Cuban economic minister Marino Murillo announced before a meeting of the National Association of Cuban Economists (Asociación Nacional de Economistas de Cuba) that the lack of liquidity in currencies is an urgent problem for the government, reported Cuban state media.
Cuban ambassador to Mexico, Manuel Aguilera de la Paz, confirms relations with Mexico have been normalized with good fortune for both countries and strengthened with the visit of President Felipe Calderón to the island, who is expected to discuss security, immigration and human trafficking issues among other topics.
In an interview with Mexican daily Milenio, Aguilera de la Paz could not confirm the exact date when President Calderón will visit the Caribbean island.
In a sign of further fracturing in Cuba’s infrastructure, more than 50% of the water pumped in the island does not reach its destination because of ruptures in networks of water mains and as a result, consumption is double than necessary, reports Cuban state media.
Cities with major damage are La Habana, Holguín, Camagüey, Las Tunas and Santiago de Cuba (which has the worst problem).
The Cuban government’s 2010 plan is to repair 559 miles of water networks by replacing water pipes with new ones.
Cubans pay on average a peso ($0.07) for water usage.
Septuagenarian Jose Ramon Machado Ventura addressing members of the Young Communists Union. (Image: JR)
José Ramón Machado Ventura, the 79-year-old first vice-president of Cuba, warned that “these years are hard” and denied that there is a lack of leaders replacing the governing elite, informs Cuban state media.
Machado Ventura presided over a meeting of the Young Communists Union (Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC) in Cienfuegos assuring “the leaders of the future are in all places”.
The government of Raúl Castro has blacklisted U.S. President Barack Obama. It’s no tasteless joke. Havana considers that after a year in the White House the first African-American president of the United States has demonstrated to be an “enemy” of the revolution just as his predecessors and that rapprochement with Washington has ended. Yesterday, the Cuban government demanded of the Obama administration its “immediate exclusion” of the list of state sponsors of terrorism and condemned the initiative as “unjust and arbitrary” of submitting Cuban travelers to stricter security measures. (via El País)
The Cuban government justified its links with Basque terrorist group (ETA) and Colombian terrorist groups (FARC and ELN); demanding that the United States “immediately exclude” the country from its “list of state sponsors of terrorism” and also condemning that its travelers are being submitted to strict security measures.
Jorge Moragas, coordinator for International Relations of Spain’s Partido Popular has said Foreign Affairs Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos has become “the ambassador of the Castro brothers—Raúl and Fidel—in Europe” for his stubbornness in wanting to change the political policy of the European Union towards Cuba. (via EFE)
Moragas voices his opinion on a weblog hosted by Periodista Digital.
(Images: directe.cat and European PhotoPress Agency)
A senior Cuban official said that an American government contractor detained in Cuba for more than a month was “working for American intelligence.” Parliament leader Ricardo Alarcon says the man is under investigation but has not yet been charged. Neither government has identified the man who was arrested on Dec. 4 on suspicion he was handing out communications equipment to opposition groups. (via AP, Reuters, AFP)
Cuba’s government summoned the top U.S. diplomat on the island to protest the country’s inclusion on a list of 14 countries facing additional security measures after a failed bombing of a flight to Detroit on Christmas.
Madrid condemns Cuba’s decision to bar a Spain’s EU diplomat’s entrance to the island.
Ex-Sandinista commander accuses Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega of manipulating recent photos taken with Fidel Castro.
National Assembly for the People's Power - a rubber-stamp legislature. (Image: NY Daily News/AP)
The Cuban Council of State announced today the calling of partial “elections” in April to select municipal assembly delegates for the National Assembly. (Cuban State Media)
Spain will protest to Cuba over its decision to refuse entry to Luis Yanez, a Spanish socialist and member of the European parliament, said the Spanish Foreign Ministry. The Cuban ambassador to Madrid has been summoned to a meeting on Tuesday with Juan Pablo de Laiglesia, a secretary of state responsible for Ibero-American affairs. (via Deutsche Presse Agentur)
Cuban bloggers hold meeting called Blogger Journey in May 2009. (Image: Generation Y)
A new revolution is making headway in Cuba. Discreet but unstoppable. Slick and irreverent. It’s called the alternative blogosphere and it is making the Castro brothers nervous, whom last Friday reached 51 years in power. The protagonists are hundreds of young men and women (and some who are a lot older) that have proposed to break a siege of censorship and to ventilate a closed society on the island for half a century. Their weapons are computers and memory sticks. And despite all the obstacles, are managing to weave a network of rebellion that begins to move from cyberspace to the streets. (via El País)
US authorities are introducing tougher screening rules for passengers arriving by air from nations deemed to have links with terrorism. Reports say people flying from Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and Cuba will have pat-down body searches and have carry-on baggage searched. (BBC)
Cuba’s Office of National Statistics (Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas (ONE) released last month a report entitled: “Economic and Social Panorama, Cuba 2009″, which provides information on the development of demographic, economic and social indicators for 2009.
The Obama honeymoon with Cuba is over. The tenor in Havana has changed considerably, and Mr. Obama, whose election was broadly celebrated by Cuba’s racially diverse population, is now being portrayed by the Raúl Castro government as an imperialistic, warmongering Cuba hater, reports the New York Times.
Will 2010 usher in a new "El Maleconazo" (the most significant demonstration of social unrest in the island), which occurred on the streets of Havana's famous seawall in August, 1994.
Infolatam analyzes the precarious economic and political situation be facing the Castro regime the year ahead:
Cuba will live a very difficult year in 2010 due to an economic crisis drowning the Castroite regime. Raúl Castro will introduce cuts to social programs reducing costs that could ultimately cause protests to become a reality. Two great unknowns of the year will center on Fidel Castro’s state of health and how advanced will talks be with the Obama administration.
Army General Raúl Castro also announced in his speech before the National Assembly’s closing meeting on Sunday that the next Bastion Strategic Exercises will take place in mid-November 2012, continuing its four-year cycle.
Before Cuba’s parliament on Sunday, Army General Raúl Castro warned that there will be no tolerance for “provocative activities” and much less on the streets.
Cuba’s President Raul Castro and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez are signing economic co-operation deals worth $3.2B. 285 accords in areas including energy, sport and technology. (BBC)
Latinobarómetro published this week its current survey on the state of democracy in Latin America, however, the Cuban population did not take part in it, but the perception of the regime is object of analysis.
Latin Americans give Cuba a 4.1 on a scale of 10, the lowest score given to the countries measured.
Evaluation of leaders
Fidel Castro is the worst rated leader scoring 4 on a scale of 10 (0 being the worst; 10 very good), only ahead of Hugo Chávez.
It is estimated that up to one million people were killed during communism in Eastern Europe – but there is no clear figure for those imprisoned, persecuted or spied on.
The whole issue of what to do about the past – forget, forgive, confront – is a live and contentious one in countries like Poland, Romania and the former Czechoslovakia.
And as most formerly communist countries have started to open their secret police archives, ordinary people are beginning to get a sense of how far the state intruded into their private lives.
European affairs correspondent Oana Lungescu – one of many Romanians who was watched – investigates.
A demonstrator, second from right, is grabbed by unidentified men during a march organized by dissidents to commemorate the Human Rights Day in Havana. 20091210 (AP Photo)
Government supporters screaming insults and slogans broke up two tiny International Human Rights Day marches Thursday and chased away a British diplomat onlooker, pounding on his car as he drove away.
Hundreds of enraged Cubans confronted a march led by Yusnaimi Jorge, wife of Darcy Ferrer, a black physician and veteran dissident who had headed demonstrations every Dec. 10 but has been behind bars since this summer for buying black market cement.
“This street is Fidel’s,” the crowd yelled as a group of men in plainclothes, believed to be state security agents, ringed the demonstrators, eventually placing them in unmarked vehicles.
The pro-government crowd also pursued observer Chris Stimpson, second secretary of the British Embassy, shouting at him until he fled to his car, then ringing the vehicle and banging on it. He returned to his office without further incident.
Surveillance cameras with the pretext of traffic control will also be used to spy on the populace for suspicious activities. (Image: El Pais)
Fifty surveillance cameras have been placed in the most important streets of Havana, which are operated by the national police. The network of cameras should be increasing and contributing to the security of the populace, reports El País.
The Center for Defense Information Studies – CDIS (Centro de Estudios de Información de la Defensa (CEID) will hold its Second International Conference on Security and Defense, at the Havana International Conference Center from April 27th to 29th, 2010. The event will examine diverse subjects of great interest on security and defense in the international, regional and national levels. (via CEID)
Brigade General Rafael Ruiz Díaz (chief, Direction of MINFAR) is interviewed by Juventud Rebelde about the modifications to Order 18 providing opportunities offered by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias) to soldiers in Active Military Service to incorporated themselves in higher education.
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, who stepped down in February last year, is still an influential figure and remains an ”ethical and political reference point” in the country, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said today in Tokyo.
At least a dozen guards from the Canaleta maximum security prison (which houses some of Cuba’s most notable political prisoners) in the province of Ciego de Avila remain under arrest since early November under the accusation of corruption and drug trafficking in connection to prisoners.
Cuban President Raul Castro walks with Nicaraguan First Lady Rosario Murillo upon arrival in Managua on June 29, 2009. (Image: HO/AFP/Getty Images)
Luis Hernández Ojeda, Cuba’s ambassador to Nicaragua, was ordered back by Havana because of a “serious incident” with Nicaraguan First Lady Rosario Murillo (who is also the official spokesperson for President Daniel Ortega).
According to El Nuevo Diario, Murillo mistreated Hernández with disdain, having used off-color language.
This is the third incident (the other two with Venezuela) within two years, whereby “discrepancies” with Murillo have caused ambassadors to be ordered back.
A U.S. State Department official says long-planned migration talks with Cuba have been delayed until next year. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the talks had been scheduled for this month but were pushed back to February.
Cuba hit back at 60 prominent U.S. black leaders who challenged its race record, with island writers, artists and official journalists calling the criticism an attack on their country’s national identity.
The five-page signed statement, distributed by Cuban government press officials in an e-mail, defended Cuba’s progress in providing social and personal opportunities for blacks and people of mixed race.
In Cuba, various small dissident groups met to ask the government of Raúl Castro to end repression on the island and allow democratic elections of multiple political parties. (via BBC Mundo)
Brigade General Rafael Moracen Limonta receiving promotion from Fidel Castro. Image: Granma
Cuban Embassy military attaché in Angola, Brigade General Rafael Moracen Limonta, on Wednesday in Luanda highlighted the continuity of the co-operation between the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), as well as between FAR and countries of the southern African region in various sectors.
The diplomat spoke during FAR’s 53rd anniversary celebration ceremony.
PINAR DEL RIO, CUBA The death sentence was asked for Frank Austin Young, former Royal Air Force pilot, by the prosecutor early today [Dec. 1] as a military tribunal ended an 18-hour trial of two Americans and 37 Cubans accused of conspiring to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime. The prosecution also demanded the firing squad for Fernando Pruno Bertot, 24-year-old Cuban and former student at Columbia University in New York. A second trial was scheduled to start last night in Havana’s old Cabana Fortress but it was postponed without explanation.
Army General Raúl Castro congratulated participants of Bastion 2009 Strategic Military Exercises, confirming they had accomplished previous goals.
A video conference with principal organs of direction, commands of the Western, Central and Eastern Armies and presidents of provincial defense councils, served as the finale of activities developed during the strategic exercises.
The presidents of the provincial defense councils of Cienfuegos, Santiago de Cuba and Pinar del Río announced, among other aspects, the preparations to bring forth today National Defense Day.
BBC Mundoreports on espionage in Latin America and Cuba’s role in it.
And of course there is Cuba.
“Both China and Russia’s services have a close relationship with the intelligence community there in an advisory role,” says Mr [Robert] Munks of Jane’s Intelligence Review.
Experts say this “advisory role” that Cuba has with Russia and China is spreading to other parts of Latin America.
Cubans are bracing for hard times in 2010 as President Raul Castro slashes imports and cuts government spending to get Cuba out of crisis — and they are growing impatient with the slow pace of economic reform.
Hurricanes, the global recession, U.S. sanctions and the inability of the communist-run island’s command economy to maneuver have put an end to recovery from the 1990s crisis that followed the Soviet Union’s demise.
Division General Leonardo Andollo Valdés (Deputy Chief, General Staff) announced for the first time on Cuban state television that the Cuban military prepares for internal warfare against the people.
However, with Bastion 2009, that fundamental is evolving for the first time to include for the preparation of the armed forces’ internal war against the people.
La Jornada reports Division General Leonardo Andollo Valdés’ (Deputy Chief, General Staff) comments on the Mesa Redonda (Round Table) state television program surrounding the FAR and MININT’s military exercises beginning today.
Was this a slip of the tongue for Andollo or was he sanctioned by the military hierarchy to make it abundantly clear for internal/external consumption the government’s plan to crush, without hesitation, social instability affecting internal security?
The economic implosion (e.g. energy crisis, falling exports, limited capital inflow, eliminating food rationing booklet) the Cuban government faces caused by a stagnate command economy with meager traces of capitalism is propelling an inevitable social upheaval that the military and security forces will confront.
Bastion 2009 exercises are further evidence of such a fundamental change to the military’s mission to now quash social instability which has been publicly announced by a high-ranking general of the Cuban military’s high command.
Granma, the Cuban Communist Party daily, announced in its front page that this is most important military exercise in the last five years even with the austerity caused by an economic crisis but conducted with efficiency.
A Council of Ministers circular, dated Oct. 21 and which reduced government power allocations, termed the energy situation “critical” and called for “extreme measures” through December.
“The energy situation we face is critical and if we do not adopt extreme measures we will have to revert to planned blackouts affecting the population,” said the order, which was seen by Reuters.
All provincial governments and most state-run offices and factories, which encompass 90 percent of Cuba’s economic activity, were already ordered in June to reduce energy use by a minimum of 12 percent or face mandatory electricity cuts.
The situation is not as dire as in the 1990s because Cuba receives 93,000 of the 150,000 barrels of oil per day that it consumes from strategic ally Venezuela on preferential terms.
A delegation of high-ranking Cuban government officials met Sunday with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavéz at the hall of the Council of Ministers in Miraflores Palace to discuss next month’s ALBA summit in Cuba, informs the Venezuelan Ministry of Communication and Information.
The Cuban delegation was led by Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz (Vice-President, Council of Ministers) along with Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz (Vice-President, Council of Ministers and Tourist Ministry); Salvador Pardo Guerra (Minister, Metals Industry); Yadira García (Minister, Basic Industry); Rodrigo Malmierca (Minister, International Commerce and Foreign Investment); Rogelio Sierra Díaz (Vice-Minister, Foreign Relations); Alberto Rodríguez (Vice-Minister, Information and Communications) and Rogelio Polanco Fuentes (Cuban Ambassador to Venezuela).
“Security measures can be ordered to prevent the commission of crimes or as a result of their having been committed. In the first case they are called pre-criminal security measures; and in the second, post-criminal security measures.” Cuba Criminal Code, “Dangerousness” Law, Chap. III, Art. 76, Sec. 1
El País, Spain’s center-left daily, published an editorial today on repression in Cuba, referencing the “dangerousness” law of the Cuban criminal code that is reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s futuristic short story The Minority Report, which describes Precrime, a system which punishes people with imprisonment for crimes they would have committed.
Students of power and international politics will find Donald Kagan’s (Yale professor of classics and ancient history) new tome Thucydides: The Reinvention of History of interest. He delves into re-examining Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War. Here are two reviews from Barnes & Noble and the Wall Street Journal.
Reinaldo Escobar, center, is taken away by unidentified men in Havana. (Image: AP)
Reinaldo Escobar, the husband of acclaimed dissident Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez, was punched and shouted down by a pro-government mob Friday after he challenged the presumed state agents who earlier roughed up his wife to a street corner debate. (AP)
A former State Department official and his wife admitted in federal court that they spied for Cuba over the past three decades, receiving their coded instructions over a shortwave radio and passing along information to intelligence operatives in “dead drops” and “hand-to-hand” passes. Walter K. Myers, 72, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit espionage and wire fraud. His wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, pleaded guilty to conspiring to gather and transmit national defense information. Under the plea deal, Walter Myers faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison, and his wife, 6 to 7 1/2 years. Both agreed to give extensive debriefings to U.S. law enforcement officials before they are sentenced. No sentencing date was set. (WaPo)
Today’s 35-minute Mesa Redonda (Round Table) program on Cuban state television focused on Bastion 2009 military exercises which will be held November 26-28.
In the first twenty minutes of the program, state television journalist Reinaldo Taladrid, reviewed U.S. military doctrine, military-industrial complex, and foreign policy.
A brief history is shown of Bastion military exercises that began in 1980 and held in successive years: 1983, 1986, 2004.
Division General Leonardo Andollo Valdes (Deputy Chief, General Staff) outlines the activities taking place in the three-day exercise.
Division General José Milián (Vice-Minister, MININT) briefs on the Interior Ministry's participation in Bastion 2009 which includes the national police, coastal guards and street surveillance.
Economic and social activities to be completed for Bastion 2009 military exercises.
The bulk of the exercises will take place in Eastern Cuba, principally, in Santiago de Cuba.
Exercises will also take place in Havana including the province whereby militias will also take part.
The government of Army General Raul Castro suffers from an asphyxiating lack of liquidity which has caused a fall of 36% in Cuba’s foreign trade in the first nine months of 2009.
And the solutions to the economic crisis are a period of wartime and deprivation: not paying debt nor to those of other countries or to creditors, restricting fuel consumption by closing unprofitable companies, asking the population to tighten their belts and further cut what Army General Castro called “excess gratuities,” starting with the food ration booklet.
Raul Castro’s government is limiting the number of products given in food rationing booklet (libreta de racionamiento). In recent months, food rations with subsidized prices have diminished for eleven million Cubans on the island.
They number just a few dozen and hardly anyone can read them – but Cuba’s government has already decided it does not like blogs.
They are new, number just a few dozen and hardly anyone can read them – but Cuba’s government has already decided it does not like independent blogs.
The island’s blogosphere is tiny but represents a threat to authorities who have spent half a century censoring and controlling information.
About a third of the island’s estimated 300 blogs operate without official approval, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. They range from outspoken political forums such as Voz Tras Las Rejas (Voice From Behind Bars), which includes posts dictated by Pablo Pacheco, who has been jailed since 2003, to wry, whimsical observations about life under tropical communism.
Fewer than 2% of people in Cuba are estimated to have internet access, with cybercafes limited largely to serving foreign tourists. Cuba appears to block fewer sites than China and relies more on prohibitive cost to curb bloggers’ access and impact.
The report “shows how the Raúl Castro government has relied in particular on the Criminal Code offense of “dangerousness,” which allows authorities to imprison individuals before they have committed any crime, on the suspicion that they are likely to commit an offense in the future. This “dangerousness” provision is overtly political, defining as “dangerous” any behavior that contradicts Cuba’s socialist norms.”
Here are segments of the executive summary:
In July 2006, Fidel Castro handed control of the Cuban government over to his brother Raúl Castro. As the new head of state, Raúl Castro inherited a system of abusive laws and institutions, as well as responsibility for hundreds of political prisoners arrested during his brother’s rule. Rather than dismantle this repressive machinery, Raúl Castro has kept it firmly in place and fully active. Scores of political prisoners arrested under Fidel Castro continue to languish in Cuba’s prisons. And Raúl Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental freedoms.
Raúl Castro’s government has relied in particular on a provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that allows the state to imprison individuals before they have committed a crime, on the suspicion that they might commit an offense in the future. This “dangerousness” provision is overtly political, defining as “dangerous” any behavior that contradicts socialist norms. The most Orwellian of Cuba’s laws, it captures the essence of the Cuban government’s repressive mindset, which views anyone who acts out of step with the government as a potential threat and thus worthy of punishment.
…
While this report documents a systematic pattern of repression, it does not intend to suggest that there are no outlets for dissent whatsoever in Cuba. The last three years have, for example, witnessed the emergence of an independent Cuban blogosphere, critical lyrics by musicians, and most recently a series of government-organized public meetings to reflect on Cuban socialism.
…
The Cuban government has for years refused to recognize the legitimacy of independent human rights monitoring and has adamantly refused to allow international monitors, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and international nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch, to visit the island and investigate human rights conditions. In researching this report, Human Rights Watch made repeated written requests to the Raúl Castro government for meetings with authorities and formal authorization to conduct a fact-finding mission to the island. As in the past, the Cuban government did not respond to any of our requests.
As a result, Human Rights Watch decided to conduct a fact-finding mission to Cuba without official permission in June and July 2009. During this trip, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted extensive interviews in seven of the island’s fourteen provinces. We also conducted numerous interviews via telephone from New York City. In total, we carried out more than 60 in-depth interviews with human rights defenders, journalists, former political prisoners, family members of current political prisoners, members of the clergy, trade unionists, and other Cuban citizens.
The International Republican Institute (IRI) conducted a survey in Cuba from July 1-August 4, 2009 and found more than four in five citizens on the island (82%) do not believe things are going well.
The survey showed a majority of Cubans would vote for fundamental political change (75%) and economic change (86%) if given the opportunity.
According to the IRI report, a total of 432 Cuban adults were asked questions ranging from perspectives on the economy, to the performance of the current Castro government. The survey has a margin of error of +/- five percent, and a 95 percent level of confidence. The survey was conducted in 12 Cuban provinces.
Opposition members, holding up a sign that reads in Spanish "Don't make Venezuela like Cuba," demonstrate during a protest against an education bill in Caracas. Image: AP
An elite group of Cuban technicians and advisors actively participate in the control of official functions key in the Venezuelan government with the consent of authorities, including the military command, warned a former high ranking official of the Chavista administration, reports El Nuevo Herald.
The Cuban Defense Ministry has announced through state media that Bastion 2009 military exercises will take place throughout the country for three days at the end of the month: November 26 – November 28. National Defense Day will be held on November 29.
The program will include maneuvers and different types of tactical exercises with the participation of units from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Armed Forces), Interior Ministry and other components of the territorial defensive system, which include troops movement and military equipment with air flights, and explosions where required.
The last large-scale military exercise was held in 2006.
Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived in Havana, Cuba, late 10 November to sign an agreement on cooperation for “information exchange and training” for Cuban emergency specialists, RIA Novosti reported 11 November.
Shoigu, who traveled to Cuba from Nicaragua where he concluded a similar agreement, said, “The Russian government has resolved to allocate a substantial sum to buy equipment and to train Nicaragua specialists to remove mines.”
The Western media seems to misunderstand the significance of the seemingly benign Russian agreements on emergency situations. The Emergency Situations Ministry is one of the most powerful in Russia in that it is the conduit for military and paramilitary assistance to nations with whom Russia has agreements, including Serbia. The definition of emergency is rather loose. These agreements are the updated versions of Friendship and Security Agreements arranged by the Soviet Union.
The significance is that Russia uses this Ministry as a substitute for the Defense or Interior Ministries to arrange relationships that in earlier times would have stood out as defense or military assistance agreements. The effects are the same in practice, but the terminology is less likely to receive careful scrutiny or attention by the West. Putin is the genius behind this quite effective subterfuge.
Army General Raul Castro has taken his time to make “structural changes,” which have arrived, e.g. the rationing booklet (libreta de racionamiento) has its days numbered.
It is foreseen that Cubans’ desperation will generate conflicts but also the adoption of other measures such as currency unification.
To halt such an impact, the government has asked the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR) to prepare neighbors for upcoming hard times.
CDR’s will conduct a census of resident workers and increase surveillance to prevent illegalities, i.e. renting out rooms without a state license or sell aliments on the black market.
Click here to read the rest of El Correo Digital article.
Army General Raúl Castro, Army Corps General Julio Casas Regueiro & Serguei Shoigú. Image: Tiempo21
Army General Raul Castro met with the Russian Minister of Civil Defense and Emergency Situations, Serguei Shoigu, who is on an official visit to the island nation, reported Cuban state media.
During the meeting, Castro and Shoigu expressed their satisfaction at the cooperation advances between the Civil Defense ministries of both countries.
Also present in the meeting were the Minister of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, Army Corps General Julio Casas Regueiro; the Chief of the Civil Defense National General Staff, Division General Ramon Pardo Guerra; and the Russian Ambassador in Havana, Mijail Kamynin; as well as members of the visiting delegation.
Issues covered in the article, which is written by Dr. Terry Maris, Ph.D., include: the Special Period, how the Cuban military quietly embraced the teachings of capitalism, perfeccionamiento empresarial, and military industries, among others.
Maris concludes, “a thorough examination of Cuban history reveals an evolution of the revolution that personifies the principles of both strategic and military management”.
Spain’s foreign minister met with his Cuban counterpart today during an official visit that has caused a stir for who he won’t be seeing: top political opposition leaders on the island. [AP]
Over the past decade, the rise of youth movements applying nonviolent methods of resistance against autocratic incumbents occurred in the post-Soviet region. This protest cycle was set in motion by the spectacular mobilization of Serbia’s social movement Otpor against Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Similarly, Ukraine’s Pora in 2004 and, to a lesser extent, Georgia’s Kmara in 2003 mobilized large numbers of young people to demand political change in the aftermath of fraudulent elections. In contrast, Belarus’ Zubr in 2001/2006 and an assortment of Azerbaijan’s youth groups in 2005 were less effective in staging nonviolent struggle against autocratic incumbents. This paper provides an explanation for divergent social movement outcomes in non-democracies by investigating the dynamics of tactical interaction between challenger organizations and the ruling elite. The paper argues that both civic activists and autocratic incumbents engaged in processes of political learning. Hence, tactical innovation was vital to the success of youth movements, especially late risers in the protest cycle.
Nikolayenko begins with: “Over the past decade, a wave of youth mobilization against repressive political regimes has swept the post-communist region. Thousands of young people took to the street to demand political change at a critical juncture in domestic politics, the election period.”
She argues throughout her paper that tactical innovation (experimentation with the choice of frames, protest strategies and interaction styles with allies) was vital to the success of youth movements.
Can the tactics used by these youth movements in post-Communist societies be replicated in a post-Castro/post-Communist Cuba?
Predicting such a happenstance is possible as Cuba’s future political landscape may change with one repressive ruling elite supplanted by another (through force, succession, or democratic transition) challenged by an increasingly younger demographic that has become a vocal opposition, e.g. bloggers.
Moreover, historically recent instances described in this insightful paper are worthy of examination.
The Americanopublished today my recent interview with poet, curator and Latin American art critic Ricardo Pau-Llosa, who discusses poetry, visual arts and the Left dominating the worlds of culture and academe.
Romanian-born author Herta Mueller on October 8 won the 2009 Nobel prize for literature. In 1999, Mueller, whose parents were members of the German-speaking minority in Romania, spoke to Mircea Iorgulescu from RFE/RL’s Romania-Moldova Service about growing up under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, her encounters with the secret police, and how her background has shaped her work. [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]
Small though the change is, it is of huge symbolic import. It is the first step in a wider, albeit stealthy, abandonment of Fidel Castro’s half-century effort to forge a “new man” in Cuba by limiting individual reward in favour of all-embracing social provision, with the state imposing its choice of consumption as well as of production. Granma said that after the plan was “perfected” some 3.5m Cubans could expect their 24,700 workplace canteens to close too, and would get a similar wage increase.
…
Cuba is close to bankruptcy. Foreign businesses have been waiting for months for permission to transfer abroad hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from joint ventures that are sitting in local banks. The government has slashed imports by more than 30% this year, and budgets for state companies and ministries have also been cut. Cuba does not produce enough and its population is ageing. Theft and absenteeism are rife in workplaces across the island.
Raúl has placed trusted military men in charge of economic policy. Their aim is to save foreign exchange and raise output. They reckon that Cubans do not value the true cost of free services. Workplace canteens used some $350m in imported food last year, according to Granma.
…
What nobody is saying publicly is that Raúl is tossing into the dustbin of Cuban history the idea espoused by Ernesto “Che” Guevara, at the start of the revolution that Cuba’s communist economy should be based on “moral incentives”, rather than material ones, and that this process would create a “new man”. Through various zigzags Fidel never wholly relinquished that idea. When opponents criticise Cubans’ derisory wages (averaging $20 per month), officials always point to the additional “social wage” of free housing, health, education, transport and food rations.
Some of this will now go. Raúl, a practical man, has no time for Utopianism. He gives every sign of knowing that if Cuban communism is to survive its founders it will have to supply people with a few more material goods. But he may find it hard to raise wages by much without more radical reform.
Cuba’s dynamic emerging blogging community has recently been testing the limits of free expression with posts ranging from vivid accounts of everyday life to sometimes risky calls for political change in the Communist-run state. [BBC Monitoring]
Cuba is ready to use just about everything at its disposal, from its well-oiled civil defense system to the soldiers of a totalitarian government, to keep swine flu cases to a minimum. Everything but a vaccine. [AP]
PAIS director Cesar Alvarado (r) forming a cavalry. Image: El Universal
It looks like Ecuador is adopting Cuba’s CDR model to surveil rural areas of the country, reports El Universal.
A force of 15,000 members is being proposed first for Manabi province.
Cesar Alvarado, director of PAIS, said: “The CDR (Committee of Citizen Revolution — Comites de Revolucion Ciudadana) will be responsible for monitoring the Citizen Revolution Project promoted by president of the republic Rafael Correa.”
Alvarado rejects criticism of the CDR. He said one of the functions of its members will be a permanent vigilance of government works executed in rural communities.
He further added, “We don’t want to be demonized by saying we will be like Cuba. The CDRs are for strengthening democracy and not allow what happen to Honduran president Zelaya, a coup d’ etat to take place.”
The UAE and Cuba signed two agreements to enhance political consultations and boost economic, commercial and technical cooperation between the two countries.
The agreements were signed by Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister, and Cuba’s Foreign Trade and Investment Minister Rodrigues Dias, in Havana.
The consultations between Shaikh Abdullah and his counterpart focused on investment opportunities in the tourism, trade and renewable energy sectors in both countries.
Transparency International, a global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption, publishes an annual Global Corruption Report, which “documents in unique detail the many corruption risks for businesses, ranging from small entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa to multinationals from Europe and North America.”
This year’s report presents a clear message: “After a first broad wave of anti-corruption activism and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, business worldwide now has a clearer responsibility, more profound self-interest and greater potential to assume a vital role in the fight against corruption.”
Cuba ranks 65th and scoring 4.3 in the reports’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2008. Score ranges between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt).
The Index “ranks countries in terms of the degree to which businesspeople and country analysts perceive corruption to exist among public officials and politicians.” Six surveys were used to rank the island and placing a low confidence range between 3.6 and 4.8.
Silvia Wilhelm’s defamation suit against Lt. Col. Chris Simmons (US Army Reserve) has been settled by both parties. Simmons accused Wilhelm of being an agent for the Cuban government in October, 2008.
Nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, Cuba remains a policy dilemma for the United States. The transition from Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl, which began when Raúl assumed the responsibilities of the presidency of the Council of State on July 31, 2006, as a result of Fidel’s illness, is still ongoing after three years. Fidel remains alive—perhaps even to a point revived—but with very limited exercise of authority. Raúl has taken charge of government, but he must still contend with Fidel’s legendary presence.
Expectations of change under Raúl Castro have been largely unmet; continuity remains the key theme of his regime. Meanwhile, the election of Barack Obama in the United States has resulted in a reexamination of U.S. policy toward Cuba, including some meaningful, however limited, first steps to reach out to the regime in Havana. The U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationship is likely to remain a work in progress well into the future. This report, which outlines conclusions reached from the seven panel discussions with experts in the field, is intended as a point of reference for decisionmakers in and out of government who deal with Cuba.
Over the past decade, Latin America has experienced considerable political upheaval. Persistent poverty, corruption, and public insecurity have produced profound popular dissatisfaction and caused widespread ideological ferment. While the electoral results of this ferment are frequently described as a “lurch to the left,” such descriptions are misleading. Latin America is not experiencing a uniform shift to the left; it is witnessing a competition between two very different political trends.
He argues that references to a uniform “left turn” in the region are misleading, and that Latin America is in fact witnessing a dynamic competition between two very different forms of governance.
Pickup trucks with machine guns, such as this Liberian 'technical', are the poor man's armoured cavalry. Image: Army Technology.com
Army Technology.com website investigates new bulked-up civil-military hybrids that are taking the Latin American market by storm.
New York based consultant and commentator Richard Gasparre wrote the article, “Latin America Has ‘El Amor’ for Armour on Vehicles“, which assesses the current trend in armored vehicles in the southern cone with the following observation:
Up-armouring is becoming as popular among Latin American civilians as it is among US troops in the Middle East, and the paramilitarised environment in some Latin countries may breed a new species of bulked-up civil-military hybrids just as the prospect of unconventional warfare favoured the slimmed-down Stryker family of US armoured vehicles.
Juanita Castro, the exiled sister of Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro, is set to release a first-person memoir in which she talks at length about her brothers. The more than 400-page book titled: “My Brothers Fidel and Raul. The Secret Story,” is set for release Oct. 26. It is co-written by Spanish-language journalist Maria Antoineta Collins and will be published by Santillana USA, reports AP.
The following quote is the executive summary of a report written by the Library of Congress which concludes that the removal of former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was legal and Constitutional:
The Supreme Court of Honduras has constitutional and statutory authority to hear cases against the President of the Republic and many other high officers of the State, to adjudicate and enforce judgments, and to request the assistance of the public forces to enforce its rulings. The Constitution no longer authorizes impeachment, but gives Congress the power to disapprove of the conduct of the President, to conduct special investigations on issues of national interest, and to interpret the Constitution. In the case against President Zelaya, the National Congress interpreted the power to disapprove of the conduct of the President to encompass the power to remove him from office, based on the results of a special, extensive investigation. The Constitution prohibits the expatriation of Honduran citizens.
Cubans began taking a hard look this week at entrenched customs like food rationing, pilfering on the job, cradle-to-grave subsidies and black market trading in a national debate called by Army General Raul Castro. Authorities have circulated a ten-point agenda for thousands of open-ended meetings over the next month at work places, universities and community organizations to “rethink” Cuban socialism, focused on the economic themes highlighted by Castro in a speech to the National Assembly in August.
Soviet Delta II Submarine. Artwork by Edward L. Cooper (1987). A Delta II could fire the nuclear-tipped SS-N-18 Stingray ballistic missile from 16 launch tubes. Image: dia.mil
The New York Times reports today on the National Security Archive (George Washington University) releasing a two-volume study, Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985, conducted in 1995 by BDM Corporation (a Pentagon contractor) which drew unique interview evidence with former Soviet military officers, military analysts, and industrial specialists, covering a wide range of strategic issues, including force levels and postures, targeting and war planning, weapons effects, and the role of defense industries.
Andrew Marshall, former director of the Office of Net Evaluation at the Defense Department was the sponsor of the study.
Fidel Castro in the 80s, according to the study, recommended to the Soviets a tougher stance against the United States:
During the early 1980s, according to the interviews, Fidel Castro recommended to the Kremlin a harder line against Washington, even suggesting the possibility of nuclear strikes. The pressure stopped after Soviet officials gave Castro a briefing on the ecological impact on Cuba of nuclear strikes on the United States.
The Pentagon study attributes the Cuba revelation to Andrian A. Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer from 1964 to ’90 and director of the staff officers who wrote the Soviet Union’s final reference guide on strategic and nuclear planning.
In the early 1980s, the study quotes him as saying that Mr. Castro “pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line against the U.S. up to and including possible nuclear strikes.”
The general staff, General Danilevich continued, “had to actively disabuse him of this view by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.”
That information, the general concluded, “changed Castro’s positions considerably.”
To read the summary of General Danilevich’s interview, click here.
EFE reports (via Spain’s newspaper ABC) the Cuban government has freed Juan Carlos González Marco, alias “Pánfilo”, who was sentenced to a two-year term for protesting and asking for food on a widely viewed video on the Internet. The wire service said he was sent to a psychiatric hospital to “cure” his alcoholism.
Smiley meets his nemesis Karla face-to-face in the BBC televised serialization of John Le Carré's Smiley's People.
Babalu Blog has posted the following letter written by Cuban spy-hunter, Lt. Col. Chris Simmons (U.S. Army Reserve, Counterintelligence), to the Miami Herald clarifying factual errors in an article about Alberto Coll, whom Simmons has called an agent of influence for the Cuban government. (See CPD’s prior posts here and here for background.)
Too Little, Too Late, And Still Wrong
I was appalled by the errors and omissions in Juan Tamayo’s article “Ex-U.S. Official Was Investigated For Espionage”(7 Sep 09).
The Miami Herald presents only two new facts in this article. First, the FBI’s written acknowledgement that it investigated Dr. Alberto Coll for espionage and second, Coll’s admission that he knew he was the subject of an espionage case rather than a criminal inquiry regarding a travel violation.
In stark contrast to these two meager facts, the errors in the Miami Herald story are numerous:
First, you totally misrepresented Bill Gertz’s brief account of Alberto Coll in his book “Enemies: How America’s Foes Are Stealing Our Vital Secrets–And How We Let It Happen. Officials did not tell Gertz they “believed” [your word] Coll was a spy. Instead, they stated it as a fact. Gertz wrote “Cuba’s intelligence service had recruited Coll…in part, by using a female agent to seduce him.” Gertz also noted that Coll’s “…spying was uncovered in 2005.” These are not Gertz’s opinions or assessments, but facts provided to him by U.S. Government officials. You could have verified this yourself by calling him directly (his number is on his webpage, “The Gertz File”). You failed to take this elementary fact-checking step, something I confirmed by calling Bill Gertz myself.
Second, Coll maintained a top-secret clearance during his tenure with the U.S. government, not a secret clearance as you reported.
Third, Coll’s security clearance was permanently revoked and his law license suspended for a year following his plea agreement, two easily verifiable facts you omitted.
I am also curious as to the self-serving boast that “a month after his [Coll’s] conviction,” the Miami Herald filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Justice Department. Why did you limit yourself to the Justice Department? After all, Coll worked for the Navy. As such, the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) conducted a joint investigation. Any reputable newspaper would have filed FOIA requests with both entities.
Likewise, you failed to contact Special Agent (Retired) Ron Olive, who led the NCIS office in Newport, Rhode Island during the Coll investigation. Now an author, a simple call to his publisher could have facilitated an interview.
On a related note, when is the Miami Herald going to file a FOIA request for the debriefings of Captain Jesus Raul Perez Mendez? The former Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI) officer defected in 1983 and “outed” at least 67 Cuban Intelligence officers, agents, collaborators and organizations. A three and a half page overview of his reporting has been available on the internet for years. Equally important, Perez Mendez is still alive and as of last year lived in Puerto Rico. When can we expect the Miami Herald to investigate this story? A Pulitzer Prize surely awaits the reporter who lands that exposé.
Beginning this month the Cuban government has authorized the celebration of religious services in all penitentiaries of the island, informs the Cuban Council of Churches, which unites all protestant denominations throughout the island.
Army General Raul Castro moved the maximum authorities of the capital and eastern province of Pinar del Río as part of the restructuring of his government which five months ago reached the other four regions, an official communique informs.
Former First Sec (PCC) of Havana Pedro Sáenz
At the proposal by his selected Politburo, reports AFP, the governing Cuban Communist Party (PCC) agreed to free Pedro Sáenz from his responsibilities as first secretary of the capital and Mercedes López was named to replace him in a plenary session of that body presided by Vice-President José Ramón Machado.
Lazara Mercedes Lopez
Sáenz (56), who held the post since 2003 will join the National Defense College as part of his advancement, according to the communique which also announced that López (45), a forestry engineer, was prior to the appointment responsible for education, science and sports sections of the Central Committee Secretariat of the PPC.
In another move announced today in the local press, the first secretary of the PCC in Pinar del Río, Olga Lidia Tapia, will move to the Central Committee, she is replaced by Gladys Martínez (38), an agronomy engineer, serving as a minor functionary of that province, AFP added.
Provincial leaders of the PCC are the maximum representation of government and all are members of the Central Committee whose first secretary Fidel Castro remains in that position despite being retired from power because of illness and second secretary Raúl Castro.
The chief of the Russian General Staff has arrived in Cuba for a working visit at the invitation of the Cuban military leadership.Gen. Nikolai Makarov, who landed in Havana late on Monday, will meet with his Cuban counterpart Gen. Alvaro Lopez Miera and other top brass, and “visit a number of military installations,” Russian Ambassador in Cuba Mikhail Kamynin said.
Although the Cuban leadership has repeatedly said it has no intention of resuming military cooperation with Russia after the surprise closure of the Russian electronic listening post in Lourdes in 2001, bilateral military ties seem to have been improving following the visit of Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to Cuba in July last year.
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Some Russian military sources have recently indicated that if a political decision is made Moscow could resume operations at the Lourdes facility and also use airbases in Cuba for refueling of strategic aircraft.
The Spanish daily, El País, presents Varas Llosa’s clear thoughts on some present Latin American leaders and the role that some governments, such as Spain’s, are playing in regards to them: “In Latin America, in contrast to counties like Spain, democracy is not there to stay. There is always the posibility of taking steps backward. This is seen in the clear involution of countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. Instead, other leftist governments, such as Brazil’s have demonstrated more common sense and have realized that to progress they have to believe in a market economy.”
On the issue of Cuba:
“Of course I was mistaken. I defended the Cuban revolution. I believed that it represented what we were looking for; a society stemmed with liberty. The truth is I wanted to believe in what I wanted to see, but I have recognized my errors. The worst is persisting in that error. Regarding present day Cuba, one can ask, how is it possible that the Cuban populace does not do the same in rebelling as was done by Poles and Hungarians. Having reached the conclusion that “a totalitarian dictatorship like Cuba’s kills whatever spirit of hope and primary impetus of liberty. Today in Cuba, hope is reduced to taking a boat and leaving for Miami.”
The rest of Vargas Llosa’s thoughts on Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Alvaro Uribe, and Perú, Colombia and Brasil from the El País article can be found here.
Russia has agreed to lend Venezuela over $2bn to buy weapons, Hugo Chavez has said. The credit will be used to purchase nearly 100 tanks and a series of anti-aircraft rocket systems from Russia, reports the BBC.
“Movies have often romanticized Communist revolutionaries—think Benicio Del Toro as Che. But a new action thriller, The Baader Meinhof Complex, counterpunches, exposing the violent psychosis that gripped the young militants of the Red Army Faction in 1970s West Germany,” writes Christopher Hitchens in last month’s Vanity Fair magazine.
Despite the world’s worst economic slump since the 1930s and projections that the number of poor in Latin America will rise this year, countries in the region have embarked on their biggest military spending spree in recent memory.
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Overall defense spending in Latin America and the Caribbean grew by 91 percent over the past five years, to $47.2 billion in 2008, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The countries that most increased their military spending were Venezuela, Brazil and Chile, the group said.
Juan Almeida Bosque, a Commander of the Revolution, and member of the Cuban gerontocracy has died, reports state media. He was 82 and the cause of death was heart failure. Addt’l coverage from AFP, BBC and Reuters.
The Cuban Intelligence Services (CuIS) found within the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, and the Cuban Communist Party could hamper or promote a transition toward democracy when Communism passes as a form of government.
Romania’s experience offers examples of which path a post-Communist government can undertake in restructuring its intelligence services instilling the establishment of democratic control over an intelligence apparatus.
The article provides valuable lessons learned of democratic control over post-Communist intelligence services and the following paragraph best sums up that experience:
Romania’s intelligence system has followed a path from serving as an instrument of communist dictatorship to being an effective intelligence community under democratic control. This achievement is notable, considering both the relatively short amount of time for the transition and the foundations of the organization—the Securitate.
With the collapse of Communism in 1989, Romania transitioned from an authoritarian regime to a functioning democracy, thereby disproving scholars’ skepticism with regard to its low chances for democratic consolidation.
Its road to a free society has been long and difficult, but, despite a series of shortcomings and failures, Romania has built up from ground zero the basic democratic institutions (political society, rule of law, state-apparatus, economic society, and a functioning civil society), demonstrating that its ‘‘course towards democracy is irreversible.’’
Boeing is sweetening its bid to beat Dassault Aviation SA and win an order for 36 jet fighters from Brazil’s air force, offered to assemble most of the proposed contract’s F/A-18 Super Hornets in the country, reports Bloomberg. Boeing wants to prevent France’s Dassault from winning work that analysts estimate could be valued at as much as 5 billion euros ($7.29 billion).
A moderate dissident group in Cuba that aspires to become a “political majority” in the future announced that it would hold a congress in 2010. The social democratic group, Arco Progresista (AP), says 150 to 200 delegates from around the country will take part in the congress. The aim is for 12 months of preparations to culminate in September 2010 in two days of “strategic” debates and the election of a board of AP leaders. In the past, similar initiatives have been squelched by Cuba’s communist government, which considers all dissidents “mercenaries” in the service of the hostile U.S. policy towards Cuba. But the organisers of next year’s congress believe that conditions have improved.
Cuba indeed puts police dogs to work in an eerily broad range of cases, not only finding fugitives and illegal drugs but warehousing the bottled scents of thousands of suspects so the canines can later identify criminals and political dissidents.
Havana has proudly and publicly claimed that crime investigators regularly solve cases with dogs and human scents gathered from crime scenes and suspects, which it argues are almost as unique as fingerprints.
“In the past 12 years, there have been more than 3,000 cases in which, based on scent, it has been possible to establish the identity” of criminals, Rafael Hernández, a criminology professor at Havana University, wrote in a 2003 paper titled La Odorología Criminalística en Cuba.
He went on to describe details of the police dog program, among them the preservation of scents in pickle-like jars, the warehousing of the scents for up to five years and their use in olfactory versions of line-ups, with six bottles instead of suspects.
But U.S. experts say such broad use of dogs, especially the bottled and warehoused scents, are highly questionable in terms of evidentiary value in court, and thoroughly draconian when applied to political dissidents.
“The New Israel Lobby“ article in today’s The New York Times Magazine discusses J Street, a year-old lobbying group with progressive views on Israel and points out to Cuban-Americans’ circumstance:
There’s a curious and striking analogy with the situation of Cuban-Americans, whose politics until quite recently were dominated by the generation that fled Castro’s revolution and were grimly determined to see his regime overthrown. Obama has not had to pay a price for moderating the American embargo, as his predecessors would have, because Cuban-American opinion is no longer in thrall to the older generation — precisely J Street’s goal in regard to the Middle East.
New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau delivered a speech yesterday at the Brookings Institution about the Iran-Venezuela axis. Today’s Wall Street Journal published an op-ed of his speech whereby he outlines the “cozy financial, political and military partnership rooted in a shared anti-American animus.”
Brazil entered into a billion-dollar-plus agreement to buy 36 French fighter jets. The upgrading of its military arsenal could be a factor in contributing to an arms race in Latin America. ”The fact that Brazil has sought partners outside of Latin America in search of technological know-how could provoke an arms race in the continent and could become an obstacle to major collaboration with neighboring countries in the defense sector,” opined German political scientist Daniel Flemes.
Coll served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflicts under President George H. Bush, and later as head of the Strategic Studies Department at the Navy War College.
Last year he was accused of being an agent of influence for the Cuban government by Lt. Col. Chris Simmons in the Miami-based TV program A Mano Limpia.
RAND describes Chinese global activism as “continually changing and has so many dimensions that it immediately raises questions about its current and future intentions and the implications for global stability and prosperity.”
Moreover, the study “examines how China views its security environment, how it defines its international objectives, how it is pursuing these objectives, and the consequences for U.S. economic and security interests.”
Chinese expanded strategic interests (including business interests) in Latin America and Cuba is accelerating at a fast pace.
As this study points out:
China is building political relationships to diversify its access to energy and other natural resources, with a focus on Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Energy security encompasses diversifying both suppliers and supply routes.
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China’s expanding involvement in Latin America is primarily (but not exclusively) driven by economic considerations: gaining access to markets, investments, and resources. The growth in China’s merchandise trade and investment in the region offers strong evidence of Chi- na’s economic motives. Trade between China and Latin America and the Caribbean has rapidly increased over the last several years, and as a result, this region has become more important to China. From 1999 to 2006, total merchandise trade increased from $8.2 billion to close to $70 billion, an almost tenfold increase. In 2006, Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 4 percent of China’s total world trade, increasing its share by 1.7 percent since 1999.
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China’s investments in Latin America are growing as well. China currently has projects in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Domini- can Republic, Guyana, and Venezuela, among other nations. China’s investments in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela are mainly focused on facilitating access to such natural resources as iron ore, copper, and oil (in the case of Venezuela); as such, its investments have been in the mining, transportation, manufacturing, and petroleum sectors.
In Venezuela, police violence – and corruption – has reached extremes. Recently, the justice minister, Tarek El-Aissami, said 20% of all crime was committed by police, a startling admission…There are daily killings. Between January 2008 and March 2009, police were implicated in 755 “homicide cases”. With some cases including multiple killings, the number of dead is likely to be significantly higher. In the first three months of 2009, there were 155 cases.
God’s pampered people, whom, debauched with ease,
No king could govern, nor no God could please;
Gods they had tried of every shape and size,
That godsmiths could produce, or priests devise;
These Adam-wits, too fortunately free,
Began to dream they wanted liberty:
And when no rule, no precedent was found,
Of men, by laws less circumscribed and bound;
They led their wild desires to woods and caves,
And thought that all but savages were slaves.
Jon Basil Utley, a former South American correspondent for Knight Ridder, demarcates Third World dictatorships in his article published in Reason magazine.
He briefly discusses the time he lived in Cuba (1958) during the Batista period, noting: “Batista never used the type of brutality Fidel Castro later imposed, but his government was corrupt, and was dependent on cronyism and upon its police, who were in turn corrupted by power.”
Utley best illustrates with the following observation:
Understanding how such dictatorships actually function would help Washington to avoid more foreign policy disasters. If Americans better understood the weaknesses of most foreign tyrannies, we’d be less inclined to see them as great threats. Also, we would have to face the reality that administering them effectively would mean establishing a permanent corps of occupation forces on the British or Roman model. Even then modern communications and weaponry might make our rule fail. Tribal societies cannot be easily converted into democracies.
The Obama administration policy in Latin America is, intentionally or not, encouraging a return of the “president for life” caudillo leadership pattern.
The delegation was met at the airport by Kim Hyong Jun, vice-minister of Foreign Affairs, and Jose Manuel Galego Montano, Cuban ambassador to the DPRK.
Der Spiegel article on Castro protégé Hugo Chavez, a “charismatic autocrat trying to cement his hold on power in a bid to silence a growing political opposition.”
Remnants of the terrorist group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) utilize combat tactics made famous by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war which were demonstrated in images presented today by Peru’s Defense Minister Rafael Rey.
A crackdown on corruption by Army General Raul Castro is causing consternation among ordinary Cubans, who say it is biting into the flourishing black market and reducing a prized source of cheaper food and other items.
The complaints are tempered by the expectation that inventive Cubans, driven by economic necessity and seasoned by years of filching from the centralized socialist economy, will soon restore the pipeline of illicit goods to full flow.
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But Cubans say the offer of products on the black market, where goods generally are much cheaper than in stores, has dropped off noticeably. The average salary in Cuba is about $20 a month, so the black market helps Cubans stretch their money or, if they are sellers, supplement their income.
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Castro’s transfer of many retail businesses to military control has caused state employees who once routinely stole goods to stop, or at least think twice. Military managers are said to exercise better inventory control and be less tolerant of filching.
China provided Cuba $600 million dollars in loans and grants Wednesday during a visit to strengthen ties by the Asian giant’s parliamentary head Wu Bangguo, diplomatic sources said.
Pedro NúñezMosquera (58), Cuba’s current ambassador to Brazil, has been appointed by the Council of State to be the government’s ambassador to the United Nations, reports AFP.
Núñez is an attorney and began his diplomatic career in 1975; holding diverse posts including ambassador to Zimbabwe (1994) and director of Multilateral Affairs for the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
The Cuban government is considering easing its stranglehold on the retail sector in an effort to legalise the underground economy and reduce massive theft. A recent communiqué from the Communist party’s central committee suggested change was coming to one of the world’s two remaining Soviet-style command economies, the other being North Korea…Cuba is battling a liquidity crisis, shrinking production and increased pressure from a frustrated public and creditors.
Chinese legislator Wu Bangguo begins his official visit to Cuba today, further promoting the growing exchanges between the two countries. This will be the first visit of a high-level Chinese legislative delegation to Cuba after the one made in January 2007 by then NPC Standing Committee Vice Chairman Cheng Siwei, reports Xinhua.
While Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez is on a three day visit to China. Rodríguez is scheduled to give a speech today at the Chinese Social Sciences Academy. He will also meet with several high-ranking Chinese government officials during his visit.
China is Cuba’s second commercial partner with a balance in 2008 of $2.2 billion.
“Cuba is . .. probably the world’s most completely militarised country.” Adrian J. English, author of Armed Forces of Latin America (1984)
Granmapublished today a propaganda laden summary on the revolutionary origins of Cuba’s militias.
However, assessments were made in 1960 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the Cuban militia. These assessments were published in the Agency’s Central Intelligence Bulletin (21 NOV 60) and Current Intelligence Weekly (23 NOV 60).
Cuban militiamen during the Bay of Pigs (1961). Image: MINREX
CIA opined at the time:
In an effort to strengthen its control, the Castro regime is giving intensive training throughout the island to a militia force of some 200,000 “volunteers”….The militia, which has a number of similarities to the Chinese Communist militia, is not only a force for police control but also a means of subjecting a relatively large number of Cubans to military discipline and political indoctrination. It also provides the regime with a cheap labor force, reducing the threat of political unrest stemming from the chronic unemployment problem. With extensive Communist penetration at all levels, the militia could also prove valuable against anti-Castro activity in the less politically reliable regular armed forces.
Read my prior post Paramilitary orgs in Post-Castro era for an assessment on the importance of these paramilitary organizations in Cuba’s future.
Calviac Laferté served prior to the appointment as chief of protocol in the Ministry of Foreign Relations and Gala López was the sub-director of Socio-Humanitarian Affairs within the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
It looks like the EU diplomats who visited the wife of dissident Darsi Ferrer have hit a raw nerve with the Cuban government. Ferrer was arrested last month on charges of buying bags of cement on the black market. More on the Cuban regime’s reaction.
Cuba delivered a formal protest today to diplomats from five European Union embassies who visited the home of a jailed dissident. The Ministry of Foreign Relations summoned the diplomats from Sweden, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland and Germany to denounce the visit, according to two of the officials. Staffers at foreign embassies often have contacts with the families of jailed opposition activists, sometimes drawing rebukes from Cuba which sees the visits as meddling in its internal affairs…It was the European Union’s first contact with a top opposition activist since last summer, when it lifted five years of sanctions imposed for Cuba’s arrest of 75 leading dissidents.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the country’s foreign policy seeks more convergence between Iran and Latin America in all spheres. In a farewell visit with Cuban ambassador to Iran Fernando Garcia Ricardo, Mottaki said the two countries’ massive potentials particularly in medical and health areas can help strengthen bilateral relations. He also called Tehran-Havana relations “strategic”. Also Fernando Garcia Ricardo said expansion of ties with Iran is among Cuba government’s priorities.
Cuban authorities acknowledge the future of the revolution is in the hands of younger generations. However, the elderly dominate the pinnacle of power. The majority of members of the Politburo of the Cuban Communist Party – a major instance of power on the island – are septuagenarians.
University of Florida Professor José Alvarez has authored a fact sheet on Cuba’s food rationing system.
Despite the fact that rationed products are sold at subsidized prices (fixed throughout the country), their supply always falls short. Since, according to the majority of Cubans, the rationed items are not enough to feed a person for the entire month, those who can afford it are forced to fulfill their needs for the remainder of the month (usually about two weeks) through purchases in other outlets where prices are much higher and/or where the purchases must be made with U.S. dollars.
Alvarez has conducted several studies assessing Cuba’s agriculture, which includes markets, sugar, and pre-revolutionary statistics.
Revolutionary National Police. Image: Miscelaneas de Cuba
Cuba’s National Police has made a public recruitment (an announcement made in Cuban state media) of men and women between the ages of 18-40 who posses adequate political and moral conditioning, and a love for investigating and risk, reported the Spanish news agency EFE last week.
The special operations unit of the National Police, which works in “discovery, prevention, and clarification of criminal and economic crimes via the use of operational secret methods and means,” is looking for candidates for their “operative officers” position.
With this open public call it looks likes the National Police is expanding its ranks to further surveil the Cuban populace as a means to control dissent since the bleak economic reality of the regime poses a sustainable threat to stability.
This week’s issue of The Economist has a briefing article assessing Latin American geopolitics aptly titled “The dragon in the backyard.”
The diversification of Latin America’s economic ties has raised in some minds a nagging question: does it foreshadow geopolitical changes? In the United States some Republicans worry that China’s growing economic weight poses a political threat. Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, has noted that China and Iran are making “disturbing” gains in the region. But many Latin Americans prefer to see China’s expanding ties to their region as an opportunity. The region, with Brazil in the lead, is forging “south-south” alliances with China, India, Russia and South Africa to push for changes in what they all see as an unjust world economic order.
But for Latin America two other questions may be just as important, if not more so. The first is whether the industrialisation of China and India is helping or hindering its own economic development. The second is whether growing economic and political ties with non-democratic countries such as China, Russia and Iran could undermine Latin America’s own hard-won commitment to democracy.
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Chinese investment has so far been overwhelmingly concentrated in mining and oil. (An early and still unusual exception is a joint venture with Brazil, dating from the 1980s, to produce communications satellites, in which China provides 70% of the finance and the technology.) Toromocho is just one of three big investments in copper projects in Peru. Chinese companies have become the biggest foreign investors in Ecuador’s oil industry.
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Venezuela under Mr Chávez has sought closer ties not just with China but also with Russia and Iran. During the cold war the Soviet Union bankrolled Cuba for almost three decades, and supported left-wing movements and governments throughout the region. Last year Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian president since those days to visit Latin America. Russia also sent a small naval flotilla to the Caribbean for joint exercises with Venezuela and Cuba. This was a tit-for-tat gesture after the United States sent ships to support Georgia after its brief war with Russia last summer.
Russia’s abiding interest in Latin America is focused on arms sales. Between 2005 and 2008 Mr Chávez bought Russian weapons worth $4.4 billion, including 24 Sukhoi fighters. As the oil price sank last year, shrinking Mr Chávez’s kitty, Russia offered a $1 billion credit line for further arms purchases. This month Mr Chávez said he would seek “battalions of tanks” from Russia on his next visit to Moscow, in response to an agreement letting America use military bases in neighbouring Colombia. But his most worrying purchase was of 100,000 Kalashnikov automatic rifles and a production line to build more. Colombian officials fear that some of these rifles will end up with the FARC guerrillas.
The Cuban government appointed journalist Rogelio Polanco as the new ambassador to Venezuela, announced in an official statement. The position was occupied during 15 years by sociologist Germán Sánchez. Polanco, the editor of newspaper Juventud Rebelde, one of the two state-run nationwide newspapers, “has accomplished important missions linked to Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution” over the past five years, according to the statement published in the Cuban official newspaper Granma. The political career of the new ambassador began with the Union of Young Communists (UJC), where he was a member of the National Bureau (1994-1998) and of its National Committee (1994-97). In 1997, Polanco organized the World Festival of Youth and Students held in Havana, AFP reported.
While in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, the government has a growing monopoly on the media. According to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Open Source Center (OSC), which said in a new assessment (pdf): The Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez “is moving forcefully to silence critics by introducing a Media Crimes bill that would give it sweeping authority to jail journalists, media executives, and bloggers who report on anything that the government considers to be harmful to state interests.”
Dr. Max G. Manwaring, Professor of Military Strategy in the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army War College (USAWC), has penned an op-ed titled. “The Role of Cuban Paramilitary Organizations (People’s Militias) in the Post-Castro Era.”
For 50 years, Cuba’s popular militias (paramilitary organizations) have been expected to act as “midwifes for new social orders” (as they did in Africa during the 1960s and early 1970s), and to help defend and maintain the revolutionary Socialist state. Anyone contemplating the post-Castro Era in Cuba will certainly have to take these paramilitary organizations into consideration.
A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.
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The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the United States Navy, and not one of the larger submarines that can launch intercontinental nuclear missiles.
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According to Defense Department officials, one of the Russian submarines remained in international waters on Tuesday about 200 miles off the coast of the United States. The location of the second remained unclear. One senior official said the second submarine traveled south in recent days toward Cuba, while another senior official with access to reports on the surveillance mission said it had sailed away in a northerly direction.
The administration of Cubalse (one of the largest state companies devoted to providing services to foreign firms and embassies and to the collection of hard currency through chains of stores, cafeterias, as well as car sales and apartment rentals) will now be under the control of the Cuban military per AFP.
Supermarkets, warehouses and clothing stores in Havana will remain closed while inventory is taking place.
The transfer of control is part of economic restructuring dictated by Raul Castro’s government three months ago.
Associate Professor of Political Scientist Javier Corrales who teaches at Amherst wrote a report titled “Petro-Politics and the Promotion of Disorder,” for one of the workshops where he analyzes how Venezuela’s windfall of profits from oil production/sales has been the “Chávez government’s principal tool for exerting influence beyond Venezuela’s borders,” which has been instrumental in the dismantling of democracy within the Venezuelan state and propping anti-democratic forces in bordering states.
Corrales focuses on the Cuba-Venezuela economic relationship in the following paragraphs:
Among Venezuela’s authoritarian allies, Cuba is probably the most important for the regime’s self-image, and the relationship is distinguished by a unique exchange of financial support for ideological endorsement. From Cuba’s perspective, Venezuela has replaced the Soviet Union as its main sponsor, supplying handsome oil subsidies that allow the island state to reexport as much as 40 percent of the fuel it receives. This allowance is provided with almost no political or other conditions, unlike any aid or investment Cuba might obtain from international organizations or democratic countries. In return, Cuba serves as the issuer of a certificate of good “radical” credentials, permitting Chávez to flaunt his anti-imperialism and score points among the most extreme elements of the left in Latin America. Cuba also provides tangible assistance in the form of almost 40,000 technical experts, including doctors, nurses, teachers, coaches, and military and intelligence personnel.
Since Raúl Castro became president of Cuba, there has been speculation that the Cuban government is growing wary of the island’s dependence on its new benefactor. There are rumors, for instance, that Castro does not like Chávez personally, and that he is pursuing ways to diversify the country’s economic ties. Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that the special relationship between Cuba and Venezuela will endure. Each country is providing the other with assets that are cheap for the donor and valuable to the recipient. Venezuela’s subsidy to Cuba consists of a small fraction of its oil production, while Cuba has a surplus of trained technical experts. The ideological endorsement, of course, costs Cuba nothing.
Raul Castro says Cuba will cut spending on education and health care, weakening the building blocks of its communist system to try to revive a floundering economy.
But Castro vows that anyone waiting for fundamental political change when he and his brother Fidel are gone is “doomed to failure.”
He told parliament Saturday, “I wasn’t elected president to return capitalism to Cuba or surrender the revolution.”
He said he was “elected to defend, build and perfect socialism, not destroy it.”
UPDATE: Full text of Raul’s speech before the National Assembly whereby the Army General announced the celebration of the VI Party Congress, which will take place next year.
Moreover, he also declared that a National Conference will take place shortly in which a new Politburo, Central Committee and Secretariat will be named before the party congress takes place.
Cuba’s National Assembly selected today Homero Acosta Álvarez as Secretary of the Council of State.
Acosta has served as an interim figure in that post since March of this year when he replaced José Miguel Miyar Barrueco.
Acosta, 45, is a law graduate from the University of Havana and holds a Master’s degree in public law from the University of Valencia, Spain. He is also a member of the National Union of Jurists. Acosta began his career in the Revolutionary Armed Forces and was First Deputy Chief of Staff to Raúl Castro.
UPDATE: In addition, Gladys María Bejerano Portela, 62, was elected by the National Assembly as Controller General of the Republic. An institution who’s role will bring order, economic discipline, internal control and battle corruption. (Ed. Note: It seems another institutional mechanism to continue the purge set forth by Raulistas against actors who pose or perceived as a threat to their power.) She has been the Minister of Auditing and Control since May 2006. Bejerano holds a Bachelor’s in Social Sciences. She also served as a high-ranking functionary of the PCC and the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.
Mijéiev recalled that Russia is developing a network of aircraft maintenance services (for MiG-21, MiG-23 and Su-22 planes) abroad, particularly in Latin American nations like Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela where maintenance and repair centers have been or will be installed shortly.
It looks like the ousted president of Honduras reportedly asked President Obama to revoke the diplomatic visas of members of interim President Roberto Micheletti’s de facto government.
NightWatch, a nightly executive intelligence recap produced by AFCEA, sagely opines on US blunderous policy toward the Honduran political crisis:
The US bullying of Micheletti risks a blowback effect in which he becomes the latest Latin American hero to stand up to the US. If the Bolivarians experience such an epiphany, they and the Cubans will turn against the US Secretary of State on this issue as fast as a serpent.
Imagine the socialists and communists supporting the free enterprise democrats in Honduras against the US; almost as crazy as the US State Department aligning with the socialists and communists against one of America’s most steadfast allies in Latin America. That would be condign punishment for misrepresenting the facts.
Heretofore, the Carter Administration was renowned for beating up US allies over human rights violations while coddling the communists and socialists, even inviting them to the White House.
Readers would be justified in suspecting that some people at State are covering up their judgmental blunders, indicated by the Department’s persistent distortion of the facts of the Honduran situation. The evidence is overwhelming — and not refuted by Zelaya or the State Department — that Zelaya attempted a political coup to usurp the Honduran constitution by means of a referendum that had been ruled unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court.
His gambit failed when the armed forces refused to carry out illegal orders to distribute ballot boxes for the referendum and when the Congress and Supreme Court staged a successful political counter-coup by ordering the army to give him the boot.
If State could commit to rule of law, it might support the coming election in November which is on track and on schedule as the best mechanism for taking the pulse of the Honduran electorate. It might even suggest accelerating the election timetable.
For now a sharply declining number of Hondurans seem to care that Zelaya is absent. They have more important and immediate problems, such as survival.
In a meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee, officials agreed to postpone indefinitely the first party congress since 1997, which had been announced for late this year, the Communist Party daily Granma reported.
The daily quoted Raul Castro, who spoke to the party’s central committee, as saying, “Because of the laws of life, this will be the last (congress) led by the historic leadership of the revolution,” referring to age and time.
Among circles friendly to the Cuban regime there has been commentary that Sylvia Wilhelm’s deposition in her defamation case against Lt. Col. Chris Simmons is quite complicated and may even backfire.
There might be moments on the horizon somewhat valuable for some people between Havana and Miami.
Last September, Gen. Michael Hayden (Director, Central Intelligence Agency) addressed the ODNI Open Source Conference in Washington, D.C. about the importance of open source intelligence collection.
General Hayden made an interesting anecdote (as follows) about his visit to a Key West open source facility wherein he watched a Cuban program and observed what analysts were able to extract from broadcasts on the island.
“In addition to that, we made a special effort to visit the outposts in the open source enterprise as well, and I think I we’ve got four of those already in terms of notches on my belt. One stop that meant a great deal to me was designed to be a courtesy call. I was in Key West, not on business. (Chuckles.) And there is an open source facility there that looks at that island about 90 miles just off the southern marker buoy there.
It was going to be a 20-minute courtesy call. I was there for three hours because, talk about time on target, the people in this little cinderblock shack on the extreme southern reaches of Key West knew so much about what was happening in Cuba. And for me as the Director of CIA to sit with them and watch Cuban soap operas and have them tell me what they were extracting from watching these soap operas was quite remarkable.
They gave me a videotape, DVD, of a program that they had captured from the Internet. And it had a Cuban soap-opera star starring in it, and there are only two other players. And his name is Nicanor (sp) and he’s making a fine brew of coffee and there’s a knock at his door. And it’s two individuals from the security service to install the microphones. (Laughter.)
We’re here to install the microphones. He says, what do you mean, microphones? And it goes for about 17 minutes of some of the most subtle satiric commentary on a totalitarian state I have ever seen. He mentions that they have to decide where to put the microphones and they can t put them in the kitchen because it s too noisy and the bedroom air conditioner interferes with it. So, finally, they say, we have to put the microphones in the bathroom. (Laughter.)
So he says, when I criticize the government, I must go into the bathroom? (Laughter.) And he said, why don’t we put another microphone over here? And then they begin to criticize him. What kind of person are you? There are only a limited number of microphones in Cuba! (Laughter.) There’s a family down the street that criticizes the government day and night. They have 11 kids and they’re only allotted one microphone.
It gave me a new appreciation for life and thought and the situation on the island.”
It looks like Gen. Hayden is referring to Monte Rouge, a Cuban satirical short, which spoofs state security. (Click video above to see the short.)
In a speech marking Revolution Day, Fidel Castro’s successor, Army General Raul Castro, said that the global economic crisis means tougher times ahead for Cuba, but the country has no one to blame but itself for poor farm production that leads to frequent shortages of fruits, vegetables and other basics.
David Ronfeldt, a former senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation who is now retired, has written several reports and monographs on Cuba’s political system and politics dating back to the mid-1970s.
The TIMN model refers to Dr. Ronfeldt’s “review of history and theory, four forms of organization — and evidently only four — lie behind the governance and evolution of all societies across the ages: tribal, institutional, market, and network.” (For further analysis see his working paper from RAND.)
Dr. Ronfeldt states: “I think Cuba is an interesting case for illuminating some theoretical principles that may be important for building the TIMN framework and understanding its implications for how to achieve social evolution.”
He further illustrates:
“One aim of the TIMN framework is to provide clarity as to why systems like Cuba’s are so limited — in fact, self-limiting. The framework also shows how to think about Cuba’s future from an evolutionary standpoint.
Briefly stated: In the name of revolution, Fidel Castro committed a strategic error of devolutionary proportions. He rejected developing Cuba in T+I+M directions, and fell back to construct a hyper T+I system. If this could have served to prepare Cuba for an eventual new transition to a +M system, the outlook for post-Castro Cuba might be promising. But his regime’s practices have not assured that Cuba will get a +M transition right, even though it is the inevitable next phase. Meanwhile, +N forces are even more suborned and restricted, especially among civil-society NGOs.
Fidel represents a supreme contemporary expression of the fusion of T+I ideals and principles. Accordingly, he has believed that if people would just behave like one big family under his chieftaincy, then everything would work fine. He did not see that the organizational forms on which his ideals rested — the tribal and institutional forms — have performance capabilities that are self-limiting, especially with regard to economic growth. Indeed, Cuba’s low level of development today reflects the inherent incapacity of T+I designs to promote and manage increasing levels of economic complexity. As with the feudal and absolutist systems of long ago, as well as recent Soviet systems based on central planning and social exhortation, this design can produce a strong, aggressive state and military, but not an advanced, multi-purpose economy and society.“
Dr. Ronfeldt also addresses current U.S. policy regarding greater channels of information and communication flows.
He argues for sustaining the embargo as evidenced in the following:
“Idealistic notions are sprouting anew — here and here, for example — that ending the embargo would ameliorate Cuba’s hard-line T+I behaviors and induce +M effects: Thus, it is said, lifting the embargo would deprive the regime of an anti-American rationale — a scapegoat — for maintaining its tyranny and explaining away Cuba’s economic woes. It would generate maneuvering room for reformers who want political and social as well as economic liberalization. It would encourage free-market reforms, and a more open, pluralistic civil society.
Yet, there is no evidence — only speculation — that ending the embargo unilaterally would have such positive effects under current circumstances. More likely, it would reinforce Fidel’s sense that he is winning and provide him with extra resources and rationales for staying his course. And there is evidence for this contrary prospect.
The infusion of foreign investments and tourists from Canada, Europe, and elsewhere since the mid-1990s, by providing new income for the regime, actually enabled Fidel to slow or reverse the modest liberalizations he had grudgingly permitted in order to ease the economic shortages following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Little new liberalization has occurred since then. Moreover, European governments that have increased their trade and investment with Cuba have been rebuffed when they have pressed for even modest shifts in the regime’s human-rights behavior.”
Dr. Ronfeldt succinctly sums up his analysis on future perspectives with this viewpoint:
“In sum, Fidel Castro remains committed to a theory of social evolution that is fundamentally erroneous. He is not entirely wrong to rail against the evils of capitalism — it can have detrimental effects, and what’s happening in the United States today provides new evidence. But by failing to see that the market system is essential for continued social evolution, and by not figuring out how to make it apply in a balanced, positive way in Cuba — even so that it deserves a name other than capitalism — he keeps Cuba’s potential arrested in an evolutionary cul-de-sac of his own fabrication.
Eventually a breakout will occur. Odds are, a multitude of U.S. actors will then rush ahead with their usual patterns about promoting democracy and freedom, including free enterprise. But if the objective is to see Cuba turn into a balanced T+I+M system, new kinds of advice and assistance may be needed. The United States has policies and strategies for promoting capitalism — basically saying, open your markets, and we will come. But do we really have adequate policies and strategies for building a properly free, fair market system? I gather not, for that’s never been as major a goal as promoting capitalism. It’s time to rethink. Otherwise, assuming that the post-Fidel regime endures, the model it prefers next may be a mild kind of fascism rather than a potential liberal democracy.”
Will Havana exercise its influence over Caracas' ties to Hezbollah at the behest of Tel Aviv?
La Nueva Cuba reports on Army General Raul Castro’s African tour (Algeria, Angola and Namibia), which included thereafter a July 22 visit to Brazil.
His visit to the South American country has sparked interest among political observers/analysts and Western intelligence agencies.
Castro visited the Northeastern city of Salvador de Bahía, according to newswires, in a layover return from Angola, which was confirmed by the Cuban Embassy in Brasilia, AFP affirms.
The Cuban successor’s visit to African countries was Havana’s desperate attempt to negotiate an urgent need for loans to alleviate pressure from foreign transnationals claiming access to frozen accounts in Cuba since December 2008.
Tel Aviv wants Havana to exercise its influence over Caracas with the intention of impeding terrorist activities in Latin America and safe havens in Venezuela.
Israel considers Cuba capable of controlling Chavez’s conduct in regards to the subject of fundamentalist terrorism in Latin America.
Earlier this month the National Defense Council met at MINFAR (Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces) headquarters.
The annual assessment on the state of Cuba’s national defense was presided by Army Corps General Raúl Castro Ruz.
The Council’s findings saw “achievements in training regular troop combatants, both active and reserve, and those of the Territorial Troop Militias.”
Army Corps General Castro noted, “Operation Caguairán was decisive to those achievements, and was initiated in mid-2006. It is a concept that has come to stay, because it has signified a qualitative leap in terms of better effectiveness and specialization in instruction, superior cohesion of small units, solid preparation of commanders and officers, and more rationality in the use of time and resources.”
Castro further highlighted:
Importance of reactivating hydraulic and forest projects found during the evaluation of tasks fulfilled in terms of engineering projects for the theater of military operations;
FAR’s construction enterprises are now working on large tunnels under the country’s eastern mountains, as part of projects that will make it possible to deal with future droughts by water transfer, including from one province to another.
Increasing food production as permitted by conditions;
The meeting ratified “advances in the reestablishment, preservation, modernization and production of weapons and other combat means. In addition, high-technology simulators have been developed, also covering means of transport, including armored, air and naval, and for tank guns, infantry weapons and antiair defense.”
These achievements have been made through the decisive contributions of a large group of scientists, specialists and workers at FAR entities charged with this important task, in close coordination with the country’s other institutions, which have made their own important contribution.
The once powerful Coordination and Support Staff's offices were located in the Palace of the Revolution (Palacio de la Revolución). Image: Panoramio
“Sources of utmost credibility” have informedPenúltimos Días blog that at the beginning of the week, Fidel Castro’s Grupo de Coordinación y Apoyo al Comandante en Jefe (Coordination and Support Staff — GCA) was dissolved.
According to the blog, several members of the Staff have been reassigned to new posts within the government.
GCA was a parallel structure of government that has been, from its inception, Fidel Castro’s executive staff implementing and executing his policy initiatives for the country.
Most notable Staff members have been recently sacked Carlos Lage (Vice-President) and Felipe Pérez Roque (Foreign Minister), whom respectively served as chief.
For further research on the GCA’s historical and political development, see my paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE).
The lack of posts the last couple of weeks is due in part to the migration of this weblog to a new hosting company. It has been a frustrating process, to say the least, as numerous files have been corrupted in the migration causing posts/pages to display incomplete text and images.
Thank you for your patience, and rest assured, new posts will be published soon.
An audience of Russian generals and colonels and members of the NATO Mobile Education Training Team at the General Staff Academy in Moscow listens to lectures. Image: NATO
La Nueva Cuba’s lead story today informs of reports the newspaper received from within the island that “Russian personnel has been in Cuba for several months working on modernizing SIGINT operations in the old Lourdes surveillance and monitoring facility south of Havana,” (complex is center right in Google Map above) which was closed in 2001 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The report goes on to say, “both Cuba and Venezuela will benefit with access to some of the information obtained from Moscow…Some of the monitoring operations has been activated and work is underway to modernize the installation with the most advanced Russian technology available. The amplification and improvement of these installations operated by Russia are part of a project of rearming and modernization of Russian armed forces and the goal of completion by 2011.”
Furthermore, “The new operations could include military sections dedicated to hacking or computer systems espionage with a capacity to neutralize U.S. military networks in the case of emergency and sensitive situations emerging from a military conflict or political necessity to pressure a weakened United States susceptible to political pressure.”
Coup plotters? Felipe Perez Roque and Carlos Lage greet Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana on June 16, 2008. (Image: AFP)
Maj. General Anatoly Zhikharev, Chief of Staff of the Russian Air Force has told Interfax-AVN military news agency that Russia could use air bases for its strategic bombers in Cuba and Venezuela.
He said: “There are four or five airfields in Cuba with 4,000-meter-long runways, which absolutely suit us.”
Lt. Gen. Maples testifying before Senate Armed Services Committee in 2007. Image: AP
DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, US Army, testified today before the Committee on Armed Services of the United States Senate delivering his Annual Threat Assessment.
With regards to Latin America, he stated: “The United States presently faces no major conventional military threats across Latin America, a number of concerns endure.”
Lt. Gen. Maples covered several Latin American countries (Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia) in his written statement and in addition too opined on Cuba with the following:
The broad support that Cuban President Raul Castro receives from the military, security services and the Communist Party will likely enable him to maintain stability, security, and his own position. The Cuban military
The stark reality of Monday’s purge was not solely to streamline government structure for efficiency, but in fact, it was also Army General Raul Castro’s mission to rid himself the remnants of Fidel Castro’s loyalists.
The Commander-in Chief (CINC) of the militarized island nation now exercises complete control of the regime’s levers of power — lock, stock and barrel.
He has supplanted key government posts with past and present members of the single most loyal institution to him – the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).
These military entrepreneurs (retired and active flag officers) are tied to the politico-economic survivability of the regime — more so now than ever, as their ranks have swelled in a host of strategic positions throughout government.
(For further analysis on the military’s involvement in the Cuban economy, click here to read my research on the subject.)
In large part, thanks to Raul, they will make pivotal decisions forging ahead a path for the island nation.
Throughout Cuban history, the military has played a decisive and instrumental role in politics, immersing itself as an arbiter of power in Havana. Tracing its lineage from the colonial period where a Spanish military governor ruled with an iron fist, to army politics during the 1930s and beyond, the armed forces has heavily shaped destiny for the Cuban populace.
However, what cohesion will the military have once the former maximum leader makes his terrestrial departure?
Will we see the status quo prevail — a military elite that manages state enterprises generating wealth for a chosen few?
Or will mid-level officers simmer with discontent in seeing their superiors bask in monetary perks instead of sharing the grand pi
Rodriguez (l); Lage (c); Perez-Roque (r). Image: AP
Via AP:
Cuba abruptly replaced some of its most powerful and visible officials on Monday, including Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.
The surprise shakeup, involving about 10 top officials, was announced at the end of the midday newscast by Cuba’s supreme governing body, the Council of State.
Among others replaced is Economy Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez.
Lage, 57, was one of five vice presidents below Raul Castro and had served as a de-facto prime minister. He was credited with helping save Cuba’s economy by designing modest economic reforms after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Perez Roque, 43, was previously personal secretary to Fidel Castro and a former leader of the Communist Party youth organization. He had been foreign minister for almost a decade.
Developing…
1640Z – Official Note from the Council of State announcing replacements and structural changes.
USS TARAWA at SEA (Aug. 14, 2008) A 32-ship armada led by the amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa (LHA 1), manuever off the Panamanian Coast as part of the multi-national training exercise Fuerzas Aliadas PANAMAX 2008. Image: U.S. Navy
The Joint Forces Quarterly 2nd Quarter 2009 issue is now available and focuses on a strategic global outlook thematic. The journal is published by the National Defense University Press for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is the Chairman’s flagship joint military and security studies journal.
One of the articles in this issue titled, “Time to Improve U.S. Defense Structure for the Western Hemisphere,” is written by Dr. Craig A. Deare, Professor of National Security Affairs at the National Defense University, which addresses “U.S. defense policy toward the region as it seeks to explain the primary structural shortcomings associated with both the formulation and execution of policy.”
The article gives a snapshot of concerns for the Department of Defense (DoD) such as transnational threats including terrorism, insurgency and drug trafficking in the hemisphere.
A series of priority countries, e.q. Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil are mentioned in the article including Cuba.
Dr. Deare summarizes Cuba as:
“The question of what happens when the Castro brothers disappear from the scene remains open. This land, the size of Pennsylvania and with 11 million people, is at what the National Security Strategy would describe as a
A permanent concern for Raul Castro’s government is how will it sustain feeding the populace as aliments continue to diminish due to shortages and the costly purchases of increasing imports, which poses a security dilemma for the regime.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Global Analysis published a report last year titled: “Cuba
Raul Castro has ascended three of his government ministers – Ramiro Valdes (Communications Minister), Ulises Rosales del Toro (Agriculture Minister), and Jorge Luis Sierra (Transportation Minister) – to vice-presidents of the Council of Ministers. According to an official note published in the state media, the objective of the appointments is to make “more effective the control and coordination” of government.
Col. Crowther discussing how the war in Iraq will affect U.S.-Latin America Relations at George Washington University. Image: GWU
Colonel Alexander Crowther, a Research Professor of National Security Studies in the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, has written an editorial titled: “Kiss the Embargo Goodbye” for SSI’s monthly newsletter calling for the end of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
He has written prior editorials and papers on Cuba and its military.
Col. Crowther outlines the reasons that have supported the embargo and why it should be lifted.
On the support of:
we need to continue pressuring the regime to motivate it to reform;
the Cuban community in Miami wants us to continue
And the reasons for its lifting:
the cost to the Cuban people
the embargo is the only excuse that the Castro regime has to maintain its tyranny
to show the world that we are willing to try a new approach to motivate the Cubans to move towards democracy
to open up the Cuban market to the United States
He further goes on to say: “To maintain the status quo is to continue failing to engender reforms in Cuba and to continue empowering the dictatorship.”
Admiral Dennis Blair USN (Ret.), new Director of National Intelligence, testified today before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence outlining the annual assessment of national security threats to the United States.
The following section of his written testimony includes Cuba:
The Rand Corporation has published a monograph titled: Domestic Trends in the United States, China, and Iran: Implications for U.S. Navy Strategic Planning, which “investigates current and projected domestic developments in the United States, China, and Iran in the areas of demographics, economics, energy consumption, the environment, and education in order to help the Navy understand how critical near-, mid, and far-term trends in these countries might influence U.S. security decisions in general.”
A section of the monograph looks at future trends and possibilities in the Caribbean and focuses on Cuba with a possible event of semi-chaos/civil war and US intervention:
The biggest near-term variable in the Caribbean is the future of Cuba after Fidel Castro passes from the scene. The Cuban economy has been very weak for decades, and Castro
Avoiding a social explosion is foremost on the minds of the Cuban nomenklatura. "El Maleconazo" which occurred on the streets of Havana's famous seawall in August, 1994 was the most significant demonstration of social unrest in the island.
A chorus of those sympathetic to the Cuban regime and/or part of the nomenklatura are voicing their opinion about the need to reform Cuba’s system or else social instability caused by a lack of change to the status quo will lead to political destabilization through violence.
A member of said chorus is Ignacio Ramonet (penned an autobiography of Fidel Castro and was editor-in-chief of Le Monde Diplomatique) who wrote a revealing article last week giving a purview of the current situation in Cuba.
Ramonet states: “Raul Castro and his team have dedicated themselves to three pressing problems: food, public transportation, and housing. Three domains where shortages, poverty, and dysfunctions favor permanent unrest of the population.”
Still Life with Skull. Painting by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674)
Rumors swirl, yet again, Fidel Castro is gravely ill. See reports here, here and here.
This generation of rumors has happened in the past, however, there is certain credence to the rumor.
The online cultural magazine Cuba Encuentro was told by well informed sources, who asked to remain anonymous: “Castro’s life cycle seems totally exhausted and his state is irreversibile.”
These sources affirm, “It has been more than a month that he does not get up from bed,” adding “Fidel has had more than one grave encounter with his brother Ra
Cuban state media reports there has been a change of command for the Eastern Army. Army Corps General Ramon Espinosa Martin (left) has been promoted to Vice-Minister of Defense. Espinosa Martin has held command of the Eastern Army for the last 27 years and was picked by Fidel Castro for the post. Division General Onelio Aguilera Berm
The Economist takes a look at the last 50 years of the Cuban revolution:
Half a century on, the euphoria is long gone. Everyday life in Cuba is a dreary affair of queues and shortages, even if nobody starves and violent crime is rare. It is the only country in the Americas whose government denies its citizens freedom of expression and assembly. Cuba
The recent Russian naval visits to Cuba and Venezuela may be linked to August’s Georgia war, said the U.S. diplomat. Shannon believes Russia may be considering a security presence in the region.
He is quoted in the interview as saying, “What would be telling however, is not this ship visit, it’s the next one. If the purpose of this ship visit was just to make a point about Russia’s periphery, if its purpose was just to make a point about Georgia, then we probably won’t see them again. But if the Russians really are attempting to build a more longstanding relationship in the region, then they will look for ways to maintain some presence in their security relationship with partners. What’s interesting for us about how Russia is engaging in the region is this is not the Soviet Union, they do not bring an ideological purpose to their engagement.”
Arms Sales
Shannon went further by adding, Russia’s trade interests include arms sales and, while Venezuela has the right to buy weapons. He was concerned an arms race might develop in the region or that decommissioned arms might be sold off to illegal groups.
“They’re (arms) sold in a context, so when Venezuela buys $4 billion worth of weapons with very high-end aircraft, it has an impact in the region and one consequence of this is the Brazilian decision to modernize its armed forces,” said Shannon.
Despite grandiose talk, this is not a particularly threatening flotilla: The Russian nuclear-powered missile cruiser Peter the Great is joined by an antisubmarine destroyer, a fuel tanker and a tugboat that is on hand in case of breakdowns. “Militarily, the trip is virtually meaningless,” says Jan van Tol, a recently retired U.S. Navy captain and senior fellow at the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “A lot of it has to do with the credibility of the navy involved,” Tol says. “I don’t think [Nicaragua's] Daniel Ortega, [Cuba's] Raul Castro or [Venezuela's] Hugo Chavez are asking the Russians, ‘How long would it take for you to be here if we needed help?’ ”
The Russians are not sending their third-string ships on this diplomatic mission; those selected to visit the hemisphere are some of the best surface ships they have left after a decade of neglect. “Peter the Great was one of the better ships the Soviets had. It was quite a powerful ship for its time,” says van Tol. “They probably were taken in for significant refitting and rehabilitation to make the trip.”
As humble as the fleet might seem from a military point of view, the real mission is powerful for its diplomatic symbolism
“Cuba is the key to the Gulf of Mexico, and also controls three entrances to the Caribbean-the Yucatan, Windward and Mona passages…between the three possible bases for attempted control of the Caribbean, no doubts can remain that Cuba is the most powerful, Jamaica next, and the Antilles least.” -Alfred Thayer Mahan, “Strategic Features of the Gulf of Mexico and The Caribbean,” in Allan Westcott, ed., 1943. Mahan on Naval Warfare. Boston: Little Brown and Company. p. 108.
I came across the aforementioned quote during my research on geostrategy in the Caribbean. Mahan was a U.S. Navy flag officer and geostrategist. His groundbreaking book is The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, which is based on naval warfare. Mahan, along with Sir Julian Corbett, has shaped the United States’ thinking about naval power.
Grave crisis over liquidity
20100111 at 1126 in Commentary, Council of Ministers, Economy, Government, Market by Armando F. Mastrapa 3d
EcoMin Marino Murillo (Image: cuba.cu)
Cuban economic minister Marino Murillo announced before a meeting of the National Association of Cuban Economists (Asociación Nacional de Economistas de Cuba) that the lack of liquidity in currencies is an urgent problem for the government, reported Cuban state media.
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Tags: Asociación Nacional de Economistas de Cuba, Cuban economic minister, foreign exchange, Marino Murillo, National Association of Cuban Economists