Cuba-Canada                                                      Uphold the Right of Self-Determination!  No to Colonial and Imperial Policies!

-Isaac Saney, CNC Spokesperson, March 2, 2021-

The Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC) is outraged by the communique from Global Affairs Canada summarizing the February 26 virtual meeting between Foreign Minister and U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. It is an open declaration that Ottawa, lock step with the United States, arrogates to itself the right to intervene in the affairs countries across the globe, particularly in the Americas. As the follow-up to the so-called Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canada Partnership launched by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden in their own February 23 virtual meeting, the communique not only violates international law, norms and conventions but also reeks of the discredited colonialist mentality and practice of foisting on independent countries imperial arrangements that they do not want or accept.

       The declaration of the Trudeau government’s “commitment to address human rights and needed reforms in Cuba” is not only a slander against Cuba but an intolerable interference in the sovereign affairs of Cuba and violation of its right to self-determination.  Global Affairs Canada is deliberately parroting the disinformation of the United States State Department about Cuba. Nowhere in the communique is there a mention of the real violator of human rights in Cuba: the ongoing U.S. economic war and campaign of subversion against the heroic island nation. Nowhere is there even an inkling that Garneau took Blinken to task for not addressing the Trump regime’s deceitful and duplicitous designation of Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism: an act of blatant opportunism and cynicism, flying in the face of the reality that it is Cuba that has been the victim of all manner of terrorist attacks carried out with the complicity, participation and sponsorship of Washington.

       If the Trudeau government is truly interested in the cause of democracy, then it should unequivocally and uncategorically demand the end of U.S. economic sanctions and other aggressions against Cuba. Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution more than sixty -year ago, the objective of Washington’s strategy has centred has been and is the negation and extinguishment of Cuba’s right to self-determination, sovereignty and independence. This effort to asphyxiate Cuba is the principal obstacle to this proud island nation’s social and economic development, costing the people of Cuba in excess of $100 billion U.S.

       Ottawa’s open alignment with U.S. policy is deeply disturbing and alarming. We call on Canadians to repudiate it with the contempt it deserves. The February 26 communique harkens back to a bygone era where great powers acted with impunity against and with utter disregard towards the nations of the Americas. The peoples of the Americas and the world have time and time again resoundingly rejected this method and mode of thinking. The great anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries bear witness to this.

       If the Canadian government truly stands for democracy and the wellbeing of the peoples of the Americas and the world, it must uphold and practice a foreign policy based on equality and respect for sovereignty and the right of self-determination, abandoning and renouncing colonialist and imperialist mindsets and policies.

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Canada-Cuba: Solidarity Campaign for Medical Supplies

Ottawa, January 8th, 2021 (Cuban Embassy)-The Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC)  launched today a campaign for funds to buy in Canada needed medical supplies for Cuba. CNC, aware of and recognizing Cuba's achievements in medical health and its efforts in providing medical support to other countries, decided to work on collecting funds Canadians want to channel to Cuba. These are difficult times for all and for Cuba who faces a double pandemic: COVID-19 and the increasingly aggressive US Blockade that impedes Cuba the acquisition of medicines and medical equipment urgently needed to confront this epidemic. In recognition of Cuba's achievements in particular in the area of Health, and also because of Cuba's internationally recognized efforts in support of other countries, is organizing this drive as it organized others in the past -for instance in support of recovery and reconstruction from natural disasters and most recently in favor of the work of the Cuban Henry Reeve Medical Brigades. Recently CNC has completed a very successful campaign in support of Cuban Baseball through the Cubacan6060 project.  

For more information about this campaign please check CNC website: https://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca/

  

The War on Cuba Episode 3

Cuban President, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez at the UN:

Our people, who take pride in our history

and are committed to the ideals and 

achievements of the Revolution, 

will resist and triumph."

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2020-09-22/speech-by-the-president-of-the-republic-of-cuba-miguel-diaz-canel-bermudez-at-the-general-debate-of-the-75th-session-of-the-unga

The War on Cuba Episode 2

The War on Cuba Episode 2

Somos del Barrio -We are the neighbourhood 

Gerardo Hernandez, Cuban Five Hero.

Visit: Sportsnet interview with Bill Ryan:

Sportsnet video Bill Ryan

Bat man and Gervan take swing at saving Cuban baseball season

Patrick Kennedy article, September 25, 2020 

Kingston Whig Standard

Gerardo Hernandez, a member of the Cuban 5, holds a Cubacan "trophy" bat while surrounded by members of Cuba's first family of baseball, the Gurriels, and bat maker Bill Ryan. From left are Ryan, Lourdes Gurriel Sr., Hernandez, ex-Baltimore Oriole Yuniesky Gurriel, current Toronto Blue Jay Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Houston Astro Yuliesky Gurriel. (Supplied Photo) JPG, KI

 Siembra -great music and a gift, by Arnaldo Rodriguez and Talismán

to the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution

celebrating their 60th Anniversary.

 

Retired car salesman turning out baseball bats for Cuba

Andrew Duffy

Sep 10, 2020   Ottawa Citizen

 From his basement woodworking shop in the Ottawa Valley, former car salesman Bill Ryan, 66, is turning out finely-crafted maple bats for Cuba's beleaguered baseball leagues. PHOTO BY JEAN LEVAC /Postmedia

A retired Ottawa Valley car salesman is turning out hundreds of hand-made maple bats every year for Cuban baseball players as part of a decade-long effort to assist the impoverished island nation.

Bill Ryan, 66, spends 10 or 11 hours every day in his basement woodworking shop, making his now famous “Cubacan” bats.

This year, he wants to send 600 bats — they each cost about $50 — to Cuba, which is about to start its national baseball series. Professional quality bats are difficult to find and prohibitively expensive in Cuba, which remains the subject of a strict U.S. trade embargo.

“The only way I can do this is to do all of the steps myself,” says Ryan, who lives on a rural side road south of Carleton Place, near Franktown.

He uses his own sawmill to cut the rectangular “blanks” from which he crafts a baseball bat. The blanks — rectangular blocks 36 inches long and three inches wide — are kiln-dried for three months to reduce their moisture content and weight.

Each bat requires about two hours of labour. Ryan uses a lathe to shape the bat, then sands it three different ways before applying two coats of paint, decals and two coats of varnish.

A careful record keeper, Ryan has made 2,967 bats since he launched his “hobby” a decade ago. Almost all of his bats are now in Cuba.

“When I made the first bat, there was no intention of making the second or the third: It just sort of built,” he says.

Like most Canadians, Ryan’s first exposure to Cuba came as a sun-seeking tourist.

A deeper involvement in the country started innocently enough when he decided to fashion a few bats as gifts for Cuban friends. A lifelong woodworker, Ryan made trophy bats that were more a decoration than a piece of baseball equipment.

In baseball-mad Cuba, however, the bats attracted attention and he was asked to make more, including bats that could be used in games. The maple bats quickly grew in popularity among Cuban players.

He was also asked to make bats as gifts for each of the Cuban Five — five intelligence officers who were arrested by U.S. authorities in September 1988. “Los Cincos” spent more than a decade in U.S. prisons after being convicted of spying. Cuba maintained they were in South Florida to monitor extremist exiles involved in a wave of terrorist bombings in Havana.

All of the men were released by 2014 and welcomed home as heroes in Cuba. Ryan met and befriended one of them, Gerardo Hernandez, and together they launched a grassroots organization, Cubacan, dedicated to improving the lives of ordinary Cubans.

Cubacan has shipped equipment and materials to improve bat making in Cuba. Last year, the organization delivered more than two tonnes of sports equipment to the island.

This year, Ryan wants to send 600 hand-crafted bats to the 16 teams competing in Cuba’s national baseball series, a key stepping stone to the Olympic Games for the country’s best players. The series starts next week.

Cuba is struggling to equip its baseball teams because of economic sanctions and new restrictions imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. During the past four years, Trump has reversed the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations orchestrated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and tightened the sanctions that have stifled the Cuban economy for 60 years.

Ryan says U.S. efforts to damage Cuba even reached into the Ottawa Valley. Earlier this year, he says, under pressure from the U.S. Treasury Department, GoFundMe closed his fundraising account which had been created to send sports equipment to Cuba from Canada.

The Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC) is now leading the fundraising effort to raise $30,000 to send the Cubacan bats to Cuba.

Ryan still travels to Cuba once a year with his wife, Nora. It’s “incredibly satisfying,” he says, to watch a baseball player hit a home run with one of his bats, but seeing one break still makes him shudder.

Two years ago, Ryan received the Cuban government’s Friendship Medal, which has gone to people such as singer Harry Belafonte and actor Danny Glover.

“More than one million Canadians go to Cuba every year,” he says, “so we’re trying to suggest to some of those people to send a bat, offer a donation, give something back.”

Anyone interested in donating to the Cubacan bat program, known as Cubacan 6060, can go to theCNC’s website or email cubacanbats@gmail.com.

Cubacan6060 Bats for Cuba