Letter to the editor

After Stalin’s death, Khrushchev took the Soviet economy and society in a direction away from socialism. He put the economy and society in reverse, split the international communist movement, and in doing so, vilified Stalin. So this is a discussion that we must have. If we are truly communist, then we must face the truth. We must admit that for his own political ambition, it was Khrushchev and not Stalin that deviated from the communist path. Because there has been so much anti-communist propaganda in our country, some of us have fallen victim to it, and have repeated the lies of the Trotskyites and others. We must properly explain the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. That is our job.

Joe Hancock                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Los Angeles, California

HOUSTON – Dennis Kucinich received the 11th annual Peacemaker Award from the Houston Peace and Justice Center on 11/9/2013. He also delivered the keynote address which you can watch on http://youtu.be/o4rGCKFzn9k  . The event program states the reason he received this award: “For courage, inspiration and tenacity; for the hope your life has given to all who care deeply about shifting from a system based on greed to one of generosity; for caring enough to highlight important topics in political debates thereby giving voice to issues that affect most Americans, including standing up against banks as early as the 1970s; for consistently elevating peace and justice issues throughout your life of service; for truly representing the best interests of the American people and the world, and for energizing others to join you.”

Dennis Kucinich is a former U.S. House of Representatives Congressperson from Cleveland, Ohio. He led the opposition to the invasion of Iraq and co-authored landmark

Dennis Kucinich speaks in Houston on 11/9/13.

legislation on Universal Health Care. Watch the video linked above and hear him discuss these and other timely issues.

PHill1917@comcast.net

Wednesday, November 13, 7 pm: DePaul University, Schmitt Academic Center, Room 154. 2320 N. Kenmore Avenue, Chicago
(with Alejandro Molina of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center speaking on the long-held Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar Lopez);

Thursday, November 14, 12 noon: Northwestern University School of Law, 375 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago

Thursday 14 November 7pm: University of Wisconsin/ Milwaukee Union bldg,, Room 240, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd, Milwaukee

Friday, November 15, 9 am: University of Illinois/Chicago [UIC], Rafael Cintron Ortiz Cultural Center, Room LC-B2, 403 S. Morgan St., Chicago [between Harrison and Taylor, Morgan and Halsted] with Jan Susler of the Peoples Law Office.

Review of Stephen Kimber, “What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban 5”
By Stan Smith, Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5
http://mltoday.com/stephen-kimber-what-lies-across-the-water-the-real-story-of-the-cuban-5?utm

Stephen Kimber has written a book about the Cuban 5 that catches you like a detective story. The book also presents previously unknown information about the case, even for those campaigning for their freedom. The Cuban 5 are political prisoners who were arrested in 1998, tried in Miami on “conspiracy” charges – for which concrete evidence is not needed – and sentenced to long prison terms (one is now released and back in Cuba).

Cuban undercover agents, working to thwart terrorist and assassination attempts against Cuba “were also the heart and soul of what was regarded, even by its enemies, as the best organized and the most effective intelligence network in the world.” (p. 49) These agents were carefully recruited, with little pay, doing the work because they believed in the revolution.

The Cuban 5 concealed their identities, and some infiltrated anti-Cuban terrorist groups in Miami, passing as bona fide right-wing Cuban exiles. Some Cuban agents also informed on Miami terrorist groups to the FBI, operating as double agents. The Miami Cuban right wing themselves knew their dirty work was made much more difficult because they were heavily infiltrated by Cuban agents.

Most US people are not aware of the case of the Cuban 5 because the US corporate media has maintained a news blackout on the case – except in Miami, where it launched a smear campaign. In a recent rare exception, the Washington Post published an October 4 op ed by Stephen Kimber:

“Consider for a moment what would happen if American intelligence agents on the ground in a foreign country uncovered a major terrorist plot, with enough time to prevent it. And then consider how Americans would react if authorities in that country, rather than cooperate with us, arrest and imprison the U.S. agents for operating on their soil. Those agents would be American heroes today. The U.S. government would move heaven and Earth to get them back. This sort of scenario has occurred, except that, in the real-life version, which unfolded 15 years ago last month, the Americans play the role of the foreign government, and Cuba – yes, Fidel Castro’s Cuba – plays the role of the aggrieved United States.” (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-10-04/opinions/42719570_1_exile-cuban-agents-u-s-agents)

The Cuban 5 were tried in Miami, where the US government admitted in other cases before and after this trial, that when the issue concerned Cuba, a fair trial was impossible. They were convicted of “conspiracy” charges and sentenced from 15 years to two life terms plus 15 years. Their defense during their trial largely rested on stating they were doing what the US government should have done, but didn’t: prevent violations of American neutrality and international laws by infiltrating, uncovering and stopping attacks against Cuba by Miami terrorist groups. Five other Cuban agents arrested with them on September 12, 1998 cooperated with US authorities in return for lesser sentences of 3 ½ to 7 years.

Kimber reveals that by the summer of 1996, the FBI knew Geraldo Hernandez was a key Cuban agent, as on September 11,1996 the FBI broke into his apartment and copied the contents of his computer and over 200
In a telling display of how the US “free press” operates, the Cuban 5 case was covered daily in Miami, while outside Miami existed – and still exists – a virtual news blackout on the case. And in Miami the government actually paid journalists over $250,000 to write newspaper articles to whip up a climate in Miami against Cuban “spies.” (http://www.freethefive.org/journalists.htm)

Kimber notes in 2005 the United Nations Human Rights Commission described their trial as unfair ( http://www.thecuban5.org/vos_un.html) , as did Amnesty International in 2010. (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/096/2010/en/e628a0eb-868e-4768-808c-9ac139b089f0/amr510962010en.pdf)  In 2005 the three-judge panel of the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned their convictions, stating their trial was “a perfect storm of prejudice and hostility,” and unanimously ordered a new trial. (http://www.walterlippmann.com/cubanfive-11thcircuit.html)
This was later overturned by the full appeals court. When the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, the Obama administration petitioned the court not to take it up. It didn’t.

After the Cuban revolution, the CIA recruited and trained rightwing Miami Cubans for actions against Cuba. The most infamous included Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles (who blew up the Cubana airliner in 1976), Felix Rodriguez, who killed Che Guevara, and Jorge Mas Canosa, who later founded the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which in spite of being a tax exempt foundation, has bankrolled numerous bombing and other terrorist actions against Cuba.

The CIA training of rightwing Miami Cubans in bomb-making and sabotage was not directed only at Cuba. In the 1970s a bombing campaign was unleashed against political opponents in Miami. During a period of one and half years, there were more than 100 bombings and an average of one assassination a week in Miami. The FBI described Miami as the “terrorist capital” of the US.

Human Rights Watch issued a report on the lack of freedom of expression in Miami. It documented 20 years of “bombings, vandalism, beatings, death threats and other examples of violence and harassment directed mostly against politically moderate exiles.” (p.66) It singled out Jorge Mas Canosa the head CANF. The report also said “government officials maintain a conspicuous silence in the face of threats to free expression.” ( p.66), and concluded that local, state, and national, leaders had “failed” to protect the First Amendment rights of Miami’s moderate exile community. Four years later this same city was chosen as the venue for the Cuban 5 trial.

But besides Cuba and Miami, the likes of Bosch, Posada and Felix Rodriguez were involved in terrorist acts against fighters for social justice in Latin America. For instance, Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffat, opponents of the Pinochet military regime in Chile, were killed by a car bomb in Washington DC. Felix Rodriguez helped Posada Carriles escape from prison in Venezuela, where he was held for blowing up a Cubana airliner, killing 73 civilians. Rodriguez had Posada flown to El Salvador, where he worked with the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s aiming to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government. In the 1990s, rightwing Miami Cubans were involved in some attacks on the Pastors for Peace caravans to Cuba.

US War On Cuba

After the Soviet bloc collapsed, the US government expected Cuba (and North Korea) to quickly follow suit. Under President Clinton, the Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws were passed tightening US economic blockade. Cuba had sought to gain foreign exchange by turning to tourism, which prompted the CIA and Miami Cuban terrorist groups to resort to bombings in Cuba to scare away tourists in a new attempt to sabotage the economy. It was in this context that the Cuban 5 went undercover in Miami.

Just as we easily overlook the real damage to Cuba by the US blockade, we also easily lose sight of the actual terrorist war being waged against Cuba by the US, though this terrorist war never reached the level it did in the 1960s.

There were a series of bombing attacks and assassination attempts on Cuba while the Cuban 5 were in Miami, a number of which Cuban agents disrupted. In 1993 Posada planned to blow up a Cuban freighter in Honduras. In 1994, Rodolfo Frometa, the leader of an exile group, was nabbed in an FBI sting trying to buy a Stinger missile, a grenade launcher and anti-tank rockets that he said he planned to use to attack Cuba. That year Posada led a team of 6 Cuban exiles to kill Fidel Castro at a summit in Cartagena, Colombia.

In 1995, Cuban police arrested two Miami Cubans after they tried to plant a bomb at a resort in Varadero, Cuba. Anti-Cuba terrorists also attempted to blow up a Havana’s Tropicana nightclub, with enough c-4 explosives to kill several hundred in the audience, as well as bomb a thermoelectric plant.

Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, planned to launch remote-controlled planes loaded with explosives against Cuba to explode at a public rally in Plaza de la Revolucion. This scheme was scratched after Cuba shot down two of their planes in February 1996.

In late spring and summer 1997 Posada organized a major bombing campaign to disrupt tourism to Cuba, its chief source of foreign exchange. Those working with Posada planted bombs at the Melia Cohiba on two occasions, the Commodore Hotel, Hotel Nacional, Hotel Capri, Copacabana Hotel, Hotel Miramar, Sol Palmeras, La Bodeguita del Medio (Hemingway’s hangout). In October 1997 attacks were planned on hotels, a tourist minbus, and at Jose Marti airport, but these were thwarted. The same year a Cuban travel agency in Mexico City was bombed. That year the Cuban 5 helped to disrupt an assassination plot on Fidel Castro in Margarita, Venezuela.

The Cuban government later said the 1997 bombing campaign cost them $181 million in lost tourism and $80 million in extra security.

In 1998 Miami terrorists tried to place bombs on civilian airplanes heading to or from Cuba. Two were arrested while smuggling explosives to Cuba to be left on an airliner parked at the Havana airport. Bomb attacks on a power station in Matanzas, and on the Che mausoleum in Santa Clara were also successfully disrupted.
Fidel Castro wrote to President Clinton in 1998, “The American investigation and intelligence agencies are in possession of enough reliable information on the main people responsible. If they really want to, they have the possibility of preventing…this new modality of terrorism.” (p. 185)

Role of US Terrorist Groups in Government Policy

Kimber’s book gives a hint of the behind the scenes workings of the real forces running the US government, though he does not bring this out explicitly. While FBI agents were fulfilling a professed function of the agency by monitoring Miami Cuban paramilitary terrorist groups engaged in bombings, assassinations and drug running, and arresting them when justified, higher level agents were making sure nothing serious was done to endanger these groups’ activities.

For instance, Kimber quotes a July 23, 1998 Miami Herald article, “Anti-Castro militant Tony Bryant still chuckles when he recalls the FBI agents who interviewed him after a 14-foot boat, loaded with high explosives and registered in his name, turned up near Havana. They said, ‘You could hurt someone. Don’t do it again.’ ‘I promised not to do it again, and they went away.’” (p. 208)

Kimber quotes Posada Carriles, the mastermind behind most of the bombings, in an interview he gave: “As you can see, the FBI and the CIA don’t bother me.” (http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/12/world/a-bombers-tale-taking-aim-at-castro-key-cuba-foe-claims-exiles-backing.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)  Posada noted his “close friendship” with high-ranking officials in the agencies.

As if in confirmation, while FBI agents collected extensive files on Posada’s criminal activities, the head of the Miami FBI, Hector Pesquera, in 2003, shredded five boxes of files on Posada, including documents concerning cash transfers to Posada. Pesquera claimed Posada had “disappeared from sight and was out of action.” Yet this was exactly when Posada, jailed in Panama, was awaiting trial for attempting to kill Fidel Castro by blowing up the building full of university students he would be addressing. Posada, at the time, had already been visited by the US Embassy’s FBI liaison there. (p. 226) This bomb plot had also been uncovered by undercover Cuban agents.

As head of the Miami FBI, Pesquera was the one who devoted FBI resources to uncovering and framing up the Cuban 5. While doing so, the men who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks were training right there in Miami, under the nose of Mr. Pesquera, totally undisturbed.

In another example of how higher ups in the US government protected rightwing Miami gangsters, Miami Cuban group member Hector Viamonte was arrested and convicted, in part by Rene Gonzalez’ information, of conspiracy to import and distribute 3000 pounds of cocaine, yet received a mere 9 years in prison. This was 6 years less than Rene Gonzalez received, 15 years, for “conspiracy to act as a non- registered foreign agent,” and is lighter than what many small scale street corner drug dealers receive.

In the fall of 1995 and early 1996, just before Cuba shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes, killing four, Richard Nuccio, Clinton’s point man on Cuba, asked the FAA to warn Jose Basulto not to provoke Cuba with more Brothers to the Rescue overflights. Nuccio is quoted saying a senior FAA official “rebuffed our concerns and said if they happen to run into him, they would mention it….[Basulto] was already quite annoyed and they didn’t want to bother him further.” (p. 103)

In further confirmation that the US knew what lay in store for their continued illegal flights over Cuban territory, Juan Pablo Roque, a Cuban double-agent who returned to Cuban in 1996, “insisted the FBI knew in advance the Cuban government would shoot down the planes. ‘FBI agent Oscar Montoto tells me on February 21st, ‘Don’t go on that mission because they are going to knock you out of the sky.’ Agent Montoto told me not to go,’ he repeated.” (p. 110)

Despite US foreknowledge that Cuba planned to physically stop future overflights if the US government did not stop them, it planned to charge Cuban leaders with murdering the four in the shootdown. The US Attorney’s office told the Miami Herald that the ‘best hope” for charging Raul Castro was to get Geraldo Hernandez, the leader of the Cuban 4, to agree to testify against him. “Hernandez himself scoffed at what he called ‘their ‘wild dream,’ the true reason behind their psychological torture [of me].’ In a 2010 letter to me, he wrote ‘it explains why they haven’t let me see my wife for 12 years like every other prisoner, why they haven’t let me write an email to her like every other prisoner, etc.,etc.” (p. 242)

Not mentioned in Kimbers’s book, a US court later declared Cuba owed the families of the four killed in the shootdown $188 million to be collected from Cuban assets. Similar bogus suits have won hundreds of millions of dollars from US courts in “compensation” from Cuba. One reason why Venezuela’s President Maduro canceled his attendance at the United Nations in September 2013 was the threat that the Cubana airliner he was flying in would be confiscated by US authorities for this purpose. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-27/venezuela-s-maduro-said-to-cancel-u-dot-s-dot-trip-over-cuban-plane

Violent terrorist groups, such as Miami Cuban ones, exist in the US with only token restraint by government agencies, to be used not just against Cubans, but against all of us in the movement for progressive change. It would be short-sighted to regard this as a Miami-Cuba problem. These Miami gangsters play the same social role as the Klu Klux Klan: extra-legal terrorist groups available to the US rulers as forces to intimidate and repress movements for social justice. We now know, for instance, that the FBI not only had advance knowledge of the 1963 church bombing in Mississippi by the KKK that killed four girls, but also helped conceal the criminals’ identity.

Stephen Kimber’s book on the real story of the Cuban 5 could not find a US publisher. Not because he did not give an excellent, readable presentation of their story, but because he did. As Ricardo Alarcon, ex-president of the Cuban National Assembly said of the book, “It is the work of a master journalist, a great writer, and, above all, an honest intellectual, committed only to what he could verify independently.” http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/15agosto-33alarcon.html

A letter to the editor was received from a North Carolina academic, John Harrington, criticizing the posting of the article “Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union.” A discussion between him and the editor followed:

John Harrington – “I think your publication of the defense of Stalin was an error. One doesn’t have to call oneself a Trotskyist–I don’t–to see that Stalin’s regime is indefensible.

Have you ever read the transcripts of the purge trials, which that regime proudly published? I don’t see how you could read them and find the charges credible.”

Editor’s response – “We are constantly experimenting with the website. One aim we have is to encourage discussion and free speech among the working class. We also like to provide a voice to the voiceless (plagiarized from Democracy Now). Certainly anyone who has anything positive to say about Stalin in this country is suppressed and dismissed as a lunatic, zealot or worse.

Certainly Stalin is one of the most hated figures in history in this country. The bourgeois media has done a very successful propaganda campaign against him since the end of WWII. No doubt many people died unnecessarily and that is unforgiveable. However, I must point out that the same people that attack Stalin don’t denounce Truman for incinerating two cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and they don’t denounce Roosevelt for his participation in the incineration of Dresden. There are numerous other examples of US leaders who committed mass murder both in wartime and in peacetime.

My usual response to people about Stalin is “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” We must not forget that he led the Soviet Union during the early years when the country was going through an incredible economic expansion in spite of multiple invasions by Western countries, and withstood propaganda attacks by many US and world leaders while building the first experiment in socialism. He also led the Red Army to the defeat of the German Nazis with little help from the US. He did this in spite of a number of early tactical errors militarily that he made when the Nazis invaded. If it were not for Stalin, we might be working in a Nazi slave labor camp today. If he had been alive during Gorbachev’s reign, Stalin might have led opposition to the Soviet government’s craven capitulation to capitalism.

Nevertheless, we don’t think Stalin was a saint. On the other hand, we don’t think he was a devil either.

Perhaps posting the article was an error. We make many errors every day.

Nevertheless, we think people in the US need to learn to think outside the box and not accept bourgeois propaganda as the absolute truth. Accepting the received view has not served working people very well.”

John Harrington’s response – “Just as Hitler is popular among white supremacists who are antisocial, so is Stalin among socialists whose real motives are pathological.

Here’s the point that I think you are missing. The bourgeoisie and its intellectuals have slandered Stalin, but that doesn’t make the opposite of the bourgeois line tolerable. Pol Pot was not a hero because Nixon opposed him, to use a more modern example.

We have to base our opinions of him on what our people, the original Bolsheviks, said of him. They didn’t get to say much because by 1941 Stalin had executed all of the members of the old Politburo who were still alive 20 years after the Revolution.

His record is so horrifying that I think defending him as the author of the article did is the same category as Holocaust denial. It requires something like cultism to sustain.

While you are right that Stalin did preside over industrializing the USSR, that doesn’t mean that development didn’t happen despite him. He set quotas for ‘enemies of the state’ in every industry. To fill those quotas, presumably innocent men were executed or sent to Siberia. For more than six months trains didn’t run on time because a shortage of personnel was created by the purge.

The same goes for military affairs. He purged the army of seasoned officers right before the Nazis invaded and made military decisions that even the surviving generals opposed.

I do not think all of this happened because he was paranoid. I think it grew out of the conditions that the Bolsheviks faced during the czarist period, and out of the role that Stalin played as, in effect, the chief of dirty tricks–bank robbery, piracy, kidnapping, murder–for the party. Stalin did not distinguish between tactics appropriate for use on our enemies and those appropriate for dealing with comrades, and indeed, during the czarist period the party didn’t have the luxury of making that distinction.

I also do not think that we have to save Stalin’s reputation in order to save the socialist cause. Oliver Cromwell founded democracy in England, then became a terrible tyrant. The French Revolution had its terror, followed by Napoleon. The wake of social revolutions is often ugly when social revolutionaries bite off more than they can chew.

You should also consider Stalin from the point of view of the Houston club, yours. During the Leninist phase, the Bolshevik party tolerated open factions and open internal disagreements. People weren’t expelled for disagreeing with the party line, so long as they observed it in action–and even then violations were often overlooked. (Look at the lives of Lunacharsky, Zinoviev or Kamenev for examples of that.) The standards under which your followers were expelled are Stalinist. Had your tendency existed in the USSR in 1937, you would be dead.”

Editor’s response – “Some people have commented that although the CPUSA is virulently anti-Stalin, their tactics in dealing with anyone within the party that disagrees with top leadership is ‘Stalinist’ as conceived by Hoover, McCarthy and other anti-communists. Indeed, some say that top CPUSA leadership criticizes Stalin while putting what they criticize about Stalin into action in dealing with their own internal problems.

The Houston Communist Party is neither a pro- nor anti-Stalin organization. We are pro-working class both in this country and around the world. We oppose purges, and expulsions and other Draconian tactics in dealing with membership. We are in favor of free speech and open discussion and try to promote that through our website. We want to build a mass party of workers which eventually will be powerful enough to win elections and make real changes in our electoral system and process. That does not mean tailing the Democratic, Republican or any other bourgeois party. It does mean organizing working people into their own political party to fight and win power and progress for workers and their families. It also means that we may need to work with bourgeois parties, until we have our own party, to win progressive reforms. However, it doesn’t mean that we have to salute anti-worker policies and actions and support imperialism because Democratic and Republican Party candidates do these things.

We encourage other working people to join the discussion. You can either post a comment to this or any article or send submissions to PHill1917@comcast.net .”

On Tuesday I worked as a poll worker at my local voting site, 3150 Broadway at Grant Houses, 67 ED 70 AD in Manhattan. During a break, I cast my vote for a third-party candidate, Tony Gronowicz, candidate for Mayor of the Green Party. At the end of the night, when the two scanners put out the tape with the voting results and were taped up on the wall, I looked at the results. Both scanners had “Tony Gronowicz 0.” Therefore my vote (and anyone else’s at that site who voted for Tony Gronowicz) was not counted.

Many people have speculated that the scanners are very easy to program to alter the results, without the voters knowing it. My experience seems to confirm this. Have the scanners been programmed to undercount votes of progressive third party candidates? I plan to report this to the Board of Elections as well as to make this public as widely as possible.

George Gruenthal
Poll worker #279642

georgeg0626@hotmail.com

You can view videos of the Maximus Coffee Group workers on strike in front of the plant on the following links:

http://youtu.be/sc6sx3Ljn0I

http://youtu.be/N16Q-E3712M

http://youtu.be/2OSfCCupBmM

http://youtu.be/2mPQL3YyuYA

You can support the striking workers by signing the petition at http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/boycott-maximus-coffee-1?source=c.url&r_by=8638452

Thanks for your support!

October 30, 2013

The War in Iraq: an Assessment
by W.T. Whitney Jr.

Argentinean political commentator Juan Gelman thinks the Iraq war has “entered into perfect forgetfulness,” at least in the United States. He implies U.S. leaders enjoy impunity, despite having lied to rationalize their invasion and despite civilian deaths from their war. Memory may indeed be at fault, but maybe what’s happening is that not all U.S. Americans know. Perhaps their politicians prefer not to know.

Media coverage of the Iraqi disaster has been sporadic and never comprehensive. Yet that may be changing. Recent initiatives promise easy access to basic information. The contention here is that knowing what has happened in Iraq is essential for awareness of crimes there and for establishing guilt.

A study released on October 15 shows, for example, that the Iraqi death rate between 2003 and 2011 was 4.55 per 1,000 person-years, a figure 50 percent higher than rates for two years immediately preceding the war. That means 405,000 excess wartime deaths. As of 2005 – 2006, the risk of death had risen 70 percent for women, 290 percent for men. According to the study published by PLOSMedicine, violence accounted for 60% of excess deaths with the remainder caused by “the collapse of infrastructure and other indirect, but war-related, causes.” PLOS, the online journal’s publisher, is an “organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.”

Having surveyed 2000 randomly selected households in 100 geographic areas, the researchers claim improved methodology over earlier studies of civilian deaths. Commentator Juan Cole linked their results to the 500,000 excess Iraqi deaths in the 1990’s, when U.S. economic sanctions prevailed. Victims were mostly children. “The US polished off about a million Iraqis from 1991 through 2011,” he charges.

In another development, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has streamlined access to mortality summaries and thereby eased the monitoring of data. An announcement explained that “AFP’s internal spreadsheet tracking daily casualties from attacks in Iraq” is open to the public. The news service expects the “incredibly time-consuming and opaque” process of verifying death reports will become obsolete. The spreadsheet for each month has links to “other sheets for violence tracking” beginning with August 2012. Government figures are available for comparison. To see the AFP spreadsheet, go to http://www.bit.ly/AFPIraqToll.

Knowing the extent of social disruption caused by the war is basic to understanding the U.S. role in the calamity. Social and environmental chaos set the stage for civilian deaths and suffering.

By 2007 Iraqi orphans numbered 5 million. As of March, 2013, 2.7 million Iraqis were internally displaced, 83 percent of them women and children. Also, 33 percent of women received no humanitarian assistance after 2003, 76 percent of widows receive no pension, and 55 percent of women suffered violent abuse. The U.S. invasion and occupation caused destruction of sewage treatment plants, factories, schools, hospitals and power plants. Public health infrastructure is minimal, 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to potable water, food is short for 4 million people, and sanitation is inadequate for 80 percent of Iraqis.

And sectarian civil war, fostered by a U.S. strategy of divide and rule, contributed mightily to social disintegration. Soldiers and paramilitaries killed civilians. U. S. troops and sectarian militias accounted for an equal number of violent deaths.

Evidence is strong that environmental contamination from left-over weapons and munitions endangered civilians. The debris contains depleted uranium (DU), which many think causes birth defects and cancers. Birth defects are concentrated in areas of heavy fighting, notably Fallujah and Basra. An epidemiological study released on September 11 has returned that epidemic to the news, but for perverse reasons.

Having conducted household interviews, the Iraqi Ministry of Health discovered that 21.7 infants per 1,000 births were born with congenital defects – normal findings, it was suggested. There was “no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth defects in Iraq,” according to the research. The epidemic never happened.

Protests from scientists and humanitarian specialists flooded left-leaning media outlets. Some 50,000 people signed a Change.org petition calling for expert review of the study data and methods. For Neel Mani, a former WHO program director in Iraq, the study “runs counter to the consistent reports of medical professionals across Iraq.” He suspects politicization of the research,”

Studies show that: from 2006 through 2009, Fallujah experienced a twelve fold rise in childhood cancer and a rise in infant mortality at least four times regional norms; in Fallujah, from 2003 through 2010, congenital malformations increased to 15% of all births; and in Basra during 10 years following the 1991 Gulf War congenital defects affecting babies born in one maternity hospital increased 17 – fold. That trend continued: physicians at that hospital recently described “a 60% rise in birth defects since 2003.” Researchers cast blame on depleted uranium and other metallic residues.

Britain’s Lancet medical journal questioned the report’s methodology and peer review.” For Finnish environmentalist Keith Baverstock, a specialist on DU health effects, “This document is not of scientific quality. It wouldn’t pass peer review in one of the worst journals.” “Existing medical records in Iraqi hospitals” were ignored and “interviews with mothers [were used] as a basis for diagnosis.”

Former UN assistant secretary general Hans von Sponeck, formerly UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, indicated evidence for the “alarming rise in birth defects, leukemia, cancer and other carcinogenic diseases in Iraq [was] definitive.” He suggested “someone, somewhere clumsily decided that they would not release these damning findings, but instead obscure them.” Baverstock questions “the role of the US and UK, who have a conflict of interest in this sort of study due to compensation issues that might arise from findings determining a link between higher birth defects and DU.”

The conclusion here is that crimes were committed and cover-up continues. After all, the Geneva Conventions require combatants to protect civilians during wars. And, U.S. guilt is clear. The U.S. military, its contractors, and other U.S agents created an environment dangerous to civilians. And, U.S. officials lied to start the war.

Agencies for judgment and enforcement are in short supply. The United States denies obligations under the International Criminal Court. Any action by the United Nations Security Council requires U.S. approval. But there is a remedy, one based on dual assumptions: U.S. involvement in Iraq joins a long series of military interventions abroad, and that’s what empires do. So obtaining justice requires joining the anti-imperialist cause and the people’s movement that is its substance. Easy to say, yes, and early victories are unlikely, but what else is there?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/30/the-war-in-iraq-an-assessment/

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Cuba gains crushing UN victory over United States, again

W. T. Whitney Jr.

The United Nations General Assembly on October 29 approved a Cuban resolution calling upon the United States to end its economic, commercial, and financial blockade. The General Assembly has backed such a resolution every year since the non- enforceable resolution was first introduced in 1992. In preparing for the vote, the Cuban Foreign Ministry creates an annual report demonstrating cruelty and illegality ongoing for half a century.

This year 188 nations said “yes” to the Cuban resolution, Israel and the United States opposed, and Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau abstained. A pattern of overwhelming majority votes began with 167 affirmative votes in 2000 culminating with 188 majority votes in 2012. The United States and Israel have opposed the resolution consistently.

In the Assembly debate prior to the vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez assured delegates that, “The human damages caused by the …blockade imposed by the United States are incalculable.” Delegates of ten nations defended the Cuban resolution. U.S. delegate Ronald Godard opined that Cuba “still has one of the most restrictive economic systems in the world.”

Cuba’s yearly submission of the resolution creates an opportunity to register worldwide loathing of U.S. policies directed at Cuba. Additionally, Cuba uses the report delivered to voting nations to demonstrate adverse blockade effects on people’s lives, Cuban national sovereignty, and economic sustainability. The report conveys crucial information on the centerpiece of U.S. anti-Cuban hostility. An English language version circulates on the internet.

Deputy foreign minister Abelardo Moreno presented the detailed, comprehensive report on October 7 at a press conference at the William Soler Pediatric Cardiology Center in Havana. Blockade – related shortages of essential surgical and medical materials have long burdened patients, families, and physicians at that flagship hospital.

Certain categories of abuses outlined in document are worthy of note. For example, monetary loss at U.S. hands totals $1,157,327,000,000 dollars (taking into account dollar depreciation). Figured into the amount are violations of Cuban patents, confiscation of Cuban funds abroad, losses from missed sales of products subjected to the blockade, losses of humanitarian assistance funds waylaid en route to Cuba, high costs from having to re-route imports blocked under U.S. rules through third countries, losses from interference with the tourist industry, losses from business contracts unfulfilled when foreign partners withdraw under U.S. pressures, and losses associated with U.S. purchases of foreign companies.

Foreign banks and other financial institutions face U.S. fines following accusations of handling dollars as part of transactions involving Cuban businesses, agencies, and citizens. U.S. identification of Cuba as a “terrorist” state serves as pretext. Fearful of losing U.S. business, targeted institutions often respond by permanently giving up relations with Cuba. As a result, difficulties mount for Cuba in securing international loans and foreign investment, receiving foreign donations, and pursuing normal overseas commerce.

Special targeting of Cuba’s health care sector, in place for many years, continues. Multi-national drug manufacturers and medical equipment merchandisers pay big fines on U.S. discovery that medical devices or drugs sold by their subsidiaries to Cuba contain 10 percent or more of components originating from the United States. They usually drop Cuba as a customer. Clinical care centers, notably intensive care units, either go without crucial supplies or secure them expensively through third parties. Equipment available only in the United States is off limits for many critically ill patients. Medical imaging equipment is immobilized because essential computerized control systems require prompt authorization from Microsoft Corporation, The blockade usually makes that impossible.

The Cuban report instructs U.S. citizens on the nature of their government. They learn that despite United Nations founding principles, the idea of national sovereignty may be trashed. They learn their government endangers innocent people, despite international law.

“Because of its declared purpose,” the report says, “the political, legal and administrative framework on which the blockade rests qualifies as an act of genocide by virtue of the Geneva Convention of 1948.” The United States has imposed “the most unjust, severe and extended system of unilateral sanctions ever enforced against any country.”

That “declared purpose” has been evident ever since the release of an internal State Department memorandum in 1960. Author Lester Mallory observed that “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” He proposed action which “makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Awareness of such cruelty and illegality has long fueled resistance by a U.S. solidarity movement. Cuba’s annual reports provide documentation essential for the purpose of sustaining that political campaign.

The contemporary relevance of the report this year is evident from the statement that “Damages done by the blockade to Cuban foreign trade amount to $3,921,725,790, a figure 10 percent above that of last year.” Significantly, “The last five years have witnessed a persistent tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States Government against Cuba, particularly of its extraterritorial dimension.”

http://www.peoplesworld.org/cuba-gains-un-victory-over-u-s/

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War zone extends to Colombian prisons

W. T. Whitney Jr.

For Colombian governments fighting a civil war, prisons are a tool of repression. Solidarity events for Colombia’s 9,000 political prisoners took place in October, 2013. Organizers maintain Colombia is rife with “social and political violence where social protest is repressed and criminalized.” Critic Azalea Robles reports 90 percent of political prisoners “are civilians jailed through their political activity … unionists, environmentalists, teachers, agrarian leaders, academic critics … and defenders of human rights.

Negotiators at peace talks in Cuba between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are discussing political prisoners as part of their current agenda item, which is political participation. The imprisonment of two high profile veterans in the fight for agrarian and human rights illustrates the connection between arbitrary incarcerations and conditions of internal war.

David Ravelo led the political fight In the Barrancabermeja area against violent paramilitaries hired by big landowners and other wealthy interests to remove small farmers from land they were seeking. Having entered prison on September 14, 2010, he is serving an 18 – year sentence on false charges of participating in a 1991 murder. Huber Ballesteros is vice president of the Fensuagro labor federation, Colombia’s largest farm workers’ union. His arrest on August 25, 2013 came early during the course of a nationwide National Agrarian Strike for which he was a spokesperson.

Ravelo’s conviction rested on an accusation made by a jailed paramilitary chieftain in return for a shortened sentence. Ravelo’s appeal focuses on a crime committed by his prosecutor in 1991. William Pacheco Granados, a police lieutenant then, participated in the forced disappearance of an individual. The Colombian military jailed him for the crime. Ravelo’s lawyers now cite laws barring criminals from serving as prosecutor. Yet Pacheco Granados is still on the job.

Ravelo has received awards for defending human rights. International unions, United Nations officials, U.K lawyers and parliamentarian, and human rights groups have protested judicial irregularities in his case and demanded his release. International delegations have visited him in prison.

At a large gathering in Bogota on the third anniversary of Ravelo’s arrest, speakers praised Ravelo’s dedication to “Colombia’s poor and humble” and his leadership of the Credhos human rights group. Voz newspaper director Carlos Lozano honored Ravelo as “a distinguished leader of the Communist Party,” who, along with those he defended, faced “dungeons, intimidations, displacements, and death threats.”

Ravelo fought on behalf of Colombians displaced from land. On a recent solidarity visit to Catatumbo Department, U.S. lawyer Dan Kovalik heard testimony describing rural terror attacks at the hands of soldiers and paramilitaries who enforce corporate land takeovers. The Colombian military; police; prison construction projects; and, indirectly, paramilitaries all benefit from U.S. funding.

Huber Ballesteros faces charges of rebellion and supporting terrorists. In addition to his participation with the Fensuagro union, Ballesteros is a leader of the Patriotic March coalition movement, also part of the agrarian reform movement. An international solidarity campaign is demanding Ballesteros’ freedom.

Hyper – concentration of land has fueled the FARC’s insurgency since it’s beginning in 1964, and the first agenda item of the Havana peace talks was agrarian rights. Although negotiators reached agreement on land issues several months ago, the arrest of Huber Ballesteros during the agrarian strike strongly suggests struggles over land are not over. That’s the impression gained also from sentences handed down recently to three other jailed Fensuagro leaders.

Ballesteros’ political participation has moved now to inside prison. He wrote the article “Privatization of justice and merchandizing of prisons” that appeared in early October. “To palliate its grave situation,” he observed, “the crisis – ridden capitalist system uses the economic model of neo-liberalism to penetrate every sphere of society.” The Colombian government “enacted laws that privatized the justice [system] and converted prisons into commercial establishments.” Ballesteros condemns “creation of new crimes with the purpose of overfilling prisons and [thereby] generating new ‘clients’ for private investment.” He objects to “implementation of North American methods of justice, prisons, and prison operations.”

Ballesteros’ concern is for all prisoners in Colombia. “In this dance of the millions,” he states, “we on the inside are the ones hurting. We suffer from corruption at all levels.” The fallout, one observer explains, includes prisoner deaths due to bad quality medical care, rotten or contaminated food, and beatings. The prison population is up 30 percent over three years. Some 40,000 people are in prison without benefit of a trial.

The cases of Ravelo and Ballesteros are equivalent to a laboratory demonstration on skewed political participation. The two prisoners intervened in a class-divided society to defend victims of land- hungry corporations and oligarchs. And Ballesteros spoke up for masses of prisoners in the grasp of latter-day slave masters and their drivers.

http://www.peoplesworld.org/war-zone-extends-to-colombian-prisons/