from foreign powers.  To the degree that you are 
indebted to foreign powers, you lose legitimacy in the eyes of people 
of your own country.  What "petition" might the "democratic left" 
come up with if it were the case that the Workers World Party were 
being funded by pachinko money generously donated by North Koreans in 
Japan?  :->  The case is worse when Cuban "dissidents" get financed 
by the US government, as it is committed to the destruction of many 
gains made by Cuban socialists, with an eye to reducing the Cuban 
people to wage slaves.

At 2:24 PM -0400 4/15/03, Nathan Newman wrote:
>  >To repeat, any "democratic left" petition critical of the Cuban
>>government's harsh sentencing of Cuban "dissidents" should criticize
>>US funding of the said dissidents, as it is not good for Cuba, the
>>"dissidents" in question, and the USA.
>
>I'll happily condemn it generally in regards to US funding but not 
>in this petition, since it would imply that the repression against 
>the activists was somehow justified because they received outside 
>money.  They are two different issues and one has little to do with 
>the other.

I don't think that US funding in itself justifies the Cuban state 
sentencing the US-funded dissidents to three to twenty seven years in 
prison.  There is no evidence that the dissidents in question were 
using money to purchase arms, manufacture bombs, etc.  Nor were they 
sabotaging and crippling any important Cuban industry and 
destabilizing the entire national economy, as rich Venezuelan 
Chavez-haters did.  The Cuban state, however, is entitled to making 
it illegal to for Cuban "dissidents" to accept money from the USG 
secretly.  What may be appropriate the appropriate punishment for 
those who violate such prohibition?  Not sentencing the criminals to 
long terms in prison.  Appropriate punishment in this case appears to 
me to be to expose their funding sources publicly, confiscate their 
undeclared and untaxed incomes, and leave them otherwise unmolested, 
i.e. trust the Cuban people to make whatever judgments they may about 
US-funded "dissidents."
-- 
Yoshie

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