From director Andrew Hasse, a delightful documentary on the urban agriculture movement, focusing mainly on what’s happening along the eastern side of San Francisco Bay.
Local readers will see a lot of familiar faces, including UC Berkeley’s Miguel Altieri, the last remaining faculty member from the university’s now-gutted agroecology program, Jason Harvey of the Oakland Food Collective, Eric Holt-Gimenez, Willow Rosenthal of Oakland’s City Slicker Farms, educator Joy Moore of Berkeley Alternative High School, Leon Davis of the Hope Collaborative, permaculture specialist Brock Dolman, and more. Altieri also addresses the short-lived occupation of the university’s Gill Tract in Albany.
Hasse’s done an excellent job of exploring a very important response to the global economic crisis, a way to reclaim some of our independence as citizens and communities. And note the job on the faces of the young people as they participate in growing food to feed themselves and their families.
A fascinating report from Agence France-Presse on one nation’s efforts to reduce the price of food by opening up urban land to community farming. Providing citizens with free seeds, tools, and other materials needed to organically grow food, Venezuela is following in the footsteps of Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union:
An important documentary by Scott Noble. The Power Principle exposes the hidden agenda driving American foreign policy over the last seven decades and its gruesome consequences.
Historian Michael Parenti calls the film “A gripping, deeply informative account of the plunder, hypocrisy, and mass violence of plutocracy and empire; insightful, historically grounded and highly relevant to the events of today.”
In an interview for Soldiers for the Cause, a veterans group supporting the Occupy movement, filmmaker Noble outlines the theses advanced in his documentary:
The Cold War was not just a struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States; the real struggle was between American corporations and the Third World.
Top policy planners in the US and other Western nations were acutely aware that the Soviet Union had a conservative foreign policy. You can see this in numerous declassified documents.
Nevertheless, the American government engaged in what can only be described as a campaign of terrorism against the American people, constantly invoking the “Soviet Menace” to justify military spending and war.
The United States does not have a free press.
The Pentagon is a Keynsian Mechanism.
The American government was responsible for genocide during the Cold War.
The Empire is similar to the mafia.
Corporate interests are inextricably wed with military policy.
American imperialism is not of recent vintage.
Elites deceive themselves as well as the public.
The US is not exceptional. It is behaving pretty much as powerful states always have.
Western elites supported fascism prior to, during and after WWII.
A WWIII scenario is almost inevitable unless the American public wakes up – and fast.
An Introduction to the Empire; Iran – Oil and Geopolitics; Guatemala – the “merger of state and corporate power”; The Congo – Neocolonialism; Grenada – “The Mafia Doctrine”; Chile – “libertarianism with a small l”; Globalization: Consequences.
1945: Grand Area Strategy; Fascism: a “rational system of the plutocracy”; Case Studies: the Greek Communists; The Italian Communists; the Spanish Anarchists; Fascism’s Western backers; Trading with the Enemy; Fascism as “preservation of civilization”; the Cold War and “A Century of Fear”.
The Power Principle – II: Propaganda
The program notes:
The Soviet Menace?; Case Studies: El Salvador, Nicaragua; Propaganda: Self-Deception and blowback; The “International Communist Conspiracy”; Declassified Documents; NSC 68; The Pentagon as Keynsian Mechanism; The Military Industrial Complex; The War against the Third World; Shifting rationales; What is imperialism?; Case Study: Haiti; “War is a racket”.
Fear-based conditioning – The War of the Worlds, The Triumph of the Will; World view Warfare; The Russians are coming; Television: The “perfect propaganda medium”; Soviet vs. American propaganda; Hollywood and the Pentagon; Psywarriors and the media; Operation Mockingbird; The Pentagon Pundits; Project Revere; The Bomber Gap; “scare the hell out of them”.
The Power Principle – III: Apocalypse
The program notes:
Mutually Assured Destruction; MAD men – Curtis Lemay and the super hawks; MAD men – Hermann Kahn and the Rand Corporation; Over flights as provocation; Cuba: the “danger of a good example”; terrorism against Cuba; “Unconventional warfare”; the Cuban Missile Crisis and the “man who saved the world”.
Why did the Soviet Union collapse?; Gorbachev: a “more violent, less stable world”; the Pentagon’s New Map; Did Ronald Reagan end the Cold War?; The Brink of Apocalypse: Able Archer; The betrayal of Russia; The expansion of NATO; Yugoslavia and Libya; the Yeltsin coup; Living standards in the former Soviet Union; A third way?
Though Julian Assange may be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, waiting for word on his bid for refuge in that land, he’s still at work, as witnessed by the latest of his interview webcast for RT.
It’s an important discussion about the rise of popular movements, primarily in Latin America and the Middle East, among Assange, MIT prof and provocateur Noam Chomsky, and Tariq Ali.
The Julian Assange Show: Noam Chomsky & Tariq Ali
The program notes:
A surprise Arab drive for freedom, the West’s structural crisis and new hope coming from Latin America. That’s the modern world in the eyes of Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali, two prominent thinkers and this week’s guests on Julian Assange’s show on RT.
UC Berkeley’s claim that Occupy the Tract — the peaceful takeover of UC Berkeley’s Gill Tract farmland in Albany — lacked support from Cal researchers took a big hit Saturday when several of them showed up for an occupation open house.
Professor Miguel Altieri spoke at an afternoon session, offering his full support for the movement which includes many of his own students.
Altieri is an agroecologist who devotes his research to finding the most effective ways to grow crops without the use of chemicals, a movement which began in its modern form with research at the site.
We counted five other Cal faculty at the site, including two who spoke briefly during the information session held on a bright, sunny day.
Altieri said UC Berkeley faculty have been heavily involved in past efforts to save the land for sustainable urban agriculture, including the 1997 drive by Bay Area Coalition for Urban Agriculture [BACUA], which was endorsed by 45 agricultural and environmental groups including Food First, Urban Habitat Project, and Earth Island Journal.
BACUA came up with a detailed proposal for the site, which is posted online here. The university rejected it.
“We did everything the university asked us to do in developing a plan to convert the Gill Tract to a center for sustainable agriculture,” said Shyaam M. Shabaka, founder and executive director of EcoVillage Farm in nearby Richmond. “The university reneged without explanation on the day the agreement was to be finalized.”
Albany activist Michael Beer helped organize another proposal with the backing of the Albany school board to transform the tract into Village Creek Farm and Garden, a site as a site for interdisciplinary academic research, a teaching center for young people, and as a working farm to provide organic food for local consumers and restaurants.
Altieri said Occupy the Farm is part of a larger global struggle for land.
Control of the land is essential both for feeding the world sustainably and for the preservation of identities and culture.
Urban farms are critical to the struggle, he said.
“More than 30 percent of the food in the world is grown in cities,” Altieri said. He cited the case of Cuba, where urban agriculture saved the country from famine after the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the supplies of oil and other critical resources.
Now Cuban urban farms produce 15 to 20 kilograms of food per square meter annually, compared to 5 kilograms in the U.S.
Altieri’s ideal would be the transformation of the site into a teaching and outreach center. His own research on the Gill Tract has been halted for the moment since the university shut off water to the site.
A look back at the BACUA plan
Fifteen years after it was proposed, it’s worth looking back at BACUA.
Writing in Earth Island Journal in 1997. Food First Executive Director Peter Rosset described the group’s vision:
BACUA believes that the explosion in urban farming taking place throughout the world is a positive development – people taking control of the resources that they need for their own livelihoods.
In this era of privatizaton, the University’s Agricultural Research Stations are casting about for a new research mission. It is becoming increasingly common throughout the world for public institutions (and universities in particular) to form partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to share resources and promote common survival. Such a partnership at the Gill Tract, would involve university professors, researchers and students with committed NGOs, working together in a new and rapidly expanding field. (Something similar already exists at the UC Santa Cruz Agroecology Program, but this program doesn’t serve an urban region anything like the Bay Area.)
We can imagine a working community farm that would provide good jobs to local youth and quality organic food to local residents. The farm would simultaneously serve as a demonstration training site for young farmers and as a research site for the University. The farm’s greenhouses could support research directed at improving urban farming technologies while the vacant buildings could become offices shared by NGOs (ranging from urban gardening, school, and community groups, to food policy and education organizations and advocacy groups) and by university professors studying the economic, agronomic, nutritional, ecological and sociological aspects of urban agriculture.
If the potential is unlimited, the alternative is appalling. The loss of this precious of urban farmland would forfeit a once-in-a-lifetime chance to create something new, something where the total would clearly be bigger than the sum of the parts.
The creation of a unique working farm/research station would be true to the legacy of the Division of Biological Control, which over the last two decades fought the long good fight against the state’s dominant agribusiness interests and the agrochemical industry.
Another reminder that rigid civilian oversight of the military is the sine qua non of sane governance comes from Radio France Internationale:
Newly-revealed documents from World War II show that British military chiefs secretly approved plans to arm the Vichy French regime and intended to hide the plot from then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the leader of the free French forces, Charles de Gaulle.
The documents, which were discovered by a history professor Eric Grove from the University of Salford in north-west England, show the chiefs wanted to arm eight French divisions of the supposedly neutral Vichy regime, to take part in the liberation of France.
In an interview with the BBC, Grove said “his eyes widened” when he unearthed the documents.
“Having been fighting the Vichy French in Syria in 1941, and indeed, in May 1942, we were actually fighting Vichy forces in Madagascar, and here we are talking about arming their colleagues in France itself,” he said.
The secret plot dissolved after Vichy troops offered no resistance to the Allied invasion of North Africa, but the lesson is clear: The generals often think they know best, and will, on occasion, launch programs on their own.
The story also doesn’t tell us how far up the chain of command the plot went. This is important because the Allies’ Supreme Commander would later become President of the United States and launched a few secret ops of his own that were kept way too secret., including that notorious failure called the Bay of Pigs.
Another secret op, much closer to home
This one — Operation Midnight Climax [previously here and here] — wasn’t cleared by the Eisenhower White House, but it helped launch the Swinging Sixties by dosing lots of unsuspecting San Francisco Bay Area residents with hefty doses of LSD.
Writing at SF Weekly, Troy Hooper offers another look at this most peculiar of Central Intelligence Agency black ops, one which involved the dosing of unsuspecting civilians in three “safe houses” equipped with hidden movie cameras to observe the effects of drugs on their hapless suspects, some of whom thought they were merely headed for a quickie with an Agency-recruited hooker or two.
It’s a good read, and a timely reminder that spies, like generals, aren’t always to be trusted.
And just for the fun of it, here’s the first of three parts of a dramatic re-enactment of the op from Brightlight Productions. We’ve previously posted the rest here.
Not in the U.S., where it’s a crime to smoke a Cuban stogie, but his offense was to attempt buy his smokes of choice from a German company so he could smoke it in Denmark.
Uncle Sam has grabbed up his cash, citing the U.S. trade embargo against the Caribbean island nation, and that has sparked what they call a “diplomatic incident.”
From Politiken DK in Copenhagen:
Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal is to investigate the case of a Danish policeman who bought cigars from a German company but has fallen foul of the US trade embargo against Cuba, according to Berlingske.
Funen Police Officer Torben Nødskou runs a part-time business known as Cognachuset and attempted to buy Cuban cigars from a German supplier in Hamburg when US authorities confiscated his deposit of DKK 137,000 (ca. USD25,000).
”I not feel it is reasonable for the United States to act against European companies in a case like this in which we have a legal transfer of funds between two European companies,” Søvndal tells Berlingske.
Nørskou sent his funds in dollars through the small, local Funen bank Totalbanken, but the funds were snapped up by US authorities who confiscated them. In January, the Justice Department refused to release the funds.
According to the Justice Department Nødskou had contravened the US trade embargo on Cuba, which was imposed in 1960 when Fidel Castro nationalised private property owned by Americans.
We would note with a certain irony that the Bush administration didn’t go after the funds of one very well known afficianado of Cuban smokes. Consider the following exchange between film director and then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, as reported by the New York Times eight years ago:
Mr. Cameron asked him how governing was going.
“They’re really shaken up up there,” he said of Sacramento. “It’s a trip. You should see it.”
He talked about the art of compromise, popularity polls, special interests, prison investigations and the atrium outside his Sacramento office, where he is able to smoke his Cuban cigars—20 feet from the entrance as state law requires.
“A lot of business gets done there,” he said. “Who doesn’t like a good stogie?”
Three years later, the Associated Press reported this:
The celebrity governor known for his love of premium cigars was headed to the Ottawa airport Wednesday when his motorcade made a detour to a hotel. There, Schwarzenegger picked up a Cuban Partagas cigar in a shop, with the $14.83 bill paid by an aide traveling with him, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported.
Under trade restrictions, U.S. citizens are prohibited from buying Cuban cigars anywhere in the world.
Schwarzenegger’s office wouldn’t confirm or deny that the governor indulged in a forbidden smoke while in Canada, where he was on a trade mission.
“He stopped and bought a cigar and smoked it on the way to the airport,” spokesman Aaron McLear said.
Was it a banned Cuban cigar?
“There’s no way of telling now because he smoked it,” McLear said.
Better watch out, Ahnie, Obama’s gonna getcha!
Yeah, sure.
We suspect his Justice Department is way to busy justifying extrajudicial killings of American citizens, busting medical marijuana clinics, and hassling Danish cops to terminate Schwarzenegger’s smoking habits.
For anyone of a certain age, two days are burned into memory: 22 November 1963 and 11 September 2001.
The first date, known to those who remember it as “November 22,” ushered in the loss of the America’s 20th Century sense of innocence.
It was then that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was fatally show from ambush as he rode in an open-topped limousine between the Texas Schoolbook Depository and a grassy knoll in downtown Dallas.
A single person, Lee Harvey Oswald, was detained soon afterwards, then shot by a low-level mobster with ties to Chicago’s notorious Outfit, the old Al Capone organization.
A hasty investigation followed, chaired by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, which carried out a slipshod examination and came to the rapid conclusion that the deed was done by one disgruntled ex-Marine, acting alone.
Even by the official verdict of the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald’s act was inspired in part by his outrage over the United States’ treatment of Cuba, which had two years earlier been the target of a disastrous “black op” carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs.
The slain President, unbeknownst to the American people at the time, had also been waging an ongoing series of assassination attempts directed at Cuban Premier Fidel Castro in collusion with the CIA in collusion with the Chicago Outfit and other mafia families.
Then there was Oswald himself, who had defected to the Soviet Union after working at a top secret facility in Japan employed in conducting U-2 intelligence overflights of China and the Soviet Union on behalf of — yep — the CIA.
And then there were the numerous inconsistencies in the evidence, the rash of deaths among other key witnesses, and a whole host of other red flags no one seemed to notice.
Were there other assassins? Was Oswald the “patsy” he claimed to be? Did the CIA and FBI have foreknowledge that Oswald posed a danger to the President? The questions, still lacking answers, are endless.
More than a thousand books have been written over the years about an event which made the words “conspiracy theory” a popular meme in the American media.
But one overarching question stands out: Was the Dallas assassination a classic case of “blowback,” a case when intelligence operations turned around and bit the perpetrators in the ass?
Having read more than a hundred books on the case, we have no clear cut answers. One thing is certain, though: The Warren Commission was a farce, a political creation designed to yield a preordained conclusion.
Many of the key files remain classified to this day, while others have vanished. It’s likely, in the end, that we’ll never have conclusive proof of the chain of events that lead to the events of that bright Dallas morning.
Blowback at the World Trade Center?
Just as Lee Harvey Oswald’s motives may have been the fruits of blowback from one set of CIA black ops, the events of 9/11 also owe their origins to another set of spooky dealings: The CIA’s secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
It was under the direction of Ronald Reagan’s CIA director William Casey, an ardent Catholic drawn to secret church societies, that the spies at Langley launched their second major covert war, this time aimed at destroying the Soviet Union by fomenting rebellion among that nation’s Muslim minority.
The place Casey chose to begin the fight was Afghanistan, where a Soviet-backed regime was confronting a rebellion in a land that no foreign power had ever been Continue reading →
Today, a SECRET/NOFORN 6 January 2010 dispatch from Jonathan D. Farrar, Chief of Mission of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which Washington maintains in lieu of an embassy.
The subject: An assessment of the recent ratcheting up of the war of words between Havana and Washington.
An excerpt:
Despite the challenges to the GOC’s authority, its economic mismanagement and its unwillingness to adapt with the times, the GOC remains confident and in control. A less hostile United States has helped allay real or imaginary fears that the regime will come under fire if it retreats from the dogmatic stance of years past. President Castro acknowledged in December that domestic change was needed, but asked for more time for consultations. And, despite his criticism of U.S. democracy programs, he again called for improved relations.
We note the use of two words in the cable — “blogger movement” — to describe one source of antiregime activism and remind readers of the State Department’s ongoing recruitment of bloggers in the propaganda war against regimes deemed unfriendly, as in, say, Egypt and Syria.
In one instance, the name of a Cuban blogger briefly detained by Cuban police is omitted. We can’t fathom why WikiLeaks removed the it in paragraph 7, given that the 6 November 2008 confinement of Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez was widely reported at the time.
And we also note the palpable loathing of Hugo Chavez on the part of Obama’s man in Cuba.
The document is posted online here. We’ve added missing names and the meanings of acronyms [in brackets].
VZCZCXRO1987
PP RUEHAG RUEHROV RUEHSL
DE RUEHUB #0009/01 0062020
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
P 062020Z JAN 10
FM USINT HAVANA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5071
INFO RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHWH/WESTERN HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS DIPL POSTS PRIORITY
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS PRIORITY
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUCOGCA/COMNAVBASE GUANTANAMO BAY CU PRIORITY
RHMFISS/HQ USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL PRIORITY
RUCOWCV/CCGDSEVEN MIAMI FL PRIORITY
RHMFISS/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 HAVANA 000009
NOFORN
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
STATE FOR WHA/CCA AND WHA/PD
STATE FOR DRL CNEWLING
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/20/2019
TAGS: PREL PHUM PGOV SMIG CU
SUBJECT: U.S.- CUBA CHILL EXAGGERATED, BUT OLD WAYS THREATEN PROGRESS
REF: A. REF A HAVANA 639 (“A SPLENDID LITTLE VISIT”)
B. B HAVANA 772 (CONSULAR VISIT TO JAILED AMCIT)
C. C HAVANA 763 (CUBA PASSES UP ON REFORMS)
D. D HAVANA 739 (STRIDENT PROTEST)
E. E HAVANA 736 (HUMAN RIGHTS MARCHES TURN VIOLENT)
F. F HAVANA 755 (CUBAN FEATHERS RUFFLED BY USCG
RESCUE)
HAVANA 00000009 001.2 OF 003
Classified By: Pol/Econ Chief Joaquin F. Monserrate for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).
1. (S/NF) SUMMARY. Over the course of the last month the tone coming out of Havana seems a regression to the hostile language that kept U.S. – Cuba relations on ice for much of the last 50 years. The U.S. press is playing it that way, and both U.S. and Cuban observers are publicly throwing their hands up in the air in frustration. The reality is far more complex, and possibly less pessimistic. The most vitriolic language was the result of Cuba’s, and more specifically Fidel Castro’s, sense of humiliation at being excluded from the negotiating table at Copenhagen. The GOC [Government of Cuba] would like nothing more than to firewall its civil society from foreigners, but its grumblings over U.S. observance of Human Rights Day were par for the course. Much more threatening to the regime are our overtures to and complaints of mistreatment of bloggers, a group that frustrates and scares the GOC like no other. The arrest of an Amcit, publicly denounced by President Raul Castro, remains a wild card that could further complicate progress. The GOC remains interested in improving relations and extracting what benefits it can but harbors no unrealistic expectations about a radical shift in U.S. policy. That interest wanes and is subject to the whims of Cuba’s rulers. This gerontocracy would rather abandon improved relations if it feels its political authority undermined. END SUMMARY.
HEATED WORDS OVER CLIMATE CHANGE
——————————–
2. (S/NF) The language coming out of Havana after the Climate Summit was as incendiary as it has been over the last year and a half. Communist Party boss and former President Fidel Castro railed about the U.S. “deceit” and “arrogance” and his Foreign Minister, upon his return from Copenhagen, duly repeated the charges at a press conference (Septel) [separate cable]. The atmosphere became so charged, that retired General Barry McCaffrey called off a 2010 visit to Cuba in disgust over the “shallow and vitriolic” language that “made the Cuban leadership appear non-serious, polemical amateurs.” The head of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, said that he had given up too, and did not expect “big changes in the near future.” The international press was quick to declare that the U.S.-Cuba “honeymoon” was over.
VERBAL WARMING A STAND-ALONE ISSUE
———————————-
3. (S/NF) Other Cuban leaders and the official media, however, have refrained from regurgitating, as they often do, the vitriolic language of the elder Castro. Many interlocutors, both foreign and Cuban, believe that Castro’s (and by extension his Foreign Minister’s) words constitute a stand-alone tantrum, and are not necessarily reflective of the state of relations between Cuba and the U.S. The British and Danes, for instance, were targeted just as fiercely. Castro’s topical obsessions are notorious, and climate change is certainly one of them (Septel). Adding insult to injury is the palpable sense of humiliation at seeing the Cuban Foreign Minister, and wannabe world leader and Continue reading →
Today, a CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN cable from Jonathan D. Farrar, Chief of Mission of the United States Interests Section of the Embassy of Switzerland in Havana, reporting on a 16-22 September visit to the island by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bisa Williams.
Farrar credits the Cuban government with granting the diplomat unprecedented access to state officials and other gestures which indicated a potential thaw in relations between the two nations.
An excerpt:
The bloggers, who partly out of self-preservation do not want to be lumped in with the dissident community, were equally optimistic about the course of events. “An improvement in relations with the United States is absolutely necessary for democracy to emerge here,” blogging pioneer and Time magazine’s 100-most influential person XXXXXXXXXXXX told DAS Williams in her modest apartment. “Restrictions only hurt us,” she added. “Do you know how much more we could do if we could use Pay Pal or purchase things on-line with a credit card?”
VZCZCXRO4752
PP RUEHAO RUEHCD RUEHGA RUEHGD RUEHHA RUEHHO RUEHMC RUEHMT RUEHNG
RUEHNL RUEHQU RUEHRD RUEHRG RUEHRS RUEHTM RUEHVC
DE RUEHUB #0592/01 2681739
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 251739Z SEP 09
FM USINT HAVANA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4792
INFO RUEHWH/WESTERN HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS DIPL POSTS PRIORITY
RUEHBS/AMEMBASSY BRUSSELS PRIORITY
RUEHUP/AMEMBASSY BUDAPEST PRIORITY
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS PRIORITY 0093
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON PRIORITY 0050
RUEHMD/AMEMBASSY MADRID PRIORITY 0159
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS PRIORITY 0027
RUEHSM/AMEMBASSY STOCKHOLM PRIORITY 0006
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUCOWCV/CCGDSEVEN MIAMI FL PRIORITY
RUEABND/DEA HQS WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEFHLC/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHMFISS/FBI WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEAORC/US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PRO WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/WHITE HOUSE NSC WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 06 HAVANA 000592
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
DEPT FOR WHA/CCA
DEPT FOR USAID/LAC
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/25/2019
TAGS: PREL CASC EAID ETTC ODIP OEXC OFDP PHSA PHUM SNAR, AA
SUBJECT: GOC SIGNALS “READINESS TO MOVE FORWARD”
REF: A. A) HAVANA 511 (“USINT FOLLOW-UP ON MIGRATION TALKS”)
B. B) HAVANA 512 (“BRITISH EMBASSY SEEKS TO BUILD CIVIL SOCIETY”)
C. C) HAVANA 437 (“GOC RESPONDS TO TIP DESIGNATION”)
Classified By: Political Counselor Joaquin Monserrate for Reason 1.4(D)
1. (C) SUMMARY. Avowing a “readiness to move forward in our relationship,” the Government of Cuba granted us unprecedented access to its state institutions during the visit of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bisa Williams from September 16 to 22. To underscore the move, the GOC also offered the Mission quarterly consular access to jailed Cuban-Americans that we identified, and extended full diplomatic protections and multiple-entry visas to USINT’s Marine Security Guards and temporary duty personnel. The country’s leading opposition figures told DAS Williams that they were heartened by the increased lines of government-to-government communications and encouraged the United States to continue prying open these links. The key to normalizing relations, DAS Williams told the Cubans, was not to be found solely in the degree of bilateral engagement between the United States and Cuba, but in the Cuban Government,s efforts to engage its own people and to respond to their wishes. The visit included DAS Williams, participation in the United States – Cuba Direct Mail Talks held in Havana on September 18 (Septel), and took place during the much talked-about “Peace Without Borders” musical concert held on September 20. END SUMMARY.
AN UNPRECEDENTED WEEK
——————–
2. (C) WHA Deputy Assistant Secretary Bisa Williams led the U.S. delegation to the Direct Mail Talks with Cuba on September 18. In the following four days, DAS Williams met with officials from the Foreign Relations, Justice, Agriculture, Health and Interior ministries, the Prosecutors’ Office, the University of Havana, and local officials in the Province of Pinar del Rio. DAS Williams also held roundtables with the leading figures from Cuba’s dissident and blogger communities, and with resident EU ambassadors. In addition, she was allowed to travel twice outside the Havana Province perimeter, to visit the Latin American School of Medicine and the areas hardest hit by hurricanes in 2008 in the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio.
“CONFIDENCE BUILDING” KEY TO MOVE FORWARD
——————————
3. (C) DAS Williams discussed the purpose and ramifications of her visit and the Mail Talks during an extended meeting with Vice Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodriguez. They agreed that further “confidence building” was essential, and acknowledged the considerable work that lies ahead. When DAS Williams brought up the treatment of prisoners in Cuban jails, for instance, Rodriguez noted how dialogue on this would be possible but only with countries with which there is “sufficient confidence” and mutual respect. The same, he said, applied to scholarships and lifting reciprocal travel restrictions on U.S. diplomats in Cuba and Cuban diplomats in Washington, to name just two areas.
4. (C) VM Rodriguez seemed optimistic that things were moving in a positive direction. “We see a change in the rhetoric,” he told Williams. “Even within the existing diplomatic constraints, we see a way forward.” In granting
HAVANA 00000592 002 OF 006
almost all of DAS Williams’ requests for Government of Cuba (GOC) meetings, “we meant to show our readiness to move forward in our Continue reading →
I’ll lay the usual third-person editorial “we” aside for this post, because what I’m about to write is intensely personal.
Have you ever had the shit scared out of you?
I don’t mean this in the metaphorical sense, but in the literal meaning of being so thoroughly terrified that my bowels opened up, spewing out in a single violent surge everything contained in my viscera.
It happened to me one night in October, 1962, at the peak of the crisis that brought the world closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time before or since.
We know it now as “the Cuban missile crisis,” the confrontation between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev over the placement of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.
The United States was encircling the Soviet Union with nuclear-armed bombers and missiles in Europe and Turkey, and the Soviets responded by accepting an invitation from Cuba — attacked two years earlier by the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs — to install nuclear missiles 90 miles from the American shoreline.
More missiles were on the way, and Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of the island, and for a few endless days, most Americans believed that millions of us would die in an apocalypse of biblical proportions, “the fire next time.”
I was born in 1946 in the very first wave of what would become the Baby Boom, and I grew up in a world filled with images of nuclear explosions conducted above ground at the Nevada Test Site and in the South Pacific.
Films of atomic blasts appeared regularly in the newsreels I watched during Saturday matinees at the Plaza Theater in Abilene, Kansas, and on nightly news broadcasts on the television Dad brought home when I was five.
Still photos in Life magazine brought the images home, delivered in our mailbox in the dominant picture magazine of the day, and at least once a month, the scream of air raid sirens brought life to halt and sent chills down my spine.
As a young child I was mesmerized by what everyone called The Bomb, knowing that this incredible, monstrous creation hung like a sword of Damocles over my future and the lives of everyone I loved.
When, at age 10, we moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, I found myself living 45 miles away from the nation’s first nuclear missile field, headquartered at Frances E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And at watched as missile silos were dug into the earth just a few miles from home.
A cousin, Harry Yesley, was a uranium prospector, and I used to join him as he searched for veins of pitchblende and thorite. I owned my first Geiger Counter when I was ten.
Obsessed with the bomb, I learned the likely nearby targets, the fallout patterns, all the necessary precautions to take in the event of an attack.
And then, when I was ten, I saw a brief film on The Ed Sullivan Show that consolidated all my deepest fears [H/T to Disinformation]:
I’d forgotten about the film until I discovered it this morning in my daily web rounds, and watching it 55 years later evoked the same sense of despair I felt them. [For more on the film see here, here, and here.]
But the fear I felt after seeing the film was nothing like the abject terror that came six years later.
A fishing trip gone horribly wrong
As the Cuban Missile Crisis played itself out, I glued myself to the television, watching every bulletin, including this 22 October presidential address to the country:
By the 26th, sabers were rattling louder than ever before, and Dad, bless him, was distraught at the terror he saw in my eyes. That’s when he decided we needed to go on a fishing trip.
The happiest times of an often troubled childhood were spent with Dad, exploring the back country and fishing the lakes and streams of Colorado and Wyoming.
Back in 1962, our favorite destination was Glendo, Wyoming, where a massive dam on the Platte River had created a reservoir where we never failed to catch our limits of Rainbow Trout, trolling our lines off the sides of our 14-foot Feathercraft aluminum boat.
So we bundled up our gear and loaded up the camper Dad and I had built on the back of a white Chevrolet pickup, hitched up the boat, then headed north on Interstate 25, a route that took us directly past the entrance to Frances E. Warren Air Force Base.
Sitting behind the wheel, I spotted a line of Air Force blue cars and trucks headed rapidly into the base gate. I’d have turned on the radio, except that Dad Continue reading →
Fifty years ago today, Cuban militia and soldiers turned back the Central Intelligence Agency’s invasion at the Bay of Pigs, resulting in a resounding victory for the young regime of Fidel Castro and his 26th of July Movement.
Now, after more than a half-century of rule by the Castro brothers, President Raúl Castro announced Saturday that future national leaders will be limited to a maximum of two five-year terms.
Th island nation will also witness a new wave of privatizations amd cutbacks on social programs, according to Rory Carroll of The Guardian:
Raúl Castro has proposed term limits for Cuba’s rulers, including himself, in an unprecedented effort to rejuvenate the island’s political leadership.
The 79-year-old Cuban president told the Communist party congress that senior positions should be rotated at least every 10 years to shake off the inertia and “self-delusion” that has crippled the economy.
“We have reached the conclusion that it is advisable to recommend limiting the time of service in high political and state positions to a maximum of two five-year terms,” he said.
The four-day congress, which ends on Tuesday, is expected to endorse most – if not all – of 311 proposals to liberalise Cuba’s stagnant, centrally planned, economy with cuts and privatisations.
Castro sprung a surprise in a speech on Saturday, which opened the congress, by denouncing a tendency towards geriatric leadership. Veterans of the 1959 revolution dominate senior posts. The first vice president, Juan Machado Ventura, is 80 and the second vice president, Ramiro Valdés, is 77. Raúl’s brother and predecessor, Fidel, 84, still retains influence.
The congress, the first in 14 years, was likely to be the last for the Castros and their generation, said the president, adding that efforts to promote young people to top jobs had failed. “Life proved we did not always make the best choice … it’s really embarrassing that we have not solved this problem in more than half a century.”
It remains to be seen just how much of the Cuban economy will be subjected to “reform.” Could it be that the U.S. 5o-year embargo and the triumph of global finance are accomplishing what the CIA and its hired hands couldn’t?
It wasn’t all that long ago that Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley was forced to quit after he had the temerity to suggest that that the Pentagon’s treatment of suspected WikiLeaker Private First Class Bradley Manning “is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”
Crowley’s acting replacement, Mark C. Toner certainly won’t follow Crowley’s honest path, as is made obvious in this bit of byplay with Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee, and Reuters scribe Arshad Mohammed over complaints from Juan E. Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, about the military’s refusal to allow him a private meeting with the young soldier, now held in what critics call an abusive form of solitary confinement [preciously, scroll down].
In today’s offering, Ambassador Clark T. Randt Jr. Writes from Beijing to describe the growing economies ties between China and Latin American in the CONFIDENTIAL 18 March 2008 cable
What may strike a reader is the realization that in matters of trade, China follows a path long trodden by Washington, extracting free trade agreements with targeted nations as a wedge to develop broader agreements.
China is a growing power in the “Southern Cone,” both as a seller of manufactured goods and as an exploiter and consumer of natural resources.
The occasion for the cable was the announcement of a November 2008 visit to Latin America by Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Interesting to note is diplomatic relationship between China and Costa Rica, the only nation in the region then conferring diplomatic recognition to China. The other Latin nations were still locked in the Washington-imposed doctrine, abandoned along with the old Cold War, which gave recognition only to Taiwan.
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SUBJECT: CHINA’S GROWING ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP WITH LATIN AMERICA
Classified By: Classified by Robert S. Forden for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)
¶1. (C) Summary. Chinese President Hu Jintao,s November 16-20 visit to Latin America, which includes stops in Peru for the APEC summit, Costa Rica, and Cuba, is intended to strengthen China,s rapidly growing economic relations with the region, according to Embassy contacts. To spur further trade growth, China is looking to ink Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Peru and Costa Rica, though these FTAs will likely be narrow in scope. Hu will use his stop in Costa Rica to emphasize China’s commitment to the region and demonstrate the benefits of diplomatic ties with the mainland, sending a not so subtle signal to the remaining states that maintain formal relations with Taiwan. While Chinese investment in Latin America is growing, contacts highlighted a range of challenges, such as a disconnect between Chinese and Latin American investment priorities and the lack of cultural understanding among Chinese companies. Additionally, China has struggled to address trade frictions, such as anti-dumping suits and a lopsided trade balance with Mexico. End Summary.
A Growing Economic Relationship
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¶2. (C) Contacts here described China-Latin American relations as being at an all-time high and credit the rapidly growing economic relationship with playing a large role. (Note. Total China-Latin America trade in the first eight months of 2008 reached $95.6 billion, according to Chinese Customs Statistics, up 49% yoy. End note.) Peking University Latin America specialist Dong Jingsheng said that a common focus on economic development and shared values as developing world partners underlie rapidly growing trade and investment ties. In particular, China,s need for raw materials complements Latin America,s need for Chinese manufactured goods and provides a basis for continued growth. Wu Hongying, Director of the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations, (CICIR) Division of Latin American Studies, said that the economic component of China-Latin America relations was the “most developed” and had the most trust. China over the past few years has benefited from the willingness of Latin American countries to open up their markets.
¶3. (C) Several Latin American contacts described China as an economic opportunity with tremendous growth potential. Peru’s Economic Counselor Jorge Chian told econoff that China’s “going global” policy provided an opportunity for Peru to attract investment
From Voice of America comes word that the Obama administration is loosening up travel restrictions on Cuba, along with the implication that the U.S. is effectively using religious groups to foment unrest on the island:
U.S. President Barack Obama has loosened travel restrictions on Cuba to allow religious groups and students to travel to the communist country.
The White House said Friday the measures are aimed at developing “people to people” contacts through more academic, cultural and religious exchanges. It says the looser restrictions are designed to support civil society in Cuba, enhance the free flow of information to, from and among the Cuban people and help promote their independence from Cuban authorities.
Additionally, the White House says the changes allow any American to send as much as $500 every three months to Cuban citizens who are not part of the government or Communist Party.
Also, more U.S. international airports will be allowed to offer charter service to the Caribbean nation. Currently, only airports in Los Angeles, Miami and New York can offer authorized charters to the island.
U.S. Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American, opposes the changes to the Cuba regulations, which are scheduled to take effect in two weeks. Ros-Lehtinen said that loosening the restrictions will neither help foster a pro-democracy environment in Cuba nor aid in ushering in respect for human rights. The congresswoman said the changes will not help the Cuban people free themselves from what she called the “tyranny” that engulfs them. Ros-Lehtinen chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
There was no immediate comment from Cuban government officials in Havana regarding the announced changes.
In 2009, President Obama eased restrictions on travel and money transfers by Cuban-Americans to family to Cuba, but he kept the long-standing U.S. embargo in place. He has said it is up to Cuba to take the next step.
The United States and Cuba do not have formal diplomatic relations. They have interests sections that are technically part of the Swiss embassies in each other’s capitals.
While we’re certainly in favor of loosening the draconian restrictions placed on Cuban to pander to the fiercely right wing Cuban emigre community in Florida, that most critical of electoral swing states, the notion of specifically empowering church groups to proselytize concerns us.
We have yet one more instance of the erosion of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the words that begin this most important section of the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . .”
By privileging church groups above all other organizations, Obama is continuing the erosion of the long-cherished separation between church and state, demonstrating once more that “Democratic centrism” is simply another phrase for “pandering to the Right.”
And don’t you suppose that a lot of those student groups will hail from Christian colleges?
From a Don Fitz post titled “Why does health care in Cuba cost 96% less than in the US?” at Links – International Journal of Socialist Renewal. H/T to Moussequetaire:
Cuba shows that a quality health-care system does not have to be based on unending expansion of expensive medical technology. Removing profit from medical care lowers administrative costs, reduces over treatment, tempers the expansion of diagnoses, stops making people sicker by denying them preventive treatment, controls exorbitant incomes of doctors and helps focus research in needed areas.
In Primary Health Care in Cuba (2008), Linda Whitehead and Laurence Branch describe how a Cuban shocked a visiting Canadian doctor by saying that virtually none of his patients with hypertension were on medication. While corporate medicine uses “diet and exercise” as a catchy phrase, in Cuba it is the way that medicine is actually practiced.
The hallmark of Cuban medicine has been designing and putting into effect a system of primary and preventive health care which is little more than sloganeering in other countries. Only 2–3% of US health-care expenditures are for preventive care.
Today’s WikiLeaks diplomatic cable is a CONFIDENTIAL general update on things Cuban from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, dispatched to Washington 5 June 2006 by Chief of Mission Michael Parmly.
Of special interest here at esnl is confirmation that folks in Washington are resentful of the good press Cuba gets for sending its doctors to places where medical help is needed around the world, and that the Foggy Bottom bunch is actively trying to discredit the humanitarian aid.
Gee, if Washington’s so eager to counter the abundance of goodwill Cuba earns from sending doctors where help is needed, why doesn’t the world’s richest nation simply emulate the program and send ten times as many medical personnel?
But, alas, it’s so much easier simply to smear, and cheaper, too,
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Classified By: COM Michael Parmly; Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)
¶1. (SBU) This edition of “Cartas” features the following items:
– Paras 2-4 Medical Malpractice — 5-8 Baseball, Music and Racism — 9-11 China Syndrome — 12-19 Diplomatic Corps Reflections — 20-22 Bracing for the NAM
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MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
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¶2. (U) NEWS: USINT is always looking for human interest stories and other news that shatters the myth of Cuban medical prowess, which has become a key feature of the regime’s foreign policy and its self-congratulatory propaganda. Two articles appeared this week in our roundup of news about Cuba that we collect and disseminate daily:
–Dateline 31 May: Jamaican Dr. Albert Lue has publicly denounced Cuban medical incompetency in handling Jamaican patients who traveled to Cuba for eye surgery. Of 60 such patients he surveyed, 3 were left permanently blind and another 14 returned to Jamaica with permanent cornea damage.
–Dateline 1 June: 14,000 Bolivian doctors are on strike to protest the 600 Cuban doctors who have been shipped into the country, with no concern as to displacement or unemployment among the Bolivian doctors, or qualifications of the Cubans.
¶3. (U) In a recent appearance on Miami Cable TV station 41′s “A Mano Limpia” interview show, Cuban doctor and former Director of Family Medicine in the Ministry of Health, Alcides Lorenzo, slammed the Cuban medical system for being overly politicized. Lorenzo had just defected to the USA via Mexico, where he missed his connecting flight from Cancun to Havana, on the way back from an international conference in Peru. According to Lorenzo, Cuban doctors spend two-thirds of their time going to political meetings, as opposed to treating patients. Lorenzo also said that Cuban medical care was grossly understaffed and underfunded at home as a result of the “medical missions” overseas, particularly to Venezuela. Unfortunately for Lorenzo, or any other Cuban doctor who considers defecting from a “mission” overseas, his family is held hostage in Cuba and will not be permitted to leave the island.
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Baseball, Music and Racism:
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¶5. (C) COM and several USINT colleagues went to the Industriales-Santiago (World Series equivalent) baseball game at Latinoamericano stadium in Havana. It was a great, hard-fought game. (In the end, Industriales won, coming back from a 4-2 deficit to go ahead 8-4, and eventually finishing 10-7.) What was striking at the game, however, was not on the field but rather in the stands. First thing: The Industriales crowd was visibly “criollo,” i.e, of Spanish descent, with very few black faces on their side of the field. The Santiago supporters, on the other hand, were heavily black. Their music, played in the stands, was entirely of an Afro-Cuban beat. There were also ample dashes of santero flavor among the SdC followers. What really highlighted the racial split, however, was the chants among the Industriales fans. If a Santiago pitcher was working on
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an intentional walk, the fans would yell, “Pitch, mommy, pitch!” That then evolved into “Pitch, guajira, pitch!” Then came allusions to the pitcher lacking all of his manhood, again with clear racial overtones.
¶6. (C) Cubans told COM that the catcalls, chants and aggressive behavior are not new. They did say that there has been a marked increase in such racially-overtoned slurs in recent years. One devoted baseball fan remarked that the regime encourages such aggressive behavior in order to take folks’ minds off where the real problem lies.
¶7. (C) The following morning, COM and Mrs. Parmly strolled
No country provided more medical aid to Haiti than Cuba. Not only did they send a large contingent of medical personnel to the island nation in the wake of the devastating 12 January cataclysm, but Cuban doctors were there long before and they’re still there not.
Yet the mainstream media largely ignored the single greatest contribution to the medical effort to fight the tragedy, leading Project Censored to declare the Cuban medical assistance on of the year’s top 25 censored news stories.
esnl readers have been reading about the Cuban aide since April, but folks who follow the major networks and major U.S. newspapers have little idea that Cuba ranks on a per capita basis as the world leader in medical aid to peoples in need.
Here’s the gist of the Project Censored report, from Sarah Maddox, José Manuel Pestano Rodríguez and José Manuel de Pablos Coello, and William Du Bois:
Cuba was the first to come into Haiti with medical aid when the January 12, 2010, earthquake struck. Among the many donor nations, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating Haiti’s earthquake victims. Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris and to revamp hospitals immediately after the earthquake struck. Their pivotal work in the health sector has, however, received scant media coverage.
“It is striking that there has been virtually no mention in the media of the fact that Cuba had several hundred health personnel on the ground before any other country,” said David Sanders, professor of public health from Western Cape University in South Africa.
The Cuban team coordinator in Haiti, Dr. Carlos Alberto Garcia, said the Cuban doctors, nurses, and other health personnel worked nonstop, day and night, with operating rooms open eighteen hours a day. During a visit to La Paz Hospital in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, Dr. Mirta Roses, director of the Pan American Health Organization, which is in charge of medical coordination between the Cuban doctors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and a host of health sector nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), described the aid provided by Cuban doctors as “excellent and marvelous.”
Haiti and Cuba signed a medical cooperation agreement in 1998. Before the earthquake struck, 344 Cuban health professionals were already present in Haiti, providing primary care and obstetrical services as well as operating to restore the sight of Haitians blinded by eye diseases. More doctors were flown in shortly after the earthquake as part of the rapid response. “In the case of Cuban doctors, they are rapid responders to disasters, because disaster management is an integral part of their training,” explains Maria Hamlin Zúniga, a public health specialist from Nicaragua. Cuban doctors have been organizing medical facilities in three revamped hospitals, five field hospitals, and five diagnostic centers, with a total of twenty-two different care posts aided by financial support from Venezuela. They are also operating nine rehabilitation centers staffed by nearly seventy Cuban physical therapists and rehabilitation specialists, in addition to Haitian medical personnel. The Cuban team has been assisted by one hundred specialists from Venezuela, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and Canada, as well as seventeen nuns.
However, in reporting on the international aid effort, Western media have generally not ranked Cuba high on the list of donor nations. One major international news agency’s list of donor nations credited Cuba with sending over thirty doctors to Haiti, whereas the real figure stands at more than 350, including 280 young Haitian doctors who graduated from Cuba. A combined total of 930 Cuban health professionals make Cuba’s the largest medical contingent on the ground in Haiti. Another batch of 200 Cuban-trained doctors from twenty-four countries in Africa and Latin American, and a dozen American doctors who graduated from medical schools in Havana, went to Haiti to provide reinforcement to existing Cuban medical teams. By comparison, the internationally renowned Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors without Borders) has approximately 269 health professionals working in Haiti. MSF is much better funded and has far more extensive medical supplies than the Cuban team.
But while representatives from MSF and the ICRC are frequently
