[NYTr] Bush Strategy: Strangle the Cuban Family

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles


Bush Strategy: Strangle the Cuban Family

By Roberto Perez Betancourt
Oct 25, 2007

The continuous tightening of the economical, commercial and 
financial blockade of Cuba, by American President George W. Bush, which 
has been the policy of the American governments for over 50 years, have 
failed in their main goal of destroying the Cuban Revolution, but their 
murdering effects are still felt by Cuban families.

The Bush administration just added new plans and multimillion dollar 
budgets to the already tight restrictions, a practice implemented as 
far back as 1959, which will be used to destabilize the small island 
nation and to pay mercenaries that work in and out of Cuba, as well as 
to chase away both Americans and Cuban-Americans from their wishes of 
travelling to the island.

Reaching a peak in their meddling with Cuban affairs, Bush's plan 
excluded cousins, uncles, and other relatives that have always been 
considered as such in the concept of family, and he went even further 
by limiting the trips of parents, grandparents and children to the 
island to once every three years, having applied previously for a 
monetary restricted travel permit.

Remittances from emigrants, to this very exclusive concept of family 
members, are limited to 300 USD every three months, while other 
relatives and friends are not allowed to send any kind of aid to Cuban 
people.

As a direct result of such arbitrary measures, Cuban-American trips to 
the island decreased by 50 percent, and the American trips, those who 
were authorized before, by 45 percent, according to official reports.

The Aid for Democracy Group (ADG), a monstrosity created by Bush's 
government to carry out actions to overthrow the Cuban Revolution, has 
been one of the most favored with millions of taxpayers? dollars, while 
the bulk of it stays in the pockets of the Cuban-American mafia groups 
which remain active in the south of Florida.

Some other money is used to finance radio and TV broadcastings, paying 
shysters payrolls, those in charge of defaming and spreading their 
venom through various mass media outlets; and also to supply small 
groups in Cuba that take orders from the US Interest Section, under the 
euphemistic screen of ?political dissidents?

It is right to point out that the donations that the ADG receives are 
funnelled through USAID, with a spending budget of 15 million US 
dollars for their so called ?aid for Cuba?

The ADG, created in 1994 to provide ?logistical back-up? for ?Cuban 
dissidents and their families?, has given them food, medicine, money 
and especially lots of counterrevolutionary propaganda, hundreds of 
short-wave radios, openly declared on May 13, 2005 by the Miami Herald, 
in its digital version. Several other institutions were created to 
profit from the extra 29 million dollars granted this year by Bush to 
destabilize Cuba.

Obviously, the counterrevolution ?industry? is still profitable for 
sponsors, executors and spokespeople for the diverse actions against 
the island, from classical sabotage to the traffic of influence in the 
US lobbies and other nations? parliaments, as well as executives of the 
companies that have submitted to the extraterritorial laws that forbid 
relations with the island.

The overwhelming response of the international community to such 
perfidy has been a strong yearly condemnation of the murderous blockade 
against Cuba in the UN Assembly.

No matter how hard they try to strangle Cuban families, in spite of the 
deep wounds that this hostile policy is inflicting on the Cuban people, 
this very same people has shown its true vocation for freedom and will 
not lower its sovereign banner, which was raised for eternity on 
January the First, 1959.