Recalling Obama’s words on May 23, 2008 concerning U.S. arrogance towards Latin America, it would appear that the U.S. is in need of a pressing review of a hemispheric policy that brings with it vital new ideas writes  COHA  ( The Council on Hemispheric Affairs ) Research Associate Katya Rodriguez. Her complaint is that nothing has changed yet compard to the Bush White House.

See article at:
 http://www.coha.org/cuba-u-s-rhetoric-ti…

Last night, March 8, 2010, three month since Copenhagen, I learned from someone that was among the creators of the US Carbon Market that this market is practically dead. Anything new on climate? No – nothing! Is there hope? Only if you are a continuous optimist!

That exchange brought me to post the following as a reminder of the post-Copenhagen spirit. Further, we are still that optimist that believes with a US health-care bill pushed through there may be a renewed US-China joint effort on climate. Further, we also follow with interest Brazil reasserting itself by putting its foot down on conditions of trade with the US. This push by Brazil may remind the US that it is hard to handle wars in Asia without house cleaning in its attitude in the Western Hemisphere. Brazil and the Latins must become US partners also on Climate and they are right to claim a more open door to US markets.

—————————

Letter to Grist from Europe

Copenhagen blame game is obstacle to 2010 climate deal.

Yesterday, WHO reported that there has been no rise in infectious diseases one month on from the disaster, with the finding based on epidemiological surveillance carried out by 52 sites across the Caribbean island nation.

On top of the more than 50 WHO/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) staff on the ground in Haiti, dozens more experts in fields ranging from disaster management to water and sanitation were deployed to the Caribbean nation. “Haiti’s entire health system, from its infrastructure to the very staff and system that operated it, has been deeply affected by the earthquake,” WHO said in its latest update.

Over 200 Haitian medical staff died when the health ministry building collapsed, while many doctors and nurses were also killed or injured.

In total, the  January 12, 2010 quake claimed more than 200,000 lives, leaving over 300,000 others injured and 1 million Haitians homeless.

Henriette Chamouillet, WHO’s Representative in Haiti, paid tribute to the hundreds of Cuban health professionals in the country at the time of the tremors, with some 1,300 additional doctors and other staff being dispatched after the quake.

“They are absolutely important for the country,” she stressed at a press conference today in Geneva.

Dr. Chamouillet said that Cuba has long been training roughly 80 Haitian doctors per year, most of whom return to their home country following their schooling.

For its part, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported today that the humanitarian situation in Haiti is on the upswing, with the port, airport and other essential infrastructure gradually coming back online.

The Office warned, however, that shelter and sanitation needs, as well as rubble removal, are among those that remain unmet.

Tomorrow afternoon, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be launching a revised flash appeal for Haiti, along with his Special Envoy for Haiti, Bill Clinton, and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes.

Just three days after the quake, the UN called for $575 million, with a bulk of the funds intended to be directed to urgent needs, including food, water and shelter.

At The Foreign Policy Association, New York, Wednesday, January 13, 2010, in the Grupo Santander building Auditorium, there was a meeting with Dr. Julia E. Sweig who wrote the book: “CUBA: WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW.”

Julia Sweig is Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin American Studies & Director for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

She has authored several reports on Latin America and American Foreign Policy. Her book “Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground” of 2002 received an award for the best book of the year by an independent scholar from the American Historical Association.

The meeting was chaired by Ambassador Viktor Polgar, Consul General of Hungary in New York City.

Dr. Sweig started out by saying that she was part of the US culture relating to Latin America – that educated in Spanish language also lots of Cuban students  and studies about Cuba but nothing in Portuguese or Brazil, implying that in the US Cuba got much too thigh attention then it deserved – and Brazil much less attention then it deserved. But even so, in effect Cuba was in a dormant state so far as US direct involvement, until the switch from Fidel to Raoul.

The discussion with Cuba was always difficult. Cuba was focusing on history while the US was looking to the future.

2006 – 2007 changes start in Havana and the Miami Cubans find this important – then 2007-2008 Raoul begins to look at domestic issues in Cuba and starts to talk of dirty laundry of the regime. On February 2008 he takes office in a 34 minutes speech – a novelty to who was used to the unending Fidel rhetoric. He skips the gov’t talk to improve the life and says that inefficiency will be removed. He eliminates control of Cubans travel abroad. There seems to be a new government, new people, new ways of doing things – and expectations started to be high. With the changes in the US – President Obama suggested in april 2009 to open a new chapter.

——-

In Miami, the last decade the Cuban Americans shift from the call for embargo to a people-to-people family oriented approach. This in South Florida more then in New Jersey. Miami is now for the first time ahead of Washington asking for change.

Since 2001 there were exchanges with Cuba, but then they were stopped by the Bush Administration – including the remittances. Then came the war on Iraq and the notion of regime change that ruffled Cuba. All what started before Bush years was now suspicious

President Lula and Spanish PM Zapatero are pushing Washington for change in regard to Cuba. Indeed, in Trinidad the US allowed the return of Cuba to the OAS, and in Congress there is now a bill to remove travel restrictions and to take Cuba of the terrorism lists.

Clearly, the US is not the final decider in Cuba – but it has a role to play in Cuba changing.

Former Congressman John Brandemas said that President Bush restricted Microsoft and Google in regards to Cuba, as Cuba also reacted with restrictions. In effect the same day as this meeting at the FPA, the New York Times had an article about a communications contractor who was arested in Cuba, Alan P. Gross, who was working with local groups to make sure they are capable of using internet communication.

Questions abunded about how long will it take to get to “YES WE CAN.” It was pointed out that $9,000 gets a Congressman’s vote and this is a reason for the bottleneck. The Cuban Americans still hold the game, even though they would like to see change.

The facts are that after the US and Canada, Cuba is third on medical issues in the hemisphere. Cuba helped Chavez consolidate his power and they like him to take out oxygen of Latin America.

—————

Further, let us recommens CUBA – La Isla Grande, Edited by Martino Fagiuoli, a 2007, Fall River Press, New York, printed in China, an album about Cuba with photos taken in the 1990s. The country seems to be ready to stick it out until the US changes its attitude towards the island.

Time for the U.S. and Cuba to Talk and More
by COHA Staff, January 29, 2010

The modest collaboration between the State Department and the Cuban government concerning the use of Cuban airspace and cooperation in providing medical relief to the Haitian people represents an opportunity for transition toward a more positive relationship between Washington and Havana. This cooperation demonstrates common humanitarian values that both nations share. The two governments should use these values and this opportunity to open a space for dialogue.
Privately, many U.S. and Cuban officials acknowledge that they are inclined to support steps toward reconciliation, though each side appears to harbor doubts of the other’s sincerity in attempts to move beyond historical rancor.
Although President Obama’s repeal of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans constitutes a step in the right direction, it was hardly enough to signal to Havana its readiness for détente.
The two ancient foes need not strive for a home run; a bunt single will do.

Diane Sawyer on ABC News,1/15/10, is visibly and verbally upset that
so much food, water, etc. was still at the airport and not distributed
to the very many in desperate need and could be dead very shortly
without it.

Then one U.S. Commander interviewed, said they needed the Haitian
government to designate distribution centers, then to be approved by
the U.N., while 10,000 U.S. troops are on the way by Sunday to help in
distribution.

Have the U.S. government/military..politicians  lost their minds? If
the Haitian government, which barely exists after this tragedy, wasn’t
there for the people before the earthquake, why is anyone waiting for
this government to act now?

If the U.N., which has done little to stop genocide in Darfur with
500,000 Blacks murdered by Muslims, why in the world is the U.N. in
charge of this operation? To avoid this dilemma, our web has picked up
the COHA idea – let the Brazilians, much less suspected then the
Americans, take over for an agreed time period the keys of Haiti!

On CNN, with Anderson Cooper showing that only Dr. Gupta of CNN, is
left in a hospital with 25 wounded patients, while the UN has asked
the rest of the doctors to leave, and then to see the aerial views of
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bodies lying on just one of the
streets, does anyone get what is going on here?

By following the supposed ‘plan’, the food and water sits at the
airport, and men, women and childen are dying .

A ‘distribution’ sight?  How about every spot where hundreds and
thousands are outside of hospitals, in parks, and in the streets,
afraid to go back into their homes, and get the food and water to
these people before they dehydrate and die. JUst don’t worry about the
fact that they did not have clean water even before this last
catastrophe hit.

Oh first we have to deal with all the ‘politics’?

Let’s see, now if the U.S. controls the airport, and not the U.N.,
then will the US be seen as ‘occupying’ Haiti? Will some see this as a
pretext to naming Haiti the US 51st State?

Then there is the big hoopla from listening to Obama that he’ll do
everything possible, including the comitment of  troops and
$100millions – some saying that this is for the reviews, while Rush
Limbaugh is obsessed on whether Obama will look good in all of this
and his ratings rise. Will he advise not to give to the Haitian people
in crisis?

If Limbaugh had a heart, he’d be pushing to feed the starving and put
the politics aside until we got through this level of the crisis.

Now with some saying 200,000 being reported dead, up from the Red Cross’s
assessment  of 45,000, we are witnessing Obama’s ‘Katrina’ of
going by ‘the book’, whatever that is, instead of stepping outside of
the box and actually making a difference.

How about just handing the water and food to everyone in need? Is this so hard to do?  How about taking care of everyone that needs the help? At what point do you need permission to be a human being and help another human being, especially when you can? Then, if this is really the case, take the Brazilians that are already in Haiti – and ask them for God’s and humanitarian sake – take the supplies and hand them out without waiting for the UN. We know, the Brazilians have lost 14 people and miss three more, but they are tough and will accept this if they see it is for a clear purpose. They also lost people in that infamous UN Baghdad disaster when the Brazilian Mission leader was killed.

This is how governments operate or don’t and they don’t… beyond the
stunts and media ploys and everyone covering their own butts, so as
not to do anything that they will have to be accountable for, while
the rest of us are expendible.

Thank G-d for independent thinking and action from volunteers.

With all the ‘chatter’ now from Yemen and another potential Muslim
Jihadist attack on the U.S. at this very time period, you can see in
Haiti the insipid approach that would happen here as well. On this, I
just observed that Saturday January 16, 2010, the Empire State
building was dressed in Green-White-Green colors – and these are the
colors of Nigeria. Is this the initiative of some private group to
thank the boy-bomber from Nigeria for awareness raising that we are
unsafe?

Can’t anyone make a decision that matters, when government bureaucrats
are in charge?

If 3 millions are affected by the Earthquake in Haiti, do we not
understand that without food or water for 5 days what is pending?

Then we watched Sean Hannity on FOX tonight talking about the
‘political earthquake’, should the Republican beat the Democrat next
Tues. for former Sen. Kennedy’s seat?

“Earthquake” Hannity? With hundreds of thousands dead in our back
yard? This is your level of consciousness to exploit using this word,
on going after Obama?

This is revolting – our stomachs turn.

How do you play ’safe’ with masses of people dying?

How do you exploit for politics, the horrors people are facing?

Appeasing those who want to kill us and then neglecting those in need
after the damage has been done, is one more example of what we are
witnessing daily in our approach in Haiti. It doesn’t matter if the
catatrophe is man-made through terrorism or by an act of G-d.

Today, after 8 yrs. illegal Haitians in Miami and in the rest of the
U.S., by the tens of thousands, they will now be allowed to stay for
18 months, eventually get green cards,  and we hope do something for
the folks back home.

But this still isn’t feeding today even one Haitian baby starving to
death or dehydrated by lack of water.

We got an e-mail saying:
“Having gone through Hurricane Andrew in 1992, I know what it is like
with 80,000 buildings destroyed and they, only admitting to 50 dead,
but there were many more.

We on Miami Beach were 17 miles from ‘Ground Zero’ and every house on
our block had no electricity for 11 days, all foods were spoiled,
every roof had to be replaced if you could find quality repair people,
not out to steal from you or legitimate insurance agencies not trying
to screw you, and in every level of survival running into obstacles
for getting food, water, gas,repairs, cleanup and a host of basics,
let alone damage to property and the emotional damage in all of it.

It took 10 years for us to recover.  Every Hurricane season we’re
glued to the weather channel in hopes of not going through it again,
and Haiti went through 3 hurricanes recently before this earthquake.
Haiti with so many of its trees destroyed. Then Papa Doc, Baby Doc,
Aristedes and even today, where are the Haitian leaders in Miami
speaking out, for they are in two political camps like the Dems. and
GOP, and neither are for the people, when it is all about them and not
us.

No matter. We MUST help those who need this emergency help.
The American people have always come to the rescue of those in need
all over the world and we’ll do it again and again for that is who we
really are and we don’t need to apologize for it either.

As a Jew, that is who I am too. That is my conscience. That is my
faith. That is my reason for being. That is my history of being a Jew
for 5000 years. Nothing to apologize for here either. My Covenant with
G-d, My Torah and My Constitution and my heart are my guides in all of
this as well as knowing so many on this level as well.” Even a secular
Jew like myself has no problem in seconding above last lines.

Ecuador Will Build UNASUR Headquarters.
Construction of the agency’s headquarters will begin next year

Foreign Minister Fander Falconí reported today that in 2010, Ecuador, which holds the pro tempore chairmanship of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), intends to build the organization’s headquarters in the community of Mitad del Mundo, a village near the country’s capital. “Our challenge is to consolidate UNASUR’s internal structure,” which includes the appointment of its secretary general, the ratification of the treaty establishing the Union for the twelve member states, and “consolidating the organization’s infrastructure,” the official said.

“We are ready to begin construction of the UNASUR headquarters in Mitad del Mundo, we have an agreement with the Provincial Council (of Pichincha, where the community is located), and we already have the resources to begin the project,” Falconí said. This entity is composed of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Suriname and Venezuela.

Interesting, the list of members, that includes only the 12 South American independent States, excludes besides the states of the Central American istmus, also the island of Cuba.
28-Dec-2009

From the latest news coming from Washington – “Under the new airport
rules, all citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen must receive a pat
down and an extra check of their carry-on bags before boarding a plane
bound for the United States, officials said. Citizens of Cuba, Iran,
Sudan and Syria — nations considered ’state sponsors of terrorism’ —
face the same requirement.”

That means Cuba and thirteen Muslim states: Afghanistan, Algeria,
Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia,
Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

These news caused a lot of comments, but we think the wrong comments.

We assume obviously that Washington is ready finally to address the
terrorism issue. Airplane terrorism, as we learned on 9/11, is not
about transport of weapons but about terrorists – to be specific since
9/11 – we speak here about Islamic terrorists. If you want to catch
terrorists you must look for terrorists. Looking for baby formula is
not the answer – but looking for those passengers whose profiles are
suspicious might be a better bet. Sure, obviously, not all Muslims are
terrorists, and profiling is terrible – even illegal, but if you want
to catch terrorists you start with the profile that most fits Islamic
terrorists, and you bet – they are Muslims of any color. Even though
they may be traveling with documents issued by non-Islamic States,
i.e. the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Switzerland, or even the
US.

So, it is not easy to define exactly what papers are carried by the
terrorists, but you can have some guidelines to increase your chance
of catching them. looking for a profile of an Asian or African Muslim.
Then, learn from the Israelis how to talk to them – you may even find
out that they are so convinced that their cause is the right one, that
they will lower their guard and just plainly disclose that what you
see is all they got.

There may be a Jamaican convert to Islam who preached terrorism in the UK
and resides now in Kenya – a case in point. Kenya does want him either and
he will be sent back to Jamaica a second time. yes, this is a problem if you
are American and Jamaica does not cooperate – but he is a Muslim and no
Anti-Defamation league is enrtitled to tell you Mr. President that he should
not be stripped and searched if he wants to travel via the US to Jamaica.
This is simple.

But what about Cuba? Fidel Castro is more atheist then Catholic, surely
no Muslim. Whatever went on in the past is history to me and I do not believe
prologue to Mr. Castro. So why mix him and his country up with 13 Islamic
States involved in Islamic Terrorism? That is unless someone in the US longs
to see him give cover to such terrorists in the future so they get new reasons
to be after him? If the Jamaica case has anything to teach us – it is that the
US is better off reinsuring its rear parts from anger caused by mistreatment
and friendship is not achieved by mulling over past grief. Specially, as several
hundred former sugar baron families living in Florida should not be allowed to
hold hostage the US when it comes to real US interests.

Mr. President, I watched Bolivia and Venezuela leaders speak in Copenhagen,
they fumed and brimmed with words – no stones or missiles. Their ALBA is,
I think, the natural ally of a US that manages to disengage from the Islamic
world of oil. So, it is the US self interest that calls for you, Mr. President, to
invite Fidel Castro to Washington for a tete-a-tete and start on a way that
eventually will give the US the wall of safety it needs when addressing the 21st
Century centers of terror – the Islamists’ terror cancer that will continue to ooze
as long as we use oil.

Please start by taking him of that list!

The thirteen on that list include the obvious Iran – Syria – Lebanon
trio of the Shii’a Islam, it includes the Afghanistan/Pakistan US
theater of operations and Iraq, as well as the other US theater Saudi
Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan that misses Egypt and the Gaza strip. A
fourth historic region includes Libya and Algeria, then with Nigeria,
these are newer sources of oil for the US, and as such clear potential
sources of unhappy Islamists who complain about the changes in their
countries as fueled by oil money. In very few countries terrorism
against the US was actually started by rulers decree. Libya, Iran,
Syria, Sudan, Somalia may be the exceptions, but Saudi Arabia and
Yemen may have seen rulers who deflected anger against themselves into
anger against foreigners. In the majority of cases the terrorist is a
person of convictions and the situation could have been avoided had
the US and the rest of the Western World, tried to be less squanderous
with the oil we got addicted to.

Having said the above – let us get now to the point – MR PRESIDENT -
PLEASE – TAKE CUBA OFF THAT LIST BECAUSE THEY DO NOT BELONG ON THAT
LIST IN 2010.

* * * *

Please look – I am posting here four reference – links to news
articles of today’s New York Times.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05t…

New Air Security Checks From 14 Nations to U.S. Draw Criticism
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/…

In Yemen, U.S. Faces Leader Who Puts Family First
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/…

Behind Afghan Bombing, an Agent With Many Loyalties
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/…

Kenya Seeks to Deport Muslim Cleric to Jamaica

————————

THE UPDATE:

We have received a comment on this post and it presents a very valid point supposedly made at the UN General Assembly by the Foreign Minister of Cuba: “I mean if they were going to include us, then they should have at least thrown in North Korea.”

Even if the e-mail we received from ajay -   akazif at gmail.com  as presented by www. eggplantpost.com in http://eggplantpost.com/2010/01/05/cuba-… were a made up story, the argument holds water nevertheless. DID THE US INCLUDE CUBA ON THAT LIST BECAUSE IT WANTED TO AVOID BEING SEEN AS GOING AFTER A RAG-TAG OF ISLANIC COUNTRIES? Now, we believe that US security should be spoken here – not again US appeasement-for-oil please!

“Full-body scanners on display at Reagan National Airport: Many experts say the full-body scanners would have detected the explosives carried aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, but the
machines have also raised privacy concerns over the detailed body image that is displayed as part of the screening.”

TSA – Transportation and Security Administration – tries to assuage privacy concerns about full-body scans.

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 4, 2010
It has come to this.

Already shoeless, beltless and waterless, more beleaguered air passengers will be holding their legs apart, raising their arms and effectively baring it all as they pass through U.S. airport security
checkpoints.

Add the “full-body scan” to the list of indignities that some travelers are confronting in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era of vigilance.

Federal authorities, working to close security gaps exposed by the thwarted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, are multiplying the number of imaging machines at the nation’s biggest
airports. The devices scan passengers’ bodies and produce X-ray-like images that can reveal objects concealed beneath clothes…….

- – - – - -

now add the “me-au” from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, ADC Legal Director   nshora at adc.org

Washington, D.C. | January 5, 2010 | www.adc.org |

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is deeply concerned by the new Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) directives, which went into effect on January 4th at midnight.  According to news sources, these directives will require citizens from 14 countries, all Arab or Muslim countries, with the exception of Cuba, to go through enhanced security screening. Such screening can include full pat-downs, scans, delays, and anything associated with secondary screening – an extra search of the passenger’s carry-on luggage may also be required.  News sources also stated that the directives are applicable to any travelers, including US CITIZENS, who have passed through one of these 14 countries, or who have taken flights that have originated from these 14 countries.

ADC is very troubled as such directives will have negative ramifications on Arab-Americans, citizens of the 14 countries, and all Americans who visit these countries. A disparate segment of the Arab-American community will be scrutinized because of these new guidelines. The blanket labeling of hundreds of millions of civilians based solely on their country of citizenship or travel is not only unfairly discriminatory based on national origin, but also improperly labels millions of innocent people as somehow suspect or possible terrorists.

The new directives came following the Christmas Day attempted airline attack that threatened our national security, and which ADC has strongly condemned. Implementing an effective and productive counterterrorism tool is paramount. However, casting a wide net against individuals based on their country of origin, race or religion is not an effective counterterrorism tool. During the past decade, similar racial, ethnic and religious profiling tactics and practices have time and again misdirected precious counterterrorism resources, damaged foreign relations with key allies, fueled the fires of extremists by giving them an excuse, stigmatized communities, and most importantly did not have any discernible impact on security. Based on precedent, these new directives will be no different than these past practices and their adverse consequences; and while such directives may appear to make us feel safer, the reality is that they discriminate against innocent persons and divert attention from real threats.

Resources must instead be focused on high-risk individuals based on proper intelligence, better coordination and communication between different governmental agencies. In addition, continued engagement with the Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian community groups must be strengthened, and must not be discouraged by ethnic profiling tactics.

ADC has been in contact with TSA and the Department Homeland Security (DHS) and is planning to file a complaint and request for additional information with the Department.  ADC urges all travelers affected by these new guidelines to always comply with the Transportation Security Officer’s (TSO’s) request.  In the event of any abuse or misuse of authority, please request the TSO’s name and badge number, and file a complaint with ADC’s Legal Department at  legal at adc.org.

==============

Honestly, I feel the pain of decent members of the ADC, but am appalled at the chutzpah to announce the complaints of that organization without a single word attached saying that as loyal citizens to this country they are ready to organize themselves in units of informers when it comes to transgressions by people from their country of birth, that are endangering the security of the country that gave to the ADC members the privilege of life under a secular democracy.

Yes, I know that the ADC has members that are Muslim, Christian or atheists. I know they have no Jews in ADC, but that is not the issue. The Arab countries, other Asian countries, and the African Arabized countries, on the list of 13, are all Islamic countries – in all of them Christians and Jews face very serious difficulties. Further, I know of good Muslims in the US and overseas, that participate with enlightened Jews in order to build bridges between communities. in Copenhagen I actually participated during the Climate conference at a pilgrimage that took us to places of worship that were Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim (that last meeting was held in the rooms of a Danish humanist society) – in this time sequence. Yes – good relationships are possible, but that will happen only when, and if, there is a clear understanding, and voiced recognition, that Islamic terrorism originates with Muslim individuals, and that in order to safeguard ourselves, profiling in search of instruments of terror is not a dirty word, but a means of self defense.

Also, in order to avoid needless friction, I suggest that the ADC moves front and center in the global effort to disengage from the addiction to oil.

And one more item – this website does speak up for Cuba as they surely are not part of the group of countries responsible for Islamicists performing acts of terror. So, they do not belong on that list of 14.

As we wrote about Copenhagen, ALBA crystallized there as the clearest US opposing group of countries in the international arena. ALBA is led by four Latin American and two Caribbean Islands Heads of State. As expressed by Presidents Morales of Bolivia and Chavez of Venezuela, the Obama intervention on that final Friday the 18th was clearly not a UN consensus building move. Obama did not play democracy to non-Democratic States, but then there was something in his behavior that could also be likened to the battleship diplomacy of old empire building colonialism – you find your allies and you set the rules of the game for others to follow. We said it many times that we agreed with Obama’s moves, but we also had an ear to the Morales and Chavez statements, and we believe that the ALBA attack will continue until the day the US is ready to sit down with the individual countries of that group and effectively co-opt them into a new Western Hemisphere alliance that pays respect also to countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. In effect we believe that these countries do have also helpful ideas and not just the rhetoric for which they are famous. Further, Nicaragua and Honduras used to belong to this group and Brazil is also close to its leaders.

OK, so how is this related to our 2009/2010 New Year’s Eve celebration in New York City?

This story starts with my having picked up a Financial Times on the flight back from Copenhagen and in the Guide – Arts around the World section I saw mentioned – “New York – Noche Flamenca” and it said that from Christmas Eve until January 16, Noche Flamenca will be performed at the Lucille Lortel Theater in Greenwich Village and that judging by the reviews the company, with its stars dancers Ms. Soledad Barrio and Juan Ogalla, the star singer Manuel Gago and guitarist Eugenio Iglesias are the most authentic flamenco touring company.

Further, already with the above in mind, I saw the December 26th Alaistair Macaulay Dance Review in the New York Times “Drama Whose Subject Is Both Nothing and Everything.” He writes – “Ms. Barrio’s intensity is striking, even when she’s standing still or walking slowly around the stage… she seemed to be brooding on the darkest spiritual concerns … the attention of her face and upper body riveted on the floor. She might have been mourning the death of a child or contemplating the augury that announced the overthrow of her nation… Her face tends to be wonderfully bleak.”

I decided that I want to experience this Latin intensity, but then the clincher came when I read that the program includes a piece called “ALBA” choreographed by Ms. Marrio’s husband and partner in Noche Flamenca, Mr Martin Santangelo. Alba is about “some extremely unspecific aspect of the Spanish Civil War.” I sensed that I may find here some explanation to the Hugo Chavez anger and his ALBA.

Every other year me and my wife, we use to travel somewhere for the Christmas – New Year time span, as in her work she alternates with another person in her office, who will take of during those days. This year was actually her time to go away, but she chose to spend her vacation in New York and the difficulties with transport and flights were an important part of this decision. So I had to decide where we will be part of a community when slipping into twenty-ten. Going to see Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca was thus our decision – I had the further goal also to get some understanding about ALBA.

Having decided on the show, I went down to the Theater at 121 Christopher Street in the Village, and looked at the neighborhood restaurants and settled fortunately for HAVANA – ALMA DE CUBA at 94 Christopher Street, that promised excellent mojitos, great food, a bottle of CAVA Champagne, New Year eve paraphernalia, Cuban music and cigars. And that is important – Cuba is the first ALBA!

Looking now more closely at Noche Flamenca, which obviously has its home in Spain, I found that they see flamenco as a form of art that is based on song (cante), music (toque), and dance born of “ancestral cultural repression and racial expulsion.” and that 2009-2010 they launch an arts education program in New York City public schools that embodies the three flamenco disciplines: dance, guitar, and song. Their target are the culturally diverse communities of New York City, and they have already lined up a very impressive list of backers to this experiment.

Andalucia in southern Spain absorbed throughout the centuries Romans, Jews and Moors. As far as flamenco is concerned, the most significant arrival was in the 15th century when tribes of nomadic Gypsies settled her. Their arrival coincided with Ferdinand and Isabella’s conquest of Granada, the last bastion of the Moors, and the subsequent expulsion of Jews and Arabs, from Spain – the Jews were massacred, the Gypsies humiliated and persecuted, the Arabs exterminated, the Moriscos (converted Arabs) expelled, and the Andalucians generally exploited – if we do not relate the music to brutality, repression, hunger, fear, menace, inferiority, resistance, and secrecy, then we shall not find the reality of cante flamenco – it is a storm of exasperation and grief. This is the background of the evolution of flamenco as per historian Felix Grande’s review of the 15th-17th centuries.

In the 19th century there were two types of singing in Andalucia – the cante gitano and the cante andaluz, then an Andaluz of Italian orifin, Silverio Franconetti, at first a singer of cante gitano, proceeded in combining the two shaping what became the cante flamenco.

The “deep song” or the cante jondo, resembles the mournful wail of the chant of the exiled Sephardic Jews and its poetry is that of existential angst and philosophical questioning common in Arabic poetry. The dance that evolved and fully blossomed by 1840s combines the repetitive key symbol prevalent in Islam, the trance-inducing rhythms of Africa and the stubborn search of Jewish music as mentioned above.

With the above in mind, let us see now what the Noche Flamenca say about their creation called ALBA:

Choreographer Martin Santangelo says that the piece was inspired by the archives of The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Now let us remember that the Spanish Civil War 1936 – 1939 was the training ground for what became WWII.

45,000 people from over 50 different countries, ignoring their own governments’ failure to respond to the threats of fascism, volunteered to support democratic Spain. The US volunteers came to be known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but Franco, backed by Hitler and Mussolini defeated the democrats – eventually fascism was defeated by 1945 but Franco was left to rule over Spain.

The program notes that many of the Abraham Lincoln Brigaders that survived remained lifelong activists and have continued to support progressive causes, including the Civil Rights Movement in the US and protests against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Spain of today feels a profound gratitude for these heroic individuals.

The song used by the choreographer in setting ALBA is a poem by Miguel Hernandez To the International Soldier Fallen in Spain:

If there are men who contain a soul without frontiers
a brow scattered with universal hair
covered with horizons, ships, and mountain chains,
with sand and snow, then you are one of those.

Fatherlands called to you with all their banners,
so that your breath filled with beautiful movements.
You wanted to quench the thirst of panthers
and fluttered full against their abuses.

With a taste of suns and seas,
Spain beckons you because in her you realize
your majesty like a tree that embraces a continent.

Around your bones, the olive groves will grow,
unfolding their iron roots in the ground,
embracing men universally, faithfully.

What the choreographer Martin Santangelo tried to convey with the members of his troupe – all male – singers, guitarists and dancers, and a bunch of walking sticks as props, was sort of a Greek corus telling about the travel of those that came from afar and the fact that their spirits were not broken. They did not give up even when beaten and continued a life of walking and fighting.

That is what I saw in that piece and I wonder how dance reviewer Alastair Macaulay saw nothing of this with his own eyes. All what he says is that it “is about some extremely unspecific aspect of the Spanish Civil War. Flamenco isn’t enriched by tackling any one particular drama; it’s diminished.” Then he adds later – “No. ‘Alba’ is not a disaster; it’s just nebulous, unclear, earnest. Obviously, though, it’s small fry compared with the greater meat of the evening.”

Sorry Mr. Macaulay, you did not understand the sonnet or you did not read it. You also did not notice those walking sticks or just did not ask yourself why walking sticks? You may think that art is only technique, but some of your readers are also capable of relating to content and to this readership the Spanish Civil War has meaning beyond plain dance. Granted that you are a dance critic and not a political pages reporter, nevertheless, you just saw an honest attempt, as you say yourself, of tackling content, so you should have given the credit these artists deserve for trying to use their art form in order to inspire the public of their theater in ways that are no different from what they will be attempting to do in our public schools with children that can be helped by art to become better citizens. In the ALBA case, I feel that understanding the Lincoln brigade volunteers could actually help in formulating opinions about issues of these days when we continue to see injustice in the world and dictators encroaching upon democracy and human rights. Yes, I am aware that there was also a Stalin involvement in Spain, and I read “The God That Failed” but all of that is secondary to my disagreement with this part of your review – the issue is really the meaning and purpose of art – I believe that there can be a purpose and you clearly disagree.

Further, in the second half of the program there was a second topical choreography by Martin Santongelo titled “Refugiados” that included the whole company. It was inspired by literature and poetry of refugee children from Somalia and Zimbabwe identified by UN agencies and receiving emergency assistance. You did not mention this piece and I wonder if your choice for criticism was rather dependent on content as this latter piece may be dealing with a subject that is less open for criticism – you do not kick children but politics are made for kicking. Sorry, and please forgive if I am here on the wrong track.

But then back to our declared real interest in Noche Flamenca as said was the title ALBA of that particular dance about the Spanish Civil War – why was it called ALBA?

Aha – I found!

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
A non-profit organization devoted to the preservation and dissemination of the history of the North American role in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
 

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA) is an international cooperation organization based on the idea of social, political, and economic integration between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is associated with socialist andsocial democratic governments and is an attempt at regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, bartering and mutual economic aid, rather than trade liberalization as with free trade agreements. ALBA nations are in the process of introducing a new regional currency, the SUCRE. It is intended to be the common virtual currency by 2010 and eventually a hard currency.

The name initially contained “Alternative” instead of “Alliance”, but was changed on June 24, 2009. ALBA also means “dawn” in Spanish.

Member states

Common name	Official name	Date joined	Population	Area (km²)	GDP PPP (US$ bn)	Capital
Antigua and Barbuda	Antigua and Barbuda	24 June 2009	85,632	442	1.546	St. John’s
Bolivia	Plurinational State of Bolivia	29 April 2006	9,119,152	1,098,581	43.424	Sucre
Cuba	Republic of Cuba	14 December 2004	11,451,652	110,861	108.2	Havana
Dominica	Commonwealth of Dominica	20 January 2008	72,660	754	.72	Roseau
Ecuador	Republic of Ecuador	24 June 2009	14,573,101	256,370	106.993	Quito
Honduras	Republic of Honduras	9 October 2008	7,483,763	112,492	32.725	Tegucigalpa
Nicaragua	Republic of Nicaragua	23 February 2007	5,891,199	129,495	15.89	Managua
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	24 June 2009	120,000	389	1.085	Kingstown
Venezuela	Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela	14 December 2004	28,199,825	916,445	358.623
ALBA Totals	9 Countries	–	73,453,238	2,625,829	669.206

Observer states of the organisation include Haiti, Iran and Uruguay

—————————–

November 27, 2008 08:30

NEWS

CARACAS.Dmitry Medvedev took part in a meeting of the leaders of the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America.

The organisation was set up at the end of 2004 on the initiative of Cuba and Venezuela. This association also includes Bolivia, Honduras, Dominica and Nicaragua; Haiti, Iran, Uruguay and Ecuador are among its observers.

During the meeting Mr Medvedev raised the question of developing cooperation between Russia and Latin American countries.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, President Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica Roosevelt Skerrit, and Vice President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba Ricardo Cabrisas took part in the meeting.

This amazing article was penned by Fidel Castro himself, then later we watched how Presidents Morales of Bolivia and Chavez of Venezuela spoke in the Copenhagen plenary similar words to these, in the name of the ALBA group of Latin and Caribbean States, on that very important Friday-the eighteenth.

Today, when finally writing about this, I also wonder if besides Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti, Chavez is not ready to accept also Abraham Lincoln as a third member of a historic triumvirate intended to set the Western Hemisphere apart from global machinations, provided President Obama does indeed stretch out a friendly hand to Cuba? I believe that this is within the realm of possibilities, and perhaps the easiest way for the US to free itself of the tyranny of oil and the influence of the oil lobby of Washington. I believe that our times start looking more and more like the pre-WWII days. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade that went to Spain had among its people some of the best the US had to offer. They were not stupid and recognized the Stalinist stealth-riders, as well as the fascist opponents, and remained true to democracy ideals that brought them there. Climate change provides the world the same opportunity as fighting for democracy did in those years. If Obama is ready to rein in the US extremists when it comes to economic relations with the countries of the Southern part of the Western Hemisphere, new line-ups are possible based on new agreed common goals of helping in the sustainable development of these countries, rather then continuing to regard them only as source of raw materials. Had the US done so earlier the world might have been a friendlier place to America – at least in that part that fell into the geopolitical Western Hemisphere Monrovian design.

Clearly, Castro and Chavez will criticize the US when being held at bay by the stick of US corporations, but when approached as partners for change they might actually be ready for political compromise. The reality is that even though they do not apply democracy to their States, the did eradicate analphabetism, hunger, and established health care systems, ahead of the US. Venezuela can help fund such positive activities thanks to its income from oil, but they seem ready to help fund also other positive activities if offered a place at the American table. The way they show pride in their baseball culture that derived from the US via Cuba, shows to me that I am not dreaming about pie in the sky.

———–
 http://monthlyreview.org/castro/2009/10/…

Reflections of Fidel: The ALBA and Copenhagen.

The festivities associated with the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, showed the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults in general by the singing, the dancing, the costumes and rich expressions of the human beings of all ethnic groups, colors and shades: aborigine, black, white and mixed people. We could see there thousands of years of human history and precious culture that explain the determination with which the leaders of various Caribbean, Central and South American peoples convened that summit.

The meeting was a great success. Bolivia was the venue. I recently wrote on the excellent prospects of that country, an heir to the Aymara-Quechua culture. A small group of peoples from that area are bent on proving that a better world is possible. The ALBA – created by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Cuba, inspired by Bolivar’s and Marti’s ideas, as an unprecedented example of revolutionary solidarity- has showed how much could be done in barely five years of peaceful cooperation. This started shortly after Hugo Chavez’s political and democratic victory. Imperialism underestimated him, and deliberately tried to oust him and remove him. The fact that for a good part of the 20th century Venezuela had been the world’s largest oil-producer, practically owned by the Yankee transnationals, made the chosen path particularly rough to pursue.

The powerful adversary had neoliberalism and the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas]; two instruments of domination always used after the Cuban Revolution to crush resistance in the hemisphere.

It is irritating to think of the shameless and disrespectful way in which the US administration imposed the government of millionaire Pedro Carmona and tried to have elected President Hugo Chavez removed, at a time when the USSR had disappeared and the People’s Republic of China was a few years away from becoming the economic and commercial power it is today, after two decades of over 10 percent growth. The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, resisted the brutal thrust. The Sandinistas recovered, and the struggle for sovereignty, independence and socialism gained ground in Bolivia and Ecuador. Honduras, which had joined the ALBA, was the target of a brutal coup d’etat inspired by the Yankee ambassador and propelled from the US military base in Palmerola.

Today, there are four Latin American countries that have completely eradicated illiteracy: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. A fifth country, Ecuador, is quickly advancing towards that goal. The comprehensive healthcare programs are underway in the five countries at an unprecedented pace in the Third World. The programs of economic development with social justice have become projects of these five states, which already enjoy great prestige in the world for their brave position in the face of the empire’s economic, military and media power. Three English speaking Caribbean countries of black ancestry, determined to fight for their development, have also joined the ALBA.

This alone would be a great political merit if in today’s world that were the only big problem of man’s history.

The economic and political system that in a short historical period has led to the existence of more than one billion hungry people, and many more hundreds of millions whose lives are hardly longer than half the average of those in the wealthy and privileged countries, was until now the main problem for mankind. But, a new and extremely serious problem was strongly discussed at the ALBA Summit: climate change. A danger of such magnitude had never been known in human history.

As Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega waved the people goodbye in the streets of Cochabamba yesterday, Sunday, that same day, according to news spread by BBC World, Gordon Brown was chairing in London a session of the Major Economies Forum mostly made up by the highest developed capitalist countries, the main culprits for the carbon dioxide emissions, that is, the gas causing the greenhouse effect.

The significance of Brown’s remarks is that they have not been made by a representative of ALBA or one of the 150 emerging or underdeveloped countries on the planet but of Great Britain, the country where industrial development started and one of those which have released most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The British Prime Minister warned that if an agreement is not reached at the UN Summit in Copenhagen, the consequences will be ‘devastating.’

Some of the ‘catastrophic’ consequences would be floods, droughts and lethal heat waves claimed the environmental group Nature World Fund referring to Brown’s assertion. “The climate change will be out of control within the next five to ten years if the CO2 emissions are not drastically cut down. There will not be a plan B if Copenhagen fails.”

The same news source claims that: “BBC specialist James Landale has explained that not everything is happening as expected.”

Newsweek reported that “it seems more unlikely every day that the states will commit to something in Copenhagen.”

According to reports from the major American press outlet, the chairman of the session, Gordon Brown, said that “if no agreement is reached, there is no doubt that the damage of the uncontrolled emissions will not be repaired with a future agreement.” He then went on to mention such conflicts as “unchecked migration and 1.8 billion people afflicted by water shortage.”

Actually, as the Cuban delegation claimed in Bangkok, the United States led the highest industrialized countries most opposed to the necessary reduction of emissions.

At the Cochabamba meeting, a new ALBA Summit was convened. The timetable will be: December 6, elections in Bolivia; December 13, ALBA summit in Havana; December 16, participation in the UN Copenhagen Summit. The small group of ALBA nations will be there. The issue is no longer “Homeland or Death”; it is truly and without exaggeration a matter of “Life or Death” for the human race.

The capitalist system is not only oppressing and plundering our countries; the wealthiest industrial nations wish to impose to the rest of the world the bulk of the burden in the struggle on climate change. Who are they trying to fool with that? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the Third World countries will be struggling for the survival of the species.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 19, 2009
6:05 PM

Our title sounds crazy – we know it – but so were Lula’s embrace,  and the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Malaysian votes at the IAEA. When world leaders tell us that enhancing nuclear will have to be part of the energy mix of the future, they just allow for these phenomena.
IRAN DEFENDS SEIZING NOBEL LAUREATE’S ASSETS
27 November 2009, From The SanFranciscoSentinel.com
BY NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times

Iran on Friday denounced charges by the Norwegian government that it had illegally confiscated a Nobel Peace Prize winner’s medal and frozen her bank account, the IRNA news agency reported. Iran called the action an interference into its internal affairs and said the winner, Shirin Ebadi, owed money to the government in taxes.

“We are surprised that Norwegian officials can make such hasty and biased comments and disregard the laws and regulations of other countries,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, was quoted as saying, adding that Ms. Ebadi, a human rights lawyer, had refused to pay taxes on her prize.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi

Mr. Mehmanparast denied that Ms. Ebadi’s medal, which she won in 2003, had been confiscated, but his comments indicated that her assets had been frozen.

“We do not understand how Norwegian officials are trying to justify people’s negligence to pay tax,” he said.

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Iran had confiscated Ms. Ebadi’s Nobel medal and her diploma from a bank box and confiscated her account. It summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires to protest the confiscation and expressed “grave concern” about the treatment of Ms. Ebadi’s husband, Javad Tavassolian, who it said had been arrested and severely beaten in Tehran.

Iran has demanded about $400,000 in taxes on Ms. Ebadi’s prize money, which amounted to $1.3 million. Ms. Ebadi has said that under Iranian law, there are no taxes on such prizes.

The measure appears to be an effort by the government to pressure Ms. Ebadi, 62, who is an outspoken critic of the government and human rights violations.

She left Iran shortly before the disputed June 12 election won by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which set off the largest protests in the country since the 1979 revolution.

Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a lawyer in Tehran and a founding member of Ms. Ebadi’s human rights group, said Ms. Ebadi’s prize money was used to help prisoners of conscience and their families, according to Agence France-Presse.

“The account has been blocked by the officials and they do not allow withdrawals,” Mr. Dadkhah said. “This is illegal as blocking and confiscation should be the decision of a court where evidence is presented for such an act. It is politicized.”

We had the following as a posting on our future events button. Now we update after the events.

——————

Posted on October 12, 2009:

Dr. Perkins, a student of leadership, to speak October 15th at the Explorers Club annual Dinner.

Dr. Dennis Perkins is Keynote Speaker at the Explorers’ Club,
Lowell Thomas Annual Awards Dinner,
October 15th, 2009 Cipriani Wall Street, NY, NY

Dr. Perkins is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, served as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam and subsequently received an MBA from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Perkins has spent his lifetime evaluating and analyzing leadership and teamwork of successful and doomed expeditions, first as a front line military leader and subsequently in the field and as faculty at our nation’s top universities. Dr. Perkins’ passion to experience and understand risk has taken him to disparate places including Antarctica, where he retraced the footsteps of famed explorer, Ernest Shackleton; and to Australia, where he sailed the Midnight Rambler, winning the challenging Sydney to Hobart Race, a 628 nautical mile race — often called “the Everest” of offshore racing – using a Volvo 60 racing boat.

Dr. Perkins has written extensively on leadership and organizational effectiveness all in the context of risk assessment and optimization.

——————–

I was intrigued by the interest in risk as described in the Explorers Club info material. Indeed, now I can report that both events did indeed stand in the shadow of the RISK idea – but please mind – this was not in the sense of getting involved in adventures for the sake of adventure, but rather the cold assessment of risk, and the intelligent process of learning how to get out from under dangerous conditions. You get to risks at the edge and might look at the brink – said one speaker.

The speakers were all old style explorers and by nature of this concept – risk takers. Those that were honored at the dinner were obviously members of the older generation, but at the Saturday “Mountain Stories” event we saw also younger people – so there is still a future for those that want to allow for risk taking. Now the problem is to find places to explore – but I learned that there is no shortage of such possibilities. Climbing new peaks in areas that were less accessible in the past is just one possibility, but going back to mountain peaks that have been explored many times in the past, but using new equipment, it is possible to open up new roots and even get a minor peak called by your name.

Going in the foots of Shackleton in the Antarctica, Dr. Perkins said that the good news was that we have been there before and we know how to do it.

Perkins speaks of “Balanced optimism grounded in reality – you damn well got to be optimistic to go on such a trip.” You must be wiling to take the big risk – not the unnecessary risk.”

What the explorer must do is to look calmly at the situation and step up to the risk worth taking. The challenge is to find innovative solutions to problems under least favorable conditions.

Dr. Perkins, when he speaks, he peppers his mental pictures with ideas from the world of business and policy – such as: “The IMF says global recovery has begun – but does not say when things will get better – so may be we cannot predict the future.”

We know we will have bad days, but we must be ready to take the worthwhile risk, and ended by saying “Thank you very much – go for the edge.”

Yvon Choinard, a Patagonian man, climed mountains on every continent. Long time ago, he looked for the true source of the Nile at Mt. Stanley in Uganda. He said that he never goes on an adventure trip – it just happens when you take small risks on the way.

Richard Wilson, told about racing a boat for 120 days and 28,000 miles, from Port la Foret, Brittany. 

Eventually someone defined the topic of risk as – “Risk is to take new exploration and the unknown, and this without knowing about success.”

—————

The Saturday event was set up to honor further six outstanding explorers and mountain climbers. I was there for three of the six.

The last presenter was Jennifer Loew-Anker - born in Montana to the outdoors from birth – she sounded like a proof that genetics, or call it upbringing – have something to do with it. When you ride a horse at two years of age, and horse-riding is in effect more dangerous then mountain climbing … you get my point.

Jennifer is an artist with wildlife her major topic. She presented to us her book “Forget Me Not” about her first husband – her childhood friend from Montana – Alex Lowe, who died in 1999, in an avalanche on the Himalayan mountain Shishapangma. Alex was considered one of the greatest modern climbers. Jennifer showed us a movie about their lives – she herself also a great climber. After 18 years of marriage, she was left with three children. Eventually, two years later she remarried another climber who worked with Alex.

Jennifer told us about climbing done in the Pinar del Rio region of Cuba, and of philanthropic work she does now with the Alex foundation. They built a climbing wall in Mongolia and established a school for sherpas when they realized that the sherpas actually never learned to take care for themselves, and the number of casualties among the sherpas is so much higher then among the foreign climbers.

The other two – actually three speakers – were the pair Freddie Wilkenson & Janet Bergman, and Kevin Mahoney. All of them from the Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, Mountain Climber community.  All of them connected to the Dartmouth Club and to “Mountain Hardware,” and from their base they work as guides and climbers all over the world.

Kevin Mahoney sees his job as a “mitigator of risk – so people discover their own worth.” He defined himself as a winter person – he climbs ice. He said that skying has many more accidents then ice climbing.

Freddie Wilkinson and Janet Bergman are young people from Kevin Mahoney’s group. They gave us a run down on today’s ice climbing – mentioning that 95% of climbing is done in a handful of peaks in the Himalayas. They described themselves as a great team as Freddie looks for opportunities and Janet for barriers – this when trying to identify new targets for climbing or new ways of climbing in areas that have been covered earlier.

——-

Now I come to the real reason why I looked at these two fascinating programs at the Explorers Club – this because of an obsession I developed at the UN when I realized that the New York based Explorers Club is an NGO affiliated to the UN, but not part of the environmental NGOs active at the UN. I realized at the time that the Club was dominated by people that would rather shoot an elephant and turn it over to a taxidermist so it be a trophy for them. Could they find the last dinosaur, they would have stuffed him also. That might have been right for the days of President Theodore Roosevelt, but I thought that today you ought  not love the outdoors in order to kill them. Also climate change is a rather important issue and I saw tremendous potential here to get the Explorers involved. Eventually I approached a young new President of the Club, we met but nothing happened.

Now, at the Saturday event I spoke with some of those that were honored at the event. These were young people and clearly not of the riffle kind, but still did not find a feel for activism present on our kind of issues. Nevertheless, I found hope for change.

When I asked Kevin Mahoney if he found signs of climate change in Nepal, he started to tell me about the farmer who complained that he has to go higher uphill with the sheep he owns, because there is no grass for them as there is a lack of water. So he goes up higher to areas that used to be covered snow! This clearly gave me the opening to talk a little about the melting glaciers, and I found real interest among the young climbers. So there may be hope that someday the Explorers might indeed become Environmentalists as well – provided by that time there will still be left some  environment to explore. Just think of the snow caps of Kenya and Tanzania and my statement above might not sound absurd at all. 

Is this a different meaning for RISK?

The Prologue:

The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il   and The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seem to present to the world their proud contention of being indeed The Axis of Evil that was originally suggested by former President G.W. Bush. (Bush had there also Saddam Hussein, and John Bolton was claiming also the rights of Fidel Castro, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad. Since then Saddam Hussein is gone and his country is normalizing slowly, and the Bolton three are at various stages of trying to undo their fame.) What is clear is that a country is not evil – only its leader can be evil. He can nevertheless influence his people and the country as a whole can become then dangerously evil. That is what happened to Germany and Austria under Adolf Hitler   – The FUERER or THE LEADER –   and that might happen now to North Korea under Kim Jong Il, while there is hope that this is not the case of Iran where the young people may show that they did not absorb the indoctrination that is being dished out in those mosques.

Enter a new US President – Barack Hussein Obama – and he declares that we do not play anymore the game of blame. There is no evil we should not attempt to talk with, and that was completely fine with us. He indeed tried to address the real problems of the world but Jong Il and Ali Khamenei seem to insist that they cannot be by-passed – they want to be recognized as holdovers   entitled   to the crown of evil.

Enter a fly to the White House, in full view of world TV, and forces President Obama to take a resolute immediate reaction – the fly gets squished!

—————–

The Drama:

The students and younger generation, also the internet enlightened women of Iran, they see the obvious – the elections in which they participated in a symbolic vote for Mr. Moussavi, where highhandedly high-jacked by President Ahmadi-Nejad. They chose to go to the street to protest the fact that their symbolic vote was not counted.

They know that Moussavi was also agreed upon by The Supreme Leader, but they liked the contender’s wife who stood by him during the campaign. This was progress, and they were ripe to submit to slow progress – as long as there will be change. Surely, they would prefer faster change, but change in a positive direction was change nevertheless, and they blessed on it.

The Supreme Leader’s support of Ahmadi-Nejad’s holding onto power – honesty or not – has now the potential of turning the obvious into real rebellion – and this is a clear Iran problem. What should Washington do?

Obama is right – stay the course and stay out. the Supreme Leader with old Nazi style information training, will blame the US if it does or if it does not – but the Iranian people – at least a great part of them – will recognize the present US non-involvement and thus the Leader’s lies. It will strengthen their hand in their conviction that time has come for real change and indeed for a new Iranian revolution – this time without the US having caused it!

The same goes for the UK – stay out because in the past you did enough mischief in that part of the world and non-involvement now is the best way to stage the local people’s own involvement according to their own real interests.

 How does a sigle fly show the way to a wondering US President?

The story actually starts with Rene Descartes lying in bed, sometime in 1628, and watching flies. He was trying to track the flies’ position and he realized that he could describe a fly’s position by inventing coordinate geometry – that was the start of the Cartesian coordinate system and a philosophy with “Rules of the Direction of Mind,” that watching what the church did to Galileo in 1633, was eventually published only in 1701 (Descartes lived 1596 – 1650).

Seemingly, a descendant of that 1628 Cartesian fly entered the White House this week to lead President Obama in his search of what to do with Leaders of Evil.

————-

Some in Washington, like Senator John McCain, are trying to trip President Obama, this while the world is learning of the broken bones of precious team members – Robert Gates, Sonia Sotomayor and Hillary Clinton. Senator McCain would like the US to intervene in Iran and see more killing and direct harm to the US. That is his right of having no responsibility for his positions. We think he also did not contemplate in depth the Cartesian fly’s self-sacrifice. Others thought that Dick Cheney might like see the US in trouble in order to vindicate his own failed policies.

Today’s newspapers are full of stories about US fortifying Hawaii Defenses Against North Korean arms and missile threats. Now that is another yet to be cooked case of raw thinking.

More solid thinking suggests that if change in Iran does occur, there is chance that also it will impact on the nuclear issue, but if repression does not allow for change, there is a chance that the outside world changes and more powers are ready to hold Iran on a shorter leash.

———–

The Epilogue:

Obama – The President of the United States – learned from the fly incident that when a nasty intruder gets close to you – you just squish him. The facts are that he did not get up from his seat to chase out the intruding fly.

North Korea, has no velvet, orange, or green revolution – its youth has been brainwashed and all what they know is to march in lockstep. This is a very sorry situation and in Gilbert & Sullivan language – “they never shall be missed.” On the other hand – in Iran there is a new generation of talented people that might yet bring about change – that is in their own country – or as said if this did not work out – in our countries.

North Korea is a candidate for immediate squishing – Iran is not – but with a caveat!

So, when the first North Korean ship does not stop for inspection as ordered by the UN Security Council, give it short warning and SINK IT. Be ready to take on any other mischief from the Dear Leader and follow him to the end – this is the squishing part. They shall not be missed.

Iran, will watch what goes on with North Korea and learn. The larger lesson is that squishing does happen. The wise is expected to learn from this. The pinpointed study is that people that follow blindly a “Dear Leader” get punished eventually.

Remarks: U.S. Amb. to Brazil Clifford Sobel at AS/COA’s São Paulo Conference
June 9, 2009

Remarks by the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Clifford Sobel
at the AS/COA Latin American Cities Conference held
in São Paulo, Brazil, on June 6, 2009.

The Future of the U.S.-Brazilian Partnership: A Call for Global Partnership

Today, I am very pleased to be here to speak with you about the importance of U.S. partnership with Brazil, especially in this era of momentous change on the global stage.I would like to speak briefly about the special position that Brazil has as an emerging global leader–especially given your roots as a democratic nation and a market economy. And I would like to discuss the coalitions that Brazil and the United States can form on common interests, looking at what unites us, and not what divides us.

Importance of the Bilateral Relationship

As a member of the BRIC nations, Brazil has had a profound impact on our world as a new leader in an era of globalization. You are helping to shift the center of gravity. As U.S. Ambassador to Brazil, I must emphasize that our partnership with Brazil is one of our most important bilateral relationships, based on shared values, shared interests, shared challenges. The United States recognizes that on many issues, Brazil has to be a part of the solution, for example, climate change, energy innovation, food security, and regional stability.

What We Have Accomplished

This bilateral relationship is already intensifying as Brazil’s economic stability, and its global reach and engagement grow. And the similarities between our countries make us natural partners. Consider for a moment all that our countries, as partners, have accomplished together:
Biofuels Agreement
CEO Forum
New air routes/Open Skies
Bilateral Military Working Group: closer engagement on Haiti and other military to military priorities
Projeto Pontes
Trip to Northeast/Hospitality
Enter Jovem
Energy and food security
New people: Health Attaché/FAA/RLA/USTDA
These are but a few examples of what Brazil and the United States have been able to do to strengthen our partnership. Imagine what the future can hold!

New Vision

Looking to the future: The United States is ready to lead by example. The Obama Administration has laid out an ever bolder vision of U.S. relations with Brazil, one that deepens our partnership on the global stage. President Obama has brought a fresh voice, and a new approach to U.S. relations in the Americas and worldwide. Some Brazilian journalists have taken to referring to “the Obama Doctrine”–that the U.S. is ready to listen, open to learning from other nations, and ready to lead by example.

This new approach was introduced at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad in April, and one may say manifested in the surprising consensus member nations found regarding revoking Cuba’s expulsion from the OAS. The resolution was an act of statesmanship. Our nations addressed and bridged an historic divide in the Americas, while reaffirming our profound commitment to democracy and the fundamental human rights of our peoples. We removed an historical impediment to Cuba’s participation in the OAS, but we also established a process of engagement with Cuba based on the core practices, principles, and purposes of the OAS and the Inter-American system. This was not an easy process, but the decision was historic. And our collaboration strengthens the OAS as an institution.

Working together our nations can make history!

Just remember, after World War II, the United States and its allies built a new world order. Today, it is up to the emerging global powers such as Brazil, and the developed world, to do it once again! Brazil could have a profound impact on our world as a new leader in the era of globalization. You are shifting the center of gravity.

The United States recognizes our shared responsibility for common problems, and we are looking for partners who demonstrate the political will to meet these challenges head on. Looking at the U.S.-Brazil partnership,   it is clear our nations have shared priorities.   We recognize the importance of:
Solving the global economic crisis and preventing future ones; Promoting prosperity and social inclusion in our diverse nations;
Dealing with climate change through environmental protection, innovation and green energy development;
Strengthening the safety of our communities by cooperating in the fight against violence, drugs, and organized crime.
As President Obama said following his March meeting with President Lula at the White House, the two Presidents “had a wonderful meeting of the minds.” Both presidents recognize that more developed nations such as the United States must work together in partnership with BRIC nations to address the key issues of our time—the global economic crisis, poverty, despair, and the 30 percent of the population that we have left behind.

This was the first topic that Presidents Obama and Lula discussed at the White House in March! We will get through this economic crisis, and our interconnected economies will pave the way for cooperation in many areas, not just in bilateral relations.   But in getting the benefits of globalization to all of the citizens of the world. Together, our leaders need to be wise enough to make the hard decisions to deal with the different issues that confront us all. For today, no country, no region, has the resources or intellectual capital to deal with all of these challenges.

Forecasting the Partnership: What Would Brazil Like?

With Brazil: We are natural partners – parcerias naturais.   And Brazil is an island of stability. Our leaders have nurtured an increasingly close relationship between our governments, our business, and our people.   As a result, I believe there is huge potential for growth in any endeavor we can think of. In its report, A Second Chance: U.S. Policy in the Americas,   the Inter-American Dialogue identified ten priority challenges for the U.S. in the Americas. The 7th involved building a closer relationship with Brazil.   I quote: “Neither Brazil nor the United States is yet ready to develop a broad longterm partnership.   They are not willing to make the concessions or accept the substantial compromises needed to build a more strategic relationship.”

With all due respect, with regard to the United States, I have to disagree with the Inter-American Dialogue. I think this Administration is already working on a longer-term strategic partnership with Brazil that goes beyond an ad hoc set of issues. And I think the indications are clear, too, that the Obama Administration is ready to make compromises and concessions, where necessary, to make such a partnership happen.

As Eduardo Campos said, Brazil is not looking for charity, but for partnership. But… it takes two to make a partnership. Call it what you will, strategic, or otherwise; the question before Brazil today is, what kind of partnership does it want? A pragmatic, fluid, broad-based partnership, based on shared interests and common strategic goals? Or something more cautious, less reliable, more subject to external pressure?

Global leadership today requires engaged and continuing political and diplomatic partnership between developed and developing countries in times of crisis and in times of calm. Global leadership entails making hard diplomatic decisions, not only the popular ones. It is up to Brazil to determine what kind of regional partnership it will seek, but the United States hopes it will not be exclusionary.

And Brazil, perhaps more than any country in Latin America, benefits from globalization. It is up to both our countries not to engage in protectionism. The United States is not looking backwards. This is a time for new vision, new opportunities, and new partnership. That is what President Obama brings as President. Certainly we have an exciting opportunity.   We recall at the G-20, how President Obama smiled when he saw President Lula, and exclaimed, “I love this guy!”

Everything I have seen as Ambassador in nearly three years leads me to believe that the potential of this partnership to create a new, positive-sum game is enormous. The barriers to constructing this partnership are low.   With so much in common, it’s really a question of interest and will. I have seen equal desire throughout my time in Brazil on the part of government ministers, members of congress, state governors and mayors, educators, scientists, students, business people, and civic activists. Of course, there are still some who think of the past and not to the future. It is my hope that in the months and years to come, Brazil will continue its outreach to the United States.

I hope as Brazil develops its strategic interests, that it will include the United States amongst its first and foremost partners. It is my hope that our governments can harness the renewed energy and enthusiasm of the last few months to create a broader and deeper partnership and yes, perhaps even a strategic one. Our nations have so much in common.   We are rich not only in commodities, but in our people.

In 1820, Thomas Jefferson remarked that Brazil and the United States are “brethren of the same family pursuing the same objective.” As I said during the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce annual dinner for Person of the Year:
Brazil and the United States of America are so alike.
We are nations “indivisible” but nations of immigrants
We are citizens of the New World
Innovators and entrepreneurs who share a common vision for the future
It makes me feel proud to stand with those who built and continue to build the bridges of friendship, and the foundations for partnership, between our two nations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the United States stands with Brazil as partners on the world stage. We can accomplish great things together–bi-laterally and multi-laterally–when we act together, as governments and as people. As Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Thomas Shannon said recently:   “This is a relationship to which both countries need to pay close attention. This relationship will really define what happens in South America and elsewhere in the world.”

Tom Shannon has been a great Assistant Secretary, and I am sure he will make a great Ambassador and   be a leader in working with Brazil to deepen our bilateral partnership. What I ask from Brazil today is: continue to be our partner. Not only our bilateral partner, but our partner in multilateral relationships, our partner worldwide. Together, we have so much room for growth and for success that we ought to be more ambitious about what our countries can do together.

We don’t know what the particular areas for future cooperation between our countries will be. But we know that the future of Brazil is today, and our futures and our prosperity are inter-dependent. This is a great time for Brazil and the United States, with limitless oportunidades. t is up to all of us, governments, the private sector, and our private citizens, to build the bridges, create the partnerships, and seize the moment.

Obrigado!

 Forget About Fidel: Things are changing in Cuba, however slowly. The United States should be a part of shaping their direction.

By Richard N. Haass – From the Newsweek magazine issue dated Mar 16, 2009.
There are signs that change may finally be coming to Cuba, 50 years after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. In a major shakeup, Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, fired several high-level officials last week. While Raúl did more to raise expectations than living standards in his first year as president, he may now be positioning the government to go beyond the tentative reforms so far introduced. Then again, he might merely be installing loyalists who share his view that the regime should keep a tight grip on society.

What’s more certain is the need for change in Cuba. Last year’s hurricanes cost the already poor island nation $10 billion, 20 percent of its GDP. The global economic slowdown has dampened tourism. The population of 11 million is shrinking, in part because of a housing shortage that’s leading many families to have fewer children. Cuba’s people, the lion’s share of whom were born after 1959, face a future that promises little in the way of either prosperity or freedom.

Some American conservatives maintain that all this is reason enough for the United States to persist in its policy of ignoring Cuba diplomatically and sanctioning it economically. At least in principle, one could argue that the revolution is running out of steam and that regime change from within may finally be at hand. The problem is that this argument ignores Cuban reality. The country is not near the precipice of collapse. To the contrary, the intertwined party, government and military have matters well in hand. The population, ensured basic necessities along with access to education and health care, is neither inclined to radical change nor in a position to bring it about.

The American policy of isolating Cuba has failed. Officials boast that Havana now hosts more diplomatic missions than any other country in the region save Brazil. Nor is the economic embargo working. Or worse: it is working, but for countries like Canada, South Korea and dozens of others that are only too happy to help supply Cuba with food, generators and building materials. Those in Congress who complain about the “offshoring” of American jobs ought to consider that the embargo deprives thousands of American workers of employment.

The policy of trying to isolate Cuba also works-perversely enough-to bolster the Cuban regime. The U.S. embargo provides Cuba’s leaders a convenient excuse-the country’s economic travails are due to U.S. sanctions, they can claim, not their own failed policies. The lack of American visitors and investment also helps the government maintain political control.

There is one more reason to doubt the wisdom of continuing to isolate Cuba. However slowly, the country is changing. The question is whether the United States will be in a position to influence the direction and pace of this change. We do not want to see a Cuba that fails, in which the existing regime gives way to a repressive regime of a different stripe or to disorder marked by drugs, criminality, terror or a humanitarian crisis that prompts hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flee their country for the United States. Rather, Washington should work to shape the behavior and policy of Cuba’s leadership so that the country becomes more open politically and economically.

Fifty years of animosity cannot be set aside in a stroke, but now is the time for Washington to act. Much of the initiative lies with the new president. President Obama, could, for example, make good on campaign promises to allow Cuban-Americans to freely remit funds to relatives in Cuba and to visit them regularly, and could loosen travel restrictions for others as well. (Some of these measures can be found in legislation currently working its way through Congress.) Obama could also initiate technical contacts. Each country already maintains an “interests section,” a small embassy by another name, in the other’s capital. They also share information about weather. But they could resume exchanges on such common challenges as migration and drug interdiction, and initiate them on homeland security and counterterrorism.

Going beyond this and dealing with the basics of the embargo-or removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism-would likely require congressional approval. Current law, though, makes it almost impossible to take such steps. It requires that Cuba effectively become a functioning democracy before sanctions can be lifted. But it’s precisely engagement that is far more likely to reform Cuba. Preconditions are an obstacle to effective foreign policy.

The Obama administration has a great opportunity to begin modifying U.S. policy before or during the Summit of the Americas, to be held in April in Trinidad. A new U.S. policy would not only increase U.S. influence in Cuba, but it probably would also be the single most powerful way in which Obama could improve the U.S.’s standing throughout the Western Hemisphere. The United States can engage with China and Russia, not to mention North Korea, Syria and even Iran. Surely it ought to be able to do so with Cuba.

Haass, a NEWSWEEK contributor and president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 From the Washington DC based Council On Hemispheric Affairs. March 4, 2009: Revamping U.S.-Cuban Politics: Playing the Guantánamo Card in a Game of Constructive Diplomacy.
 http://www.coha.org/2009/03/revamping-us…

- 106 years of American occupation of Guantánamo Bay is long enough
- Obama signs order to close torture facility, but remains silent about the base’s future
- Reversion of the obsolescent facility to Cuba is essential for the normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations as well as rehabilitation of Latin-American ties

In recent months, media coverage of Guantánamo Bay has focused on the relocation and plans for the prosecution of detainees now housed there by the United States government. But there is another issue that all but goes unaddressed – the legitimacy of the U.S. naval base’s very presence along the southeastern coastline of Cuba. This issue has not yet been even cursorily explored. On January 22, President Obama signed an executive order that called for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within one year. This would remove the sole remaining function of the base that served as an internment camp for suspected terrorists, and therefore also would provide the Obama administration with good reason to reconsider returning the land itself to Cuba, its rightful and legal owner.

Returning Guantánamo to effective Cuban sovereignty as part of a normalization of relations with Cuba would have an explosive impact throughout Latin America. It would be the single most transformative act of goodwill that the U.S. could make, and would be sure to bring in return a range of positive actions on Havana’s part. Furthermore, Washington’s release of the Cuban Five (jailed Cubans presently serving lengthy prison terms after very controversial trials before Federal District Judge Joan Lenard – one of the most contentious judicial figures in the country) could win the release of all political prisoners presently being held in Cuba.

Guantánamo: an Anachronism
The presence of the U.S. in Cuba is a grossly outdated quirk of history. Today there appears to be no logical justification for the U.S. maintenance of its more than 100-year old outmoded base at Guantánamo; the U.S. receives no tactical or economic benefits from it. Indeed, The New York Times estimated that the annual cost to operate the strategically redundant base ranges between $90 million and $118 million, an unconscionable waste of vital resources, particularly in these dire economic times. To continue leasing territory from a country with which the U.S. has not had formal diplomatic relations for almost five decades and which has become its mortal enemy, also seems to be a bizarre practice at the least and at best a perversity.

There is no legal justification for Washington’s continued presence at Guantánamo; the base contravenes a myriad of international laws. Moreover, the original military rationale for sustaining a base on Cuba no longer exists. Washington has closed similar bases in the region, including Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, and the naval imperatives of the late 19th century have long since disappeared. Roosevelt Roads was shut down due to the Pentagon’s base-closing proceedings. There is no question that Guantánamo would be in for the same fate if it weren’t used as an instrument of spite against the Castro regime, rather than serving a useful function. In short, the U.S.’ maintenance of Guantánamo is an anachronism, which it would do no harm to resolve, rather decidedly bringing distinct political benefits.

An Uncertain History: The Foundations of Controversy
A mere three years after the Spanish-American War ended in 1898, the Platt Amendment of March 2. 1901, which regulated the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Cuban territory, was passed by the U.S. Congress. Although the terms of the preceding Teller Amendment of 1898 guaranteed Cuba’s independence after the conflict ended, the Platt Amendment changed the legal grounds for the ensuing U.S. occupation. Washington would continue to be allowed to intervene in the internal and foreign affairs of the island, especially monitoring Havana’s debt repayment policy. More importantly, the bill created the basis for a long term U.S. military presence in Cuba by stating that “to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.”

Cubans, from the beginning, condemned the Platt Amendment as a violation of their sovereignty and Havana refused to accept it on these grounds, with the Constituent Assembly rejecting it twice. However, Washington authorities, guided by the then prevailing Manifest Destiny expansionist ideology, pushed for the amendment to be passed. With Cuba at the time being politically and economically dependant on the U.S., and after a third vote was taken, the amendment was eventually included in the Cuban constitution of 1902, making the island a quasi-protectorate of the U.S. For the next seven years, the U.S. embassy would make the most important decisions in this pseudo-republic. This was so clearly understood when in 1962 U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith, a prominent businessman at the time, wrote in his book which was provocatively titled ‘The Fourth Floor,’ that it was he who ran the island from his fourth floor office of the U.S. embassy in Havana.

Although much of the Cuban population opposed what they perceived as the U.S. imperialist occupation, a treaty that would give the U.S. jurisdiction over specific areas, including Guantánamo Bay, was signed by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and Cuban President Estrada Palma in February 1903. It was assumed at the time that a generous, if irregular, hand out of currency to well placed pro U.S. Cubans sealed the deal. The lease agreement between the two countries gave the U.S. “complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas;” however, it also “recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba” over the territory of the base. On July 2, 1903 the terms of the lease agreement were specified in an additional treaty. It stipulated that the base could not be used for any commercial purpose, a clause that routinely has been ignored by the U.S. ever since. Further, the U.S. was obligated to pay Havana $2000 annually, a sum which would equate to over $50,000 today, even so, far less than the annual rent of a luxury New York City apartment. However, disregarding the inflation rate of the U.S. dollar and rising land prices in Cuba, the annual leasehold figure was increased only once – to $4,085 in 1934. The U.S. government continues to offer to pay this meager sum for the 46.8 square miles of Guantánamo land to Havana, but Cuban authorities spurn the payment, protesting the illegitimacy of the American occupation.

Coaling Station, Refugee Camp, Torture Facility
Shortly after its opening, the naval base at Guantánamo was utilized solely as a coaling station. In the following decades, as technology advanced and steamboats became obsolete, the U.S. military used it for the refueling and resupplying of its navy vessels. During both World Wars, the alliance between Cuba and the U.S. meant that the base’s status remained unchanged, with the facility heavily involved in both conflicts. Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the diplomatic ties between Cuba and the U.S. quickly soured, until they were finally severed by President Eisenhower on January 3, 1961.

Since Fidel Castro came to power he continuously has articulated the idea that the U.S. occupation of Guantánamo Bay is unlawful, because the treaty of 1903 is no longer valid. In 1964, as an act of protest, Castro cut off all supply lines to U.S. facilities in the bay in retaliation for the U.S. apprehension of 17 Cuban fishermen operating in U.S. waters. In response, a desalination facility was built by U.S. authorities and all other supplies have since been flown or shipped to the base. For three decades after this incident the base did not draw much international attention. In 1994 the U.S. launched Operation Sea Signal, which came about as a result of U.S. immigration policies whereby Haitian and Cuban would-be refugees were picked up on the high seas as they tried to reach Florida, and were temporarily being housed at Guantánamo. Until 1996, Guantánamo served as a refugee camp for over 50,000 Haitian and Cuban refugees, who were seeking asylum in the U.S.

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan, the base has served as a detention center for alleged terrorists, as part of the so-called and hugely controversial “preventative reasons” policy. Since 2002, the time spent by prisoners at Guantánamo has been marked by horror, controversy and debates over legality. The detainees arrived at the camp without knowing what evidence had been gathered against them, what charges they faced, or for how long they would be imprisoned.

Many have been kept for an indefinite period of time without being charged with any crime and some were made to suffer sexual or cultural humiliation at the hands of U.S. officials, in the name of gaining intelligence and vital information. Such euphemisms as “enhanced interrogation techniques” were effectively implemented by the Bush administration in order to shield the ongoing inhumane treatment at the facility.

Interning suspects who have not been charged with a crime violates the civil rights provisions of Habeas Corpus, the Geneva Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which the U.S. is a signatory. For engaging in these extrajudicial practices, the U.S. has received widespread criticism from the international community. In 2003, the Cuban National Assembly stated that “In the territory illegally occupied by the Guantánamo Naval Base, hundreds of foreign prisoners are subjected to indescribable humiliations.” Previously, Fidel Castro went so far as to call the base a “concentration camp.”

An Investigative Stronghold: A Diplomatic Catastrophe
U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba has not only been ineffective, but also contradictory. The supposed purpose of the 47-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba was to “bring democracy to the Cuban people.” However, the U.S. government itself moved suspects from detention camps like the one in Guantánamo to secret prisons all over the world so as not to be bound by the restraints of a democratic legal system. These actions reveal the inherently duplicitous nature of U.S. policy in this regard. Although President Obama has now signed an order to close Guantánamo within the next year, he has failed to take a “moral high ground” on other American detention centers that have been havens for the U.S. to carry out unlawful, undemocratic practices. For instance, detainees at the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan were recently denied the right to challenge their case before a neutral judge; an outright inconsistency in the U.S.’ so-called restoration of democracy.

This makes perfectly clear that effectively reestablishing Washington’s reputation for probity abroad will not end with the closing of the internment camp in Guantánamo. If Obama is serious about undoing U.S. policy in the course of its war on terror, and if he wants to again make this country into a law abiding society, he will have to ensure fair trials for all suspects formerly detained by the U.S. at Guantánamo Bay and then return the military base to Cuba, marking a clear break with its dark history. Such a reconstruction of relations would be beneficial for both partners, economically, politically and socially, especially due to the close geographic proximity of the two nations.

The Legal Perspective: A Void Treaty
It can be argued that from an objective perspective, the U.S. occupation of Guantánamo is illegal and the 1903 treaty is invalid. International law professor and former U.N. lawyer, Alfred de Zayas, maintains that “the lease agreement is voidable.” As evidence he cites five international legal findings; the Doctrine of Unequal Treaties, the Emergence of New Peremptory Norms, the Implied Right of Denunciation, the Clausula Rebus Sic Stantibus and the Termination by Virtue of Material Breach.

The Doctrine of Unequal Treaties describes the voiding of treaties that had been entered into between unequal parties. Former Soviet judge Sergei Krylov articulated in 1947, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, that treaties “by which an imperialist power imposes its will upon a weaker state” are invalid. Under this condition, treaties between imperialist superpowers and colonies were revoked in the process of decolonization. In reference to Guantánamo, it can be maintained that Cuba was not a fully sovereign state in 1903 when the treaty to lease one of the island’s finest natural harbors to the U.S. was made. Havana had emerged from 400 years of Spanish control in 1898, and taking the Platt Amendment into account, Cuba was in effect still under U.S. military occupation when it declared its nominal independence on May 20, 1902. During this period, Havana came under great pressure from Washington to sign the agreement guaranteeing effective U.S. sovereignty over the island.

Furthermore, the Emergence of New Peremptory Norms is mentioned by Zayas. It relates to the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and can be applied to the Guantánamo case. Article 64 of that document states that if there is a new norm in international law, it retrospectively applies to all treaties. Consequently, if treaties do not comply with the new norm, they must be rendered invalid. The principle of self-determination, and by extension of this a nation-state’s full sovereignty over its soil, has been a peremptory norm of international law for many years now. Since the treaty between the U.S. and Cuba clearly violates this norm, it deserves to be annulled.

In addition to these provisions of a number of international laws, Zayas points out that article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of treaties argues that a treaty should be interpreted according to the context and the circumstances under which it was made. He makes the case that Cuba intentionally did not sell the land to the U.S. in the early 1900’s, but retained sovereignty over the leased territory. Therefore, “a sovereign should be able to regain the exercise of jurisdiction over the territory in question, otherwise he is not a true sovereign,” Zayas contends.

Zayas also invokes the Clausula Rebus Sic Stantibus, which provides legal ground for a treaty to become invalid if there is a fundamental change in circumstances. A change in regime in Havana from a former ally to a foe, to which the U.S. has maintained a half-century embargo aimed at asphyxiating its economy, represents an essential alteration of an objective situation. He concludes that it is “an anomaly that the country that has imposed an embargo on Cuba for more than 40 years insists that it has a right to remain on its sovereign territory,” and Washington’s operation as a sovereign even though it all along has acknowledged that the harbor belongs to Cuba is also a contradiction.

Lastly, Zayas brings up what may be the most obvious reason for the invalidating of the 1903 agreement: the breach of contract by the U.S. The treaty states that the territory is to be used for “coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose.” The use of the land for establishing an internment camp and interrogation center “is wholly incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty.” Furthermore, it was stipulated that the territory could not be used for commercial purposes. However, there are currently nine restaurants, seven bars, a bowling alley, a surfboard rental and several other businesses on the base.

The five legal standards listed above fully apply to the situation in Guantánamo and show that under international law, the 1903 treaty is invalid.

David vs. Goliath
Aside from the indisputable legal situation, it would be economically beneficial for the U.S. to abolish the base, and its relations with the region as a whole would undoubtedly benefit from such a move. The results of similar historical actions, like the reversion of the Panama Canal to Panama, and the Suez Canal to Egypt, demonstrate the diplomatic advantages of returning Guantánamo to Cuba, due to the goodwill it would engender. The U.S. approach to Cuba has been perhaps the single biggest factor in the emergence of a tumultuous relationship between Washington and the rest of Latin America, and steps towards a thaw in its ties with Havana would surely strengthen the U.S.’ image elsewhere, which is considered to be a major desideration involved in its attempts to reconstruct its Latin American policy.

Therefore, once the detention camp is closed, the territory itself should be returned to Cuba, as there is no reason to maintain the existing naval station. Fidel Castro called it “an arrogant act and an abuse of immense power against a little country,” for the U.S. not to return the base. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez demanded on January 29 at the World Social Forum in Brazil that President Obama should “return Guantánamo and Guantánamo Bay to the Cubans because that is Cuban territory.” Demonstrably, it is up to the U.S. to comply with the law of nations and standards of international law. As of now, Havana, the weaker nation by far, can merely repeatedly demand the reversion of its land back to Cuba. At this point, Washington can start by fulfilling some of the fundamental duties of a state: namely, to abide by the application of the principles of international law to this dispute, while committing an act of comity and goodwill by returning Guantánamo to its rightful owner, Cuba.

This analysis was prepared by Kira Vinke
March 4th, 2009

¿Cambio? – “CHANGE?” – Latin America in the Era of Obama ― An Early Reading on the Administration:
- Bush’s legacy leaves an estranged Latin America
- Range of new Latin American issues vie for Washington’s attention
- Conflicting messages from Obama’s diverse cabinet
- Regional leaders express hope, remain cautious

Now that Barack Obama is several weeks into being the 44th President of the United States, expectations are running high in Latin America, where two terms of George Bush’s widely noted indifference to regional affairs have strained hemispheric relations.

Obama now must address a hemisphere that has developed a substantially different profile than existed eight years before when Bush first assumed office. A highly regarded would-be superpower, an impressive collection of left-leaning governments, a concerted attempt at regional integration, and the formation of an entire array of new institutions have emerged in Latin America since Washington’s near abandonment of the region in favor of the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

Moreover, an intensifying security threat associated with drug trafficking and the demands of other, more clamorous issues have muscled their way to the forefront of the area’s concerns.

If he is to revive any significant U.S. silhouette in the Latin American region, Obama must live up to his oft-repeated but as yet untested campaign rhetoric calling for ‘change.’ Each of the agenda items which his presidency is facing in the region can be addressed with reasonable ease if the Obama administration’s supposed pragmatism prevails over the status quo policies which were a feature of both Clinton’s and Bush’s approach to the region. What is needed is a sense of respect for all of the hemisphere’s players rather than ideological Sturm und Drang or the assumption that augmented trade will provide a universal elixir.

War on drugs
An increasingly high-intensity war is being fought in Mexico between all-powerful drug trade organizations (DTO) and the country’s security forces. President Felipe Calderon deployed Mexico’s army soon after the onset of his presidency in early 2007. His mission was to dismantle the DTOs’ heavily armed networks as well as to attempt to moderate the unprecedented violence that had been growing in the country throughout 2006. Two years since the anti-drug trafficking offensive began, over 8,000 casualties have been violently claimed in cartel hot spots across Mexico. The two bloodiest battlefields have been right along the U.S. border in and around Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, where DTOs are fiercely fighting over control of drug smuggling routes. Additionally, over 1,000 kidnappings were reported in 2008, exceeding the numbers encountered in Colombia or Iraq.

Early in 2009 the violent trend set in motion during the two previous years has shown no sign of slackening. Officials on both sides of the border only now have begun to give this issue the attention it deserves. Leaders from across the hemisphere have met on a number of occasions to initiate intelligence-sharing programs as well as attempt to jump start cooperative training, tracking and extradition procedures. Recently, President Calderón met with Guatemalan President Colom, Panamanian President Torrijos and Colombian President Uribe in Panama where the leaders underlined the indisputable importance of a coordinated response. Colombia remains the world’s leading cocaine producer despite the U.S.-backed multi-billion dollar anti-narcotics campaign, Plan Colombia. Meanwhile, Guatemala and Panama serve as major hubs in the smuggling chain that leads to the U.S.

The Tactics of a Drug Strategy: Colombia and Mexico
In the U.S., officials from relevant branches of the government have begun to point out the destabilizing effects that a lawless Mexico could have on the southern U.S., let alone the rest of Latin America. Last year, Guatemala suffered at least four grotesque massacres that occurred due to Mexico’s growing DTO influence in the country. Incidents in Honduras and El Salvador tell similar tales. An Afghanistanization of Mexico and Central America becomes a strong possibility, if not a near certainty, claims a report written by ex-Drug Czar General McCaffrey, referring to the specific areas within Mexican territory being wrested from the government’s de facto control by powerful drug lords who would then not hesitate to set up their own shadow authority. Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana immediately come to mind as likely locales when contemplating this scenario’s plausibility. Local police officers and military personnel have only loose control over certain quadrants in the major Mexican cities where they are. The potential for failed cities in such close proximity to the U.S. border could certainly produce a dangerous spillover effect similar to what is happening in the border towns that link Guatemala and Mexico, where a legal boundary exists only in name.

In an event that may have been more ceremonial that substantive, Mexico’s Calderón was the first foreign leader to meet with President Obama. The Mexican leader’s main mission in Washington, besides pushing for immigration reform, was the deadly threat of narcotrafficking and the perils posed to both countries. A harried Calderón strongly made the case for added U.S. cooperation in the anti-drug struggle, when he urged that “the more secure Mexico finds itself, the more secure [the] U.S. will be.” Obama certainly seems to understand the importance this threat represents for U.S.-Mexican security concerns. If this is so, it should be one of the Obama’s administration’s greatest priorities to address the responsibility of his country’s stake in the violence that Mexico is currently facing largely alone.

Assisting the Mexican government with military aid and intelligence will have little effect if the DTOs continue to arm themselves with US-secured weaponry from cross-border sources. Obama and Calderon both understand the need to collaborate on this issue, which carries dire consequences, but a traditional approach, which is the one likely to take place here, will not do the job. Just like Plan Colombia is having only a very limited impact on the drug trade that originates from Colombia, the recently started Merida Initiative is on track to suffer a similar fate. The importance of acknowledging the price that the war on drugs has cost the region, which has been fueled by high levels of US consumption and eager DTOs doing the supplying, must be of more than cosmetic note to the Obama administration.

Trade
Trade between the United States and Latin America has grown inexorably over the past decade, with Washington remaining the largest trading partner for many of the countries there, according to latest World Trade Organisation statistics. Even Venezuela – despite Hugo Chávez’s ‘anti-imperial’ rhetoric – relies heavily on U.S. commercial ties, with almost half of the country’s exports in 2007 heading for U.S. shores. The U.S., however, has lost considerable momentum in the area during the eight years of the Bush presidency, with Latin American countries moving increasingly towards a system of trade regionalisation which steadily limits Washington’s presence. A host of bodies like Mercosur and such collective entities as UNASUR, ALBA, and Petrocaribe have emerged promoting strong regional trade links, and largely have focused on South and Central American Basin locations. The prominence of these organisations has represented an implicit rejection of the Bush administration’s attempt to press the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in the region. This continental free trade zone became a major project designed to realize Washington’s vision for hemispheric trade, but Bush’s position was so inflexible that it forced the rest of Latin America into forging ahead with a system of its own choosing, relegating the U.S. a peripheral presence.

Whereas Bush resorted to negotiating bilateral free trade agreements with countries aligned with U.S. interests, Obama would be well advised to remove the blinkers of a specific model of free trade and attempt to engage with Latin America on terms more acceptable to the region as a whole. The newly emerging regional organisations have variously emphasised degrees of political integration and social considerations, like funding poor countries’ development programmes in order to temper the unadulterated free trade which both the Bush and Clinton White Houses envisaged. There is certainly a good deal of reason for Obama to address the issue of the growing isolation of the U.S. from the hemisphere’s main regional bodies. Those that exist form a patchwork meant to deal with specific issues concerned with distinct development models. No single model yet holds a monopoly on the region’s attention. However, any Latin American country keen to assert itself on the world stage as a political entity is now unlikely to submit to trade terms exclusively dictated by the United States. Obama must come to realise this in a way which Bush never did.

Brazil
The one country which noticeably has moved into the U.S.’ stead in assuming a leading role in Latin America – particularly in this new wave of regional institutionalization – is Brazil. The Brazilian economy has exhibited a degree of resilience in the face of the ongoing global economic downturn and has become the most economically and geo-politically significant presence in the area. The sign to date of this is the nascent relationship between Lula and Obama which is likely to be a very constructive one. Just prior to the latter’s election, Lula described a potential Obama presidency as a representation of major change; adding to the momentum that already had begun in South America: “just as Brazil elected a metal worker, Bolivia elected an Indian, Venezuela elected [socialist leader Hugo] Chávez and Paraguay a bishop, I think that it would be an extraordinary thing if, in the largest economy in the world, a black were elected president of the United States.”

Statements that Lula has made since Obama’s inauguration illustrate that his enthusiasm for the new U.S. president certainly remains undiminished, but it is also tempered by the realistic expectations he has for him. Brazil’s strong voice as South America’s regional hegemon has echoed the expectations that the area has of Obama; asking for mutual respect as the most important guidepost. “Obama should transform that gesture of the U.S. people into a gesture for Latin America … respecting our sovereignty and an equitable coexistence,” explained Lula, particularly regarding leftist countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Nevertheless, after speaking on January 26 over the telephone, the two men spoke highly of the chances of cooperation, particularly on the issue of biofuels, with Lula telling Obama: “Your election transcends the United States.”

Given the current positive standing of Brazil in Latin America, good relations between Washington and Brasilia are vital for the existence of solid U.S. links with the region as a whole. What was once exclusively the U.S.’ backyard is now one which Obama must learn to share with Lula, and later, others. Indeed, Obama may be well advised to invite Brazil to play a more important role on the world stage by supporting its long-held ambition to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and other symbols of tenure in the winner’s circle.

Cuba
One of the most important indicators of future U.S.-Latin American relations will be what President Obama will do regarding the Cuban embargo and other sanctions considered by Latin American leaders as being onerous and unacceptable. Most South American leaders have come forth with positive remarks about Castro and Cuba, and have strongly expressed their condemnation of U.S.-Cuban policy, which if anything became even more rigid under former President Bush. Sympathy for Cuba’s plight has grown arithmetically in recent years as left-leaning democracies have emerged throughout the region to which Havana is more a hero than a knave.

Guantánamo and Cuba
Obama’s discussion on U.S.-Cuban relations has laid out a welcomed course of possibly reversing President Bush’s restrictions on Cuban-American travel to the island as well as removing caps on financial remittances by family members being sent back to the island. A significant step was taken when President Obama ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility within a 16-month window due to its notoriety as a known torture center during the ongoing War on Terror. The prospect of shutting down Guantánamo was well received around the world, but most notably by Fidel Castro who cautiously praised Obama. “I expressed that personally I had not the least doubt of the honesty with which Obama, the 11th president since January 1 1959, expressed his ideas, but in spite of his noble intentions there remained many questions to answer,” said Castro in his Reflections column. Here we have an interesting duality being posed. It may well be that U.S. relations with Washington may affect a thaw far more quickly than with Venezuela, because Raúl Castro will be looked upon as an inherently less radical victor than is Chávez. Washington, however, may be mindful of the fact that Fidel Castro administered several generations of the left throughout Latin America – most notably Chile’s Salvador Allende, Grenada’s Maurice Bishop and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

Unfortunately, even though significant progress may be in the making regarding U.S.-Cuban relations, Obama has resorted to Cold War-era rhetoric by using the 50 year-old embargo as leverage to promote democratic change. President Lula of Brazil advised Obama to abolish the inflexible blockade as it lacks “any scientific or political explanation.” If Obama were to cease the outdated strategic stalemate with Cuba that has locked U.S. bilateral policy toward the island in an obsolete time capsule, it would help herald a new dawn for U.S.-Latin American relations as well as improving badly frayed hemispheric ties.

Chávez: Lightning Rod & Yolk
For well over a century, the Monroe doctrine dictated U.S. policy towards the rest of the Americas. Since 1823, until recently, Washington basically designated the hemisphere as exclusively an American sphere of influence, and forbade the application of any outside forces to its perceived extended territory. However, the past eight years have seen U.S. influence in Latin America badly erode and progressively usurped by powers from outside the hemisphere. Russia and China in particular have been active in the region, as well as Iran and the European Union, among others, as the continent has diversified its trade links. Hugo Chávez has acted as a ‘lightning rod’ for many of these changes and for attracting the business and political interests of some of these countries to the continent, but their influence is more widespread and variegated than this connection would suggest.

Building New Links
According to Reuters, “Russia and Venezuela have signed 12 arms contracts worth $4.4 billion over the past two years,” and the two countries’ navies recently engaged in joint maneuvers. Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, has visited not just Chávez, but also the Castro brothers in Cuba, and Lula in Brazil, and has received Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Moscow. On December 23rd 2008, France and Brazil signed a deal worth, according to the New York Times, $12 billion for helicopters and submarines, and China’s trade with the region has risen tenfold during the Bush presidency, according to the Guardian. Moreover, Iran has struck trade deals with Venezuela and presidents Chávez and Ahmadinejad have worked together to revitalize OPEC.

The new Obama administration has issued mixed reactions to this presence of foreign powers in the U.S.’ traditional sphere of influence. Speaking on January 27, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, one of the few members of the Bush administration to retain his post under President Obama, said: “I’m more concerned about Iranian meddling in the region than I am the Russians.” Gates expressed concern at the “frankly subversive activity that the Iranians are carrying on in a number of places in Latin America,” but made it clear he doesn’t see Russian involvement, not even their recent naval maneuvers with Venezuela, as a threat, a view that Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Tom Shannon has previously voiced.

Obama must not place unquestioning faith in Gates’ recent comments about Iranian influence in Latin America, which have demonstrated that his roots lie firmly in the Bush administration. The White House under Obama already has begun drafting a letter, in a conciliatory gesture, to the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Gates’ view on Iran’s links with Chávez in particular seems not to tally with Obama’s readiness for a de-marche. Instead of firing hostile rhetorical shots, Obama would be prudent to continue on his diplomatic path and remember that Iran’s capabilities and development abilities in the Western hemisphere are limited (particularly now due to their straitened economy); certainly in military terms. Today Tehran poses a far lesser threat to the U.S. than Moscow.

A Mixed Record on Bilateral Trade
In addition to attracting outside influences, it has been Chávez who has been instrumental in spreading a wave of ‘21st Century Socialism’ across the region, influencing countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Outside Chávez’s direct sphere of influence lie other centre-left governments, encompassing Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Guatemala. Thus, the dwindling pool of countries which remain truly sympathetic to traditional U.S. goals in the region is limited to no more than Colombia, Peru, El Salvador and sometimes Mexico. In this respect, Obama inherits a region very much different to what his predecessors had to face.

Many of these countries have experienced frosty relations with the U.S. during Bush’s eight years in power. Both Venezuela and Bolivia expelled their U.S. ambassadors in September 2008, and Chávez was famously the subject of a coup in 2002 to which the CIA was allegedly linked. Evo Morales demanded the removal of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) office from Bolivia in November 2008, and Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa elected in October 2007 not to renew the U.S.’ lease on the Manta airbase in the country, forcing U.S. military personnel to leave the area when it expires this year.

The Obama administration’s approach again has been mixed in regard to these countries. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said after the January 25 constitutional referendum in Bolivia: “I don ´t think the results are final at this point, but we look forward to working with the Bolivian government in ways we can to further democracy and, you know, prosperity in the hemisphere,” a comment which drew a warm response from Evo Morales. “If that’s the message I feel it’s a message that is going to be respectful of the decisions of the Bolivian government, because before, with the government of Bush, we had many problems,” he told Mercopress, and Bolivia’s foreign minister David Choquehuanca has subsequently hinted that the countries’ respective ambassadors could soon be reestablished.

With Venezuela, on the other hand, things are far muddier. Both Obama’s cabinet and Chávez have exchanged gestures alternating between confrontational and accommodating in recent weeks. In their initial exchanges of rhetorical salvos, Chávez welcomed Obama’s election as a historic occasion that could potentially lead to an amiable relationship. But while Obama at first may have been demonstrating a new generosity of spirit when it came to unconditional negotiations with Venezuela and Iran – an approach which drew attacks against him from then rival primary candidate Hillary Clinton – he too began to exchange barbs with Washington’s traditional pariahs, attacking Chávez for his alleged links to Colombia’s FARC in the week prior to his inauguration. “Chávez has been a force that has interrupted progress in the region,” Obama said, which prompted the Venezuelan to retort: “hopefully I am wrong, but I think Obama will be the same harmful influence as Bush.”

Since Obama’s inauguration, Washington’s approach towards Venezuela has become even less clear. James Steinberg, the new U.S. Deputy Secretary of State said on January 23: “Our friends and partners in Latin America are looking to the United States to provide strong and sustained leadership in the region, as a counterweight to governments like those currently in power in Venezuela and Bolivia which pursue policies which do not serve the interests of their people or the region.” However, on the same day, Chávez appeared to soften his approach, saying of the new president: “He is a man with good intentions; he has immediately eliminated Guantanamo prison, and that should be applauded … I am very happy and the world is happy that this young president has arrived … [we] welcome the new government and we are filled with hope.” What is alarming when looking upon the whole exchange are the combative words of James Steinberg, who, as Deputy Secretary of State could play a substantial role in formulating a new Latin America policy, despite his professional history not revealing an indication of a weighty background in U.S.-Latin American relations.

As of now, both President Obama and President Chávez appear to be carelessly lobbing condemnations at each other that may come back to bedevil prospects for them to engage in useful talks. Obama may be too hastily dispensing brimstone on Venezuela, a subject in which he is poorly versed, knowing well that Chávez’s sclerotic nature might win him a thunderous response at home while simultaneously alienating him from Washington. Equally, Chávez is now using a campaign rhetoric that has the dangerous potential of becoming a fixed public position. OAS secretary general José Miguel Insulza has expressed the conviction that Caracas should take the vagueness of Obama’s statements with a grain of salt; advice that both sides of this diplomatic spat might want to heed.

There is no need or desire for Obama to reassert U.S. hegemony in Latin America – indeed, the U.S., given the new display of regional standing on the part of Brazil as much as the significant presence of Chávez, almost certainly lacks the ability to do so. Obama must come to recognise that the newly established presence of such non-traditional Latin American players as Iran, China and Russia has come about primarily as a reaction to the U.S.’ post-9/11 neglect of the hemisphere. If he is to halt the growing shadow cast by these countries, and act to secure the fuel and other vital resources and commodities which Washington traditionally has found in Latin America, he must begin to engage constructively with the region at a brisk gait rather than weighing in with Bush-style caudillismo.

Obama’s Cabinet
Having appointed the tough-minded Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State and Ron Kirk as his Trade Representative, Obama has two potentially strong free traders in important cabinet positions. Although this is not the position Clinton took during the campaign, she nevertheless takes a flexible point of view towards various pending free trade pacts. In her confirmation hearing on January 15h, Clinton addressed Latin America as a lesser concern than Australia and South East Asia in discussing her foreign policy priorities, and Latin America is one of the few regions without a special envoy in the State Department. During her own presidential campaign, the future Secretary of State berated Obama’s willingness to engage in dialogue with the Castro brothers “unconditionally,” and also has backed Alvaro Uribe’s Colombia in no uncertain terms in its various confrontations with Venezuela.

However, Clinton has made some promising remarks since assuming her position in the Obama administration. “We will return to a policy of vigorous involvement — partnership even — with Latin America, from the Caribbean, to Central America, to South America,” she said shortly before Obama’s inauguration. Latin America can also hope that Obama feels he owes a ‘debt’ of attention to the U.S.’ Latino population which was instrumental in his election. Indeed, Clinton, in a sign that this may be true of the wider cabinet, has said: “We share common political, economic and strategic interests with our friends to the south, as well as many of our citizens who share ancestral and cultural legacies.”

The position of Commerce Secretary in Obama’s cabinet is on the verge of being filled by Senator Judd Gregg, after the January 4, 2009 withdrawal of Bill Richardson, who is under investigation by the FBI and a federal grand jury for alleged campaign finance irregularities. Richardson, despite being a staunch advocate of free trade, particularly NAFTA himself, would have brought to the administration a wealth of knowledge and experience on Latin American issues. As COHA noted in its original response to his appointment in December, “Richardson is in touch with … hemispheric trends and could be of inestimable value to the new administration, in presenting a new face to the region and a definitive end to the fallow relations that Washington has had towards the region” (‘Is Richardson’s appointment as Secretary of Commerce good news for NAFTA’s revitalization? It certainly is good news for the region’s self-esteem’, December 15 2008).

Stripped of Richardson as one of his point men on trade issues, Obama’s cabinet remains devoid of anyone with a strong focus on Latin America. However, he does have in one of his advisors and White House Counsel someone who COHA has previously lauded as “The right man to revive deeply flawed U.S. – Latin American relations.” Greg Craig has espoused the adoption of a multilateral approach toward Latin America and has spoken out in his calling for respecting sovereign regional governments of varying political orientation, an approach which could prove to be highly promising.

***

Plus ça change
Barack Obama should not rush to follow a well worn path that his predecessors have lamentably taken by relegating Latin America to a peripheral concern. When seeking first tier U.S. foreign policy goals, second-rate punditry is not good enough. If Obama is to rebuild the shattered U.S. image which is currently being observed from Latin America, he must give the region a sense of priority in recognition of Washington’s longstanding legacy in the area.

One consequence of the diminishing U.S. regional stature has been an encroaching foreign influence which has taken advantage of the vacuum created by Bush’s myopic foreign policy, particularly the distraction provided by Iraq. The effect of this outside influence has been compounded by an emphatic move towards a new conception of regionalism which increasingly excludes United States participation, examples of which include UNASUR, ALBA, the Rio Group, and the Ibero-American summit.

Obama should fulfil his campaign promise to meet unconditionally with the region’s leaders regardless of their political orientation – specifically meaning Raul Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Evo Morales. Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the disaffected South American states reached a low point last year with the reciprocal expulsion of ambassadors involving the U.S., Bolivia and Venezuela. Even though Chávez expressed the hope that Venezuela’s relations with the U.S. could improve under Obama, he has since tempered his enthusiasm following perceived dismissive remarks made by the new U.S. administration, and actions from Washington that were not aimed at winning friends.

Obama: Sticking Together a Viable Latin America Policy
Obama cannot afford to neglect the cordial relationship he has already begun developing with Lula in Brazil. Eight years of ignorance and neglect in Washington has enabled Brazil to emerge as a benign regional semi-superpower. The country has assumed a central role in the various moves toward political and economic autonomy which South America has taken away from the Bush presidency. There is no avoiding the fact that if Washington is to make headway in Latin America today, it must have the blessing of Lula or his successor.

Even though the announced closing of the Guantánamo detention facility and a proposed easing on the remittance and travel ban affecting Cuban Americans has been warmly welcomed, Obama must consider among his immediate priorities a truly significant reassessment of U.S. policy towards Cuba. This might also include another unilateral policy – the return of the base on Guantánamo to Cuba. It is an act of pure colonialism for Washington to continue to hold onto a facility it intentionally obtained through its power rather than through reason, and perpetuates the image of the U.S. as an ‘empire’ in parts of Latin America. The next step should be the lifting (unilaterally, if need be) of the almost five decade-old Cold War-era embargo. This puerile and ineffectual policy has been repeatedly rejected by Latin Americans and its abolition would go a long way towards repairing battered U.S. relations with the region.

Revising the U.S. approach to its 30-year old failed war on drugs, which is now featuring a growing wave of transnational violence, should also be high on Obama’s agenda. Considering that the United States is the world’s largest and most lucrative market for the sale of these illicit substances, creating security pacts with neighbouring countries in order to clamp down on the supply, will continue to have little effect as long as domestic demand remains unimpaired.

The makeup of Obama’s cabinet may point towards the adoption of a policy less bold than Latin America is calling for – even expecting – from the new administration. The implications of Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State are hard to escape from; it is her position as Washington’s top diplomat which will dictate the administration’s approach to Latin America, for it is she who will be making most of the appointments of first and second tier personnel who will be exercising their jurisdiction over regional decision making. The loss of a respected Latin Americanist like Bill Richardson over a campaign-donation matter certainly is a grievous blow, and the composition of Obama’s cabinet suggests at first glance that the status quo could very well prevail.

However, the signals that the Obama administration has sent during its few weeks in office have not been enough to evaluate either its innovative nature or its willingness to break with the past; it has not been seated long enough to establish whether it is prepared to embrace Latin America in all of its variegated forms. Since January 20, the administration has issued a series of remarks, both promising and troublesome. The statements made by Steinberg and Gates demonstrate that the old order’s dogma continues to permeate Washington, whereas the approach to date of Clinton, Wood and Shannon, as well as Obama himself, hints that a significant shift could be in the offing when it comes to hemispheric relations. Provided the more progressive wing of the administration prevails, there may still be hope for change in Washington’s stance on Latin America.

This analysis was prepared by Research Associates Tomás Ayuso & Guy Hursthouse
February 3rd, 2009

On Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista. (Go to article.)

Grief Marks Anniversary of Triumph of Castro.

HIALEAH, Fla. — Four months after they appeared in the waters between Havana and Miami, the four dead men remain nameless. At a morgue in the Florida Keys, they lie on stretchers stacked like bunk beds, their bodies chewed by sharks, their faces too putrified to be recognized.

The police suspect they were Cuban rafters. Nilda Garcia thinks one of them might be her son — and the thought makes her weep. Fourteen years after she left Cuba on her own makeshift boat, she finds herself wondering once again: When will it end?

“How many mothers are going through this?” Ms. Garcia said in an interview at her daughter’s apartment here as she awaited DNA results on the bodies. “How many more are crying for their losses? How many young people have drowned in this sea? How many?”

Fifty years ago today, many Cubans cheered when Fidel Castro seized power in Havana, and even now, the revolution attracts many fans — as evidenced by the Canadian tour agencies advertising trips “to celebrate five decades of resilience.”

But the bodies speak to a different legacy. Here in South Florida, where roughly 850,000 Cubans have settled over the years, repeated waves of painful exile and family separation define the Castro era. The revolution never met their hopeful expectations, the island they love has slipped into decay, and for many, this week’s golden anniversary provides little more than a flashback to traumas, old and new.

“It pounds in everybody’s conscience every day,” said Ramon Saul Sanchez, 54, the founder of Movimiento Democracia, a Cuban-American group known for using boats to stage protests. “Fifty years is something very hard to accept.”

Some Cubans remain defiant. Huber Matos, a former revolutionary leader who came to Miami after Mr. Castro sent him to jail in 1959 for suggesting that the Cuban government included too many Communists, said that the anniversary inspired him to keep pushing for change.

“When you think of what you have to do, you can’t be sad,” Mr. Matos, 90, said. “To continue working, that’s the key.”

But for many, the revolution’s 50th anniversary has inspired a period of reflection. Cubans across Florida say they are mourning privately, or trying to forget, and formal commemorations are being kept to a minimum. If Miami in the 1980s was a place of militants, where “Havana vanities come to dust,” as Joan Didion wrote, today it is also a home to newer arrivals who ask, Must the pain go on?

A poll released this month by Florida International University shows that 55 percent of Cubans in Florida favor lifting the United States embargo against Cuba, up from 42 percent a year ago. It is the first time a clear majority has held that position since the survey began in 1991.

President-elect Barack Obama — while backing away from an earlier pledge to meet with Cuban leaders during his first year in office — condemned the current “failed policy” during the presidential campaign and promised to make it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit relatives on the island or send them larger amounts of money.

Even among those who support the 46-year-old embargo, like Senator Mel Martinez, a Republican, continued damage to families has become a more prominent concern.

“This is an ongoing tragedy,” said Mr. Martinez, who left Cuba at age 15 and spent four years without his parents. “How many people today are still being separated? How many people in Cuba are making plans to leave?”

Ms. Garcia was a “balsera,” one of the 38,000 rafters who fled Cuba in 1994. She said she left her suburb of Havana because her daughter needed medical care she could not get in Cuba for a brain tumor. Her son, Osmani, stayed. He was 20 at the time, a speaker of English and French, who became an independent journalist.

His work often put him at odds with the Castro government. In one dispatch, published on Oct. 26, 2007, he condemned Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, for mischaracterizing comments from President Bush.

“I will not take the time to point out all the lies told by Felipe Pérez Roque at this press conference, but I will say there was a worried look on his face and those of his cohorts,” Mr. Garcia wrote, in an article posted online. “It almost seems that they too are realizing there is little time left to the Castro dictatorship and that change is very near.”

Instead, over the next year, political pressure on Mr. Garcia increased. In June, according to a report in a Cuban online forum, he was arrested and interrogated by state officials. Two months later, his mother said, he was filmed by a Cuban television reporter at a protest against the government, scaring him enough to flee.Mr. Garcia’s relatives said that on the night of Aug. 15, he climbed aboard a boat with no motor and seven or eight other people, pushing off from an area near Havana with hopes of reaching Florida within a few days.

The pace mattered; the sea was churning. By early Monday morning, Tropical Storm Fay had moved through Cuba into the Florida Straits, bringing nearly a foot of rain, swells of several feet and winds that would strengthen to 60 miles per hour.

Ms. Garcia, 64, a home health aide, said she was not sure if her son had known the storm was coming. Even if he had, she said, “he was desperate and needed to go.”

She said her son had done all he could to change Cuba from the inside. “How can Cubans confront the government, with rocks and sticks?” Ms. Garcia said. “Everyone has nothing, and the people are afraid.”

She found out about the bodies from the news. The first one, tagged 0107 in morgue records, appeared in the waters off Craig Key just after 5 p.m. on Aug. 21. A fisherman called the Coast Guard, and two Monroe County police officers pulled the dead man from the teal-blue sea. Three other bodies followed, appearing offshore over the next 24 hours in a line heading north.

Detective Terry Smith, one of the lead detectives investigating the case with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, said the locations and currents suggested that the bodies had probably spent several days in the water, drifting from somewhere to the south, though the Coast Guard’s computer analyses were not definitive.

Their identities have been even harder to determine. E. Hunt Scheuerman, the medical examiner for Monroe County, which includes the Keys, said all four bodies were naked and gnarled, with only three defining characteristics. Body 0107 wore a ring with a Celtic cross and green stone on the fourth finger of his left hand; 0109 arrived with a white sock and blue Lotto running shoe on his right foot; and 0110 had a tattoo on the inside of his lip that said “Raquel.”

Ms. Garcia said the ring sounds similar to one she gave Osmani, but the ring in the morgue is yellow, suggesting gold, and the ring she gave her son was silver.

She said she hoped her son was at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where she was processed before coming to the United States. And initially it seemed possible. The Coast Guard stopped a boat near the Bahamas with eight or nine Cuban rafters a few days after Aug. 15. But it must have been another group, Detective Smith said; Mr. Garcia’s name could not be found on the Coast Guard’s list of repatriated refugees.

At least two other Cuban families in Miami are in a position similar to Ms. Garcia’s. In emotional phone calls, they have told Detective Smith about relatives who left Cuba on Aug. 15 in a boat, never to be heard from again.

“What if the four we received are not any of their relatives?” the detective said, discussing what haunts him most.

DNA may be the only way to know for sure. In September, Detective Smith swabbed Ms. Garcia’s mouth and sent the sample to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a comparison with the bodies. For the other two families, the DNA must be collected from closer female relatives, who live in Cuba.

Mr. Sanchez, of Movimiento Democracia, has been trying to arrange for secure samples from the island. “There are hundreds, probably thousands of Cubans who think they lost relatives in the high seas,” he said. But so far, he has received little help from either the Cuban or American governments.

And so the cycle continues. According to Coast Guard statistics, 10,489 Cubans have been stopped at sea since the beginning of 2005, more than double the 4,223 who were caught in the previous four years. A report in May from the Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami found that 131,000 Cubans had settled in the United States permanently over the last four years, and its title predicts more of the same. “Not Going Away,” it says. “Cuban Mass Migration to Florida.”

Ms. Garcia said she just wanted an end to the 50-year pattern: the uncertainty, tears and tales of woe.

Three months after her DNA reached the F.B.I., she is still waiting for answers. Conversations about her son are drenched with tears, and she is never far from a photograph that shows him staring straight ahead, with a stern face, a few wrinkles and thick, dark hair.

It looks like a passport picture — of a man who may have only reached a Florida morgue.