Response to reactionary Guardian attack on Cuban socialism

Dear Sir,

I am writing about your article "Cuba cuts 500,000 state workers" from 11 January 2011.

In regards to workers moving out of the state sector, its omitted that many will move into co-operatives, considered by many people - especially in Venezuela- as more conductive to workers democracy and therefore socialism. The article states 'people are worried' but does not offer a source of this claim.

Travel is Cuba is not 'controlled by the army'. The country has democratically elected officials who are responsible for travel policies. I do not clearly see what is implied by the suggestion it is controlled by foreign investors.

Results for 2010 show that the Cuban economic strategy has had significant success in its objectives. Imports are down and exports are up - thus reducing the fiscal deficit. Why is this not mentioned?

Healthcare is hardly handicapped by export of personnel. Cuba leads the world in patient per doctor ratio at 170, whilst in the UK its reckoned to be around 440. In Haiti it is 4,000. In fact Cuba has created a surplus of healthcare workers. 3500 of those have worked in Haiti over the last 12 years, saving 250,000 lives and performing 16 million consultations.

The problem is, the article generally contains little fact or assertion. It largely appears as a sensationalist reaction at Cuba's attempt to adapt to global economic crisis and pursue socialism.


Anthony Bairstow, London, UK.
13 January 2011.

Brazil: accelerating exploitation

by Alvaro Michaels,
Source: Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!, no. 218, December 2010.


Dilma Rousseff became Brazil’s first female president in the first elections in Brazilian history to be based on full universal suffrage. Following the votes on 3 and 31 October, her Workers’ Party now holds more state governorships than it did under former President Lula (2002-10). His designated successor won 56.05% of votes against 43.95% for Jose Serra (Party of Brazilian Democracy); winning most of the impoverished poor northern and north eastern regions. The central and southern areas voted for Serra.

The Workers’s Party has damped down protests by providing the 11 million very poorest families with the Bolsa Familia – a family allowance of $12 per month or $0.39 per day, per family – tied to attendance by their children in the abysmal state school system. This has created a political balance and social peace which allows foreign investors to buy the country’s resources on a grand scale. The boom in worldwide demand for raw materials over the last six years means more workers are being exploited and Brazil is now the world’s seventh largest capitalist economy, with an official 10% of workers destitute. A loose budgetary policy – Federal State spending is up 18% this year – is aimed at placating a strategic section of the working and small middle class.

Profits are high, the price of land relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap and capital is scarce. High returns attract capital. So an enthusiastic influx of capital from ‘over-ripe’ imperialist states takes place. The inflow of currencies has pushed the Brazilian Real up 39% against the US dollar since the start of 2009. To prevent this influx of currency fuelling speculation, a 6% tax on bond inflows has been imposed, but this has not prevented the worsening of Brazil’s export competitiveness. With the US’s recent second Quantitative Easing programme more dollars have flooded into Brazil. Brazil cannot prevent the continued imposition of usury imperialism on top of the scheme of direct investments.

Despite Brazil being a major exporter of manufactured goods, engineering and technology to South America (dominating trade with Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) and Africa, the ratio of raw or basic products exported to its manufactured exports is the highest since 1978.

The destruction of the Amazon forest, as the infrastructure is extended to extract this wealth, is wiping out the remaining indigenous communities, regardless of a facade of legal protection given by Lula.

Continued accumulation of capital puts grandiose ideas into the heads of the national bourgeoisie. It is trying to put an economic distance between itself and the US, disturbing US imperialism, with strong ties to the ALBA nations, and its independent stances towards the Middle East, Iran and elsewhere. In 2009 China replaced the US as Brazil’s largest trading partner. Brazil’s exports to China have rocketed, agricultural products being critical. China’s Sinopec has just taken over 40% of Spanish firm Repsol’s Brazilian oil stake. These changes are eyed jealously by European financiers. The message of congratulations sent to Rousseff from EU president Barroso inevitably advocated the intensification of the 2007 Strategic Partnership between the EU and Brazil. The inter-imperialist struggle for markets of every sort in the ‘developing’ world has not been this intense for 50 years.

If Julian Assange is a Terrorist, What is Luis Posada Carriles Then?

by JEAN-GUY ALLARD,
Source: Cubanradio.cu, 08 January 2011.


The trials of the creator of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles will begin with less than 24-hour difference on January 10 and 11, one in London and the other one in El Paso, Texas. The anomaly immediately catching the attention of people is that the champion of freedom of information will be accused of the very serious crime of terrorism, while the confessed terrorist will be tried for migratory crimes sanctioned by a sentence he has already served.

The ANSA news agency reports that the request of extradition made by Sweden for the charge of "sexual molestation" against Assange was transferred from a court in the center of London to Belmarsh Court, specializing in terrorism issues and annexed to a maximum security prison, re-baptized years ago by the BBC as "The British Guantánamo."

Assange will appear in court on a charge of terrorism, which implies, according to British laws, his arrest and confinement.

Luis Posada Carriles will continue to be free on bail when he appears in the United States before a judge who acquitted him in a first trial and who openly expressed her sympathy for him in a hall full of followers, many of them with a terrorist past, who will come from Batista's Miami and so as not to miss an opportunity to celebrate his crimes.

A spokesperson of the British legal authorities stated that the transfer to the court of Belmarsh, in the south-east area of the capital, is due to "logistic reasons" and not, as stated by WikiLeaks, due to US pressure.


SPEEDED UP FOR ASSANGE, DELAYED FOR POSADA
The truth is that while in the case of Assange, the procedures have been speeded up, skipping stages as much as possible, after a series of tricks to silence the blonde Australian man, in the case of Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent that served the Company as an instructor of explosives, a torturer, a police captain, a hired assassin, a terrorist and a promoter of assassination, records of dilatory maneuvers to drown out his case are broken.

In addition to use a panoply of dirty tricks to pressure Assange, sabotage his operations system, take away its income, recover its leaks, manipulate its content, in short, terrorize the man who dared to open the valves of the huge can of diplomatic trash of the United States, the US intelligence services and its branches, they have kidnapped the man to be blame for so much courage for not being able to eliminate him without expanding the scandal even more.

Hundreds of texts have been written, books have been published, and documentaries have been made about the criminal record Posada, the Klaus Barbie of US intelligence.
On May 17, 2005, at 1:30 pm, Luis Posada Carriles was arrested near Miami, and taken in a gulf cart to a helicopter, "with every kindness and courtesy possible", for his transfer to the offices of the Department of Internal Security.

On April 1st, 2005, a lawyer for Posada Carriles, Eduardo Soto, confirmed in Miami that his client -illegally introduced in US territory on board of a shrimp vessel owned by a capo of the Cuban-American mafia-, would ask for asylum and parole to stay in the country permanently.

In spite of the accusations presented in Caracas for his participation in the terrorist attack against a Cuban aircraft that killed all 73 people on board in 1976; his arrest in Panama in 2000, in connection with a plan for an assassination attempt against Cuban leader Fidel Castro; his public acceptance for having organized a terrorist campaign against tourist facilities in Havana in 1997; and his close links with terrorist networks, Posada Carriles would receive from Bush's government absolute support that Obama never dared to alter.

On September 27, 2005, an immigration judge in El Paso, Texas, William Abbott, following federal instructions, had used the absurd testimony of an old accomplice of Posada, a former official of the Venezuelan secret police, Joaquin Chaffardet, to order that the criminal could be deported to Venezuela.

GETTING RID OF THE "HOT POTATO"
Four months later, on January 24, 2006, three days before the formal assuming of power of the new Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, The Miami Herald -the bonds of which with US intelligence have been well demonstrated-, cited what it called "fragments" of a Statement by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau (ICE), that pointed out the following: "The ICE is progressing in the carrying out of the removal of Mr. Posada from the USA."

The White House -in the face of an international scandal-, assessed that the best way to get rid of the "hot potato" the former agent, terrorist, torturer and assassin represented, was to find him refuge anywhere outside US territory.
Three days later, on January 27, 2006, the US ambassador to Honduras, Charles "Charlie" Ford, visited Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, scarcely eight days after his coming to power, to present him an insolent request.

"Ambassador Charles Ford came to ask me, by way of the Foreign Ministry, for the granting of a visa to Posada Carriles", said Zelaya later, referring to the then Foreign Minister Milton Jiménez Puerto.

"It was impossible to give a visa to Luis Posada Carriles, since he was questioned for terrorist acts. They defend that kind of terrorism, I vouch for that, and it's for that kind of thing that we hold different stances," he underlined.
On April 19, 2007, Posada Carriles, found not guilty by Cardone, was back in Miami not to set foot in a detention center ever again.


BROWNFIELD: "POSADA DOESN'T PUT ANYBODY AT RISK"
On March 18, 2008, as a response to the statements made by Cuba and Venezuela at the UN, the person in charge of legal affairs in the US mission, Caroline Wilson, pointed out with candor that her country "had carefully followed the legal procedures in force in the case of Posada Carriles".
"As happens in democracies in the world, a person can't be tried or extradited if there isn't enough evidence that he committed the crime he's accused of," she asserted.

In July, 2008, the US ambassador to Venezuela at the time, William Brownfield, in statements to the Panorama newspaper, in Maracaibo, made it clear that the United States had no intention whatsoever of putting Posada at the disposal of Venezuelan justice, which was claiming and continues to claim him.

"Mr. Luis Posada Carriles doesn't represent an imminent danger for anybody," Brownfield had asserted, making it clear that the Bush administration would never turn over its veteran agent. Ironically, a few days before the Brownfield stupidity, the Undersecretary of State, Thomas Shannon, today an ambassador in Brazil, assured the OAS that the US Department of Justice was "still carrying out investigations" about Posada Carriles.

While Assange is hastily taken from a minor court to another one that can lock him up for good, the Venezuelan government is waiting for an answer, for more than five years now, to the request of extradition of the terrorist. Assange, the Web idealist demonized by the major communication networks and persecuted by the police of the US spiders web, will soon know how imperial justice gives a piece of its mind, with or without intermediaries.

Ignored by an accomplice press, Posada, the mercenary assassin, will keep on evading law, and the dozens of victims and relatives of victims of his crimes, the lives of whom, in many cases, have been devastated by the permanent despicable and cowardly willingness of the swine without scruples of serving the empire.

Cuban Doctors Save 0.25m Haitians

Cuban Doctors Save 250,000 people in Haiti
Source: Agencia de Informacion Nacional (Habana), 29 December 2010.


Cuban doctors have saved over 250,000 Haitians during the twelve years of medical cooperation in Haiti, which was devastated in 2010 by a strong earthquake and after that by the cholera pandemic.

Cuban Health vice Minister Marcias Cobas said that international cooperation with Haiti began in December 1998; it was never suspended despite coups d'etat, and was intensified this year after the earthquake and the pandemic outbreak.

According to the Cuban Round Table TV Program, Cobas affirmed that Haiti has received, during these years, more than 3,500 health cooperants that have performed 16 million consultations.

Cobas added that the health system of Haiti was rebuilt, as part of a Cuban initiative after the earthquake, with the support of nations from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), especially from Venezuela.

She mentioned that under this initiative, in progress when the cholera pandemic started, they have created more than 24 campaign hospitals and 30 rehabilitation centers. Cobas noted that nowadays, there are more than 1,334 Cuban health cooperants and that not even the pandemic has been able to stop the rebuilding process.

Cholera was detected last October 20 [2010] in a health facility with Cuban doctors and it spread right away throughout the country causing death to 2,707 people. Other 115 cases were reported in the Dominican Republic, Haiti's closest neighbor, in addition to another three in the United States. Cuban Health deputy Minister Luis Struch pointed out that after the earthquake Cuba began to monitor the epidemiologic situation of Haiti, which allowed noticing immediately this acute bacteriologic disease of high toxicity.

Struch said that the Cuban strategy against the pandemic in Haiti is to take the health services to every corner of the country.

The Rector of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) highlighted the presence of tens of young physicians graduated in this school in the cooperation mission in Haiti.

Cuban vice Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Ramon Ripoll noted that the solidarity of other governments with Haiti is channeled through the Cuban medical mission. He cited the support of Norway, Spain, Australia and Namibia and stated that the distribution and use of the materials are made in conjunction with the Haitian authorities.

RATB reviews: Julia Sweig's Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know

Julia Sweig, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, USA: Oxford University Press, 2009, (ISBN 13: 978-0-19-538380-5, ISBN 10: 0-19-538380X), pp304, $16.95 pbk, $74 hbk.

reviewed by Helen Yaffe.

Here’s is my review of Julia Sweig’s latest book, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, written for the January 2011 issue (87:1) of International Affairs.
Source: RealCuba blog, 13 January 2011.


Written as part of the Oxford University Press ‘what everyone needs to know’ series, this book is organised as a set of questions and answers and divided into four broad periods: pre-1959, the Cold War 1959-1991, post Cold War 1991 to 2006, and post-Fidel to 2009. In order to cover this broad sweep of history in 250 pages the author adopts a succinct and authoritative narrative style. The text is accessible and directed towards a non-academic audience; there are no notes or references, and the story is told more through assertion than evidence. This locates the book in a different category from Sweig’s 2002 Inside the Cuban Revolution which, based on groundbreaking research, examined the role of the 1950s urban underground movement with scholarly rigour. Nonetheless, because of the range of topics in Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know even Cuba scholars are likely to learn something new. The format of the book makes repetition inevitable.

In her introduction the author states that: ‘The emphasis in this book [is] on the US-Cuba relationship’ and that it is written: ‘Especially (though not exclusively) for the benefit of an American audience’. This is both a strength and a weakness and reflects Sweig’s commendable objective to challenge ‘the nearly genetic American belief that Washington should and can somehow manage Cuba’s transition’ and to discredit a US foreign policy promoting regime change (pxxii). Nonetheless, the author apparently shares the notion that a transition to capitalist democracy is desirable. She adopts terms like ‘democracy’, ‘human-rights’ and ‘repression’ within the same ideological paradigm as her audience. The philosophical flexibility necessary to appreciate a revolutionary society, the attempt to escape underdevelopment with different institutions, objectives, values and relationships, is lacking.

So for example, Sweig skilfully navigates the fascinating story of how the Cuban exile community has had a disproportionate (and undemocratic) impact on US elections and domestic politics and explains divisions within that community, but she does not mention the grassroots institutions through which the Cuban people are organised. Known as ‘organisations of the masses’, these are based on voluntary participation in work, study, gender, cultural and residence-based groups and integrate almost 100% of Cubans. Readers will not learn how these operate, their role within the National Assembly, Cuba’s highest legislative body, or that forum’s relationship with the Cuban Communist Party. These are key aspects of Cuban society about which everyone needs to know. There is one nod towards ‘Cuba and Venezuela’s own approach to “participatory democracy”’ (p201), but what this means or how it works is not discussed.

Consequently, while Sweig states that ‘the most fundamental question this book answers is why the revolution has endured beyond the Cold War and, now, beyond the half-century tenure of Fidel Castro’ (pxxii), little effort is made to explain how Cuban society is organised or to account for individual commitment to Cuba’s social project. Support for the Revolution is accounted for by sweeping references to nationalism or admiration for Fidel Castro. As a consequence the Cuban people are consigned to a set of minorities: those who migrate with visas or on rafts, artists, ‘dissidents’ on the island and the exile community in the US.

Among the exciting post Cold-War developments in Cuba has been the emergence of organic farming and urban gardens. In 2006, the WWF’s Living Planet Report named Cuba as the only country in the world to have achieved ‘sustainable development’ and Cuba initiated the Energy Revolution. Such developments are not examined.

The strong political narrative is undermined by the lack of economic history or understanding of the political economy of socialism. For example: 1) referring to Che Guevara’s work as a member of the post-1959 government, Sweig states that he ‘did little to solve the practical economic problems of the day’ (p46). In fact, Guevara’s management of industry helped avoid paralysis of the economy during the rapid transition from a free-enterprise to a planned economy. 2) Sweig says the 1990s economic crisis saw the ‘introduction of the notion, virtually an anathema until then, that the market – the free market, the capitalist market – might actually be a tool Cuba could somehow harness in the interests of socialism and social welfare’ (p131). However, the extent to which market mechanisms should be adopted in socialist development was already being debated in Cuba in the early 1960s.

As the introduction concedes, ‘this book may not cover all the ground that every reader might wish’ (pxxii). It does, however, challenge many perceptions and demystify Cuba. Most important, it demonstrates the scale of Cuba’s achievement in surviving a half-century campaign by the US administration (and international allies) and a powerful exile community to destroy the Revolution using every means from terrorism and economic blockade, to generous funding of an internal opposition. For this, and many other reasons, this book is well worth reading.



Helen Yaffe is a member of RATB.

Google censors Cuban YouTube account

CUBADEBATE, YOUTUBE AND POSADA CARRILES
by The South Journal, 13 January 2011
Source: CubanDemocracy blog

Cubadebate website, one of the South Journal´s major news sources about Cuba, has denounced that Google cut its access to YouTube video services on the grounds of a copyright violation. The cause allegedly was the use by Cubadebate of a piece of video [see below - RATB] about the presentation in the US city of Miami of the Legal Fund for Luis Posada Carriles, which the Cuba website recently published. The piece had been edited out of a longer video that was published on the Internet and was reproduced by several sites without any credit, Cubadebate explains.



The copyright claim was filed by the person who filmed former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles announcing that he would be in Cuba this year as he claimed payment for his services—including the bombing in 1976 of a Cuban airliner that claimed 73 innocent lives. Following that claim, Google cut the access to YouTube video services in a moment when Cubadebate had already uploaded over 400 videos and had registered 1,6 million downloads.

It might seem the right response to a copyright violation, but not by mere chance it happened just when Luis Posada Carriles is facing a trial in El Paso, Texas for immigration fraud and his large terrorist background may come to surface during the process due to the huge amount of evidence and proofs about his terrorist actions.

As Cubadebate explains in its denunciation, YouTube is infected with videos showing manipulated and biased information about Cuba, and images that have been “stolen” from Cubadebate website, but Google has not taken any action in this respect.

Obviously, keeping public opinion behind the wall of silence that unsuccessfully tries to hide Posada´s crimes in such a crucial moment is a Must for those who protect him. They simply cannot allow more evidence to surface now; US public opinion has been kept away from learning about the horrors committed by the man who, the Miami-based “anti-Castro” groups want to make a appear as a hero.

The action by Google was strongly condemned by Cubadebate as an attempt against the Freedom of Expression of an alternative site that, due to the US economic blockade of Cuba, has no other choice than using a satellite-based connection and has no resources to manage its own multimedia servers. Not to mention that it can not purchase exclusive videos produced in the U.S. that reveal the impunity of Miami-based terrorists, which are significant for their news services.



See also: CubaDebate uses Facebook in fight with YouTube - RATB.
Facebook page is here (in Spanish).
See also: Google censorship, now Facebook as well (in Spanish).

Cuban nurses arrive in Jamaica

Source: Jamaica Gleaner, 14 January 2011.

In an attempt to stem the critical shortage of nurses in Jamaica, 35 nurses are now in the island from Cuba to begin working in the public health sector. According to the Ministry of Health, the nurses will be deployed to facilities across all four health regions. Health Minister Rudyard Spencer, in a release, said the batch of 35 represents a percentage of the total of 51 nurses who were recruited during a trip to Cuba by health ministry officials in June 2010.

Minister of Health Rudyard Spencer embraces Ana Iris, one of 35 Cuban nurses who arrived in the island Wednesday to take up various positions within the primary health care system, during a welcoming ceremony in the VIP Room at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston.

The remaining number is expected to arrive in the island in about three months.

"The Government of Jamaica entered into a bilateral agreement with the government of Cuba to train and supply critical health workers for the local sector. We signed two agreements in July 2009, one which led to the development of the Eye Care Centre located at St Joseph's Hospital and the other which would see health specialists from Cuba supporting our public health-care system," Spencer said.

The 35 nurses include operating-theatre nurses, ophthalmology, pediatrics, neonatal, intensive care nurses and 15 to be deployed in primary health care. Spencer said that in going forward, the ministry was interested in attracting other health workers from Cuba, including physicians, biomedical engineers, biomedical technicians, other technicians such as a/c refrigeration and electro-mechanical, paramedicals, nurse educators, dental mechanical engineers and dental nurses.

The current bilateral agreement comes to an end in July 2011. According to the findings of a report published last year by the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean Region, at least three out of every four nurses trained in Jamaica have migrated to developed countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

How Obama's USAID operates in Cuba

Reversing Bush policies: "Like taking cocaine from an addict."
Source: Along the Malecón, 27 November 2010.
by Tracey Eaton.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has spent some $140 million toward Cuba pro-democracy programs since 1996. The Obama administration is asking for another $20 million for fiscal 2011, which ends Sept. 30, 2011.

Over the past few years, USAID has gotten behind on programming and distributing funds. The agency is still working its way through fiscal 2009 funds, and says it’s too early to say how much of that money has reached Cuba. But USAID told me in a statement:

The vast majority of this money is intended for individuals on the ground in Cuba. Our objective is to maximize the amount of support that benefits Cubans on the island. Since the $15.62 million in fiscal year 2009 funds has recently been programmed, it is too early to have a precise figure at this point, but the overall goal is to have the funds directly benefit Cubans on the island.

I posted that statement on Oct. 25. Later a former State Department officer told me he believes that the USAID statement was “horseshit.”
Speaking to me on condition of anonymity, he said:

Only a tiny fraction of the money ever gets to these regime opponents. A tiny fraction of it. For them to juice up their rhetoric as if the regime-change programs were going full bore…It’s really too bad that your source said that because it’s not true.
Whoever you talked to is somebody that’s using talking points prepared by the extreme right wing that supports these regime-change programs and wants them to be as provocative toward the regime as possible.

The source said President Obama has signed off on new people-to-people programs related to Cuba, but supporters of more aggressive tactics persuaded the White House not to implement the programs quite yet.
Such programs will make it easier for people to bring money and assistance to Cubans, and not just regime opponents.
The source said he believes that some of the pro-democracy programs may not legal under USAID and State Department guidelines. USAID and State Department employees:

are not authorized to do covert actions. They’re not authorized to do classified programs in foreign countries. And they’re not authorized to do clandestine political activities, which they’ve been doing.

The source said the State Department did not sign off on and was not aware of the activities of Alan Gross, who was arrested in Cuba on Dec. 3, 2009.

They were unaware. And some of them, in a moment of honesty, say, ‘Well, that’s pretty fucking stupid.’ If you’re going to do satellite communications gear, something that provocative, then you should at least should do some basic research and the person who goes and does it should at least be a Spanish speaker.

Ending these kinds of programs is difficult, the source said.

It’s very tough because the bureaucracy loves these programs. They love the clandestinity and all of that.

Such programs endure, the source said, even when some of the pro-democracy funds are funneled to Cuban:

government-controlled agents, and it doesn’t matter because it is really fun to spend money and run programs and do clandestine operations. It’s really, really fun. And it’s really fun to have no supervision. You basically move it all out of the government so it can’t be FOIA’ed. It can’t be FOIA’ed and there’s no accountability.

The source contends that these types of pro-democracy programs are not always effective. He said:

This shit doesn’t work. It undermines the legitimacy of these people. It opens them up to – even the good ones, the sincere ones – it opens them all up to severe criticism if not arrest by the Cuban government because like in the United States to be a foreign agent is against the law. If the Cubans came and started passing around money in the United States of America, we would arrest that person. We would arrest the recipients, too, for receiving foreign money.
The moral question of whether we should support democracy isn’t on the table. Of course, we support democracy. All of this is looking at the how.

The source was referring to how such programs should be carried out. He asked:

Why are these treated as clandestine programs? Where's the oversight? What are we doing with taxpayer money? There's no accountability.
These programs have cost $160 million. Show us where it has contributed, where it has helped the Cuban people, not contractors and lobbyists. No one dares ask that question because there's no answer.

Another shortcoming of the pro-democracy programs, he said, is that once private contractors start operating pro-democracy programs, they sometimes use their political assets, their surrogates, to attack interests who work against their political goals.

For example, John Kerry put a hold on regime-change programs. Surprise, surprise, the people that are nurtured and funded by the some of the Miami-based groups, start attacking Senator Kerry.
Or Cardinal Ortega successfully negotiates the release of political prisoners. Surprise, surprise. The people who don’t want there to be an improvement in bilateral relations start attacking Cardinal Ortega through their surrogates on the island.

The source said he didn’t know how the situation will evolve, but believes that it will be difficult to reverse policies implemented during the Bush administration.

The bureaucracy has basically hijacked this policy, which then puts the political people in the position of trying to wrestle it away from them. But, boy, that’s like taking cocaine from an addict.

Setting the record straight on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez

By Eva Golinger
Source: Postcards from the Revolution, 09 January 2011.

With so much misinformation circulating in different media outlets around the world about Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez, it's time to set the record straight. Venezuela is not a dictatorship and President Chavez is no dictator.

Just last evening the Venezuelan head of state participated in a meeting with a group of housing activists, who not only criticized - live on television - government policies and inaction on tenant and housing issues, but also proposed laws, regulations and projects that were received with open arms by Chavez himself. And last week, the Venezuelan President vetoed a law on higher education that had been approved by the prior year's majority pro-Chavez legislature, calling for more "open and wide" debate on the subject, to include critics and those who had protested the bill. That is not the behavior of a brutal dictator.

As someone who has been living on and off in Venezuela for over 17 years, I can testify to the extraordinary transformation the country has undertaken during the past decade since Chavez first was elected in 1998. He has been reelected by landslide majorities twice since then.

When I arrived to Venezuela for the first time in 1993, the country was in severe turmoil. Constitutional rights had been suspended and a nationwide curfew was imposed. Repression was widespread, the economy was in crisis, several newspapers, television and radio stations had been shut down or censored, and the government had imposed a forced military draft targeting young men from poor communities. There was an interim president in power, because the actual president, Carlos Andres Perez - hailed by Washington as an "outstanding democrat" - had just been impeached and imprisoned for corruption. Perez eventually escaped confinement and fled to Miami, where he resided until his death last month, living off the millions he stole from the Venezuelan people.

Even though a new president was elected in 1994, constitutional rights remained suspended on and off for years, until the elections in 1998 that brought Chavez to power. Since then, despite a short-lived coup d'etat in 2002, an economically-shattering sabotage of the oil industry in 2003 and multiple attempts against his government during the following years, President Chavez has never once limited constitutional rights nor imposed a curfew on the population. He hasn't ever ordered a state of emergency that would limit rights or shut down any media outlets. He even issued a general pardon in 2007 giving amnesty to all those involved in the 2002 coup, with the exception of individuals directly responsible for crimes against humanity or homicide.

Under the Chavez administration, poverty has been reduced in half, universal, quality, free healthcare and education have been guaranteed for all Venezuelans, new industries have been created and more and more political power has been placed in the hands of "ordinary" people who were previously excluded by the elite that ruled the country throughout the twentieth century.

So why do so many newspapers and broadcast media classify him as a dictator?

You may not like Hugo Chavez's way of speaking, or the fact that he was born into poverty, comes from the military, is a leftist and doesn't fit the stereotypical image of a head of state. But that doesn't make him a dictator.

In Venezuela, more than 80% of television, radio and print media remain in the hands of private interests critical of the government. So, despite what some international press claim, there is no censorship or violation of free expression in Venezuela. Calls to overthrow the government or to incite the armed forces to rebel against the state, which would clearly be prohibited in most nations, are broadcast on opposition-controlled television channels with public concessions (open signals, not cable). Just last month, the head of the Venezuelan chamber of commerce, Fedecamaras, gave a press conference broadcast live on television and radio stations, during which he called the armed forces "traitors" who would "pay the price" if they didn't disobey government orders and "obey" the dictates of big business.

I can only imagine if a business leader in the United States were to go on television and call the US Army "traitors" if they didn't disobey the federal government. Secret Service would arrest the man immediately and the consequences would be severe. But something like that would never happen in the US, since no television station would ever broadcast anything that constituted a call to rebellion or disobedience against the government. That's illegal.

So, not only is there no censorship in Venezuela, there is an excess of "free" expression. One positive aspect of the permissive attitude assumed by the Chavez government with regards to media has been the proliferation of community and alternative media outlets throughout the nation, which have provided space and voice to those ignored by mainstream corporate media. During governments prior to the Chavez administration, community and alternative media were banned.

Recently, the Venezuelan legislature passed a law called the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio, Television and Digital Media. The law does not censor internet or any other form of media. What it does do is disallow calls to assassinate the president or other individual, as well as prohibit incitement to crime, hate or violence on web sites operated from Venezuela. This is a standard in most democracies and is a sign of civility. The law also instills on media a responsibility to contribute to the education of citizens. Media have a huge power over society today. Why shouldn't they be responsible for their actions?

Another issue widely manipulated in mass media is the Enabling Act that was approved last month by the Venezuelan parliament. This law gives "decree" powers to the Executive to legislate on specific issues as stipulated in the bill. The Enabling Act does not usurp, inhibit or limit legislative functions of the National Assembly, nor is it unconstitutional or anti-democratic. The parliament can still debate and approve laws as usual within its authority. The Enabling law, which is permitted by the Constitution, was requested by President Chavez in order to provide rapid responses to a national emergency caused by torrential rainfall that devasted communities nationwide at the end of last year and left over 130,000 homeless. The law will not affect any constitutional rights nor impose a "dictatorship" on the country, it is merely a valid, legitimate response to an emergency situation that needs quick solutions.

And speaking of the Venezuelan legislature, there is a lot of deceitful information repeated and recycled in media worldwide about the composition of this year's new parliament. Venezuela had legislative elections in September 2010, and opposition - anti-Chavez - parties won 40% of the seats. Some say this is a majority, which is very strange. The pro-Chavez PSUV party won 60% of seats in the National Assembly, as the Venezuelan legislative body is called. That's 97 out of 165 seats, plus 1 more which was won by the pro-Chavez PCV party, for a total of 98.

On the other hand, the opposition bloc won 65 seats represented by 13 different political parties that don't necessarily agree on most issues. Two other seats were won by a third, independent party, PPT. So, the PSUV party won 97 seats in parliament and the next party in line is Accion Democratica (AD) with 22 seats. Who has the majority?

In 2005, the opposition parties boycotted the electoral process, and lost the near 50% they had in parliament from the year 2000. Now, their bloc has been reduced to 40%, yet they claim to have "grown" in numbers. This perspective has been reiterated in mainstream media, despite its erroneous and manipulative nature.

The opposition bloc has already announced it will seek foreign intervention to help overthrow the government. Not only is this illegal, it's incredibly dangerous. Many of the candidates and most of the parties that conform the opposition in Venezuela have already been receiving millions of dollars annually in funding from several US and international agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), both financed with US taxpayer monies. The stated purpose of this funding has been to "promote democracy" in Venezuela and help build the opposition forces against Chavez. This is a clear violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and a waste of US taxpayer dollars. US citizens: Is this the way you want your hard-earned money to be spent?

This week, opposition leaders will meet with their counterparts in Washington. They have already said their mission is to seek more aid to help remove President Chavez from power. Unfortunately, their undemocratic actions have already been welcomed in the US Capitol. Representative Connie Mack (R-FL), now head of the House Sub-Committte on Foreign Relations for the Western Hemisphere, announced on the first day of Congress that his one goal this year is to place Venezuela on the list of "state sponors of terrorism". And Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), now head of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has backed that objective, even going as far as to publicly state she would welcome the "assassination of Fidel Castro or any other repressive leader" such as Hugo Chavez.

On January 1, President Chavez held a brief, informal and amicable encounter with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Brasilia, during the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's new president. No agreements were reached, but the exchange of hands and smiles stabilized an escalation in tensions between both nations, which had produced a diplomatic crisis at the end of last year. But upon her return to Washington, Clinton was severely criticized by media, particularly The Washington Post, which accused her of being too "soft" on Venezuela.

The Washington Post's calls for war against Venezuela are dangerous. Remember, conditioning of public opinion is necessary to justify aggression against another nation. The campaigns of demonization against Saddam Hussein, Iraq and Islam were essential to initiate the wars in the Middle East which have yet to cease. Is the public willing to be influenced by media that have a political (and economic) agenda that seeks to oust a democratically-elected and popularly supported government just because they don't like its policies?

With the recent tragic events in Arizona it should become even more evident that media have power and influence over individual actions. Hate speech, demonization campaigns, manipulative and deceitful information are dangerous and can lead to abominable consequences, including war.

It's time to stop the escalating aggression against Venezuela and accept the facts: Venezuela is not a dictatorship, and while many of you may not like Hugo Chavez, a majority of Venezuelans who voted for him do. And in this scenario, they're the ones who matter.

Morales Explains Repeal of Fuel Price Hike

Evo Morales Explains Repeal of Fuel Price Hike
Source: Prensa Latina, 02 Jan 2011.


The Bolivian people were not ready for the consequences of fuel price hikes implemented to bring them up to the same level as in neighboring countries, President Evo Morales said on Monday. In his explanation of why he had repealed the Dec. 26 fuel price decree aimed at ending fuel smuggling, the president stated that the people welcomed the move as being in defense of the poorest families.

At a press conference in Cochabamba, Morales stated he heard and submitted to the people as he promised when assuming the presidency of Bolivia. On Friday, Morales announced the revocation of the decree established five days earlier, which involved the removal of state subsidies for fuel and increases in prices, to bring them up to the same level as the rest of the region and stop the bleeding of the Bolivian economy.

Fuel subsidies rose from USD $108 million in 2005 to USD $660 million in 2010. Of that amount, USD $380 million was subidized and USD $150 million in fuel was smuggled out of the country.

The Caracazo

by Eva Golinger
Source: Correo del Orinoco International, 26 February 2010.

A mass popular explosion overtook Caracas twenty-one years ago and changed the country forever.

February 27, 1989 is a date that marked Venezuela forever. Thousands were killed, slaughtered and arbitrarily detained and tortured by the “democratic” government of the time, led by President Carlos Andres Perez. Most of the dead and arrested were poor people, many of whom had been out protesting and rebelling against the neoliberal economic policies announced by the government just days earlier.

After the fall of Venezuela’s last dictatorship in 1958, the nation’s two main political parties, Accion Democratica (AD) and COPEI, made a pact to share power and align the country’s policies with foreign economic interests. That agreement, known as the “Punto Fijo Pact”, led to decades of “elected” governments from both parties, one after the other.

In 1976, Carlos Andres Perez, president at the time, nationalized the country’s oil industry, promising to invest the massive wealth in the nation’s infrastructure and development. Despite the oil boom of the 70s, Perez fell through on his promises. After he left the presidency, the economy began a downward spiral and by 1983, the currency was devalued several points, increasing financial despair amongst citizens.

The Venezuela of the 70s and early 80s, known as the “2 for 1” time - because everything abroad was so cheap to Venezuelans that they could buy two items of each product – rapidly began to disappear. Poverty grew at an alarming rate.

Infrastructure was abandoned. The agricultural industry vanished. All focus was on oil and its immense profits. But those earnings were not going into the national purse, but rather the pockets of the political and economic elite, which grew wealthier and wealthier while the majority of Venezuelans fell to poverty. The nation’s big middle class became an even larger working class, and the rich built walls to live behind to hide their stolen wealth.

EMPTY PROMISES
In the 1988 presidential elections, Carlos Andres Perez was the candidate again for Accion Democratica. Having left the presidency in 1979 during a time of prosperity from the growing oil industry, Perez promised to return the impoverished nation to the “good ole days”. “Everyone will have a big television”, he promised in his campaign, assuring supporters that the middle class would rise again under his leadership. One of Perez’s major campaign promises was his staunch rejection of the wave of privatization policies sweeping the region. While other countries were implementing the “neoliberal package” imposed by the International Monetary Fund, promoted by the Washington consensus, Perez told his supporters he would not lead Venezuela on the path to privatization.

He would “preserve” the nationalized oil industry that he himself had helped create more than a decade earlier. Perez won the election and took office in early February 1989. To the terrible surprise of his supporters, his first official announcement as president was the acceptance of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of $4.5 billion USD. Venezuelans reacted with shock to Perez’s blatant betrayal, and feared for the future of the country. Perez, who had referred to the IMF and the World Bank as “genocide workers in the pay of economic totalitarianism”, was now capable of handing the country over to multinationals.

Fear of privatization grew quickly. Business owners began to hoard consumer products, believing inflation would soon raise costs and products would be worth more in a matter of days. Why sell now when the price could triple by next week and more money could be made? Supermarket shelves went bare. People began to panic. The reforms announced by Perez caused an immediate raise in gas prices, based on a fear of the oil industry being privatized. Consumers were instantly affected, and reacted.

THE BIG EXPLOSION
On February 27, 1989, the people took to the streets. The protests began in Guarenas, a suburb of Caracas, as commuters boarded public transportation in the early morning hours, only to find out bus fare had gone up overnight. The rejection of the price hikes was widespread, and protests rapidly became violent. Tensions were extremely high. Buses were overturned by angry riders refusing to pay the increased and unjust fare. Word spread quickly to other areas of Caracas and riots broke out everywhere.

Stores that had been hoarding products for weeks were looted by hungry and angry residents, disgusted with business owners for hiding the products from consumers so they could raise costs. Hunger was the most visible incentive of the protests. Looters weren’t stealing expensive goods, they were taking meat, cheese, milk and other food products that had disappeared from stores in the days before. Demonstrators began to organize and fill the downtown streets, calling on the President to react to the unrest and concern of his followers.

But President Perez chose to respond with force, and not with dialogue. He called out the National Guard and the police and ordered them to use lethal force to repress the protests.

THE MASSACRE
The security forces under the command of Perez went into the poor neighborhoods of Caracas and shot on sight. In some instances, their machine gun fire entered homes and killed women cooking in the kitchen, or children taking naps or playing in the parks. It was a cruel and perverse way to eradicate poverty. Thousands were killed –massacred– on the days of February 27 and 28. Mass gravesites were dug and bodies were thrown in and covered up so that the true number of dead will never be known. A state of emergency was imposed and constitutional rights were suspended – indefinitely.

The event left the nation bitter, mourning for the loss of thousands of brothers and sisters, but also for the loss of dignity. Perez had handed the country over to multinationals and killed all those that opposed him.

THE REVOLUTION BEGINS
Despite the immense tragedy that took place on February 27, 1989 - today remembered as the Caracazo (the big Caracas explosion) - the date is seen as the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution. It was the first mass, spontaneous people’s uprising against neoliberalism and privatization – against imperialism and capitalism. Three years later, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Venezuelan Army, by the name of Hugo Chavez, led a military rebellion to overthrow the murderous and corrupt government of Carlos Andres Perez.

The February 4, 1992 insurrection failed, and Chavez was imprisoned, but Perez’s government began to rapidly fall apart. On November 27, 1992, another military uprising attempted to oust Perez, but also failed. Months later, Venezuela’s Congress impeached Perez for corruption and placed him on house arrest. He later fled the country as a fugitive from justice, arriving in Miami. Carlos Andres Perez has never returned to Venezuela again, but the Bolivarian Revolution has lived on and continues to grow and prosper. Those whose lives were lost to the brutal and repressive policies of the past will always be remembered.

Mission Barrio Adentro

Mission Barrio Adentro: A socialist concept of Medicine
by Pearl Nguyen,
Translation: by Eva Golinger.
Source: Correo del Orinoco International, no. 22, 30 July 2010

In Venezuela, the concept of social medicine in which health is viewed as an essential part of humanism and as a right of every citizen and not a business, continues to grow. The work of Mission Barrio Adentro, a Cuba-Venezuela initiative, has been fundamental to achieve this end.

The relationship between Cuba and Venezuela has developed steadily since October 30, 2000, when Presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro of Cuba signed a Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement Cuba-Venezuela. In April 2003, the first Cuban doctors of Mission Barrio Adentro arrived to Caracas to jumpstart the social program, which was soon extended to the rest of the country. The initial goal was to bring healthcare into poorer communities, where most people had never had any medical care and had little or no access to preventive healthcare campaigns.
The mission currently is run by Cuban and Venezuelan doctors as part of an overall healthcare strategy and state policy of the Chavez administration, explained Vice-Minister of Health Networks, Iver Gil.

Today, more than 15,000 doctors are working in Mission Barrio Adentro, with a large percentage of Venezuelan doctors now working with human sensitivity and social commitment. There are approximately 30,000 Cuban collaborators, including medical and technical staff in hospitals throughout the country, with the goal of strengthening the national public health system.

NEW HOSPITALS AND CLINICS
The objective this year is to complete the construction of more than 500 comprehensive diagnostic centers (CDI), where Venezuelan and Cuban doctors provide care and counseling in the areas of healing, promotion and prevention. Students are also trained in social medicine at these centers, based on the notion that healthcare is a right, not a commodity, and is essential to aid in the improvement of quality of life in Venezuelan communities.

“It’s a joint program with doctors and communities working together to improve the quality of life and health of residents. We are now developing integral health community services, so that communities have an area or network with medical health services at the preventive, diagnostic and treatment levels to promote health and prevent disease”, explained Vice Minister Gil.

Gil reported that in the next two months 17 more CDIs should be inaugurated and 64 new hospitals built, along with the renovation of other public hospitals in specific areas such as operating rooms, laboratories, delivery rooms, emergency, among others. Gil stressed that the most important aspect of Mission Barrio Adentro is the promotion of social medicine, curative and preventive healthcare and proper rehabilitation.

“In many areas that never had access to medical consultations before, there are now popular, free clinics. During the program, we have increased the number of neighborhood clinics from 4,000 to 11,000 nationwide”, said Gil.

TRAINING
Vice-Minister Iver Gil also explained that previously in Venezuela, medical education was elitist, with limited spaces at universities. “A medical degree was seen only as a profession to make money or earn large sums of money, and the concept was of a doctor waiting in his offi ce for the patient to come with problems”.

With the new concept of socialist healthcare in the country, Gil noted the whole medical community is being reshaped. There are currently more than 28,000 students of Comprehensive Community Medicine studies in six experimental national universities. “In five years, we have incorporated more than 8,000 students into the public hospital system who will graduate in December next year, trained in social, socialist, integral medicine, which takes into account the community environment and not just the body or the sick person alone, but also how we live and how we can improve the quality of our lives. This is a process that includes home visits, and students are forming these clinics and networks in their own communities”.

PROVISION OF MEDICINE
The Ministry of Health has several strategies to ensure the provision of medicines and medical equipment for communities, hospitals and clinics. Alliances with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas) countries and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations), including Argentina, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, have enabled agreements to buy medicines at low prices.

Also, Gil noted that through these partnerships, major surgical equipment for hospitals and other medical supplies have been acquired. “Now we are engaging in agreements to enable Venezuelan industries to produce pharmaceutical drugs in our own country. This involves the transfer of technology and know-how from other nations, which is an essential part of these accords”, he said.

Cuba rebuffs right-wing campaign in El Salvador

Cuban Ambassador Rebuffs Campaign against Salvadoran MDs Graduated in Cuba
Source: RealCuba.worpress.com, 09 January 2011.

Cuban Ambassador in El Salvador Pedro Pablo Prada rejected a campaign carried out by local rightwing political parties and press media to discriminate and slander Salvadoran students who graduated from the Latin American Medicine School (ELAM) in Havana.

Prada said in an interview with local radio station Radio Nacional on Friday that the ELAM School and Cuba itself had been rudely attacked, and he strongly rejected such attacks led by rightwing Republican Nationalist Alliance of El Salvador (ARENA).
The Cuban ambassador said that all the students who study medicine in Cuba –either Cuban nationals or foreigners- get a degree in Medicine; the syllabus is designed by the Public Health Ministry, and accredited by organizations such as the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization.

He said that the medical study program is also accredited by many universities, including 10 of the most prestigious universities in the world. And he said that the slanders are taking a serious risk by attempting to talk on behalf of the Salvadoran medical community, which knows very well the Cuban public health system.
Prada recalled that even many Salvadoran doctors graduated in El Salvador have studied postgraduate courses in Havana. He refused the idea that the chance to study in Cuba for a foreign student becomes "a political scholarship" and demanded those who say so to bring solid evidence on the case.

He also gave information on the fact that many Salvadoran doctors who graduated in Cuba were prevented from being able to join the Salvadoran public health system, and others were victims of the so-called "Theft of Brains". The campaign was also rejected by officials of the Salvadoran and Cuban Public health Ministries, students, local political and social organizations and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

Posada's good friend at the FBI

Posada’s "very good friend" in the FBI investigated attacks in Havana
Source: Granma International.
by Jean-Guy Allard, 03 June 2010.

GEORGE Kiszynski, the FBI agent whom Luis Posada Carriles described as a "very good friend" in his interview with The New York Times, investigated the 1997 series of bombings in Havana that the national terrorist confessed to having organized, according to an official report by U.S. federal police which was declassified on May 18 this year.

The three-page document has been presented as another piece of evidence to the El Paso court that is to initiate - on a date still to be determined – proceedings against Posada on a number of charges. Dated November 13, 1998, the first two pages of the declassified document report that on June 17 of that year, "an in situ examination of four electronic detonators has been made in Havana, Cuba" and continue with "specifications of the examined items:" four DuPont detonators made in the United States.


The third page – a letter explicitly addressed to the FBI chief in Miami – refers to three samples of the explosives examined, and specifying that the results of the analysis were attached. Just before the final paragraph, comes the enigmatic and handwritten appearance of the surname Kiszynski.

This is a clear indication that, in one way or another, FBI agent George Kiszynski – whose links to anti-Cuba terrorism date back years – took part in the FBI investigation into the 1997 attacks in Cuba. As is well known, these attacks were planned in El Salvador by Posada, who described Kiszynski as a "very good friend" during an interview with Ann Louise Bardach and Larry Rother, published by The New York Times on July 12 and 13, 1998.

THREE FBI AGENTS IN HAVANA
On June 15, 1998, as the direct result of a communiqué to Bill Clinton –.conveyed to the then president in May of that year by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez at the request of Cuban President Fidel Castro – a FBI delegation arrived in Havana to meet Cuban experts on June 16 and 17, 1998. The three U.S. officials were provided with extensive information on the attacks that had taken place in Cuba the previous year, including 64 pages providing evidence of 31 terrorist plots and attacks on Cuba between 1990 and 1998, under the direction of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) in Miami.

The evidence handed over included examples of explosives used to make some of the devices that had been deactivated. The FBI agents promised to inform the Cuban side of the results of their analysis of the materials presented to them as soon as possible. They never did so.

A few weeks after the U.S. investigators’ visit to Cuba, Héctor Pesquera – Miami’s FBI chief at the time – not only failed to mount an investigation into the criminals exposed in Havana, but also – at the petition of the Mafioso capos, including Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart, who was kept constantly informed – ordered the arrest of Cubans infiltrated into the ranks of terrorist organizations.

On June 18, when the visiting FBI agents returned from Havana, Posada was on the Dutch island of Aruba, calmly granting The New York Times the interview in which he boasted – "proudly" – of having organized the terrorist campaign in Cuba, and even spoke openly about his CANF sponsors.

It was precisely in this interview that the international terrorist identified FBI Special Agent George Kiszynski as a "very good friend," whom he had known for some time.

A WHOLE SUCCESSION OF CONSPIRATORIAL EVENTS
The known history of the complicity between agent Kiszynski and the Cuban-American mafia begins in 1979 when Detectives Sergio Pinion and Ozzie Austin informed him of the terrorist plot linked to Orlando Bosch’s Coordinación de Organizaciones Revolucionarias (CORU) to sabotage an aircraft on the Miami-Havana flight route. Miami police investigators then asked their colleague Kiszynski for his help in counteracting the plot.

Kiszynski immediately met with the indicated suspects, on the pretext of interrogating them and, on his way out of the meeting, conveniently "forgot" his briefcase. On the basis of information from a collaborator infiltrated inside CORU, Pinion and Austin reported Kiszynski to their superiors, who carried out an investigation, whose unknown results were quickly shelved.

Shortly before the Iran-Contras scandal broke, Kiszynski passed on an ultra-secret FBI report to Colonel Oliver North, a central player in the plot in the service of George Bush Sr. The report provided detailed information on every aspect of a Miami Police Department investigation into the Contras and drug trafficking, an illegal exercise in which CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles had an active role.

On February 7, 1992, the very same Kiszynski – appointed by the FBI to comply with a Congress order to assist the General Accounting Office that was investigating the Iran-Contra affair – interviewed Luis Posada Carriles for several hours at the U.S. embassy in Honduras, where the terrorist was located at the time.

The (pleasant) conversation between Kiszynski and the terrorist took place without it ever occurring to the former to arrest the latter. Posada was thus able to continue with his assassination attempts, with the confirmation of U.S. sympathy for his activities. And he proceeded to do so, in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

"I NEVER HEARD ANYTHING MORE ABOUT THEM"
But there are other astonishing anecdotes regarding this very special agent. In 1997, Guatemalan agent Antonio "Tony" Jorge Alvarez was the manager of the WRB Enterprises branch in Guatemala where Posada Carriles was working. At that point, the terrorist was organizing the campaign of attacks on hotels in Cuba and plotting an attack on Cuban President Fidel Castro which he anticipated perpetrating at an Ibero-American Summit on Margarita Island, Venezuela.

Alvarez – currently a resident of Greenville, South Carolina – informed the FBI of these conspiracies. He said that Posada and his accomplices had bought detonators – the ones that turned up in Havana – in order to fabricate explosive devices, and that he had seen them in possession of plastic explosives. According to comments from Alvarez at the time and which were published by The New York Times, the FBI acted with "surprising indifference." The newspaper confirmed that an FBI agent - George Kiszynski – contacted Alvarez from Miami.

"He (the agent) told me that my life was in danger; that these were very dangerous people and that I should leave Guatemala. I never heard anything more about them," Alvarez told the daily. The New York Times itself had to conclude that if the FBI had interviewed businessman Alvarez at that time, they would have discovered the attacks on Havana that Posada was planning.

But that isn’t all.

Kiszynski reappeared on March 26, 2001 as a witness in the case of the five Cubans accused of "espionage" for having infiltrated terrorist groups in Miami. The defense called him after having been informed by the FBI that he had investigated the presence of two suspicious boats in Miami.

Kiszynski – whose background was ignored at the time – told the court that, in July 1998, he had investigated two boats moored in a Miami marina, owned by an individual who was plotting a terrorist operation against Cuba. Kiszynski affirmed that he organized an operation to search for explosives or weapons but had found nothing. He then questioned the owner of the boats, Enrique Bassas whom he admitted that he already knew.

What Kiszynski did not state is that Bassas was one of the individuals who met with Luis Posada Carriles from July 19 to 21, 1998, at the Holiday Inn in Guatemala City, in order to plan another assassination attempt on the Cuban president, who was scheduled to participate in the Summit of Caribbean Heads of State in Santo Domingo.

Nor did he mention that Bassas knew Posada from the Cuban province of Cienfuegos - where both men were born – when he was a member of the Cuban secret police headed by the notorious terrorist Sixto Reynaldo Aquit Manrique.

The presence of the name KISZYNSKI at the end of the inventory for the explosives samples, drawn up by the FBI after its envoys’ visit to Havana, is further proof of bad faith in the dossier of relations between the U.S. federal police and Cuban-American terrorism. Almost 12 years after the FBI’s experts came to Havana, the terrorists exposed by Cuba – including Posada – are moving freely around Miami, conspiring with impunity and with the complicity of the FBI.

Meanwhile, the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters – who were fulfilling the duty of protecting their homeland – remain incarcerated in five U.S. jails, victims of the odious machinations which, with total cynicism, masquerade as U.S. justice.

Cuba registers record-low infant death rate

by RealCuba.wordpress.com, 4 January 2011.

Cuba ended the year 2010 with an infant mortality rate of 4.5 per 1,000 live births, the lowest in its history, the country’s health ministry said Monday in a statement.
Cuba had 127,710 births in 2010, 2,326 fewer than in 2009. The number of infant deaths was 45 fewer than in 2009, according to the ministry.

The province with the lowest infant death rate, 2.5 per 1,000, was Villa Clara in central Cuba. Another seven provinces also had death rates below 5 per 1,000.

Cuba’s infant mortality rate was the lowest in the Americas, said the statement.

Cuba spends more than 60 percent of its budget on free education and health care. Babies are scheduled to be examined by a doctor 12 times in a year and have a genetic test and immunization against 12 preventable diseases. Pregnant women receive an average of 17 medical treatments and 99.99 percent of them deliver in hospital.

Cuban medics in Haiti put the world to shame

Source: The Independent.
By Nina Lakhani, 26 December 2010.


Castro's doctors and nurses are the backbone of the fight against cholera

They are the real heroes of the Haitian earthquake disaster, the human catastrophe on America's doorstep which Barack Obama pledged a monumental US humanitarian mission to alleviate. Except these heroes are from America's arch-enemy Cuba, whose doctors and nurses have put US efforts to shame.

A medical brigade of 1,200 Cubans is operating all over earthquake-torn and cholera-infected Haiti, as part of Fidel Castro's international medical mission which has won the socialist state many friends, but little international recognition.

Observers of the Haiti earthquake could be forgiven for thinking international aid agencies were alone in tackling the devastation that killed 250,000 people and left nearly 1.5 million homeless. In fact, Cuban healthcare workers have been in Haiti since 1998, so when the earthquake struck the 350-strong team jumped into action. And amid the fanfare and publicity surrounding the arrival of help from the US and the UK, hundreds more Cuban doctors, nurses and therapists arrived with barely a mention. Most countries were gone within two months, again leaving the Cubans and Médecins Sans Frontières as the principal healthcare providers for the impoverished Caribbean island.

Figures released last week show that Cuban medical personnel, working in 40 centres across Haiti, have treated more than 30,000 cholera patients since October. They are the largest foreign contingent, treating around 40 per cent of all cholera patients. Another batch of medics from the Cuban Henry Reeve Brigade, a disaster and emergency specialist team, arrived recently as it became clear that Haiti was struggling to cope with the epidemic that has already killed hundreds.

Since 1998, Cuba has trained 550 Haitian doctors for free at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina en Cuba (Elam), one of the country's most radical medical ventures. Another 400 are currently being trained at the school, which offers free education – including free books and a little spending money – to anyone sufficiently qualified who cannot afford to study medicine in their own country.

John Kirk is a professor of Latin American studies at Dalhousie University in Canada who researches Cuba's international medical teams. He said: "Cuba's contribution in Haiti is like the world's greatest secret. They are barely mentioned, even though they are doing much of the heavy lifting."

This tradition can be traced back to 1960, when Cuba sent a handful of doctors to Chile, hit by a powerful earthquake, followed by a team of 50 to Algeria in 1963. This was four years after the revolution, which saw nearly half the country's 7,000 doctors voting with their feet and leaving for the US.

The travelling doctors have served as an extremely useful arm of the government's foreign and economic policy, winning them friends and favours across the globe. The best-known programme is Operation Miracle, which began with ophthalmologists treating cataract sufferers in impoverished Venezuelan villages in exchange for oil. This initiative has restored the eyesight of 1.8 million people in 35 countries, including that of Mario Teran, the Bolivian sergeant who killed Che Guevara in 1967.

The Henry Reeve Brigade, rebuffed by the Americans after Hurricane Katrina, was the first team to arrive in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, and the last to leave six months later.

Cuba's constitution lays out an obligation to help the worst-off countries when possible, but international solidarity isn't the only reason, according to Professor Kirk. "It allows Cuban doctors, who are frightfully underpaid, to earn extra money abroad and learn about diseases and conditions they have only read about. It is also an obsession of Fidel's and it wins him votes in the UN."

A third of Cuba's 75,000 doctors, along with 10,000 other health workers, are currently working in 77 poor countries, including El Salvador, Mali and East Timor. This still leaves one doctor for every 220 people at home, one of the highest ratios in the world, compared with one for every 370 in England.

Wherever they are invited, Cubans implement their prevention-focused holistic model, visiting families at home, proactively monitoring maternal and child health. This has produced "stunning results" in parts of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, lowering infant and maternal mortality rates, reducing infectious diseases and leaving behind better trained local health workers, according to Professor Kirk's research.

Medical training in Cuba lasts six years – a year longer than in the UK – after which every graduate works as a family doctor for three years minimum. Working alongside a nurse, the family doctor looks after 150 to 200 families in the community in which they live.

This model has helped Cuba to achieve some of the world's most enviable health improvements, despite spending only $400 (£260) per person last year compared with $3,000 (£1,950) in the UK and $7,500 (£4,900) in the US, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development figures.

Infant mortality rates, one of the most reliable measures of a nation's healthcare, are 4.8 per 1,000 live births – comparable with Britain and lower than the US. Only 5 per cent of babies are born with a low birth weight, a crucial factor in long-term health, and maternal mortality is the lowest in Latin America, World Health Organisation figures show. Cuba's polyclinics, open 24 hours a day for emergencies and specialist care, are a step up from the family doctors. Each provides for 15,000 to 35,000 patients via a group of full-time consultants as well as visiting doctors, ensuring that most medical care is provided in the community.

Imti Choonara, a paediatrician from Derby, leads a delegation of international health professionals at annual workshops in Cuba's third city, Camaguey. "Healthcare in Cuba is phenomenal, and the key is the family doctor, who is much more proactive, and whose focus is on prevention ... The irony is that Cubans came to the UK after the revolution to see how the NHS worked. They took back what they saw, refined it and developed it further; meanwhile we are moving towards the US model," Professor Choonara said.

Politics, inevitably, penetrates many aspects of Cuban healthcare. Every year hospitals produce a list of drugs and equipment they have been unable to access because of the American embargo which prevents many US companies from trading with Cuba, and persuades other countries to follow suit. The 2009/10 report includes drugs for childhood cancers, HIV and arthritis, some anaesthetics, as well as chemicals needed to diagnose infections and store organs. Pharmacies in Cuba are characterised by long queues and sparsely stacked shelves, though in part this is because they stock only generic brands.

Antonio Fernandez, from the Ministry of Public Health, said: "We make 80 per cent of the drugs we use. The rest we import from China, former Soviet countries, Europe – anyone who will sell to us – but this makes it very expensive because of the distances."

On the whole, Cubans are immensely proud and supportive of their contribution in Haiti and other poor countries, delighted to be punching above their weight on the international scene. However, some people complain of longer waits to see their doctor because so many are working abroad. And, like all commodities in Cuba, medicines are available on the black market for those willing to risk large fines if caught buying or selling.

International travel is beyond the reach of most Cubans, but qualified nurses and doctors are among those forbidden from leaving the country for five years after graduation, unless as part of an official medical team.

Like everyone else, health professionals earn paltry salaries of around $20 (£13) a month. So, contrary to official accounts, bribery exists in the hospital system, which means some doctors, and even hospitals, are off-limits unless patients can offer a little something, maybe lunch or a few pesos, for preferential treatment.

Cuba's international ventures in healthcare are becoming increasingly strategic. Last month, officials held talks with Brazil about developing Haiti's public health system, which Brazil and Venezuela have both agreed to help finance.

Medical training is another example. There are currently 8,281 students from more than 30 countries enrolled at Elam, which last month celebrated its 11th anniversary. The government hopes to inculcate a sense of social responsibly into the students in the hope that they will work within their own poor communities for at least five years.

Damien Joel Suarez, 27, a second year from New Jersey, is one of 171 American students; 47 have already graduated. He dismisses allegations that Elam is part of the Cuban propaganda machine. "Of course, Che is a hero here but he isn't forced down your neck."

Another 49,000 students are enrolled in the El Nuevo Programa de Formacion de Medicos Latinoamericanos, the brainchild of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, who pledged in 2005 to train 100,000 doctors for the continent. The course is much more hands-on, and critics question the quality of the training.

Professor Kirk disagrees: "The hi-tech approach to health needed in London and Toronto is irrelevant for millions of people in the Third World who are living in poverty. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and criticise the quality, but if you were living somewhere with no doctors, then you'd be happy to get anyone."

There are nine million Haitians who would probably agree.

Return to Third Cinema?

Return to Third Cinema? The Case of Listen To Venezuela
By Deirdre O’Neill and Mike Wayne.
Sources: Film International, Vol.8, No.1, 2010, and ListentoVenezuela.info

We arrived in Venezuela in February 2008 on a Leverhulme Scholarship that would allow us a unique opportunity to live and work in the country for a year. We had chosen to go to Venezuela because we had for some time been closely following the revolution that had been developing there since the breakthrough election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. We wanted to see this revolution at first hand and we wanted to contribute to it in any way we could. We were aware that the mainstream media, both press and television, in the United Kingdom and internationally, were misrepresenting
the Venezuelan revolution. They focused unremittingly on the personality of Hugo Chávez, ignoring the broader issues and involvement of millions of people. Moreover, the focus on Chávez has been extremely distorted, variously describing him as a killer, dictator, populist strongman, megalomaniac, supporter of terrorism,
anti-Semitic, buffoon and other sundry tropes that merely confirm racist western stereotypes of Latin American leaders.

However, people around the world started to pay more attention to what was happening
in Venezuela after an attempted coup by the Venezuelan oligarchy (which was backed by the Bush administration) in April 2002. This dramatic episode drew attention to what was happening in the country and what was at stake in the conflict between the oligarchy and the people. The attempted coup and the popular uprising which it provoked were captured on film in The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain, 2002) which had international exposure. This documentary gave
an account of what may very well be the first ‘media coup’, insofar as the private television companies in Venezuela actively participated in and supported the coup.

Read more...


Conclusion
This struggle to remember and reclaim the past and create a different future is now a global one. This consumer entrapment has dominated globally via neo-liberalism. Today we need to find alternatives to this model. Despite the economic crash, there is little sense of an alternative paradigm emerging in the West.
What is happening in Venezuela is not of course a model that can be picked off the shelf and applied everywhere else, but it is a gigantic experiment in trying to develop an alternative to neo-liberal capitalism. Now is the time to listen to Venezuela. Listen To Venezuela is available to buy for £10 from the film’s website at: http://www.listentovenezuela.info.


Deirdre O’Neill and Mike Wayne will attend and take part in a Q&A at an RATB screening of Listen To Venezuela on 27 February 2011 at 2pm in the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, Manchester, UK, M2.

US terrorist Posada Carriles’ Trial approaches

Posada Trial Approaches - Worldwide Demonstrations Needed
Source: FreetheFive.org

The long-delayed trial of Luis Posada Carriles will begin on January 10, after the judge rejected defense motions for yet another delay. In Havana, Posada's accomplice Francisco Chávez Abarca was just convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison after admitting his role in planting bombs in Havana hotels, as an accomplice of Posada.

The U.S. government continues to ignore Venezuela's request for Posada's extradition. If the U.S. refuses to extradite, it is obligated by international law to try Posada for the murder of 73 people on board Cubana Flight 455. Instead, the government will only prosecute him on the much lesser charge of perjury.

Only a massive show of worldwide support can possibly bring justice for the victims of Flight 455, justice for Fabio di Celmo and the many other victims of Posada Carriles. A worldwide outpouring is needed to demand that the U.S. government extradite Posada to stand trial for his real crimes.


While Posada, Orlando Bosch and other terrorists enjoy complete impunity in Miami, the U.S. government continues to imprison the Cuban Five anti-terrorists, who never harmed anyone, but were on a mission to stop terrorist attacks on Cuba. In El Paso we will raise our banners for the Five, and demand that the Obama administration free the Cuban Five immediately.

The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, and other organizations will be in El Paso on January 10 for the start of Posada's trial, demonstrating in front of the courthouse. We call on all supporters of the Cuban Five, and supporters of justice to hold simultaneous demonstrations that day at U.S. embassies and other appropriate locations in the U.S. and around the world. Join us as we raise our voices and demand: Extradite Posada! Free the Cuban Five! End the blockade of Cuba! And please let us know of your plans so we can help publicize them on our website and on Facebook.

If you live in the U.S. Southwest, we urge you to organize a caravan to El Paso and participate in the "People's Tribunal", featuring Ramsey Clark, on Sunday, Jan. 9, and the protest when Posada's trial begins, Monday, Jan. 10.


Posada Carriles’ Trial to Include Evidence of Terrorism against Cuba
By Redaction AHORA, 08 December 2010.
Source: Ahora.cu

The evidence collected by Cuban authorities and the FBI on the role played by notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in the 1997 string of bombing attacks against tourist facilities in Havana will reportedly be included in the trial against him.

Cubadebate reports that this will be the first time that a recorded interview with Posada by a journalist from The New York Times, in which he admits that he planned the terrorist attacks, will be presented before a jury.

Cubadebate adds that at the trial, which is scheduled for January 10, 2011, in El Paso, Texas, the intention is not to demonstrate that Posada Carriles is a self-confessed terrorist, but a liar, who committed fraud and lied to US immigration officials upon entering the US illegally in 2005.

Judge Kathleen Cardone affirmed that she decided to allow the presentation of the five-hour recordings by journalist Ann Louise Bardach because she was trustworthy.

Bardach testified on a closed-door hearing on November 15, on her interview with Posada and on the management of the tapes with The New York Times.

As said by The New Herald, attorneys from the Justice Department are planning to present in the trial more than 3 500 pages of official documents from Cuba and Guatemala, detailing the attacks in Havana, the perpetrators, the plotters and the explosive devices used.

FBI agents collected documents showing money transferences of nearly 19 000 US dollars from New Jersey to Posada in El Salvador and Guatemala between October 1996 and January 1998.

The FBI assumes the money was used to finance the attacks. Nevertheless, the judge blocked hundreds of other documents on the links between Posada and the CIA for more than 25 years.

Cuba to publish censored WikiLeaks cables online

Cuba puts 'imperialist' US Wikileaks online
Source: BBC News Online, 24 December 2010.

Cuba says it will publish on the internet more than 2,000 US diplomatic cables released by the website Wikileaks.

The aim is to highlight US "imperialist" policy and efforts to "subvert" the Cuban revolution, the official Cubadebate.cu website said.

The first seven documents, translated into Spanish, are already on the site. In some of them, US diplomats criticise Cuban opposition groups as divided and out of touch with ordinary people.

Of 2,080 leaked cables in which Cuba is mentioned, Wikileaks have so far made public only 62. Cubadebate said it would focus on cables originating in the US interests section in Havana, the source of 507 leaked cables.

It says the documents prove links between Cuba's "so-called internal dissidence" and the US government. They also reveal the continuing "terrorist actions" against Cuba from the US, as well as "complicity" between the CIA and Cuban exile groups, it says.

In other secret cables already released by Wikileaks, US diplomats say opposition leaders are largely unknown in Cuba and unlikely to ever run the country.

US interests section chief Jonathan Farrar said dissidents deserved backing as the "conscience of Cuba," but Washington should look elsewhere, including inside the Cuban government, for possible successors to the Castro regime.

Health secrets
It is not clear if the Cubadebate site will republish leaked cables which analyse the health of the former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, which were released by Wikileaks earlier this month.

In those cables, US diplomats said Mr Castro came "close to death" in 2006 after suffering a perforated intestine and refusing a colostomy.

The health of 84-year-old, who handed power to his brother Raul in 2006, is considered a state secret in Cuba.

The former Cuban leader recently praised Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, saying the leaks of thousands of diplomatic cables had brought the US "morally, to its knees".

"Julian Assange, a man who a few months ago hardly anyone in the world had heard of, is showing that the most powerful empire in history can be defied," Fidel Castro wrote in an article published by Cuban state media.

President Raul Castro said last week that the leaked cables showed that the US still acted as the "world's policeman" despite the "friendly rhetoric" of President Barack Obama.

Earlier this month the Bolivian vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, began putting leaked US cables related to Bolivia on his official website. Mr Garcia Linera said the documents exposed Washington's "interventionist infiltration" in Latin America. Bolivia's left wing government, led by President Evo Morales, is a close ally of Cuba.

US discredited Jamaican-Cuba healthcare

WikiLeaks: US sought to discredit JA-Cuba eye care
Sources: Jamaica Observer and AP, 17 December 2010.


THE United States sought to discredit Cuban healthcare including eye care treatment given to Jamaican patients, which was criticised locally, revealed in leaked United States diplomatic cables obtained by the WikiLeaks website and published by The Guardian newspaper today [17 December 2010].

In the cables US diplomatic staff in Cuba are said to have looked 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."

Concerns expressed by Kingston Public Hospital [KPH] opthamologist, Dr Albert Lue, about the quality of treatment received by Jamaican patients in Cuba, were mentioned under the heading 'Medical Malpractice'.

"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," read a US cable addressed from the US Interests Section in Havana from 2006.

When contacted by the Observer this morning, Dr Lue was unable to comment since he was about to perform an operation at KPH.