Cuba: 55 Years of Ideas and Truth

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/10/cuba-55-years-of-ideas-and-truth/

On January 1, Cubans 2014 marked the 55th anniversary of their revolution’s victory. Fidel Castro’s words spoken May 1, 2000 cropped up in President Raul Castro’s speech in Santiago de Cuba. Revolution, they said, is “to believe deeply there’s no force in the world capable of crushing the force of truth and ideas.”
Commentator Ángel Guerra Cabrera recalls one idea: “To understand the conflict between Cuba and the United States it’s necessary to study Latin American history. It shows the superpower has never tolerated our countries developing internal or external politics separate from its dictates.”

Raul Castro articulated another: “[N]ew generations of leaders … never will be able to forget that this is the socialist Revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble. This is the essential premise and effective antidote for not falling for the siren songs of the enemy.”

Political talkers sometimes label ideas as utopian, among them that of ending the anti-Cuban U.S. blockade now. “Cuba [however] is still embracing utopia in year 55 of the triumph of its revolution,” affirms Guerra Cabrera.

U. S. defenders of Cuban independence could do with truth and ideas, or at least new ones. On their watch, “Cuba has suffered under the longest blockade in history.” Objective realities in the two countries may vary enough for Cuba’s U. S. friends to accept what they see as truth as allowing for small gains only, and waiting. By contrast, Cubans seem to take the realities they live with as encouragement for keeping on. Indeed, there are “55 reasons for a new anniversary,” says one observer. They would fit within Fidel Castro’s notion of the “truth.” A listing follows:

Cuba’s infant mortality rate is at a new low: 4.2 babies died during 2013 out of every 1000 births. Average rates for the region remain at around 30. Maternal mortality has dropped, and life expectancy at 77.9 years matches that of industrialized nations. Physician density in Cuba is one physician for 197 persons, one of the world’s top rates. That doesn’t include 40,000 Cuban physicians serving abroad in 70 countries.

Universal education and health care are intact; 1,993,300 students from preschool through university level will be enrolled in 2014, and eighty million physician consultations are anticipated, plus 22 million visits to dentists and 1.140.000 hospital admissions.

The United Nations Program in Human Development ranked Cuba 59th overall out of 187 countries. UNESCO’s 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report had Cuba as 14th in the world. Health care expenses consumed 22 percent of Cuba’s 2013 state budget, education 27 percent. Cuba’s 54 percent current budgetary allowance for social services is among the world’s highest. Only 30 countries share Cuba’s below-five percent unemployment rate.

Cuba maintains its outsized role in international solidarity. Two thousand teachers work abroad. Cuba’s “Yo sí puedo” literacy program has benefited eight million learners in 29 countries. “Operation Miracle” has restored sight for two million people worldwide. By 2011, the Latin American School of Medicine had graduated 9,960 new doctors from 58 countries. Tens of thousands of other medical students and graduate physicians study in Cuba.

Economic readjustment is proceeding. A new Labor Code became law following discussions among almost three million workers. State businesses, newly autonomous, are on track to increase exports and reduce imports. Mariel is the site of a new “Special Development Zone” directed at promoting foreign investment, exports, jobs, and fostering modern business technologies. New patterns of land use and agricultural marketing prevail.

Some 400,000 Cubans are recently self-employed without loss of social services. Over 250 new cooperatives are functioning. Cuba’s economy maintains a three percent rate of growth. Russia recently agreed to forgive 90 percent of Cuba’s $29 billion debt incurred during the Soviet era. Provision of electricity has improved through the use of new generator facilities.

Cuban diplomats joined the United Nations Council on Human Rights in 2013. Cuba that year served as president pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that includes all Western Hemisphere nations save Canada and the United States. During 2013, Cuba hosted peace talks between the Colombian government and the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

These facts – these truths – suggest Cuba’s revolution is established and continuing. In Santiago, President Raul Castro once more called for “respectful dialogue” with the United States. “We don’t claim the United States has to change its political and social system, [but] we have to learn mutual respect for our differences, only that. [Otherwise] we are disposed to endure another 55 years in the same situation.”

Cuba’s real experiences and achievements demonstrate that big, utopian ideas can materialize. New realities add substance and serve to motivate. Fidel Castro’s must have presumed listeners on May 1, 2000 were ready “to challenge powerful forces dominating inside and outside boundaries of society and the nation … defend values in which we believe at the price of any sacrifice.”

That kind of commitment exercised within U.S. society could help convert utopian longings into existing facts. One would be the unrealized dream of U.S. acceptance of Cuba as a regular nation. Actually to fight to change existing U. S. realities would move that dream along, and others too.

Agrarian-based oligarchy controls post-coup Paraguay

http://www.peoplesworld.org/agrarian-based-oligarchy-exerts-control-over-post-coup-paraguay/

January 7, 2014

The so-called “legal” coup that removed progressive President Fernando Lugo from power on June 25, 2012 set the stage for large agricultural corporations, particularly soybean producers, to establish control over Paraguay’s government. The wealthy Horacio Cartes’ election to the presidency in April 2013 restored dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s Colorado party to power. Yet opposition forces remain active.

In a radio address on December 30 labor leader Bernardo Rojas declared that 2013 was a “hard, difficult” year because of persecution and austerity policies. He condemned “criminalization of social struggle” and announced a general strike set for March 26, 2014. Hundreds had rallied in front of the National Congress in Asuncion to mark four months of the Cartes presidency which began on August 1. The demonstration’s theme was “100 days that shouldn’t have been, of militarization and surrender, militarization and accusations.” In November, street demonstrations continued in San Pedro department a day after the police shoot and wounded two of some 200 activists protesting displacement of small farmers from land lost to private interests.

Crisis in Paraguay began on June 15, 2012 when 300 police forcibly removed 50 would-be occupiers from land without clear title in Curuguaty district. President Lugo’s political opponents exploited the violent fallout – 17 were killed and 20 wounded including police – to accuse the Lugo government of incompetence and engineer Lugo’s removal through parliamentary action. Plotters raised the specter of terrorism by identifying the Paraguayan People’s Army, leftist insurgents, as backing small farmer agitation. The Lugo government may have forced the hand of coup perpetrators by seeking to block agribusiness plans to import genetically modified seed corn.

Post – coup governments first headed by former Vice President Frederico Franco and Cartes later on went to work. The executive branch gained new powers under a modified Law 1337/99 to deploy the military and police for internal security purposes. Expanded police and military capabilities are being “financed by the landholding class and foreign capitalists,” one observer claimed. Agrarian rights activists confront security forces equipped with high- technology weapons and tools and advised by Israeli and US operatives.

Commentator Jose Carlos Lezcano points also to new “fiscal responsibility” legislation; Law 5.098/13 prescribes budgetary cuts and structural adjustment policies. A novel “law of public-private alliance” authorizes privatization of “strategic resources,” including state – owned enterprises.

The police assassinated eight agrarian rights leaders, supposedly for the purpose of “decapitating” opposition leadership. The fear-laden atmosphere and Colorado Party control of electoral processes resulted in the victorious Cartes gaining 45 percent of the presidential votes cast in April. The candidate of the left-leaning Guasú Front coalition took a mere 3.5 percent of the votes. Now, says Lezcano, power brokers have “surrendered the country to transnational gangsters.”

That would be Monsanto, Dow, Agrotec, and Syngent corporations. Within months of the coup, the Agricultural Ministry approved their use of transgenic corn blocked under the Lugo government. Lezcano claims Paraguay has suffered a “major loss of sovereignty and effective loss of civil rights,” along with diminishing state-sponsored social services.

The stage is thus set for Paraguay, the world’s sixth largest soybean producer, to maintain its role, along with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, as a soy juggernaut providing industrialized societies with the prime raw material for bio-diesel fuel and animal feeds. Current political arrangements, a legacy of the 35– year long Stroessner dictatorship, favor skewed land-owning patterns. Currently 2% of owners control 85% of Paraguayan farmland there; four percent of soybean growers control 60 percent of soy growing land. Foreigners, often Brazilians, own almost 20 percent of such land. .

Foreign sales of soybeans and beef yield sales worth $10 billion, yet producers and processors pay only two percent of the government’s revenue requirements.

Excluded from regular participation in governmental processes, agrarian rights activists point to harm done to natural and human environments. Accounts surface for example, of poisoned rivers, soil, and human beings through the extravagant use of pesticides and herbicides. Conversion of land for large scale agricultural use has led to tens of thousands of small-farmer families being displaced. They often end up living precariously on the edges of cities.

Deforestation in Paraguay is extreme. During the last half of the 20th century, 75 percent of the original forest cover disappeared. The trend has accentuated: In 2010 in western Paraguay forests of 580,000 acres were cut down. During the following year, the total mounted to 618,000 acres.

And irony of all ironies: despite annual soy exports amounting to 300,000 tones and meat products, to 200,000 tons, one fourth of Paraguayans are hungry, according to the United Nations Food Program. Some 20 percent of rural inhabitants live in extreme poverty.

Political prisoners, killings mount in Colombia – peace momentum slows

Jan 12, 2014

2014 had barely begun. Already assassins had killed activist rapper Gerson Martínez, community leader Giovanny Leiton, the latter’s life partner, and unionist Ever Luis Marin Rolong. A police projectile thrown at Sintraelecol union president Óscar Arturo Orozco gravely injured his left eye. He had been speaking at a union rally in Manizales, Caldas,

On January 4 in Cucuta, the Catatumbo epicenter of agrarian revolt in June, 2013, authorities detained academician Francisco Toloza. Leiton and Toloza are leaders of the two-year old Patriotic March grouping of social movements. Patriotic March is spearheading revived agitation for agrarian rights.

War in Colombia has long reflected opposed views of control and use of land. Land use was the first agenda item in peace talks underway in Cuba between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Killers of 25 Patriotic March activists murdered in 2013 are still at large. Assassins that year took the lives of 26 unionists associated with the CUT labor federation. Over 90 percent of those targeted were union leaders, The National Labor School reports that paramilitary groups accounted for 92 percent of the violations, the police or military, 19 percent.

News of deadly assaults against advocates for change is not new. Over the course of decades, tens of thousands of poor farmers, marginalized city dwellers, teachers, unionists, and political activists were murdered. The toll of murdered unionists since 1984 is estimated at 3000.

What may be new is the turn to filling jails with political adversaries, especially with leaders like Francisco Toloza. Jail time for him and detained counterparts may be advantageous for those in charge. They gain credit for using courts rather than killing. And hoopla surrounding such cases bolsters the image of the FARC as enemy and of opposition figures as loyal to the FARC.

The state alleges Toloza and many others belong to the FARC and are guilty of “aggravated rebellion.” Supposed evidence comes from computers retrieved, as the story goes, from sites ravaged by bombs that killed FARC leaders.

Toloza is a sociology professor and investigator at Colombia’s National University who, encouraged by peace negotiators in Havana, organized national forums allowing citizens to discuss issues covered in the talks. Olga Quintero, collaborator of Toloza in agrarian organizing in Catatumbo, describes the prisoner as “more than a leader, he has great intellectual capabilities and is committed to contributing to the social process and change the country requires.”

Fellow Patriotic March leader Lilia Solano explained that, “the persecution of dissident thought is not only a problem for Patriotic March, but is also one for thousands of Colombians who don’t accept the politics of hate and plunder they have imposed.

Toloza’s persecution follows the imprisonment earlier of similarly charged Huber Bellesteros, another Patriotic March member. The CUT unionist and vice president of the Fensuagro agricultural workers’ union was spokesperson for the MIA collective that in August 2013 organized a nationwide strike for agrarian rights and against Colombia’s “free trade” agreement with the United States. Authorities jailed Bellesteros at the strike’s onset.

After almost three years of incarceration, Fensuagro human rights director Liliany Obando is at conditional liberty as she awaits a Supreme Judicial Court ruling on her appeal. Convicted of rebellion, she was sentenced to house arrest for five years and fined the equivalent of $368,347 USD.

Political prisoner David Ravelo is serving an 18 year prison term because he publicized ex President Alvaro Uribe’s close ties with paramilitary chieftains who then and now were terrorizing Ravelo’s native Barrancabermeja. Their false accusation that Ravelo helped out with a 1991 murder led to his conviction in December 2012. Ravelo is a Communist Party leader, an educator, a union organizer, and an award – winning human rights human rights activist.

Such prisoners join 9500 other Colombians incarcerated for politics of resistance. The political prisoner population is rising along with a 70.4 per cent increase in the overall prison population between 1998 and 2009. Prisons are overfilled: 17.2 percent over capacity in 2007; 25.5 percent, in 2008; 35.8 percent, in 2009; and 41.7 percent in 2010.

Jailing of the two Patriotic March leaders has evoked outpourings of support and condemnation of governmental repression. Left political parties worldwide, unions, and human rights groups have come to Toloza’s defense. “We demand immediate freedom for Francisco Tolozo and end of persecution of Patriotic March,” wrote Carlos Lozano, editor of Colombia’s Voz weekly newspaper. “Huber Ballesteros and now Francisco Toloza: those are not gestures of peace.”

Surely commentator Sara Leukos’ concerns are widely shared: “Inside Colombia the peace talks express one reality and [President] Juan Manuel Santos’ constitutional powers establish another. Are they different languages?” She adds: “Incarceration of Professor Francisco Javier Toloza, just like the assassinations, political prisoners, persecution, and threats … generate open debate over the importance of real, structural changes required of the Colombian state. The people have called for popular rebellion, and necessarily so.”

Check out the two videos listed below. They show the Cuban celebration of May Day. Remember that May Day is the holiday that commemorates the achievement of the U.S. workers in establishing the 40 hour work week. Too bad we didn’t have one million people in Washington, D.C. or NYC or Chicago or LA or Houston or any other U.S. city celebrating May Day.

Two videos from May Day parade in Havana, Cuba, 2011.

concert band and closeups

flags waving at end of parade

Jimmie Carter statements from his trip to Cuba:

End the US blockade of Cuba, free the Cuban 5, take Cuba off the US’ state sponsors of terrorism list, end the US travel ban, meets with the families of the Cuban 5

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/1april-interview.html

Urged Bush and Obama to free the Cuban 5
“in my private conversations with President Bush and with President Obama, I have talked about the release of these persons. I recognize the limitations within the judicial system of the United States and I hope that the President can grant this pardon; but that is a decision that only the President himself can make; in other words, I can’t tell the President what to do, but the President, both before and now, knows that my opinion is that the trial of the Five was highly questionable, that standards were violated, and that the restraints on their visitations are extreme.”

Meeting with Evo Morales and Fidel Castro on global warming
“I believe that the United States has not been as firm as it should have been in approaching the problems of global warming. Since I have been here, the Cuban officials have pointed out to me what has been done with the old city of Havana, and I have been in Bolivia to meet with Evo Morales, and Bolivia could be the first country to have major damage to its economy, because of the melting of its mountain glaciers, which signify a source of drinking water. For that reason, I hope that in the future, this issue, as it is also related to global warming, can be discussed by all nations, and I know that Fidel Castro is also a promoter of this issue. We were talking about the steps taken when I was president of the United States, and we have been talking now and he is talking and trying to use his voice as a senior statesman for the wellbeing of human beings. We were talking, we were in agreement on a lot of things and, above all, we also talked about this global warming, and I believe that there are possibilities between the two countries.”

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/1april-Press-Conference.html

“I believe we should immediately eliminate the trade embargo that the United States has imposed on the people of Cuba and also allow travel without any kind of restriction from the U.S. to Cuba and vice-versa”

Falseness of US Classifying Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism

“The only American allegations in terms of terrorism against the Cuban government are related to some of the groups in Colombia, the FARC and ETA in Spain.

When I met with the ambassadors of Spain and Colombia yesterday morning, they told me that they had absolutely no objection, that they thought that the capacity of members of ETA and FARC in Colombia to come to Cuba was something very positive for them, because it gave them an opportunity to communicate in a friendly way in Cuba with people who were causing problems in their own countries. And so the American allegations, the affirmation of terrorism, is a premise which is completely unfounded, and that is another aspect that the President of the United States could address; in other words, eliminate the statement that Cuba is sponsoring terrorism, because it is evidently untrue.”

Cuba Support Group Ireland
PRESS RELEASE, 12 April 2011

NATIONAL TOUR 14 – 21 APRIL: Bay of Pigs Anniversary Celebration
================================================================

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Victory at the Bay of Pigs

10 towns, 8 days, 3 Cubans, 50 years of resistance: Cuba Support Group
Ireland, in conjunction with Irish Friends of Cuba Coalition, is pleased to
announce a major tour of Ireland by a high-level delegation from Cuba to
celebrate the victory of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces over the CIA
back mercenary invasion of Cuba on 16 April 1961. This will be an event
that anyone with an interest in Cuba, world history, politics or journalism
will want to participate. The delegation will be lead by Col. Victor Dreke,
a highly decorated Cuban military commander and veteran of the Bay of Pigs
victory.

The tour will culminate with a day-long symposium in Liberty hall Dublin on
16 April examining the historical significance of the Bay of Pigs, the
enduring validity of the Cuban Revolution and the Challenges that Cuba is
facing today.

Symposium in Liberty Hall, Dublin
=================================

09:00 – 09:30
Registration

09:30 – 10:30
Documentary film: “66 Hours” – The True Story of Bay of Pigs.
Directed by Otto M. Guzmán, MUNDO LATINO

10:30 – 10:45
Introduction by Jack McGinley, Chair of the SIPTU Solidarity with Cuba
Forum.

10:45 – 11:45
Historical significance of the Bay of Pigs Victory.
Speakers: Víctor Dreke, Deputy Chairman of the Association of Combatants of
the Cuban Revolution, Bay of Pigs veteran.
Moderator: Gerry Grainger, Workers Party
Q&A

11:45 – 12:00
Coffee
12:00 – 13:00

Validity of the Cuban Revolution 50 years after declaring its socialist
character.
Speaker: Reinaldo Taladrid, journalist and political analyst
Moderator: Eugene Mc Cartan, Communist Party of Ireland
Q&A

13:00 – 14:00
Lunch

14:00 – 16:30
Solidarity with Cuba Presentations and adoption of Plan of Action
– The US blockade.
Speakers: Simon McGuinness and Dr. David Hickey, Cuba Support Group and
María Aleida del Riego, Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.
– EU Common Position on Cuba.
Speakers: Barbara de Brun MEP and Teresita Trujillo, Cuban Ambassador to
Ireland.
– The Miami Five.
Speakers: Reinaldo Taladrid, Finian McGrath TD and Jimmy Kelly, UNITE.

16:30
Closing remarks. Adoption of the Final Declaration.
Speaker; Jack O’Connor ICTU.

17:00
Laying of wreath at the memorial to Commandant James Connolly by Cuban
veteran

18:00
Internationale

Advanced registration for Dublin event recommended via email to
IrishFriendsofCubaCoalition@gmail.com

The Cuban Delegation
====================

Col. Victor Dreke Cruz
———————-
On 17 April 1961, the first day of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Victor Dreke
assumed command of two companies of the 117th Battalion, taking part in a
clash with paratroops of US lead “Brigade 2506” under the command of
Comandante Che Guevara. On 19 April, he was wounded in combat and briefly
captured after driving towards Girón in a jeep ahead of his tanks.

Highly decorated in Cuba and Africa, he was to serve in Congo in 1965 under
Che, and later in 1966-8 in Guinea-Bissau, he retired in 1990.
More:
http://bayofpigs50.blogspot.com/2011/02/biography-of-victor-dreke-cruz.html

Reinaldo Taladrid
—————–
Award winning Cuban journalist TV presenter and broadcaster, Reinaldo
Taladrid has worked for most of the major news channels in the USA and
currently hosts a nightly “Round Table” political discussion on Cuban TV
which is broadcast to the whole of Latin America on the TeleSUR satellite.
He is one of the most recognised people in Cuba and has interviewed all of
the Cuban leaders and two US presidents. He is uniquely placed to provide
an overview of Cuba’s place in Latin America, its current economic
adjustments and the prospects of US-Cuban relations.

Maria Aleida del Riego
———————-
Coordinator for Ireland and Britain of the Cuban Institute of Friendship of
the Peoples (ICAP), Maria Aleida del Riego have visited Ireland before and
is familiar with all the groups in these Irelands who are active in support
of the Cuban Revolution. Maria coordinates the brigades on which Irish
people travel to Cuba and is an invaluable source of information and
assistance to visitors who want to understand the nature of Cuban society.

National Bay of Pigs Tour Programme
===================================

Limerick
——–
Thursday, 14 April, 18:00 hrs
Reinaldo Taladrid – Public meeting at the University of Limerick – Room
C1061 in Main Building
Cuba Support Group
Contact: Nina Blodau nblodauyahoo.com

Waterford
———
Thursday, 14 April 19:00 hrs.
Maria Aleida del Riego – Public meeting
Waterford Trades Council
Contact: Tommy Hogan
Ph: 086 1656818

Dublin
——
Saturday, 16 April 09.00 – 18.00
Liberty Hall Bay of Pigs Celebration
Day-Long Conference (see detailed programme below)
SIPTU / Cuba Support Group Contact: Simon McGuinness CubaSupport@eircom.net

Belfast
——-
Monday, 18 April, 19.00
Victor Dreke & Reinaldo Taladrid – Public meeting in Europa Hotel
With film, music and presentations
Sinn Fein
Contact Sean Murray
Sean.murraysinn-fein.ie

Derry
—–
Monday, 18 April, 20.00
Maria Aleida del Riego – Public meeting in Sandino’s
Sinn Fein
Contact Daisy Mules

Galway
——
Tuesday, 19 April, 20.00
Victor Dreke & Reinaldo Taladrid – Public meeting in SIPTU Hall
Galway Trades Union Council
Contact: Pat Hardiman
Pathardiman99gmail.com

Letterkenny
———–
Tuesday, 19 April, 19.00
Maria Aleida del Riego – Public meeting in Station House (Ramada) Hotel;
with Cuban film “66 Hours”
Cuba Support Group
Contact: Bill O’Brien wobrien05eircom.net

Sligo
—–
Wednesday, 20 April
Maria Aleida del Riego Public meeting in Glasshouse Hotel, Hyde Bridge
Organized by Declan Bree dbreeeircom.net

Dundalk
——-
Wednesday, 20 April, 19.30
Reinaldo Taladrid – Public meeting venue Imperial Hotel
Sinn Féin
Contact: Emma McArdle
Emma.mcardlesinn-fein.ie

Cork
—-
Thursday, 21 April, 19.30
Victor Dreke, Reinaldo Taladrid & Maria Aleida del Riego Public meeting in
Connolly Hall.
Cuba Support Group contact: John Bowen johnbowen51gmail.com

__________________________________________________________
_______________________

Further information and to arrange media interviews with the delegation
contact:

Simon McGuinness,
National Coordinator,
Cuba Support Group Ireland,
15 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.

Ph: 087 6785842
www.CubaSupport.com

http://www.latinocongreso.org/

March 25-27, 2011
Crowne Plaza, Austin, Texas

A newly released documentary will be featured at the National Latino Congreso in Austin, Texas

Saturday, March 26th at 8:00 p.m.

“Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!”

Produced by Emmy-Award Winner Saul Landau will be featured at the upcoming Congreso Latino. Nelson Valdés, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and one of the many people interviewed in the documentary will be present at the screening to respond to any questions by the audience (see brief bio below)

WHAT DID CUBA DO TO US?

In April 1961, the CIA sent a force of Cuban exiles to overthrow the Cuban government. This resulted in the Bay of Pigs Fiasco. Fifty years later, a new documentary shows that US-backed violence against Cuba continued for decades. The new film, with Danny Glover, anti-Cuba terrorists, and Fidel Castro himself (filmed recently) is combined with fascinating archival footage and a rare recorded interview from prison with one of the Cuban 5. These men are serving long sentences in US prisons for trying to stop terrorism against tourist sites in their country.

“Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!” provides every professor and specialist with an invaluable teaching and learning tool about US-Cuba policy and the history of terrorism in that policy. It also explains the story of and context for the “Cuban 5,” the Cuban agents who penetrated Miami exile groups to stop their plans for violence against the island, and ended up in US prisons.” Julia Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It’s a real Who’s Who of key figures in the more than half-century-long grudge match over Cuba.” Tracey Eaton former Dallas Morning News’ Bureau Chief, Havana

Brief biography of Nelson Valdés: Cuban by birth, Professor Nelson Valdés first came to the US at age 15 and has maintained continuous contacts with family and associates on the island since then. In 1970 he was the first to translate the speeches of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara into English. He has written extensively on the politics and development in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America. Professor Valdés is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and the creator and Director of the first university computerized database on Latin America, the LATIN AMERICA DATA BASE which he directed from 1986-1996. He also created the Cuba-L listserver in 1992 which continues to run on a daily basis. Nelson Valdés is considered by other Cuba experts to be the living Encyclopedia on Cuba and US-Cuba relations.

By Karen Lee Wald

via CUBANEWS and Cuba-Inside-Out (google group)

For some time now I have been planning to review some recent books on Cuba. What made me hesitate was that two of the books were written by people I know; by people who support the essence of the Cuban Revolution, and had valid experiences there that should be passed on to others — BUT, each of the books had some points I strongly disagreed with or considered inaccurate or misleading, and frankly, I didn’t know how to handle this.

I’ve decided to just plunge in – knowing these reviews won’t be all I want them to be – because I just got another book that I REALLY want people to read (Keith Bolender’s “Voices from the Other Side”) and if I don’t start reviewing all of these books, warts and all, many of you will never know about them.

So here is number 1 of what I hope will be at least 4 book reviews. Remember there are a lot more really good things in this book than I have noted here, which you will have to read the book yourself to find.

Part 1: REVIEW OF JEANNE LEMKAU’s Lost and Found in Cuba

The first thing to recognize when reading this book is that it is primarily about Lemkau’s “change of life”, not about Cuba.

But I am not going to review that book for Cuba-Inside-Out – which I realize is a disservice to Lemkau and her book. My expertise is Cuba, not life-changes in women, as fascinating as those may be and as well-written this part of the book is. So I can only focus on the specifically Cuban aspects of this book, which unfortunately means I will have to dwell on some of its shortcomings as well as its often startling naivete stemming from her lack of knowledge about many aspects of Cuban life.

She tells us this, and acknowledges throughout the book what her personal focus – and biases – were. In fact, Lemkau explains from the start that she “first visited Cuba on a whim”. The opportunity arose as part of a week-long educational exchange focusing on health care in 2000, sponsored by the National Peace Corps Association and the Friendship Force.

That Cuba would host or even accept such a trip might seem strange at first, given Cuba’s knowledge that the Peace Corps was used for everything from trying to instill pro-US attitudes in otherwise hostile people in developing countries to outright spying for the CIA.

But as a Cuban friend pointed out to me decades ago when I was uneasy about the opening of Cuba to tourism, “In order to influence people you have to risk being influenced.” In any case, the trip was allowed to take place.

Lemkau tells us she was lured as much by “the prospect of spending a week in the company of other former Peace Corps volunteers” as the chance to learn about Cuba’s health care system, having spent two years of Peace Corps service in Nicaragua during the early 1970s – augmented by half a dozen trips to Central and South America over the subsequent decades.

(Which one has to wonder about, since that would presumably cover the years of the US-backed Dirty Wars and Death Squads in that region, which tortured, mutilated, disappeared and/or slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Central and South Americans. Lemkau doesn’t tell us what she thought of all this, whether she took a stand against it, ignored it, or was a part of it. One would of course hope for the former.)

At the time of her trip to the island, she was a psychologist and professor of family medicine. “But of Cuba,” she tells us candidly, “I knew little more than that it was a Caribbean island that had been taken over by a revolutionary Fidel Castro when I was still learning fractions in grade school.”

Although she was a professor and researcher, she didn’t find time to read the many books and articles recommended as preparation for the trip. As a result, “I was an empty slate ready to be written upon by the raw experience of Cuba”.

This would explain a lot of the seemingly contradictory expectations, analyses, conclusions and behaviors which abound in the book. Without this background, it would be hard to understand how someone could be simultaneously so experienced and naive, so much against what the US government policies and practices have done and are doing to the Cuban people, yet still so suspicious of a “communist government”.

The result is that in every chapter you see her respect for what the Cuban Revolution has accomplished scrambled with remarks and attitudes that reflect her biases. Perhaps this strange mixture is possible because overriding all this is her sincere affection and concern for the people she met.

Lemkau’s first trip to Cuba-(incidentally this occurred at the time my son, whom I raised in Cuba while I was working there as a foreign correspondent, was completing his medical school education) included “seven days of hospital and home visits, meetings with health professionals and state officials, city tours and private explorations” during which she says she “tried to bring Cuba into focus”.

Not an easy task, given the combination of her lack of information and deep-rooted biases. Yet with a refreshing honesty, she admits: “but it seemed as if I were looking through a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription. Drawing any conclusions proved to be difficult; the mix of the foreign and the familiar was too baffling.”

Her experience in other parts of Latin America gave her a good basis for comparison. She noted similarities between Havana and other Latin American capital cities, “but the misery was missing. I saw no tar paper shacks with squalid dirt floors, no children sleeping in cardboard boxes in the streets, no emaciated babies with sad eyes, no walls topped with barbed wire and shards of broken glass to protect palatial homes.”

But it didn’t prepare her for the contradictions, both real and imagined, such as “Well-stocked “dollar” stores mixed with sparsely-supplied bodegas. Images of Che Guevara interspersed with likenesses of Abraham Lincoln…”

“[…] Puzzling contradictions pervaded my view of the health system too: dilapidated hospitals but superb health statistics, universal access to medical care but serious shortages in medicines, paltry salaries but enthusiastic physicians-all within a cultural motif that, at least on the surface, emphasized the collective: “!La revolución somos todos!” [We are the Revolution]”

I couldn’t help but recall the popular Cuban joke that describes the US’ inability to effectively spy on its Caribbean nation and understand it. According to the story, the US President (Ronald Reagan, when I first heard it) sent someone to go to Cuba to make an assessment of its current situation-presumably so the US could decide on its next plan of action.

The spy was given lots of money, highly sophisticated technology, everything he would need. And after some time wandering around Cuba, he returned to Washington to make his report. “Well, what are your conclusions?” the President asked him. “Sir, I’m sorry to say I don’t have any conclusions” the spy admitted. The outraged president stormed: “We gave you all the time, money and equipment you could possibly need! How could you possibly come back here and say you don’t have any information?!”

The spy, still hanging his head, explained: “Well, you see, sir, it’s like this:

In Cuba, there is no unemployment. There’s no unemployment, but nobody works. Nobody works, but everyone meets their production quota. Production quotas are all filled, but there’s nothing in the stores. The stores are empty, but everyone is happy. Everyone is happy, but everyone complains. Everyone complains, but they all go to the Plaza to cheer the Revolution.

“So you see, I have lots of information-just no conclusions.”

This seems similar to the situation Lemkau was in. In the best of circumstances, a casual visitor-even one who spends considerable time in Cuba-can see and hear many things (a lot of them contradictory), but has little way to make heads or tails of what she/he is seeing and what she is told.

Moreover, if the researcher does not have the support of the relevant authorities in the field she wants to study, she/he won’t have access to much of the first-hand data and will have to rely on second-hand reports, apocryphal stories and anecdotes. That almost guarantees that some of the information subsequently will be flawed or misleading, not through any intention of the author. What is amazing about this book, then, is not how much she got wrong (here and there) but how much she got right.

And all this in the midst of undergoing life-altering changes in her perspectives, priorities and career.

Lemkau wanted to learn about Cuba’s much-touted healthcare system and followed up a group visit with several extended stays. Unfortunately, she did not have the kind of background, credentials or contacts that would make the people in the international section of the Health Ministry [MINSAP] willing to risk opening doors for her to see everything first hand.

Cubans have been burned so many times by people who claimed to be friendly, open-minded and objective and turned out to be writing supermarket tabloid type hit-pieces against the revolution that many are now reluctant to trust foreign reporters and researchers.

Lemkau had good intentions. She just had no way to prove it. So she got the classic stall: no one ever told her she couldn’t do her research. She just never got the green light to go ahead and do it.

In those circumstances, she chose to just go ahead and see what she could see.

To be fair to Lemkau, I should acknowledge that officials in MINSAP have too often opted out this way – perhaps typical of people in their position. I found this all-too-familiar description in a Sue Grafton mystery novel: “He stared at me with that blank look all petty bureaucrats assume when they calculate the probabilities of getting fired if they say yes.”

To be fair to the officials who never approved her research, I should explain that Lemkau unknowingly had already done a number of things “wrong” from their viewpoint by the time she contacted MINSAP. She was in Cuba, to begin with, on the wrong kind of visa. You are not allowed to do research or reporting on a tourist visa (just as you are not allowed to work in the US while on a tourist visa).

You are supposed to prepare a resume, a letter explaining your project, and send that to the appropriate ministry in Cuba via the Cuban Embassy or, in the case of the United States, the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. Ideally, if possible, you would accompany those with letters of recommendation from other people in your field already known to the Cubans. And then you wait. And wait. And wait.

It definitely helps if you have someone on the island who is already interested in your research and can make sure that the appropriate ministry, agency, university of even the Friendship Institute or Church council lets the Cuban Interests Section know they will take responsibility for hosting you and helping you organize your research.

Lacking this-as Lemkau did-it’s hit or miss.

Second, in addition to being sponsored and having the proper visa, you are supposed to follow all other Cuban laws, rules and regulations. That includes housing. You don’t have to live in a hotel-you can live in a guest house (many ministries and agencies have these, including Public Health, Education, ICAP, the Association of Small Farmers, church groups like the Martin Luther King Center, Casa de Carino and others).

Or you can rent a room from a private homeowner who is legally licensed to do so-which means they pay their monthly fee and make sure your documents are presented to immigration authorities.

Lemkau, probably for lack of information, missed doing the right thing. From her description, time after time she ended up being housed, fed and guided by people who were living outside the law, although she apparently didn’t realize it at first.

Sometimes, the people who took her under their wing were good, honest people who were working to improve people’s lives within the revolution, and wanted the world to know about all the good things they were achieving despite incredible obstacles and hardships. Other times, they were outright hustlers, and more experienced readers will wonder why she didn’t realize it sooner.

All of this combined to deprive Lemkau-and subsequently her readers-of much of the information she would have gotten if she had won the trust of the MINSAP officials who would not only have guaranteed her more access to health care facilities and information, but could have corrected some of the misinformation she was given.
But despite that, Lemkau was able to observe a great deal, and if sometimes she too-willingly believed some spins and distortions, her own generally good instincts allowed her to also come away with much that is positive.

Her perception of Cuba’s health care system hits the nail on the head from the outset, as she observes: “Although flawed and struggling, the Cuban model of health care, based on the radical notion of health as a fundamental human right, offered an alternative vision of the possible, beyond the provision of medical care based on wallet biopsy and insurance coverage with which I was more familiar.”

As a US citizen, she encountered the obstacles set by her own government which still apply to most citizens and residents of the United States, and is therefore worth quoting extensively.
Returning to Cuba was no trivial matter.

As part of the general ban on commercial transactions with the country, citizens of the United States are forbidden by their government from travelling there; although technically, spending money and not travel itself is forbidden.

The travel ban, a key component of the trade embargo that has governed U.S.-Cuba relations for half a century, was designed to squeeze the Cuban economy and provoke the collapse of the Castro regime. Two Castros and eleven American presidents later, the embargo still stands.

Exceptions to the travel ban for educational, journalistic, and humanitarian reasons have been variously allowed under different administrations, typically requiring advanced application and “specific license,” a document issued to the approved traveler prior to departure. In contrast, research travel is covered by “general license,” and requires no advanced application.

For general license, one must comply with the requirements of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The traveler must be a full-time professional whose travel transactions are directly related to non-commercial research, with a full work schedule in Cuba and substantial likelihood of public dissemination of findings.

Under an obscure 1918 regulation that forbids “Trading with the Enemy,” anyone who returns from Cuba without a specific license can be charged and fined unless they can demonstrate to immigration officials their eligibility for general license. The intimidating, after-the-fact nature of this assessment has deterred many a prospective traveler.
************

Lemkau didn’t tape her interviews or even take notes during the time of her conversations, preferring to write from memory afterwards to make her friends and acquaintances feel more comfortable. This also leads to two potential problems: did she understand correctly? Did she remember correctly?

The author gives you the flavor and her perception of what was going on. It may not all be factually correct, but it makes for interesting and informative reading. At one point she writes that her Cuban host told her he had received a new refrigerator as a reward for having participated in the many demonstrations demanding that Elian Gonzalez be reunited with his father.

Certainly, that is the impression she came away with.[“a small Soviet refrigerator that Norberto had earned by participating in State-sponsored demonstrations for the return of Elian Gonzalez, when the six year old had washed up on Florida shores” she reported somewhat inaccurately.]

Is that what her host said? If so, he was giving her inaccurate information. The Cuban government was not handing out refrigerators or other domestic appliances to the hundreds of thousands (eventually millions) of people who took part in the marches and rallies for Elian.

Nor would it have needed to. People were genuinely outraged at the idea of a small boy who had lost his mother at sea being kept from his father – with whom he had a close, loving relationship – because rightwing idealogues in Miami and Washington wanted to keep him there for political reasons.

It is certainly true that for other events – May 1 International Workers Day, for example, or historic events like the 26th of July – some people may turn out because it is expected of them; because they want to make a good impression at their workplace, in their neighborhood, their school; or simply because it’s a change from the routine.

But with Elian, there was a deeper, emotional aspect that people throughout the country shared. (80% of Americans polled also felt that the boy and his father belonged together, regardless of the politics, it shoud be noted).

Does that mean that Lemkau, or her host, were lying? No, more likely it was a misinterpretation.(Remember, her Spanish was spotty and she wrote her notes later, summarizing what she had heard and seen). Or her host, Norberto, may have told her that , assuming she knew how the process worked.

He may or may not have explained at greater length that workers received “bonuses” at their workplaces for being overall good workers, fulfilling and overfulfilling production quotas, doing voluntary work, helping others, performing civic duties ranging from neighborhood cleanup to taking part in demonstrations. But what she took away from this conversation was that he got the refrigerator for demonstrating.

(The fact that she missed the larger explanation is evident in another section of the book when she assumes the many consumer items found in another apartment were an indication that the family received help from relatives abroad, not realizing that an alternative possibility was that they had earned them at their workplaces).

If not having enough in-depth information led Lemkau to misinterpret or simply miss points from time to time, the biases she brought with her caused her to reach other dubious conclusions or to too-hastily accept what others told her. We see this when she accepts and reports as fact the suspicions of some of the people at the Catholic Church’s leprosy sanatorium regarding government spying on them.

Is it possible that some of their suspicions were correct, that some of the people they pointed out were in fact government security agents? Of course. What’s more debatable is whether she should have reported all their fears and conjectures as absolute fact.

But the rest of Lemkau’s book more than makes up for these occasional misinterpretations or acceptance of statements that may not have been wholly true (especially given that she was generally surrounded by people living on the “outside” of the revolutionary process).

Her getting to ride through Pinar del Rio on horseback, talking with people in the countryside, may not have achieved the specific goals she was seeking, but they give us a wonderful view of a part of daily life few people get to see.

And since she complemented her experience with that of her husband, who along with the rest of the group was able to see what she missed by going off on her own – the reader gets the best of both experiences.

“He had toured the school attended by Rosa’s children…he had seen state of the art solar panels providing energy for basic school equipment – a television, a computer and lights, ‘green’ technology being used throughout the country, even in one-room school houses with fewer than a half-dozen students….

“We had each enjoyed our separate excursions, his within the guidelines of the tour group, mine in collusion with Silvio the rule bender….the thrill of riding horseback among the mogotes, the lovely openness of Rosa and her family… a landscape of unforgettable splendor. Clearly life outside the rules – por la izquierda – had its rewards.”

Although I often flinched at how far -and how unknowingly – Lemkau was treading outside the rules, her candid description of this, and her reactions when she found out, provide an interesting counterpoint to the attitude of many visitors to Cuba who prefer staying out of hotels and registered bed-and-breakfasts, away from government-sponsored tours.

It was only at the end of her adventures in Pinar del Rio that Lemkau asked Silvio, who organized her away-from-the-group activities, about the “financial and legal logistics”.

He told her that he was driving her around illegally and was regularly fined by the “policia” for “consorting with tourists”. But he shrugged that off saying the fines were more than offset by what he was paid.

She then learned that the man who rented her the horse, and her guide, and the people she visited were all paid – illegally – by Silvio – who kept a portion of what she paid each. Even Rosa, who fed her lunch, had been paid illegally or as Silvio put it “por la izquierda”, a common way for Cubans to refer to doing something we might call “under the table”. Lemkau humorously commented: “To use the expression ‘by the left’ to refer to clandestine and forbidden activities struck me as perversely funny in a country already leaning so far left as to topple over.”

But later at the private but registered “casa particular” where she and her husband stayed , she learned more, when her hostess “said there was something she needed to discuss with us…..”

She requested that Jeanne and her husband tell Silvio they’d arrived a day later and paid half of what she was declaring, because he was also “the inspector for her rental and what she had to pay him depended on her income. Cheche cooked the books,” she concluded.

Which is something to keep in mind when we read of private renters, owners of private restaurants, and others who work for “cuenta propia” complaining about taxes, inspections, and other “government harassment”.

Encountering lepers and the Catholic Church

For me the weakest pat of the book were the chapters where Lemkau was recounting of her experience with (and through the eyes of) the Catholic nuns who care for lepers in a small sanatorium outside of Havana and the famous (or infamous) Dia de San Lazaro when religious zealots walk, hobble, crawl (sometimes whipping themselves) to the shrine of Saint Lazarus in the hope of some miracle cure for themselves or loved-ones.

The writer seemed to take in stride some of the behaviors that made me shrink back in horror, and the acceptance of them by the priests and nuns. Moreover, because her experience did not lead Lemkau to question anything the priest and nuns told her, she reported it all as fact.

So these last few chapters are filled with questionable or inaccurate (to me) information and attitudes, and a good dose of paranoia — somewhat lessening the positive aspects of describing an event that, although heavily reported in US media, may still be unknown to some readers.

Lemkau somewhat tempers this with her admission that “my apprehensions about state surveillance in Cuba and OFAC prosecution in the United States [she lumps these together] were proxies for other fears, fears of gambling the safety of my nailed down life for something more.” Would that others who find themselves highly critical of some aspects of life in Cuba could be so self-analytical and perceptive.

******

If not all the details of what is lacking in Cuba always coincided completely with life as I knew it there, the overall conclusion – that the US blockade is hurting the people of the island tremendously, and should be ended – certainly does. It’s a conclusion that almost everyone who gets to know the people on the island arrives at, whatever their views of socialism, communism or Fidel Castro.

Hopefully, readers can glean some of this feeling themselves by reading Jeanne Lemkau’s book -something I highly recommend — and will be motivated to join her and the Latin American Working Group to overturn an archaic policy that after 5 decades continues to hurt the people of that island.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

GRANMA INTERNATIONAL

Havana. March 2, 2011

Cuba categorically rejects any attempt whatsoever to take advantage of the tragic situation created in order to occupy Libya and control its oil

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/news-i/2marzo-Cuba%20categorically.html

• Statement by Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs to the UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, March 1, 2011

Mr. President:

Humanity’s conscience is repulsed by the deaths of innocent people under any circumstances, anyplace. Cuba fully shares the worldwide concern for the loss of civilian lives in Libya and hopes that its people are able to reach a peaceful and sovereign solution to the civil war occurring there, with no foreign interference, and can guarantee the integrity of that nation.

Most certainly the Libyan people oppose any foreign military intervention, which would delay an agreement even further and cause thousands of deaths, displacement and enormous injury to the population.

Cuba categorically rejects any attempt whatsoever to take advantage of the tragic situation created in order to occupy Libya and control its oil.

It is noteworthy that the voracity for oil, not peace or the protection of Libyan lives, is the motivation inciting the political forces, primarily conservative, which today, in the United States and some European countries, are calling for a NATO military intervention in Libyan territory. Nor does it appear that objectivity, accuracy or a commitment to the truth are prevailing in part of the press, reports being used by media giants to fan the flames.

Given the magnitude of what is taking place in Libya and the Arab world, in the context of a global economic crisis, responsibility and a long-term vision should prevail on the part of governments in the developed countries. Although the goodwill of some could be exploited, it is clear that a military intervention would lead to a war with serious consequences for human lives, especially the millions of poor who comprise four fifths of humanity.

Despite the paucity of some facts and information, the reality is that the origins of the situation in North Africa and the Middle East are to be found within the crisis of the rapacious policy imposed by the United States and its NATO allies in the region. The price of food has tripled, water is scarce, the desert is growing, poverty is on the rise and with it, repugnant social inequality and exclusion in the distribution of the opulent wealth garnered from oil in the region.

The fundamental human right is the right to life, which is not worth living without human dignity.

The way in which the right to life is being violated should arouse concern. According to various sources, more than 111 million people have perished in armed conflicts during modern wars. It cannot be forgotten in this room that, if in World War I civilian deaths amounted to 5% of total casualties, in the subsequent wars of conquest after 1990, basically in Iraq, with more than one million, and Afghanistan with more than 70,000, the deaths of innocents stand at 90%. The proportion of children in these figures is horrific and unprecedented.

The concept of “collateral damage,” an offense to human nature, has been accepted in the military doctrine of NATO and the very powerful nations.

In the last decade, humanitarian international law has been trampled, as is occurring on the U.S. Guantánamo Naval Base, which usurps Cuban territory.

As a consequence of those wars, global refugee figures have increased by 34%, to more than 26 million people.

Military spending increased by 49% in the decade, to reach $1.5 trillion, more than half of that figure in the United States alone. The industrial-military complex continues producing wars.

Every year, 740,000 human beings die, not only on account of conflicts, but as victims of violent acts associated with organized crime.

In one European country, a woman dies every five days as a result of domestic violence. In the countries of the South, half a million mothers die in childbirth every year.

Every day, 29,000 children die of hunger and preventable diseases. In the minutes that I have been speaking, no less than 120 children have died. Four million perish in their first month of life. In total, 11 million children die every year.

There are 100,000 deaths a day from causes related to malnutrition, adding up to 35 million a year.

In Hurricane Katrina alone, in the most developed country in the world, 1,836 people died, almost all of them African Americans of few resources. In the last two years, 470,000 people died throughout the world as a result of natural disasters, 97% of them of low income.

In the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti alone, more than 250,000 people died, almost all of them resident in very poor homes. The same thing occurred with homes swept away by excessive rainfall in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

If the developing countries had infant and maternal mortality rates like those of Cuba, 8.4 million children and 500,000 mothers would be saved annually. In the cholera epidemic in Haiti, Cuban doctors are treating almost half of the patients, with a mortality rate five times lower than those being treated by physicians from other countries. Cuban international medical cooperation has made it possible to save more than 4.4 million lives in dozens of countries in four continents.

Human dignity is a human right. Today, 1.4 billion people are living in extreme poverty. There are 1.2 billion hungry people, and a further two billion are suffering from malnutrition. There are 759 million illiterate adults.

Mr. President:

The Council has demonstrated its capacity for approaching human rights situations in the world, including those of an urgent nature which require attention and action on the part of the international community. The usefulness of the Universal Periodic Review, as a means of sustaining international cooperation, of evaluating the undertakings of all countries without distinction in this context has been confirmed.

The spirit which animated our actions during the review process of this body was to preserve, improve and strengthen this Council in its function of effectively promoting and protecting all human rights for everyone.

The results of this exercise express a recognition of the Council’s important achievements in its short existence. While it is true that the agreements reached are insufficient in the light of the demands of developing countries, the body has been preserved from those whose aim was to reform it to their convenience in order to satisfy hegemonic appetites and to resuscitate the past of confrontation, double standards, selectivity and imposition.

It is to be hoped from the debates of the last few days that this Human Rights Council will continue constructing and advancing its institutionalism toward the full exercise of its mandate.

It would be very negative if, on the pretext of reviewing the Council’s institutional construction and in abuse of the dramatic juncture which is being discussed, it should be manipulated and pressured in an opportunist way in order to establish precedents and modify agreements.

If the essential human right is the right to life, will the Council be ready to suspend the membership of states that unleash a war?

Is the Council proposing to make some substantial contribution to eliminating the principal threat to the life of the human species which is the existence of enormous arsenals of nuclear weapons, an infinitesimal part of which, or the explosion of 100 warheads, would provoke a nuclear winter, according to irrefutable scientific evidence?

Will it establish a thematic procedure on the impact of climate change in the exercise of human rights and proclaim the right to a healthy atmosphere?

Will it suspend states which finance and supply military aid utilized by recipient states for mass, flagrant and systematic violations of human rights and for attacks on the civilian population, like those taking place in Palestine?

Will it apply that measure against powerful countries which are perpetrating extra-judicial executions in the territory of other states with the use of high technology, such as smart bombs and drone aircraft?

What will happen to states which accept secret illegal prisons in their territories, facilitate the transit of secret flights with kidnapped persons aboard, or participate in acts of torture?

Can the Council adopt a declaration on the right of peoples to peace?

Will it adopt an action program that includes concrete commitments guaranteeing the right to alimentation in a moment of food crisis, spiraling food prices and the utilization of cereal crops to produce biofuels?

Mr. President:

Distinguished Ministers and Delegates:

What measures will this Council adopt against a member state which is committing acts that are causing grave suffering and seriously endangering physical or mental integrity, such as the blockade of Cuba, typified as genocide in Article 2, Paragraphs B and C, of the 1948 Geneva Convention?

Thank you very much.

Translated by Granma International