Havana, Nov 16 (EFE).- Cuba's dissident movement has responded with conflicting reactions to the recent controversy over the irregular use of U.S. funds allocated to promote political change on the communist island.

A report by the U.S. Congress's General Accountability Office confirmed irregularities in the use of part of the roughly $74 million sent to groups within the Cuban opposition between 1996 and 2005 by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department.

One aid recipient, for example, used USAID funds to purchase such items as Nintendo Game Boys, Sony PlayStations, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crabmeat and Godiva chocolates, The Miami Herald reported Wednesday, citing the GAO report.

None of the USAID funds can be sent to Cuba's opposition in cash, a policy designed to protect dissidents from being persecuted by the island's government. The funds often have been used, it seems, to purchase items in the United States that have then been shipped to the dissidents on the island.

In Cuba, the controversy has deepened the differences among the dissident groups who feel the U.S. aid is not necessary and those who believe that any foreign help should be welcomed.

Marta Beatriz Roque, the head of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, said that the dissidents do not receive money from the U.S. but rather "the means" to pursue their activities.

She told Efe that the dissidents had received from the United States books, medicine and radios, among other "things having to do with the possibility of bringing democracy to the people," and she acknowledged that they accepted anything that Washington wanted to send them.

Elizardo Sanchez, who heads the outlawed Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said that the U.S. help is "necessary and positive."

"Not only the dissidents, but also the Cuban people need much help from abroad because there are huge shortages in daily life and in the means to work out from under the aegis of the government," he added.

The U.S. aid, Sanchez said, comes with no "conditions ... (because) the Commission opposes the (U.S. economic) embargo and when they have been able to send us aid we accepted it willingly and we will continue accepting it."

On the other hand, Manuel Cuesta Morua, the spokesman for the social democratic Arco Progresista, said that the United States "must not finance the Cuban dissidence."

The U.S. aid "could be counterproductive for the dissidents inside Cuba because it could give the (Cuban) government a basis for saying that we're financed by the United States," he told Efe.

Also Miriam Leyva, one of the founders of the Ladies in White movement, said that "there must be no funds from any government allocated to the dissidents ... (because) the opposition gets practically nothing and the main thing is that it gives the Cuban government a pretext to say that we are mercenaries and put us in jail."

"I'm against any funds from the American government and I think that if it wants to help the Cuban people it should lift the embargo and allow trade, tourism (and) academic exchanges, and Cubans should be allowed to travel without restriction to the United States or send money to their family" on the island, said Leyva, the wife of one of Cuba's roughly 300 political prisoners. EFE

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US aid to dissidents breeds corruption

HAVANA, Nov 16, 2006 (AFP) -

Havana charged Thursday that US aid to dissidents in Cuba invites corruption, pointing to a recent US congressional probe, which showed that the funds have been used to buy luxury items.

"The program, which is corrupt, breeds corruption," the Communist Party daily Granma said in a front-page article titled "Wasted Money."

"As Cuba has said, these payments prove the political and financial ties that the majority of the supposed 'opponents' of the island's government have with the United States," the official website Cubadebate said.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Wednesday showed that poor monitoring of millions of dollars intended to support Cuban dissidents has led to the purchase of Godiva chocolates, Sony PlayStations and other luxury items at US taxpayers' expense.

Of 10 aid recipients audited, three were found to have made "questionable expenditures," said the GAO, an investigative branch of the US Congress.

It mentioned one recipient who "could not adequately justify" the use of US Agency for International Development (USAID) funds to buy such items as "a gas chain saw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Gameboys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and Godiva chocolates."

The group was not identified in the report, but the Miami-based Cuban Democratic Action group admitted making such purchases with the funds, intended to provide humanitarian assistance for dissidents in Cuba.

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QUICK ACTION ON CUBAN EMBARGO UNLIKELY IN NEW CONGRESS

17 November 2006

Inside U.S. Trade

While Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) is a known opponent of sanctions against Cuba and is set to become the next chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, it is unlikely that he will push for a fundamental change in direction in our foreign policy towards Cuba until after Fidel Castro dies, sources this week said.

According to a House aide, Rangel will not be inclined to push for his own legislative priorities now as chairman, especially those that stand little chance of prevailing in Congress, but will instead set legislative priorities that reflect the attitude of the majority of the members of his committee. Rangel will not look to muscle his committee on anything, and will not force the Cuba issue simply because it is a "pet project," the aide said.

In addition, this aide said, it is unlikely that any major bills related to Cuba will be voted on in the House until the political situation in Cuba is clarified. Currently, with Castro alive but ill, there is little opportunity to work with the Cubans on the embargo and other related issues, but that could change with Castro's death because it could enable the U.S. to work in conjunction with new Cuban leadership, sources said. Cuba is too much of an "unknown" at this point to consider changes to U.S. policy, the aide said.

The aide said he was not aware of any meetings to determine what the consensus is on the Cuba embargo among the new Ways and Means Committee members.
One private-sector source said that with Reps. Clay Shaw (R-FL) and Mark Foley (R-FL) leaving the committee, Rangel is unlikely to face serious opposition on the embargo in the committee. However, other sources agreed that it was unlikely Cuba would be an immediate priority for the Ways and Means committee because there are so many other more pressing issues before that committee.

Rangel has previously introduced legislation to lift the trade embargo on Cuba, and has pushed to end funding for the enforcement of the embargo through amendments to appropriations bills. Rangel has also supported efforts to allow U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba without restriction.

Outside of the House, sources said the Senate could prove even more difficult for those seeking to ease the embargo against Cuba. Aside from Senate rules that allow members to hold bills they oppose, sources noted that many senior Democrats in the Senate have traditionally opposed efforts to ease sanctions against Cuba. For example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has long supported the embargo, as have Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT).

Because of these obstacles, some sources said any attempt to change U.S. Cuba policy would likely have to be justified with arguments that it is the U.S. national interest to make the change. "If anything is going to happen at all, the winning play won't be to argue that we've victimized Cuba," according to Robert Muse, a lawyer who specializes in U.S.-Cuba policy. "Arguments would have to be made that there is a specific U.S. interest in any policy change."

Still, the House aide argued that under a Democratic Congress, there might be more "wiggle room" for issues to be worked out on the margins of the embargo between Congress and the White House.

Of these issues, sources anticipated that easing the travel restrictions to Cuba would be among the most likely to gain traction in the new Congress. One possible idea is making it easier for U.S. companies that sell agricultural commodities to Cuba to travel there to explore sales, which has been supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has previously introduced legislation that would ease travel restrictions, which was supported by Rangel. However, these bills have been largely symbolic because Republican leadership had refused to move the legislation, a spokesman for Rep. Flake said. The spokesman said Flake would push Rangel on lifting the travel ban before the new Congress begins in January, but so far has not had a chance to talk with him on this issue.

The spokesman added that Flake would also talk to Rangel about the possibility of drilling for oil off the shore of Cuba. The U.S. embargo generally prohibits U.S. companies from entering into any contract with Cuba for any business reason, and thus would preclude an attempt to seek oil in Cuban waters unless the Treasury Department were to issue a license for that purpose.

One private-sector source said that while oil companies are interested in the possibility of drilling near Cuba, it is not a pressing issue for them, and the companies are not expected to push Congress hard on the issue.

So far, no one has lobbied Rangel to make specific changes towards Cuba policy, a House aide said. However, in a letter to Rangel dated Nov. 8, organizations in favor of changing U.S. policy towards Cuba urged Rangel to continue playing a leadership role in the effort to change U.S. policy towards Cuba while considering his priorities for the next Congress.

The letter was signed by the Center for Democracy in the Americas, the William C. Velasquez Institute, The New America Foundation, The Fund for Reconciliation and Development, the Latin America Working Group, The Washington Office on Latin America, Alamar Associates, Puentes Cubanos, the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, the Emergency Network of Cuban American Scholars and Artists, the Center for International Policy, and the World Policy Institute.
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Cuba TV leaves Castro birthday plans up in air

HAVANA, Nov 16 (Reuters) - An influential program on state-run Cuban television on Thursday described plans for ailing Fidel Castro's 80th birthday celebration but did not mention whether he would attend and said his ideas were more important than his presence.

The nightly "Mesa Redonda" show, often used by the government to disclose news, was devoted entirely to the Dec. 2 event, but its participants stayed away from the topic of Castro's health.

Moderator Randy Alonso said in a closing statement that "more than the physical presence, the ideas of Fidel, the ideas of the revolution" were important to the celebration.

Castro had intestinal surgery for an undisclosed illness and temporarily turned over leadership to brother Raul on July 31.

He has not been in public since, but an Oct. 28 video showed him to be gaunt and frail, raising questions about whether he would recover enough to return to power.

Many in Cuba view the Dec. 2 event, which also marks the 50th anniversary of the revolution that put him in power in 1959, as an important milestone for Castro.

Government officials have said he is recovering but that his attendance for the celebration is uncertain.

His 80th birthday was Aug. 13, but he was unable to celebrate in public and suggested it be marked on Dec. 2.

The highlight of the celebration will be Havana's first military parade in a decade, with art, music and literary events leading up to it.

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Depardieu to be among those toasting Fidel

Havana, Nov 17 (EFE).- At least one big French film star and a former first lady from that country will be on hand here for the delayed celebrations of Fidel Castro's 80th birthday, though whether the ailing longtime leader himself will appear remains unknown.
The Guayasamin Foundation, named for Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo Guayasamin, is organizing a series of round table discussions, concerts and art exhibitions between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1 as something of a postponed birthday party for Castro.

The "maximum leader" of the nearly 48-year-old regime handed off the presidency to his younger brother Raul, the longtime army chief, last July 31 after undergoing intestinal surgery. The Communist government says Fidel's health is a state secret, and has provided no diagnosis or prognosis of his illness.

The delegation of power to Raul and several close aides was described as "temporary," but there has been no official prediction as to when or if Fidel, who turned 80 on Aug. 13, will return to the exercise of full power.

Saskia Guayasamin, daughter of Oswaldo, said French actor Gerard Depardieu has confirmed his attendance, as has Danielle Mitterrand, wife of former French president Francois Mitterrand.

Among others who have said they will come are Argentine Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel and Spain's Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former head of UNESCO.
Castro's eldest son said Monday that his father is getting better, but declined to say if the leader would attend his birthday festivities.

"All I can tell your is that he is recovering," Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, a 57-year-old scientist, told reporters in response to a question about the health of his father.

The son's comments came the same day that many U.S. media outlets published or broadcast reports, based on unidentified U.S. sources, that officials in the Bush administration believe Fidel Castro has cancer and will not survive through 2007.

Cuban state media have shown some pictures and video of Castro since his operation. In those images, the president appears significantly leaner and somewhat gaunt. EFE eyy/dgm
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CUBA: CASTRO FANS HAVE FAITH HE WILL RETURN, BUT DOUBTS SIMMER

By Dalia Acosta
16 November 2006

Inter Press Service
HAVANA, Nov. 15, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- Betting on the health of Cuban President Fidel Castro, his reappearance in public and his return to the helm is gaining in popularity with the approach of Dec. 2, the day Castro himself chose to celebrate his 80th birthday.

The "fiesta," which was to have taken place on or around his Aug. 13 birthday, was postponed by Castro in the same public statement in which he announced he had undergone emergency surgery and was handing over his position and provisional powers to his brother Raúl Castro, for the first time since 1959.

More than 100 days after the announcement, plenty of people say that "Fidel will be back" and that he will undoubtedly be at the celebrations. Many others are doubtful after a video broadcast on Cuban television on Oct. 28.

"I understand that it had to be proved that he was alive, but I wouldn't have shown him in that condition. There's a different look in his eyes. It's going to be hard to have him back as he was, as we were used to seeing him," said Aurelia Comas, a member of a Grandparents' Club, who says she has been "a revolutionary and 'Fidelista' all my life."

The video shows Castro speaking to the camera, sitting and reading the day's newspaper, riding in an elevator and walking slowly but unaided down a corridor. He referred to the rumors of his death and reminded people that he had previously warned that his recovery "would be prolonged and not exempt of risk."

"Clearly the president's willpower is greater than his actual physical capacity," Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a spokesman for Arco Progresista (Progressive Rainbow), a moderate dissident coalition, told IPS.

"Some say he isn't well, but nobody really knows. Anything can happen -- he is strong," said Virgen Gómez, an English teacher.

"That he'll be back is beyond question," said Manuel Agüero, leader of a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, socialist groups that operate at the neighborhood level.

A woman from another Latin American country who has lived in Cuba since the early 1960s postponed a trip abroad for several reasons, among them her determination not to miss the activities planned for Nov. 28-Dec. 2: a military parade, concert, exhibit and seminar on the impact of Castro's thinking.

"I want to be here on the day he comes back," said the woman, who preferred that neither her name nor her country of origin be mentioned.

Confirming the dates and arrangements for the festivities, the Ecuadorian Guayasamín Foundation said that "in the opportune moment, in the midst of Fidel's disciplined process of recovery, he will decide the circumstances in which it will be possible for him to accompany those of us who will be here" in Havana. "If the doctors allow it, Fidel could make that expected public reappearance, at least at one of the planned events," said Argentine writer and lawmaker Miguel Bonasso, a personal friend of Castro's.

While U.S. officials say Castro is suffering from terminal cancer and is unlikely to live to see 2008, the messages from Cuban authorities avoid all extremes: Castro is not fully recovered, but neither is he so ill that he cannot supervise the country's major decisions.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said on Nov. 6 that Castro's recovery was advancing, although he said there was no guarantee that he will be well enough to attend the celebrations.
Pérez Roque also said that the president would return to his official functions "at the right time," and that "It's a subject on which I don't want to speculate."

Previously, on Nov. 3, the president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcón, had said that Castro was recovering faster than expected, and was increasingly involved in political activity, being consulted about many matters.
"He will return to his responsibilities," Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage told the press in Montevideo, Uruguay, on Nov. 5, during the Ibero-American Summit there.

Above and beyond the question of whether Castro will take part in his belated birthday celebrations, local analysts say the tranquility that has reigned in Cuba since the announcement of his surgery proves the socialist government's capacity to keep a firm hold on power in his absence.

In Cuesta Morúa's view, a return by a fully functional Castro to power is no longer an option, and it is time to make a decision to completely hand over power to his successor under Cuban law, his brother Raúl.

That is the only way Cuba will be able to begin moving toward "a new era," he said.
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Cuba blasts Swiss banks for cutting off business

HAVANA, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Cuba's central bank blasted Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse on Thursday for cutting off business dealings with Cuba, saying they had bowed to U.S. pressure.

In a statement, the central bank said the United States' long-standing economic embargo against the communist nation led to the banks' "pitiful" decision.

"The actions of these two banks have nothing to do with respect of the law or looking after their banking transactions. It is simply an act of submission to the U.S., which they don't dare confess," the Cuban bank said.

The Swiss banks said on Sunday in response to a published report they had stopped doing business with "sensitive" countries," including Cuba, citing the difficulties and expenses involved.

A UBS spokesman said other "sensitive countries" included North Korea, Iran and Sudan.

The U.S. government under President George W. Bush has tightened its four-decade-old Cuba embargo by imposing regulations on dollar transactions that make it more difficult to do business there.

The embargo is aimed at undermining the government that, under Fidel Castro, has run Cuba since a 1959 revolution.

The actions of the Swiss banks, the Cuban bank said, are "an irrefutable example of how the U.S. imposes it laws outside its borders and decides with whom institutions of other supposedly free and sovereign nations can and cannot do business."

Despite the pullout of UBS and Credit Suisse, it said a growing number of countries and organizations are refusing to follow "an empire whose constant failures in recent weeks are just the tip of the iceberg of its irreversible decline."

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Dual economy could trouble Cuba's future

Cuba's two economies, one for those with dollars and another for those without, may cause headaches for future leadership.

HAVANA - MIAMI HERALD STAFF REPORT

Posted on Fri, Nov. 17, 2006

Joel earns $200 per month in tips from playing percussion in a band that performs for tourists in Old Havana -- more than 30 times what the Cuban government pays him for the same work.

Meanwhile, Irene, a government secretary without access to U.S. dollars, subsists on her monthly salary of 300 Cuban pesos -- the equivalent of nearly $13.

''Those with dollars have a big advantage,'' Irene said as she sat outside Havana's famed Coppelia ice cream shop. ``It's not fair.''

With Cuban leader Fidel Castro ailing, the inequities created by the dual dollar-peso economy that Cuba established to overcome the catastrophic collapse of Soviet subsidies may well become one of the major challenges faced by his successors, experts say.

Cubans say the unequal system is the single most exasperating issue facing them. So much of the economy runs on the dollar that the typical family here needs greenbacks to buy everything from razors to bedsheets to shoes -- items largely available only at government stores that price their goods in dollar equivalents. Yet the average worker earns 250 pesos a month -- about $10.

''In Cuba, money is worthless,'' said dissident Lizette Fernández who left Cuba in August and now lives in Hialeah. ``You get soap two times a year, and when you run out, you have to go to the dollar store, where it costs 75 (U.S.) cents. There is virtually nothing you need that you can buy with Cuban pesos.''

Before she left Cuba, Fernández helped kick off a campaign demanding that all government establishments sell goods in a single currency -- pesos.

Trying to overcome the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, Castro legalized the use of U.S. dollars here, opened the doors to foreign tourists and began allowing Cubans to open small private businesses like restaurants in their homes.

TROUBLESOME GAP

The changes are credited with keeping the economy afloat. But the dollar's legalization also created a vast and potentially troublesome gap between those who have dollars and those who don't.

''It was a Faustian bargain that Fidel had to make against his ideological preferences,'' Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst and author of the recent book, After Fidel, said in a telephone interview. ``There is a dual society now in Cuba. . . . The social disparities from those with access to dollars and those without is huge.''

INEQUALITY

With state salaries barely able to cover less than half a month's living costs, those with dollars now live far better off than the rest.

''You have an inequality that is not supposed to exist in a socialist economy. . . . This is a big issue for the government to solve in the future,'' Philip Peters, director of the Cuba Program at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia think tank, said by telephone.

Peters estimates that 60 percent of Cubans have access to dollars through tips, special rewards to state workers, work on the side or remittances from relatives or friends abroad. Those remittances have been estimated at $1 billion a year.

The dual dollar-peso economy is also believed to be leaving Afro Cubans behind. Since lighter-skinned Cubans have migrated in higher numbers, their remittances mostly go to their lighter-skinned relatives on the island.

NEED FOR DOLLARS

Castro again banned the use of cash dollars in 2004, apparently to collect a fee on exchange transactions, and required Cubans to change their greenbacks for so-called convertible Cuban pesos, or CUCs. One dollar now equals about .80 CUCs.

But that measure has not ended the Cubans' need for dollars to use for purchases at the government's ''dollar stores,'' which sell consumer goods at CUC prices.

A store in Central Havana recently was selling a bottle of cooking oil for 2.20 CUCs, a bottle of rum for 5.40 and a jar of mayonnaise for 4.10 -- the equivalent of 5.12 in U.S. dollars, 98.40 pesos and about 40 percent of an average monthly wage.

And in contrast to capitalist economies, taxi drivers, waiters, bartenders, hotel receptionists -- anyone with access to tourists' tips -- hold some of the most coveted jobs in Cuba.

A cab driver named Emilio said he works 15 days a month and earns the peso equivalent of $12 a month from his state-run enterprise. But Emilio's real income is $100 to $120 per month, thanks to dollar payments from tourists and prostitutes. Emilio said the job is so rewarding that some Cubans are paying $500 in bribes for the right to drive a cab.

The surnames of Emilio and other Cubans interviewed for this story are not being published to prevent government reprisals.

Even if they have dollars or CUCs, average Cubans cannot buy their way into facilities or services that the government reserves for foreign tourists, such as leading hotels, cellphones or some beaches.

Faced with the reality of too many things she could not afford -- and dollars she did not have -- before she moved to Hialeah, Fernández and a dissident organization that she ran, the Federation of Rural Latin American Women, launched the effort to demand that all establishments sell goods in pesos.

She said 28 women around the island are organizing small cells of women who are gathering signatures backing the campaign, dubbed ''With the Same Coin.'' A dissident still in Cuba said people support the move, but are afraid to sign.

''We can't be second-class citizens just for being Cubans,'' said Fernández. ``We have no rights, just because we have no dollars.''

The Miami Herald withheld the name of the correspondent who filed this report because the author lacked the Cuban journalist's visa required to work on the island.

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Venezuelan Aeropostal, Cuban Cubana de Aviacion Extend Cooperation Agreement

16 November 2006
Latin America News Digest
AII Data Processing Ltd

Venezuelan airline Aeropostal and Cuban airline Cubana de Aviacion have extended their cooperation agreement, which entered into force in 1999, the Venezuelan press reported on November 15, 2006.

The extended agreement enters into force as of 2007.

The agreement envisages extending the code sharing agreement to such destinations as Lima, Bogota and Medellin in Colombia, Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as all national destinations. The code sharing agreement also includes all flights of Cubana de Aviacion between Venezuela and Cuba.

Venezuela is the main trade and political ally of Cuba. The two countries have been strengthening their bilateral relations for the past several years, signing a series of cooperation agreements.

In May 2006 Venezuela and Cuba signed in Havana an agreement for cooperation in the field of oil exploration and oil production, as part of the so-called regional integration project Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which is boosted by Venezuela and Cuba.

[Editor's note: The trade exchange between Cuba and Venezuela totalled $3.67 bln (2.86 bln euro) in 2005, the President of Cuba, Fidel Castro, announced on May 1, 2006.]

http://www.abn.info.ve/

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EU to send reps to Cuba to give women rights prize

Strasbourg, France, Nov 16 (EFE).- The European Parliament decided Thursday to send a delegation to Cuba to deliver a prestigious human rights award to a group of women - wives, mothers and daughters of political prisoners - who were barred by the Communist regime from traveling to France to receive it.

Last year's Sakharov Prize was awarded to the Women in White. When the Castro regime denied the activists permission to travel to this city that is the seat of the EU legislature, the women asked the body to send representatives to Havana to give them the prize there.

The decision to do so was made during a conference Thursday of the heads of parties represented in the body.

The congress also resolved to send another delegation to Myanmar, formerly Burma, to try to deliver the same award to democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was named its recipient in 1990. She has been under house arrest since 2003.

Whether the parliamentary delegation would be allowed to enter Cuba remains to be seen. The Cuban government in recent years has expelled European legislators taking part in pro-democracy events on the island, and has barred entry to the United Nations' special human rights monitor for Cuba.

The Women in White movement includes wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and other female relatives of the 75 dissidents arrested and sentenced in spring 2003 to jail terms averaging 20 years.

The prisoners - mostly democracy advocates and independent journalists and librarians - were convicted of "undermining the revolution."

Cuba's 47-year-old one-party state is one of the few regimes in the world that requires of its citizens official permission to leave the country. EFE

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Copyright struggle US publisher loses Cuban claim

David Ward

17 November 2006

The Guardian

A copyright struggle over some of the finest music to emerge from Cuba ended yesterday after a six-year legal process in which a British judge presided over court hearings in London and Havana.

Mr Justice Lindsay, ruling on a wrangle over rights to "lively and expressive music" made famous on album by the Buena Vista Social Club (right), declined to give a declaration sought in the high court by Peer International Corporation, a US publisher, that it owned the rights to 13 songs dating back to the 1930s.

Peer had claimed its catalogue had been unlawfully taken over by the Cuban government after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. It said it had acquired the English copyright from the heirs to the composers, now dead.

But Editora Musical de Cuba (EMC), described by the judge as an "emanation" of the Cuban state, said Peer was trying to salvage royalties from songs that had never made a penny for their authors. It argued it had legally assigned the copyright to Termidor Music Publishers, based in Britain and Germany.
Peter Prescott QC, representing Termidor, had told the judge the contracts involving the 600 songs were all invalid because they were "cunningly contrived, allowing the publishers to get away with paying virtually nothing. "The composers in this case received, at most, a few pesos and maybe a drink of rum," he said at the hearing.

Mr Justice Lindsay said there was a long period when Peer had no contact with the composers, but in the 1990s, perhaps after the success of the Buena Vista Social Club album, tried to re-establish contact.

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Black Panther William Lee Brent, 75

Matt Schudel - Washington Post Staff Writer

17 November 2006

The Washington Post

William Lee Brent, a member of the Black Panthers who hijacked an airliner to Cuba in 1969 and later wrote a gritty account of his life, died Nov. 4 of bronchial pneumonia at his home in Havana. He was 75.

After years of crime, prison and low-paying jobs, Mr. Brent joined the Black Panthers in 1968 and quickly rose in the ranks of the radical black-power organization based in Oakland, Calif. To avoid trial for his role in a shootout with San Francisco police, Mr. Brent hijacked a TWA flight and spent the rest of his life in Cuba.

He chronicled his life in his 1996 autobiography, "Long Time Gone: A Black Panther's True-Life Story of His Hijacking and Twenty-Five Years in Cuba." Although he came to miss the United States and had reservations about life in Cuba, he said he never regretted the actions that separated him from his family and his homeland.

Mr. Brent was born Nov. 10, 1930, in Franklin, La., and had a hardscrabble childhood in Louisiana and Texas before his family moved to Oakland in 1943. By the time he was in junior high school, he was selling drugs and committing other crimes.

In 1947, he bought a fake birth certificate to enlist in the Army but was discharged after eight months. Returning to Oakland, he fell into his old ways and served 18 months in a youth prison for stealing a bicycle. At some point, he took out a library card and began to read Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of Sherlock Holmes.

In the early 1950s, he was convicted of auto theft and armed robbery and was sentenced to five years to life in San Quentin State Prison. He served eight years before he was released in 1962.

"I promised myself I'd die in the gutter before I would ever go back to prison," Mr. Brent wrote in "Long Time Gone."

He worked for an auto-wrecking business and was married in 1964 to Gloria Harness, from whom he was later divorced. After learning about the nascent Black Panther movement, Mr. Brent attended a rally in Oakland in 1968 and joined the party.

At 37, he was one of its oldest members. He entered the group's inner circle and became a Panther spokesman and bodyguard to Eldridge Cleaver.

In November 1968, after a gas station robbery in San Francisco, Mr. Brent was involved in a drug-fueled shootout with police that left two officers severely wounded. Mr. Brent was arrested at the scene with two accomplices.

Free on bail, and vowing not to go back to prison, Mr. Brent surveyed his limited options.

"Shortly after I joined the Panthers I'd heard that revolutionaries who needed political asylum could get it in Cuba with no problem," he wrote in "Long Time Gone." "I considered myself a revolutionary and I certainly needed asylum."

Wearing a conservative suit and tie, he boarded TWA flight 154 in Oakland on the morning of June 17, 1969. The flight had originated in San Francisco and was scheduled to fly nonstop to New York.

Somewhere over Nevada, he told a flight attendant that he was hijacking the airplane. In the cockpit, he held a .38-caliber revolver to the head of the pilot, who calmly announced to the 76 passengers, "We have had a change of plans. We are going to Havana." It was the 28th hijacking of the year.

When the plane touched down in Havana, Mr. Brent expected to be greeted as a hero. Instead, he was put in a Cuban jail for 22 months as authorities sought to learn whether he was a spy. He later cut sugar cane and worked in a soap factory and on a hog farm. He married an American journalist living in Cuba, Jane McManus, and enrolled at the University of Havana, from which he graduated in 1981. (McManus died last year.)

Mr. Brent was part of a circle of other American political emigres in Havana and led a somewhat privileged life by Cuban standards, with a spacious apartment overlooking the Almendares River. He taught English at Havana's leading high school and became a disc jockey under the name Bill Beaumont -- after his onetime childhood home in Texas -- on Cuban radio.

While visiting Havana, Steve Wasserman, an editor with Times Books, urged Mr. Brent to write his memoirs, which were published to warm reviews in 1996.

"It was one of the great experiences I ever had as an editor, to watch this man whose life was chaotic and unruly obtain mastery over his own story by writing it in his own hand," Wasserman said in an interview.

Mr. Brent did not return to the United States because there is no statute of limitations for skyjacking. No one in his family visited him, and his isolation began to wear on him. He said he also recognized the false hope engendered by Fidel Castro's revolution, as life on the island grew ever more straitened.

"Bill refused to lie," Wasserman said. "He was certainly an unrepentant and radically minded guy, but he was not a man who liked to live in an illusion."

Without renouncing his radical fervor or the crimes and missteps that led to his exile, Mr. Brent admitted in 1996 that he missed "my people, the struggle, the body language" of America.

"You can't get rid of what you are, what you grew up in, the way you were formed."

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And the band played on ...: ... During a hurricane in Cuba and breaking down the culture wall of China

By Matt Elliott, Tulsa World, Okla.

McClatchy-Tribune Business News

16 November 2006

Nov. 16--You might think that 30 years into its career, Air Supply would be on its way down, playing smaller clubs in the band's autumn years.

Feel free to drop those preconceptions. The band, which wrote some of the most ubiquitous love songs of the 1980s, played one balmy July night in 2005 to 175,000 people in Havana, said Graham Russell, the group's principal songwriter and co-founder.

So many people kept showing up, the outdoor show's organizers kept pushing the band's show time back, Russell said. Fighting weariness, the group didn't go on stage until 2 a.m., when it played the first chords of the night's concert in the city's center next to the sea wall.
"It was a great moment, and we'd wanted to do it for some years," said Russell, an Englishman who has lived in the United States for about 20 years. "But, it's difficult to get in and out of Cuba. You're not allowed obviously to go in or come out to the U.S . . . so we came in from Panama and went back to Guatemala."
Hurricane Emily blew through around around 6 a.m. following the concert, Russell said, blowing cars through the streets, bowing palm trees and knocking out power to his hotel. The storm canceled the band's next-day second show, which disappointed Russell, who said the band wanted to meet Fidel Castro, who was expected to attend.

Instead, Russell got a far more memorable gift.

Tourists and area residents flocked to Russell's stone hotel for shelter from the storm.

The power was out and the only light came from candles. Hundreds of people packed into the hotel's lobby and other rooms, sleeping on the floor, he said.

"You couldn't walk through the lobby without treading on people."

He was suddenly struck by the romantic setting of the hotel in candlelight and the raging storm outside.

"I just shouted in the lobby, I said, 'If anybody's interested, I'm going to do an acoustic set in one of the restaurants.' And, I thought maybe a few people would come, but five minutes later, everyone came in and it was packed.

"We had no power, so . . . my pianist played this massive Steinway. And, I just played acoustic guitar and I said to everyone, 'You've got to be really quiet because there's no amplification.' But, it was incredible. It was just one of those moments. It was a great thing. And everybody sang and was holding candles. It was just a beautiful moment in my career."

Air Supply started in the late 1970s after Russell, a guitarist and pianist, met singer Russell Hitchcock during rehearsals for "Jesus Christ Superstar" in Sydney, Australia.

The two grew to become one of the biggest bands in the world after Arista Records signed them around 1980.

Their first album on Arista, "Lost in Love," ruled the charts with its sweeping and heartfelt love songs that would become the group's signature sound -- one that still defines it today.

Performing is what keeps the band going now, he said, although a new album -- the band's 22nd -- will be out early next year.

Air Supply recently returned from a tour of China, where it first performed in 1986 -- the first western band to play in the communist country. That first trip coincided with a time when the band's material wasn't as popular on the music charts, which gave the two more freedom to play where they wished, Russell said.

Russell and Hitchcock are living well off their economic successes in the 1980s.

"None of those things are important. It's playing live and bringing something to people in the audience. We really believe that we do that to varying degrees. People come and see us, they're really surprised. They come for one reason but they get another when they've seen us. It's a very passionate show."

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'I'M SO HAPPY THAT I AM HERE'; CUBAN IMMIGRANT, FILM LECTURER MAKES A JOYFUL LIFE IN MADISON

Christopher Marotta Special to The Capital Times

16 November 2006

The Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal

Arsenio Cicero came to Madison from Havana seven years ago, and his life has not been the same.

"I had two lives, one before in Cuba and one studying here," he said.

In Cuba, Cicero, who worked as a film festival liaison to the world press, said he lived a censored life, unable to speak or think freely. "You know there are some things you don't say, some things you don't do," he said in an interview here.

Speaking freely here as a U.S. citizen, Cicero sees a potential crisis on the horizon with the fading of Fidel Castro. "My hope is that people outside of Cuba take it easy . . . I hope that they stay out of all that and leave it for Cuba to solve for itself."

Cicero now is a lecturer in Spanish language, culture, and cinema at UW-Madison, and is also taking classes to get a graduate degree. Now 50, he lives in Eagle Heights, with his 4-year-old Madison-born daughter, Nina Maria Cicero-Soles.

Cicero worked for most of his early life in Cuban cinema and translation. For 16 years, Cicero worked at the annual Havana Film Festival, in charge of the foreign press.

"Working with the festival, I got to meet a lot of nice people, which gave me this good idea about Americans," he said.

Some of the "nice people" Cicero worked with were actors Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken, and newsman Peter Jennings.

The person he met at the festival who made the most impact in his life, though, was not someone famous. "I met this woman, I fell in love with her." said Cicero.

Writing her thesis in Cuban cinema, Cicero's future wife, Diane Soles, was a native Madisonian. "When we met, we had a connection immediately," Cicero recalled. At the time, Cicero was preparing to open a Cuban branch of studies in a school in Zurich, Switzerland.

"I was really interested in the school, but love was stronger," said Cicero. He came to the United States on a fiance visa in June of 1999 and was married that July.

He spent his first years at Madison teaching at UW, having a daughter, and deciding to go back to school. Seven years later, Cicero and his ex-wife are divorced.

"I have no regrets, absolutely. No regrets at all. I'm so happy that I am here," he said.

Now, there are two new loves in his life - his daughter, and Madison.

"In the whole wide world, that's where my daughter is, it's where she was born, it's where she goes to school. And I have a lot of friends here myself. Madison is the place," he said.

In addition to teaching, he has been organizing a Cuban film festival. "I want to share all that I can with the people here in Madison, because it is my city," he said.

Cicero's only regret is the distance that has developed between himself and his own culture. "What I would love to see is to end this stupid status we have now," said Cicero. He believes that there is no reason that the U.S. embargo should continue, and that it is only putting a wall up between two cultures.

"Cuba is home, Cuba is friends, Cuba is hurricanes, and it's family, and it's music, and it's baseball, and it's people ," he said.

"What I would love is for people from Madison and all over the United States to go to Cuba."

Christopher Marotta of Madison is currently a sophomore at Bowdoin College in Maine.

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Cuba: dólares ahondan las diferencias de clase

Redacción de The Miami Herald

LA HABANA

Joel gana $200 al mes en propinas por trabajar como percusionista en una banda musical que actúa para los turistas en La Habana Vieja, lo que equivale a más de 30 veces lo que el gobierno cubano le paga por hacer el mismo trabajo.

Por su parte, Irene, secretaria del gobierno que no tiene acceso a los dólares, sobrevive con su salario mensual de 300 pesos cubanos, el equivalente de casi $13.

Beneficios de ALBA para Bolivia "se hacen esperar", dice experto (EFE)

Micelaneas de Cuba (http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/)

Dual economy could trouble Cuba's future

------------ Cuba: dólares ahondan las diferencias de clase

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Cuba: dólares ahondan las diferencias de clase