Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalWhen the United States Government Broke Relations with Cuba
January 08, 2015
The History Obama Neglected to Mention
When the United States Government Broke Relations with Cuba
by NELSON P. VALDÉS and ROBERT SANDELS
Esto es muerte o vida, y no cabe errar.
This is life or death, and we cannot err.
– José Martí, Letter to Manuel Mercado, May 18, 1895 (one day before Marti’s death)
President Obama’s announcement Dec. 17 that the United States would resume diplomatic relations with Cuba, did not include an explanation of what went wrong half a century ago….
The Cuban revolutionaries took power Jan. 1, 1959, overthrowing Fulgencio Batista, a close ally of the U.S. government. The Republican administration of President Dwight Eisenhower made numerous efforts to stop the revolutionists even before they seized power. A conservative administration confronted with a growing civil rights movement at home and an anti-colonial struggle throughout the Third World certainly did not feel comfortable with Fidel Castro and his “barbudos.”
As soon as the revolution took power, the U.S. government gave refuge and support to Cuban counterrevolutionaries. Hit and run attacks by sea and air were almost a daily problem confronting the Cuban authorities as their counterrevolutionary enemies used American territory at will. Moreover, the redistribution of property and other social and economic reforms as well as Cuba’s nationalist stance was considered in Washington a highly dangerous and destabilizing threat to traditional U.S. dominance in the hemisphere.
From December 1959, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked on numerous projects to assassinate Fidel Castro, even before Eisenhower approved a military invasion. By early February 1960, the United States government had given the CIA the green light to organize an invasion force to be trained in Guatemala and Nicaragua, then ruled by two brutal right-wing dictatorships. Meanwhile, counterrevolutionaries inside the island received training and resources such as incendiary bombs from the CIA to stage terrorist attacks in Havana and other urban areas while fast boats and airplanes engaged in constant sabotage of economic and coastal facilities from bases in south Florida. The Cuban authorities continuously denounced the incursions, the plots and the policy of violence and harassment.
In early March 1960, Eisenhower cut the sugar quota that had been a fixture in bilateral relations between the two countries since 1934. The intention was clear: to deliver a major economic blow to the most important sector of the Cuban economy, with multiplier effects on commerce, banking, employment and trade. The very livelihood of Cuban labor and a significant portion of American and Cuban corporations were catastrophically affected.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/08/when-the-united-states-government-broke-relations-with-cuba/
US Slaps New Sanctions Against Venezuela: Why Now?
US Slaps New Sanctions Against Venezuela: Why Now?
by Roger D. Harris / January 8th, 2015
A day after President Obama announced initiatives to normalize relations with Cuba, he seemingly reversed course by enacting the latest round of sanctions against Cuba’s staunchest ally, Venezuela, on December 18. His action conclusively ended any threat of a thaw in frosty relations since the US and Venezuela withdrew their respective ambassadors in 2010. The US Senate had approved the legislation on December 8, followed two days later by the House in a bipartisan gush of unity with no debate or dissenting votes. The legislation will allow the president to deny visas and freeze assets of Venezuelan officials accused of violating the rights of anti-government groups
Response to Sanctions
During the unrest six months ago in Venezuela, the Obama administration was reluctant to push sanctions. Even the Washington Post, which is highly critical of the Venezuelan government, questioned why Obama was “balking on the (sanction) measures this year at the height of a (Venezuelan) government crackdown against protesters” yet proceeded now when “the largely symbolic act of imposing sanctions would give (Venezuelan President) Maduro a propaganda boost.”
The G77 group of 134 developing nations including China condemned the sanctions and called for their repeal. Venezuela also received the support of the Latin American regional organizations ALBA and MERCOSUR.
~ snip ~
Venezuelan Opposition Isolates Itself
Ever since the election of leftist President Hugo Chávez in 1998, the opposition in Venezuela has suffered a series of humiliating electoral defeats (except for one referendum), despite receiving over $100 million from the US government. When Chávez died in March 2013 and his successor Nicholás Madero won the presidency in a special election the next month by a narrow margin, the opposition was emboldened to tout the then upcoming municipal elections as a referendum on the Chávista project of 21st century socialism.
The December 2013 elections were a referendum… for the ruling Chávistas who swept over 70% of the municipalities. Decisively defeated in the electoral arena, a hard-right splinter from the opposition initiated la salida (the exit) which was to achieve by violence what could not be achieved democratically. Opposition guarimbas (barricades) and destruction of public property, explicitly designed to provoke an overreaction from the government, lasted from February to May of 2014 and then collapsed.
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/01/us-slaps-new-sanctions-against-venezuela-why-now/
Peru’s Fujimori convicted of corruption in fifth trial
Source: Associated Press
Peru’s Fujimori convicted of corruption in fifth trial
By Associated Press January 8 at 4:27 PM
LIMA, Peru — A three-judge panel in Peru has convicted jailed former President Alberto Fujimori of funneling more than $40 million in public funds to tabloid newspapers that smeared his opponents during his 2000 re-election campaign.
Thursday’s conviction was the fifth for the 76-year-old Fujimori.
The judges sentenced him to eight years in prison and fined him $1 million. The sentence will run concurrently with the stiffest sentence he has received to date: 25 years for murder in the military death-squad killings of 25 people.
Fujimori fled Peru in 2000 amid a bribery scandal and was extradited in 2007 from Chile, where he was arrested trying to return to his homeland to attempt a political comeback.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/perus-fujimori-convicted-of-corruption-in-fifth-trial/2015/01/08/2436cdfa-977d-11e4-8385-866293322c2f_story.html
Fujimori tricks:
Wednesday, May 9, 2001; Page A01
U.S. Allies In Drug War In Disgrace
Arrests of Peruvian Officials Expose Corruption, Deceit
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
LIMA, Peru -- Inside a dilapidated downtown prison, a gaggle of former president Alberto Fujimori's top generals sulked around a green cement jail yard on a hot afternoon. The recently arrested generals whiled away their recreation time halfheartedly, playing soccer and reminiscing about the days when Fujimori's finest could count on at least one steadfast friend: Uncle Sam.
Gen. Juan Miguel del Aguila, head of Peru's National Anti-Terrorism Bureau until last year and, later, security chief of the National Police, recalled frequent meetings with U.S. intelligence agents right up to the moment when Fujimori abandoned the presidency and fled to Japan in November.
"The U.S. was our partner in every respect, giving us intelligence, training, equipment and working closely with us in the field," said del Aguila, who is charged with conspiracy in the state-sponsored bombing last year of a bank in central Lima, an act meant to look like the handiwork of Fujimori opponents to portray them as
radicals. "The United States was our best ally."
Less chatty, Gen. Nicolas Hermoza Rios, an honors graduate from the U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., shooed away a foreign journalist.
The former head of Fujimori's joint chiefs during most of the 1990s -- a decade when Peru vied with Colombia as the top recipient of U.S. military aid in South America -- Hermoza had just pleaded guilty to taking $14 million in illicit gains from arms deals. He was still fighting more potent charges of taking protection money from the same drug lords the United States was paying Peru to fight.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/perus-fujimori-convicted-of-corruption-in-fifth-trial/2015/01/08/2436cdfa-977d-11e4-8385-866293322c2f_story.html
Guatemala's Indigenous People Fighting Back Against Exploitation by Multinational Mining Companies
Guatemala's Indigenous People Fighting Back Against Exploitation by Multinational Mining Companies
In violation of international law, the Guatemalan government is seeking to issue mining permits without the consent of indigenous people.
By Jeff Abbott / Waging Nonviolence
January 7, 2015
Conflicts over mining are expanding across Guatemala. According to a recent report by Amnesty International, the Canadian government and Canada-based multinational mining companies have played a major role in the conflicts and abuses of human rights in indigenous communities.
“Canada — like many other states — has shown itself willing to take action with extraterritorial effect to promote and protect corporate interests,” state the authors of the Amnesty International report. “The failure to take action — in line with the requirements and recommendations of U.N. human rights treaty bodies — to effectively regulate Canadian companies operating abroad is enabling these companies to benefit from human rights abuses occurring outside of Canada.”
The report, which was published in September 2014, states that Canada, which is headquarters for three-quarters of global mining companies, and the government of Guatemala have failed to provide space for community involvement and voices in the expansion of mining. The inadequate protection and unwillingness of the Guatemalan government of President Otto Pérez Molina to guarantee the rights of indigenous communities has exacerbated the situation.
“In promoting the involvement of Canadian corporations in global resource extraction activities, the government of Canada continues to rely almost exclusively on the national laws, regulations and enforcement mechanisms of the host countries to ensure that Canadian investment abroad does not contribute to human rights abuses,” states the Amnesty International report, “even when there is reason to believe that those laws are inadequate or are not enforced.”
More:
http://www.alternet.org/guatemalas-indigenous-people-fighting-back-against-exploitation-multinational-mining-companies
Mexican police force held in journalist's disappearance
Mexican police force held in journalist's disappearance
| January 6, 2015 | Updated: January 6, 2015 12:47pm
VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) — State prosecutors detained a town's police force Tuesday following the disappearance of a journalist in the southern state of Veracruz.
Thirty-six members of the Medellin de Bravo police department were brought in to give statements, according to a statement from the Veracruz state prosecutor's office. Authorities detained three police officers there Monday.
Prosecutors said the investigation is in an advanced stage and one of the lines of investigation is looking at the social activism of journalist Moises Sanchez Cerezo, some of which was aimed at Medellin Mayor Omar Cruz.
Sanchez's brother Juan Carlos Sanchez said Monday that his brother had been threatened by Cruz. Cruz denied any involvement at a news conference Monday.
More:
http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Mexican-police-force-held-in-journalist-s-5996937.php
Led by Latinos, US Cities Organize to End Plan Mexico and Support Ayotzinapa
Led by Latinos, US Cities Organize to End Plan Mexico and Support Ayotzinapa
By Nidia Bautista | 5 / January / 2015
Thousands of people came out to protest on Dec. 3 in fifty-four U.S. cities under the hashtag #USTired2. Based on the slogan used by Mexican protesters #YaMeCansé (I’m tired of it) following a remark by Attorney General to cut off a press conference, #USTired2 has helped build momentum in the context of growing discontent with U.S. foreign policy toward Mexico and police brutality at home.
In a few weeks, the movement has become a contemporary example of grassroots solidarity between U.S. and Mexican communities. The organization has scheduled national protests for Jan. 6 when Enrique Peña Nieto visits the While House to meet with President Obama to discuss the bilateral agenda.
For over three months, Mexicans have organized demonstrations in the country’s cities and towns, demanding justice for the disappeared college students from Iguala, Guerrero. Yet since October, protestors have not only called for the appearance of the 43 disappeared students (now presumably 42 since the remains of one student were identified among ashes found near the scene of the crime), but also the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto and justice for the tens of thousands of disappeared and hundreds of femicides nationwide that have occurred, especially since the war on drugs was launched in December 2006. At the core of their criticisms is the impunity and corruption at local, state and federal levels.
While protestors in Mexico have amplified their demands, multiple protests have been organized abroad in more than fifty countries. One of the largest and most notable is in United States, known by the hashtag #USTired2. The protests were organized in November to coordinate nationwide protests on Dec. 3 in support of the Ayotzinapa families. The #USTired2 protests are geared toward pressuring the U.S. government to end Plan Mexico, the bilateral security aid package that supports Mexican police and military forces like those implicated in the Ayotzinapa case.
Organized primarily by Latinos and Mexican communities in the United States, the #USTired2 protests emerged as a critique of President Obama’s stance on Ayotzinapa. The new movement denounced Obama’s offer to help the Mexican government resolve the Ayotzinapa case as a contradiction, considering the U.S. government has provided $2.4 billion dollars in security funding to Mexico through Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative. Plan Mexico has been funding U.S. training and equipment for Mexico’s armed forces, police, courts and prison system. Since 2008 when the bilateral program began, human rights violations by security forces have soared, according to the National Commission on Human Rights.
More:
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14231
Families of Murdered Colombians Lose U.S. Lawsuit Against Occidental Petroleum
Families of Murdered Colombians Lose U.S. Lawsuit Against Occidental Petroleum
by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog
December 15th, 2014
A U.S. court has refused to allow family members of three murdered Colombian union leaders the opportunity to sue Occidental Petroleum. The families claimed that the Los Angeles based company should be held responsible since it allegedly provided financial support for the military unit that killed the men.
Hector Alirio Martinez, Leonel Goyeneche Goyeneche, and Jorge Prieto Chamucero were shot and killed on the morning of August 5, 2004, outside Chamucero's home in Caño Seco by members of the Colombian army's 18th Brigade.
In its defense, the Colombian military claimed that the three men were members of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army), a guerrrila movement. In fact Alirio was a former president of the Departmental Association of Peasant Consumers (ADUC), Goyeneche was treasurer of the CUT Workers Unitary Central and Prieto was president of the National Association of Hospital and Clinic Workers (ANTHOC) in Arauca.
Eighteen family members of the three victims brought a lawsuit against Occidental in November 2011 with the help of Terrence Collingsworth, a Washington DC-based lawyer. They stated that Occidental was making regular payments to the Colombian National Army (CNA) to guard a 170 kilometer pipeline that runs from the company's Caño Limon oilfield to the port of Coveñas.
“Occidental directly provided the CNA with (or provided the CNA with the funds for) the helicopter used to move the decedents' bodies, the communications equipment used on the day of the attack, and other material support used by the 18th Brigade on the day of the attack," the families wrote in their lawsuit.
More:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=16001
They risked everything to open a door to Cuba. They were shunned for it.
They risked everything to open a door to Cuba. They were shunned for it.
Tina Griego • January 5, 2015
In the complicated, sometimes violent, always emotional history of relations between the United States and Cuba, resides an obscure chapter about 55 young exiles. All were still children when they left Cuba in the early 1960s, after Fidel Castro took power. In 1977, they returned.
“Los Cincuenta y Cinco Hermanos.” The 55 brothers and sisters. Better known as the Antonio Maceo Brigade, named for a revered general in the Cuban war for independence against the Spanish. Decades before President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, the brigade was the standard bearer of an equal relationship between the two countries. Its youth risked everything to become a post-revolution bridge between Cuba and its exiles, shattering the persistent myth that all exiles were of the same mind, bent on the destruction of the Castro regime.
In Cuba, they would come to be welcomed as the brave heart of the revolutionary movement among youth throughout the world.
In the United States, they were called traitors, and one of their founders would be assassinated.
The young men and women of the Antonio Maceo Brigade brimmed with the zeal of the politically awakened and the anguish of childhoods interrupted. And they wanted to judge the results of the Cuban revolution for themselves. You could say they have been working and waiting 37 years for this new chapter to be written. And, true to their roots, you also could say they will believe its authenticity only when they see it.
More:
http://progresoweekly.us/risked-everything-open-door-cuba-shunned/
Ecuador Adopts Resolution Condemning US Sanctions Against Venezuela
Ecuador Adopts Resolution Condemning US Sanctions Against Venezuela
Latin America
14:25 30.12.2014 (updated 16:22 30.12.2014)
Ecuador's National Assembly passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Venezuela. The resolution was adopted Monday with 66 votes in favor of it, 16 votes against and eight abstentions.
MOSCOW, December 30 (Sputnik) – Ecuador's National Assembly has passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Venezuela and condemned the imposition of sanctions on the country by the United States, Venezuelan network TeleSur reported.
The resolution was adopted Monday with 66 votes in favor of it, 16 votes against and eight abstentions.
Assembly member Diego Vintimilla denounced the United States' imposition of sanctions against Venezuela, saying that the US legislators should not interfere in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. Vintimilla also accused the United States of double standards in its foreign policy and stressed the importance of respect for international legal obligations.
"If we are so determined to defend our principles let us comply with those specifying noninterference and respect of international law," Vintimilla was quoted as saying by TeleSur.
Earlier in December, US President Barack Obama approved sanctions on Venezuela. The sanctions target individuals who are allegedly responsible for human rights violations during February protests against President Nicolas Maduro's government.
More:
http://sputniknews.com/latam/20141230/1016396609.html
Pinochet's 'soundtrack to torture' made available to the public
Pinochet's 'soundtrack to torture' made available to the public
18 hours ago by Kath Paddison
A digital archive documenting music from the torture chambers, concentration camps and prisons of the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is available to the public for the first time.
The online 'torture soundtrack', launching on 8 January 2015, is called Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs) and includes songs written, sung and listened to in political detention – and the stories behind them.
It is the brainchild of Dr Katia Chornik - who herself is from Chile - a researcher at The University of Manchester's Music Department and the first scholar to investigate music under political detention in Chile.
When Pinochet seized power in 1973, the majority of the almost 40,000 political opponents imprisoned in over 1,000 detention centres suffered gruesome physical and psychological torture. Some of Pinochet's torture practices employed music and relate to CIA techniques.
Prisoners often used music as a means to cope with the harsh conditions and the uncertainty of not knowing if they would live or die. Survivors are being encouraged to upload their stories and songs to the Captive Songs website.
Some of the material on the archive are songs penned by the prisoners themselves, and in some cases recorded clandestinely in a concentration camp, like El puntúo (Cheeky Devil) and El suertúo (Lucky Devil) – all of the recordings are available to listen to.
More:
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-pinochet-soundtrack-torture.html
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