CubaNews notes from Los Angeles

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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CubaNews notes from Los Angeles
by Walter Lippmann, Moderator
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WELCOME TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS
New people continue to sign up for CubaNews list,
a very pleasing development and I'd like to welcome
all of you to this service. It tries to provide news and
analysis on Cuba and events effecting the island 
from a diverse series of sources. Your questions
and ideas for making it better are welcome. Over
540 subscribers are taking Cuba news as of now.

If you like the material you're getting, please tell
friends and pass this on so others will subscribe.
It costs nothing but the time you invest in reading.
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WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH
Cuba's struggle to maintain its soverignty and its
ability to progress, confirming the concept that
"a better world is possible" continues to deepen
despite numerous obstacles. Relationships on
the international arena are shifting in the weeks
and months since the invasion and occupation of
Iraq began. It's difficult to follow it all and this list
works toward bringing you some tools to see what
is happening, and to help readers to distinguish 
between the forest and the trees. We try to keep
the focus on Cuba and to look at the broader
issues in terms of their relationship to Cuba.

This list, please remember, provides all sorts of
information. Some good, some bad, some true
and some of what we send, yes, is false! It's all
part of what's coming out of, or what's being
said about Cuba today. If you want to be active
in bringing about normalized relations between
our two countries, this list tries to provide you
with useful items. Just because it comes out of
here, doesn't mean that I or anyone else is
endorsing it, just that it's here to inform you.

BIOTECH STORY: JUST THE BEGINNING
The story just sent about Cuba's biotechnology
industry is but one of many such areas where
the island plays an outstanding role. There are
also its efforts at conservation of energy, the
use of solar sources, the struggle against the
desertification process and much more. With
rare exceptions, such as this morning's one
on the Pedro Khouri institute, these stories do
not seem of interest to the mass media in the
United States. That's for a reason: Powerful
forces in the United States don't want you to
know what is really going on in Cuba or they
only want you to hear the negative things in
Cuban life. 

There ARE problemmatic things in Cuba. On 
this list an effort is made to emphasize many of
the positive sides, since they're left out of the
bulk of corporate coverage of Cuba. But to
understand the whole story, it's vital to try to
look at a wide array of sources. that's what
this list is about. That's why some stories on
problemmatic aspects of Cuba are shared.
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CUBA CELEBRATES CUBAN MUSIC
Because the Latin Grammy organizers failed
to get the invitations to the Cuban artists in a
timely way, and the US government did zilch
to help, the Cubans didn't get to Miami, so in
Cuba they held their own ceremony. Mary
Murray of NBC wrote about it, but otherwise
the US media remains silent on this.
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DIPLOMATIC DEVELOPMENTS
Fidel met with Amadou Toumani Touré the
president of Mali, in a process of expanding
relations between the countries. You will not
see ANY of this in the US media. But it's the
lead story in both of the Cuban dailies.
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CHOMSKY INTERVIEW NOW ON Z-NET
Noam Chomsky's interview last week on
Radio Havana Cuba, conducted by journalist
Bernie Dwyer, is getting around. Now it's also
posted to Z-NET's website. Chomsky's one
of the most principled fighters for social
justice and one of our best educators about
US foreign policy. Be sure to read his views
all the way through if you haven't already,
and pass them on to friends. Chomsky's 
bottom line is one I share strongly since he
support Cuba's right to self-determination:

"As far as I am concerned, I do not pass 
judgement on what Cubans decide to do. 
I am in favour of Cuba?s successful defiance 
of the United States. I am in favour of them 
taking matters into their own hands. Exactly 
how they carry it out? I have my own opinions. 
A lot of things I think are fine, a lot not, but it?s 
a matter for the Cubans to decide. My concern 
is that the hemispheric superpower not resort 
to violence, pressure, force, threat, and embargo 
in order to prevent Cubans from deciding how 
to determine their own fate." FULL TEXT:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=4132

FORMATTED VERSIONS OF CHOMSKY
If you need to print out the Chomsky materials,
we now have them available in English (three
pages) and in Spanish (five pages). This is
because the Spanish edition contains the
introduction to the Cuban edition of Chomsky's
book CHOMSKY EN LA JORNADA which was
a talk Alarcon gave last year at the Havana 
Book Fair. These are located at the FILES
section of CubaNews list in the "Terrorism
and Anti-Terrorism sub-file:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/files/

HOUSEKEEPING ISSUE
Computer challenges and the erratic behavior
of the Yahoo system means that the flow of our
reports to you from the various sources on Cuba
have not been functional as in the past. I'm sorry
about these problems and am doing what I can to
fix the problems as quickly as possible.

MORE NEWS AND INFORMATION ON CUBA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/ 





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