From: "Walter Lippmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [CubaNews] CubaNews summary - 10-3-2001 CubaNews summary - October 3, 2001 ===================================== The best source of news on the world crisis remains DEMOCRACY NOW IN EXILE. These are accessible in daily archived form at www.webactive.com Today's edition includes an interview with activists representing immigrant taxi drivers who have been subject to attacks because they were thought to be Muslims. A report in detail on Saturday's anti-war rally in Washington, DC can be found on the report for October 2, 2001. Many other reports of interest are also on today's edition. ===================================== TERRORISM ISSUE CONFRONTED AT THE U.N. The headline on George Gedda's U.N. report says: "UN Allied With US in Terrorism Fight" but that is a bit hopeful. Since the U.S. has held the U.N. in utter contempt for years, and has dragged its feet about paying dues to the world body until the aftermath of 9-11, support within the world body has had more of a formal than real character. Washington has found itself alone or almost alone on the Kyoto global warming agreement, the International Court of Justice, enforcement of a treaty to ban germ warfare and the U.N. World Conference on Racism. In August, a U.N. conference was able to reach agreement on curbing illegal small arms trafficking but not before it was watered down considerably by the United States to protect the rights of U.S. civilian gun owners. Next month, the United States will be subjected to its annual clobbering by the General Assembly for the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. It has become a November ritual. Timothy Crawford of the Brookings Institution says the General Assembly is essentially powerless so its votes don't count for much. The Security Council is where the action is, he says, and ``often works for our agenda.'' http://news.lycos.com/news/forms/printstory.asp?section=Politics&storyId=254 857&topic=Cuba ==================================== RACIST ATTACKS CONTINUE AND EXPAND There are so many that we can only suggest you refer to a few websites for detailed documentation: THE BLACK WORLD TODAY http://www.tbwt.com/ WORLD RACISM.COM: http://www.worldracism.com/ ==================================== CUBANS SLOW TO GET AN INTERNET WINDOW Cuba's slow but steady movement into the internet produces diverse responses in writers from the U.S. media who visit (or who don't bother to visit) the island. Sometimes they complain about Cuba's slow road to internet access. Sometimes they say Cuba constitutes a terrorist U.S. security though hacking via the net. The various limitations on access to the internet which Cubans experience (and I know them all too well) seem to come entirely from governmental repressiveness if you can take the media's word for it. These writers do not ever mention Washington's 40-year-long blockade of the island under which the sale of computers and so on are forbidden to U.S. companies by U.S. law. Also unmentioned in such accounts are uses which Washington makes to disrupt Cuba in its overt efforts to overthrow the Cuban government. That is the explicit goal of the Helms-Burton Law. And yet these U.S. reporters seem to think Cuba should make it easier for Washington. They don't, however, say just WHY Cuba should help Washington to do this... Cubans Slow to Get an Internet Window on World by Frances Kerry Tuesday, October 02, 2001 10:03 p.m. EDT HAVANA (Reuters) - In a cool room in a post office in Havana's Vedado district, a row of seven young Cubans lean over computers that let them send e-mail, enter a single Cuban-run chat room and surf a small corner of the Internet. The center, which opened last month, is one of four such facilities in Havana, and the plan is for them to spread to post offices across the communist-ruled island. In a sense, they are like cyber-cafes without the coffee -- or the full-fledged Internet. Their limitations typify Cuba's slow entry into the cyber world. It is not that President Fidel Castro's government has not seized on the Internet with enthusiasm as a tool to spread its political message and even sell its wares. The several hundred sites it has set up or approved in recent years range from details on the Communist Party and the single labor union through online state media, business, the arts and sports. But so far, Castro critics say, the government has kept a lid on widespread usage of the Internet. For many of the Caribbean island's 11 million people, the Internet is hard to access, or a peek-hole if you get there. To such criticism, the government counters that Cuba is a developing country with more pressing economic needs than putting its people online, noting for example the low rate of telephones per inhabitant. Officials said earlier this year Cubans have 60,000 e-mail accounts, and just a quarter of those have Internet access. But the government's critics at home and abroad say the reason is at least partly political. The Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a private think-tank that studied the impact of the Internet on China and Cuba, said in a report in July that the governments of both countries have managed to limit political discourse and contain subversive elements: China by monitoring what goes on online and Cuba by limiting access. But for Cubans with a few dollars to spare, the new post office system, however limited, is a leap forward. CHEAPER THAN PHONE CALLS ABROAD With a card costing $4.50 for three hours' use, a huge sum for many Cubans earning about the equivalent of $12 a month in the local peso currency, people can go to the Vedado post office, open an e-mail account and send and receive messages. They can converse with people in Cuba or abroad in a Cuban chat room, at the islagrande.com portal, and surf Cuba-approved sites, known as the "intranet." There are plans to access online encyclopedias. "So long as they don't bother their neighbor or damage the equipment, they can do what they like," said post office net administrator Ivan Gonzalez. Gonzalez did acknowledge another thing clients can't do, which is to surf the whole Internet. He did not know if or when surfing at the post offices might occur. The post office idea -- one that will at least serve to make quick communications with relatives and friends abroad a lot cheaper than phoning at $2.50 a minute to the United States -- is one way Cubans have gone online in the last five years. Only a small number can freely surf the Internet, legally at least. Access is available to foreign residents and foreign firms, and in luxury hotels. The Internet is also available in work places, such as research institutes, ministries and state companies, as well as to students at universities. Cubans say users often have to tell an administrator they are logging on, and sheer lack of computers makes for crowds. "Imagine," said a biology student, Jorge. "In theory we have the Internet at university. But there are very few computers for a lot of people, so it can be hard to find a space, or much time." But at least access costs nothing. At an e-mail-only center in the Playa district of Havana run by a state tourism agency, Infotur, people pay $1 a message to communicate with people abroad. At the Infotur office, you can't open a private e-mail account. Messages go to the Infotur account, an Infotur worker phones the recipient to let them know they have a message and opens it when they come in, printing it out for another $0.25. NOT QUITE PRIVATE Since the account is not personal, users' mail would be easily read, although an administrator, Marcos Marin, said as "a question of ethics, of course we don't read it." But some people are so new to computers that they labor over the keyboard and blow their privacy by asking for help. "I get people dictating love letters to me," he smiled. But alongside such lovelorn novices, there are also highly sophisticated computer users and a black market in Internet use that has led to a privileged few surfing illicitly at home. Some computer administrators in work places that have access to the Internet illicitly charge around $50 a month -- a fortune for most Cubans -- to rig people up on their home computers and give them a password to the Internet. "They shut down the access if they know that there is about to be a workplace inspection," said one illicit client. The Internet is home to fierce criticism of Cuba and its one-party system: such as the sites of exile organizations or work by independent journalists on the island. Some of these journalists have been in trouble with authorities because of articles posted on the Internet by exiles. One illicit Internet user said she was aware of such material but always steered away from politics and concentrated on things that interested her more, such as health and beauty pages or wandering the world in chat rooms. The Cuban government meanwhile, presses ahead with opening sites which it is happy to present as a window on official thinking, or what a commentator in the official Granma newspaper recently called "a world political weapon of peoples against the empire (the United States)." Online just last month are the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), neighborhood block groups charged with defending the social order. The site at www.lacalle.cubaweb.cu/, includes a detailed explanation in Spanish of the aim of the organization. "CDR's are still a firm bastion for our freedom and our development, and an unbending obstacle for the interests of our external and internal enemies," says the introductory page. But it is not all politics. You can go online spending in Cuba -- if you have a foreign credit card. Copyright � 2001 Reuters Limited. TEXT OF THE STORY http://news.lycos.com/news/forms/printstory.asp?section=CatalogSearch&taxono my=Technology/Internet&storyId=254319&topic=Cuba PHOTO ACCOMPANYING THE STORY: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/20011002/wl/imdf02102001090518a.html ===================================== QUE HORA ES? SWING TIME WITH CACHIATO Wednesday, October 3, 2001; Page C05 Orlando Cachaito Lopez is known as the heartbeat of the Buena Vista Social Club (and, at 68, one of the youngsters), not only for his sturdy and imaginative double bass playing, but also for being the only person to appear on every Buena Vista-related album released since the project's 1997 inception. It was fitting, then, that Cachaito's concert at the 9:30 club Sunday night was a wide-ranging, swinging affair, springing not just from Cuban styles but also from classical, jazz and even hip-hop.Cachaito was subdued as the leader of his 10-piece band, but the verve that came from his bass playing during the opening "Redencion" and later on "Tumbanga" set the tone for freewheeling solos in a way that recalled the big-band explorations of Charles Mingus. Miguel Anga Diaz served as emcee and percussive leader, his congas snapping songs like "Mis Dos Pequenas" and "A Gozar El Tumbao" into strutting shape. "Conversacion" expanded the marvelous duet between flutist Magic Malik and guitarist Manuel Galban captured on Cachaito's fine debut album. Galban's playing proved to be some of the evening's most imaginative, especially the slicing runs and blocks of chords he proffered on "A Gozar." The most far-reaching genre blending was covered with the appearance of turntablist Dee Nasty, who brought the set to a close with minimal scratching on "Tumbao No. 5" and "Cachaito in Laboratory."The Buena Vista phenomenon has produced increasingly quaint music recently, but Orlando Cachaito Lopez impressively indicates that there is at least one growling, imaginative heart still beating within a musical series in danger of being overrun by PBS-style niche marketing.-- Patrick Foster � 2001 The Washington Post Company ======================================= MIAMI FIREFIGHTERS: FLAG REFUSAL FALSE Robert Steinback, the wimpy Miami Herald columnist who writes on Black issues, says he's now convinced that the flap over the Black firefighters who protested the flag on their firetruck was contrived. He suggests strongly that it was designed to destroy the careers of three firefighters who have strongly spoken out on a range of issues, but who never, at any time, refused to ride on firetrucks with a flag flying. Good column. http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/local/columnists/steinback/digdocs/ 112221.htm ========================================= TERRORISM'S PARADOX: CHEAPER GASOLINE Lowered demand is credited with responsibility for the fall in prices for this essential commodity. http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/local/florida/digdocs/071289.htm ======================================== KATHERINE HARRIS SEEKS CONGRESSIONAL SEAT Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, who oversaw last fall's election in which thousands of qualified voters were disenfranchised and the election was http://www.sun-sentinel.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=sfl%2Dfharris 03oct03 _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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