Daily Archives: September 8, 2012

In Cuba, religious freedom remains a dream

Posted: September 8, 2012 at 12:15 am

BY TEO A. BABUN JR.

Five nuns from Our Lady of the Good Shepherds congregation returned to Cuba on Aug. 28 with a small statue they had taken 50 years ago when they left after Cubas communist revolution. As recognition of the Cuban governments advances toward freedom of religion, the Episcopal Conference of Cuba noted that the religious act was another sign of the improved relations between the church and the government.

Interestingly, this past summer, during remarks on the State Departments annual report on International Religious Freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, Freedom of religion is not just about religion. For Cubans, in particular, this is very true.

In Cuba, every aspect of life is controlled by the state. Freedoms in general and specifically freedom of religion are not fully available, and persecution of those who publicly profess a creed exists today. Freedom of religion is a right that every human being should be allowed to enjoy without restriction of any government or political entity.

Religion in Cuba must be presented in the context of its recent history, in a spirit of truth and justice, putting aside our personal interests or agendas with no other objective except the truth.

When we talk about Cubans and religion, we must begin with what the people in Cuba have experienced and are experiencing today.

From the 1960s until 1990, discrimination against Christians slowed the growth of churches. Christians suffered under Cuban communism. In the early years some pastors and priests were placed in re-education camps a type of concentration camp where they were forced to perform manual labor in agriculture in order to survive and where many met their death. These so-called camps were part of a rehabilitation program known as military units to help agricultural production or UMAP by its Cuban acronym.

Christians and their families could not receive a good education or good jobs. This pushed religious people to the lowest levels of society. Even by the mid-1980s, Cubas government declared Christians could still not hold jobs where they would influence other people, especially children. This means no Christian teachers, social workers, counselors, etc. The result of these restrictions was that very few people wanted to be associated with Christianity as it would lead to the loss of job or status, as well as other discrimination.

One of the hardest realities of this strategy is that children are shamed by their teachers and others to disown religious symbols and renounce religious practices.

In his last newsletter published only a few weeks before his death, Oswaldo Pay, a Catholic, wrote that it is shameful that a child must feel fear in her school because she attended a church service.

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In Cuba, religious freedom remains a dream

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Liberty Global Unveils Horizon TV

Posted: at 12:15 am

Liberty Global Inc. (LBTYA), a leading cable MSO of Europe and Latin America, launches an innovative digital TV network, called Horizon TV. This digital TV platform will enable customers to view and share all of their favorite content across the TV, laptop, tablet and smartphone. Initially this service will be available in the Netherlands and then in Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland within the next 3-6 months.

With Horizon TV, customers can share TV showing in multiple screens such as computers, and Apple Inc. (AAPL) developed iPhones and iPads. Horizon TV also features an in-build application store for YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook. In the second quarter, the company added 244,000 digital video subscribers. At the end of the reported quarter of 2012, Liberty Global had 8.6 million digital cable subscribers with a penetration rate of 49%.

Horizon TV gateway also offers triple-play services of video, Internet, and wireless voice. It uses Intel Corp.s (INTC) Atom chipset as processor. At the end of the previous quarter, Liberty Global had 5.6269 million triple-play clients, up 3.5% year over year. In the coming years, we believe Liberty Globals revenue will continue to benefit from a triple play of video, broadband, and telephone, as it signs up more bundled customers in Europe and Latin America.

Deployment of high-speed DOCSIS 3.0 network has significantly helped Liberty Global to differentiate its offerings in the industry. Management has devised a plan to deploy EuroDOCSIS 3.0 in the range of 80%-90% of all UPC broadband divisions in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe.

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Nothing dire about Social Security, letter writer says

Posted: at 12:13 am

GRAND RAPIDS, MI Social Security isn't broken and it doesn't need fixing. At least not now, says letter writer Jake Terpstra.

"There is $2.5 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, the fund will continue to grow until 2017," Terpstra writes.

Also on letter writers' minds:

The importance of restaurant inspections.

Democrats, Republicans and presidential politics.

And interpreting the Second Amendment.

MORE OPINION: Click this link for more Grand Rapids-area opinion pieces.

Email letters of 250-words or less to grletters@mlive.com. Please include a name, address, hometown and phone number. (The address and phone number are for verification purposes only.)

Don't fall for misleading statements about Social SecuritySocial Security is fixable said an article in the Aug. 21 issue of The Grand Rapids Press. It claims that long-term problems of Social Security can be fixed, and it can be preserved, with relatively small adjustments.

This is misleading information. It implies that Social Security needs fixing now, which it does not. There is $2.5 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, the fund will continue to grow until 2017. Then it will begin to diminish, and in 2037 the fund may be depleted. At that time, adjustments will have to be made. Even then without adjustments, payments could be continued at 80 percent of the current rate.

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Nothing dire about Social Security, letter writer says

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Green light go

Posted: at 12:13 am

The Universitys speech policies deserve praise and continued attention from students to ensure they are fairly applied By Managing Board | Sep 06

Free speech means being able to speak out for yourself, although some organizations go further by speaking for others. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) focuses directly on colleges. Working in a more narrow framework, the foundation targets university policies to ensure they protect free speech.

The foundation attorneys examine college speech codes before giving a school a red, yellow or green light rating depending on each schools policies. This intuitive triad makes free-speech issues more accessible to the non-lawyers among us. The foundations website has a database of the ratings and speech codes for more than 400 colleges. This accessible bank known as the Spotlight serves alongside a case submission form and guide to student rights that make issues of free speech amenable to student involvement.

We often think free speech means having the freedom to misquote Jefferson. But the story of the foundation at the University actually embodied his pillars of expression and student self-governance. Cavalier Daily alumna Ginny Robinson worked with the foundation and Dean of Students Allen Groves to alter University codes. We went from a red light in 2010 to two consecutive years of green light, meaning we lack any censorial policies. There are only 16 green light colleges, and our trip from red to green wasnt too difficult.

In an email, Groves explained the changing of signals. A foundation representative, invited by students, had traveled to Grounds to speak. Groves listened, and then asked the foundation why we had a red light. The foundation responded in turn. So, Groves worked to correct the policies, and the University got the green light, making us something of a darling for the foundation and a template for other colleges. The foundation proclaimed us one of the seven best colleges for free speech Thursday, for the second consecutive year since the list of top colleges started.

But this does not mean student speech rights are absolute; there are still speech limits on Grounds. Groves said decisions about protests are made based on reasonable time, place and manner considerations, criteria the Supreme Court has upheld as checks on the First Amendment. Thus regardless of any green light, the freedom of speech on Grounds is to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Generally, the administration has done a fair job. Groves noted in particular the absence of excessive police force during the summer rallies for University President Teresa Sullivan. Yet the Living Wage Campaign was barred from protesting in Madison Hall last spring because work would be disrupted, Groves said. And President Barack Obama was prevented from talking on central Grounds last week for fear of interrupting classes.

Until speech-friendly policies are put to the test they are not enough to ensure the protection of the First Amendment. It will take continual cooperation between students and deans to ensure that considerations of reasonable time, place and manner are fairly applied. Although we should celebrate another award from the foundation and the work done in 2010, a green light is just a signal unless we have the drive.

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Green light go

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