Cuban CP Congress Ratifies Economic Guidelines – Workers’ Control and International Socialism Absent From Discussion

Written by Jorge Martin
Tuesday, 07 June 2011

The long delayed VI Congress of the Cuban Communist Party took place on April 16-19 in Havana and discussed the Guidelines on Economic and Social Policy for the Party and the Revolution. The Congress was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the attempted Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, when Fidel Castro proclaimed the “socialist character of the revolution”.

Read the rest here

RENEGADE EYE

Fidel: 'Cuban Model Doesn't Even Work For Us Anymore'

Some important headlines have been coming from Atlantic Magazine blogger Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently interviewed Fidel Castro.

1) Fidel: 'Cuban Model Doesn't Even Work For Us Anymore'

Readers of this blog shouldn't be too surprised by Fidel's statements. Contacts within Cuba, have been telling us, that Raul was fond of the Chinese model. In comments I'll talk more.

2) Fidel to Ahmadinejad: 'Stop Slandering the Jews'

3) Chavez: 'We Respect and Love the Jews'

RENEGADE EYE

Cuba: Freedom of Expression & Socialism

By Ron Ridenour
Tuesday, 21 April 2009

How much freedom of expression and real (active) power the Cuban working class and the population as a whole, possess and exercise is a vital matter for the very survival of socialism and its development, a question that is being addressed by a few hundred university students, professors and professionals in Havana since November 2007.


“It is not a question of luxury, an alternative which one can choose or not: worker democracy is a condition sin qua non for the normal unfolding of a socialist economy.”

Over the last 50 years, the Communist party and government strategy for survival has focused on unity: unity in decision-making, unity around the top leaders, and unity in the media. This strategy has enabled the country to resist the United States and allied efforts to smash it.

However, this approach has prevented leaders and the bureaucracy from believing that it can afford the “luxury” of allowing any significant active participation on the part of the population to discuss and decide what the nation’s politics and economy ought to be. Nor do the media question decisions taken.

When questioned about the wisdom of this control, officials either ignore the question or respond with examples of how the US intelligence apparatuses intervene in other countries´ processes when they are not in what Washington perceives as its interests.

Suffice it here to note the successful interventions in media organs during the Allende government in Chile (1970-73), and in Nicaragua during the first Sandinista government from 1979-1990.

Hunger for More Information

Cuba’s leadership has maintained that broader freedom of expression can place the nation’s very sovereignty in peril. While there is some truth to this historically, strict government control of the media and other channels of information and debate cripple the ability of the common man and woman from acquiring adequate information and ideas necessary for them to become empowered.


The University of Havana (Photo by Maycgx)

This had led a sizeable segment of the population, and especially the younger generations, to be, disbelievers of what they are told by the media. They hunger for more and open information.

Cuban historian and professor of the University of Oriente, Frank Josue Solar, recently wrote:

“It is not a question of luxury, an alternative which one can choose or not: worker democracy is a condition sin qua non for the normal unfolding of a socialist economy. Without this it is deformed, and finally perishes.”

In the past two years or so some leftist voices have begun to hold indoor workshops to discuss these questions. There are also handfuls of students at the University of Havana and the Cujae University who meet to discuss socialism’s future.

This is the first time in decades that the government has allowed such open critique, albeit confined indoors until now.

A group of university students, professors and professionals formed the Bolshevik Workshop to pay homage to the Russian revolution, at the 90th year anniversary in November 2007, and to discuss its trajectory and collapse.

Some 500 people assembled at the University of Havana. One of the workshop organizers, Ariel Dacal Diaz, a professor of law, delivered a paper on the subject. The English translation is available at Cuba, October, Youth and the Future.

Revitalizing Revolutionary Marxism in Cuba

At this assembly, and at a subsequent workshop, participants viewed the need to revitalize revolutionary Marxism, also in Cuba. The dozen coordinators of the original workshop continued writing but did not organize other meetings in 2008 although they did create a lively Spanish language website, www.cuba-urss.cult.cu. They propose to “contribute to the empowerment of persons and groups in their practice as citizen-subjects within the Cuban revolution as a process and with socialism as its project.”


A sizeable segment of the population is hungry for more and open information (Photo by Caridad)

The website has hundreds of essays and articles by readers and past and current theoreticians and leading activists such as: Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, Luxemburg, and Che…

At the end of January this year, the coordinators organized another workshop by the name: “To live the revolution 50 years after the triumph.” They now meet monthly at the Ministry of Culture’s Juan Marinello Center, close to the Plaza of the Revolution.

The Ministry’s Antonio Gramsci Department and the Superior Art Institute (ISA) are cosponsors. The meeting hall allotted can hold just under 100 persons. It was full at the initial workshop where the theme was: Sentidos y significados de la revolucion en la vida de nosotros. (The significance and meaning of the revolution in our lives).

This lay the basis for the following workshop- “The political system of the revolution: participation, popular subject and citizenship”–which I attended.

In its announcement folder, the coordinators wrote: “This workshop seeks to contribute to the analysis on the place of citizen participation in the political system, its forms of expression concerning sovereignty, the necessity of a political and legal culture consistent with the social protagonism at the moment to create, control, limit and enjoy the political and the law.”

Specific topics were: how does socialism reformulate the concept of citizenship; mechanisms of actual popular participation; how to contribute to empowerment, all within the context of Hagamos nuestra la revolución (Making the revolution ours).

After a brief introduction and a short Cuban film, “The revolution we make,” the filled meeting hall broke into four groups to discuss what experiences we had with active participation and with forced participation, and how we felt as subject-citizens. (My participation was mainly as an observer since I do not currently live and work in Cuba, which I did from 1987 to 1996.)

Frustrations and Impotence

Diverse expressions surfaced regarding active and “obligatory” participation. When people had felt they could participate and, perhaps make a difference they felt positive. The reverse was the case when their experiences were not truly voluntary.


Paulo Freire: “If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.” (photo by Distant Camera)

A student said that it was possible “to participate but `they´ make the decisions”. A young woman student spoke enthusiastically about this workshop initiative, which allowed her to feel as an active subject, “hoping it can lead to making a difference for the society.”

A Colombian studying here said he felt more as a subject in Cuba than in Colombia but hoped for greater active participation.

An older woman, who classified herself as an ordinary worker, said she felt isolated. “`They´ don’t give me a chance to participate in any real sense. `They´ don’t take our commentaries seriously, so I feel like a crazy old woman.”

During a break, she said she believed the revolution has stood still since the mid-60s. A couple of older professional men, remembering those activist days when peasants and militia still carried weapons to defend the nation-which they did at the Bay of Pigs invasion and against counter-revolutionary groups infiltrated and financed by the CIA (Operation Mongoose)-believed the revolution died after that.

The walls were covered with handwritten quotations by Bertolt Brecht, Roque Dalton, Silvio Rodriguez and others. On one wall were posted words by Paulo Freire: “If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.”

Summaries of each group’s discussion were read during the last plenary session. The experiences and sentiments were similar. Bureaucratic mechanism’s of control were outlined and criticized during the discussion period.

There was ample self-critique as well. We must overcome self-censorship. We must not yield to the fear of losing what we may have or hope to obtain, such as a better position, and thereby remain silent in face of unfairness or wrong decisions.

One young man said each of us should find ways to improve our own behavior. For example, we must stop throwing trash anywhere we feel like it. We should intervene in all our surroundings with a positive spirit that we can make change.

He said we can make “them” listen to us, because we are the producers, the people for whom the political structure serves. An older professor suggested we invite bureaucrats to meet with us, “because they are Cubans too and we could learn from one another”.

A young professor of law, Julio Antonio Fernandez, gave a brief talk, first giving a brushstroke of revolutionary political and legal history. He then defended the constitution of 1976 as a revolutionary one, and one legalizing an active citizenry for socialism, one that establishes popular control of all mechanisms for sovereignty. The audience was so attentive a pin could be heard to drop.

“We do not seek to regress to before the revolution: we must be designers and controllers… What is most important now is a critique of current state organisms and not the possible creation of ideal institutions,” said Fernandez.

He continued by asking: If a dominating regime is necessary how can it act without alienating the people? How can we democratize power?

We have formal rights of control, Fernandez said, but need to actualize them. The law is not that of the state but that of and for the people. Citizenry duty must be restored. He also spoke against continuing discrimination both of race and gender. The individual and the collective must recognize and confront these ills.

“The danger of imperialism is real and we must find forms to act taking this reality into account,” he concluded.

Participation Leads to Solutions

Following his well received analysis, the body was asked for comments, especially concerning the question of how one can participate in a revolutionary manner. One-fourth of the audience-25 people-made comments and offered ideas to further the revolutionary process, and some called for action.

Several people young and old said that the workshop process and its ideas should go public. There must be ways of involving workers, vital producers. Some said that while laws protect the right to associate and to organize associations, and no law prohibits strikes, the reality is something different.

No one dare try to organize strikes, and many who petition for permission to organize associations are ignored or denied their right.

An older lawyer said he was still waiting, now ten years, for a reply from the Ministry of Justice to his several petitions to organize a harmless, social association of descendants of Slavic people in Cuba.

A sociology professor said that while some professions were allowed to form associations, those in sociology-a study prohibited in Cuba for three decades, which the government reinstated in the mid-90s-were not. Yet no reason was given.

A history professor said it was necessary to define what socialism really is and what it should be. Among other things, socialism must be personal as well as collective. One must feel that he/she is a decision-maker. Without that sense, what occurred in Russia and Eastern Europe could well occur in Cuba.

“Participation leads to solutions and that is liberating,” he concluded.

Another person said that Internet is a liberating tool. The Cuban Ministry of Telecommunications has repeatedly said that broader access will be technologically possible when the Venezuelan undersea cable reaches Cuba later this year or next.

One participant raised doubts about whether a dominating state power was any longer a necessity, especially one in which many leaders retain power positions for many years, even decades.

A young female student said she felt stimulated by these workshops and was optimistic that positive changes could be made. Several youths echoed her sentiment. The last speaker, a Brazilian student, said that it was most important that the group not degenerate into sectarianism as do so many left groups around the world.

The next workshop, open to all, will take place on March 27, at 9:30 a.m. at the Centro Juan Marinello. Its theme will be: state property, social property and the socialization of production.

Originally published in the Havana Times, March 12
Marxist.com

RENEGADE EYE

Crossing Borders with the Afro-Cuban All-Stars

Thank you Foxessa. for informing me about this situation.

By Larry Blumenfeld (The Village Voice)
Tuesday, March 24th 2009 at 3:04pm

When Juan de Marcos González brings his 14-piece Afro-Cuban All-Stars to Town Hall on March 28, they'll include residents of eight countries, from Mexico to Sweden, Spain to the United States. But none from Cuba. No musician living there (and planning to return) has played here since December 2003, when pianist Chucho Valdés headlined the Village Vanguard. After that, the Bush administration effectively shut down all U.S.-Cuba cultural exchanges.

González has contributed mightily to that cut-short exchange. Best known as the architect of the Buena Vista Social Club, he assembled that band with musicians drawn from the first edition of his All-Stars. (Their debut CD, A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, released simultaneously with Buena Vista's, was the better recording.) But he soon went his own way, turning down offers for more retro-styled recordings, or what he called "la onda de los viejitos" ("the fad of the old-timers"). He's been cleverly crossing stylistic boundaries with his latest batch of All-Stars ever since, blending traditional and contemporary Cuban sounds. His 40-city tour is equally resourceful in terms of border crossings: The band's members, all with roots in Cuba, have passports in other nations, thus sidestepping the rules that exclude Cuban musicians.



"This band is bringing a message," he says. "Cuba is here, independent of any politician or policy. Our music and our influence cannot be stopped. And it's time for the policy to catch up with the reality."

Such change may be afoot. Tucked into the recently approved Omnibus Appropriations Bill, despite vociferous objection by such hard-liners as New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, are provisions that liberalize travel for Americans to visit relatives in Cuba. However, the bill does so essentially by defunding the Treasury Department agencies that police such activity, which is different from legal sanction—besides, it expires in six months.

"But Mr. Obama is a smart guy," González adds. "He's going to open the doors wider, at least to cultural exchange."

To that end, the President's inbox holds the urging of more than a thousand noted artists, educators, and cultural leaders via signatures on a letter calling for, among other measures, the elimination of restrictions that prevent Americans from traveling to Cuba, and Cuban artists from performing in the United States. (See it at cubaresearch.info/cubaletter2009.) "I shouldn't have to ask permission of my government to travel anywhere," says Louis Head, co-founder of the U.S.-Cuba Cultural Exchange, which orchestrated the letter campaign. "Historically, cultural expression in the U.S. and Cuba are joined at the hip, and it's time to respect that vital connection."

"The letter is very important," Grammy-winning pianist Arturo O'Farrill told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! "For us to be denied access to this source of cultural sustenance is absolutely insane."

The "Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act" (H.R. 874 in the House and S. 428 in the Senate), a more effective and lasting option than the Omnibus add-on, is attracting a growing list of co-sponsors and, if passed, would permit all U.S. citizens unrestricted travel rights. That should allow, for instance, O'Farrill to realize his dream of bringing his Afro-Latin Orchestra to Cuba to perform the music composed by his father, Chico, in the home Chico left in 1958, for good.

Still, we need the door to swing open both ways, so that, as Alicia Alonso, director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, wrote in a 2007 open letter to American artists, "a song, a book, a scientific study, or a choreographic work are not considered, in an irrational way, a crime." González envisions bringing a 30-piece band to the U.S., adding such musicians as pianist David Alfaro, who lives in Cuba. No one should stop him.

Juan de Marcos González and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars play Town Hall March 28

RENEGADE EYE

Happy Thanksgiving/Odds and Ends/Open Thread

OPERA FRIDA KAHLO WITH GRACE ECHAURI

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Christopher Hitchens wrote a brilliant essay in 2005, about Thanksgiving being a great American holiday. It is a holiday not connected to any particular religion. It is a time when a family may be feeding a complete stranger, or neighbor.

Soon I will have a post about the Spanish Civil War, with a Youtube video of John Peterson, who contributes to this blog, talking on that subject. It is the what not to do revolution.

Sean Penn, Douglas Brinkley and Christopher Hitchens interview Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Raul Castro in Cuba.

The movies to see are Milk***1/2 and Baz Luhrmann's Australia*** with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

Addendum November 30, 2008

See Giles Ji Ungpakorn's report from Thailand. Who but pro dictatorship demonstrators, can camp at an airport?

RENEGADE EYE

Stratfor: The Russian Resurgence and the New-Old Front

Stratfor is an intelligence group, made up of people formerly from government intelligence, who still have contacts. This piece is interesting, because it identifies the motivations of all the players, particularly in the Americas, and their relationship with Russia. I didn't know before reading this, why US imperialism, continues with the "War On Drugs." I have disagreements with this post in details as Chavez's relation to FARC, and not mentioning Colombia in this analysis. The writer is not Marxist, and this isn't a Marxist analysis. That is not Stratfor's job. Still this is a valuable analysis.

By Peter ZeihanK
September 15, 2008

Russia is attempting to reforge its Cold War-era influence in its near abroad. This is not simply an issue of nostalgia, but a perfectly logical and predictable reaction to the Russian environment. Russia lacks easily definable, easily defendable borders. There is no redoubt to which the Russians can withdraw, and the only security they know comes from establishing buffers — buffers which tend to be lost in times of crisis. The alternative is for Russia to simply trust other states to leave it alone. Considering Russia’s history of occupations, from the Mongol horde to Napoleonic France to Hitler’s Germany, it is not difficult to surmise why the Russians tend to choose a more activist set of policies.

As such, the country tends to expand and contract like a beating heart — gobbling up nearby territories in times of strength, and then contracting and losing those territories in times of weakness. Rather than what Westerners think of as a traditional nation-state, Russia has always been a multiethnic empire, heavily stocked with non-Russian (and even non-Orthodox) minorities. Keeping those minorities from damaging central control requires a strong internal security and intelligence arm, and hence we get the Cheka, the KGB, and now the FSB.

Nature of the Budding Conflict

Combine a security policy thoroughly wedded to expansion with an internal stabilization policy that institutionalizes terror, and it is understandable why most of Russia’s neighbors do not like Moscow very much. A fair portion of Western history revolves around the formation and shifting of coalitions to manage Russian insecurities.

In the American case specifically, the issue is one of continental control. The United States is the only country in the world that effectively controls an entire continent. Mexico and Canada have been sufficiently intimidated so that they can operate independently only in a very limited sense. (Technically, Australia controls a continent, but with the some 85 percent of its territory unusable, it is more accurate in geopolitical terms to think of it as a small archipelago with some very long bridges.) This grants the United States not only a potentially massive internal market, but also the ability to project power without the fear of facing rearguard security threats. U.S. forces can be focused almost entirely on offensive operations, whereas potential competitors in Eurasia must constantly be on their guard about the neighbors.

The only thing that could threaten U.S. security would be the rise of a Eurasian continental hegemon. For the past 60 years, Russia (or the Soviet Union) has been the only entity that has had a chance of achieving that, largely due to its geographic reach. U.S. strategy for coping with this is simple: containment, or the creation of a network of allies to hedge in Russian political, economic and military expansion. NATO is the most obvious manifestation of this policy imperative, while the Sino-Soviet split is the most dramatic one.

Containment requires that United States counter Russian expansionism at every turn, crafting a new coalition wherever Russia attempts to break out of the strategic ring, and if necessary committing direct U.S. forces to the effort. The Korean and Vietnam wars — both traumatic periods in American history — were manifestations of this effort, as were the Berlin airlift and the backing of Islamist militants in Afghanistan (who incidentally went on to form al Qaeda).

The Georgian war in August was simply the first effort by a resurging Russia to pulse out, expand its security buffer and, ideally, in the Kremlin’s plans, break out of the post-Cold War noose that other powers have tied. The Americans (and others) will react as they did during the Cold War: by building coalitions to constrain Russian expansion. In Europe, the challenges will be to keep the Germans on board and to keep NATO cohesive. In the Caucasus, the United States will need to deftly manage its Turkish alliance and find a means of engaging Iran. In China and Japan, economic conflicts will undoubtedly take a backseat to security cooperation.

Russia and the United States will struggle in all of these areas, consisting as they do the Russian borderlands. Most of the locations will feel familiar, as Russia’s near abroad has been Russia’s near abroad for nearly 300 years. Those locations — the Baltics, Austria, Ukraine, Serbia, Turkey, Central Asia and Mongolia — that defined Russia’s conflicts in times gone by will surface again. Such is the tapestry of history: the major powers seeking advantage in the same places over and over again.

The New Old-Front

But not all of those fronts are in Eurasia. So long as U.S. power projection puts the Russians on the defensive, it is only a matter of time before something along the cordon cracks and the Russians are either fighting a land war or facing a local insurrection. Russia must keep U.S. efforts dispersed and captured by events as far away from the Russian periphery as possible — preferably where Russian strengths can exploit American weakness.

So where is that?

Geography dictates that U.S. strength involves coalition building based on mutual interest and long-range force projection, and internal U.S. harmony is such that America’s intelligence and security agencies have no need to shine. Unlike Russia, the United States does not have large, unruly, resentful, conquered populations to keep in line. In contrast, recall that the multiethnic nature of the Russian state requires a powerful security and intelligence apparatus. No place better reflects Russia’s intelligence strengths and America’s intelligence weakness than Latin America.

The United States faces no traditional security threats in its backyard. South America is in essence a hollow continent, populated only on the edges and thus lacking a deep enough hinterland to ever coalesce into a single hegemonic power. Central America and southern Mexico are similarly fractured, primarily due to rugged terrain. Northern Mexico (like Canada) is too economically dependent upon the United States to seriously consider anything more vibrant than ideological hostility toward Washington. Faced with this kind of local competition, the United States simply does not worry too much about the rest of the Western Hemisphere — except when someone comes to visit.

Stretching back to the time of the Monroe Doctrine, Washington’s Latin American policy has been very simple. The United States does not feel threatened by any local power, but it feels inordinately threatened by any Eastern Hemispheric power that could ally with a local entity. Latin American entities cannot greatly harm American interests themselves, but they can be used as fulcrums by hostile states further abroad to strike at the core of the United States’ power: its undisputed command of North America.

It is a fairly straightforward exercise to predict where Russian activity will reach its deepest. One only needs to revisit Cold War history. Future Russian efforts can be broken down into three broad categories: naval interdiction, drug facilitation and direct territorial challenge.

Naval Interdiction

Naval interdiction represents the longest sustained fear of American policymakers. Among the earliest U.S. foreign efforts after securing the mainland was asserting control over the various waterways used for approaching North America. Key in this American geopolitical imperative is the neutralization of Cuba. All the naval power-projection capabilities in the world mean very little if Cuba is both hostile and serving as a basing ground for an extra-hemispheric power.

The U.S. Gulf Coast is not only the heart of the country’s energy industry, but the body of water that allows the United States to function as a unified polity and economy. The Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi river basins all drain to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The economic strength of these basins depends upon access to oceanic shipping. A hostile power in Cuba could fairly easily seal both the Straits of Florida and the Yucatan Channel, reducing the Gulf of Mexico to little more than a lake.

Building on the idea of naval interdiction, there is another key asset the Soviets targeted at which the Russians are sure to attempt a reprise: the Panama Canal. For both economic and military reasons, it is enormously convenient to not have to sail around the Americas, especially because U.S. economic and military power is based on maritime power and access. In the Cold War, the Soviets established friendly relations with Nicaragua and arranged for a favorable political evolution on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Like Cuba, these two locations are of dubious importance by themselves. But take them together — and add in a Soviet air base at each location as well as in Cuba — and there is a triangle of Soviet airpower that can threaten access to the Panama Canal.

Drug Facilitation

The next stage — drug facilitation — is somewhat trickier. South America is a wide and varying land with very little to offer Russian interests. Most of the states are commodity providers, much like the Soviet Union was and Russia is today, so they are seen as economic competitors. Politically, they are useful as anti-American bastions, so the Kremlin encourages such behavior whenever possible. But even if every country in South America were run by anti-American governments, it would not overly concern Washington; these states, alone or en masse, lack the ability to threaten American interests … in all ways but one.

The drug trade undermines American society from within, generating massive costs for social stability, law enforcement, the health system and trade. During the Cold War, the Soviets dabbled with narcotics producers and smugglers, from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the highland coca farmers of Bolivia. It is not so much that the Soviets encouraged the drug trade directly, but that they encouraged any group they saw as ideologically useful.

Stratfor expects future Russian involvement in such activities to eclipse those of the past. After the Soviet fall, many FSB agents were forced to find new means to financially support themselves. (Remember it was not until 1999 that Vladimir Putin took over the Russian government and began treating Russian intelligence like a bona fide state asset again.) The Soviet fall led many FSB agents, who already possessed more than a passing familiarity with things such as smuggling and organized crime, directly into the heart of such activities. Most of those agents are — formally or not — back in the service of the Russian government, now with a decade of gritty experience on the less savory side of intelligence under their belts. And they now have a deeply personal financial interest in the outcome of future operations.

Drug groups do not need cash from the Russians, but they do need weaponry and a touch of training — needs which dovetail perfectly with the Russians’ strengths. Obviously, Russian state involvement in such areas will be far from overt; it just does not do to ship weapons to the FARC or to one side of the brewing Bolivian civil war with CNN watching. But this is a challenge the Russians are good at meeting. One of Russia’s current deputy prime ministers, Igor Sechin, was the USSR’s point man for weapons smuggling to much of Latin America and the Middle East. This really is old hat for them.

U.S. Stability

Finally, there is the issue of direct threats to U.S. stability, and this point rests solely on Mexico. With more than 100 million people, a growing economy and Atlantic and Pacific ports, Mexico is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that could theoretically (which is hardly to say inevitably) threaten U.S. dominance in North America. During the Cold War, Russian intelligence gave Mexico more than its share of jolts in efforts to cause chronic problems for the United States. In fact, the Mexico City KGB station was, and remains today, the biggest in the world. The Mexico City riots of 1968 were in part Soviet-inspired, and while ultimately unsuccessful at overthrowing the Mexican government, they remain a testament to the reach of Soviet intelligence. The security problems that would be created by the presence of a hostile state the size of Mexico on the southern U.S. border are as obvious as they would be dangerous.

As with involvement in drug activities, which incidentally are likely to overlap in Mexico, Stratfor expects Russia to be particularly active in destabilizing Mexico in the years ahead. But while an anti-American state is still a Russian goal, it is not their only option. The Mexican drug cartels have reached such strength that the Mexican government’s control over large portions of the country is an open question. Failure of the Mexican state is something that must be considered even before the Russians get involved. And simply doing with the Mexican cartels what the Soviets once did with anti-American militant groups the world over could suffice to tip the balance.

In many regards, Mexico as a failed state would be a worse result for Washington than a hostile united Mexico. A hostile Mexico could be intimidated, sanctioned or even invaded, effectively browbeaten into submission. But a failed Mexico would not restrict the drug trade at all. The border would be chaos, and the implications of that go well beyond drugs. One of the United States’ largest trading partners could well devolve into a seething anarchy that could not help but leak into the U.S. proper.

Whether Mexico becomes staunchly anti-American or devolves into the violent chaos of a failed state does not matter much to the Russians. Either one would threaten the United States with a staggering problem that no amount of resources could quickly or easily fix. And the Russians right now are shopping around for staggering problems with which to threaten the United States.

In terms of cost-benefit analysis, all of these options are no-brainers. Threatening naval interdiction simply requires a few jets. Encouraging the drug trade can be done with a few weapons shipments. Destabilizing a country just requires some creativity. However, countering such activities requires a massive outlay of intelligence and military assets — often into areas that are politically and militarily hostile, if not outright inaccessible. In many ways, this is containment in reverse.

Old Opportunities, New Twists

In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega has proven so enthusiastic in his nostalgia for Cold War alignments that Nicaragua has already recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two territories in the former Soviet state (and U.S. ally) of Georgia that Russia went to war to protect. That makes Nicaragua the only country in the world other than Russia to recognize the breakaway regions. Moscow is quite obviously pleased — and was undoubtedly working the system behind the scenes.

In Bolivia, President Evo Morales is attempting to rewrite the laws that govern his country’s wealth distribution in favor of his poor supporters in the indigenous highlands. Now, a belt of conflict separates those highlands, which are roughly centered at the pro-Morales city of Cochabamba, from the wealthier, more Europeanized lowlands. A civil war is brewing — a conflict that is just screaming for outside interference, as similar fights did during the Cold War. It is likely only a matter of time before the headlines become splattered with pictures of Kalashnikov-wielding Cochabambinos decrying American imperialism.

Yet while the winds of history are blowing in the same old channels, there certainly are variations on the theme. The Mexican cartels, for one, were radically weaker beasts the last time around, and their current strength and disruptive capabilities present the Russians with new options.

So does Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a man so anti-American he seems to be even a few steps ahead of Kremlin propagandists. In recent days, Chavez has already hosted long-range Russian strategic bombers and evicted the U.S. ambassador. A glance at a map indicates that Venezuela is a far superior basing point than Grenada for threatening the Panama Canal. Additionally, Chavez’s Venezuela has already indicated both its willingness to get militarily involved in the Bolivian conflict and its willingness to act as a weapons smuggler via links to the FARC — and that without any heretofore detected Russian involvement. The opportunities for smuggling networks — both old and new — using Venezuela as a base are robust.

Not all changes since the Cold War are good for Russia, however. Cuba is not as blindly pro-Russian as it once was. While Russian hurricane aid to Cuba is a bid to reopen old doors, the Cubans are noticeably hesitant. Between the ailing of Fidel Castro and the presence of the world’s largest market within spitting distance, the emerging Cuban regime is not going to reflexively side with the Russians for peanuts. In Soviet times, Cuba traded massive Soviet subsidies in exchange for its allegiance. A few planeloads of hurricane aid simply won’t pay the bills in Havana, and it is still unclear how much money the Russians are willing to come up with.

There is also the question of Brazil. Long gone is the dysfunctional state; Brazil is now an emerging industrial powerhouse with an energy company, Petroleo Brasileiro, of skill levels that outshine anything the Russians have yet conquered in that sphere. While Brazilian rhetoric has always claimed that Brazil was just about to come of age, it now happens to be true. A rising Brazil is feeling its strength and tentatively pushing its influence into the border states of Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, as well as into regional rivals Venezuela and Argentina. Russian intervention tends to appeal to those who do not feel they have meaningful control over their own neighborhoods. Brazil no longer fits into that category, and it will not appreciate Russia’s mucking around in its neighborhood.

A few weeks ago, Stratfor published a piece detailing how U.S. involvement in the Iraq war was winding to a close. We received many comments from readers applauding our optimism. We are afraid that we were misinterpreted. “New” does not mean “bright” or “better,” but simply different. And the dawning struggle in Latin America is an example of the sort of “different” that the United States can look forward to in the years ahead. Buckle up.


RENEGADE EYE

Celia Hart Santamaría (1962 – 2008)

By Alan Woods
Monday, 08 September 2008




We have just heard the tragic news of the death in a traffic accident, of Celia Hart Santamaría, 45, and Abel Hart Santamaría, 48, the daughter and son of Armando Hart Dávalos and Haydée Santamaría.

The accident occurred on the afternoon of Sunday, 7 September in the Miramar district of Havana. We do not know the details, but it appears that the car hit a tree. It may be that the bad conditions caused by the recent hurricane had something to do with this.

The bodies of Celia and Abel were taken to the Funeral Rivero, Calzada and K, from where the funeral procession set out for the Columbus Necropolis, where they were buried today at 10:00 am local time.

Celia Hart came from a family of veteran Cuban revolutionaries who fought against the Batista dictatorship together with Fidel Castro. Celia Hart has been an outspoken defender of the political and revolutionary heritage of Leon Trotsky. Her articles on this subject, which have been published by the Spanish Marxist website El Militante and also on Marxist.com provoked an intense debate on the question of Trotsky both in Cuba and internationally.

Celia Hart was born in January 1962, just a few months after the Cuban missile crisis. Her mother, Haydée Santamaría, ("the most extraordinary person I have ever known") was a revolutionary from the very early days, and participated together with Fidel Castro in the famous storming of the Moncada barracks, where she lost both her brother and her boyfriend.

Armando Hart, her father, began his political activities by a different route: In the dark days of the Batista dictatorship, when, as a young lawyer, he commenced his political agitation and became a student leader in the University. He was a member of the National Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario) led by García Barcena, a university professor who opposed Batista and was imprisoned even before the assault on the Moncada barracks.

Armando Hart and Haydée Santamaría were dedicated to the revolutionary cause and fought together with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. When Batista was finally overthrown, Armando was made the first Minister of Education of the Revolution and Haydée Santamaría was made President of the Casa de las Américas (the House of the Americas), which she in effect founded.

Haydée was always opposed to ‘sovietization' - that is to the attempt to impose rigid Stalinist bureaucracy and dogmatic thought and methodology on Cuba. In Casa de las Américas there was no room for either dogmatism or so-called socialist realism. She ran it together with a real galaxy of talent: Benedetti, Galich, Mariano Rodríguez and others. Tragically, she committed suicide in 1980. For his part, Armando Hart had a brilliant intellectual career, and at the present time, after more than twenty years as Cuban Minister of Culture, is in charge of the Oficina del Programa Martiano.

In Celia's own words: "I therefore grew up in the eye of the hurricane, between the tremendous passion of my mother and the intelligence and devotion to study of my father - both of them firmly inserted in the political life of Cuba." In 1980, one month before her mother's suicide, Celia decided to study physics in Havana University. Two years later she was sent to finish her studies in the University of Dresden in the German Democratic Republic.

Celia continued my studies until graduating in 1987 - the first foreign female to graduate in this Faculty. She then returned to Havana, where she worked until one year ago in the University, publishing approximately 15 specialist works on magnetism and superconductivity. She also participated in about half a dozen congresses in Italy, Brazil and Argentina.

Talking about this period in her life, Celia told me:

"In 2004 I was supposed to have finished my Doctorate in Physics, but as I was putting the final touches to a work on Philosophy, as part of my Doctorate I realized that my great love for physics was not an end in itself, but only a means to an end."

She continued:

"During my stay in the German Democratic Republic, I realized that there was a contradiction between the inevitability of Socialism to fight for a better world and the bureaucracy, the suffocating of all initiative and the apathy that I found in that country, in spite of the good living conditions. I was repelled by the excessive images of Honecker that one found in every shop window."

In this way, slowly but surely, the ground was being prepared for Celia's transition to Trotskyism, which she described in the following words:

"In 1985 I returned to Cuba on holidays and confessed to my father my feelings of utter desperation. In response, my father opened a cupboard and got out four books: the three-volume Life of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher and Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. I devoured these books, but until a few months ago had no opportunity of reading the rest of Trotsky's works."

"From that time," continues Celia, "everything began to fall into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I understood how the Russian Revolution - and not only the Russian Revolution - had been betrayed and millions of comrades had been deceived."

However, none of Celia's works were published in Cuba, except a prologue to a book written by her mother entitled Haydée Speaks about the Moncada (Haydée habla del Moncada). Her writings were first published in the website of El Militante and Marxist.com (see The Flag over Coyoacán) and the Spanish magazine Marxismo Hoy. Later we published a book of her writings in Spanish with the title Apuntos Revolucionarios (Revolutionary Notes), which was introduced to the public in Spain and Cuba by the Frederick Engels Foundation.

It was the comrades of the IMT who first contacted Celia Hart and gave her the opportunity to enter into contact with international Trotskyism. She attended our world congress in 2004 and had intensive discussions with the leading comrades. Shortly afterwards she wrote:

"I have just returned after attending the International Conference of the Marxist tendency. It was a very important experience for me. I met some marvellous comrades from Pakistan, Israel, Spain, the United States... And I see that I am not alone, that the same ideas I defend are spreading all over the world. These are the ideas of the future. I thank all the comrades for the happiest summer of my life.

"A new and exciting chapter is opening for me. It is a very strange feeling. Less than a year ago I was a researcher in Physics in the University of Havana. Now I do not know what the future holds. But I do understand that science, and the scientific method, is the best method with which to carry out this passionate revolutionary struggle."

Since then Celia has been in regular contact with the IMT and has spoken at our meetings in various countries. In February of this year she spoke at the first public book launch in Cuba of Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed, organized by the Frederick Engels Foundation with more than 100 people present at the Havana Book Fair.

Celia Hart was always very passionate about her ideas and the struggle for socialism. We had many discussions with her, often ending in agreement, sometimes not, but in all our dealings with her, there was always a warm sense of comradeship and friendship and she always spoke very warmly about El Militante and the IMT.

Most recently she spoke at a very successful meeting of 200 people in Montreal on 28 May this year, which we jointly organized. The next day there was a meeting on the Permanent Revolution organized by the IMT at which she also spoke. As far as I know this was the last public meeting she ever spoke at, although we had planned to invite her to speak at the launch of my new book Reformism or Revolution at the Havana Book fair next February.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. A cruel accident has robbed us of a valuable and much-loved friend and comrade. But her memory lives on in the hearts and minds of those of us who knew her. And above all, the ideas we defended together live on and grow stronger by the day. That is the best memorial Celia Hart would have desired.

Farewell, comrade Celia! We shall continue the struggle!

Hasta la Victoria Siempre!

Alan Woods, London, September 8th

RENEGADE EYE

USA: Obama and the Democrats' Foreign Policy

By Shane Jones
Monday, 31 March 2008

"War is politics by other means." - Carl von Clausewitz

"I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." - Barack Obama

Many people are looking to the Democrats, and in particular to Barack Obama for a real change, specifically when it comes to the Iraq war. But on the question of war and foreign policy, does Obama really differ from the current White House administration, or from his party mate Hillary Clinton, or for that matter, from the entire DC political establishment?

You can tell a lot about a person based on the company he or she keeps. Obama is backed by people like billionaire Warren Buffet, who has made his fortune forming and investing in companies that exploit literally millions of people around the globe. Obama's main foreign policy advisor is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a staunch anti-communist who was a key player in the U.S. support and aid to the counter-revolutionary Mujahedin in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In a time of true Double Speak, where "democracy" means "imperialism" and "freedom" means "occupation", "reform" means cutbacks and attacks on social services. In Obama's case, "change" means the continuation of the current state of affairs. He has sung the praises of people like Ronald Reagan, who oversaw a huge expansion of the U.S. military at the expense of the standard of living of millions of U.S. workers and the poor.

When it comes to foreign policy he is a regular smoke and mirrors magician. While boasting about his tough stance against the war on Iraq, he is at pains to prove his reliability to the interests he truly serves. Far from calling for an immediate withdrawal, Obama says that U.S. forces may remain in Iraq for an "extended period of time" maintaining "a reduced but active U.S. military presence" that "protects logistical supply points" protecting "American enclaves likes the Green Zone" so that U.S. troops "remaining in Iraq" will "act as rapid reaction forces to respond to emergencies and to go after terrorists."

Obama has also suggested that he would be in favor of attacking Iran under the pretext of stopping its nuclear program:

"We should take no option, including military action, off the table, sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons."

And on another occasion:

"In light of the fact that we're now in Iraq, with all the problems in terms of perceptions about America that have been created, us launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in ... On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse. So I guess my instinct would be to err on not having those weapons in the possession of the ruling clerics of Iran."

Obama, who would "take no option of the table," clearly sees the limits of the Bush style of maintaining U.S. imperialist hegemony, and understands that the threat of overt military force must be coupled with maintaining U.S. imperialist power through an international web of diplomacy, that is, deals where others carry out the dirty work at the behest of the U.S.:

"Tough-minded diplomacy would include real leverage through stronger sanctions. It would mean more determined U.S diplomacy at the United Nations. It would mean harnessing the collective power of our friends in Europe who are Iran's major trading partners. It would mean a cooperative strategy with Gulf States who supply Iran with much of the energy resources it needs. It would mean unifying those states to recognize the threat of Iran and increase pressure on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. It would mean full implementation of U.S. sanctions laws. And over the long term, it would mean a focused approach from us to finally end the tyranny of oil, and developing our own alternative sources of energy to drive the price of oil down."

When it comes to Israel, Obama is committed to the status quo:

"We must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs."

He even goes the extra mile to show his support for the Israeli ruling class:

"We should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States."

When pressed on comments he made about the "suffering of Palestinians" Obama makes his position very clear:

"Well, keep in mind what the remark actually, if you had the whole thing, said. And what I said is nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region. Israel is the linchpin of much of our efforts in the Middle East."

Although he said he would be willing to meet with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Obama has personally helped advance imperialist propaganda against the Venezuelan Revolution. He co-sponsored a resolution that urged Venezuela to re-open "dissident" radio & TV stations. Like much of the propaganda produced at the time by corporate media, the resolution blurred the issue with that of free speech:

"[The Senate] expresses its profound concern about the transgression against freedom of thought and expression that is being committed in Venezuela by the refusal of the President Hugo Chavez to renew the concession of RCTV ... [The Senate] strongly encourages the Organization of American States to respond appropriately, with full consideration of the necessary institutional instruments, to such transgression."

RCTV was not a "dissident voice". Rather, in 2002, with the backing of the U.S., the Venezuelan ruling class staged a coup in which many people died, and the democratically elected government was thrown out along with the new constitution which had been written with the involvement of millions of ordinary Venezuelans. RCTV was an integral part of the coup, intentionally broadcasting false information and helping to lay the basis for the violence that followed. In 2007, the Venezuelan government simply did not renew RCTV's license to use the publicly owned air waves. RCTV still operates on private cable and satellite feeds. Obama, however, was ready and willing to confuse the issue in the interests of U.S. imperialism.

He has also come out in favor of opening up relations with Cuba. But what does his mean in practice? He would immediately pressure the Cuban government to open up the doors to U.S. corporations and the privatization of the planned economy. And while Obama has paid some lip service to the notion of closing the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo, he has yet to sign on to any legislation that would actually do so.

Obama has also said he would use military force in Pakistan even without consent, under the guise of fighting al-Qaeda:

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

But he is also willing to bribe a path for U.S. interests too, as he said he would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on following U.S. "suggestions".

On March 17th it was reported that the U.S. launched missiles in the tribal area of Waziristan in Pakistan. The strike was unannounced by the U.S. and unauthorized by Pakistan. Obama is a proponent of this very type of aggression:

"The first step must be getting off the wrong battlefield in Iraq, and taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Obama also sees no problem with the Colombian military crossing the border into Ecuador to launch an attack:

"The Colombian people have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of a brutal terrorist insurgency, and the Colombian government has every right to defend itself against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)."

While Obama squarely blamed the FARC, he was silent on the role of Colombian government and military, the Colombian paramilitaries, and the huge sums of military "aid" that have flowed there since the 1960s. In the last 20 years, 2,574 union organizers and thousands of political activists, peasants, workers and youth have been assassinated by the Colombian government. Is this the "every right to defend itself" that Obama speaks of?

Obama also supports expanding the military. When asked if he would vigorously enforce a law that allows military recruiters on campus, Obama gave an affirmative "Yes". He goes right along with the so-called "war on terror" as a justification of such expansion:

"Our most complex military challenge will involve putting boots on the ground in the ungoverned or hostile regions where terrorists thrive." and "That should mean growing the size of our armed forces to maintain reasonable rotation schedules, keeping our troops properly equipped, and training them in the skills they'll need to succeed in increasingly complex and difficult missions."

He also voted to renew the Patriot Act, and has voted to militarize the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Obama, who is playing on people's sincere desire for change, has taken a slightly more nuanced approach to foreign policy. Whereas Bush is only semi-coherent, Obama is capable of spinning words to soften the real role he hopes to play to keep the U.S. capitalist class dominant both at home and abroad. Fundamentally, Obama represents the same class interests as Bush and co., but is able to pass it off as though he is something fresh and new. We must understand that real change can only come through our class moving in a revolutionary direction to break the domination of the capitalists. Short of this anything else is simply a "changing" of the guard. RENEGADE EYE

Open Thread: Do Things Have To Get Worse, Before They Get Better?

This post is an open thread, before big elections in Bolivia, Ecuador and Pakistan that are coming soon.

Louis Proyect The Unrepentant Marxist, has an interesting post about whether economic catastrophe automatically means political change. Is catastrophe around the corner? He argues politics can trump economics. Ultimately, it was the emergence of an oppositional political culture in Cuba that led to a revolutionary onslaught. This brings me to a point that Gindin made in his presentation. He said that the problem today is political more than anything else. He said that if you had told him in 1975 that the U.S. would undergo the loss of good trade union jobs and welfare state social legislation with so little protest over the next 30 years or so, he simply would have not believed it–and neither would have I.

If there is anything that we can learn from Cuba’s socialist revolution, it is that leftists have to learn to break with the two-party system that keeps opposition politics within acceptable, capitalist parameters. For us, the launching of a mass, left of center leftwing party would be equivalent to the launching of Granma in 1956. It would be less dangerous but just as fragile an enterprise given the power and wealth of our class enemies. But no other course makes sense, especially given the ripening of economic conditions that might even result in a catastrophe down the road, for in that eventuality extremism of the right would challenge civilization as we know it.

Sonia has a post about how the mainline feminist groups as National Organization of Woman, don't mention oppression of women under Islamism, as in Saudi Arabia.

Anok tagged me. Instead of accepting the tag, I'll plug her blog. I like her feistiness.



Phil A Very Public Sociologist has a post about socialists and porn. I always hated how feminists misunderstood pornography. Blaming it for sociopathic behavior, has never been proven in a cause and effect model.

It's probably the kiss of death for her. I like Confessions of a Closet Republican a right of center blog. What I like about Incognito, is she is not predictable. She doesn't define herself as anti, as other conservatives. RENEGADE EYE

Cuba: "One day of the blockade is equal to 139 urban buses."

By Darrall Cozens
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
The large sign on the wall says it all: "One day of the blockade is equal to 139 urban buses."

There is no doubt that Cuba has suffered at the hands of the USA since the blockade was imposed. Yet despite being starved of essential resources the Cuban people have demonstrated a remarkable resilience and inventiveness. As they say here: "Todo se resuelve." Everything will be solved.

When you walk around the streets of the capital, you can see examples everywhere of this creativity in the face of adversity. Buses are often made from tin boxes put together and then placed on the back of a lorry. Children make scooters from old bike parts. Old cars from pre-1958 trundle along on a wing and a prayer. Yet these old models and lorries belch out choking thick black smoke that pollutes the streets.
It is, however, in the area of medicine and health that the blockade takes its greatest toll. Children suffering from kidney problems are denied basic life saving help in drug treatment. This is only one example. In the early 1990s after the collapse of the subsidies from the Soviet Union in exchange for Cuban sugar, some people suffered from blindness resulting from a vitamin deficiency. This was cured from scarce resources.

Cuba's ability to get by whilst at the same time help others has to be admired and it is an indication that the Cuban revolution is still alive despite all the difficulties it faces. Despite being isolated at the behest of the USA, Cuba has a patient doctor ratio that is the envy of even so-called advanced countries. And while Cuba takes care of its own in terms of health care, it also exports its skills and personnel to other countries.
The Granma newspaper of October 28th reported just one example. The retired Bolivian officer Mario Teran, who fired the fatal shot that killed Che Guevara, was cured of blindness in Bolivia under Operacion Milagro staffed by Cuban doctors. Since 1963 Cuba has sent medical teams to help others even more unfortunate than itself. Some 42,000 Cuban medical staff are active in 102 countries around the world and 53,000 young people are being trained in medicine both in Cuba and in their own countries. 60 million people world wide are benefiting from this medical help and since the programmes began some 300 million have been treated. In Nicaragua alone since Daniel Ortega was elected back in January some 10,000 have received eye treatment and for many it is the first time that they have been able to see. The whole of Misión Barrio Adentro which provides basic primary health care in the poor communities in Venezuela would not have been possible without the 20,000 Cuban doctors and nurses who participate in it.

The vote therefore at the United Nations to call on the USA to end its blockade of the island was welcomed in Cuba. 184 countries voted against the USA blockade and only four in favour of it. The USA was able to muster voting allies in favour of its policy from Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Yet the question that has to be asked is why the blockade has not ended already, since the UN has voted by majority since 1992 against it. On the one hand it is clear that the UN's decisions can be vetoed by powerful members and therefore it is an instrument of the status quo on a world scale, used as a fig leaf when it suits the interests of imperialism, discarded when it goes against them. On the other hand the need is raised for an international campaign based on workers organisations that can truly defend the gains of the Cuban revolution.

Despite the heroic attempts by the Cuban people to carry on under extremely harsh conditions, problems remain. In the capital Havana many buildings are in a state of collapse yet provide homes to many Cubans. Roads are full of potholes and when it rains, they fill up with water that lies stagnant, a breeding ground for mosquitoes. There are regular disinfestations of commercial premises using smoke machines.
The blockade of Cuba has also meant that many traditional industries like sugar have reached the stage of collapse. However, unlike in capitalist countries, all workers from the sugar industry have been either re-employed elsewhere or been given access to full time education.

The sugar workers of Cuba were like the miners in the UK. Thatcher set out deliberately to destroy the mining industry in order to destroy the NUM. The sugar industry here has collapsed due to a combination of the end of subsidised purchases from the Soviet bloc and the collapse of prices in the world market, with the result that the most militant section of the working class has been dispersed.

There are two currencies working side by side; the official national currency and convertible pesos which are exchanged on par with the US dollar at a rate of 1:1. The local currency will pay for newspapers, public transport and is used in some food and clothes shops. Even if you are working and getting paid in the national currency, most find it very hard to make ends meet. If you want shoes or many items of clothing, you need convertible pesos. How do ordinary Cubans get them?

Firstly, there are remittances sent to families by Cubans abroad. Secondly, you work in the growing tourist industry and get tips from foreigners. Thirdly, you hustle. It is called "jineterismo". You are approached all the time by mainly young men, but often young women, who start by asking the time. If you respond, the play continues until you are hooked. And this is a problem. How do you know if a Cuban wants to speak to you because they are interested in what you think or wants to find out where you are from? You don't until gradually the motives become clear. On my second day here 6 young men tried to hustle me. Initially I engaged in conversation and it soon became clear what the main gripe was.

People also get by selling sandwiches on street stalls or by directly begging, especially the old.

The worst aspect of all of this is that on almost every street corner in the tourist centre of Havana there are pimps and prostitutes, while on opposite corners there are one or two police, some with dogs and some without, stopping and checking the IDs of anyone they want to stop. Yet prostitution is illegal and severely punished.

There is also a growing problem of street thefts using physical violence, something that previously did not exist. But people have to survive by any means possible.

On every street corner and in every doorway there are groups of young people, especially men, with nothing to do. Some of them might be receiving money from relatives abroad so they can live without working. Poverty is evident in terms of diet and clothing. Sections of society have become marginalised and therefore many seek a solution to their problems not in collective action but as individuals against the system

Almost every building has one or two guards in case someone tries to steal something. I walked past a very small organic garden in the old part of the city and there was a guard with a dog. He explained that it was his job to ensure that no plants were stolen!

This fear of theft reflects a growing unease and malaise. People have to survive and will find any and every method in order to do so.

While these problems exist in Cuba, they are nothing compared with the situation of poverty, destitution and crime one finds in any Latin American country and by comparison living standards (in terms of health care, access to education, living expectancy, etc) are still much higher in Cuba.

The other thing that strikes you is the growing level of disbelief between government pronouncements and the reality at street level. The papers are full of targets that have been met in different areas of the economy, but many basic needs remain unmet at street level. Even the TV voices occasional criticisms where for example a theatre has been closed for 6 months for minor repairs that should only have taken a few weeks, yet when wood was needed to effect the repairs it was not available.

People in the street realise that many of the shortages are due to the blockade, yet they are also beginning to realise that the way society is organised also has a lot to do with it.

On the one hand the planned and state owned economy has enabled Cuba to enjoy free education, free health care, very cheap housing and public transport that is so cheap it is practically free. Yet on the other hand there is almost no opportunity for ordinary Cubans to participate in the running of society. Socialism needs the oxygen of a workers' democracy with all citizens having the right to decide on policy at all levels.

The growing discussion here is therefore, where is Cuba going and what part can everyone play in that discussion? What you don't often hear is a desire to emulate the model of capitalist development that took place in the old Soviet bloc countries, but China is growing in influence here with 3 TV stations that all Cubans can access. Is this a sign that certain sections of the bureaucracy are looking at the Chinese model of capitalist development controlled by a "Communist Party" as a way out of the impasse?

In this context the recent visit of Hugo Chavez provoked some very interesting reactions. In his speech that was televised live he declared that he was a Trotskyist. When the speech was retransmitted that part was edited out and the press also said nothing of it. Yet millions heard it. It was just like the old photo of Lenin on a wooden podium with Trotsky standing on the steps that was airbrushed under Stalinism.
The effect here was electric. On the one hand those who are looking for a revolutionary Marxist way out of the crisis based on defence of the planned economy but seeing the need to extend the revolution to other countries as well as fighting for a genuine workers democracy were emboldened. Those who had perhaps only heard of Trotsky but knew nothing of him were then asking how they could get hold of his writings. Chavez is a hero here, so if he is a Trotskyist then they should be too! Even elements within the military are reading Leon Trotsky in their search for a solution.

There is an opening. Fidel released a speech that was published in Granma, official organ of the Cuban CP, on October 27th. The occasion was the 48th anniversary of the death of a leading revolutionary, Camilo Cienfuegos. Fidel quoted the famous words of Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." The words were directed at the USA but could equally be directed at sections of the bureaucracy here, which have been criticised by Fidel in the past.

What epitomised what is happening was a meeting that I went to on October 31st. It had been billed as a discussion on October 1917. The actual title was the influence of different socialist ideas on the Cuban CP up to 1953. Out of the three speakers on the platform, two of them mentioned the importance of Leon Trotsky and his writings, with one specifically saying that the development of the Cuban Communist Party cannot be understood without people having read the ideas of Leon Trotsky. There were about 70 people at the meeting.

These are early days here. There has been a small opening that is pushed wider by events, such as the visit of Chavez. There is a thirst for ideas at all levels of society. Ideas that will defend the gains of the Cuban revolution, will not mean a return to capitalism, but will mean a growing influence of the ideas of Trotsky. The concept of Socialism in one country has proved to be a fallacy as has the theory of the two stage revolution. Only the idea of the permanent revolution of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky will provide the answer to the Cuban revolution.


Havana
November 1st 2007
RENEGADE EYE

Victor's 1959 Cafe

A not very subtle backdoor, to a Cuba discussion.






Welcome!

I invite you to come to my little piece of Havana in Minneapolis. My father was a chef and he taught me everything he knew about good, simple, authentic Cuban cooking. It is my pleasure to share these foods with you in a relaxed, casual and festive environment.

¡Gracias!
Victor

Need an event catered Cuban style?

¡No problema! Whatever the occasion, we will work with you to customize a menu to best meet your needs. And, if you like, we will be happy to assist in the coordination of other details to help make your event muy especiál.



Hours:

Breakfast and lunch, 6 days a week.
Tuesday thru Saturday 7:00am - 2:30pm
Sunday 8:00am - 2:00pm
Closed Monday

Breakfast and lunch, 6 days a week.
Tuesday thru Saturday 7:00am - 2:30pm
Sunday 8:00am - 2:00pm
Closed Monday

Dinner, Tuesday thru Saturday.
4:30pm - 9:00pm

3756 Grand Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN

RENEGADE EYE

TAKE ACTION TO PREVENT THE RELEASE OF THE TERRORIST, LUIS POSADA CARRILES!

OVERVIEW


Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban born, Venezuelan citizen, is a terrorist and former CIA operative who, with his partner, Orlando Bosch, carried out the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane in 1976, killing all 73 persons on board. The plane exploded over Barbados, on its way to Venezuela. This took place when the CIA was under the directorship of George Bush, Sr. Venezuela is demanding that Posada, who escaped from a Venezuelan jail while on trial for the airliner bombing, be extradited to face trial there. Posada entered the United States illegally and is asking for asylum here. The Bush administration has refused to extradite him and he has been released from custody by an immigration judge. The Court of Appeals confirmed his release on bail. On May 11, in El Paso, Texas, Posada begins his trial on immigration charges. This trial is widely anticipated to be a farce, a "necessary" step toward erasing any legal obstacles to Posada's unimpeded residency in the United States.


STATEMENT BY THE VENUEZUELA SOLIDARITY NETWORK


The Venezuela Solidarity Network condemns the release on bail of Cuban exile terrorist Luis Posada Carriles pending his trial on immigration violations. Posada is a former CIA operative who has openly boasted about the terrorist acts he has committed against Cuba. He escaped jail while on trial in Venezuela for his role in planting a bomb that killed 73 passengers on a Cuban airliner. He is a naturalized Venezuela citizen and former member of State Security. The Venezuela Solidarity Network demands that the United States Government extradite Posada to Venezuela, as it is required to do under international law. The Venezuela Solidarity Network rejects claims by the Bush administration that Posada would be at risk of torture and abuse in Venezuela. Prisoners were tortured under US-supported Venezuelan governments during the period when Posada worked in State Security. The present government of Venezuela does not torture prisoners. The Venezuela Solidarity Network rejects the hypocrisy of the government of George W. Bush accusing another country of torture when he has authorized torture in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Venezuela Solidarity Network rejects the hypocrisy of the government of George W. Bush, which claims to be fighting a war on terrorism when it is harboring Cuban exile terrorists such as Posada and Orlando Bosch, who has also bragged about bombing tourist hotels in Cuba. The Venezuela Solidarity Network demands that Posada and Bosch be punished for their crimes against humanity. In addition, we demand that the Cuban Five, five brave men who infiltrated the Miami terrorist cells and reported on their activities to both Cuban authorities and the U.S. Government, be freed from US prisons to which they were sent on trumped up espionage charges.


BASIC TALKING POINTS


Luis Posada Carriles is an international terrorist and mass murderer. Any talk about a "war on terrorism" is exposed as pure hypocrisy by the Bush Administration's refusal to extradite Posada to stand trial in Venezuela.

The Bush Administration has maintained that Posada would face torture if returned to Venezuela. This assertion is ridiculous, given that Bolivarian Venezuela has never been credibly shown to employ such techniques. Rather, the United States has been found to use torture in a variety of places, including the infamous prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The US also regularly uses the practice of "extraordinary rendition" to send prisoners to other countries known to torture.


DEMONSTRATION MAY 11, 2007


Attend or organize a demonstration on May 11th, the date Posada's trial begins!
It is widely speculated that Posada's trial will be a farce, clearing way for him to be granted asylum in the United States. A major demonstration is being planned in El Paso, where the trial will take place, before the opening session on May 11th, beginning at noon. For more information, go to the following link:


http://www.freethefive.org/posadaprotest.htm#form

Other protests are being planned in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and information should be forthcoming about those at the above site.

HELP ORGANIZE A CONTINGENT FROM YOUR COMMUNITY TO GO TO THE EL PASO DEMONSTRATION!

ORGANIZE A SOLIDARITY DEMONSTRATION IN YOUR COMMUNITY IF YOU CANNOT GO TO EL PASO, OR A DEMONSTRATION IS NOT PLANNED WHERE YOU ARE!

If you are organizing to take people to El Paso, or are planning a solidarity demonstration in your town, please let us know, and we'll get the information up on the Venezuela Solidarity Network website ( www.vensolidarity.org). Write us at: vsn@afgj.org and let us know what you're planning.
RENEGADE EYE

The Internationalization of Genocide

Granma International recently printed and translated into English, Fidel Castro's response to George Bush's trip to Latin America. The issue of ethanol is put into a new light, that I think is original thinking. Ethanol is commonly talked about as whether it's an effective petroleum substitute from technical viewpoints. Its effect on food production is another issue, not often talked about.


Fidel Castro Ruz
Havana. April 4, 2007


The Camp David meeting has just ended. We all listened with interest to the press conference by the presidents of the United States and Brazil, as well as news about the meeting and opinions stated.

Confronted by the demands of his Brazilian visitor regarding import tariffs and subsidies that protect and support U.S. ethanol production, Bush did not make the slightest concession in Camp David.

President Lula attributed to this higher corn prices which, according to him, had gone up by more than 85 percent.

Previously, the Washington Post newspaper published an article by Brazil's top leader discussing the idea of converting food into fuel.

It is not my intention to hurt Brazil, or to meddle in the internal politics of that great country. It was precisely in Rio de Janeiro, where the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held exactly 15 years ago, where I vehemently condemned, in a 7-minute speech, the environmental dangers threatening the existence of our species.

At that meeting, Bush Sr. was present as president of the United States, and in a gesture of courtesy he applauded my words, just like all the other presidents.

Nobody at Camp David responded to the main question. Where and who is going to supply the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals that the United States, Europe and the rich countries need to produce the volume of gallons of ethanol that the big U.S. companies and those of other countries are demanding as compensation for their sizeable investments? Where and who is going to produce the soy beans, the sunflower and colza seeds, whose essential oils are going to be converted by those same rich countries into fuel?

A number of countries produce and export their surplus food. The balance between exporters and consumers was already tense, making the prices of those foodstuffs shoot up. In the interest of brevity, I have no other alternative but to confine myself to pointing out the following:

The five top producers of the corn, barley, sorghum, rye, millet and oats that Bush wants to turn into raw materials for producing ethanol supply 679 million tons to the world market, according to recent data. In their turn, the five top consumers, some of which are also producers of these grains, currently need 604 million tons annually. The available surplus comes down to less than 80 million tons.

This colossal waste of cereals for producing fuel, without including oleaginous seeds, would serve only to save the rich countries less than 15 percent of what is annually consumed by their voracious automobiles.

In Camp David, Bush has stated his intention of applying this formula on a world scale, which means nothing else than the internationalization of genocide.

The president of Brazil, in his message published in the Washington Post, right before the Camp David meeting, affirmed that less than one percent of Brazil's arable land is dedicated to sugar cane for producing ethanol. That surface area is almost triple the size of that used in Cuba when almost 10 million tons of sugar were being produced, before the crisis of the USSR and climate change.

Our country has been producing and exporting sugar for a longer time, first based on the labor of slaves, who eventually totaled more than 300,000 in the early years of the 19th century and made the Spanish colony into the top exporter in the world. Almost 100 years later, in the early 20th century, in the pseudo-Republic, whose full independence was thwarted by U.S. intervention, only West Indian immigrants and illiterate Cubans carried the burden of the sugar cane cultivation and cutting. The tragedy of our people was the so-called dead time, due to the cyclical nature of this crop. The cane fields were the property of U.S. companies or large Cuban landowners. We have accumulated, therefore, more experience than anyone else on the social effects of that crop.

Last Sunday, April 1, CNN was reporting the opinion of Brazilian experts, who affirmed that much of the land dedicated to sugarcane cultivation has been purchased by rich individuals from the United States and Europe.

In my reflections published on March 29, I explained the effects of climate change in Cuba, compounded by other traditional characteristics of our climate.

On our island, poor and distant from consumerism, there would not even be sufficient personnel to withstand the harsh rigors of the crop and attention to the cane fields in the midst of the heat, rain or growing droughts. When hurricanes hit, not even the most perfect machines can harvest the tumbled, twisted sugar cane. For centuries, the custom was not to burn it, nor was the soil compacted under the weight of complex machinery and enormous trucks; nitrogenous, potassic and phosphoric fertilizers, now so expensive, did not even exist, and the dry and wet months alternated regularly. In modern agriculture, no high yields are possible without crop rotation.

On Sunday, April 1, the Agence France-Presse news agency published worrying news on climate change, which experts brought together by the United Nations believe to be something that is now inevitable, and with serious consequences in the coming decades.

Climate change will affect the American continent significantly, by generating more violent storms and heat waves, which in Latin America will cause droughts, with the extinction of species and even hunger, according to a UN report to be released next week in Brussels, the AFP reported.

At the end of this century, every hemisphere will suffer from water problems, and if governments do not take steps, higher temperatures could increase the risk of "mortality, pollution, natural disasters and infectious diseases," warns the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to the article.

In Latin America, global warming is already melting the Andes icecaps and threatening the forests of the Amazons, which could become grassland, the article says.

Because of the large numbers of people living near coasts, the United States is also exposed to extreme natural phenomena, as was demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the AFP notes.

This is the second in a series of three IPCC reports, which began in February with an initial scientific diagnosis establishing the certainty of climate change, the article continues.

This second, 1,400-page report, which analyzes the changes by industry and region, and a copy of which was obtained by the AFP, states that even if radical measures are taken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere, higher temperatures throughout the planet in the coming decades is now a certain fact, the AFP reported.

As could be expected, Dan Fisk, National Security advisor for the region, stated on the same day in the Camp David meeting that in the discussion on regional matters, the Cuba issue would be one of them, and not exactly to address the subject of ethanol -- about which the convalescing President Fidel Castro wrote an article on Thursday -- but instead about the hunger he has created among the Cuban people.

Given the necessity of responding to this gentleman, I feel obliged to remind him that the infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than that of the United States. He can rest assured that not a single citizen lacks free medical care. Everybody is studying, and nobody lacks the possibility of useful work, despite almost half a century of economic blockade and the attempt by U.S. governments to bring the Cuban people to its knees through hunger and economic asphyxiation.

China would never use even one ton of cereal or legumes to produce ethanol. This is a nation with a prospering economy that has beaten growth records, in which all its citizens receive the income necessary for essential consumer goods, despite the fact that 48% of its population, in excess of 1.3 billion inhabitants, work in the agricultural sector. On the contrary, it has been proposed to save considerable energy by eliminating thousands of factories that consume unacceptable levels of energy and hydrocarbons. Many of the foodstuffs mentioned are imported by China from all corners of the world after being transported thousands of kilometers.

Scores of countries do not produce hydrocarbons and cannot cultivate corn and other grains, or produce oleaginous seeds, because they do not have enough water even to meet their most elemental needs.

In a meeting convened in Buenos Aires by the Oil Industry Chamber and the Exporters Center on the production of ethanol, Dutchman Loek Boonekamp, director of Markets and Agricultural Trade for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, informed the press:

"Governments got very enthusiastic; but they should take a good look as to whether there should be such robust support for ethanol.

"Ethanol production is only viable in the United States; not in any other country, except when subsidies are applied.

"This is not manna from heaven and we don't have to blindly commit ourselves," the cable continues.

"These days, developed countries are pushing for fossil fuels to be mixed with bio-fuels at close to 5% and that is already putting pressure on agricultural prices. If that mixture is raised to 10%, it would need 30% of the sown surface of the United States and 50% of Europe's. That is why I am asking if this is sustainable. An increase in the demand for crops for ethanol would produce higher and more unstable prices."

Protectionist measures have risen today to 54 cents per gallon and real subsidies are much higher.

By applying the simple math that we learn in high school, as I stated in my previous reflections, it can be confirmed that the simple replacement of incandescent light bulbs by fluorescent ones would contribute a saving of investment and energy recourses equivalent to trillions of dollars without using a single hectare of agricultural land.

Meanwhile, news coming from Washington is affirmed textually by the AP:

"The mysterious disappearance of millions of bees across the whole of the United States has beekeepers on the verge of a nervous breakdown and is even worrying Congress, which this Thursday is to debate the critical situation of a key insect for the agricultural sector.

"The first serious signs of this enigma emerged shortly after Christmas in the state of Florida, when beekeepers discovered that the bees had vanished.

"Since then, the syndrome that experts have christened Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has reduced the country's swarms by 25%.

"'We have lost more than half a million colonies, with a population of around 50,000 bees each,' said Daniel Weaver, president of the American Beekeeping Federation, noting that the disease is affecting 30 of the country's 50 states. The curious part of the phenomenon is that in many cases no mortal remains have been found.

"The hardworking insects pollinate crops valued at $12-14 billion, according to a study from Cornell University.

"Scientists are considering all sorts of hypotheses, including one that a certain pesticide has provoked neurological damage in the bees and altered their sense of direction. Others blame the drought, and even cell-phone waves, but what is certain is that nobody knows for sure what the real trigger is."

The worst could be still to come: a new war to ensure supplies of gas and oil, which would place the human species on the brink of a total holocaust.

There are Russian news agencies that, citing intelligence sources, have reported that the war on Iran has been prepared in all its details for more than three years, from the day that the United States decided to totally occupy Iraq, thus unleashing an interminable and odious civil war.

Meanwhile, the United States government is directing hundreds of billions to the development of highly sophisticated technological weapons, such as those utilizing microelectronic systems, or new nuclear weapons that could be over their targets one hour after receiving the order.

The United States is totally ignoring the fact that world opinion is against any type of nuclear weapons.

Demolishing every single Iranian factory is a relatively easy technical task for a power like that of the United States. The difficult part could come afterwards, if another war is launched against another Muslim belief, which merits all our respect, as well as the other religions of the peoples of the Near, Middle and Far East, before or after Christianity.

The arrest of British troops in Iran's jurisdictional waters would seem to be a provocation exactly like that of the so-called Brothers to the Rescue when, in violation of President Clinton's orders, they advanced over waters in our jurisdiction, and the defensive action of Cuba, absolutely legitimate, served as a pretext for the government of the United States to promulgate the infamous Helms-Burton Act, which violates the sovereignty of other countries. The powerful mass media have buried that episode in oblivion. More than a few people are attributing the price of oil, reaching close to $70 per barrel on Monday, to fears of an attack on Iran.

Where are the poor nations of the Third World going to find the minimal resources for survival?

I am not exaggerating or using untempered words; I am going by facts.

As can be seen, the polyhedron has many dark sides.RENEGADE EYE