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"Surely he will receive a juicy salary in his new job, but Caleb McCarry -- I assure you -- will retire without setting foot in Cuba," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said in Panama.

Cuban opposition leaders were at least as forceful in their reaction.

"Any transition in Cuba is for Cubans to define, lead, organize and coordinate," said Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and promoter of a petition seeking democracy in Cuba.

Other dissident groups that opposed the appointment on the same grounds were the Progressive Arch and the Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission.

"It will allow the Cuban government to raise the specter of foreign interference in the internal affairs of our country," said Elizardo Sanchez of the commission.

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Maybe because Batistabots who love America more than their own country already left for the U.S. and have been more concerned about getting rid of Castro than about forming a better alternative that would not be subservient to the U.S. while those who genuinely love Cuba and see neither Castro or America as being right are willing to work positive change...

Or maybe I'm overthinkin this. :-P

[ 05 August 2005: Message edited by: Betray My Secrets ]

by Richard Levins

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Why are so many progressives and liberals taken in by even the most outrageous falsehoods about Cuba? Why do they often accept uncritically the line of the Miami and Washington reactionaries about Cuba when they doubt almost everything else from these sources? Possibly some are tired of nay-saying all the conventional wisdoms. They do not want to appear "hard-line" or "ideological," and rejecting Cuba is a cheap and easy way of being a little more mainstream. Cuba may be relegated by some to the list of youthful enthusiasms from the time when "we thought we could change the world." This stance is reinforced by the accumulated cynicism of many defeats that says that no place can be all that good, that all dreams come to naught. Or, perhaps since Cuba's socialism is one of the few to have survived, it has become harder to romanticize it.

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