The dirty rum war

By Gabriel Molina Franchossi:

FROM 1998 through 2003, the Bacardi company invested three million dollars in taking over the Havana Club trademark, in conspiracy with the Bush family.

This past June 25, Cuba and the European Union registered a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO), stating that they had been waiting for 11 years for the United States to revoke Section 211 of the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1998, which legalized the theft of the trademark.

A book by Tom Gjelten, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause, on the career history of the Bacardi family, exposes this incredible squandering of money. An audit demonstrated how, between lawyers’ fees, campaign contributions and expenses, the fight for Havana Club was highly expensive.

Rubén Rodríguez, president of Bacardi through 2005, wanted to get these expenses under strict control and disarmed the Cuba Group existing within the company, which coordinated Cuba-related issues.

The apologetic Bacardi book admits that, in response to the urging of his brother Jeb, George W. Bush violated international law and U.S. laws recognized by the U.S. Patent Office and the WTO, to utilize the Havana Club trademark in U.S. territory and sell supposedly Cuban rum. To a certain extent, Rodríguez distanced himself from the campaign waged by Pepin Bosch, the third president, who led the company into a hard-fought war against the Cuban Revolution, while triumphing as head of the family. "I made them all millionaires," he proudly declared in Miami.

Bosch contributed to the creation and funding of the Cuban Representation in Exile (RECE), which devoted itself to planning acts of terrorism against Cuba, and appointed Jorge Mas Canosa as group spokesman. The successful businessman wanted to put a non-family member at the head of the company, but Eddy Nielsen Schueg was opposed to this and Bosch resigned in anger in 1975. Nielsen took over the presidency and drew back from attacking Cuba. But some years later, alarmed by the challenge of the Havana Club Holdings (HCH) joint venture, created in 1992 between the French Pernod Ricard corporation and Havana Ron, once again started campaigning, at a time when HCH sales doubled in the fist four years of the venture’s operation.

In April 1995, company president Rodolfo Ruiz and Mas Canosa, president of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), organized a banquet (at $500 per head) in the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel, to finance the reelection of Senator Jessie Helms. This ‘give to get’ move was to place at Helms’ disposition the lawyer Ignacio Sánchez, so that he could draft Title III of the Helms-Burton Act with Daniel Fisk, the Senator’s man on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

However, the Helms-Burton Act, baptized the Bacardi Claims Act by Wayne Smith, former director of the Cuba Bureau in the State Department, didn’t do the company much good; its extraterritorial pretensions clashed with European interests and forced a compromise with the EU, thus leaving many of its clauses without effect; year after year, U.S. presidents were forced to temporarily suspend the effects of Title III.

That fall, Bacardi loaded 16 crates of rum from its distillery in Nassau and marketed them in the United States with Havana Club labels. But in 1996, the French-Cuban HCH won a claim against Bacardi-Martini in a New York court, for violating a trademark registered by Cuba and approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1976.

Bacardi continued with its plan in 1997, buying the Havana Club franchise from the Arechabala family for $1.025 million. In real terms, this family had lost it in 1974, given that it did not renew its registration of the trademark or produce rum for 30 years. Nevertheless, Bacardi lawyers fixed their sights on abstracting their case from the 1928 Trademark Act, and had Congress approve a new bill, with retroactive effect, to deactivate the 1976 registration made by Havana Club to sell genuine Cuban rum. They used senators such as Connie Mack and Robert Graham, and Congress members IIeana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, to add an amendment to the 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act’s controversial Section 211 on the National Budget.

The illegitimate amendment allowed them to get around the U.S. Trademark Act when Judge Shira Scheindling, of the Southern District of New York, approved the Bacardi claim. But Havana Club Holdings succeeded in having the European Union and the WTO question the anomalous inclusion at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), which did not cancel the registration of the Havana Club trademark as Bacardi sought via the amendment. But under pressure from Bush, the PTO invalidated its own decision.

The spurious George W. Bush administration, which won the 2000 elections over Albert Gore through fraudulent voting in Florida, was grateful and rewarded the Miami mafia and Bacardi, among other benefits, the denial of Cuba’s right to continue paying for the registration of the Havana Club rum trademark in the United States.

In October 2002, The Washington Post published email messages supplied by the Florida Democratic Party, revealing how the then governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, made the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office change its position in favor of Bacardi.

When the PTO attempted to act in accordance with the law, Jorge Rodríguez Márquez, vice president of Bacardi, sent a brazen note to Jeb Bush, "Somebody has to tell the Patent Office to stop interfering," he demanded.

In response, Governor Jeb Bush replied on April 23, 2002, that his brother, the President, had appointed former Congressman James Rogan to supervise the PTO; and instructed Rodríguez to draft a letter to Rogan asking for "prompt and decisive action in favor of Bacardi," which he would sign. The letter, duly drafted by Rodríguez and signed by Bush, ordered an end to the dispossession immediately; as was carried out. The process revealed the high degree of complicity on the part of the Bush clan with corrupt individuals in Washington such as Congress members Tom De Lay and his colleagues Mel Martínez, Díaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen, funded by Bacardi.

The Post also reported on December 4, that Rodríguez Márquez had spent five million dollars since 1998, paying Congress members, and another $2.2 million hiring lobbyists.

Bacardi admitted to having used corporate funds to pay electoral campaign costs in Texas to the leader of the Republican majority, Tom De Lay. The company was fined a mere $750, despite demonstrating its involvement.
 

In 2002, the EU filed a lawsuit against this second Bacardi Act, and the WTO Arbitration Committee ruled that parts of Section 211 were in violation of the commercial commitments of the United States and needed to be amended by Congress in order to bring them into line with WTO regulations. Thus the United States was urged to adapt them within a reasonable amount of time, as they were in violation of accorded regulations in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.

The EU plaintiff agreed to give the U.S. more time to abide by this ruling, on various occasions. Thus, in 2004, Congress was presented with a bill on respect for trademarks, signed by legislators from both parties and supported by the National Foreign Trade Council, but the attempt was derailed by the very same legislators with identical bribes.

In July 2005, Europe and the Bush administration agreed, behind Cuba’s back, not to set a deadline for the United States to meet its WTO obligations; they agreed to abstain from asking the Solution of Differences body authorization to suspend concessions to the U.S. at this stage, until, at "some future date" they should decide to so. This understanding facilitated delaying the dispute for an indefinite period.

In this year’s hearing, European diplomats stated that it is time for the U.S. to resolve the issue and the Americans responded that a draft bill is in the hands of legislators in Washington to find a solution. They were informed that 11 years is more than enough time to adapt the regulation. But the 50-plus years of cold war against Cuba have broken the principles of the market economy which sustains this country’s ideology.

The dirty tricks of the Bush brothers and their protagonists in this rum war: Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Mel Martínez, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Tom De Lay and Jack Abramoff are among the more aggressive actors in the dirty war which Washington has insisted on maintaining. Given their corrupted and underhand nature, they constitute a 21st century Watergate. The pro-Batista Congress members of today are playing the same role as Nixon’s band of gangsters: Rolando Martínez, Virgilio González and Bernard Baker, together with Howard L. Hunt, James Mc Cord and Frank Sturgis.

To whom does President Obama have a debt of gratitude?

 

September 06, 2013

 

Granma.cu

 

Bahamas Blog International

 

War and Peace in Venezuela

By Luis Britto Garcia:

WAR

I don’t get tired of quoting Clausewitz, who says that war is a continuation of politics by other means. The United States has failed so completely and successively in its policies that it always has the temptation of war.

PEACE

Venezuela doesn’t represent the slightest risk to the safety of anyone, it hasn’t assaulted anyone nor perpetuated a hostile act against any country, it has a smaller than average army with conventional weapons that don’t threaten its neighbours.

WAR

Venezuela is besieged by seven U.S bases in Colombia, two in Curazao and Aruba, four more in Panama, one in Honduras, and by the IV Float that patrols the Caribbean after military occupying defenceless Haiti.

PEACE

Because of its population of fifty million habitants, because of its agricultural and industrial production, because of the expansion of its capital, Colombia can easily obtain immense benefits from peaceful commercial relations with its neighbours, and enjoy a subregional hegemony without firing a single shot or scattering blood in an ocean or playing its destiny and that of its leaders in the casino of war.

WAR

But with the Plan Puebla-Panama, that consists of a strategic corridor through Central America up to the Sister Republic, and Plan Colombia, that aims to convert [Colombia] into the Hawk Country of the Hired Killer Country, the United States is planning to drive a wedge into the heart of Brazil, its true competitor in Latin America, and carry out Project New American Century.

PEACE

According to Dilip Hiro, the foreign policy of Obama combines overbearing threat with withdrawal in the face of firmness (TomDispatch.com). Obama rejects the Honduras coup as a “terrible precedent”, the coup leaders racially insulted him and he ended up supporting them. After threatening to remove Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, he backed him when he offered to go over the Taliban and declared Iran “our friend, our ally”. After pressuring China to revalue its yuan, threatening it with reports from the treasury department and approving the sale of 6.4 billion dollars in arms to Taiwan, Obama accepted Hu Jintao’s measures against companies who sold said arms and held back the announced reports.

WAR

The 700 billion dollars of Plan Paulson and the 750 billlion euros of financial relief in Europe have sunk into the bottomless well of the crisis. Workers refuse to pay with higher taxes, decreased workers’ rights and pensions. Bankers clash with the social rebellion in Greece and Portugal, Spain confronts 25% unemployment and the United States gives in to the temptation to activate its economy with military spending, with a military budget announced for 2011 of over 726 billion dollars.

PEACE

Brazil is clear about the United States’ intentions and is also clearing the way for independent agreements with Iran and Turkey, countries that are moving further and further away from the United States’ orbit.

Venezuela, apart from its integration in Mercosur and its close relations with Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicharagua, Uruguay and the Caribbean countries, has began multi-polar relations with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, African countries, the Third World. United States dominance will find it difficult to directly confront a bloc with noticeable multi-polar links and that covers almost two thirds of South America.

WAR

The incoming president in Colombia will be subject to the devastating pressure of almost a decade of United States intervention and a military occupation that guarantees the invaders immunity and impunity from the law and local tribunals. His predecessor sent Colombians to fight the U.S war in Afghanistan. The new president will have little hesitation to sacrifice them as canon fodder in any conflict in the interest of the Empire.

PEACE

In 2007 Colombia had 459,687 civil servants working in security and defence and in that year spent 6.5% of its GDP on internal conflict, some $22 billion annually. Statistics from the Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPRI) fix the number at 3.7% of the GDP in 2009 ($10.06 billion), which places Colombia as the Latin American country which spends most on arms.

El Espectador on 25 November 2009 announced that Colombia has established a war tax that expects to raise 3.3 billion pesos annually (according to the Real Academia Espanola, a billion is a million million, and one dollar is worth almost two thousand pesos). Such burdens go strongly against its economy and the precarious conditions of life of its people, of which seven million have been forced to emigrate and 4.3 million have been displaced from their land due to military operations.

Despite this, the Colombian government  hasn’t been able to eradicate an insurgency that consists of some ten thousand rebels. Before involving itself in other countries, it would be better that Colombia sort out its own backyard. It wouldn’t be wise to invade other countries to confront the rebellion of thirty million Venezuelans and two hundred million Brazilians.

WAR

The possible future president [Translator’s note: since the original publication of this article, that possible president, Juan Santos, has since won the presidential elections] of Colombia has threatened with kidnapping the Venezuelan mayor Di Martino; has supported the invasion against Ecuador, has explicitly stated that his government would assault any country in order to exterminate the insurgency that it can’t even control within its own borders. As vicepresident he supported the military occupation of his country by the United States and tried to unite his electorate using a war against Venezuela discourse at every opportunity.

PEACE

Venezuela faces the possibility of this declared war with an alarming lack of preparation. Severe deficiencies in education on history, geography and civics make it hard to deepen the national consciousness.

Some 4.3 million Colombians live in Venezuela and almost no Venezuelans live in Colombia. A fifth column of paramilitaries occupies us without any resistance and legalises capital with bingos, casinos, and gambling dens. Part of the opposition and its media call out loudly for Venezuela to be invasive. There’s no norms in Venezuela to exclude people with loyalty, obedience and military defence towards other countries from strategic responsibilities.

Venezuela barely spends 1.5% of its GDP on defence these days, a reduction of 25% compared to previous years ($3.254 billion dollars).

 WAR

Noriega collaborated with the United States and it overthrew him and kidnapped him. Fujimori carried out genocide in the interest of the northerners [U.S] and ended up in jail. Carlos Andres massacred in defence of the IMF and paid with his imprisonment. Saddam Hussein fought against Iran supported by the Yankees and was executed by them. The Taliban, trained, financed, and armed by the Gringos [U.S] today are being reduced to ashes by bombs Made in the USA.  He who initiates conflict in the name of the empire ends up unhappy. Whoever serves the United States commits suicide.

PS: The third edition of my book ‘Peace with Colombia” is in circulation and can be downloaded [in Spanish] from www.minci.gob.ve

 

Translated by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis.com

July 3rd 2010

venezuelanalysis

Bahamas Blog International

Ronald Reagan Caribbean Legacy

Ronald Reagan and Grenada

Reaction To Reagan’s Role In The Caribbean

By Charles Fawkes

Nassau, The Bahamas

02/07/2004

HOUSE OF LABOUR: Reaction to last week’s column “Reagan’s legacy in the Caribbean", through e-mail and by way of telephone was swift and furious.  It is perhaps articles like that one that answers the question, "Is anybody listening?”  In one of the e-mails sent, the reader wondered if this column could shed some light on the fate of the seventeen Grenadians charged and jailed with murder, and manslaughter in the political incident that ended in the death of Maurice Bishop- the former Prime Minister of Grenada and his supporters.

To be honest this was a tall order.  I had long ago stopped following the development regarding those who were regarded as the counterrevolution in the experiment where Grenadians were attempting to establish the second workers state in the Caribbean.  However, after considerable research and a few phone calls to some of my Caribbean comrade’s- one recent article by Rich Gibson a professor of education at San Diego State University provided some insight.  What follows are excerpts from the lengthy article entitled “ The Grenada 17, The Last Prisoners of the Cold War Are Back” where Gibson argues: “The invasion of Grenada, more than 20 years ago, presaged many of the events that blowback on the US today: unilateral warfare, official deceit about the motives for war, a massive military moving against an imagined foe, stifling the press, leaders proclaiming their guidance from God, denials of human and civil rights, systematic torture and subsequent cover-ups-and a hero who refused to go along.  Many of the players in the Bush administration who promise perpetual war today cut their teeth on the invasion of Grenada.

On March 13, 1979 a revolution took place in Grenada, the first in an African Caribbean country, the first in the English-speaking world.  The people who made up the revolutionary cadre were young, average age around 27.  The uppermost leadership was predominantly middle class, educated abroad.  They called themselves the New Jewel Movement (NJM).  The revolution, or coup as some called it, was popular, replacing a mad dictator named Eric Gairy who spent much of the tiny country's (pop 100,000) resources investigating the reason Grenada was a favorite landing point for flying saucers.

At the time of the uprising, Eric Gairy was in the US visiting with Nazi war criminal (and United Nations Secretary General) Kurt Waldheim.  Gairy simply didn't return.  Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Bernard and Phyllis Coard, were among the key New Jewel leaders.  Bishop and Coard had been childhood friends.

The NJM leadership was socialists, though their socialism was eclectic-hardly the doctrinaire image the U.S. later created.  They borrowed judiciously and won investments from any government they could, from the British to the USSR to Iraq and Cuba (which provided mostly doctors, construction specialists, nurses, and educators).  The exacting Brandeis-educated Bernard Coard, leading the financial sector, was recognized throughout the Caribbean as a rare, honest, economist.

They began a mass literacy project (led by Paulo Freire), quickly improved medical care, began to set up processing plants for fish and spices, and started building a jetport.  The country had a tiny landing strip only able to land prop planes, a problem for an economy tied up with tourist interests.  The plan in general, was to magnify national economic development by expanding existing forms of production (agriculture, small industries, tourism, etc.) and by creating a new class of technologically competent workers who might use their skills to create a role for Grenada in the information economy as well.  The far-sighted educational programs had a critical role in that project.

To claim that the NJM rule was a model of egalitarian democracy, as much of the chic left did at the time, would be off point.  It wasn't.  While international tourist-socialists danced during carnival in the beautiful houses allotted to revo leaders, democracy and equality went on the back burner in favor of national economic development.

With New Jewel under terrific pressure, The US quickly moved to crush the revo, made tourism nearly impossible for U.S. citizens.  It is fairly clear that the CIA made several attempts to murder key leaders.

Pressed externally, NJM grew more isolated from the people.  Rather than reach out to expand its initial popularity, the party turned inward.  The leadership tried to rely on a correct analysis and precise orders rather than to build a popular base.  Even though there was no question that Bishop would win elections, the NJM leaders refused to hold them.  Then In 1982 and 1983, sharp disagreements began to emerge within the entire organization.  Within four years, by 1983, the NJM was in real trouble.

The Central Committee passed motions blaming the people for the crises in the economy.  In 1983, the whole party voted overwhelmingly to reduce Bishop's role and elevate Coard to an equal spot, though the entire party, and Coard, knew he would never be as popular as the charismatic Bishop, and could never rule without him.  There were many reasons for the move; one of the more important being Bishop's lack of personal discipline, called "waffling".  The shift to shared leadership was made in the context of a revolution already in crisis.  Bishop agreed to the plan, but expressed concern that his work was being repudiated, that this might be a vote of no confidence.

On 19 October 1983, a mob of thousands led by Bishop marched past armed personnel carriers (APC's) lined up in front of his home, freed "We Leader" Bishop, and (under curious banners like "We Love the US") began to move to the town square.  No one in the APC's moved to stop the crowd.

As the crowd moved to Bishop's house, a Cuban military outfit arrived at the downtown Fort Rupert (now Ft George).  They had not reported in days and were turned away by the commander on duty from the NJM.  In the town square, where rallies were traditionally held, microphones were set up for Bishop to speak to the people.  Bishop could have easily mobilized nearly the entire population of the island to come to the square to support him-and that probably would have been that.

But now led by Bishop and his friends, the crowd turned and marched on a nearby fort where arms and TNT were stored.  Bishop demanded that the commander of the fort turn over his weapons.  He did, and was locked in a cell.

At this point, things become murky.  An award winning Grenadian journalist, Alastair Hughes, famous in the region for his resistance to the NJM and his courage, saw the crowd move to the fort and bolted home, rather than cover the news.  Bishop moved his cadre to seize the radio and telephone centers, as had the NJM in overturning Gairy a few years earlier.  From another fort on a mountain about two miles away, Peoples Revolutionary Army APC's were ordered to quiet the mob.

The soldiers on the APC's were for the most part, hardly crack troops; they were mainly youths who had enlisted to get the money to buy shoes for their families.  One had deserted out of loneliness and been brought back the previous day.  They rode on top of the carriers, in full view. As they approached the fort, fire came from the mob.  The commander of the first APC, one of the few experienced soldiers in the group and a highly respected officer, was killed.  Discipline appears to have evaporated on all sides.  Fire was returned.

No one knows exactly how many people were killed and wounded.  No firm count was ever made.  There are films of people leaping over a wall at the fort (why a film-maker was so poised with such a powerful camera is an interesting question).

In any case, Bishop and other top leaders of NJM, including his pregnant companion Jackie Creft, were killed- after they had surely surrendered.  The remaining leadership of NJM imposed a curfew on the island.  In part because important documents taken from Grenada during the invasion remain classified in the U.S., no thoroughgoing investigation of this day's events has been possible.

Shortly afterward, on October 23 1983, 241 US troops were killed, blown up in their barracks in Lebanon by a truck bomb.

US President Ronald Reagan took to the TV, announcing he had discovered, through satellite photos, that the Cubans were building a secret Soviet Cuban military airstrip in Grenada-a direct threat to US security.

Reagan declared the US medical students to be in grave danger from the crisis in Grenada, said that the NJM was a threat to all regional security.  He got the organization of Caribbean nations to back him with a big payoff to those who went along-- and invaded a country the size of Kalamazoo with a massive military force, under a precedent_ setting news blackout.  The US had practiced the invasion of Grenada as early as 1981.

The invasion of Grenada (popular among most Grenadian people sickened by the long collapse of the NJM) was complete in a week.  It was, however, denounced as illegal by the U.N. Security Council, by Margaret Thatcher and the British government, and by a myriad of US congress people.

The US, however, quickly recaptured its post-Lebanon image as a military super-power.

Seventeen NJM leaders were charged with the murder of Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, and others, though most of them were nowhere near the incident.  The NJM leaders claimed they were tortured and signed transparently bogus confessions.  According to affidavits filed by former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, and Amnesty International, the NJM leaders were denied attorneys.  They were tried by jurors who chanted "guilty" at them during jury selection, in trails led by judges hand-picked and paid by the U.S.  They were unable to make a defense in the kangaroo atmosphere.  Their lawyers were subjected to death threats and some fled.  Fourteen of the NJM members were sentenced to death.  In 1991, after an international outcry, the sentences were commuted to life.  Typically in the Caribbean, a life sentence amounts to around 15 years.

The New Jewel leaders are still serving time in a prison built in the nineteenth century.  The last prisoners of the cold war are black.  Their health is rapidly fading.  Despite immense obstacles created by prison officials over the years, the NJM prisoners are conducting one of the most successful literacy campaigns in the country.  Less than two in ten of the program' grads return to the Richmond Hill jail.

As of October 2004, the NJM prisoners will have served 21 years.  Phyllis Coard was released in 2000 to seek cancer treatment abroad, following an international campaign on her behalf.  She is still expected to return to the jail following treatment.

In October 2003 Amnesty International has issued a detailed report, demonstrating their conclusion that the Grenada 17 were denied due process in their trial: "the trial was manifestly and fundamentally unfair."  The selection of both judges and the jury were tainted with prejudice.  Documents that might have contradicted key prosecution evidence were denied the defendants.

In 2002 Rich Gibson interviewed Grenada's ambassador to the US, asking him why his government is so determined to keep the Grenada 17 in jail.  He replied that he, and the nation's current leader, Keith Mitchell, believed there would be riots if the Grenada 17 were set free.  The possibility of serious civil strife in Grenada, about anything but the corruption allegations aimed at the Mitchell regime, are actually quite negligible, as leaders of the opposition party and the country's leading paper, the Voice, told Gibson.

Gibson concludes, “I spent 1996 in Grenada interviewing many of the jailed NJM leaders.  To say they are innocent of everything is not the case.  To say they are innocent of the charges brought against them is.  The New Jewel leadership made serious mistakes.  The prisoners have issued extensive, indeed insightful, apologies to that effect, taking responsibility for the crisis of the revolution, but not for the murders they did not commit.  Their continued imprisonment is a mysterious yet great wrong that needs to be righted.  The truth of the Grenada revo, and its destruction, needs to be known.”

Hopefully this information shed some light on the current status of these imprisoned as a result of the crushing of the Grenadian Revolution.

Charles Fawkes is President of the National Consumer Association, Consumer columnist for the Nassau Guardian and organizer for the Commonwealth Group of Unions, Editor of the Headline News, The Consumer guard and The Worker’s Vanguard.