Obama and the death of Honduras' beauty queen

By Christian Molinari






US President Barak Obama's immigration plan announced Thursday is to be commended for allowing undocumented yet otherwise law-abiding immigrants to "come out of the shadows and get right with the law."

However, it overlooks one important aspect – the reason why Latinos risk their lives to illegally enter the US in the first place. If their living situation back home were decent enough, they would have little reason to want to leave.

But the situation back home for many Latinos is hardly worth sticking around for. Take, for example, the most recent case of the 19-year old Honduran beauty queen María José Alvarado, murdered alongside her 23-year old sister Sofía just days before she was due to compete in the Miss World pageant in London.

The case has helped to shed light on Honduras' plight as the country with the highest homicide rate in the world. The killings highlight the fragility of the security situation and expose the weak institutions in the Central American country.

Sadly, this is not the first time the death of a beauty queen has brought attention to violence in some Latin American countries. The region rang in the new year with the untimely demise of former Miss Venezuela, Mónica Spear, and her British ex-husband, murdered by roadside burglars.

Not to mention the nationwide protests gripping Mexico over the apprehension, disappearance and suspected murder of 43 students from Iguala, which has spun into public outcry over the entrenched collusion between state and organized crime, which gives way to human rights violations.

Regarding crime, Obama's policy proposes to deport "felons, not families" and "criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who's working hard to provide for her kids."

While this would seem to make sense for those living in the US, the policy could actually be 'exporting' the gang culture cultivated within US borders to its southern neighbors, who are much weaker and unprepared to confront the influx of violent criminals, thereby exacerbating the problem in Latin America.

So what can the US do to make the situation better south of the border? Given the geophysical proximity, one would think that boosting trade, and thereby increasing business and making more money go around, would behoove both sides.

However, as we previously noted, Obama showed scant interest in Latin America during his first term in office, with a foreign policy focus on Asia and the Middle East. That has largely continued to this day, with the likes of the Islamic State and related issues getting the lion's share of his attention.

In LatAm, according to the World Bank's Doing Business report, countries such as Colombia and Mexico shot up in the 2015 ranking while other more solid economies like Chile and Peru remained relatively stable. The pieces are starting to fall into place, and Obama ought to jump at the opportunity to strengthen the relationship with Latin America as a way to preemptively address the immigration puzzle.

November 21, 2014

BN Americas

Obama’s unfulfilled Gitmo promise

• Five years after his election, the U.S. President has not closed the prison on the illegally held Guantánamo Naval Base

By Manuel E. Yepe

THE failure to fulfill electoral promises made by candidates who win U.S. presidential elections is not news. In fact, this is corroborated by the corporate press in that nation.

 

However, in the case of current President Barack Obama – whose triumph had much to do with the relatively daring promises which allowed him to overcome the odds against him, given his ethnic and social origins and age, among other aspects – his failure to meet his promises has placed him in a position which could prove damaging to the Democratic Party in the 2016 elections.

 

One glaringly evident case little mentioned in the media is that, during his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama described the case of Gitmo (as the illegally naval base is identified in the United States) as “a sad chapter in American history,” and promised that, if he were to be elected, the base would closed in 2009.

 

Shortly after his election, the new president reiterated his promise to close the base in an ABC television interview.

 

However, in November 2009, Obama was forced to acknowledge that it was not possible to set a specific date for the closure, while announcing that it would most likely occur at some undetermined point in 2009.

 

On December 15, 2009, a presidential memorandum issued by Obama ordered the closing of the prison camp and the transfer of the detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois. Shortly afterward, in a letter to Congressman Frank Wolf, who was making every effort to avoid the transfer of the Guantánamo detainees to Thomson, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that such a move would violate legal prohibitions which he was determined to uphold.

 

And thus this vacillation has continued to date, in a clear demonstration of the President’s unwillingness to confront the issue, despite popular will as expressed in the elections.

 

It should be noted that there has been no media reference in recent history to the fact that the base’s very existence is indefensible and that a genuine solution must include, as a principal step, the return to Cuba of this occupied territory.

 

During a workshop with Cuban experts on the 110-year occupation of Guantánamo by the United States, which took place recently in Havana, Jonathan Hansen, associate professor at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, affirmed that few in the United States acknowledge that the base must be returned to Cuba, and that the problem is how to make this matter an issue for discussion.

 

The United States occupies this portion of Cuban territory in virtue of an unjust agreement of indefinite duration imposed on Cuba in February 1903, as one of the addendums to the Platt Amendment, introduced as an appendix to the Constitution of the nascent Cuban Republic through pressure from Washington.

 

Sooner or later, Guantánamo must disappear and this ignominious enclave will remain as one more sad page in the history of U.S. imperialism.

 

November 28, 2013

 

Granma.cu

 

Bahamas Blog International

 

President Obama: Between a "Barack" and a hard place

By RAULSTON NEMBHARD





President Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall as a result of the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression. He also inherited a country that was at war on two fronts: Afghanistan and Iraq. The sad thing about these two wars is that they were not paid for by the previous administration. As if this were not enough, the wars were being fought at a time when a massive tax cut was given to the richest people in the country. No sacrifice was demanded of the citizens to foot the bill for these wars; all the government had to do was run an already high deficit, even though the revenue stream from the richest was significantly cauterised. To add to all of this, significant checks and balances that were required to prevent the financial meltdown on Wall Street were not in place when toxic mortgage securities were allowed to "poison" the financial system. To save banks that were too big to fail, billions of dollars had to be spent, again running up an already horrendous deficit. The new president had no choice but to institute a stimulus programme which itself added to the deficit burden of the country.

This brief historical perspective tells the lie to many of the president's detractors that what we are seeing in the aftermath of the debt ceiling debate and the Standard and Poor's downgrade are all the president's fault. What we saw in Washington recently is not only how dysfunctional government can become, but the extent to which politicians are prepared to play reckless games with the country's future in the pursuit of their own narrow-minded ideological positions. This is a dangerous trend which merited an evaluation (not necessarily a downgrade) by those who are professionally designated to offer an opinion on these matters. What was shocking was the willingness of people who swear to defend the health of the country to throw it over the cliff if their agendas were not met.

In order to preserve their agenda and the ideological purity which underlines it, and in order to ensure that the president is a one-term president, as is the avowed wish of many of his detractors, no effort is being spared to ensure that the president's agenda fails. For example, in the recent debt-ceiling fiasco, nothing was said about the need to create jobs or to reinvigorate the economy. These are things that will have to happen if the president is to have any chance at being re-elected. His opponents know this and they are not prepared to lend a helping hand in the president's second-term effort. As part of this effort Republican members of the Senate have used Senate rules to block the passage of important legislation or the appointment of high level government officials. For example, a number of senior positions at the Treasury Department are yet to be filled. The filibuster rule is used routinely to delay and frustrate the passage of key legislations. In 2009 alone, senate Republicans filibustered close to 80 per cent of major legislations.

In recent times, the House of Representatives has become more hardened, dogmatic and more dysfunctional than the deliberative Senate. It has become particularly so since the ascendancy of the Tea Party mavericks in 2010. Under the guise of a commitment to fiscal prudence, small government and no new taxes, they have imposed their ideological positions on the Republican Party to the extent that the mainstream of that party seems impotent to cast them off. Not only are they committed to the president's failure as Michelle Bachman, one of their leading spokespersons has stated repeatedly, but their rhetoric on the ground does not remotely resemble anything that can move the country forward in the short term.

Are these the kind of people with whom the president, and even the country, can do business? Can the principle of compromise to which the president seems solidly committed work with people whose ideology is cast in wrought iron even when it can do serious harm to the country? As a constitutional scholar, the president knows and accepts the importance of the principle of compromise in light of how the federal constitution and the republican form of government work. Unlike the parliamentary system of government where a prime minister is both chief executive and chief legislator, the president of the United States does not have the privilege to pass laws; he can only sign bills into law. He can urge and influence his party to pass legislation in line with his wishes, but this is as far as he can go. He is heavily dependent on the other arms of government to get anything done, hence the need to compromise.

This often places a president between the proverbial rock and a hard place. In an effort to compromise, how much of one's core principles must be given up to gain consensus on a policy? As President Obama grows weary of vitriolic and partisan debate, how much patience can he exhibit when deep down he knows that the country can be hurt by the intransigence from the other side of the political fence? To dig himself out from between that wedge of the rock and the hard place, he has to become more assertive and smart in playing the cards that are being dealt to him. Compromise is good, but there is a limit even to this hallowed principle especially when your core values and those of your constituents are being called into serious question. In the end, the people in a republican democracy are the final arbiters of the way forward. It behoves a president - this president - to trust them more, to be open and more transparent with them. They will reward you if they are convinced that you are at least trying.

stead6655@aol.com
www.drraulston.com

August 13, 2011

jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International

The crucifixion of Obama

BY LLOYD B SMITH




United States President Barack Hussein Obama's The Audacity of Hope has overnight become The Audacity of Hopelessness. At least, this is the opinion of his many detractors, namely the irascible Republicans and Tea Party affiliates, in addition to extreme rightists, disenchanted Independent and blacks, plus outrightly racist Anglo-Saxons who were never comfortable with the idea of a black man being in the White House.In November 2008 Senator Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. And during his subsequent stroll from the Capitol in Washington DC in January 2009 I recall saying to myself here goes "the man of the moment" like Jesus Christ riding on the Democratic Party's proverbial donkey on his way to Jerusalem where he may well be betrayed, accused, tried and condemned to a swift political death.

Politics is an ungrateful profession. Here are some of the descriptions that were made about the first Black man to become president of the world's most powerful and influential country (cannot say it is the richest anymore): "The most exciting politician of the day" - Independent; "In our low-down, dispiriting era, Obama's talent for proposing humane, sensible solutions with uplifting, elegant prose does fill one with hope." - Washington Post; "The Audacity of Hope offers readers on this side of the Atlantic a window not just into the mind of one of America's most exciting politicians, but into the political landscape of post-Bush era...like Bill Clinton, he has the knack of weaving together the personal and the anecdotal with the political and the conceptual, so that each point seems both persuasive and commonsensical." - Guardian

Euphoria has turned to hysteria; love has turned to hate; admiration has turned to vilification; dreams have become nightmares and now the Pharisees and Sadducees, the High Priests and Scribes are shouting, "Crucify him, crucify him!" And whom do they want? Sarah Palin! Now if this scenario does not suggest that many Americans have lost their bearings, what could convince any sane person otherwise?

I am not for one moment saying that Obama has not fouled up in his presidency. There are times when I have quietly expressed anger at some of his decisions, actions and pronouncements, but does this make him into a Communist or Socialist, a Hitler, a Muslim sympathiser and worst of all an illegitimate president by virtue of the propaganda that he is not a born American? Many terrible things have been said of American presidents, but I am yet to be convinced that Obama has not been the most denigrated of them all. I am further convinced that he has suffered this opprobrium even from members of his own party because of his having had a Kenyan father.

Alas, poor Obama. In a bid to be all things to all men, he has failed most miserably and so he has ended up angering just about every spectrum of the American political kaleidoscope - Conservatives, Liberals, Independents, women, the Anglo-Saxon males, youths, seniors, Wall Street, the unemployed, etc. Will he ever be able to get it right? Not as long as he is deemed to be on the left, some say. Today, millions of Americans will go to the polls to vote in the Midterm elections. The latest CNN poll shows the GOP (Grand Old Party) 10 points ahead of the Democrats. It would appear that after today there will be a big, rambunctious elephant charging around in the Oval Office.

The Republicans have skilfully used fear as their major weapon against the Obama administration. Already known as "the party of no", they have set out to make it impossible for Obama to return to the presidency in 2012, if he dares. But history may well be on Obama's side - a history that has shown that incumbent presidents who fare badly in mid-term elections tend to be comeback kids. Ronald Reagan did it and so did Bill Clinton. Within the next two years, his fortunes can turn around, especially if the White House can build consensus with the Republicans on major issues without veering too much from his stated visions; defang Al-Qaeda, grow the economy and create jobs, reduce the national debt, empower the minorities (blacks, Hispanics in particular), deal effectively with the contentious immigration issue, revisit the health-care bill, tackle with compassion and common sense gay and abortion rights, among the many other matters that beset that great nation. A tall order, indeed, but Obama must be pragmatic and come up with an agenda and timetable that are doable within the years he has left in his presidency. Lest he forget, "It's the economy, stupid!"

The spectre of China superseding the USA as the number one world power is most frightening and demoralising to the Americans. It is this fear that has driven many individuals into the lap of the Republicans who, despite today's predicted landslide victory, are not seen by the majority of voters as much better than the Democrats. That is why the Tea Party has emerged in essence as a third party and has attached itself parasitically to the GOP - a marriage that may well end up in a bitter divorce.

I still believe in Obama and I have this gut feeling that he will rebound. After all, if there is any logical historicity to his presidency, then the crucifixion should be followed by the resurrection. His must not be a dream deferred but a dream realised.

lloydbsmith@hotmail

November 02, 2010

jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International

“Obama has to be persuaded to avoid nuclear war” - (Interview with Fidel Castro Part 1)

• Fidel answers questions from Carmen Lira Saade, editor of Mexico’s La Jornada newspaper

(Taken from CubaDebate)

HAVANA. He was fighting for his life for four years. Entering and leaving the operating room, intubated, being fed intravenously, catheters, frequent lapses into unconsciousness…

“My illness is no state secret,” he would have said just before it became a crisis and forced him to “do what I had to do:” to delegate his functions as president of the Council of State and consequently, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Cuba.

“I cannot continue any longer,” he admitted then – as he reveals in this his first interview with a foreign newspaper since that time. He made the transfer of command, and handed himself over to the doctors.

That event shook the entire nation, friends from other parts; prompted his detractors to cherish revanchist hopes and put the powerful neighbor to the North on a state of alert. It was July 31, 2006 when the resignation letter of the maximum leader of the Cuban Revolution was officially announced.

What his most ferocious enemies failed to obtain in 50 years (blockades, wars, assassination attempts) was attained by an illness about which nobody knew anything and everything was speculated. An illness which that regime, whether he accepted it or not, was going to convert into a “state secret.”

(I am thinking about Raúl, about the Raúl Castro of those moments. It was not only the package that he was suddenly entrusted with, although he was always in agreement; it was the delicate state of health of his partner Vilma Espín – who died of cancer shortly afterward – and the highly possible death of his older brother and the only jefe in the military, political and family contexts.)

Forty days ago today, Fidel Castro reappeared in public in a definitive way, at least without any apparent danger of a relapse. In a relaxed atmosphere and when everything would make one think that the storm has passed, the most important man of the Cuban Revolution looks healthy and vital, while not fully dominating his leg movements.

For the approximately five hours that the conversation-interview with La Jornada lasted – including lunch – Fidel tackled the most diverse issues, although he is obsessed by some in particular. He allowed questions about anything – although he was the one who asked the most – and reviewed for the first time and with a painful frankness certain moments of health crises that he has suffered over the last four years.

“I came to the point of being dead,” he revealed with an amazing tranquility. He did not mention by name the diverticulitis that he was suffering from, nor the hemorrhages that led the specialists of his medical team to operate on various or many occasions, with a risk to his life every time.

What he did speak on at length was the suffering that he endured. And he showed no inhibition about describing that painful stage as a “Calvary.”

“I no longer aspired to live, or far less… I asked myself on various occasions if those people (his doctors) were going to let me live in those conditions or if they were going to let me die… Then I survived, but in very poor physical shape. I reached the point of weighing just over 50 kilos.”

“Sixty-six kilos,” clarifies Dalia, his inseparable compañera who was there for the conversation. Only she, two of his doctors and another two of his closest collaborators were present.

“Imagine: a guy of my height weighing 66 kilos. Now I’ve gone up to 85-86 kilos, and this morning I managed to take 600 steps on my own, without my stick, unaided.

“I am telling you that you are in the presence of a kind of re-sus-citat-ed man,” he stressed with a certain pride. He knows that, in addition to the magnificent medical team which attended him during all those years, thus putting to the test the quality of Cuban medicine, he has been able to count on his will and that steel discipline that is always imposed when he embarks on something.

“I never commit the slightest violation,” he affirmed. “Moreover, that means that I have become a doctor with the cooperation of doctors. I discuss things with them, ask questions (he asks many), learn (and he obeys)…”

He is fully aware of the reasons for his accidents and falls, although he insists that one hasn’t necessarily led to another. “The first time it was because I didn’t do the necessary warm-up before playing basketball.” Then came that of Santa Clara: Fidel was coming down from the statue to Che, where he had presided over a tribute, and fell head first. “That was influenced by the fact that those who look after you are also getting old, losing their faculties and didn’t take care,” he clarified.

That was followed by the fall in Holguín, likewise a severe one. All of these accidents before the other illness turned into a crisis, leaving him hospitalized for a long time.

“Laid out in that bed, I only looked around me, ignorant of all those machines. I didn’t know how long that torment was going to last and my only hope was that the world would stop;” surely in order not to miss anything. “But I rose from the dead,” he said proudly.

“And when you rose from the dead, Comandante, what did you find?” I asked him.

“A seemingly insane world… A world that appears every day on television, in the newspapers, and which nobody understands, but one that I would not have wanted to miss for anything in the world,” he smiled in amusement.

With a surprising energy for a human being rising from the dead, as he put it, and with exactly the same intellectual curiosity as before, Fidel Castro has brought himself up to date.

Those who know him well, say that every project, colossal or millimetric, which he undertakes he does so with a fierce passion, and even more so if he has to confront adversity, as had been and was the case.

“That is when he seems to be in the best humor.” Someone who claims to know him well told him: “Things must be going very badly, because you’re looking in fine health.”

This survivor’s task of accumulating daily news begins when he wakes up. He devours books with a reading speed obtained by nobody know what method; he reads 200-300 news cables every day; he is aware of and up to date on new communication technologies; he is fascinated by Wikileaks, “the deep throat of Internet,” famous for the leaking of more than 90,000 military documents on Afghanistan, on which this new ‘surfer’ is working.

“You see what this means, compañera?” he said to me. “Internet has placed in our hands the possibility of communicating with the world. We didn’t have any of that before,” he commented, while he delights in reviewing and selecting cables and texts downloaded from the net, which he has on his desk: a small item of furniture, two small for the size (even diminished by illness) of its occupant.

“The secrets are over, or at least would appear to be. We are in the face of a ‘high-technology research journalism,’ as The New York Times calls it, in the reach of everybody.

“We are in the face of the most powerful weapon that has ever existed, which is communication,” he interjects. “The power of communication has been and is in the hands of the empire and of ambitious private groups who used and abused it, that is why the media has fabricated the power that its boasts today.”

I listen to him and couldn’t help but think of Chomsky; any of the deceptions that the empire attempts must previously have the support of the media, principally newspapers and television, and today, naturally, with all the instruments offered by Internet.

It is the media that creates consensus before any action. “It is making the bed,” we would say… It is setting up the theater of operations.

However, Fidel added, although they have tried to preserve that power intact, they have been unable to. They are losing it day by day, while others, many, very many, are emerging every minute…

He went on to acknowledge the efforts of some websites and media in addition to Wikileaks: on the Latin America side, Telesur of Venezuela; Canal Encuentro, the Argentine TV cultural channel; and all the public and private media that are standing up to the region’s powerful private consortiums and the news, culture and entertainment transnationals.

Reports on the manipulation of information on the part of powerful national or regional business groups, their conspiracies to enthrone or eliminate governments or political figures, or on the “dictatorship” exercised by the empire via its transnationals, are now within the reach of all mortals.

But not of Cuba, which has just about one Internet port (ISP) for the entire country, comparable to that of any Hilton or Sheraton hotel.

That is why connecting in Cuba is a desperate business. It is like surfing in slow motion.

“Why is it like that?” I asked.

“Because of the categorical refusal of the United States to give the island Internet access via one of the underwater fiber optic cables that pass close to our coast. Cuba is obliged, instead, to download a satellite signal, which makes the service that the Cuban government has to pay much more expensive, and prevents the use of a wider band that could allow access to many more users and at the speed normal throughout the world with broadband.”

And that is why the Cuban government is giving connection priority not to those who can pay for the cost of the service, but to those who most need it, like doctors, academics, journalists, professionals, government ‘cadres’ and social use Internet clubs. It cannot do any more.

I think about the extraordinary efforts of the Cuban website CubaDebate to internally nourish and take the country’s information abroad under the current conditions. But, according to Fidel, Cuba could find a solution to this situation.

He was referring to the conclusion of underwater cables extending from La Guaira port in Venezuela to the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba. With these works being undertaken by the government of Hugo Chávez, the island could have broadband and possibilities for a huge amplification of the service.

“Cuba, and you in particular, have been pointed to many times as maintaining a strictly anti-U.S. position and you have even been accused of bearing hatred toward that nation,” I said to him.

“Nothing of the kind,” he clarified. “Why hate the United States if it is only a product of history?”

But, in real terms: barely 40 days ago, when he had not completely “risen,” he concentrated – as a variation – on his powerful neighbor in his new Reflections.

“The thing is that I began to see very clearly the problems of the growing world dictatorship…” and he presented, in the light of all the information that he was managing, the “imminence of a nuclear attack that would unleash a world conflagration.”

He was still unable to go out and talk, to do what he is doing now, he told me. He could just about write with some fluidity, because he not only had to learn how to walk again, but also, at the age of 84, he had learn to write again.

“I came out of hospital, I went home, but I walked, I exceeded myself. Then I had to do rehabilitation for my feet. By then I was already managing to relearn writing.

“The qualitative jump came when I could dominate all the elements that made it possible for me to do everything that I am doing now. But I can and must improve… I can get to the point of walking well. Today, as I told you, I walked 600 steps alone, without a stick, without anything, and I have to balance that with climbing up and going down, with the hours that I sleep, with work.”

“What is there behind this frenzy of work which, instead of rehabilitation could lead him to a relapse?”

Fidel concentrated, closed his eyes as if to sleep, but no… he returns to the charge:
”I do not wish to be absent in these days. The world is in the most interesting and dangerous phase of its existence and I am very committed to what is going to happen. I still have things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like constituting a whole anti-nuclear war movement;” that is what he has been devoting himself to since his reappearance.

“Creating an international force of persuasion to avoid that colossal threat happening,” represents a tremendous challenge, and Fidel has never been able to resist a challenge.

“In the beginning I thought that the nuclear attack would be on North Korea, but I soon rectified that because I said to myself that China would stop that with its Security Council veto…

“But nobody is stopping that of Iran, because there is no Chinese or Russian veto. Then came the (UN) Resolution and although Brazil and Turkey vetoed it, Lebanon didn’t and so the decision was taken.”

Fidel is calling on scientists, economists, communicators, etc to give their opinions on what the mechanism might be via which the horror is going to be unleashed and the way that it might be avoided. He has even taken them to exercises of science fiction.

“Think, think!” he urges in discussions. “Reason, imagine,” exclaims the enthusiastic teacher that he has become in recent days.

Not everyone has understood his concern. More than a few people have seen his new campaign as preaching disaster or even delirious. To that must be added the fear of many that his health will suffer a relapse.

Fidel is not giving up: nothing or nobody is capable of even holding him back. He needs to convince as rapidly as possible in order to detain the nuclear conflagration that, he insists, is threatening to obliterate a large part of humanity. “We have to mobilize the world to persuade Barack Obama, president of the United States, to avoid a nuclear war. That is the only thing that he can do or not do, press the button.”

With the data that he handles like an expert and the documents backing up his words, Fidel is questioning and making a spine-chilling exposition:

“Do you know the nuclear power that is held by a good few countries in the world at present, compared to that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki era?

“It is 470,000 times the explosive power of either of the two bombs that the United States dropped on those two Japanese cities; 470,000 times more,” he emphasizes, scandalized.

That is the power of each one of the 20,000-plus nuclear weapons calculated as being in the world today.

With much less than that power – with just 100 – a nuclear winter which would darken the world in its totality could be produced.

This barbarity could come about in a matter of days, to be more precise, on September 9, which is when the 90-day period given by the UN Security Council before inspecting Iran shipping expires.

“Do you think that the Iranians are going to give in? Can you imagine that? Courageous and religious men who see death as almost a prize… Well, the Iranians are not going to give in, that is a fact. Are the Yankis going to give in? And, what is going to happen if neither one gives in? And that could happen on September 9.”

Gabriel García Márquez wrote on the 41st anniversary of Hiroshima: “One minute after the explosion, more than half of human beings will have died, the dust and smoke of continents in flames will defeat sunlight and total shadows will return to reign in the world. A winter of orange-colored rain and icy hurricanes will invert the season of the oceans and turn around the course of the rivers, whose fish will have died of thirst in the boiling waters… the era of rock and heart transplants will revert to its ice infancy…”

“I DO NOT HARBOR THE LEAST DOUBT THAT THERE WILL BE GREAT CHANGES IN MEXICO”

“Tell me, tell me, what is all this that the “mafia” is saying about everything that I wrote?”

“It isn’t only the mafia, all right? There are more people disconcerted by those Reflections, Comandante. Not to mention the displeasure that you gave to the Mexican government.”

“I had no interest in criticizing the government… Why would I get involved with the Mexican government? For fun? If I devoted myself to getting involved with governments, to stating the bad or erroneous things that I consider they have done, Cuba wouldn’t have any relations.

“It is being said that with your praise and open acknowledgements, what you said to Andrés Manuel López Obrador was the “kiss of the devil”… and people are asking why it is that you are now making public both the statements of Carlos Ahumada to Cuban justice and details of your singular relationship with Carlos Salinas de Gortari. They suspect a hidden intention.”

“No, no, no. I had the good fortune to find Andrés Manuel’s book. Somebody gave it to me at the end of the (National) Assembly session. I read it rapidly and its reading inspired me to write what I wrote.”

“What inspired you?”

“Discovering what he had done with the land, with the mines; what he had done with the oil… Finding out about the theft, the plunder that that great country has suffered; about that barbarity that they have committed, and that (now has Mexico how it has…)”

“There are mistrustful people on one side or the other who are insisting that there are other intentions behind your chance words.”

“No. I hadn’t planned to write what I wrote; it wasn’t within my plans. I have a free agenda.”

“Well, it’s caused an uproar, I can tell you. They are accusing you of having unleashed a whole political scandal and the criticisms are raining down because they are saying that whether for good or bad, Comandante, you have gotten involved with the Mexican electoral process…”

“Ah! Yes?” he asks very animatedly. “So there is criticism of me? How good, how good! Send me them! And who are these criticisms coming from?”

“From many people, apart from one. The only one – of those involved – who has not said a single word is Carlos Salinas…

“Because he’s the most intelligent one, he always was, as well as being more skillful,” said Fidel with a mischievous smile. Judging by his expression, it would seem that he is already waiting for Salinas’ response. At best, even a book.

He went on to repeat some of the paragraphs of his Reflections: that Salinas had been in solidarity with Cuba, that he had acted as a mediator (appointed by Clinton in 1994) between the United States and the island “and conducted himself well and really acted as a mediator and not as an ally of the United States…”

He related that when Salinas obtained permission from the Cuban government to take refuge in that country and even “legally” acquire a house, that they saw “quite a lot of each other” and exchanged points of view, et cetera.

“I came to think that he never tried to deceive me,” Fidel said sarcastically.

“Really?” I asked. Did Salinas comment on or consult with him concerning his government’s decision to open up relations with self-declared terrorist organizations, such as the Cuban-American National Foundation, created with the exclusive purpose of overthrowing the regime and assassinating its president, Fidel Castro?

For the first time in the history of relations between the two countries, a Mexican government opened the doors of the presidential palace to Jorge Mas Canosa, at that time president of that paramilitary organization, and an old enemy of the Cuban Revolution.

“The man that you brought to this house was a killer,” I told Carlos Salinas on that occasion, during an interview with La Jornada. Salinas nodded, giving me the right. But he immediately justified himself by saying that his government was seeking participation with Cuban “plurality” in the “dialogue” that was taking place for a rapprochement between the two sides.

“I wish to state that Mexico is extremely respectful of the internal processes decided by the Cubans,” Salinas affirmed then.

“But what is happening to Cuba is not going to be at a remove from Mexicans; Mexicans cannot be absent from the transformations that might happen in that country because they will have repercussions in Mexico, in all of Latin America. We have to maintain this communication with the whole range of opinions… (La Jornada, August 1992).

“Opinions? Mexico needed the “opinion” of a criminal to enrich its dialogue with neighboring countries,” I enquired now.

Fidel had lowered his head and asked, as if to himself:

“Why did he do that to us? He had conducted himself as a friend of Cuba. Pending political and economic matters were being arranged with him, finally… He gave the impression that he didn’t have any problems with us.

“Why the hell did he have to receive that bandit?” he asked, somewhat disconcerted.

But he didn’t want to say anything more. He had turned the page a while back or had reserved it for the moment at which – after the obligatory balancing – he would decide to make public knowledge the termination of his relationship with the former Mexican president, as occurred with his Reflection “The giant with the seven-league boots.”

“Cuba never wanted to hand over the filmed documentation that confirmed the conspiracy against López Obrador, as the PRD was demanding at the time.

“In that we could not please them,” he explained. “We sent all the documentation to the authority asking for his extradition (the Mexican Foreign Ministry). Any other attitude would not have been serious,” he emphasized.

Then, Fidel became seriously ill and that matter, like many others, had had to wait.

“Why the mention of López Obrador at this pre-electoral moment?

“Because I had a debt with him. I wanted to tell him (although he did not agree to hand over the documentation asked for) that we were not in any conspiracy against him, nor (were we) or are we aligned with anybody in order to damage him. That, as I said in what I wrote, I am honored to share his points of view.

“That is precisely where they are saying that you gave him ‘the kiss of the devil,’ Comandante.”

“So we won’t even mention inviting him to Cuba, right?” he said with a roguish smile. “That would be risking too much, wouldn’t it? That whole gang would fall on top of him, to discredit him and take votes away from him.

“Like 50 years ago, in the early days of the Revolution, when traveling to Cuba was a totally daring undertaking. One photo arriving or leaving the Mexican airport for Havana could result in persecution, blows, prison…”

Fidel maintained his that little laugh of his, and advised:

“You Mexicans shouldn’t be so concerned about these things. All of that is going to change. I do not harbor the slightest doubt that there are going to be great changes in Mexico.”

To be continued...

Translated by Granma International

Havana. September 2, 2010

granma.cu

- "The world of the future has to be shared by everyone" - Interview with Fidel Castro (Part 2)

Bahamas Blog International

I am ready to continue discussing

Reflections of Fidel

(Taken from CubaDebate)

TWO days ago I was watching Vanessa Davies on her "Contragolpe" (Counterpunch) program broadcast by Venezolana de Televisión’s Canal 8. She was dialoging with and multiplying her questions to Basem Tajeldine, an intelligent and honest Venezuelan whose face transpired nobility. When I switched on the television my thesis that only Obama could halt the disaster was being approached.

The incommensurable power attributed to him came immediately to the mind of the historian. And that is so, undoubtedly. But we are thinking of two distinct powers.

Real political power in the United States is held by the powerful oligarchy of multimillionaires who govern not only that country but also the world: the gigantic power of the Bilderberg Club described by Daniel Estulin, created by the Rockefellers and the Trilateral Commission.

The military apparatus of the United States with its security agencies is far more powerful than Barack Obama, president of the United States. He did not create that apparatus, neither did that apparatus create him. The exceptional circumstances of the economic crisis and the war were the principal factors that took a descendent of the sector most discriminated against in the United States, gifted with culture and intelligence, to the post which he occupies.

Where does Obama’s power lie at this point in time? Why am I affirming that war or peace will depend on him? Hopefully the interchange between the journalist and the historian might serve to illustrate the issue.

I will say it in another way: the famous little briefcase with its keys and button to launch a nuclear bomb emerged because of the terrible decision that it implied, the devastating nature of the weapon, and the need not to lose a fraction of a minute. Kennedy and Krushchev underwent that experience, and Cuba was at the point of being the first target of a mass attack using those weapons.

I still remember the anguish reflected in the questions that Kennedy suggested French journalist Jean Daniel should put to me, when he found out that Daniel was coming to Cuba and would meet with me. "Does Castro know how close we were to a world war?" I suggested that he return to Washington to speak with him. The story is a well-known one.

The subject was so interesting that I invited him to leave Havana, and we were approaching the issue well into the morning, in a house near the sea at the famous Varadero beach.

Nobody had to tell us anything, because they immediately advised me of the assassination and we tuned into to a U.S. radio station. At that very moment it was announced that a number of shots had fatally wounded the president of the United States.

Mercenary hands had carried out the homicide.

For the right in the United States, including the CIA mercenaries who landed at Girón [Bay of Pigs], he was not sufficiently energetic with Cuba.

Almost half a century has passed since then. The world changed, far more that 20,000 nuclear weapons were developed, their destructive power is equivalent to nearly 450,000 times that which destroyed the city of Hiroshima. Anybody has the right to ask: what is the use of the nuclear briefcase? Could a president possibly direct something as sophisticated and complex as a nuclear war?

That briefcase is something as symbolic as the ceremonial staff that is kept in the hands of the president as pure fiction.

The only significant fact is that in the United States there is a Constitution which establishes that there is only one person in the country who can give the order to start a war, which is now more important than ever, since a world nuclear war could break out in one minute and possibly last one day.

So, I can ask a number of questions. Could somebody other than the president give the order to start a war? Did Kennedy himself need another faculty to attack Girón and then unleash war in Vietnam? Johnson to escalate it? Nixon to devastatingly bombard that country? Reagan to invade Grenada? Bush Sr., on December 20, 1989, to attack the cities of Panama, Colón, to flatten the poor neighborhood of El Chorrillo and kill thousands of poor people there? Did Clinton need it to attack Serbia and create Kosovo? Bush Jr., for the atrocious invasion of Iraq? I have mentioned in their order only some of the best known crimes of the empire to date. Obama has done nothing more than to receive the inheritance.

The old thinking does not adapt easily to new realities.

Well, all right. I have posed the idea, not of Obama being powerful or super-powerful; he prefers to play basketball or give speeches; he has, moreover, been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Michael Moore exhorted him to earn it. Perhaps nobody imagined, him least of all, the idea that, in this final stage of 2010, if he complies with the instructions of the United Nations Security Council, to which a South Korean named Ban Ki-Moon is possibly firmly exhorting him, he will be responsible for the disappearance of the human species.

I am ready to continue discussing the issue.



Fidel Castro Ruz

August 22, 2010

12:26 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

granma.cu

Bahamas Blog International

Washington Still Has Problems With Democracy in Latin America

By Mark Weisbrot - CEPR:

Imagine if Barack Obama, upon taking office in January 2009, had decided to deliver on his campaign promise to “end business as usual in Washington so we can bring about real change.”

Imagine if he had rejected the architects of the pro-Wall Street policies that led to the economic collapse - such as Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and the stable of former Goldman Sachs employees running the Treasury Department - and instead appointed Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz to key positions, including the Federal Reserve chairmanship.

Instead of Hillary Clinton, who lost the Democratic presidential primary because of her unrelenting support for the Iraq war, imagine if he had chosen Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.) for secretary of state, or someone else interested in fulfilling the popular desire to get out of Afghanistan.

Imagine a real health-care reform bill instead of the health-insurance reform we got - one that didn't give the powerful pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies a veto.

It goes without saying that Obama would be vilified by the major media outlets. The seething hostility of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would be matched by more mainstream news organizations, which would accuse the president of polarizing the nation and engaging in dangerous demagoguery.

With most of the establishment media and institutions against him, Obama would face a constant battle for political survival - although he might well triumph through direct, populist appeals to the majority of voters. This is what a number of left-of-center Latin American leaders have done:

In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa was reelected by a large margin in 2009, despite strong opposition from the country’s media.

In Bolivia, Evo Morales has brought stability and record growth to a country with a tradition of governments that didn’t last more than a year. And he has done so in spite of the most hostile media in the hemisphere, as well as unrelenting, sometimes violent opposition from Bolivia’s traditional elite.

And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has survived a military coup attempt and other efforts to topple his government, winning three presidential elections, each one by a larger margin.

All these presidents took on entrenched oligarchies and fought hard to deliver on their promises.

Morales, the first indigenous president in a country with an indigenous majority, re-nationalized fossil-fuel industries, created jobs through public investment, and won approval of a more democratic constitution. Correa doubled spending on health care and canceled $3.2 billion in foreign debt that he declared illegitimate. Under Chavez, who took control of his country’s oil industry, poverty was cut in half, and extreme poverty dropped by more than 70 percent.

These presidents faced another obstacle to delivering on their promises that Obama would not: the opposition of the most powerful country in the world. The same was true of former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, who had to battle the Washington-dominated International Monetary Fund to implement his economic policies, which made Argentina the fastest-growing economy in the hemisphere for six years.

Chavez, of course, has been the most demonized in the U.S. media. That is not because of what he has said or done, but because he is sitting on 100 billion barrels of oil. Washington has a particular problem with oil-producing states that don't follow orders - whether they are dictatorships (Iraq), theocracies (Iran), or democracies (Venezuela).

All of these leaders had hoped Obama would pursue a different, more enlightened Latin American policy, but that hasn’t happened. It seems that Washington, which was comfortable with the dictators and oligarchs who ran the show in the region for decades, still has problems with democracy in its former “back yard.”

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He has written numerous research papers on economic policy, especially on Latin America and international economic policy. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also co-writer of Oliver Stone’s current documentary, “South of the Border,” now playing in theaters. He can be reached at weisbrot@cepr.net.

Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

July 19th 2010

venezuelanalysis

Bahamas Blog International

The odious tyranny imposed on the world

Reflections of Fidel

OUR era is characterized by an unprecedented fact: the threat to human survival imposed on the world by imperialism.

The painful reality should not come as a surprise to anybody. We have seen it coming at an accelerated pace in recent decades, at a rate difficult to imagine.

Does this mean that Obama is responsible for or the promoter of that threat? No! It simply demonstrates that he is ignoring reality and neither wants to or would to able to overcome it. Or rather, he is dreaming of the unreal in an unreal world. "Ideas without words, words without meaning," as a brilliant poet once stated.

Although the U.S. writer Gay Talese, considered to be one of the principal representatives of the new journalism, affirmed on May 5 – according to a European news agency – that Barack Obama embodies the finest history of the United States in the last century, an opinion that could be shared in certain aspects, in no way does that alter the objective reality of the human destiny.

Events are happening, like the ecological disaster that has just occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, which demonstrate how little governments can do against those who control capital; those who, in both the United States and Europe, via the economy of our globalized planet, are the ones who decide the destiny of the peoples. We could take as one example measures coming from the U.S. Congress itself, published in the most influential media of that country and Europe, just as they have been circulated on Internet, without altering one word.

"Radio and TV Martí blatantly lie while broadcasting unfounded information, states a report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which recommends that both stations be permanently moved from Miami and relocated in Washington and be ‘fully’ integrated into the propaganda framework of Voice of America (VOA).

"Besides deceiving the public… both broadcasting stations use ‘offensive and incendiary language,’ which discredits them.

"After 18 years, Radio and TV Martí have failed to ‘make any discernable inroads into Cuban society or to influence the Cuban government…’

"The report, which was circulated this Monday [May 3], recommends that the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) become part of VOA, the official propaganda radio of the U.S. government.

"’Problems with adherence to traditional journalistic standards, miniscule audience size, Cuban government jamming, and allegations of cronyism have dogged the program since its creation,’" recognized the committee, headed by Democrat John Kerry."

"The committee recommends urgently removing both stations from Miami, highlighting the need to hire personnel in a more balanced way to produce a ‘depoliticized and professional product.’

"In the report, Kerry makes reference to Alberto Mascaró, the nephew of Pedro Roig’s wife—Roig is the general director of Radio and TV Marti—who was hired as the director of VOA Latin America thanks to his relative.

"The document reports in detail how, in February 2007, the former director of the TV Marti programs, "along with a relative of a member of Congress" (who was not named), pleaded guilty in the Federal Court to receiving $112,000 in illegal kickbacks from an OCB contractor. "The former OCB employee was sentenced to 27 months in jail and fined $5,000 after being found guilty for taking as much as 50% of all monies paid by TV Martí for the production of television programming by vendor Perfect Image."

Up to here, the Jean Guy Allard article that appeared on the Telesur website.

Another article, by U.S. professors Paul Drain and Michele Barry, from Stanford University (California), translated on the Rebelión website, states:

"The US blockade on Cuba proclaimed after Fidel Castro’s revolution ousted Batista’s regime is 50 years old this 2010. Its stated objective has been to help the Cuban people to attain democracy but a U.S. Senate report from 2009 concluded that ‘the unilateral blockade on Cuba has failed.’

"…despite the blockade, Cuba has achieved better healthcare results than most Latin American countries and comparable with those of most of the developed nations. Cuba’s average life expectancy is the highest (78.6 years) and it also has the highest density of medical doctors per capita – 59 doctors to 10,000 people – and the lowest mortality rate for children under one year of age (5.0 per 1,000 life births) and infant mortality (7.0 per 1,000 live births) among the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

"In 2006, the Cuban government allocated about $355 per capita for healthcare" … "The annual healthcare cost assigned to an American citizen that same year was $6,714… Cuba also assigned less funds to healthcare than most of the European countries. But, the low costs of healthcare do not explain Cuba’s successes, which could be attributed to a greater emphasis on prevention and primary care that the island has been cultivating during the American commercial blockade.

"Cuba has one of the most advanced primary care systems of the world. The education of its population in disease prevention and healthcare promotion has made the Cubans less dependent on medical products to keep the population healthy. The opposite happens in the United States, which is highly dependent on medical provisions and technologies to keep its population healthy, but at a very high economic cost.
"Cuba has the highest rates of vaccination in the world as well as the highest number of births assisted by expert healthcare workers. The clinical care provided in doctors’ offices, policlinics and the largest regional and national hospitals are free of charge for patients…

"On March 2010, the U.S. Congress introduced a bill to strengthen healthcare systems and increase the number of healthcare experts sent to developing countries… "Cuba continues sending doctors to work in some of the poorest nations on the planet, something it started doing in 1961.

"Given the recent support for healthcare reform in the United States, the possibility exists of learning some good lessons from Cuba on how to develop a really universal healthcare system with an emphasis on primary care. The adoption of some of Cuba’s most successful healthcare policies could be a first step toward the normalization of relations. The U.S. Congress could instruct the Medicine Institute to study the successes of Cuba’s healthcare system and how to start a new era of cooperation between American and Cuban scientists."

For its part, the Tribuna Latina news website recently published an article on the new Immigration Law in Arizona:

"According to a survey published by the CBS network and The New York Times, 51% consider that the law is an appropriate focus in relation to immigration, while 9% consider that it should go even further on this matter. Opposing them, 36% think that Arizona has gone ‘too far.’"

"…two out of every three Republicans are backing the measure"… "while just 38% of Democrats say that they are in favor of the law…"

"On the other hand, one out of every two recognizes that, as a consequence of this regulation, it is ‘highly probable that persons from certain racial or ethnic groups will be detained more frequently than others,’ and 78% recognize that it will pose more burdens for the police.

"At the same time, 70% consider it probable, as a consequence of this measure, that the number of illegal residents and the arrival of new immigrants in the country will be reduced…’"

On Tuesday, May 6, 2010, under the headline "Arizona: a pretentious death from hunger," an article by journalist Vicky Peláez was published in Argenpress, which begins by recalling a phrase by Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Remember, always remember, that we are all descendants of immigrants and revolutionaries."

It is such a well-argued document that I do not wish to conclude this Reflection without including it.

"The huge marches of this May Day condemning the pernicious anti-immigration law passed in Arizona, have shaken all of the United States. At the same time, thousands of Americans, politicians, jurists, artists, organizations, civil organizations demanded that the federal government declare unconstitutional Law SB170, which resembles laws passed in Nazi Germany or South Africa in the apartheid period.

"However, despite fierce pressure against the pernicious law, neither their government nor 70% of the inhabitants of that state wish to accept the gravity of the situation that they have created in order to blame undocumented immigrants for the severe economic crisis that they are experiencing. Meanwhile, they are asking Barack Obama for money to pay 15,000 police; they are radicalizing their racist policies. Governor Jan Brewer stated that ‘illegal immigration implies rising crime and the emergence of terrorism in the state.’

"Placing undocumented immigrants on the same plane as terrorists authorizes the police to fire on people simply on the basis of the color of their skin, their clothing, what they are carrying in their hands or even their way of walking. Without any doubt, this will also affect the 280,000 Native Americans who live marginalized and in extreme poverty, as well as other minorities in addition to Hispanics, who have found refuge and work in this arid zone of the United States.

"Following the line of Republican Pat Buchanan, who says, ‘The United States must make a stronger crusade for America’s liberation from the barbarian hordes of hungry foreigners carrying exotic diseases,’ after hitting out at undocumented day laborers, construction workers, domestic employees, gardeners and cleaners, Governor Brewer has now directed her campaign against teachers of Hispanic origin.

"According to her new decree, teachers with a marked accent will not be able to teach in schools. But her crusade does not end there because, in all historical periods, ‘ethnic cleansing’ has always been accompanied by ideology. From now on, ‘ethnic studies and projects’ are abolished in schools. They are also banning the teaching of subjects that could promote resentment of a certain race or social class. This implies politicizing knowledge, converting myths created by the U.S. system into a reality. It also signifies exhuming the most respected thinkers in the United States such as Alexis de Tocqueville who, in 1835, said that ‘the place where an Anglo-American sets his boot is forever his. The province of Texas still belongs to Mexicans but soon there will not be one Mexican there. And that will happen anywhere.

"The sole consciousness of racists is hatred and the only weapon that can overcome it is the solidarity of human beings. This state was already defeated when it refused to make Martin Luther King Day a public holiday; the boycott was solid and overwhelming…"



Fidel Castro Ruz
May 7, 2010
6:15 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

granma.cu

Bahamas Blog International

Support Obama - It's in our interest

By Sir Ronald Sanders:


Barack Obama is earning the Nobel Prize for Peace that he received late last year amid criticism that he had done nothing to deserve it.

The arms treaty that he personally pushed and signed with the Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev on April 8 in Prague is cause for the entire world to breathe a sigh of relief.

For sure, the world is a safer place for the fact, that under this Treaty, the nuclear arsenals of both the United States and Russia will be cut by a third.

Small nations, such as those in the Caribbean, would never have been part of the nuclear arms race, but once these weapons are in the hands of countries which might be tempted to use them, the real risk exists that small countries in their proximity could become innocent victims.

Of course, the risk now goes beyond nations to rogue groups with the financial capacity either to buy or develop nuclear weapons for use against nations they consider enemies. By the nature of its involvement in global affairs, the United States is an obvious target for hostile nations and anti-American organisations.

A nuclear attack on the United States would have dramatic and fatal consequences for the Caribbean in a range of ways that go far beyond the overspill from nuclear explosions.

Against this background, Caribbean countries should applaud the treaty signed by Obama and Medvedev. Similarly, they should welcome the Conference to be held by 47 nations, hosted by the United States on April 12 and 13.

Small states will forever be spectators at such Conferences – not being nuclear nations themselves – but they should be active spectators cheering on the governments that resolve not to develop nuclear weapons as well as the governments that take the bold step to reduce their arsenals. In this regard, governments of small states would act in their own interest and in the interest of all mankind if they sent messages of congratulations to Presidents Obama and Medvedev. These two leaders need to know that people around the world approve of their action.

It would not be amiss too if Caribbean governments also sent messages to the leaders of all 47 states participating in the Summit meeting on nuclear security starting on April 12. Such a message should make it clear that the world expects them to act responsibly and collectively to uphold the fundamental premise of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NTP) which is that while all nations have the right to seek the peaceful use of nuclear energy, they all also have the responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation, and those that do possess these weapons must work towards disarmament.

Both Medvedev and Obama have already received strong criticism from influential persons and groups within their own countries, making it even more urgent for peace-loving nations to register their vibrant support for their courage in resisting the combatants in their own societies. The ink was not yet dry on the signatures to the Treaty signed on April 8 when conservatives opposed to Obama’s agenda for nuclear non-proliferation attacked him, saying that he will weaken the US nuclear deterrent against possible attack.

Not surprisingly among the nay-sayers was John McCain, the Republican Senator against whom Obama ran for the US Presidency. He was joined by another Republican Senator in saying: “We believe that preventing nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation should begin by directly confronting the two leading proliferators and supporters of terrorism, Iran and North Korea. The Obama administration's policies, thus far, have failed to do that and this failure has sent exactly the wrong message to other would-be proliferators and supporters of terrorism”.

Their statement indicates quite clearly what the attitude of the Republicans will be in the US Senate which has to ratify the Obama-Medvedev treaty before it can come into force. They will subject Obama to a verbal bashing, and raise the spectre of American vulnerability as they try to scaremonger the entire nation into rejecting it. The Russian Parliament also has to ratify the treaty, and while the ride there may be easier, it will not be entirely smooth. This is even greater reason for other nations to transmit to these bodies their support for the agreement.

The Summit on Nuclear Security is not expected to discuss particular countries but undoubtedly Iran and North Korea will be discussed in the margins of the meeting. Iran is widely suspected of pursuing nuclear weapons, and North Korea, which withdrew from the NPT in 2003, has twice detonated nuclear devices. Both countries are under UN sanctions, and both are governed by regimes that have demonstrated a dislike and disregard for international rules.

What was particularly significant about the speech made by Medvedev after signing the April 8 treaty is that he was severely critical of Iran saying that the world could not turn a blind eye to Iran, which he said had not responded to "many constructive proposals". He suggested that Russia would be open to further sanctions against Tehran.

Small states, particularly those that are actively seeking economic links to Iran, also need to be careful that the Iranian government does not expect their votes in diplomatic tussles at the United Nations and other international bodies over Iran’s nuclear programme. While all countries should support the desire for nuclear energy, it is not at all clear that Iran’s programme stops there. And rejecting any overtures from Iran for diplomatic support in the nuclear controversy would not be submission to a US-Russia position; it would be an assertion of the vital concern of small nations for a world in which no new nuclear weapons are built and existing arsenals reduced.

On April 7, the Obama government committed the US not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states provided that they are party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations. Only North Korea and Iran are presently omitted from this undertaking.

The nuclear security Summit could be a first step in a constructive nuclear-use strategy. If the development of nuclear weapons could be universally rejected and a commitment made to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, nuclear power could be used in the fight against climate change and in giving the entire world greater confidence in energy security

Obama has given the world the right lead by his intense desire to end nuclear-proliferation. Yes, the US would be safer if this happens, but so too would the rest of the world particularly those with no nuclear weapons. Obama deserves support.

April 9, 2010

caribbeannetnews

Bahamas Blog International

Health reform in the United States

Reflections of Fidel

(Taken from CubaDebate)

BARACK Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system imposed by the United States on the world. "God bless the United States," he ends his speeches.

Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with sympathy the African-American candidate’s victory over that country’s extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor’s genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of 50% of Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.

Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000 soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.

The current administration’s militarist policies, its plunder of natural resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.

The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the international community – which had given credit to his promise to cooperate in the fight against climate change – was another act that disappointed many people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet words of its president beforehand.

It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the egotistic policies of that colossal empire.

In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle, and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists, that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed. Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.

On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing, agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in which the human species that inhabits it – which emerged less than 200,000 years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life emerged on the planet – is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.

Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government, the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world’s nations, when the increase in temperatures – beyond the critical limits that are in sight – is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen years, leaving underwater all of the world’s port facilities and the lands where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and works.

Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for them not to know it.

I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the government’s position vis-à-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who are limiting the administration’s faculties. It would be worse if those who engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not clouding his intelligence.

In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American, Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to their countries.

The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies. They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?

The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti – the poorest country in Latin America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that involved the death of more than 200,000 people – and the terrible economic damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.

The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being the model for humanity he extols.

Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral victory.

Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.

The problems of our era are far more serious still.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing the large U.S. banks – the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for the financial chaos on the planet – to be kept afloat by the government of that country in each one of the system’s frequent and growing crises.

The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of gold, something more than 25% of the world’s reserves of this metal, a figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP, like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country have taken over a considerable part of the world’s wealth, and which sustain that nation’s consumer society.

Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the principal Internet networks.

Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity in an exceptional dilemma.

Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but, in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.

A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second – if there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of that sun.

The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.

The new laws of science – based on Einstein’s theories on energy and matter and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and infinite stars or other hypotheses – have given way to profound changes in fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying theologians’ attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision holística del Universe (The Artist’s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe), launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.

Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and even in philosophy and theology.

The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama’s thinking on the compatibility of consumer societies with science.

Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty – at least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.



Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

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Obama's Nobel Prize: The stupidity of political bigotry

By Sir Ronald Sanders:


Barack Obama did not ask for the Nobel Peace Prize and he was probably the most shocked person to learn that it had been awarded to him.

He certainly made no secret of his surprise at the news. And, he was dignified and humble in publicly saying that he didn't feel that he deserved to be "in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honoured by this prize - men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace".

In selecting Obama, the Nobel Prize Committee said: "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future". Few, except Obama's bitterest antagonists in the US Republican Party and right wing groups would deny that statement.

The Committee also justified awarding the Prize to Obama by saying it "attached special importance to Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons". That, too, is true. Obama could not be any clearer on this issue.

I part company with the Committee in its prospective explanation that "as President (Obama) created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play". This latter assertion is left to be seen.

From a Caribbean standpoint, his desire for multilateral diplomacy - rather than the enforcement of a US position - is yet to be tested and will be judged on the readiness of his administration to include Caribbean governments directly in: addressing the economic development needs of the area through bilateral assistance and the mobilization of resources from the international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank; reviewing US policy on the deportation of criminals; reassessing and re-modeling the anti-drug trafficking programme in the area; and fashioning machinery that will allow Caribbean financial services to continue to compete in the global market place, particularly in relation to US businesses. On this, judgment of Obama's willingness to engage even the smallest of nations in multilateral decision-making has to be withheld.

But, whatever reservations may be harboured by non-Americans about the early award of the Peace Prize to Obama, two things cannot be denied. First, the Nobel Prize Committee is right in its assessment that Obama has captured the world's attention and given people of many nations cause to hope for a better future. And, second, he has been awarded the prize without seeking it.

In this regard, Barack Obama is far above reproach. His declaration that he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of the notable persons who preceded him also marked him as a special human being.

Every citizen of the United States of America should have rejoiced in the selection of one of their own for the Prize, especially coming after a period in which its government's policies and practices estranged the US from most of the rest of the world and created deep resentment of Americans as a nation. Americans of every stripe should have been delighted that their country had returned to a place of global honour.

And, it is worth saying that while the period before Obama was particularly awful under the administration of George W Bush, the previous Bill Clinton government was not without its flaws.

Any who would question my observation of the Clinton government should look at the number of routine air strikes in Afghanistan that killed many innocent people and spurred deep resentment.

For the Caribbean, the dislocation of banana farmers from their preferential market in the European Union was a direct result of the Clinton administration's decision to act in the World Trade Organization for US multinational companies that were banana plantation owners in Latin America as well as financial contributors to the Clinton presidential campaign. It was also under the Clinton administration that the US took a hawkish position in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that blacklisted several Caribbean jurisdictions over financial services. Many never recovered.

There is no doubt that no one person in US history has done more to improve global attitudes to the US than Barack Obama. The American people purged themselves when the majority of them elected him President for the content of his character above the colour of his skin, and for recognizing that he had a quality in his reasoning and his aspirations that was inspiring and believable.

But, instead of applauding Obama's appreciation by a prestigious body that has honoured human achievement and ambition for over a century, Republicans and right-wing groups in the United States denigrated it.

Fox News called the Nobel Prize "tainted" and one commentator wallowed in the gutter to ask if the Prize Committee was pursuing "a policy of affirmative action" - in other words Obama got the Prize because he is black. The ridiculousness of the last comment is evidenced by the people who have won the Peace Prize in modern times. For the most part, they are not white and at least three of them are black - Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King.

These same groups cheered, celebrated, and rejoiced when their own country lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics simply because Obama joined the effort to convince the Olympic Committee to choose Chicago. How sick is that?

As a non-American, wary of the tendency for big powers to overlook the human value of small countries and their tendency to marginalise weak nations in pursuit of their own interests, I have to hope that, in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama so early in his Presidency, the objective of the Committee was to hold him to the values that he has espoused and encourage him to live up to them.

But, those Americans who maligned this unsought honour to one of their own should be ashamed of their deplorable behaviour. The awful spectacle to the world of their bigotry on this particular issue lost them respect and was nothing short of stupid.

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