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March 22, 2013 - No. 38
Disinformation on Cuba
Condemn Media Campaign Against
Revolutionary Cuba
Disinformation
on
Cuba
• Condemn Media Campaign Against Revolutionary
Cuba - Tony Seed
• Toronto Star Makes Up Facts in Exposé
- Andrew Brett
• Cuba Third Most Popular Caribbean Tourist
Destination
• Cuban Adjustment Act Exposed -
Manuel E. Yepe
Threat of U.S. War on
Korean Peninsula
• Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Confirms Nullification of Armistice Agreement
• Facts vs. Disinformation on Scrapping of
Armistice Agreement
• Sanctions Doomed to Failure -
Rodong Sinmun Commentary
Disinformation on Cuba
Condemn Media Campaign Against
Revolutionary Cuba
- Tony Seed -
The Toronto Star and El Nuevo Herald,
the
Spanish-language
sister
publication
of the Miami Herald,
have conspired to publish a sensationalist series on "sex tourism" to
Cuba. The series began precisely one month to the day following the
"visit" by Foreign Affairs Minister
John Baird to Cuba on February 15, 2013 and his provocative meeting
with "dissidents." "He pledged Canada's support for efforts to secure
freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law," his department
said at the time in a release, "in the only remaining Communist country
in the Western hemisphere."
Now the "dissidents" have emerged, writes Andrew Brett, to form the
main "source" for the Toronto-Miami media disinformation blaming the
Cuban people and government, who are the victims, for "sex tourism."
Far from being a coincidence, the series serves the agenda of the
Harper government of political destabilization
and isolation of all opposition to imperialist dictate in the Americas.
The Star also writes: "Although Canada has had
a law against abusing children abroad since 1997, it is undermined by
the inability of law enforcement officials to monitor sexual offenders
as they slip out of the country." Thus, under the banner of high
ideals, it furnishes the Harper Government the
pretext to collect information on all those Canadians travelling to the
independent socialist Republic of Cuba.
Toronto Star Makes Up Facts in Exposé
- Andrew Brett, March 17, 2013 -
"There is truly no prostitution healthier than Cuba's,"
said Fidel Castro in 1992. Or so claims the Toronto Star. But
did he really?
Not at all. Castro actually said, "There is truly no
tourism healthier than Cuba's."
This just scratches the surface of the fact-free
reporting of the Star in its new series "The Ugly Canadians,"
an exposé of a supposed epidemic of Canadians travelling to Cuba
for child sex tourism.
"Canadians are travelling to Cuba in surprising numbers
to sexually exploit young people," the first article in the series
says. Just how surprising are these numbers? Well, they can't say. The
same article admits that they don't actually know, because the Canadian
government doesn't reveal the number of Canadians
prosecuted in Cuba for sex crimes.
The only facts they can point to are in a 2011 RCMP
report that lists Cuba as "a top destination in the Americas" for sex
tourism. No, not the top. One of them. In the Americas. And where does
Cuba rank in this list? The article doesn't say.
So why have they decided to highlight sex tourism to
Cuba instead of, say, the actual top destination?
Why do the Cubans quoted happen to be a "dissident
lawyer" and a "dissident blogger"?
Why did the article print a fabricated pro-prostitution
quote attributed to Castro?
The series on Cuban sex tourism is not being published
by the Star alone. Its partner in the series, El Nuevo
Herald, is the Spanish-language sister publication of the Miami
Herald, known for editorializing against the Cuban government and
for employing journalists paid
by the U.S. government to disseminate anti-Cuban propaganda.
Could this joint series actually be a deliberate attempt
to stigmatize the Cuban tourism industry, a backbone of the Cuban
economy? A modern-day, liberal version of the "red scare"? In 2004,
President Bush similarly warned about child sex tourism to justify his
government's travel restrictions on Cuba, without
any evidence to suggest the problem is more prevalent on the island.
With close to one million visitors a year, Canadians are
the primary market for the Cuban tourism industry, a major source of
funding for the Cuban economy. If anyone wanted to target Cuban
tourism, the Canadian market would be the place to start.
Whatever the intention of playing fast and loose with
the facts, it raises questions about the editorial influence of the Herald
on this series, and whether the remaining articles will be based on
evidence or just conjecture of opponents of the Cuban government.
Cuba Third Most Popular
Caribbean Tourist Destination
The beauty of Old Havana
at night.
As of May 2012 Cuba is now the third most popular
Caribbean country for tourists, trailing the Dominican Republic and
Puerto Rico, according to Carlos Vogeler, General Director for the
Americas of the World Tourism Organization (WTO). Vogeler's remarks
were
quoted by the Cuban News Agency last spring
during his visit to the Cuban islands known as the King's Gardens
(Jardines del Rey) as part of Cuba's 32nd International Tourism Fair,
FITCuba 2012.
Vogeler said the improvements in Cuba's tourism
industry are reflected in the increasing number of visitors each
year. As Cuba's level of tourism has improved so has the quality of its
tourism
fairs. Holding the 2012 fair in Cayo Santa Maria on the King's
Gardens was a great opportunity for many foreigners
to get to know the natural beauty of the Coco and Guillermo Keys, an
area of great tourist potential barely known outside Cuba, Vogeler said.
Representatives of tour operators, travel agents, hotel
chains and
airlines toured the different facilities in the keys
off the northern central Cuban coast. There they could see the beauty
of the Playa Pilar resort, one of the most beautiful places in Cuba,
where the sand dunes are among the best preserved in the
region.
This year's FITCuba will take place in Veradero,
Matanzaz province, Cuba's most famous beach, from May 7 to 10.
Cuban Adjustment Act Exposed
- Manuel E. Yepe, March 4, 2013 -
The special immigration
status which the U.S. Cuban
Adjustment Act grants Cuban citizens has become even more of a
problem for Washington in light of Cuba's new travel regulations.
A Chicago Tribune editorial published on
February 16 tackled this important issue in the White House´s
policy against Cuba from a very unusual perspective in U.S. media: the
privileges and immigration rights the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act
grants to Cubans and denies to all other citizens on
the planet.
The Chicago Tribune editorial explains that
for Cubans who want to immigrate to the United States, the hardest part
is getting there, because, since 1966, they've essentially been granted
automatic refugee status on arrival.
Almost half a century later, states the paper, Cubans
who get to the U.S. rarely claim to be victims of political
persecution. They want a better economic future, or to join family
members already there, or both -- just like most people who want to
immigrate from anywhere else.
Unlike most immigrants, though, Cubans don't have to
wait years for a visa, or sneak across the border illegally. Once
they're in, they're fast-tracked to legal residency, with a clear path
to citizenship, the Tribune's editorial notes.
It's a sore subject as Congress considers what to do
with the 11 million undocumented immigrants to whom the system has not
been so generous, the editorial complains.
Those immigrants -- more than half of them from Mexico
-- live and work under the government's radar, often for very low
wages, constantly in fear of being deported.
"To come here legally, most Mexican laborers would have
to wait decades for a visa. But Cubans who present themselves at our
southern border -- a common point of entry, thanks to the U.S. "wet
foot, dry foot" policy -- are allowed in once they show a Cuban ID.
These special considerations are especially
hard to defend now that Cubans can travel freely between the U.S. and
their homeland."
According to the Tribune, after 2009 when
President Barack Obama lifted most of the limits that kept
Cuban-Americans from traveling to the island to visit family, last
year, more than 400,000 of them did so, some of them dozens of times.
"In January, the Cuban government began allowing
citizens to leave without an exit permit. Passports are now granted
more liberally, and those who leave can stay away up to two years
without losing their residency. Most Cubans are able to come and go at
will," says the editorial.
It's hard to argue that Cubans who can come and go as
they please are in need of special considerations normally reserved for
victims of a political repression they are not suffering when the only
thing they did was dodge Coast Guard boats long enough to tag American
soil.
"To be fair," admits the paper, "those immigrants aren't
lying about their circumstances. They're not required to demonstrate
that they're political refugees." They come because they can thanks to
the privileges granted by the anti-Cuba Act.
 The Chicago paper says this isn't
fair, "Cubans who want
to come here for economic reasons should play by the same rules as
economic immigrants from other countries," it argues.
Since it was passed in 1966 as an instrument of
aggression against the Revolution, the Cuban Adjustment Act
has caused an incalculable number of Cuban deaths -- sometimes whole
families in reckless expeditions through the Strait of Florida --
encouraged by the limitations imposed on Cuba for
more than half a century by the U.S. economic blockade, and by the
promise of access to a paradise on Earth.
"We have no problem with allowing Cuban-Americans to
travel back and forth to Cuba," says the Chicago Tribune
editorial, and proposes that Congress ought to eliminate the travel ban
entirely, so that all Americans can visit the island just like tourists
from all other countries in the world who have
been flocking to Cuba for years.
Threat of U.S. War on Korean Peninsula
Democratic People's Republic of Korea Confirms
Nullification of Armistice Agreement
 
Units of the Korean
People's Army vow to defeat any aggression from the U.S. imperialists
or their puppets in south Korea.
Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the Central
Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, confirmed on March 13 that
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has scrapped the
Korean Armistice Agreement (AA) as of March 11, as it said it would do
if the U.S.-south Korean "Key Resolve"
war exercises proceeded on that day. The newspaper article notes: "War
has resumed between the DPRK and the U.S."
The Korean People's Army Panmunjom Mission, which was a
negotiating mechanism established and operated by the DPRK
in order to establish a peace-keeping
mechanism on the Korean Peninsula has also been removed. As well, the
DPRK-U.S. Military hotline in Panmunjom was cut
some days ago.
The Rodong Sinmun article notes that the
current state of war between the DPRK and the U.S. and its south Korean
puppet is the result of the perfidious activities of the U.S. such as
organizing UN Security Council Resolution 2094. The U.S. has repeatedly
violated the AA and continues to carry
out provocative war games aimed at igniting a nuclear war on the DPRK.
As such, the DPRK is exercising its right to nullify the AA and to
"conduct self-defensive military actions at any time we think it fit to
mercilessly punish the aggressor and achieve national reunification."
For the almost 60 years that the AA was in place, the
United States refused to abide by it, starting with sabotaging Article
60 which stated: "In order to insure the peaceful settlement of the
Korean question, the military Commanders of both sides hereby recommend
to the governments of the countries concerned
on both sides that, within three (3) months after the Armistice
Agreement is signed and becomes effective, a political conference of a
higher level of both sides be held by representatives appointed
respectively to settle through negotiation the questions of the
withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, the peaceful
settlement of the Korean question, etc."
The U.S. refused to participate in such a "political
conference" aimed at withdrawing all foreign forces from Korea and
therefore must be held entirely responsible by the people of world and
the peace- and justice-loving people in Canada for the wrecking of the
AA. All humanity must demand that another Korean
War is not instigated by the U.S. and its allies including Canada!
No to Another Korean
War!
U.S. Troops Out of Korea!
U.S. Must Sign a Peace Treaty with the DPRK Now!
Facts vs. Disinformation on Scrapping of
Armistice
Agreement
 On March 13, the Institute
for Public Accuracy (IPA) put
out a news release which aims to clarify the mass media disinformation
concerning the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s scrapping
of the Korean Armistice Agreement (AA). The IPA is a public policy
research institute based in Washington,
DC whose mandate to "[widen] media exposure for progressive
perspectives on many issues including the environment, human rights,
foreign policy and economic justice" that are "excluded or drowned out
by government or corporate-backed institutions."
The DPRK had given notice on March 5, that if the
U.S.-south Korea joint military exercises Key Resolve went forward as
part of the war preparations against the DPRK, it would nullify the AA
on March 11. The only two signatories to the AA are the DPRK and the
United States.
Since the March 5 announcement, there has been
disinformation in the monopoly media claiming that the DPRK cannot
unilaterally scrap the AA and requires the consent of the other parties
to the AA including China, south Korea and so on. This disinformation
is an attempt to criminalize and isolate the DPRK
for its just stand and justify another illegal Korean War.
The IPA quotes Law Professor Francis Boyle of the
University of Illinois College of Law who refutes the claim made in a
March 13 New York Times article that said: "The North said
this week that it considered the 1953 Armistice that halted the Korean
War to be null and void as of Monday because
of the joint military exercises. The North has threatened to terminate
that agreement before, but American and South Korean military officials
point out that legally, no party to the armistice can unilaterally or
alter its terms."
Professor Boyle calls this "nonsense." He points out,
"An armistice agreement is governed by laws of war and the state of war
still remains in effect despite the Armistice Agreement, even if the
armistice text itself says additions have to be mutually agreed upon by
the parties. Termination is not an addition. Under
the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, and the Hague Regulations,
the only requirement for termination of the Korean War Armistice
Agreement is suitable notice so as to avoid the charge of 'perfidy.'
North Korea has given that notice. The armistice is dead."
According to the U.S. Army Field Manual, "If
in case it [the Armistice] is indefinite, a belligerent may resume
operations at any time after notice."
The IPA news release also quotes Professor Christine
Hong of the University of California who points out: "People in the
U.S. need to understand that the 1953 armistice agreement called for
talks to begin three months after its signing regarding the peaceful
settlement of the Korean War and withdrawal of all
foreign troops. Chinese troops left soon after. U.S. troops remain six
decades later, and the Korean War has never ended."
Sanctions Doomed to Failure
- Rodong Sinmun Commentary*, March 20,
2013
The U.S. is trying any means to seek global hegemony.
This includes the use of aggression and pressure against other
countries such as sanctions and blockades, ideological infiltration and
sowing internal divisions.
Sanctions are one of the major methods.
 Since the end of the Second World
War, the U.S. has
resorted to sanctions in an attempt to isolate and stifle the
anti-imperialist and independent countries.
In November 1949 the U.S. cooked up the Coordinating
Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) to slap economic
sanctions on the socialist countries including the DPRK.
Through the Export Control Act adopted on June
25, 1950 the U.S. totally banned exports bound for the DPRK.
On December 17 the same year, the U.S. labeled the DPRK
a "hostile country threatening the security of the U.S." and began to
cut all economic relations with it on the basis of its Trading
with the Enemy Act.
The Trade Agreement Extension Act in 1951
stipulated the imposition of tariffs increased by a factor of 10 should
anyone trade with the DPRK.
In the 1960s, the U.S. brought its Foreign Aid Act
into force and totally barred the government, business groups and banks
from dealings with the DPRK.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. extended sanctions
against the DPRK in all fields of the economy through the Trade Act,
the
Foreign Economic Emergency Measure Act and the Export
and
Import
Bank
Act.
The moves of the U.S. and its followers to stifle and
blockade the DPRK was further stepped up after the south Korean puppets
fabricated the bombing of an airliner in 1987.
On January 20, 1988 the U.S. put the DPRK on its list of
state sponsors of terrorism and applied further sanctions to it.
The U.S. delayed the construction of the light
water reactor power plant to be provided to the DPRK under the 1994
DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework and finally suspended it, thereby placing
great obstacles in the way of the development of our independent
nuclear power industry.
In the new century, the U.S. slandered the DPRK as being
part of an "axis of evil" and an "outpost of tyranny" and scrapped the
DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework and further intensified sanctions.
In April of last year the U.S. and its followers,
following our satellite launch, made public a UN Security Council
presidential statement "critical" of the DPRK and incited anti-DPRK
campaigns which included "additional sanctions."
After that the U.S. fabricated a sanction committee
against the DPRK under the UNSC, demanding it submit regular reports
of its activities.
In particular, the U.S. and its followers on January 22
contrived the "Resolution on Sanctions" No. 2087 of the UNSC, a gross
infringement on the DPRK's inviolable sovereignty.
When we conducted the third underground nuclear test as
a self-defensive countermeasure, they slandered it as "provocation,"
calling for "rectification" [...] And finally, they fabricated another
anti-DPRK resolution on sanctions, No. 2094.
All this clearly shows how viciously the U.S. and its
followers resort to anti-DPRK sanctions.
In particular, the U.S. financial sanctions are very
malignant.
In 2005 the U.S. groundlessly contacted the Bancodelta
Asia Bank of Macao, China and for purposes of hindering U.S. business
groups and banks and all other financial machinery in the world from
dealing with the bank [which holds some accounts belonging to the
DPRK -- TML Ed. Note].
The financial sanctions are getting harsher today.
The U.S. blocked its companies' export of ordinary
commodities to the DPRK and bans any country from selling goods that
contain more than 10 per cent U.S. technology, as well as the export of
all information technology products.
Hundreds of acts and measures related to sanctions are
imposed on the DPRK.
 Under the Six-Party Talks agreement, the U.S. took the
DPRK off its list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008,
but increased the severity of sanctions by three or fourfold on the
strength of numerous national laws under different pretexts.
So, in actuality no sanctions were lifted.
According to data available from the U.S. Congress
Investigation Bureau, some 10 of the 40 sanctions are applied because
of the DPRK's different political system and another 30 are applied
because of "threats to U.S. security," "proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction," "sponsoring of terrorism," "human
rights issues," "suppression of religion," "missile development,"
"human trafficking" and other nonexistent reasons.
Their grounds for applying the sanctions are determined
according to the judgment of the President or the relevant departments
of the U.S. Administration.
In this way, the U.S. has persisted in all sorts of
vicious moves to stifle the DPRK economically for over 60 years.
But its maneuvers could not work on the DPRK and have
been frustrated completely, while the DPRK advances under the banner of
justice, peace, independence and self-reliance.
We have vigorously struggled to build socialism,
unaffected by the U.S. sanctions and blockade.
The national strength of the DPRK has been boosted
without comparison.
If the U.S. and its allies think that their despicable
sanctions can shake the revolutionary faith and firm will of the Korean
people and break our single-minded unity, this is a great
miscalculation.
The U.S. can never break the firm faith and will of the
Korean army and people to defend the sovereignty and dignity of the
nation and the supreme interests of the country.
The DPRK will advance dynamically only along the route
of Songun [the policy of giving military/self-defence
matters first priority in the Korean nation-building project -- TML Ed.
Note].
Read The Marxist-Leninist
Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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