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Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 14:15:07 -0400 (EDT)
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Subject: [CubaNews] NY Transfer's RHC News Update-06 August 2001
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 06 August 2001
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*SUMMITS WILL HAVE TO MOVE TO SPACE TO AVOID PROTESTS - FIDEL
*UN FAO DEPLORES CUT IN AID TO FIGHT HUNGER
*CUBA, ITALY SIGN ACCORD TO RESTORE HAVANA'S HISTORIC BUILDINGS
*CUBAN SCIENTIST WARNS OF DESERTIFICATION IN LATIN AMERICA
*CUBAN COMPLETES 33,000 HOURS OF VOLUNTARY LABOR
*U.S. PROFESSOR TO GIVE COURSE ON HEMINGWAY IN HAVANA
*HIROSHIMA COMMEMORATES 56th ANNIVERSARY OF US ATOMIC BOMBING OF JAPAN
*SLAVE TRADE IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY - BEN BELLA
*AFTER GENOA, ITALY RELUCTANT TO HOST WORLD FOOD SUMMIT IN ROME
Viewpoint:
MULTINATIONAL CUBAN DELEGATION TO ATTEND WORLD YOUTH FESTIVAL
.
*SUMMITS WILL HAVE TO MOVE TO SPACE TO AVOID PROTESTS - FIDEL
Havana, August 6 (RHC)--Cuban President Fidel Castro has asserted that rich
nations will have to hold their summits on an orbiting space station to
avoid protests. Speaking Sunday in Havana to the 750 youths forming the
Cuban delegation to this week's World Youth Festival in Algeria, the Cuban
leader said the world is already destabilized and that hundreds of thousands
are going to protest with increasingly less fear and more audacity.
He said hundreds of thousands are recognizing that imperialism and the free
market neo-liberal trend are carrying humanity to the brink of extinction.
President Castro ridiculed plans to hold the next G8 Summit in 2002 in a
small town in the mountains of Canada.
The Cuban leader called on the delegation to contribute their grain of sand
to unmask the lies and hypocrisy and reveal the truth. In reference to the
festival site in Algeria, the leader of the Cuban Revolution said that
Africa, with a legacy of centuries of injustice, exploitation and crimes, is
the first region where humanity should begin to find solutions to the
world's problems -- the region that is in most need of solidarity.
President Castro also made reference to the five Cuban patriots wrongfully
convicted in Miami of spying against the US government, stating that this is
another injustice that will eventually be recognized as such, and that this
recognition will come sooner rather than later.
*UN FAO DEPLORES CUT IN AID TO FIGHT HUNGER
Havana, August 6 (RHC)--In Havana, the director general of the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, has deplored the
reduction in international aid to fight hunger. In statements to the local
and foreign press Monday in the Cuban capital, following his arrival here
Sunday, Diouf said the international community has reduced its aid to fight
hunger by 15 percent between 1990 and 1999.
He also criticized the 40 percent reduction in loans to fight hunger made by
international financial institutions like the World Bank. The UN official is
on a tour to promote participation from this region at the upcoming World
Food Summit tentatively to be held in Rome.
Following his 2-day visit to Cuba he will travel to Costa Rica, Panama,
Colombia and Venezuela, among other countries. Diouf called Cuba a bastion
of the work carried out by the FAO, noting that the island is cooperating
with other Third World nations in the war against poverty with the transfer
of technology in the agricultural, pharmaceutical and public health sectors.
*CUBA, ITALY SIGN ACCORD TO RESTORE HAVANA'S HISTORIC BUILDINGS
Havana, August 6 (RHC)--An accord between Cuba and representatives of the
Italian province of Lombardy will make possible restoration of a number of
historic buildings in Havana. The agreement was signed by Alessandro Moneta
from Italy and Havana's city historian Eusebio Leal.
The buildings slated for restoration are currently protected by UNESCO as
part of humanity's heritage. Roberto Formigoni, the governor of Lombardy,
explained to the press that the restoration project was part of an overall
economic package that his province was offering Havana.
*CUBAN SCIENTIST WARNS OF DESERTIFICATION IN LATIN AMERICA
Guantanamo, August 6 (RHC)--A Cuban scientist has spoken before the
European Union on the destructive effects of desertification on Latin
America.
Antonio Rodriguez who is a Doctor of Sciences and also the representative of
the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment in the state of
Guant�namo, announced that a full 300 million hectares of degraded soil
exists in the region, with the fertility of the soil decreasing steadily. He
said that Cuba is seeking to convert the semi-desert area in the south of
his province to a regional model of sustainable development. He added that a
third of all land in the Americas is in danger of becoming desert from over
exploitation and abuse.
The Guantanamo project has been approved by the EU and will begin in the
early part of next year. It is expected to substantially increase food
production as well as provide jobs for many of the 30,000 residents in the
area, which has one of the most fragile ecosystems of the Cuban coastal
archipelago.
More than a sixth of Cuba is either partially or totally uncultivable. The
island is the first country in Latin America to receive the United Nations
prize for the preservation of arid land.
*CUBAN COMPLETES 33,000 HOURS OF VOLUNTARY LABOR
Havana, August 6 (RHC)--Cuba's daily newspaper of record, Granma, Monday
congratulated Antonio Morales for completing 33,000 hours of voluntary labor
since 1975.
For the last 26 years the tobacco worker has offered his services as a bus
and truck driver to an estimated four million Cuban passengers -- and this
in spite of the fact that he had to take off two years to complete military
service in Africa.
Morales is pictured by Granma wearing so many medals on his guayabera shirt
that it covers the entire front. When asked when he planned to retire from
working for free, he replied that he will keep going as long as his health
holds out.
*U.S. PROFESSOR TO GIVE COURSE ON HEMINGWAY IN HAVANA
Havana, August 6 (RHC)--The Jos� Mart� International Institute in Havana
will be holding a summer course on the writings of Ernest Hemingway.
Organized by the Hemingway Faculty of the Institute, which specializes in
journalism, the classes will include thirty hours of conferences given by
U.S. professor Douglas LaPrade from the University of Illinois. He will
lecture in Spanish.
LaPrade, one of the foremost experts on Hemingway in the United States,
taught North American literature for eight years at the University of
Barcelona in Spain. His course is titled "Hemingway and Journalism" and will
explore the writer's work as a journalist.
*HIROSHIMA COMMEMORATES 56th ANNIVERSARY OF US ATOMIC BOMBING OF JAPAN
Tokyo, August 6 (RHC)--More than 50,000 people in Hiroshima Monday
participated in commemorations of the 56th anniversary of the US
government's launching of an atomic bomb over the city.
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba stated during the ceremony that the end of
the century of war has not automatically placed us on the path of peace and
humanity, deploring what he called efforts to extend battlefields to space,
an allusion to Washington's Star Wars Program.
A new list of the bomb's victims was presented, adding the 4,757 people who
died in the past 12 months as a result of the fallout, bringing to 221,893
the total number of victims. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
asserted that Japan will remain in the vanguard of the world movement in
favor of disarmament, but several pacifist organizations accused Tokyo of
not demonstrating sufficient firmness regarding Washington's threat to
abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Seven associations of atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima also called on
Koizumi to refrain from visiting the Yasukuni Temple next August 15th,
dedicated to the 2.5 million Japanese soldiers killed in diverse armed
conflicts initiated by Japan since the middle of the 19th century.
Since 1979, the Temple has also honored seven Japanese war criminals
condemned by Tokyo's International Tribunal. Both China and South Korea
strongly oppose the planned visit, insisting that it would imply the prime
minister's acceptance of Japan's ultra-nationalist imperial past.
*SLAVE TRADE IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY - BEN BELLA
Geneva, August 6 (RHC)--Former Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella has
called on western nations to recognize that the slave trade as a crime
against humanity. At a press conference Monday in Geneva amid negotiations
on the final document to be adopted at the upcoming International Conference
on Racism in Durban, South Africa, Ben Bella denounced what he called the
bloodletting of the human and material resources suffered by the African
continent.
He added that impunity for these crimes continues to atrociously corrode the
African continent. Leader of the non-governmental organization North South
XXII, Ben Bella and other African NGO leaders rejected the most recent
proposal in Geneva made by the European Union.
The EU condemned the slave trade and colonialism, expressed its condolences
to the victims and admitted that some effects of colonialism persist and
continue to cause immense suffering. But the document does not define the
slave trade and colonialism as crimes against humanity, leading the African
activists to condemn the proposal for not going far enough.
Participants in the press conference said the lack of an explicit
recognition of the crimes is due to the fears of Europeans and North
Americans of the economic cost that this recognition could have in terms of
reparations.
*AFTER GENOA, ITALY RELUCTANT TO HOST WORLD FOOD SUMMIT IN ROME
Rome, August 6 (RHC)--Following the violent confrontations during the G8
Summit in Genoa, the government of Italy does not want to host the
international conference on hunger scheduled for Rome next November. Italian
Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero has warned that as many as 500,000
anti-globalization protesters could converge on the Italian capital.
The opposition has criticized the government's attitude, stating that it
would send a message of incompetence and would portray Italy as a country
incapable of organizing an important international conference.
Changing the site of the conference, organized by the Rome-based United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, would reportedly be extremely
costly, though its cancellation is not possible. Thus far 180 heads of state
and government have been invited.
*Viewpoint: MULTINATIONAL CUBAN DELEGATION TO ATTEND WORLD YOUTH FESTIVAL
Cuba will be participating in the 15th World Festival of Youth and
Students, scheduled to begin in Algeria on August 8th. In an unprecedented
move, Cuba has brought together, under the same flag, youngsters from 57
nations with the same slogan in favor of peace, solidarity, and development.
A total of 750 young people from four different continents will have the
chance to be in Algeria raising their voices for the survival of humankind.
And there is probably no better place to hold the World Youth and Students
Festival than on a continent in which humanity's very existence is in
danger. As Cuban president Fidel Castro put it when he presented the
island's delegation with the national flag they will take with them, Africa
has suffered the calamities and unfair practices of colonization and
capitalism like no other region in the world. The Cuban leader added that
Africa desperately needs world support and solidarity. The Festival is the
appropriate framework to voice the truth and put an end to the fallacies
that affect the world and threaten its existence. It will also be an
appropriate forum to denounce those responsible for inequalities and
injustice.
The younger generations have the responsibility to lay the foundations for a
better world. They represent hope of a better future. This festival
consolidates a tradition that was about to be lost, until Cuba offered to
hold the previous festival four years ago. And to make this solidarity a
reality, Cuba has now helped youngsters from other nations to join the
Cubans to be present at the festival. This is their chance to speak out.
Tens of thousands of young people have come out to express their
disagreement and resistance to all that denigrates them and blocks their
potential. Their voices were heard in Davos, Gutenberg, and Seattle -- and
more recently in Genoa. Whenever the super-industrialized powers meet, young
people come out to denounce and condemn globalization and neoliberal
policies.
Algeria further paves the way for them to demonstrate their strength in
their effort to spread the spirit of change, for a more peaceful and
different world.
(c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.
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