**Pedro Campos Santos**. Former Cuban diplomat in Mexico and at the UN
Human Rights Commission in Geneva. International political analyst.  Head
researcher of the Center for United States Studies project the University
of Havana.  He is currently retired.*


*- Havana Times.org - http://www.havanatimes.org -*

*So Where’s the Real Enemy?*

Posted By *Circles Robinson* On July 15, 2012 @ 7:05 am In *Opinion,Pedro
Campos,Recent Posts* |

*Pedro Campos*
 <http://www.havanatimes.org/?attachment_id=74390> [1]

Stairway of Padre Pico, Santiago de Cuba. Photo: Janis Hernandez

HAVANA TIMES — A certain media source presents itself to us as a champion
of the “revolution” and focuses its attacks on the activities of
“diversionary” bloggers, journalists, human rights and civil rights
advocates, and different sectors of Cuban society that operate from a
position that is independent of the state.

It generally dedicates itself to attempting to discredit and defame
different modes of thought, though actually trying to divert public
attention from the problems that endanger the future of the Cuban
revolutionary process and its systemic causes.

This involves a small group of “journalists” who in their abundant writings
— with more adjectives than verified information — never, rarely or only
superficially address the problems of bureaucracy, corruption, excessive
centralization of economic and political power, the difficulties arising
from the absurd monopolistic economic policies and the lack of popular and
workers control over the processes that they claim to be “socialist.”

I won’t mention any names, because everyone knows who I’m referring to, in
what media sources they “write” for, and what are their motivations. My
goal isn’t to discredit anyone in particular (there are better causes in
which to engage oneself) but to expose such methods as having nothing to do
with socialism or revolution.

*Gov. Bureaucrats Are the Most Dangerous Counterrevolutionaries*

For those who have dedicated themselves to fighting against the
“imperialist enemy and its agents,” real or fictional, they must defend
tooth and nail all that has made the “perfect revolution” — understood as
the work of a state — no matter the practical results, the “side effects”
or that it has driven us to the edge of the abyss.

For them the “state socialism,” bureaucratic socialism, the so-called
“real” socialism of the USSR and the “socialist camp” didn’t collapse as a
result of their own deviations and errors. It was not because of their
absurd policies at all levels, but as a result of the enemy activity of
imperialism and its agents, the “betrayal” of Gorbachev and others.

*Applying that same analogy to Cuba, it doesn’t matter that both Fidel and
Raul said years ago that any disaster here would not be the fault of
imperialism, but the inability of Cuban revolutionaries themselves to
correct their mistakes.*

In truth, the only thing that the journalists are accomplishing is
diverting the attention of their readers from the reality of what’s
happening in Cuba. They aim to avert a true “struggle of all the people”
and to prevent workers from standing up against a bureaucracy that is
trying to hijack the revolutionary process.

<http://www.havanatimes.org/?attachment_id=74391> [2]They are attempting to
take over the existing machinery to convert the monopoly capitalism of the
state system (or “state socialism”) into an increasingly privatized form of
capitalism and with monopolies of detached groups from the state that enjoy
the full autonomy to exploit the wage-labor of their workers.

To create, inflate and encourage “enemies” who really don’t pose a major
threat to the process of the socialization and democratization of the
economy and politics of the country, can only serve those who seek to
divert attention in support of those who seek to restore private capitalism
in our country.

*It is the bureaucracy that is retarding democratic reform, using real
power, given that they want nothing changed and are therefore hindering the
process.*

The statist bureaucrats are the ones who are preventing cooperativism,
obstructing real and direct participation of workers and the people in the
decision making process; hindering the freedom of information, discussion,
opinion and association on the part of the Cuban people; violating the
socialist constitution and attempting to privatize the means of production,
openly turning it over  to  foreign capital or using the euphemistic
“autonomous enterprises” (devoid of democratic control by the workers)
controlled by power groups created under the state. They are the most
dangerous counterrevolutionaries.

*Undermining of the Economic Foundation*

*The well-known Cuban analyst Manuel David Orrio, a secret operative for
Cuban State Security for many years — who no one suspects of serving the
CIA and imperialism — said recently in an interview with Orestes Marti:
“While people are picking at chicken crap ‘ideological diversionists’ of
the likes of Yoani Sanchez and Antonio G. Rodiles, the formidable ‘CIA
operative’ of inflation, or hyperinflation in its extreme, is undermining
the foundation of the Cuban political system and endangering the very
independence of the nation.” (See the interview in the magazine Hermes, **in
Spanish*<http://auto-hermes.ning.com/profiles/blogs/impresiones-de-viaje-cuba-2012-entrevista-a-manuel-david-orrio?xg_source=activity>
* [3])*

Students of Marx know that the causes of inflation are systemic and
characteristic of economic models sustained by wage-labor exploitation.

These models generate more and more expensive products to offset the very
high and unreasonable standard of living of the owners of capital — whether
private or state owners — to pay for the high costs of new production
technology and machinery that will allow them to stay competitive and swell
the budgets that support their states’ bureaucracies and military and
security forces.
 <http://www.havanatimes.org/?attachment_id=74392> [4]

Palacio de la computacion, Santiago de Cuba. Photo: Janis Hernandez

Of course all of this is at the expense of the semi-slave-labor of their
employees (See Karl Marx. Capital, Volume III, part 3, “The Law of the Tendency
of the Rate of Profit to
Fall<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall>
[5]”). Many of the subsequent bourgeois explanations ignore this law,
discovered by Marx, or they take it into account only partially).

But this is not paid any attention to by these “combatants of the pen.”  I
should note that these “journalists” certainly live better than all members
of the “Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution,” people who did
indeed risk their lives, and many were affected in different ways from
frontal battles against the imperialist enemy.

More than an few of these veterans now have to eat in the smelly subsidized
dining rooms that some technocrats and economists have tried to close. They
aren’t analyzed in the writings of the “agents” of the CIA mentioned by
Orrio, and much less what is directly responsible for their sad existences:
that class which maintains and encourages the capitalist wage-labor
exploitation of workers in Cuba.

*The enemy within*

It is clear: To invent enemies, to inflate “counterrevolutionary fetishes,”
to blame imperialism for all our misfortunes, has always been a strategy of
the bureaucracy. President Raul Castro himself has said he will no longer
point to imperialism as being responsible for our misfortunes.

Who in Cuba has the intention and the real capability to divert the
revolutionary process towards private capitalism? In Cuba today, who is the
real and principal enemy of the process of the socialization and
democratization of the economy and politics, the very essence of the
revolution in today’s Cuba?

“So what do you think?” A question like that is a way to stimulate
reasoning, according to what I was told by a prominent professor of Marxism
in the advanced course for Soviet intelligence for senior Cuban
intelligence officers back in the 80’s.

By the way, they also told me that many of those in Soviet Intelligence and
in the Department of Marxism of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, of
which that distinguished professor was a part, were in favor of
accelerating and deepening Gorbachev’s Perestroika, but they weren’t paid
any attention to and then came the military coup, with all its known
consequences.

*To contact Pedro Campos, write:** [email protected] [6] *

*------------------------------------------------*

*The Apologies of Agent Percy*

Posted By *Circles Robinson* On July 13, 2012 @ 3:26 pm In *Fernando
Ravsberg,leftcol1,Opinion* | *2
Comments<http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=74299&print=1#comments_controls>
*

*Fernando Ravsberg* <http://cartasdesdecuba.com/> [1]
 <http://www.havanatimes.org/?attachment_id=74300> [2]

Percy Alvarado half apologized to only some of the many people he slandered.

HAVANA TIMES — Cuban security operative Percy Francisco Alvarado Godoy just
apologized (on his Spanish language
blog<http://percy-francisco.blogspot.com/2012/07/una-disculpa-necesaria.htm>
[3]) for having accused several personalities and intellectuals of working
against the revolution, implicating them in the plans for a cyber-war
orchestrated by the United States.

Percy affirms that “honest people apologize for the mistakes and errors
committed.” He speaks as if he had made a few typos or misspelled some
names, though he knows perfectly well what such accusations means in Cuba.

What’s more, such accusations are more serious when they come from no other
than a Cuban security agent who has a website titled *Descubriendo verdades*(
*Discovering Truths*), where “declassified files” are revealed.

Doing a balancing act he has turned himself into a victim, because
following his small mistake he was attacked in cyberspace; as he put it,
that error “triggered an avalanche of offensive twitters against me
personally from the counterrevolutionary twittersphere.”

The questions that remain for everyone — and which the agent fails to clear
up — is where that contaminated information came from and who directed him
in denouncing those people and others to whom he doesn’t apologize. Was he
tricked, misdirected or was it simply his hurried opinion?

Whatever the reason, it turned out to be very serious, and for the apology
to be accepted it deserves a more serious explanation than the one offered
by this agent, especially because I don’t think that the institution he
works for wants to see itself involved in such “neighborhood gossip.”

I hope that based on this commentary, Percy doesn’t also put me on the list
of “enemies of the revolution paid by the empire.” It would be good if he
didn’t pointlessly waste what little credibility he has left after the
little “mistake” he has just committed.


*Share this post:*

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2 Comments (Open <http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=74299&print=1#> |
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2 Comments To "The Apologies of Agent Percy"

*#1 Comment* By *Richard Cheeseman* On July 13, 2012 @ 7:49 pm

“I hope that based on this commentary, Percy doesn’t also put me on the
list of ‘enemies of the revolution paid by the empire.’”

Don’t worry, Mr Ravsberg, you’ve already put yourself onto that list of
enemies of the revolution by your own efforts … and I’m sure you haven’t
forgotten that you are paid by the relentlessly anti-socialist state
propaganda outlet of the empire’s British satellite regime.

*#2 Comment* By *Moses* On July 13, 2012 @ 9:28 pm

For all the abuses that libel laws in the US invoke, this is one time where
it would be helpful if Cuba permitted the same torts in the Cuban legal
system. Under our system, Agent Percy would be forced to disclose the
source of his misinformation. Only in the narrowly-defined case of national
security, could his sources be withheld. Finally, there is nothing like the
possibility of losing a multimillion dollar lawsuit to encourage one to
check one’s facts BEFORE publishing a hit piece.
------------------------------

Article printed from Havana Times.org: *http://www.havanatimes.org*

URL to article: *http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=74299*

URLs in this post:

[1] *Fernando Ravsberg*: *http://cartasdesdecuba.com/*

[2] Image: *http://www.havanatimes.org/?attachment_id=74300*

[3] on his Spanish language blog: *
http://percy-francisco.blogspot.com/2012/07/una-disculpa-necesaria.htm*

[4] Image: *http://www.linkwithin.com/*


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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