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Steve Clemons: Who Is Hot And Who Was Blocked (Or Forgotten) At First White House State Dinner

2009-11-24T20:56:40Z

The White House just released the list of those attending the State Dinner honoring India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Cool list actually. But not just because it's India night -- but because there are a lot of folks that could push other agendas in Obama Land.

Domestic Policy Council chief Melody Barnes, who recently expressed support for "gay marriage" will be there. I admire her and have been irritated by the pressure others in the White House operation have brought on her to retract or reframe her comments.

Gay iconic businessman David Geffen and his excellent partner Jeremy Lingvall will be there and should give Melody Barnes some support -- and to make their case to Michelle and Barack Obama that being absent in today's civil rights movement shouldn't be part of his presidency. Obama and team need to reconnect with the gay community which has a lot of doubt about his support of an end to Don't Ask, Don't Tell and for an end to other anti-gay discriminatory legislation.

But having Geffen and Lingvall at this dinner is a great move -- and was Rahm Emanuel's doing. I haven't been able to credit Emanuel with much lately -- but he did the right thing tonight.

On another front, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman will be there tonight -- and so too will be New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. The connection? Cuba.

Both strongly support moving the US-Cuba relationship into new territory and ending the restrictions on travel to Cuba for American citizens. Oddly, American citizens today can travel to North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, virtually anywhere in the world -- but because the Cold War still rages 90 miles off the US border, US citizens can't go to Cuba freely. This is a self-damaging restriction on American rights that should be ended -- and Berman and Bill Richardson are on the case. Look for them whispering in the President's ear.

After all, India joined 186 other nations in voting against us a few weeks go in the United Nations condemning the US embargo of Cuba.

Intelligence adviser to the President John Brennan will be there -- and so too will be his policy and political rival, White House Counsel Gregory Craig. Greg Craig is leaving the White House on January 10, but Obama really should begin talking to Craig right away about a new role. My suggestion is that he replace Israel/Palestine Envoy George Mitchell, who will not be at the dinner tonight.

Greg Craig would be excellent on the defining Middle East challenges facing the US -- and my suggestion is that we encourage Senator Mitchell to try his hand at brokering peace among warring White House factions around Obama and Rahm Emanuel.

On the journalistic front, Tom Friedman of the New York Times will be there -- and so too will Fareed Zakaria whose star continues to climb. Zakaria has largely been quite positive about the presidency of Barack Obama and not taken any substantial jabs at the White House -- but I suspect that after an invite like this one, he'll have to balance out his hyper-access with some substantial critique of the limited results of the Obama team's foreign policy accomplishments.

Some other cool names: Michele Flournoy, Louisian Governor Bobby Jindal, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Hunter Biden, Jim Steinberg, Jack Lew, Under Secretary of State Bill Burns, the Afghanistan War Tax advocate Representative David Obey, OMB chief Peter Orszag, General Colin Powell, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Ben Rhodes (very cool dude), US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, Vinod Shah and John Doerr, Amartya Sen, Steven Spielberg, oops -- and I forgot Brian Williams.

But some interesting folks are not there.

If I had any influence over the White House social secretary, I would have invited Steve Coll, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the book that Barack Obama has been carrying around with him for 11 months, Ghost Wars. Coll has been one of the most articulate advocates of an India-Pakistan rapprochement that eventually decreases tensions in Afghanistan and the broader region. Coll and Obama went to Occidental College together -- and he would have been on my list for the evening.

Dennis Ross will be there -- but neither George Mitchell nor Richard Holbrooke, who is reportedly off skiing for the weekend. But it would seem to me that Holbrooke's portfolio is closer to India matters than what Ross is doing with Iran.

Where is Brent Scowcroft? Maybe the former National Security Adviser was busy tonight, but really -- he is a guy Obama turns to behind the scenes and should have been invited.

Zbigniew and Emilie Brzezinski are other obvious DC political personalities who are missing from the roster. Brzezinski's early endorsement of President Obama's campaign was significant -- and it is always good to have Brzezinski and Scowcroft on your side -- but neither will be at Obama's side tonight.

Two guys who should have definitely been there and somehow either kept themselves in the background or weren't invited are former National Security Council chief of staff Mark Lippert and current National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough. These guys for quite a while were the most significant axis of power in the foreign policy arena, and Obama trusts them. McDonough works extremely hard, as recently recounted in David Plouffe's book, The Audacity to Win, so may have been too busy. But come to think of it, David Plouffe is not on the list.

Eric Schmidt of Google would have been on my recommended list -- even though General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt is there. I would have not allowed Larry Summers to bring a guest -- and would have asked Paul Volcker to fill that seat.

Where are any of the Republicans for Obama? The three that got that movement going are philanthropist Rita Hauser, former Republican Senator turned independent Lincoln Chafee, and former House International Relations Committee Chairman Jim Leach. Not on the list!

I'd add Susan Eisenhower and General Wesley Clark. Missing in action both -- and they shouldn't be.

I am also surprised not to see Caroline Kennedy -- who may be done with the political scene as far as running for office, but America needs her at State Dinners!

For fun -- I'd include Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, and Arianna Huffington, but they are not on the list.

Gary Hart and former Defense Secretary William Cohen should really be there tonight -- both for the leadership they have shown in foreign policy, but also because they both are reservoirs of smart thinking on India.

Where are Chuck Hagel and David Boren -- the incoming co-chairs of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board....and where is R. Nicholas Burns??? When serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Nick Burns put the US-India nuclear deal together. He worked with Evan Bayh's father -- the much more progressive than Evan former Senator Birch Bayh, who should have been invited.

I'll stop there....but I could keep going. It's as much fun thinking about who is not there as who is.

Except for David Geffen and Jeremy Lingvall who will be the life of the party, I'm sure.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Prieto's New Novel "Travels By Taxi", And Free Speech In Cuba (VIDEO)

2009-11-23T16:02:38Z

Ben Wyskida
The Nation

In the late 1980's noted novelist Jose Manuel Prieto was asked to leave Cuba, at odds with the Castro regime and what he calls the Cuban Revolution's "deep and terrible idealism." In his essay "Travels by Taxi" in this week's Nation Magazine "Fall Books" issue, Prieto describes the challenges of explaining the situation in Cuba to people he meets around the world. In this video conversation, Prieto and Daniel Wilkinson, a Nation contributor and the deputy director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, discuss Prieto's essay, and the topic of freedom of speech for writers and bloggers currently in Cuba.

In "Travels by Taxi", Prieto reflects on the positive and negative consequences of that idealism for Cubans generally, and also on the cultural and political dimensions of Cuba's relationship with the United States. You can read the full essay here.

WATCH:

Tracy L. Barnett: Lighting Out For The South

2009-11-23T08:46:00Z

Tomorrow I will follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, Che Guevara and Celia Cruz to the irrepressible rhythm of the Cuban sun - emanating from Cuban human beings, not my CD collection or a cover band in downtown Houston. Far from the Bayou City, I'll savor the sunset breezes on the Malecon, the famous boulevard that stretches the length of the city along the Bay of Havana. As many a tourist has done before me, I'll sit at Hemingway's favorite bar and have a mojito in his memory.

And while I will embrace the cultural magic of this legendary land, my journey goes beyond culture to something more essential, something universal and urgent.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Salopek recently articulated my thinking better than I could have. Salopek won the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award last month from Colby College, and like a modern-day Horace Greeley, he uttered some sage words of advice to young journalists in his acceptance speech.

"I would advise any ambitious young reporter today not to head to Washington or to London to launch a career but to light out for the South, because that's where the global narrative is rapidly taking shape," he said.

Salopek, for those who may not know, is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who was captured and held captive in Sudan for a month while reporting a National Geographic cover story on Africa's Sahel region. One can only hope that his words will inspire a fraction of the shift in the national zeitgeist reflected in the famous 1800s phrase attributed to Greeley, "Go West, young man."

I am no longer a young reporter, but lighting out for the South is exactly what I am preparing to do. Over course of the next year, I will be traveling through Latin America, reporting on the important and innovative work of world-changers at the grassroots. Here is where the passion and the color and the sazon of the Latino people finds its nexus with what's been called the most urgent issue of our time: remaking society in a way that will avert an ecological catastrophe.

Citizens of the Global South have too often been portrayed as victims, villains and bit characters in the global narrative playing out around us. We see the images of the distressed and dismayed, buffeted by yet another catastrophe. We hear about the druglords and narcotraffickers, the swine flu outbreaks and the hordes of undocumented immigrants besieging our borders.

What I have seen in my travels in the Global South is a sharp contrast. Yes, there is suffering, but as Salopek also noted, there is great joy. He describes Africa, with all its entrenched poverty, as one of the happiest places he's been. Paradoxical, yes; but paradox is the great crucible of the soul, and therein lies the story I am about to tell.

My Global South is peopled with heroes and heroines, men and women who face down their fears and the formidable challenges that stand in their way to produce meaningful change. It's also peopled with ordinary folks who are tackling the same challenges we are, but from a different angle.

My Global South is working quietly to create a model for a future that is ultimately more sustainable than the one that we here in the overdeveloped world have created, and we have barely noticed.

In the year ahead, as humanity wrestles with what may be the greatest challenge of our times - re-creating a society and a sustainable way of life that is consistent with long-term planetary survival - I will be giving voice to some of these unsung world-changers in the pages of The Esperanza Project, a green bilingual (and ultimately, multilingual) news portal for the Americas.

Esperanza is the Spanish word for hope - a commodity seemingly in short supply these days. With the rapidly approaching Copenhagen conference, climate leadership is hard to find - unless one looks south, where Brazil, the world's fourth-largest carbon producer, is pledging to cut emissions by a third; Cuba, which has turned crisis to opportunity with one of the hemisphere's most sustainable infrastructures; and mega-metropolises like Mexico City and Bogota, with green initiatives that go far beyond what most U.S. cities have attempted.
I've already begun the reporting on this project with an October trip to Mexico, where young professionals in Guadalajara are putting their bodies on the line for a more sustainable city, and in Mexico City where a sprawling, 30,000-person complex is making the conversion to an ecovillage.

In Cuba, I'll witness the creative responses to the crisis that followed the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of its main source of petroleum. The country was forced to rapidly rethink its agricultural, energy, transportation and health care systems with a fraction of its previous oil supply, and in a process borne of necessity, created some of the world's most sustainable cities.

And in January, after packing up my belongings into a storage locker and saying goodbye to my family, I'll be hitting the road on a yearlong southward journey seeking and training collaborators for a new media project.

On this news network, Latin Americans are the protagonists of their own narrative, and one that we here in the North would do well to follow, as there is much to be learned from them. We'll be using all the tools of the digital age to tell their stories: video, photography, the new social media and, yes, the good old-fashioned written word.

Jorge Luis Sierra, an award-winning investigative journalist from Mexico City and a pioneer in online media himself, has signed on as The Esperanza Project's Spanish-language editor, giving the project greater depth and an exciting edge. Patricia Martinez, an environmental journalist from Guadalajara, Alejandro Manrique, an investigative journalist from Colombia, and Tami Brunk, an environmental writer based in New Mexico, are also among our collaborators.

We are looking for contributors from all over, and you can be one of them. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter, subscribe to our RSS feed or receive updates in your e-mail. You can post relevant stories in the newsfeed, contribute to the discussion in the comment fields or even write stories of your own, if you feel so inspired.

I hope you will join the hemispheric conversation that is about to begin at TheEsperanzaProject.org. Click around the site, share your thoughts, forward it to your friends. This is how a new online media project is born, and you can be a part of it.

Tracy L. Barnett, www.tracybarnettonline.com, is an independent journalist based in Houston. She is a blogger at The Huffington Post and founder of The Esperanza Project.
Paul Salopek's inspiring speech, delivered last month upon receipt of the Elijah Lovejoy Award, is available in podcast here.

Edward Jay Epstein: Annals of Unsolved Crime: The Oswald Mystery

2009-11-21T11:16:47Z

The endless tangle of questions about bullets, trajectories, wounds, time sequences and
inconsistent testimony that has surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in
1963 and has obsessively fascinated, if not entirely blinded, two generations of self-styled
assassination investigators, probably never will be satisfactorily resolved. Each new release of
documents from the various bureaucracies involved in the nearly half century old investigation
may only deepen the apparent contradictions.

Within this morass of facts. however, there is a central actor, Lee Harvey Oswald. His rifle,
which fired the fatal bullet into the president, was found in the sniper's nest at the Texas Book
Depository. So was his palm print. He had also bought the ammunition. His cartridge cases
were found near the body of a murdered policeman on the route of his flight.

In light of such evidence, the issue that ought to have concerned Americans was not Oswald's
technical guilt but whether he was involved with others in the assassination. Oswald was not a
"loner" in the conventional sense. Ever since he was handed a pamphlet about the Rosenberg
prosecution at the age of 15, he was a joiner, seeking affiliations with groups at home and
abroad. When he was only 16, he wrote the Socialist Party, "I am a Marxist and have been
studying Socialist Principles for well over five years," and he requested information about joining their "Youth League." He subsequently made membership inquiries to such organizations as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, The Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Communist Party, USA-- correspondence that brought him under surveillance by the FBI.

0swald also joined the Marine Corps. And after a two-year stint as a radar operator, Oswald
sought still another affiliation: in October 1959 he became the first Marine to defect to the Soviet
Union. In Moscow, he delivered a letter stating: "I affirm that my allegiance is to the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics." Not only did he publicly renounce his American citizenship, but he
told the U.S. consul that he intended to turn over to the Soviet Union military secrets that he had
acquired while serving in the Marines, adding that he had data of "special interest" to the
Russians. Since he indeed had exposure to military secrets such as the U-2 spy plane, his
defection had serious espionage implications. Oswald thus had not only compromised the secret
data he had come in contact with in the Marines, but put himself firmly in the hands of another
country. He was now completely dependent on Russia for financial support, legal status and
protection.

Before disappearing into the Soviet hinterland for a year, Oswald spelled out his operational
creed in a long letter to his brother. From Moscow, he wrote presciently of his willingness to
commit murder for a political cause: "I want you to understand what I say now, I do not say
lightly, or unknowingly, since I've been in the military .... In the event of war I would kill any
American who put a uniform on in defense of the American Government --", and then ominously
added for emphasis, "Any American." His willingness to act as an assassin was now known to
anyone who read this letter, which included not only his Russian hosts but American intelligence,
since his letter was intercepted by the CIA and microfilmed.

Oswald returned from the Soviet Union in June 1962, joined by his Russian wife Marina, and
settled in Dallas. He then acquired the means for killing. He purchased a rifle with telescopic
sights and a revolver from a mail-order house under a false name. He also lectured a small circle
of friends on the need for violent action rather than mere words. His particular focus was General
Edwin A. Walker, an extreme conservative, who had been active in Dallas organizing anti-Castro
guerrillas. For example, he suggested to a German geologist, Volkmar Schmidt that General
Walker should be treated like a "murderer at large." He did not stop at fierce words. For weeks,
he methodically stalked Walker's movements, photographing his residence from several angles.
He then had his wife photograph him, dressed entirely in black, with his revolver strapped on a
holster on his hip, his sniper's rifle in his right hand, and two newspapers, The Worker and The
Militant, in his left hand. He made three copies of the photograph--one of which he inscribed,
dated "5--IV-63" and sent to a Dallas acquaintance, George De Mohrenschildt (who had also
seen his rifle). He then left with his rifle wrapped in a raincoat, telling his wife he was off to
"target practice," but his target, General Walker, was out of town that night. Five nights later,
Oswald returned to Walker's house, and fired a shot at him that missed his head by inches,
demonstrating to those that saw the photograph that he had the willingness to kill.

After the failed assassination, another friend, Ruth Paine, drove Oswald and his family to New
Orleans, where he became the organizer for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which opposed
the efforts of the Kennedy administration to overthrow Castro. Aside from printing leaflets,
staging demonstrations, getting arrested and appearing on local radio talk shows in support of
Castro that summer, Oswald attempted to befriend leaders of and infiltrate anti-Castro groups
that were organizing sabotage raids against Cuba. By this time, he apparently considered himself
a sleeper operative, writing in August 1963 to the central committee of the Communist Party
USA, and asking, "Whether in your opinion, I can compete with anti-progressive forces above
ground, or whether I should always remain in the background, i.e. underground." During this
hot summer, while practicing sighting his rifle in his backyard, according to his wife, he told her
about his plan to hijack an airliner to Cuba, saying he might earn a position in Castro's
government. Then, on September 9th, in a report that appeared on the front page of the New
Orleans Times-Picayune, Castro, who had been the target of a number of assassination attempts
by the CIA, warned that if American leaders continued "aiding plans to eliminate Cuban leaders
... they themselves will not be safe."

The implication of this warning was not lost on Oswald. Telling his wife that they might never
meet again, he left New Orleans two weeks later, headed for the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.
To convince the Cubans of his bona fides-- and seriousness--he had prepared a dossier on
himself, which included a 10 page resume, outlining his revolutionary activities, newspaper
clippings about his defection to the Soviet Union, documents he had stolen from a printing
company engaged in classified map reproduction for the US Army, his correspondence with the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee executives, and, as if to demonstrate his lethal capability , the
photographs linking him to the Walker shooting.

Oswald applied for a visa at the Cuban Embassy on the morning of September 27, 1963. He
said that he wanted to stop in Havana en route to the Soviet Union. On the application, the
consular office who interviewed him noted: "The applicant states that he is a member of the
American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."
Despite such recommendations, Oswald was told that he needed a Soviet visa before the Cuban
visa could be issued. He argued over this requisite with the Cuban counsel, Eusebio Azque, in
front of witnesses, and reportedly made wild claims about services he might perform for the
Cuban cause. During the next five days, he traveled back and forth between the Soviet and Cuban
embassies attempting to straighten out the difficulty. When he telephoned from the Cuban
embassy to arrange an appointment at the Soviet Embassy with an officer called Valery
Vladimirovich Kostikov, he set off alarm bells at the CIA, which had been surreptitiously
monitoring the phone line. Kostikov was a KGB officer who had been under close surveillance in
Mexico by the FBI. By the time the CIA had identified Oswald, and notified the FBI, he had left
Mexico.

When he returned to Dallas, Oswald assumed a different identity--"O.H.Lee"--and, separating
himself from his family, he moved to a rooming house. He also forbade his wife from divulging
his whereabouts.

On October 18th, Oswald's visa was approved by the Cuban Foreign Ministry despite the fact that he had
not officially received a Soviet visa, as required. Apparently unaware of this development, he wrote
another letter to the Soviet Embassy, referring to his meeting with Kostikov in Mexico, and
adding cryptically: "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the
embassy there would have had time to complete our business." When FBI counterintelligence
intercepted this letter in Washington. it urgently requested its field agent in Dallas to question
him.

The FBI agent, James Hosty, unable to locate Oswald, warned his wife she could be sent back to
Russia. When his wife told him about the FBI warning he threatened to bomb its Dallas office.
By this time, Oswald had a menial $1.50 hour job at the Texas Book Depository, which
overlooked the convergence of the three main streets into central Dallas.

On November 22nd, at 12:30 pm, as the President's car passed the book depository, a burst of
rifle fire fatally wounded him. Less than two hours later, a Dallas policeman had been shot and
killed, and, near the shooting, Oswald was arrested with the murder weapon in his hand. He was
charged with killing the policeman and, shortly afterwards, assassinating the President. Then, on
November 24th, Oswald was shot to death in Dallas police headquarters by night club owner
Jack Ruby.

The Warren Commission concluded--rightly I now believe--that Oswald fired all the shots that
killed the President. But conspiracies do not necessarily require multiple rifleman to accomplish
their purpose. And what the Warren Commission could not absolutely rule out, as two of its
members pointed out to me, was the possibility that Oswald had acted at the behest of others.
After all, he had advertised his willingness to undertake a high-profile assassination by
circulating photographs connecting himself to the shooting of General Walker. Any party who
was monitoring his activities in Dallas, New Orleans or Mexico City could have discerned from
them that he was a potential assassin awaiting a mission. With his mind set on such violent
actions as hijacking a plane, blowing up the FBI office, or killing "any American," not much
would be required to prod him to violence. He had sought liaisons in dangerous quarters and
someone could have provided him with an inducement. But with Oswald forever silenced by
Ruby, and intelligence services capable of expunging embarrassing data about their contacts
with a Presidential assassins from their files, it is doubtful that we will ever know who, if
anyone, influenced Oswald to act on November 22, 1963.

Yoani Sanchez: Obama Answers Top Cuban Blogger

2009-11-19T11:38:48Z

HAVANA — President Barack Obama has answered questions submitted by a celebrated Cuban blogger, saying he isn't interested in "talking for the sake of talking" with Raul Castro and indicating he won't visit the island until the communist government changes its ways.

In an unusual written response to Yoani Sanchez, who has gained international acclaim for daring to criticize her government online, Obama also said it is up to Cuba to act if it wants normal relations with Washington, saying that a true thaw in nearly 50 years of deep-freeze "will require action by the Cuban government."

Yoani Sanchez: President Obama's Answers to My Questions

2009-11-19T10:03:51Z

As I reported yesterday, I submitted seven questions to the American president, Barack Obama. He kindly took the time to respond; following are the answers I received from the White House.

President Obama's Responses to Yoani Sanchez's Questions

Thank you for this opportunity to exchange views with you and your readers in Cuba and around the world and congratulations on receiving the Maria Moore Cabot Prize award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for coverage of Latin America that furthers inter-American understanding. You richly deserve the award. I was disappointed you were denied the ability to travel to receive the award in person.

Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba. It is telling that the Internet has provided you and other courageous Cuban bloggers with an outlet to express yourself so freely, and I applaud your collective efforts to empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology. The government and people of the United States join all of you in looking forward to the day all Cubans can freely express themselves in public without fear and without reprisals.

QUESTION #1. FOR YEARS, CUBA HAS BEEN A U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ISSUE AS WELL AS A DOMESTIC ONE, IN PARTICULAR BECAUSE OF THE LARGE CUBAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY. FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, IN WHICH OF THE TWO CATEGORIES SHOULD THE CUBAN ISSUE FIT?

All foreign policy issues involve domestic components, especially issues concerning neighbors like Cuba from which the United States has a large immigrant population and with which we have a long history of relations. Our commitment to protect and support free speech, human rights, and democratic governance at home and around the world also cuts across the foreign policy/domestic policy divide. Also, many of the challenges shared by our two countries, including migration, drug trafficking, and economic issues, involve traditional domestic and foreign policy concerns. Thus, U.S. relations with Cuba are rightly seen in both a foreign and domestic policy context.

QUESTION 2: SHOULD YOUR ADMINISTRATION BE WILLING TO PUT AN END TO THIS DISPUTE, WOULD IT RECOGNIZE THE LEGITIMACY OF THE RAUL CASTRO GOVERNMENT AS THE ONLY VALID INTERLOCUTOR IN THE EVENTUAL TALKS?

As I have said before, I am prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a range of issues of mutual interest as we have already done in the migration and direct mail talks. It is also my intent to facilitate greater contact with the Cuban people, especially among divided Cuban families, which I have done by removing U.S. restrictions on family visits and remittances.

We seek to engage with Cubans outside of government as we do elsewhere around the world, as the government, of course, is not the only voice that matters in Cuba. We take every opportunity to interact with the full range of Cuban society and look forward to the day when the government reflects the freely expressed will of the Cuban people.

QUESTION 3: HAS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT RENOUNCED THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AS THE WAY TO END THE DISPUTE?

The United States has no intention of using military force in Cuba. The United States supports increased respect for human rights and for political and economic freedoms in Cuba, and hopes that the Cuban government will respond to the desire of the Cuban people to enjoy the benefits of democracy and be able to freely determine Cuba's future. Only the Cuban people can bring about positive change in Cuba and it is our hope that they will soon be able to exercise their full potential.

QUESTION 4: RAUL CASTRO HAS SAID PUBLICLY THAT HE IS OPEN TO DISCUSS ANY TOPIC WITH THE U.S. PROVIDED THERE IS MUTUAL RESPECT AND A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. IS RAUL ASKING TOO MUCH?

For years, I have said that it is time to pursue direct diplomacy, without preconditions, with friends and foes alike. I am not interested, however, in talking for the sake of talking. In the case of Cuba, such diplomacy should create opportunities to advance the interests of the United States and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.

We have already initiated a dialogue on areas of mutual concern - safe, legal, and orderly migration, and reestablishing direct mail service. These are small steps, but an important part of a process to move U.S.-Cuban relations in a new and more positive, direction. Achieving a more normal relationship, however, will require action by the Cuban government.

QUESTION 5: IN A HYPOTHETICAL U.S.-CUBA DIALOGUE, WOULD YOU ENTERTAIN PARTICIPATION FROM THE CUBAN EXILE COMMUNITY, THE CUBA-BASED OPPOSITION GROUPS AND NASCENT CUBAN CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS?

When considering any policy decision, it is critical to listen to as many diverse voices as possible. When it comes to Cuba, we do exactly that. The U.S. government regularly talks with groups and individuals inside and outside of Cuba that have an interest in our relations. Many do not always agree with the Cuban government; many do not always agree with the United States government; and many do not agree with each other. What we should all be able to agree on moving forward is the need to listen to the concerns of Cubans who live on the island. This is why everything you are doing to project your voice is so important - not just for the advancement of the freedom of expression itself, but also for people outside of Cuba to gain a better understanding of the life, struggles, joys, and dreams of Cubans on the island.

QUESTION 6: YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES. BUT, CUBANS CONTINUE TO HAVE LIMITED ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. HOW MUCH OF THIS IS DUE TO THE U.S. EMBARGO AND HOW MUCH OF IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT?

My administration has taken important steps to promote the free flow of information to and from the Cuban people particularly through new technologies. We have made possible greater telecommunications links to advance interaction between Cuban citizens and the outside world. This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba, for example, by expanding opportunities for fiber optic and satellite transmissions to and from Cuba. This will not happen overnight. Nor will it have its full effect without positive actions by the Cuban government. I understand the Cuban government has announced a plan to provide Cubans greater access to the Internet at post offices. I am following this development with interest and urge the government to allow its people to enjoy unrestricted access to the internet and to information. In addition, we welcome suggestions regarding areas in which we can further support the free flow of information within, from, and to Cuba.

QUESTION 7: WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO TRAVEL TO OUR COUNTRY?

I would never rule out a course of action that could advance the interests of the United States and advance the cause of freedom for the Cuban people. At the same time, diplomatic tools should only be used after careful preparation and as part of a clear strategy. I look forward to visit a Cuba in which all citizens enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other citizens in the hemisphere.

Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.

Steve Clemons: Howard Berman/Richard Lugar Bipartisan Team Call for End to Cuba Travel Ban

2009-11-17T02:34:12Z

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R-IN) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) have jointly written a compelling case to end the travel ban for all Americans desiring to go to Cuba.

In fact, their piece, titled "Lift the Ban -- Let Americans Visit Cuba" really calls for ending travel restrictions on Americans going anywhere since Cuba is the only place in the world where America's democratic government restricts the travel freedom of its citizens.

It is a remarkable but true fact that the US government cannot stop regular Americans from traveling to North Korea, Burma, Iran, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Congo, or any other complicated place in the world -- except the one spot where the Cold War still freezes time -- Cuba.

The Lugar-Berman piece reflects a sensible bipartisan realism about the fact that five decades of an embargo have dramatically hurt US interests and have only perpetuated a dysfunctional status quo in US-Cuba relations.

President Obama constantly calls for serious bipartisanship in national security matters -- and he can pluck this Lugar-Berman prize off the tree easily if he has the will (and time on his overcrowded calendar). The House bill to end the travel ban to Cuba has been led by Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA) on the Dem side and Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) who often says that it's supposed to be Communist governments, not Democratic ones, that impose restrictions on their citizen's choices to travel. The House Bill now has 180 cosponsors comprised of both Republicans and Democrats.

The companion Senate bill has 34 Senate cosponsors. Informal whip counts put the House bill at 205 votes -- within striking distance of the 218 needed, and between 61-64 in the Senate.

But thus far Barack Obama's team continues to condition any further openings to Cuba with a requirement that Cuba begin to demonstrate key political reforms on top of the fact that Obama's presidency has done the ironic thing of opening up travel for a "class" of Americans (those with Cuban relatives) while excluding all other Americans from that legal privilege -- I would actually say, "legal right". This exclusion of some but not all is something Obama should not want too long on his legacy sheet.

Lugar and Berman open:

U.S. law lets American citizens travel to any country on earth, friend or foe -- with one exception: Cuba. It's time for us to scrap this anachronistic ban, imposed during one of the chilliest periods of the Cold War.

Legislation to abolish restrictions on travel to Cuba has been introduced in both chambers of Congress. And on Thursday the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing examining the rationale for the travel ban.

This ban has prevented contact between Cubans and ordinary Americans, who serve as ambassadors for the democratic values we hold dear. Such contact would help break Havana's chokehold on information about the outside world. And it would contribute to improving the image of the United States, particularly in Latin America, where the U.S. embargo on Cuba remains a centerpiece of anti-Washington grievances.

While opponents argue that repealing the travel ban would indicate approval of the Cuban human rights record, many human rights organizations -- among them Freedom House and Human Rights Watch -- have called for abolishing travel restrictions.

They go on to make the same point, namely " "isolation from outside visitors only strengthens the Castro regime," that former AEI neoconservative staffer and current Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw "Radek" Sikorski made in his own 2005 essay on Cuba in National Review. Bush Institute for Public Policy Director and former G.W. Bush administration Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy James Glassman has also argued that the travel ban and embargo undermine American interests.

It is through people to people exchange that both Cubans and Americans will become exposed to each other's worlds and political realities. They argue that more financial flow inside Cuba will strengthen the underground economy, a source of independence and potential liberalism inside Cuba.

Berman and Lugar state flat out with regard to the notion that restricting US travel to Cuba generates any leverage at all after five decades of failure on this track: "Conditionality is not leverage in this case."

The White House National Security Council staff reading this really should articulate a believable counter-point to Senator Lugar's and Chairman Berman's compelling argument if it is going to continue to 'cling to conditionality' before making further moves. What is the empirical basis for believing that putting Cuban responses before American interests will have any impact or makes sense?

Others who Barack Obama respects -- including former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State and Treasury George P. Shultz -- have said that both the travel ban and the embargo make no sense as foreign policy. Shultz has called the travel ban "lunacy".

There are not many occasions when there is such a large squad of Democrats and Republicans in the same space.

Howard Berman is on board. Richard Lugar is on board. Many others are as well. Call John Kerry -- and I bet he's on board too.

It's the only course that ultimately makes sense. As David Rothkopf said at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting just before this past year's Summit of the Americas, US-Cuba relations are the "Edsel of US foreign policy."

It's time for Barack Obama to wake up on this and realize that he and his team are the outliers in a hefty and healthy bipartisan move in the Latin America portfolio.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Yoani Sanchez: The Younger Generation is Coming Like a Whirlwind to Dismantle Everything

2009-11-16T23:11:29Z

At times here, one breathes in the aroma of a funeral. On the television news the images of funeral ceremonies have become common, almost monthly: a bugle note calling for silence, twenty-one gun salutes, soldiers marching, tears and words of farewell. They initiate new mausoleums and restore existing ones. Added to this is the fevered mania to commemorate anniversaries of some event, to sing the praises of what previously occurred on these days marked by obligatory celebration. The senile worry about preserving memories has displaced the restless creativity of youth.

The Cuban population has aged, in part due to the low birthrate, the steady emigration of the youngest, and rising life expectancy. But the graying is accentuated among those at the country's helm. Perhaps because of this, analysts are increasingly inclined to use the word gerontocracy to define our form of government. The definition may seem inaccurate if one looks at the average age of the deputies to the National Assembly, but it is just the opposite if one considers that it has been more than a dozen years since there has been rejuvenation within the Communist Party Central Committee. There are a good number of ministers still under sixty, but the largest share of power is concentrated in the hands of septuagenarians and octogenarians.

Instead of accelerating forward progress, these veterans delight in looking back at the stretch traveled and demand appreciation for the achievement. As they prepare for what will undoubtedly be the most spectacular funeral in the history of Cuba, or what some call "the biological solution," the mournful saga that floods the television programming seems like a dress rehearsal. The noise of the ceremonial cannons doesn't allow them to hear the new generation knocking at the door, coming like a whirlwind to dismantle everything. Sweeping away--in passing--the odor of dried-up flowers we sense all around us.

Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.

How Cuban American Hard-Liners Influence U.S. Policy With Campaign Donations: Report

2009-11-16T00:22:02Z

While U.S. policy toward Cuba has opened up since President Barack Obama took office, a new report from Public Campaign, an organization dedicated to reforming campaign financing, raises the question of whether hard-line Cuban Americans will succeed in stifling further changes in U.S.-Cuba relations through their campaign contributions to members of Congress.

According to the report, the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, along with a "network of hard-line Cuban American donors," have made over $10 million in campaign donations since the 2004 election cycle, with 337 federal candidates receiving funds through the PAC.

The report claims that the candidates that received these contributions have "more often than not cast their votes on Cuba policy issues with the hard-liners." It highlights a group of 18 House members, a mix of Democrats and Republicans, whose voting patterns appeared to have shifted significantly since receiving their first contribution from the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC. Having once voted consistently in favor of easing relations with Cuba, these members were now more often found to be questioning any such shift, the report concludes. Unsurprisingly, as the power in Washington has shifted, so too has the money. In 2004, 71 percent of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC's money went to Republicans; in 2010, the figure is projected to be 76 percent to Democrats.

When it comes to public sentiment toward the U.S.'s relationship with Cuba, the Public Campaign report insists that the hard-liners, in their opposition to repealing such things as the travel ban for Americans, are out of step with where the majority of the country is heading. A poll by Bendixen and Associates conducted in September 2009, which is cited in the report, found that 59 percent of Cuban-Americans favored lifting the travel ban for all Americans. Similarly, a national survey conducted by World Public Opinion in April claimed that 70 percent of Americans were in favor of being allowed to travel to Cuba. A congressional hearing is due to be held on November 19 by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the topic of lifting the travel ban to Cuba.

In April, Obama abandoned restrictions on Cuban Americans' ability to travel to the island and send money to relatives, a move described by the New York Times at the time as the "most significant shift in United States policy toward Cuba in decades." Obama also cleared the way for telecommunications companies to pursue licensing agreement in the country. The U.S.'s trade embargo with Cuba, however, remains firmly in place.

Pat Quinn, Dick Durbin Try To Build Support For Gitmo Inmates' Relocation To Thomson Prison In Illinois

2009-11-15T19:06:56Z

CHICAGO — Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin on Sunday tried to build support and counter criticism of a proposal to sell a prison in rural northwestern Illinois to the federal government to house Guantanamo Bay detainees and other inmates.

Federal officials are expected to visit the maximum security Thomson Correctional Center, about 150 miles west of Chicago, on Monday.

Thomson Prison In Illinois Is Leading Choice In Obama's Search For Stateside Gitmo

2009-11-14T17:34:58Z

CHICAGO — The Obama administration may buy a near-empty prison in rural northwestern Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay along with federal inmates, a White House official said Saturday.

The maximum-security Thomson Correctional Facility, about 150 miles west of Chicago, was one of several evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and emerged as a leading option to house the detainees, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because a decision has not been made.

Cuba Bodybuilding Competition (PHOTOS)

2009-11-14T17:27:23Z

Last weekend was Cuba's 22nd regional and national bodybuilding competition, which took place in the Mariana Grajales cinema in Havana, and featured some 50 contestants from the island. Bodybuilding is one of those activities that is simultaneously fascinating and slightly discomforting, and the photos below speak to its unique, if also slightly peculiar, aura. Let us know which of these pictures, and bodybuilders, you like the most, and also let us know what you think about bodybuilding as a sport.

Yoani Sanchez: Terror: The Last Recourse of the Dictatorship

2009-11-13T03:36:23Z

This guest column was written by Miriam Celaya, whose blog, Without Evasion, recently won the prize for Best Journalism Blog in the Virtual Island contest for Cuban blogs. Miriam writes from her home in Havana, Cuba. Miriam's blog is available in English translation here.

Terror is the supreme recourse of dictatorships. Curiously, it is also the most pronounced manifestation of their own terror: they fear the words, freedom, lucidity, transparency and dignity of those who dare to challenge them. The Cuban dictatorship wasn't going to be the exception; now it decided to stop the sham of discretion behind which it hid its fierce side, and to show its dirty fingernails.

The assault and battery inflicted Friday, November 6th on Yoani Sanchez, who was lifted by force and in broad daylight into a car with private plates by several unidentified burly individuals in plain clothes, demonstrates not only the degree of helplessness of people under dictatorial regimes, but also the rampant immunity of the gorillas and of the regime that allows such outrage against citizens who cause them discomfort. Uniformed police, meanwhile, enthusiastically supported this pack of hounds' outrage and for their part drove the blogger Claudia Cadelo and Orlando Luis's girlfriend away in a patrol car and left them on a corner of the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood as well.

Yoani, along with writer Orlando Luis Pardo, was literally kidnapped from the very central Avenue G, in Vedado, beaten and pinned down before the astonished and terrified gaze of dozens of people who had the dubious and involuntary privilege of attending a scene that accurately reproduced those starring Batista's henchmen, Pinochet's soldiers, or any of the other dictators that History has known, not to mention its similarity to Mafia methods or those of the Colombian narco-guerrillas. Fist blows against Yoani's slight body, inflicted by men who kept her, half suffocated, head against the floor, in the back seat of a car, while they justified the grotesque abuse by screaming that it was about counterrevolutionaries; such nonsense in a country where there isn't even a hint of revolution any more!

They want to curb the Island's growing citizen rebirth with terror. And the truth is that, somehow, they manage to sow fear. In my case, for instance, I feel a deep terror on thinking that when this happened I was not there to support Yoani and our other friends. I dread imagining that they might lash out with their fury against any free Cuban and I might not be close-by to scream with all my might against such repression and call for an end to tyranny. The fate is finally sealed: terror is the cowardice of those who apply it, not of the recipient; it is the beginning of the end of dictators.

With this public act of bestiality against a helpless woman, the Cuban dictatorship has just abandoned any pretense and has entered the era of impudence: a clear message of what can happen to those who might feel emboldened to exercise freedom. We certainly can expect more repression and more violence because this government is truly predicated on hate. Let's see now how the eternally near-sighted--those who try to place a pious veil about the Cuban reality--justify this, while they continue to conciliatorily shake the dirty hands of the Castro regime.

Barth Anderson: Big Ag Takes Aim at Cuban Embargo

2009-11-12T14:40:05Z

You have to give Big Ag its due: Big Soy and friends are pushing hard to end the ridiculous US embargo of Cuba. From Hoosier Ag Today:

The American Soybean Association reports that legislation to expand agricultural trade to Cuba will be introduced by Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, Representative Jerry Moran, Agriculture Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro, and Representative Jo Ann Emerson.

It might seem ironic to see a Blue Dog like Collin Peterson and a rectangle-state Republican like Rep. Jerry Moran advocating for trade with Socialists. But this is an old tune of theirs, actually. In particular, Jerry Moran has been pushing for normalization of Cuba trade relations for a decade and frequently took on the Florida-pandering Bush administration for its efforts to strengthen the embargo. Smart dude. If he's successful in busting down trade-barriers for his farmers, you'll see a Jerry Moran International Airport in Topeka.

And the time seems uniquely ripe to tear down this wall. High Plains Journal reports:

The American Farm Bureau Federation and Grocery Manufacturers Association...joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups to urge [then] President-elect Obama to begin the process of restoring relations [to Cuba].

Furthermore, HPJ says that attitudes toward Cuba are shifting, even in anti-Castro quarters of Miami:

A recent poll of Cuban-Americans in south Florida found 55 percent favor ending the trade embargo and 65 percent favor restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba. Even larger majorities favored lifting travel restrictions. It is the first time since the poll began in 1997 that a majority favored lifting the embargo.

Before scheduling daily flights from Topeka to Havana, though, it's worth noting that

Cuban-American members of Congress from the Miami area are likely to resist any effort to relax Washington's trade restrictions.(High Plains Journal)

Agreed. It's one thing for recent arrivals and third generation Cuban American kids to skew poll numbers, and it's another entirely to crack the back of old anti-Castro Money.

But this isn't the Bush White House anymore, and while President Obama extended the Cuba embargo for one year (he's got some other stuff happening right now), spring is in the air for DC and Havana. In that light, one assumes that if Big Ag gets its wish and forces the embargo issue, we'll see a Farm State vs. Florida skirmish next year, and, just to ice up that delicious cake, the potential for a deepening Republican versus Republican civil war.

Yoani Sanchez: The Faces of Those Who Repress Us [PHOTOS]

2009-11-12T13:08:19Z

After what happened last Friday--my kidnapping and beating by plainclothes State Security agents--I decided to bring to light a series of pictures of people who watch and harass me.

My relationship with the movies has always been from the seats in the shadow of a room where you can hear the sound of an old projector. It kept on like this until I started to live in my own movie, a type of thriller of the pursuers and the pursued, where it is up to me to escape and hide. The reason for this sudden change from spectator to protagonist has been this blog, located in this wide space--so little touched by celluloid--that is the Internet. I woke up two years ago with the desire to write the true script of my days, and not the rosy comedy they show in the official newspapers. I went, then, from watching movies to inhabiting one.

I have my doubts whether some day I'll see the curtain come down and be able to leave the movie theater alive. The long film that we have been living for decades in Cuba does not seem to be close to the point where the credits are shown and the screen goes blank. However, the spectators are no longer interested in the interminable filmstrip shown by the authorized projectionists. Rather, they seem captivated by the vision of those who create a blog, a blank page where they record the questions, the frustrations and the joys of citizens.

Believing myself Kubrick or Tarantino, I have begun to post a testimony of these creatures who watch and harass us. Beings from the shadows who, like vampires, feed on our human happiness and inoculate us with terror through punches, threats and blackmail. Individuals trained in coercion who could not foresee their conversion into hunters who are hunted, faces trapped on camera, mobile phones, or in the curious retina of a citizen. Accustomed to gathering evidence for this dossier about each of us kept in some drawer, in some office, now they are surprised that we make an inventory of their gestures, their eyes, a meticulous record of their abuses.

Here is a series of photos taken earlier this year near my house.

Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.

Steve Clemons: Cuba's Soft Power: Exporting Doctors Rather Than Revolution

2009-11-12T11:39:11Z

Recently, Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice went at it during a session when 187 Members of the United Nations were about to vote against the United States and two allies on the issue of the US embargo against Cuba.

Rodriguez said "President Obama has a historical opportunity to lead a change of policy toward Cuba and the lifting of the blockade," but also said "the blockade is an uncultured act of arrogance," "an act of genocide," and that the embargo was "ethically unacceptable."

I would have encouraged Cuba's foreign minister to say instead that the embargo was an anachronism of the Cold War, has not achieved the goals the US had for it, harmed both Cuban and US interests, and that the countries should realize its the 21st century and find a way to move forward.

But given the pitch of things that day at the UN, Ambassador Susan Rice threw some tough words back at Foreign Minister Rodriguez calling his remarks "straight out of the Cold War era" and "hostile."

She went on to underscore the more substantively important point that President Obama and the US were prepared to engage Cuba on a number of issues of mutual interest and concern. That at least is good news and really the only statement that mattered.

But theatrics and rhetoric aside, what is astonishingly absent from America's autopilot driven position on the Embargo is that with the end of the Cold War, Cuba is not exporting arms and revolutionaries -- Cuba is exporting doctors.

There are more than 51,000 Cuban doctors and health care professionals working around the world today, primarily in developing nations. Many of these are working collaboratively with US and European NGOs actually in third countries -- particularly in Africa in dealing with AIDS/HIV, river blindness, malaria, and a number of health maladies.

America and Cuba both maintain too much a habit of Cold War era rhetoric, but the facts on the ground are that Cuba is not a threat to the United States or its allies in any fundamental ways that justify the kind of barriers we have erected between Americans and Cubans -- at the government to government as well as at the people to people levels.

The other thing that US diplomats could do to constructively redirect a history of escalating, toxic public exchanges is to commend Bruno Rodriguez for his chapter in Cuba's "soft power" history.

In the Obama administration's roster of foreign policy practitioners today, people like Anne-Marie Slaughter, James Steinberg, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Richard Holbrooke and others have done roll up their sleeves work in developing nations -- but I think all of them would admire the year of humanitarian service Bruno Rodriguez did on the Pakistan/Kashmir border.

To make a long and very fascinating story short, Fidel Castro organized a team of 1,500 doctors into the "Henry Reeves Brigade" and offered them to the US to provide support for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Predictably, the US declined the gesture. Shortly after, a major earthquake hit the heavily Islamic fundamentalist region along the border of Pakistan and Kashmir.

Castro sent the brigade to Pakistan to help earthquake survivors and those suffering long-term shock and other problems related to the earthquake in the months after.

The current Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez -- who was then a deputy foreign minister -- was dispatched along with the Reeves Brigade to oversee the medical operations in the mountainous, difficultly accessed earthquake zone.

Americans and Europeans also sent medical teams -- one major base camp each that stayed about a month each. The Cubans sent seven major base camps and thirty field hospitals, remaining for a year.

Reportedly, the Cubans, American and European medical personnel coordinated well in the field and worked together without incident. In one case, a Cuban doctor had to dress in a full hijab as a female doctor in order to deliver the baby of a local woman -- who would have been subjected to harsh punishment if known that a male doctor did this. But the Cubans did send many female doctors and health professionals as well.

At the time this all occurred, Pakistan and Cuba did not have diplomatic relations -- and today they do. And their are Cuban doctors doing work in Pakistan today -- and Pakistani students studying at the Latin American School of Medicine.

The Henry Reeves Brigade has, since Pakistan, been deployed to help in the great Sichuan Earthquake in China and also to do disaster relief in Latin America. The Brigade now has more than 3,000 health care professionals who are experts in disaster-related medical support.

This is a case of soft power with hard results, a story that anyone can commend despite all of the other warts and problems in a relationship. Americans and Cubans worked together to help others -- and nation to nation opportunities for Cuba and Pakistan grew out of that engagement.

It would be useful to see some of this kind of material make it into our diplomatic posturing as we work to get past the past.

The Cold War should be over, and once we begin to find narratives that can fill up the pages of the present and the future, that were not written as the result of inertia and being on auto-pilot, we can move to the next, more constructive phase in US-Cuba relations.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Yoani Sanchez: "Tell Yoani to Shut Up"

2009-11-11T20:56:28Z

Orlando Luis Pardo and Yoani Sanchez in Havana, 4 days after they were kidnapped and beaten by plain clothes security agents.

Yoani's shirt says, "Don't hit me, I'm just a blogger"
Photo: Fotos Desde Cuba

Note: This prose-poem guest column was written by Orlando Luis Pardo who was kidnapped and beaten together with me on the evening of November 6.

I never told her to shut up
by Orlando Luis Pardo
Havana, Cuba

Look at my neck.
It was nothing.
A belt of red spots from too much force by a teenage officer and a case of my bad coagulation.

Look at my neck in the jpg.
According to how you interpret it, it is insulting or interesting to tell.
In the beginning there was no Verbum, only Barbariem. Non-verbal violence pulse.

After today, walking in the Vedado neighbohood will be an extreme experience.
The Avenue of the Presidents will refer, now, to a post-princely prison.

Within seconds, Yoani and I had our arms twisted in a car imported from our Stepmother Country: China  My head against the car's carpet, and Yoani with her feet in the air.  I couldn't see her, identifying her only because she would not be quiet. 

In seconds, I heard her scream with the vehemence of a being who is the freest person on the planet. 

She had a Cuban man's knee nailed against her chest, and still she rebuked him. 

From that energy I borrowed the strength to revive a bit my own voice. 

They told me to tell Yoani to be quiet.  That phrase, pronounced by three unknowns in the name of the Cuban State, sums up the obsolescence and obscenity of this country. 

"Tell Yoani to shut up."
"Tell Yoani to shut up."
"Tell Yoani to shut up."

Despotically, they deposited us in a corner that I confused with the patio of a barracks.  I was dizzy.  I felt disgusted, I wanted to vomit.  I could not move my neck. 

I embraced Yoani (which I'd never done before).  She began to sob.  The greatest woman in Cuba seemed like a tiny girl of zero years.  Because Yoani is that: the future of Cuba crystallized in a fragile and irrepressible body.  I kissed her head. Her hair, pulled with such hate, smelled like freedom.  

Once.  Twice.  Ten. Uncountable times I kissed her ageless head. 

But I never told her to shut up. 
But I never told her to shut up. 
But I never told her to shut up.

Orlando's neck Friday evening just after the kidnapping.

Orlando Luis Pardo's blog, Boring Home Utopics, won the prize for the Best Photography Blog in the recent Virtual Island blog contest.

Jim Luce: El Museo del Barrio: Fifth Avenue on Fire

2009-11-10T10:54:51Z

Forty years ago, El Museo del Barrio was a dream contained in
a single classroom so far north that “sophisticated” Manhattanites would not
visit there after dark.

It was founded in 1969
by artist and educator Raphael Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of parents,
educators, artists, and activists who noted that mainstream museums largely
ignored Latino artists.

Last week, on a cold,
windy night, over 1,600 New Yorkers arrived to welcome the opening of the
Museum after more than a year of renovations.
The place was so alive, so hot – so on fire.

It was the
invitation-only inaugural preview and members’ reception of two shows, Voces y Visiones,
and Nexus
New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis.

I focus in this piece on Nexus New York, and in the Daily
Kos on the second show Voces y
Visiones.

In celebration of El
Museo’s reopening, the Empire State Building was illuminated with the museum’s
signature mango-yellow color.

“El Museo del Barrio is
at the junction of Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue and the gateway to El Barrio, a
neighborhood rich in Latino traditions,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, El Museo’s
Director and CEO.

“Our holdings and
programs span from our Puerto Rican roots to a wide range of Latino, Caribbean
and Latin American cultures,” Julián said.

I was delighted to meet
and chat with the curator of Nexus New
York, Deborah Cullen, who gave me a detailed understanding of her new
exhibition.

I was delighted to meet and chat with the exhibition’s curator, Deborah
Cullen.

“Nexus New York covers new ground for most viewers,” Deborah told me.
“The connections brought to life in our
galleries have never been concretely explored before – by bringing the actual
artworks from the times together, we are allowing them to speak for themselves
and the vibrant dialogues occurring from early in the 20th century.”

“The longstanding
intertwinement of Latin American artists in what has been thought of as
“American” modernism, their presence and impact, is very enduring, rich, and
multi-faceted,” she explained.

This landmark exhibition
examines pioneering Caribbean and Latin American artists who lived in New York
City before World War II and shaped the American avant-garde.

El Museo has unveiled a new visual
identity that reflects the vitality of its offerings and

programs. The new visual identity is the work of Miguel Sal, executed by Elvira
Moran

Between 1900 and 1942,
New York City was the site of extraordinary creative exchange where artists
could share ideas in a global context.

Nexus: New York is the first exhibition to explore the profound way
these artistic exchanges between Latino and non-Latino artists deeply impacted
art and art movements in this city and numerous countries for years to come.

Chief among them were Frida
Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Miguel Covarrubias – familiar to me from trips to the
museums of Mexico City. Works from each
of the artists’ are on show in el Museo’s Nexus
New York.

Salvador Dali, Robert
Motherwell, Wilfredo Lam, and Marcel Duchamp are also represented in the show.

The exhibition is also
deeply representative of El Museo’s mission to produce new scholarship on the
significant yet sometimes overlooked contributions made by Latino, Caribbean,
and Latin American artists.

More than 200 important
works by artists from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, as well as by artists working in
the United States, are presented together for the first time.

Chatting with El Museo del Barrio staff Michelle
de Leon and Mariana Salem.

The swiftly-changing
urban landscape before and between the World Wars inspired the erosion of
artistic boundaries and fostered a new climate of modernist experimentation.

Frida Kahlo’s haunting
work memorializing socialite Dorothy Hale’s 1938 suicide in New York is
included in the exhibition.

Frida Kahlo. The Suicide of
Dorothy Hale (El suicidio de Dorothy Hale). 1939.

Nexus New York focuses on key artists from the Caribbean and Latin
America who entered into dynamic cultural and social dialogues with the
American-based avant-garde and participated in the development of a new modern
discourse.

The exhibit features for
the first time ever, a fresco panel from Diego Rivera’s New Workers’ School
Cycle, completed in late 1933 after his ill-fated Rockefeller Center mural, one
of the most significant art world controversies ever to take place on U.S.
soil.

This scandal involved
Rivera’s 1933 mural Man at the Crossroads, which was destroyed in 1934 before
completion due to Rivera’s sympathetic depiction of Lenin.

Frustrated Rivera utilized
his large Rockefeller family fee to carry out the Union Square mural cycle that
clearly depicted his political ideologies, once the other project was abruptly
destroyed.

Before this controversy,
Rivera, who spent 1930 to 1934 in the United States, was honored with a solo
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1931.

Diego Rivera. Opponent of Fascism (Adversario del
fascismo). 1933.
Photo courtesy Collection Michael Fuchs, New
York. Photo: Jason Mandella.
© 2009 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust,
Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

An illustrated,
bilingual scholarly catalogue, distributed by Yale University Press, will
accompany the exhibition, with essays that focus on specific environments,
exchanges, or centers, and which detail the various artists’ New York milieus
and artistic development.

The renovated museum
features a new glass façade, a redesigned courtyard, modernized galleries, as
well as a new café/programming space and an expanded shop.

The design by Gruzen
Samton Architects received an award for Excellence in Design presented by Mayor
Michael Bloomberg on behalf of the Art Commission of the City of New York.

Major support for the
exhibition was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art, Agnes Gund,
and the Henry Luce Foundation. The lead
corporate sponsor is MetLife.

Miguel Covarrubias. Comedian (Humorista). 1927.
Photo courtesy of El Museo del Barrio, New
York City.
Photo: Jason Mandella. © María Elena Rico Covarrubias.

A dynamic artistic,
cultural, and community gathering place, El Museo is a center of cultural pride
on New York’s Museum Mile.

Since its inception, El
Museo has been committed to celebrating and promoting Latino culture, thus becoming
a cornerstone of El Barrio, and a valuable resource for New York City.

El Museo’s varied
permanent collection of over 6,500 objects spanning more than 800 years of
Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino art includes pre-Columbian Taíno
artifacts, traditional arts, twentieth-century drawings, paintings, sculptures
and installations, as well as prints, photography, documentary films and video.

El Museo del Barrio is
located at 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street, across from Central Park and one
block above the Museum of the City of New York.
It is situated between the Upper East Side and East Harlem – “El Barrio.”

Photos of reception attendees by John Lee.

Steve Clemons: Arturo Valenzuela Confirmed as Asst. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere

2009-11-06T15:16:50Z

After a long, messy battle between Senator Jim DeMint and the Obama administration, Senator DeMint removed his holds on two key administration appointees whose nominations have been languishing pending the outcome over a battle involving the Honduras ouster of President Manuel Zelaya.

In his statement on the Senate floor, DeMint lavished praise on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon -- whose nomination as the next US Ambassador to Brazil DeMint also had on hold -- for yielding to his views that whether or not the Honduras legislature votes Zelaya back into office that the Obama administration will recognize the outcome of the coming November 29th elections as legitimate and fair.

There is growing dispute about a Honduran government deal with Zelaya that the ousted leader now says the de facto government is not abiding by. Some suggest that Jim DeMint had some influence on pulling apart the Honduran deal with his own negotiations with the Obama administration over what was needed for the US to recognized the November election results.

The great news is that Arturo Valenzuela, Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, has now been confirmed as Thomas Shannon's successor as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.

Valenzuela served at the White House as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council in the second term of the Clinton administration.

Only problem is that one of the other key players in this Shakespearian political drama, Tom Shannon (who Jim DeMint now thinks is great!) got stuck on the floor last night when recently appointed Senator George LeMiuex began to flex his Senatorial muscles by not allowing Shannon's nomination to be voted on with a big passle of other nominees who were unanimously approved by the Senate at 5:30 pm yesterday evening.

Allegedly, the pro-embargo, anti-Castro crowd hijacked the Freshman Senator -- who will show great promise as a US Senator when he doesn't yield so publicly to the overtly crude and frivolous whims of fanatics who will lose the battle on Tom Shannon, but who want to waste the government's time.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Steve Clemons: Senator LeMieux On Wrong Track with anti-Cuba Political Action Committee and State Department Hold

2009-11-06T11:33:08Z

Kind of sad when you see a Freshman US Senator get appointed and immediately hijacked by lobbying groups who have deeply parochial interests that run against the nation's and even Senator George LeMieux's own state of Florida.

Last night, the US Senate finally moved to confirm Obama-nominated Georgetown Professor Arturo Valenzuela as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs and the incumbent in that job, Thomas Shannon, as US Ambassador to Brazil. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate itself was able to finally overcome the holds placed by Senator Jim DeMint who has been waging a one man battle to get someone to pay respect to Honduras coup officials.

But as the machinery for the vote was unfolding, the recently appointed frosh Senator George LeMieux (R-FL) -- appointed to fill Senator Mel Martinez's vacated seat -- placed a hold on Shannon's nomination, allegedly at the behest of the US-Cuba Democracy PAC that is ticked for Shannon's excellent handling of the Cuba OAS resolution earlier this year.

I hope that Barack Obama's team -- including National Security Council Western Hemisphere Director Dan Restrepo -- and those higher up the chain like NSC Deputy Tom Donilon -- get a sense of who the reasonable players in the US-Cuba policy debate are who are working hard for Obamaesque strategies with Cuba -- vs. those who are still trying to keep the freezers blowing on the last refuge of the Cold War.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Just When You Thought Cuba Might Ever Get Rid Of Fidel

2009-11-06T10:16:55Z

Huffington Post: If you thought Cuba might one day be free of Castro, Ann Louise Bardach has another message for you. The following excerpts from her new book, Without Fidel : A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington (Scribner) and the family trees explain what's coming. Fidel's tree is full of fun--hook ups galore. Raul's tree means business: these are the people who are ready to step into the job the minute Uncle Fidel passes.

The Family Tree of Fidel Castro
Excerpt from Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington
Part Three: Raul's Reign

A few weeks after the rebels' victory on January 1, 1959, Raul Castro married Vilma Espín Guillois, the daughter of a prominent family in Santiago, Cuba's second largest city and once its capitol. Espín came from privilege, culture and considerable wealth; her father, Jose Espin, an executive at Bacardi Rum. "We had an easy life," Espín told me in 1994, "but we had principles." She did post-graduate work at M.I.T. in chemical engineering in 1955, encouraged by her father who had hoped it would distract her from revolutionary politics. It didn't.

Espin dropped out of M.I.T. after just a few months. On her return to Cuba, she alighted in Mexico City to meet the celebrated revolutionary brother duo, and promptly fell in love with the besotted Raul Castro. After three days with him, Espin returned to Havana as their comrade-in-arms. Later she joined the Castros in the Sierra Maestra. "At the time, I was the head of the underground for all of the province of Oriente, " she told me. "The role of women was very important. Women were tortured, women were assassinated." A close confederate of the martyred revolutionary Frank País, Espín had impeccable revolutionary bona fides. When reminiscing about the revered País, whose photograph hung on the wall just behind her desk, Espín suddenly, and uncharacteristically, broke into tears.

After the Revolution, she founded and served as president of the Women's Federation of Cuba. More significantly, she stepped into the unofficial role as Cuba's First Lady and held that position until her death at 77 on June 18, 2007.

The couple had one son who they named Alejandro in tribute to Fidel's nom de guerre. Alejandro Raul Castro Espin followed his father's footsteps into the Army, rising to the rank of colonel with a vast portfolio that covers both intelligence collection and China. Raul and Vilma also had three daughters. One of Raul's daughters, Mariela, is married to an Italian businessman and regarded as the free spirit of the family. His other two daughters are both married to high ranking officers in the Cuban Armed Forces (FAR). Deborah, their eldest, was given Vilma's revolutionary nom de guerre while their youngest, Nilsa, nicknamed Nilsita, was named in honor of Vilma's beloved, deceased sister, a revolutionary firebrand who took her life in 1963.

Soon after the Revolution, Raúl and his family settled into a sprawling seventh floor apartment in Nuevo Vedado, not far from the historic Colon Cemetery. Later the family moved to a countrified mansion with generous grounds and a coterie of farm animals in Jaimanitas in western Havana known as La Rinconada, not far from Fidel's principal residence. While relatives and foes attest to his love of family, Raúl was hardly the faithful husband. But like his brother Fidel, he conducted his affairs with a degree of courtliness and discretion.

According to relatives of Celia Sanchez, Fidel's political and personal partner until her death in 1980, Raul was the patriarch to a parallel family. A long term affair with a pretty assistant in the FAR begun in the 1960s, they say, produced at least one son named Guillermo in the early 1970s. A light skinned, blond child, Guillermo, would later study medicine, according to the Sanchez relations who met him socially. They also believe that Raul sired a second younger son out of wedlock - though it is unclear whether the boy shared the same mother as Guillermo, or was the son of another liaison.

Raúl would have other significant affairs, including one with a Bulgarian woman who lived in Havana and another with a Colombian nurse. According to a colonel in the FAR, many government elites believed that Raul was involved in the 1980s with Yadira Garcia Vera who became First Secretary of the Communist Party in Matanzas, and later was promoted to Minister of Basic Industry in 2004, and eventually elevated into the Politburo. Another attractive young woman in the Ministry of Commercial Affairs captured Raul's attention in the 1990s. Indeed, Raul's romantic life was not dissimilar to that of his brothers, Fidel and Ramon, or for that matter, their father Angel. He was a Cuban man of a certain generation for whom extra-marital liaisons were almost de riguer. The difference lay in Raul's deeply felt passion for fatherhood and in his esteem for his wife.

By the mid-1980s, Raúl's marriage to Vilma had settled into a familial partnership and friendship. Several insiders said they lived separately for more than 20 years. But throughout his dalliances, he remained deeply respectful towards Espín and her public role as Cuba's First Lady. He was at her side at family celebrations and tragedies, and stood beside her at official events and receptions.

Following her diagnosis of cancer in 2004, Raúl was scrupulously attentive to her needs. Her death in 2007, by all accounts, devastated him. He wept profusely at her memorial in Havana and at the internment of her ashes in Santiago's Mausoleum of the Frank País Second Front. In an ironic bookend, Fidel, who had been too preoccupied to attend Vilma and Raúl's wedding, was too ill to attend her funeral.

The Dynasty
Chapter 12: The Graveyard Shift

Fidel Castro's expressed concerns about "a generational problem" in Cuba's leadership were prescient and all too relevant. Raul Castro has already chosen and prepared his grave site -- outside Santiago where the ashes of his wife were scattered. At the Frank Pais Mausoleum of the Second Front, Raul's name has been embossed on a plaque next to Vilma's, mounted on an immense boulder ringed by royal green palms and the Micara hills.

Sometime in the next decade, most of Fidel and Raul's septuagenarian appointments will be dead or gone. Their governing bunker mentality will presumably exit with them.
However, the Castros remain the dynastic royal family of Cuba. Strategically placed throughout the government's portfolios and ministries are an array of Castro relations - uncles, nieces and cousins - who are well known among the nomenklatura or chattering classes, but not to the average Cuban.

Curiously, none of Fidel's children appear destined for major political careers. Nor have any of his brood gone into the country's Armed Forces. Fidel's brood, according to several accounts, are not especially ambitious with exception of the well-liked Antonio, who heads up the Cuban Baseball League. Inheriting their father's intellectual bent, Fidel's sons have generally favored professions in medicine and the sciences.

The legacy factor is strongest in Raul Castro's clan - whose members can be found in virtually every ministry. At the top of the list would be Raul's son-in -law, Col. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, married to Deborah Castro Espin, and who is the chief executive officer of GAESA, the business arm and cash cow of the Cuban Army. The clout and prestige of Rodriguez, whose own father was a Division General and who now heads the Cuban Defense Information Studies Center, cannot be overestimated. "There are higher ranking generals in the Army but few come close to having his influence," observed military historian, Frank Mora. "He is the most important entrepreneur in the Army."

Raul's daughter, Mariela Castro Espín has stepped into her late mother's role as Cuba's unofficial First Lady. Soon after Vilma's death, she assumed her mother's position as the head of Cuba's Federation of Women and also serves as a spokesperson for the family.

A passionate advocate for gay and transgender rights, she heads the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX). Once the family rebel, Mariela, 47, leans towards progressive liberalism and has chosen a decidedly bohemian lifestyle. She is married to an Italian businessman with whom she has two children; she also has a son from a previous liaison with a Chilean whom she did not marry. She has the perspective of intellectual who has traveled widely and lived abroad.

Her advocacy of homosexual and transgender issues has led many to think she is gay but, by all reports, she is not. She is, however, ambitious and topping her agenda is the legalization of same-sex marriage. High on her agenda is the inclusion of sex change surgery for transgenders in the Cuban health care, notwithstanding critics who point out that the system barely meets basic, minimum needs.

Another of Raul's son-in-law, Alfonsito Fraga, married to Raul's youngest daughter, Nilsa, is also a colonel in the Army and has his own field of influence. Fraga's father is Alfonso Fraga Perez, another Ministry of Interior [MININT] colonel, who served as chief of the US Interests Section in the 1990s. [However, he is not a relation of Mario Fraga who married Fidel and Raul's older sister, Angelita.] Also, worth watching is Marcos Portal, the former Minister of Basic Industries. Portal is quite close to Raul and is, in fact, family. Portal's wife is Tania Fraga Castro, the daughter of Angelita Castro, who herself is a high ranking official in the Ministry of Health.

The surprise player could well be Raúl's own son, Alejandro Raul Castro Espin, a colonel in MININT with a powerful portfolio. The younger Castro heads up intelligence collection and also serves as Cuba's point man and liaison with China. He is an accomplished politician, though very much in the low-profile mold of his father. Down the road, he will likely step into a more public role. He occupies a far more strategic position than his cousin, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, a 60 year old physicist who is a scientific advisor to the Council of State.

Every New Year's Day a caravan of banner-festooned jeeps and trucks leaves Santiago de Cuba, recreating Castro's eight day victory march across the island in 1959. In 2009, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Revolution, the Caravan of Victory was slated to be a blow-out, celebratory party. But with Castro confined to his state-of-the-art convalescent suite, the festivities were downgraded to a far more subdued affair.

Standing in for Fidel was his first born child and namesake. As a picture-perfect photogenic 9 year old, Fidelito had been at this father's side during the historic journey that culminated at Camp Columbia, the military barracks in Havana. Father and son have a marked physical resemblance to each other, but in temperament Fidelito is closer to that of his mother. Like her, he has no passion for politics. Nevertheless, he was thrilled to repeat the experience of the caravan, calling it "the happiest day of my life." Still, the differences of a half century were stark.

In 1959, the caravan was surrounded by hordes of jubilant Cubans, which was not the case in 2009. In contrast to his father, his appearance generated no electricity with the small but polite crowds that came out to see him, mostly out of curiosity. In 1959, Fidel Castro assured the cheering throngs that "this is not a dictatorship," promising that "the day that the people do not want us, we shall leave." It was a promise not kept.

The Family Tree of Fidel Castro

The only child not identified on Fidel's Tree is a son known as Fito. According to a former Cuban intelligence defector Roberto Hernández del Llano, Castro fathered a child with the wife of an important government trade official. According to Hernandez, Rosana Rodriguez, the wife of Abraham Masiques had a son named Fito born around 1970, who was in fact Fidel Castro's child.

Read more: Castro, Raul Castro, Fidel Castro, Cuba, Books News

Betwa Sharma: No Toilets or Air For "Forgotten Prisoners"

2009-10-29T17:45:38Z

Prison conditions worldwide are worse than the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture could have imagined. So he said, while presenting his latest findings from detention centers in different regions. Jails without air, toilets and food are not rare.

The UN produces a steady stream of reports every year that are judiciously discussed and web-linked. Occasionally, some of these studies before being archived, invite a raised eyebrow.

In Equatorial Guinea, Rapporteur Manfred Nowak reveals that the government does not provide food and water to the prisoners who must wait for their families to bring water in plastic bottles and food in plastic bags.

Since there are no toilets, prisoners use the same bottles to urinate and the plastic bags to defecate. In most police stations, including the police headquarters in the capital Malabo, tons of filled and stinking plastic bottles and bags had been thrown through the bars to the corridors and open yards.

The government of Equatorial Guinea has rejected the report. “So many countries are not living up to their obligations to respect the basic dignity of human beings in detention,” says Nowak.

In prisons little bit outside of Montevideo in Uruguay, detainees used the water in the toilets for drinking. The sewage system does not work so inmates use plastic bags for defecation, which they later throw outside.

In Uruguay, hundreds of convicts and pretrial detainees spend years in tiny metal boxes called “las latas” (tin cans) under conditions described by the Rapporteur as “inhuman.”

During the summer, heat in these metal boxes reaches 60° C and the lack of ventilation means that detainees had to sit in shifts in front of tiny openings to breathe. They also had to cut themselves in order to get medical assistance.

In Nigeria, a small hole in the corner of the cell served as a toilet for 100 detainees whose cell had a makeshift roof making the temperature and humidity unbearable.

In many cases, prisoners have to wait for hours before a guard lets them out to use a toilet, and most detainees are watched by others as they use a hole in the corner of an overcrowded cell.

The Uruguayan leadership gave orders to close down that particular prison three days after Nowak’s visit in March. In Nigeria, the government decided to release 20,000 prisoners since their pre trial detention lasted longer than their maximum term. Many people above the age of 60 have already been released.

Worse than the beatings and torture to extract confessions.... is living in prisons where the government does not provide food or health services. Instead, it the responsibility of individual families to organize meals and toilet articles.

“If you’re a foreigner or you don’t have a family....you might starve or you may try to get food from other detainees in exchange for slavery like services, sexual services and other services….”says Nowak. “The poor are at the bottom of the prison hierarchy.”

The study declares the “re-education through labour” programme in the infamous Chinese Falun Gong camps equivalent to brainwashing. Then, in Togo, three detainees with serious mental disabilities were simply left unattended in a dark cell.

It is a conservative estimate that one million children are behind bars. Under international law, children can be jailed only under exceptional circumstances for a short period of time.

The report finds that children as young as eight or nine are packed away for minor crimes, end up for prolonged periods in pre-trial detention, and are treated much worse than the grown-ups. “Children more often than adults are subject to beatings and institutionalized corporal punishment......sexual violence,” says Nowak.

This is the Rapporteur’s fifth report since 2004, and now the UN agent is pushing for an international convention that will protect the rights of detainees as a vulnerable group. “Most people have no idea how life behind bars looks in reality,” he says.

In many instances, the UN’s requests to come and inspect the prisons have been denied for several years. “Unfortunately in the Arab world on the one hand torture is wildly practiced and secondly most countries did not request favorably to my request,” he says.

Countries suspected of human rights violations, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria have not responded to requests.

In Jordan, Nowak found that while there was no systematic torture, practices like beating on the soles and then walking on salt were carried out in a prison in Amman. The notorious Al-Jafr prison, located in the desert 350 km south of Amman in Jordan, was closed after the Special Rapporteur visited.

The UN estimates that the 10 million persons deprived of liberty worldwide are living in unacceptable conditions. The Rapporteur stresses that abuses also occur in industrialized nations particularly with aliens awaiting deportation or minors who have broken immigration laws.

Several countries have avoided a check-up including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Israel, Russia and United States. Cuba has invited Nowak for a visit in 2010.

Yoani Sanchez: From Cuba With Love, They Can't Wipe the Smile off My Face

2009-10-29T17:28:35Z

I've forgotten the last time I cried, even though I'm not particularly strong when faced with the vagaries of life; on the contrary, I consider myself overly sentimental and given to tears. However, for more than a year I have decided to be happy at any cost, inoculating myself with placidity in anticipation of worse times. I resist letting them dim my smile, or turn me into a paranoiac, always looking over my shoulder to see who is following me.

This childish inclination to frolic has allowed me to cope with the denials of permission to travel, the radioactive circle in which they try to envelop me, the insults, the defamation campaigns, the control of the political police, and even the neurosis about possible microphones in my house. I have tried to celebrate, even what they have taken from me, like the possibility of travel, attending the various prize ceremonies, access to Generation Y from Cuban networks, contact with many of my friends, attending cultural events in my own country, and witnessing the launch of my books.

Just today I am inebriated with satisfaction because a compilation of my texts titled, "De Cuba, com carinho...", From Cuba with Love, will be launched this afternoon in Brazil. Mindful of the three hour time difference that separates me from Rio de Janeiro, I will celebrate at 5:00 pm the beautiful edition of my posts in Portuguese. I will show my teeth from several yards distance, not only because they are large with gaps, but because of the permanent laugh I wear on my face. A corrosive laugh that the grim faces of those who have prevented me from going there cannot understand; a stab of delight that cuts and pierces those who don't know how to handle the unexpected joy of the captive.

Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.

Evelyn Leopold: Cuban Vote at UN: "Here We Go Again"

2009-10-28T22:34:16Z

UNITED NATIONS - For the 18th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly condemned the US economic embargo against Cuba. The 187 countries voting in favor were friends and foes, democracies and dictatorships.

But this was the first vote since President Obama took office, and everyone listened for hints of change. While the administration has taken steps to improve relations with Cuba, it renewed the embargo just last month.

The speech by Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was more conciliatory than in previous years. But there was no hint the embargo would be lifted unless Cuba allowed "political and economic freedoms."

When the embargo first came to the floor of the General Assembly, many European nations abstained. But then came the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which imposed fines and other sanctions on foreign firms dealing with Cuba. In the ensuing years, the UN vote turned heavily against Washington, not only in Europe but in all of Latin America.

This year it was 187 to 3 votes with two abstentions. The United States, Israel and the Pacific island of Palau voted "no" while the Marshall Islands and Micronesia (also Pacific isles) abstained. The resolution is not binding but expresses the will of the international community. Cuba has been under a US trade and travel embargo since 1962, three years after Fidel Castro took power.

New York Philharmonic banned?

Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said the embargo had prevented his country from obtaining needed drugs for adults and children, including those combating HIV/AIDS as well as equipment to detect cancer. The US government, he said, recently stopped the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from performing in Cuba. "The blockade is an uncultured act of arrogance," Rodriguez said. "How can artistic creation be considered a crime?"

"President Obama has a historical opportunity to lead a change of policy towards Cuba," the minister said, and at minimum could grant waivers to ease the embargo. While Cuba purchases agricultural products from the United States, he said it has to pay cash in advance and could not transport the cargo in its own vessels.

In response, Ambassador Rice said, "Here we go again. I suppose old habits die hard."

"The hostile language we have just heard from the Foreign Minister of Cuba seems straight out of the Cold War era and is not conducive to constructive progress. We will not respond in kind to painfully familiar rhetoric that we have heard in years past -- rather, I am prepared to acknowledge that there is a new chapter to this old story," Rice said.

She noted that the Obama administration had promoted family visits and remittances and had expanded the amounts of humanitarian items Americans could donate. It also resumed talks on migration, moved to establish direct mail service and enhanced the ability of US telecommunications and agricultural firms to pursue agreements.

"These are important steps and can be the starting point for further changes in the relationship," Rice said.

The isolation of the United States on Cuba follows a series of US initiatives in the United Nations, with engagement on disarmament issues, such as a proposed arms trade treaty, and human rights bodies. Gone is the embarrassing US stand on women's issues whenever family planning in poor nations arises.

But on Cuba, the lobby remains strong, even though polls show a split in the Cuban-American community.

Elena Freyre, executive director of the moderate Cuban American Defense League in Miami, told CNN after the vote:

"The definition of insanity is to do something over and over again and expect a different result. We are not going to get a different result. It's not working."

Yoani Sanchez: The U.S. Embargo: A Convenient Excuse for Cuba's Own Failures

2009-10-28T20:34:38Z

I wore a red and white uniform, I was ten years old, and the subject of the "blockade" was barely mentioned in the ideological books they gave me at school. Those were optimistic times and we believed that the F1 cows* would give enough milk to flood the streets of the whole country. The future had those golden hues that never showed themselves in our faded reality but we were a too colorblind to notice. We thought we had discovered the formula to be among the most prosperous people on the planet, so that our children would live in a country with opportunities for all.

From the podium a bearded leader defiantly pointed to the North, because he counted on the pole of the Kremlin subsidy to vault over any obstacle to the construction of communism. "Despite the blockade..." we said, with the same conviction that in years past we'd talked about the ten million tons of sugar*, coffee growing all around the cities*, and a supposed industrialization of the country that never came. We had to cut short our dreams when the flow of oil and rubles abruptly stopped. The years came of beginning to explain the setbacks and comparing ourselves to the poorest nations in the region to make us feel, if not happy, at least satisfied.

As I began my adolescence, the issue of trade restrictions was on nearly every billboard in the country. At the political rallies we no longer shouted, "Cuba yes, Yankees no" but a new hard-to-rhyme slogan: "Down with the blockade." I looked at my nearly empty plate and couldn't imagine how they had managed to blockade our malangas, orange juice, bananas and lemons. I grew up repudiating the blockade, not because I swallowed the line about the country we could be if the blockade weren't preventing it, but simply because they tried to explain that everything that wasn't working was a result of it.

If my friends were leaving the country en masse, it was because of the United States policy of harassment; if the cockroaches were crawling all over the walls at the maternity hospital, it was the fault of the North Americans; even if a meeting at the university expelled a critical colleague, they explained to us that he had fallen under the ideological influence of the enemy. Today, everything begins and ends with the blockade. No one seems to remember the days when they promised us paradise, when they told us that nothing -- not even the economic sanctions -- would prevent us from leaving behind our underdevelopment.

Translator's notes

F1 cows: A breed that is a cross of Holstein and Zebu (Cebu) cattle. Fidel Castro believed these cattle would allow Cuba to export beef and dairy products. It didn't work out; both meat and milk are severely rationed in Cuba.

Ten million tons of sugar: In 1970 Fidel Castro turned the resources of the entire country to a achieving a record ten-million ton sugar harvest, even "rescheduling" Christmas for July so as not to interfere with the work. The target was missed and Cuba's sugar crop has declined ever since; in 2009 the total was barely over one million tons.

Coffee growing in the cities: Fidel Castro had a plan to grow coffee in Havana despite expert advice that the climate was unfavorable; it didn't work out.

Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.