Message from the National Committee to Free the Five

reporters for hire

One of the most significant presentations made at the International Commission of Inquiry in London in the case of the Cuban Five was by Angela Wright of Amnesty International. A.I. has now released its full report, which you can read by clicking here.
A.I.'s thorough investigation reviews the legal history of the case, noting for example that the 3-judge Appeals Court panel, which ordered a new trial for the Five (later reversed by the full Court), decreed that the evidence submitted in support of the motion for a change of venue was "massive".

 A.I. puts the spotlight on the fact that Miami reporters who reported on the Cuban Five prosecution in a highly biased and inflammatory manner were on the U.S. government payroll, an outrageous situation entirely unknown during trial.

"The new evidence that has emerged since the trial -- of journalists being paid to plant prejudicial stories against the accused during the trial -- also raises concern about equality of arms in that the government, unknown to the defendants, were stacking the case in the media -- and also as we have seen very possibly in the courtroom itself -- in the prosecution's favour."
Amnesty International
 
The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five has collectively dedicated thousands of hours in research and Freedom of Information Act petitions to expose the secret payments by the U.S. government to dozens of Miami reporters, AND to research and process the hundreds of articles and broadcast coverage that poisoned the atmosphere in Miami. Our work on the issue of the U.S.-paid journalists has contributed greatly to the evidence presented by the Cuban Five defense team in Gerardo's, Ramón's and Antonio's Habeas Corpus appeals.The evidence shows that a fair trial in Miami was impossible. 
     
 NOW! A new 559-page Investigative Report produced by the National Committee  is available here; a version in Spanish is also available.
 
We appeal to you at this time to make a donation to our ongoing efforts, both in the critical research still to be done, and in our popular organizing campaigns. We are an all-volunteer committee, but our ability to continue our investigative work, its distribution to political, legal and popular entities, as well as our mobilizing campaigns for the Cuban Five, depends on donations as well.
Please, if you are able to make a donation of any amount, do so today by clicking the "Donate" link  below. Thank you for your support!
 
 
National Committee to Free the Cuban Five 
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. * web: www.freethefive.org * Tel: 415-821-6545

 

Cuba hoy

Published on May 1, 2014 

Plaza de la Revolución (Revolution Square) shuddered again this May as thousands and thousands of Havana residents marched in support of the revolution and for the future of an even better, more efficient socialism even better and more efficient. This year, the march was opened by a block of health workers, demonstrating their centrality to the historic contribution Socialist Cuba has provided to its citizens and the world. 

Rubio Menendez Cruz

Progresso Weekly  

By Jane Franklin • Published on April 28, 2014

“If only they had waited a few more years! Oh well, nobody pays any attention to dates anyway so we’ll just wing it!”

All three Cuban-American members of the U.S. Senate – Robert Menéndez, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz – wish they could say truthfully that their parents “fled Castro’s Cuba”. The embarrassing reality is that their parents left Cuba while General Fulgencio Batista was running the country after the 1952 coup that overthrew an elected government and canceled an election in which Fidel Castro was running for office.

www.revolutionarycommunist.org FRFI 238 Apr/May 2014

dilma-rousseff-y-raul-castro-mariel-cuba3-580x375 0

On 27 January, Cuban President Raul Castro and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff inaugurated the first 700 metre section of a container terminal at the port of Mariel, Cuba, in a ceremony attended by the Presidents of Haiti, Bolivia, Venezuela and Guyana and the Prime Minister of Jamaica. Raul Castro declared: ‘This container terminal, and the powerful infrastructure accompanying it, are a concrete example of the optimism and confidence with which we Cubans see a socialist and prosperous future.’ The heads of state were in Havana for a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (see FRFI 237).

The Mariel Special Economic Development Zone is a 465km2 deepwater sea port and industrial park area in Artemisa Province, 45km west of Havana. The $950m development is intended to ‘increase exports, the effective substitution of imports, [promote] high-technology and local development projects, as well as contributing to the creation of new jobs’, and to stimulate foreign investment in Cuba. Mariel is the nearest port to the US. The Zone will benefit from the expansion of the Panama Canal, to be completed in 2015, and the creation of the transoceanic Nicaragua Canal by the HKND Group, expected to be completed by 2019. With world-leading technology and sufficient depth, Mariel will be able to accommodate huge post-Panamax vessels and act as a transhipment hub for the region.

Cubanos en UK

A scandalous video with false images of Cuba was presented by the NGO UN Watch during the so-called VI Summit for Human Rights and Democracy held in the International Conference Centre of Geneva, Switzerland.

The video is part of the ongoing campaign of UN Watch, an NGO known as "The Trojan Horse" of the CIA in Geneva, aimed at achieving that countries such as Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia, stop being members of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

During its presentation at the Summit, the UN Watch NGO, through its director Hillel Neuer, showed false images of Cuba where riot police officers appear beating some supposed Cuban young persons who are seated on the street shirtless.

Next they publish some images of about twenty of the so-called Ladies in White, women paid by the United States who were marching peacefully down a street of Havana and mix them with another group of women who have nothing to do with the Ladies in White.

Not a single police officer or a single image of repression presented by UN Watch corresponds to Cuba. Every person having lived of visited the Island knows very well that those images do not correspond to the Caribbean country. Cuban police officers wear neither those uniforms, helmets, nor those riot shields...

Presna Latina

zunzuneo

Cuba has historically served as a laboratory for the application of U.S. non-conventional warfare methods, Cuban media are charging today as reports about the unveiled ZunZuneo program continue to surface.

Assassination attempts, introduced diseases, support for armed counter-revolutionary grouplets, invasion, and the application of an economic, financial and trade blockade are all part of the history of Washington's aggressions against Havana over the past 50 years.

ZunZuneo, an invention of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) meant to promote destabilization in the country through a text-messaging platform similar to Twitter is one more for the list.

According to the Granma newspaper, there is a striking similarity between the data revealed by the Associated Press report, and training manuals that are part of the U.S. Army's guides for Non-Conventional Warfare, such as Training Circular (TC) 18-01.

The Hummingbird Tweet: An Espionage Tale

by ALFREDO LOPEZ www.counterpunch.org

zunzuneo1-2

For two years, starting in 2010, the United States Agency for International Development ran a social networking service — similar to Twitter — for the Cuban people. Its long-term objective was to forment popular revolt against the government and de-stabilize the country.

They called it “ZunZuneo” (Cuban slang for a hummingbird’s “tweet”) and launched it under absolute secrecy about who was really running it. “There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement,” according to a 2010 memo from one of the companies supposedly running the service. “This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the mission.”

The “mission” was to reach a critical mass of Cuban users by offering tweets on sports, entertainment and light news over the service and signing recipients up through word of mouth — you call a phone number and your phone is hooked up. With that critical mass in place, the tweets would start getting more political: inspiring Cuban citizens to organize “smart mobs” — mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice to spark a kind of a “Cuban Spring” or, as one USAID document put it, “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”

Cuban cancer cure

RealCuba 

Cuban doctors have filed March 26 in Havana, the result of 14 years of research, a solution of antitumor peptides whose natural analogue is able to offer positive dynamics in cancer treatments.

According to Cuban specialists, what makes this solution unique is that peptides can act in areas of the human body that are impossible to operate on or treat with chemotherapy or other modern therapies.

A clear example of the success of the new method is the child, Leo, who was suffering from brain cancer. Now the boy looks like a regular guy and it is hard to tell at first glance that a few months ago he won a battle against death. The place where Leo had the tumor did not allow submission to the operation he needed, as undergoing the operation meant running a great risk of losing his life. The only possible remedy was using the minor drug developed by Cuban researchers Labiofam business group based on natural peptides.

Elizardo Sanchez

This video shows Elizardo Sánchez and his wife, Baby, selling the equipment they receive from the United States to perform their work as 'dissidents'. The video was filmed by fellow dissidents, in protest that they are not receiving resources sent via this dissident 'vanguard' to be shared out between them all. It shows how US taxpayers' money ends up being used in the 'dissident' business.

Elizardo Sánchez is one of the main characters behind accusations of supposed human rights abuses in Cuba. Not only does he earn a living by reporting fictional mass arrests on the island, he also sells computers, printers, portable DVDs, mobile phones, and so on, on the black market.
 
This video shows the internal contradictions within the counter-revolutionary movement and the mercenary character of those individuals who are prepared to sell their country to the US government.
 
The United States government invests at least $20 million annually attempting to create a loyal and viable opposition in Cuba to assist in the objective of regime change. The policy has failed throughout the 55 years of Revolution.