People Before Profit blog

Italian elections reflect dangers facing Europe

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:32:00 +0000

The parliamentary elections carried out in Italy during the weekend of February 23-24 have created great worry in governments throughout Europe.

The principal issue was austerity: Anti-worker labor reforms were introduced by outgoing "technocratic" Prime Minister Mario Monti for the purpose of cutting the country's sovereign debt, which stood at about 120 percent of the gross domestic product, and restoring Italy's creditworthiness. These were imposed after the fall of Monti's predecessor, Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, in November 2011 amid massive scandals and looming criminal prosecution. This election was triggered when Berlusconi's followers pulled out of the broad coalition headed by Monti last year.

Monti himself fielded an election vehicle under the name of Civic Choice, but, as expected, this party was trounced, getting, with allies, only 10.56 percent of the popular vote and 47 seats out of 630 in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the Italian parliament), and only 9.13 percent of the vote and 18 out of the 315 elective seats in the Senate.

A slight favorite going into the elections was the Democratic Party and its allies in the Common Good coalition, headed by Pier Luigi Bersani. Bersani was active in the old Italian Communist Party (PCI) which disintegrated after the fall of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Today his party represents centrist positions and not leftist or communist ones.

Common Good got 29.54 percent of the vote for the Chamber, but was able to elect a majority (340 seats) because the Italian constitution awards extra seats to the party that gets a plurality of votes. But Common Good fell short in the Senate, gaining 31.63 percent of the vote and 113 seats.

Silvio Berlusconi's own party, the People of Freedom, allied with 11 other right-leaning parties, did well in the Senate where it got 30.71 percent of the vote and 116 seats; it got 29.18 percent of the vote and 124 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

The big news was that the "Five Star Movement" (Movimento 5 Stelle) headed by former comedian Beppe Grillo surged hugely, getting 22.55 percent of the votes in the Chamber of Deputies with 108 seats and 23.79 percent in the Senate with 54 seats. This means that the Five Star Movement has surged from nowhere to become, overnight, the third largest party in Italy.

The Marxist left and allies did not do well. The two Italian communist parties, the Communist Refoundation and the Party of the Italian Communists, had for the purposes of this election, folded themselves into a united front called the Civic Revolution ("Rivoluzione Civile") which also included several non Marxist parties. Civil Revolution got only 2.25 percent of the votes and no seats in either house of parliament. Not very long ago, both communist parties had representation in parliament.

What Berlusconi and Grillo have in common is that they campaigned against the austerity program imposed by monopoly capital and against the euro, without a clear program of what they would do differently. That they are both wealthy men and that Berlusconi himself is a major figure in the broadcasting industry did not deter them.

On the other hand, Monti was punished for his "technocratic" role in implementing austerity, and Bersani's Democrats fell between two stools. They did not campaign on the basis of a clear program of reversing the austerity measures, but only on modifying them somewhat. But this did not stop Berlusconi and his allies from a vicious red-baiting campaign against Bersani. Berlusconi has always used McCarthyite tactics against his adversaries and even against prosecutors and judges who have been investigating him.

Why did the Civil Revolution ticket not do better? Its platform certainly took on austerity and strongly defended workers' rights and other popular causes.

The result of the election is likely to be a stalemate. In Italy, all laws have to be passed both by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and with the Democratic Party controlling the first and the Berlusconi forces the second, it is hard to see how any laws can be passed at all. It is not even clear that there will be a prime minister.

Bersani has the first shot at trying to form a government. In such circumstances the normal thing would be to build coalitions within each house in such a way as to form a cabinet and get things going. But with the big vote for the Five Star Movement, and with a declaration by Grillo that he will not join any coalition but will confine himself to supporting or rejecting bills on a case by case basis, this will not be possible.

The comeback of Berlusconi and the sudden rise of Grillo's Five Star Movement should be a wake-up call for the Italian and European left. All over the continent, voters have been rising up and protesting against the austerity plans imposed by their own ruling classes and the "troika" consisting of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Where right wing governments were implementing these policies, voters have brought centrist "social democrats" to power. However, where social democrats have been in power, they have ended up supporting very similar austerity policies. In response, voters in Greece, Spain and Portugal have thrown them out, bringing in right wing governments.

Parties of the left who have opposed the austerity policies, including the communist parties, have not been able to muster enough electoral strength to rule, though they have played a key role in strikes and protests.

Unless the left can take back the leadership of the anti-austerity movement, the danger will grow that covertly or overtly fascist elements will move into the vacuum.

Portuguese protest austerity

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:23:00 +0000

In Lisbon, Oporto and at least 18 other Portuguese cities on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of workers, students, pensioners and others marched against the right-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho and his enablers in the "Troika" of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund. The marchers were demanding an end to policies of austerity, privatization and "labor flexibilization" that are being imposed on the Portuguese people by their own ruling class, by the Troika and by international monopoly capital.

The demonstrations were strongly boosted by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers, which is close to the Portuguese Communist Party, but attracted millions of unaffiliated people also. One popular slogan was short and to the point: "Screw the Troika" (Que se Lixa a Troika). Another was poetic: Many people wore carnations in commemoration of the "Carnation Revolution" of 1974, which brought down the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship.

But perhaps the one that most shook the government was musical: The sound of hundreds of thousands of people singing the ballad "Grandola vila Morena" (Grandola, you Dark Town). This song, written by the leftist songwriter Zeca Afonso,, refers, on the surface, to the fraternity and solidarity of the inhabitants of the town of Grandola, in the Alentejo region of Southern Portugal. But its symbolism is stronger: The playing of this song on the radio was the signal for the uprising of young military officers and others in 1974 that brought the Carnation Revolution into the streets. By singing Grandola, the people of Portugal are saying to their reactionary government that the revolution of 1974 might be repeated.

Portugal is in terrible shape economically, but the nostrums employed by Mr. Passos Cuelho at the behest of the Troika (and in exchange for a 2011 bailout of $102 billion) are clearly making things worse. He has laid off state workers and cut public services to the bone, while sharply raising taxes. This has caused a vicious cycle of more cuts and economic shrinkage. When asked what people who find themselves permanently unemployed should do, the best he has been able to do is to recommend they move to some other country.

Insult has been added to injury by a new policy, designed to catch tax evaders, which requires all consumers to keep and make available receipts for all purchases, no matter how trivial. The way the Portuguese people are dealing with this bit of bureaucratic nonsense is to put the name and tax ID number of Prime Minister Passos Coelho on the receipts, with the idea that this would show him as having expenditures far beyond what he declares on his own taxes, with the hoped for result of triggering a nasty audit of the prime minister's own personal taxes.

There have been street protests against the neo-liberal austerity and privatization programs for several years now, but the government continues to pile on more anti-people measures. The latest is a labor reform which reduces to 12 days (from the previous 30) the period during which an employer has to pay a worker he or she fires unjustifiably. This is a typical measure of labor "flexibilization" which is somehow supposed to reduce the unemployment rate, which currently stands at 17 percent of the workforce. It was strongly protested in the Portuguese parliament by a deputy from the Portuguese Communist Party, Jorge Machado, who said "Facilitating firing will not solve any problem; facilitating firing will only create more unemployment and help to replace workers with rights by workers without rights and, in this manner, increase the exploitation of people who work."

The Portuguese Communist Party and other left and labor groups promise the demonstrations will continue.

Photo: Portugal demonstrators protest austerity measures. Francisco Sero/AP

Hypocrisy of U.S. “terrorism” accusations against Cuba

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:03:00 +0000

Last year, the United States once more confirmed Cuba's presence on the State Department's list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism." This is one more indication of the utter hypocrisy and bankruptcy of U.S. Cuba policy.

The ostensible reasons for the continued listing of Cuba include that there are members of the Columbian Insurgent group FARC-EP (Armed Forces of the Colombian Revolution-People's Army) and the Basque independence group ETA (Euzskadi ta Askatasuna) living there.

Both of these are slanders. The FARC-EP presence in Cuba is at the request of the Colombian government, which is engaged in peace negotiations with the rebels with Cuba and Norway as intermediaries, and Cuba as host. The ETA presence was initiated at the request of former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, and at any rate the ETA is in the process of dismantling its armed wing.

Another excuse for maintaining Cuba on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list is the fact that there are a number of people wanted by law enforcement in the United States who have been given political refuge in Cuba. Best known of these is African American radical activist Assata Shakur. Besides the mere presence of Ms. Shakur in Cuba, the United States complains that the Cuban government has provided her with medical care (which Cuba does for everybody on its shores) and a Cuban food ration book.

Ms. Shakur, now 65, is indeed accused of a serious crime. In May of 1973, she and others were involved in an incident in which a New Jersey state trooper was shot to death. Ms. Shakur denies responsibility for this extremely murky event, but New Jersey and U.S. authorities still want to imprison her. But to evaluate the charges against her, we must recall the historical context.

At the time, a state of near war existed between the various organizations of the Black freedom movement, on the one hand, and the FBI and state and local police forces on the other. Many of the African-American leaders and activists who came into the cross-hairs of the FBI had been outspoken, not only about racial injustices in the United States, but about freedom struggles worldwide, especially the fight to end the Vietnam War and the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The head of the FBI was J. Edgar Hoover, who had convinced himself that the Civil Rights Movement was controlled by foreign communists. In this spirit, he had no scruples against using any kind of deceit and treachery to destroy the African-American leadership. As the example of Dr. Martin Luther King shows, even non-violent protest was seen by Hoover as a violent threat, to be forcefully suppressed.

So, under the FBI's COINTELPR O (Counter Intelligence Program), the entire African American movement, as well as freedom movements of other oppressed minorities, was subjected to intense government attacks which included the deliberate provocation of violence and the framing of activists for violent crimes. Some African American leaders were murdered outright. Others, such as boxer Ruben "Hurricane" Carter and Black Panther activist Geronimo Pratt, were framed and made to serve long prison sentences. Communist Party USA activist Angela Davis was also in the cross-hairs. Others fled the country, in some cases to socialist Cuba. Some, including African-American activist Mumia abu-Jamal and Native American Activist Leonard Peltier, are still behind bars.

But COINTELPRO was discredited long ago (which, unfortunately, does not mean that such things don't go on today). Pratt, Carter and others have been released from jail when courts recognized that the FBI and local police had engaged in massive malfeasance in their original trials. Campaigns to exonerate others, including Assata Shakur, continue.

It was in this context that Cuba decided to give asylum to Assata and others. Cuban authorities were disinclined to give credence to accusations by the likes of Hoover directed against African-American and Latino activists and leaders. On the other hand, Cuba has not allowed anybody living on its soil to abuse Cuba's generosity by launching terrorist attacks against the United States and other nations. Were it not so, we surely would have heard about it from our own government and media!

So the accusation that Cuba is a "state sponsor of terrorism" is a vile slander. But it is also a piece of breathtaking hypocrisy.

Since the Cuban Revolution which triumphed on January 1, 1959, multiple agencies of the United States government, especially the CIA and the military, have been engaged in organizing and carrying out terrorist attacks against Cuba. These attacks have often been arranged with the cooperation of Cuban exile organizations and sometimes the Mafia.

A number of exiles involved with terrorism are still living unmolested in the United State. One of the best known is Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile who had become a citizen and police official of (pre-Chavez) Venezuela. Carriles is strongly suspected of a whole string of terrorist attacks, the worst being the bombing of a Cuban passenger aircraft in 1976 in which 78 innocent people died. He is also very credibly accused of a bombing plot against the University of Panama where Fidel Castro was scheduled to speak; hundreds of students could have been killed had not police detected the plot and stopped it in time.

Cuba and Venezuela have demanded that the United States extradite Posada. The United States itself could bring him to trial. But neither of these things have happened, and he is living out his old age in Miami, where he is lionized by some politicians.

The reason given for not extraditing him is that he would be tortured. No evidence has been presented to show that under present circumstances, Posada would be tortured by either Cuba or Venezuela; the determination was based on the flat statement of one witness who is a Posada crony.

The United States now has a new Secretary of State, so the possibility of removing Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism arises once more. Asked if that was in the offing, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland has said that it is not, as the situation of Cuba has not changed. But we must not accept that.

All lovers of justice should contact the State Department to demand that Cuba be taken off the list. For if Cuba, which has done nothing to deserve this listing is nevertheless listed, why is a certain other country right at the top of the list?

I mean, of course, the United States of America.

Photo: Flickr

Communists re-elected for 5th term in Tripura, India

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:15:00 +0000

Election results are out for the state of Tripura in northeast India. Communists were re-elected to power for a fifth consecutive term. The Communist Party of India-Marxist and Communist Party of India bagged a total of 50 seats out of 60 in the state parliament.

Communists have won that state's elections seven times in total since 1978. They lost marginally in 1988-93.

The remaining 10 seats went to the Indian National Congress Party, Congress for short, which is the ruling party nationally.

More than 2 million voters went to the polls on Feb. 14. There were long queues still at closing time forcing polls to extend their hours in order to let all vote. The turnout hit a record 94%.

Communists are seen as honest and devoted to the people. It is often said that Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has the lowest "bank balance" of any other state chief ministers. In contrast, the opposition Congress Party is roiled in deep allegations of corruption at the federal level.

Even before Tripura became a state, in 1952, Communists won the area's first elections. Now what people have appreciated is the level of development. After the results came in Sarkar said, the voters' "verdict" went in favor of "development, peace, stability and good governance." The charges of increasing unemployment and income disparity hurled by opposition did not seem to stick.

While other eastern states face violence and instability from both terrorist sources and the military, Tripura has been managed to avoid this by reaching the public for support. The media says, "Curbing militancy is rewarded."

The other two bastion states for Communists are West Bengal and Kerala, although currently Communists are out of power there. Observers say those states could likely swing back to Communist government as corruption cases on current rulers abound. Next year, 2014, is national elections for India's parliament.

Photo: Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, left, stands with West Bengal former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya at the Communist Party of India-Marxist 2008 convention in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. (PW/Teresa Albano)

Land remains key to negotiated peace in Colombia

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:11:00 +0000

Small farmers formed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 1964 to defend land. Now land is the first agenda item in peace talks in Havana between the FARC and Colombian government. Renewed struggle over land roiled the talks in late February as the government delivered a controversial tract of land to new owners and the FARC raised the issue of food sovereignty.

Expressing hope earlier in the month, Humberto de la Calle, leader of the government's negotiating team, envisioned "a true opportunity to end armed conflict in Colombia through dialogue." Optimism vanished, however, on Feb. 23 when Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos threatened, "If talks don't advance, we'll leave the table."

Santos was reacting to FARC criticism of his visit three days earlier to San Vicente del Caguán where he transferred 247,000 acres of land in the area to 342 farm families. In an open letter, FARC Commander Timoleón Jiménez rejected Santos' contention that the land had belonged to FARC commander Jorge Briceño, killed by government forces in 2010. "Let's save the peace, Santos," he asserted.

With an average parcel size of 727 acres, far in excess of most small-farm operations, the land deal raised questions. In fact, reported human rights activist Horacio Duque, Santos was "delivering land titles to members of the Army... and to their paramilitary stand-ins, land taken away from thousands of peasants." Duque contends Santos sought to "lower pressure from the ultra-right military leaders, loyal to ex-President Uribe, who are demanding that the peace negotiations be suspended."

The land transfer event took place on the anniversary of the military takeover in Caguán in 2002 that marked the end of two years of peace negotiations there. Jiménez castigated Santos' commemoration of failed peace talks, his having "insulted the FARC in every possible way," and his silence on current peace talks. He warned that "official attitudes ... threaten to sink the process into a swamp."

Santo's plans for running for re-election in 2014 are unclear, and his opinion poll ratings are down. Predecessor Alvaro Uribe is spearheading efforts to return right-wing orthodoxy to the presidency and congress.

The FARC general staff on Feb. 26 expressed confidence peace talks would continue. The Colombian people were called upon "to mobilize against what caused and who was responsible for the plundering of 20 million acres over 20 years, [in order to] to facilitate delivery of a good part of the national territory to trans-nationals."

In an interview that day FARC delegation head Ivan Márquez broadened discussion of land to encompass larger societal needs. He referred to "war-making sectors quite interested in sabotaging this process of dialogue that know there are themes they don't want discussed like concentration of land." Land for small farmers would come "from cattle raisers, for example, who have 100 million acres in their hands and a herd of 22 million cows that live like princesses on large stretches of land we could put into cultivation, to produce food."

Márquez cited "studies calling for distribution of 50 million acres among small farmers and dedicating them to food sovereignty. We need to produce food for Colombians. Until just recently Colombia was more or less self sufficient, at 90 percent. [N]ow with neoliberal politics this changed and now we have to import more than 10 million tons of food products."

A week earlier the FARC delegation publicized ten food sovereignty proposals. First, access to food would become a fundamental right. The people would be empowered "to define their own strategies for sustainable production commercialization and consumption of food products."

Other proposals were: eradication of hunger; Production of food in "stable, health-promoting, and environmentally sustainable ways; consumers guaranteed access to food; "protection, stimulation, and financial support" for small farmers; co-existence of varying production models; protection against land diversion to "mega projects;" cooperation between farmers and city consumers to remove intermediaries; infrastructure improvements; and democratic decision-making.

Nevertheless, while negotiators were coping with the land question, a widespread coffee farmer's strike materialized on Feb. 25. Coffee farmers and cacao, cotton, sugar cane, and rice farmers are now victims of changing world market conditions and the impact of U.S., Canadian, and European free trade agreements. Food importers undersell Colombian producers. Coffee prices and production have dropped precipitously.

Police violence directed at the strikers reinforced media-inspired prejudice against agrarian agitators. Government spokespersons hinted strikers were taking orders from the FARC. Analyst José Antonio Gutiérrez points out that, "As is typical of the Colombian government, social protest has been turned into a military problem, and internal security problem."

Gutiérrez reports, however, that "small [coffee] farmers complain [government] help serves only to benefit big producers, and the mid-level and small ones don't see a peso." Says Gutiérrez, "Although the government wants to exclude discussion of the economic model from the peace negotiations, it's impossible to talk about agriculture without taking that model into consideration."

He adds: "Coffee and cacao farmers are showing that social mobilization in Colombian streets and countryside will make sure such discussion becomes the order of the day. Although Santos ... believes problems of class struggle can be confined to a negotiating table, the Colombian people are demonstrating that deep transformation of the country comes about through the daily construction of ...of new political horizons. These winds blowing in favor of the people can no longer be contained by means of violence. Something is happening in Colombia."

Struggle over privatization of San Juan airport continues

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:26:00 +0000

Protests are mounting in Puerto Rico as the centrist government of Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla, of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP), goes ahead with a privatization scheme involving the Luis Muñoz Marin airport, which provides service to the capital, San Juan.

The scheme was cooked up last year by Mr. Garcia Padilla's predecessor, Governor Luis Fortuño of the New Progressive Party (PNP). Fortuño's administration was wracked by street protests against his neo-liberal policies of austerity and privatization, which led to his defeat by Mr. Garcia Padilla in the November 2012 elections. The Popular Democrats also got majorities in both houses of the Puerto Rican legislature in those elections.

The Fortuño plan was explained by the previous government as being necessary because Puerto Rico is broke, with the Port Authority, which runs the airport, more than a billion dollars in the red. This impecuniousness was also given as the reason for severe cuts in the higher education budget, which set off a struggle by unions and student organizations in 2010 and still continuing. But in fact the effort to impose the neo-liberal austerity and union busting program in Puerto Rico has been going on since long before the present world financial crisis. In 1998, there was a massive labor and people's struggle to prevent the privatization of Puerto Rico's telephone services, which met with a vicious repressive response from the government.

The specific deal concerning the airport involves the Aerostar Company, gives the Mexico-based company a 40 year lease to run the airport in exchange for $2.6 billion in cash and equity over a number of years. Aerostar is a 50-50 combination of the Mexican firm Grupo Aeroportario del Sureste, which runs several airports in Mexico, and Highstar Capital, a U.S. "infrastructure investment" company.

On Monday, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which has authority over airports in Puerto Rico because the island is not an independent country but a U.S. "commonwealth" (some would say colony), indicated to the Puerto Rican government that it has approved the plan.

Governor Garcia Padilla said he did not especially like the plan but felt he had to go ahead and implement it because his predecessor had made a commitment and now it became a question of Puerto Rico keeping its word to the investors. But labor unions and other people's organizations, as well as the left, in Puerto Rico objected strongly.

Worse for the governor, it appears that most of his party's representatives in both houses of the legislature are also angry about the deal.

Labor's object focuses on the fact that nothing was negotiated to make sure that current employees of the airport and its present subcontractors would not be let go and replaced, perhaps even by foreign workers brought in for the purpose, leading to unemployment and union-busting. Puerto Rican business concerns also object that the continuation of their contracts to run some airport services is not guaranteed in the agreement. Opponents of the deal also fear that it will result in significant cost increases to consumers of airport services, while enriching foreign corporations instead of Puerto Rican businesses.

In the Legislative Assembly, Representative Jose Varela Fernandez, representing the caucus of the governor's own Popular Democratic Party presenting a report denouncing the arrangement, saying "the transaction in question lacks the indispensable value of transparency which should characterize every transaction which alienates ... a good which forms part of the national patrimony."

In the Senate, Senator Lourdes Santiago of the Independence Party (PIP) introduced a bill to reverse the deal. More demonstrations and protests are planned for coming days and weeks.

Puerto Rico receives subsidies to the tune of $4 billion annually from the United States but as a U.S. possession, has limited ability to deal with fiscal and economic crises. It does not control its own currency, for example, and can not unilaterally do anything about the fact that vast areas of the country are occupied by U.S. military bases. Removing U.S. military operations from the offshore island of Vieques took a long, massive struggle, which continues still with a focus on cleaning up the environmental damage done by the military.

The formerly ruling PNP calls for Puerto Rico to be made the 51^st U.S. state, but leading members of the US Republican Party, with which the PNP itself is loosely allied, puts conditions on this such as changing Puerto Rico's official language from Spanish to English; a high hurdle in a land where 97 percent or more of the people speak mostly Spanish.

Governor Garcia's PDP wants to continue the current "Commonwealth" status, if possible with enhanced autonomous powers, while the PIP and other left wing parties without current parliamentary representation call for Puerto Rico to become fully independent, which would allow it to become part of growing trade and aid arrangements that are raising living standards in the Latin-America and Caribbean area.

Raul Castro elected to final term as president of Cuba

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:49:00 +0000

Raul Castro was elected to his second term as Cuban president February 24, but he said it would be his last.

And the 81-year-old tapped Miguel Diaz-Canel to be his top lieutenant as the National Assembly voted for the country's leadership for the next five years.

He also said that he hopes to establish two-term limits and age caps for political offices including the presidency.

As the new first vice-president of the Council of State - Cuba's cabinet - 52-year-old Mr. Diaz-Canel has risen higher than any other official who didn't directly participate in the 1959 revolution.

The president hinted at other changes to the constitution.

But he scotched any idea that the country would abandon socialism, saying he had not assumed the presidency in order to destroy Cuba's system.

"I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba," he said.

"I was elected to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism, not destroy it."

Cuba is at a moment of "historic transcendence," Mr. Castro told MPs while announcing his new number two, who replaces 81-year-old Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, a veteran of the armed struggle against former dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The president praised Mr. Ventura and another aging revolutionary for offering to leave their positions so that younger leaders could move up.

Their selflessness is "a concrete demonstration of their genuine revolutionary fiber ... the essence of the founding generation of this revolution."

Mr. Castro said that Mr. Diaz-Canel's promotion "represents a definitive step in the configuration of the future leadership of the nation through the gradual and orderly transfer of key roles to new generations.

"Our greatest satisfaction is the tranquility and serene confidence we feel as we deliver to the new generations the responsibility to continue building socialism," he added.

The 612 MPs sworn in named Esteban Lazo as the first new National Assembly chief in 20 years, replacing Ricardo Alarcon who retired to work on the .

And MPs elected Mr. Ventura, comptroller general Gladys Bejerano, second vice-president Ramiro Valdes, Havana Communist Party secretary Lazara Mercedes Lopez Acea and head of Cuba's trade union Salvador Valdes Mesa the new vice-presidents of the state council.

Reposted from Morning Star

Photo: Cuba's new Vice-President Miguel Diaz-Canel, right, listens to Cuba's President Raul Castro during the closing session at the National Assembly in Havana, Cuba, Feb. 24. Ramon Espinosa/AP

Taking China's bullet train with slow clock

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:15:00 +0000

BEIJING -- On a crisp Saturday late last year, after participating in a conference on the crisis of capitalism and the future of world socialism, I took the subway to the Beijing Nan (south) rail station. I arrived less than 15 minutes before the scheduled departure of my bullet train to Nanjing, 620 miles away.

I quickly passed through minimal security, and took my assigned seat with time to spare. (Had I missed my train, I was told that I could exchange my ticket for another without penalty.) The train was sleek, the cars were clean but not exceptionally fancy. The train left on time.

The train maintained about 188 miles per hour. I was sure that the view from the window would be dizzying. But with elevated tracks and spotless windows, I had to struggle to unglue my nose from the window when we reached Nanjing, a little over three and a half hours after departing. The one quirk was the onboard clock was one minute slow, although the train left and arrived on time. Can the laws of relativity be fiddling with the clock, I wondered?

In the first three hours of my trip, I must have seen a million trees but not one forest. The trees all appeared to be less than 20 years old, and primarily of a single species. China suffered severe deforestation until recently, but it is now reforesting. All I could think of is that if a beetle fell from Mars and took a liking for that one species, the fumes of decay would soon choke life on Mars. But as we neared Nanjing, the number of species grew, with pleasing clumps of young evergreens. Modern China has a way of correcting itself.

The Nanjing bullet train station, the largest in China, is itself brand new. Like the Beijing station, it is connected to the city subway and bus lines. It is also almost exclusively solar-powered.

My Nanjing host told me that China now has 5,000 miles of bullet-train lines, spanning east to west as well as north to south. Weeks later, China inaugurated the world's longest high-speed rail line, from Beijing to Guangzhou, and the network now exceeds 5,800 miles.

The train covers the distance from New York to Washington or Boston in about an hour, more than three times the speed of Amtrak trains, at about the cost of budget buses. Special windows have been built to keep the view clear on the bullet train. My host also informed me that freight is now gradually replacing the previous high-speed passenger lines, which ran at almost 125 mph. This of great importance as it helps to raise the overall labor productivity in China.

China's new rail network is one face of the "stimulus" package rolled out following the open outbreak of crisis in capitalist countries in September 2008; some 20 million Chinese workers producing for export lost their jobs in a space of a few weeks.

But in sharp contrast with stimulus packages in capitalist countries, China's package created some 20 million new jobs by the spring of 2009. That includes about 500,000 to develop the five main bullet-train lines, soon to grow to eight lines spanning 11,000 miles by late 2015. The stimulus projects built on the existing five-year plan, with a concentration on addressing environmental concerns. Rail, for example, has about one-thirtieth the carbon footprint of planes, and less than half the footprint of trucks and buses.

I left China shaking my head in happy disbelief.

Photo: (CC)

Demand for inquiry into France's role in assassination of African leader

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:01:00 +0000

On February 13, a member of the French Chamber of Deputies tabled a motion to begin a parliamentary investigation of the assassination of Captain Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso, in 1987.

Sankara, who himself took power in a coup d'état in 1983, was a progressive and charismatic leader who is sometimes referred to as Africa's Che Guevara. Succeeding a regime seen as subservient to France, Sankara changed the name of his country from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which means land of men of integrity. He was considered incorruptible, and gained the love and support of poor Burkinabés (as the people of Burkina Faso are called) because of his programs of land reform, agricultural development, improved health care and schools and other similar things. Two very popular emphases of Sankara's policies were the improvement in the situation of women and the curtailment of the traditional powers of tribal chiefs, who were seen by many as corrupt. He nationalized all land and subsoil wealth of Burkina Faso.

But in 1987, he was overthrown and killed in a military coup organized by Blaise Compoaré, at that time a military officer also, and now president of Burkina Faso. The reason given for the coup was that Sankara's nationalizations and anti-imperialist rhetoric were angering the French and neighboring African countries aligned with France. With Sankara out of the way, many of his progressive policies were reversed, including the nationalizations. But Sankara's supporters have not forgotten him in the ensuing 26 years, and have kept up a campaign to achieve justice for Sankara, and a return to his progressive socialist policies.

The belief that France and perhaps the United States were involved in the overthrow and killing of Sankara did not come from nowhere. Besides the flat statement by the Compoaré group that they overthrew Sankara because he was annoying the French, many of the individuals who have carried out coups in Africa have been former French or French colonial army officers, and the involvement of French security services and business interests in such actions is well known. The CIA has also been involved in several coups, most notably in the overthrow of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960 and of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. In each case, the leader overthrown and/or killed was seen as a threat to French, U.S. or other western business interests because of his progressive policies.

Earlier this year, the French newspaper Liberacion published a story which strongly suggests some sort of French security involvement in the incident in 1994 in which an airplane carrying the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda was shot down over the Rwandan capital of Kigali, an incident which helped trigger the Rwandan genocide and some other current conflicts in Central Africa.

People in Burkina Faso cannot get at the necessary French government records under normal circumstances.

So in 2011, a group of Burkinabé parliamentarians wrote to the French National Assembly calling for it to begin an inquiry into the Sankara assassination. A motion to that effect has now been tabled in the lower house of the National Assembly by Andre Chassaigne, a deputy from the French Communist Party. A guest from Burkina Faso's left-wing Union pour la Renaissance/Parti Sankariste, Me Benewende Stanislas Sankara, attended the 36^th Congress of the French Communist Party this month. On returning to Burkina Faso, he participated in a press conference in the Burkinabé capital, Ouagadougou, to advance the same demands.

Mr. Chassaigne's motion coincides with an increasing level of U.S., French and NATO involvement in African affairs, including an exponential expansion of U.S. military missions under the AFRICOM command. The latest is that the Republic of Niger is now allowing the U.S. to set up drone bases in the Southern part if its territory, near the border with Mali.

It's necessary that we in the United States also be ready to demand answers from our own government.

Photo: Thomas Sankara website.

Cyprus presidential election moves to second round

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:30:00 +0000

The first round of the presidential election in Cyprus concluded on Feb. 17 with three candidates emerging out of a field of 10. The overall voter turn out was more than 80%.

Expecting an outright victory, center-right party candidate Nicos Anastiades was forced into a second round election by two other candidates running as independents, Stavros Malas and Giorgios Lillikas.

Anastiades is seen as the favored candidate of big banks and others who want to impose austerity on Cyprus in response to the worldwide crisis of capital.

Malas, who enjoys the support of left party, AKEL, came in second. Malas and Lillikas' combined vote total topped Anastiades. Lillikas is backed by EDEK, a party considered socialist but more in the model of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party.

In a recent statement on the elections the AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou called on Cypriots to "defend the public and natural wealth" and to defend against neo liberal attacks on working people, social benefits, wages and pensions.

After the first round results, Malas called upon the public to defend Cyprus and democracy. Now he is currently reaching out to the supporters of third place finisher, whose votes will be critical for the anti-austerity candidate's victory. The second round is scheduled for this Sunday, Feb. 24.

Photo: Cyprus is situated in the eastern portion of the Mediterranean Sea. (CC)

Mali situation far from resolved

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:31:00 +0000

The situation in the West African country of Mali continues to get more difficult and complex.

Although the intervening French troops initially managed to drive Islamist fighters of the Ansar Dine, MUJAO and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb out of the Northern cities of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal, it is now becoming clear that these forces have neither been broken up nor driven out of Mali. They are evidently regrouping, with bases in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, for the purpose of carrying out irregular or asymmetrical warfare against the Malian state and its French and African allies. Kidal appears not to have been completely cleared of its rebel forces, and several attacks have been carried against Malian troops in Gao. Meanwhile, there appears to be more coordination among Islamist rebels in Several West and North African countries, leading to a wave of kidnapping of foreigners for ransom across the region.

In areas held by the Malian army and its allies, too, the situation is complex. Malian soldiers are accused by Human Rights Watch and others of having committed crimes against the civilian population, while civilian populations have targeted Arab and Tuareg owned businesses for revenge attacks.

The idea proposed by the French government, namely that the Malian government of Interim President Dioncounda Traoré make concessions to the Tuareg separatists so as to turn them into a force to fight the Islamists, is not eliciting loud applause in Bamako, Mali's capital, either from supporters of Traoré or from those of his rival, Army Captain Amadou Sanogo.

Although in European and American media there is a tendency to express uncritical sympathy for the Tuaregs as a neglected minority oppressed by the darker skinned people who run the government, the reality is really more complex. The Tuaregs do have some legitimate complaints about the government, especially its inadequate response to climate changes. But in pre-colonial times and during the French colonial administration, some aristocratic Tuareg clans held a relationship of masters to slaves over other Malian ethnic groups, and by some accounts this relationship still continues in some form.

The claim by Tuareg separatists (who by no means represent all Tuaregs in Mali) to the whole of North Mali collides with the fact that they are only about ten percent of the population of the region (they are far from a majority in Timbuktu, for example, where speakers of languages of the Songhai group predominate). Also, if Mali turns out to have major reserves of oil, gas and uranium, it is probably to be found in the North, so splitting that off to form a separate Tuareg state is seen as an alarming prospect for Mali's economic future.

And the projected state of Azawad for which the Tuareg separatists have been fighting would theoretically include great chunks of Mali's neighbors: Algeria, Niger, Libya and Burkina Faso, which have Tuareg populations. The governments of these countries would be unlikely to agree to such a thing.

The European countries that colonized Africa struggled against each other for control of territory, and the colonial boundaries were determined by those struggles and did not follow the borders of pre-colonial states or ethnic groups. For example, what are now Sudan and South Sudan became "British" (actually, nominally Egyptian) because in a face to face confrontation at Fashoda on the upper Nile between British General Herbert Kitchener and French Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, the French blinked first.

Nobody asked the local population whether they wanted to be ruled by the French, the British, the Egyptians, the Belgians, or nobody but themselves.

When these colonies became independent, they were left with these irrational boundaries, and consequently with the potential for a lot of internal ethnic conflict. But the judgment of almost all of Africa's leaders has been that it is better not to tinker with the boundaries, as this, far from cooling down ethnic friction, is likely to set off an even greater balkanization of the African continent. In Mali alone, there are more than 50 languages spoken; in nearby Nigeria, the number is ten times that. (The separation of South Sudan from Sudan is a recent exception, accepted by other African states because of the united support in the South for independence and because of the extremely bad government of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir).

Captain Sanogo's faction is especially much opposed to doing a deal with the Tuaregs. He took power in a coup d'etat in March 2012 specifically to preserve the "territorial integrity" of Mali, accusing then President Amadou Toumani Toure and his officials of opening the door to a national split up, because they were corrupted by cross-Saharan smuggling operations.

On the left, Mali's main Marxist party, the Parti SADI, (African Party for Solidarity and Independence), has for a while been worried about French neocolonialism playing a Tuareg card, and now they believe their fears are confirmed. The announcement on February 5 by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian that the French military is already working with the Tuareg separatist organization, MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) brought about an angry response from Parti SADI: "To impose the MNLA at the table of negotiations will be justly seen as inadmissible interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation, and would lose for France the political benefit of an intervention which all are saluting at present."

Rather, the Parti Sadi statement says, the MLNA leaders should be put on trial for the massacre of Malian soldiers taken prisoner a year ago.

Photo: U.S. Army Capt. Laura Porter with children during a medical capabilities exercise in Senkoro, Mali. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Jeromy K. Cross)

Opportunity for a peaceful end to Syria crisis must not be lost

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:11:00 +0000

The civil war in Syria has now cost 70,000 lives, as forces loyal to President Bashir al Assad and rebel forces with an increasing militant Islamist component blaze away at each other, leaving sections of Damascus, Aleppo, and other Syrian cities and towns in smoking ruins. The number of refugees is now estimated to be around a million.

Yet there is a small opening toward a possible peaceful solution. This is an opportunity that must not be lost.

The fighting in Syria began in when peaceful demonstrations against Assad's authoritarian regime were violently repressed, and the opposition responded with violence also. As the fighting has continued, various outside forces have interfered. The Arab monarchies of the Gulf area have been bankrolling the rebellion, and especially the extremist Sunni Islamists in its front ranks. The United States and its European NATO allies plus Turkey, while not wanting to put "boots on the ground" in Syria, have been providing moral and economic support to the rebels. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was very visible in trying to organize a new government for Syria through the "Friends of Syria" organization, an activity many would say should be strictly left to the Syrian people alone. Russia, China, and Iran, not wanting to see another "regime change" scenario like the one in Libya take place in such a crucial geographical spot have been opposing this outside interference.

As the fight has developed it has become clearer that am increasing, role is being played by militant Islamist fighters of the Al Nusra Front, which is closely aligned with Al Qaeda, and other hard line Islamist groups. The worry is now that should Assad be overthrown, a radical Islamist regime would come to power, and would put an end to positive characteristics of Syrian society such as relative religious tolerance and basically secular governmental and social institutions. Many in Syria and elsewhere fear that such a regime, besides imposing harsh Sharia law, would come down hard, perhaps with genocidal consequences, on religious minorities in Syria, including Christians but also the 2.6 million strong Alawite branch of Shia Islam, to which Assad and his family belong.

In the United States, there are now two positions being pushed to prevent Syria from being transformed into an Al Qaeda ruled state and a base for terrorist attacks against the rest of the world. One is that the Obama administration should now intervene directly in the Syrian war, at least arming those sectors of the rebellion which are not Islamists, so that as well as fighting to oust Assad, they can also fight to prevent their Islamist allies from taking power after Assad goes. This point of view is promoted, for example, by Vance Serchunk, a former aide to ex Senator Joe Lieberman (I- Connecticut), thinks that the US should bomb the Assad regime to help the rebels win, and arm "moderates" among the rebels so that after Assad goes, they can defeat the Islamists.

Serchunk fears increased Russian and Iranian influence in the area more than he does the seizure of power in Damascus by Al Qaeda clones, so he is against the U.S. coordinating with Moscow to try to find a peaceful solution.

This sort of thing is what the great Marxist sociologist C. Wright Mills called "crackpot realism". It relies on the idea that the U.S., by intervening, can make sure that "moderates," of whose strength we have no clear idea, if armed and supported by the United States, can fill the vacuum in Syria. But an outcome equally or more likely is that in spite of all the U.S. military's drones and bombs, the Islamists sweep both Assad and the moderate oppositionists off the stage, with disastrous consequences to all but themselves, and for the Syrian people.

The other approach would be to coordinate with Russia, China and others to try to find a peaceful exist before it is too late. On February 20, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, together with the Arab League, made a new offer to broker a negotiated solution. Originally seen as allied with Assad, Russia has in recent weeks criticized both the Syrian Government and the rebels for their intransigence, which Lavrov points out can only lead to mutual ruin. Among the rebel groups and leaders, Moaz al Khatib, leader of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, has expressed willingness to enter negotiations. Next week, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Moallem, will be headed to Moscow for talks.

The Islamists and some others denounced el Khatib's initiative, and Assad keeps saying that he will not step down, but an opening toward a new negotiated solution seems to be in the offing.

Also the U.N. Special Representative in the Syria situation, Lakhdar Brahimi, has been reappointed, an encouraging sign.

There are many obstacles, but also signs of hope. A lot depends on the position of the United States. So far, while indirectly supporting the rebels, the Obama administration and most of the European NATO states have been wary of directly arming them, because of the probability of such arms falling into the hands of the jihadi extremists. But if Obama and his new Secretary of State, John Kerry, listen to the crackpot realists and plunge into the Syrian maelstrom further, it would greatly harm chances for a peaceful negotiated solution.

We need to speak out to prevent this.

Photo: Smoke rises from a damaged building in Aleppo, Syria. Manu Brabo/AP

Ecuadorian President Correa gains second term, scores big win

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:22:00 +0000

Rafael Correa won his third election to Ecuador's presidency on February 17, 2013. The first one, in December 2006, preceded approval two years later of a new constitution, and next two followed. Having served 10 years when his new term ends in 2017, Correa will have been Ecuador's longest serving president. In the decade prior to his first election in December, 2006 seven presidents had held office.

Correa's 56.9 percent plurality this time and his 51.7 percent victory in 2009 were each high enough to rule out second round voting. He is the first president in Ecuadorian history to win two consecutive first round victories, and the only president in three decades to have been re-elected decisively.

Banker Guillermo Lasso, heading the newly created CREO Party, was chosen by 23.8 percent of voters. Next in line was ex-president Lucio Gutiérrez who gained six percent of the votes. Those remaining were shared among five other candidates. Lasso sought tax repeal, free trade agreements, and increased private foreign investment. He belongs to the conservative Opus Dei group and is linked to ex-Spanish President José María Aznar, a lead European spokesperson against widening democracy and integration in Latin America.

At least 51 percent of candidates of Correa's Alianza Pais political party gained National Assembly seats. Never before in Ecuadorian history has a single party held a legislative majority. Voting results for provincial assemblies were incomplete two days after the elections.

The "Pais" in the party's name - "country" in English - signifies "Patria Altiva I Soberana," or in English, "Proud and Sovereign Fatherland." Backers of the socialist movement led by Correa speak of a "Citizen's Revolution." The Quechua indigenous expression "Sumak Kawsay" signifies safe and sound equilibrium with nature and communal life. Translated into "Living Well," it became the movement's slogan.

Correa found backing across Ecuador's class spectrum, with some local manufacturers grateful, for example, for policies limiting imports of some foreign goods. The economy has advanced 5.2 percent annually since 2007. Inflation has averaged 4.8 percent.

The President's victory stemmed overwhelmingly from popular mobilization built upon five years of social gains for the country's majority. The poverty rate dropped from 38 to 29 percent and unemployment, from nine to four percent. The minimum salary was increased. Health and education services; transportation services; and infrastructure, especially roads, bridges, and airports, were improved. The government recently hiked "development bonds," payments to families and handicapped persons, from $35 to $50 per month. They were in effect when Correa became president.

Augmented funding for social services is the result of increased revenues the government negotiated with multinational oil producers. Stopping payment on one third of Ecuador's foreign debt in 2008 on the presumption it was illegal also opened up resources for social spending.

One observer attributes Correa's electoral achievement to late effects of women and the illiterate having gained the vote decades ago and to voting rights extended under the new Constitution to youth, prisoners, immigrants, and Ecuadorians living abroad, of whom 80 percent voted for the President. In the campaign, Alianza País took mass meetings and rallies into the streets and to rural areas and used media and social networks to good effect.

Opposition forces critiqued Correa's supposedly arrogant style of exercising power and government repression of hostile media. Business interests pointed to high levels of public debt and low credit ratings with international lenders. Friend and foe alike warn of persisting problems, among them indigenous resistance to promotion of extractive industries, land inequalities, fragile water resources, monopoly domination of the economy, corruption, and Julian Assange, who found asylum in Ecuador's London embassy.

President Correa's admirers point to full and understandable explanations Correa offers for government policies. A Cuban editorialist cites Correa's "valor" for "policies making up for extreme poverty imposed by past governments, for expelling the Yankees from the Manta airbase, for confronting the Uribe government [of Colombia] for having killed the FARC leader Raul Reyes on Ecuadorian territory, for taking on the petroleum multinationals, for examining the country's foreign debt and reducing it, for confronting the coup of September 30, 2010, for condemning in Miami itself the unjust convictions in that city of the five Cuban anti-terrorists jailed in the United States, for tying the destinies of his country to ALBA, and for not attending the Summit of the Americas because Cuba wasn't invited."

At a post election press conference Correa dedicated his victory to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, our "friend who is fighting for his life and is the natural leader of the Latin American integration process."

Photo: Ecuador President Rafael Correa is embraced by his mother, Norma Delgado, as they celebrate his election victory. Dolores Ochoa/AP

Ecuadorian President Correa gains second term, scores big win

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:08:00 +0000

Rafael Correa won his third election to Ecuador's presidency on February 17, 2013.

Correa's 56.9 percent plurality this time and his 51.7 percent victory in 2009 were each high enough to rule out second-round voting. He is the first president in Ecuadorian history to win two consecutive first round victories, and the only president in three decades to have been re-elected decisively.

One observer attributes Correa's electoral achievement to late effects of women and the illiterate having gained the vote decades ago, and to voting rights extended under the new Constitution to youth, prisoners, immigrants, and Ecuadorians living abroad, of whom 80 percent voted for the President. In the campaign, Alianza País took mass meetings and rallies into the streets and to rural areas and used media and social networks to good effect.

Banker Guillermo Lasso, heading the newly created CREO Party, was chosen by 23.8% of voters. Next in line was ex-president Lucio Gutiérrez who gained 6% of the votes. Those remaining were shared among five other candidates. Lasso sought tax repeal, free trade agreements, and increased private foreign investment. He belongs to the ultra-conservative Opus Dei group and is linked to ex-Spanish President José María Aznar, a lead European spokesperson against widening democracy and integration in Latin America.

President Correa's admirers point to full and understandable explanations Correa offers for government policies:

making up for extreme poverty imposed by past governments

taking on the petroleum multinationals

examining the country's foreign debt and reducing it

condemning in Miami the unjust convictions in that city of the five Cuban anti-terrorists jailed in the United States

tying the destinies of his country to ALBA

and not attending the Summit of the Americas because Cuba wasn't invited.

Photo: President Correa visiting Casa Negra mine where two miners were trapped in 2010. Santiago Armas/Presidencia de la República, Flickr

The cost of renewed U.S. control in Paraguay

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:54:00 +0000

U. S. involvement in Paraguay has a dark past. The Standard Oil Company financed Bolivia's brutal 1932-1935 Chaco war with Paraguay. U.S. agents helped the Stroessner dictatorship in carrying out the terrorist Operation Condor aimed at assassinating enemies of right wing governments in Latin America. Stroessner's regime fell after 35 years only when U. S. support ended.

Paraguay interests the U.S. government now because it's close to unruly Bolivia, because of oil deposits, the Guaraní fresh water aquifer, and lawlessness in the tri-border area. The world's fourth largest soy exporter, Paraguay bought enough seed and herbicide from Monsanto Corporation in 2011 to generate $30 million in tax-free income. U.S. troops rotate through Paraguay.

U. S. interventionists now work to solidify cooperation from civil and military government officials. In a report February 7, Brazilian journalist Natalia Viana maintains that approach helped facilitate the congressional coup that on June 22, 2012 removed the progressive President Fernando Lugo from office.

For five years ending in 2012, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) pursued its "Threshold Program" in Paraguay. Viana suggests that "through USAID, the North Americans donated more than $100 million to businesses, NGO's, and government agencies [and thereby] are guaranteed proximity to various spheres of power." Funding increased from $ 17.3 million in 2007 to $36.2 million in 2010. Between 2005 and 2010, 1000 Paraguayan soldiers and police received U.S. training, most in 2009.

"Threshold" was supposed to ensure "transparency, justice, and economic liberty," and reduce corruption. Funds went to the Interior Ministry, Public Ministry, Comptroller General, Finance Ministry, and Supreme Court. The police received $9.4 million in 2009 alone; Supreme Court, $5 million that year.

Lugo's tenure ended through quick impeachment by a landowner dominated Congress refusing to accept his non-approval of Monsanto's application to market genetically modified soy, cotton, and corn seeds. On becoming president, former Vice President Fernando Franco quickly complied with Monsanto's wishes

Viana portrays U. S. Ambassador Liliana Ayalde as confident, especially because the finance minister, police chief, interior minister, and President Franco's cabinet chief "know and respect USAID and worked with us in the past."

Yet the U.S. government had financed dozens of organizations earlier to assure Lugo's election in 2008, perhaps to break the Colorado Party's 62-year hold on power. Analyst Luis Argüero Wagner explains that, Lugo "won the elections on the back of intervention by the North American ambassador James Cason." He describes Lugo's "cabinet as made up entirely of people strongly identified with the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy...the Inter-American Foundation, [and as regards Defense Minister Bareiro Spaini] schools of coup-plotters in the United States."

Evidently for U.S. strategists, securing control over targeted governments is a higher priority than selecting their leaders. The idea may be that with leaders paid off and dependent, controls will survive periods of turmoil and uncertainty. Post-coup Paraguay is passing through one of them.

Charges proliferate that the violent incident used as pretext for the coup was scripted. Five days prior to Lugo's impeachment, 324 police forced 70 peasants - some carrying homemade shotguns - to vacate land in Curuguaty, claimed without benefit of title by a wealthy former Colorado Party president. The encounter involving police sharpshooters left six police and 11 peasants dead. Lugo's enemies declared the incident demonstrated his ineptness in using security forces to block agrarian rights agitation. Agrarian leader Vidal Vega, witness to the killings, was later murdered. U.S. trained police participated in the shoot-out.

Viana quoted as a confidant Ayalde as saying, "Political actors across the spectrum are looking to hear our advice." Earlier on Wikileaks cables, Ayalde emphasized that, "Political control of the Supreme Court is crucial for guaranteeing impunity for crimes committed by slick politicians. Having friends on the Supreme Court is pure gold." The Court rejected Lugo's argument of unconstitutionality in regard to the scant time allowed for his defense against impeachment.

On February 2, presidential candidate Lino Oviedo died in a helicopter crash. Assassination is rumored. Polling data for presidential elections set for April 21, 2013 gives the retired general a 10 percent preference rating. Colorado Party candidate Horacio Cartes is quoted as saying, "Oviedo's potential for attracting voters with moderately conservative views was extremely dangerous." General Olviedo, a famous coup-plotter and conspirator, had joined with the U.S. embassy in removing Stroessner.

In polls, the wealthy, allegedly narco-trafficking Cartes is ahead of Efraín Alegre, candidate for President Franco's Liberal Party. Next in line is the Guasu Front, the left leaning electoral coalition joined by the Paraguayan Communist Party that in 2008 put Lugo in power. Its candidate now is Anibal Carillo. Mario Ferreiro is the candidate of social democratic groups that split from the Front.

With the approach of elections, the U.S. embassy has augmented its staff. "In the end," Viana concludes, "U.S. support is fundamental for the future of any government in that country."

The other story is what one agrarian activist calls a "severe crisis of the rural sector with deteriorating living standards for small producers." In response, rural mobilization is advancing, but not without peril. Security forces have killed 120 organizers in recent years. Land occupiers at Curuguaty were detained and allegedly tortured. Yet there's reason for resistance.

Now, two percent of Paraguayans own 90 percent of the country's land. Since 1996, 30 million acres have been deforested to make way for soy production; 9000 farm families are forced off their land every year. Food must be imported to feed Paraguay's people, 60 percent of whom live in poverty. Over 22 percent of small children are at risk of malnutrition, says Prensa Latina.

Photo: Farmers protest holding pictures of people who died on June 15, 2012, during clashes with police as they were evicted from a reserve, on the outskirts of Curuguaty, Paraguay. Jorge Saenz/AP

Colombian senator: U.S.-backed labor rights plan a flop

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:40:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The labor action plan for workers' rights added to the controversial U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is failing, a Colombian senator and union leaders are telling their U.S. colleagues. The U.S. should start enforcing it, they add.

Otherwise, U.S. and Colombian workers will both be the losers, they said.

From Feb. 11-13, Colombian Sen. Alexander Lopez Maya and three top leaders of Colombia's oil workers union - Cesar Liza, German Osman and union president Rodolfo Vecino Acevedo - brought their message to the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees. Leaders of other Colombian unions accompanied them.

The group discussed workers' rights with pro-worker lawmakers, the State and Labor Departments, the U.S. Trade Representative, the Agency for International Development and Colombia's Embassy. The U.S. agencies are involved with Colombia.

The AFL-CIO and SEIU promised to take up the Colombian workers' cause again with U.S. officials and lobby for enforcement of the side pact, Lopez Maya said in a telephone interview with Press Associates Union News Service.

The Steelworkers sponsored the Columbians' trip to the U.S., along with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a top human rights group. Steelworkers Associate General Counsel Daniel Kovalik raised the same issues in a Feb. 12 letter to lawmakers, citing the murder of three Colombian union leaders so far this year.

Those three are added to 19 murders last year and 3,000 since 1980, said Lopez Maya. The number of death threats against unionists and their families has increased, he added. The carnage has made Colombia the most dangerous nation in the world for unionists. It's also one of the least unionized, with only four percent organized.

Few perpetrators have been brought to trial, but right-wing paramilitaries have confessed to 450 of the killings, Lopez Maya added. But they did so to Colombia's Truth and Justice Commission. The testimony gains them lesser jail sentences. "And we still don't know who ordered the unionists' murders," Lopez Maya said.

U.S. unions, notably the Steelworkers and the Communications Workers, led the domestic opposition to the U.S.-Colombia FTA, which George Bush negotiated. The Obama administration, under pressure from U.S. unions and some congressional Democrats, forced addition of the labor action plan that the Colombian senanator and unions say is not being taken seriously by the government or by corporations.

The murders and death threats are not the whole story. The Colombian government still puts obstacles in the way of workers who want to unionize, even though current president Eduardo de los Santos has pledged to protect worker rights.

One notorious "cooperative" subcontract system of hiring workers - which prevented workers from organizing under Colombian law - was dumped, Acevedo said. It was replaced by an equivalent system, where the hiring firms were "simplified stock companies," which then sign up workers.

Under Colombian law, Lopez Maya explained, that still prevents the workers from unionizing, because such stock companies are exempt from laws requiring respect for organizing rights and because workers are not directly hired by the port, factory, or other enterprise.

And while last year's hunger strike by eight GM Colombia workers outside the U.S. embassy finally drew a response from the ambassador, there's been no actual remedial action on the complaints of the workers. The GM workers cited lack of pay and repression of workers' rights.

The oil workers' union, the port workers union and the sugar cane workers have been particularly repressed, Lopez Maya adds. Police were called to break up oil workers' organizing in Cartagena, the main export terminal. Oil workers who expressed interest in unionizing were immediately and summarily fired. And when Lopez Maya tried to enter the port to address workers, a YouTube video shows police driving him off.

A memo from Union Portuaria, via WOLA, describes employer intransigence in bargaining and dominance of the temp hiring firms. "In 2012, more than 1,000 workers were fired from their port jobs" for seeking to unionize or meeting with organizers, it says. "In addition, around 600 workers had their salaries reduced by the Port Authority."

The Colombians renewed their campaign for enforcement of the FTA's labor side pact this year following a one-year hiatus, Lopez Maya added. "We'll ask the Hill to start work on enforcing the Labor Action Plan. We understand that last year, because of the U.S. election, its priority fell through. Now that he [Obama] is in his second term, we want him to make it a priority," Lopez Maya said.

The U.S. can enforce the labor pact by formal complaints to a joint panel, saying Colombia fails to follow the pact's commitments. But past U.S. complaints to such panels, covering other Latin American nations, have gone nowhere. So Lopez Maya and the unionists will return to publicity: His Colombian Senate committee will hold a hearing in April on workers' rights - and he wants U.S. unions to send representatives and delegations to again reveal and report on the situation in Colombia.

Image: Women carry signs demanding negotiations to end violence against workers in Colombia. Luis Gomez // CC BY-ND 2.0

Presidential election to be held in Trinidad and Tobago

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:05:00 +0000

Presidential elections are scheduled to be held on Trinidad and Tobago on February 15^th. The president, is, like the Queen in England, the nominal head of state, however, in this island nation the post is largely ceremonial, with the real executive power vested in the prime minister.

The president is elected by the members of Parliament and, given Trinidad and Tobago's parliamentary system of government, it is likely that the candidate nominated by the group holding the most seats in parliament, in this case the Peoples Partnership coalition will ascend to the presidency.

The candidate nominated by the PP is Anthony Carmona, a highly respected former justice of the nation's Supreme Court. Although the election will be on the 15^th the new president will not take office until March 17^th, at the end of the term of the current president, George Maxwell Richards. In addition to his position in the judicial system of Trinidad Carmona was recently elected to be a justice of the International Criminal Court.

U.S. a factor in 6 million Congo deaths

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:39:00 +0000

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, writing for The Guardian of London, called it "the most important assassination of the 20th century." He was referring to the murder of the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ("DRC" or "Congo"), Patrice Lumumba, on January 17, 1961, through the combined efforts of the United States and Belgium. The assassination took place less than seven months after Congolese independence from Belgium. The Congo has yet to recover from this tragic event.

In his Guardian article, Nzongola-Ntalaja explained that Lumumba's murder - "the country's original sin" - was motivated by the U.S. desire to control the Congo's resources:

"With the outbreak of the Cold War, it was inevitable that the U.S. and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp. It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba's determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo's resources in order to utilize them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests."

Sadly, as we find throughout the rest of the world, the end of the Cold War has not slowed the U.S. in its aggressive pursuit of other peoples' wealth. Indeed, in large part because of the demise of the Soviet Union, which had been a check on U.S. intervention, the U.S. aggression has only increased.

And so, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, U.S. President Bill Clinton began to pave the way for a giant resource grab in the Congo - the most resource-rich country on earth, and also the poorest, with the very lowest Human Development Indicator of the 187 countries ranked by the United Nations. Thus, as we learn well from the work of Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, most notably in The Politics of Genocide, the U.S. in the early 1990s backed forces led by Paul Kagame, who was trained in intelligence at Fort Leavenworth, in their takeover of Rwanda.

And then, in 1996, the U.S. backed Kagame, who had become president of Rwanda with U.S. help, in his invasion of the Congo. The result has been the greatest mass killing since WWII, with around 6 million killed in the Congo since that time.

In a recent interview with me, Kambale Musavuli of Friends of the Congo explains that U.S. economic and geopolitical interests have motivated its continuing support for the bloodbath in the Congo, which continues to this day. As Kambale explains, the U.S. is motivated by "economic and military interests."

"Economic interests in Congo are that which we need in our daily life. The coltan which comes out the Congo can be found in your cell phone, the cobalt of the Congo can be found in the battery of the broker of Congo's minerals, and they loot Congo's mineral resources while they commit atrocities. ... Chaos allows resources to leave from the Congo at a cheap price, and of course it's not actually just leaving, it's actually being stolen from the Congolese people.

"The second [factor] is military interest. Rwanda and Uganda their militaries have been trained by the United States. Since the era when the American soldier was killed in Somalia in Mogadishu, the U.S. did not want to have any of the troops in Africa anymore. So the U.S. created a system in which they would train all the foreign military missions. I mean, can you imagine that ... today, we have Ugandan soldiers in Afghanistan fighting the war on terror. How many Americans know that? We have Rwandan soldiers in Haiti and in Sudan. These missions can be deployed across the world to protect U.S. interests around the world. ... So, the U.S. government is valuing profits before people, and ignoring the fact that people have the right to life, to human rights."

Kambale, speaking for himself and many other Congolese, is begging Americans to wake up and speak out against the U.S. support for the genocide being carried out in his country:

"If you are aware, just as we took action to end the Holocaust in Europe, if we know in the Congo millions have died from - estimates take the number to over 6 million, and half of them are children under the age of 5 - and we remain silent when we know what is happening, we are really complicit. And in a very tangible way because we are supporting the two oppressive regimes in Rwanda and Uganda, and in turn these nations are using the support that we are giving them to create, fabricate militia groups which are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity."

The U.S. intervention in Africa, while most notable in the Congo because of the extent of its brutality there, does not end in that country. Thus, we recently saw the U.S. lead the regime change in Libya, which has devastated that country and directly led to the destabilization of its neighbor, Mali.

The U.S. is also supporting Ethiopia as it carries out its own genocide against the 5 million ethnic Somalis in its Ogaden region. Thus, as Graham Pebbles recently explained in Counterpunch:

"In the harsh Ogaden region of Ethiopia, impoverished ethnic Somali people are being murdered and tortured, raped, persecuted and displaced by government paramilitary forces. Illegal actions carried out with the knowledge and tacit support of donor countries [most notably the U.S.], seemingly content to turn a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by their brutal, repressive ally in the region; and a deaf ear to the pain and suffering of the Ogaden Somali people."

And, President Obama is preparing to up the ante by sending Special Forces to 35 African countries this year. Kambale was correct in saying that we have a moral obligation to speak out against this U.S. war against his country and the continent of Africa. His words indeed bring to mind similar words of Martin Luther King which are as true today as they were then: "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government, I cannot be silent."

Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights attorney. He teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Photo: Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in Brussels, January 1960. He was assassinated with U.S. connivance a year later. Wikimedia Commons

Obama and Europe’s meltdown

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:46:00 +0000

Back in the 1960s, the U.S. peace movement came up with a catchy phrase: "What if the schools got all the money they needed and the Navy had to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier?" Well, the Italian Navy has a line of clothing, and is taking a cut from a soft drink called "Forza Blu" in order to make up for budget cuts. It plans to market energy snacks and mineral water.

Things are a little rocky in Europe these days.

Unemployment is over 25 percent in Greece, Spain and Portugal-and far higher among young people in those countries-and most economies are dead in the water, if not shrinking. Relentless austerity policies have shredded Europe's traditional social compact with its citizens, fueled a wave of debt-related suicides in the continent's hard-hit south-Greek suicide rates jumped 37 percent from 2009 to 2011-and locked much of the continent into a seemingly endless spiral: austerity means layoffs, fewer jobs equal less revenue, lower revenues leads to more austerity=the classic debt trap.

"The economic situation in Europe is moving from bad to catastrophic," says Douglas McWilliams, chief executive for the Centre for Economic and Business Research. "There is a danger that economic problems will spill over into social breakdown."

So why hasn't the U.S. Treasury pressured lending agencies, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to shift from austerity formulas to stimulation policies? Why is the Obama administration pressing Europeans to increase military spending? And what should it matter to Washington if Britain remains in the European Union (EU)?

It is not just that Europe is in crisis, it is that, as one Portuguese pensioner told Reuters, "We see no light at the end of the tunnel, just more pain and difficulties." In November the European Commission reported that unemployment on the continent-now in excess of 25 million people-would continue to rise. "The economic outlook is bleak and has worsened in recent months and is not expected to improve in 2013," the Commission found. "The EU is currently the only major region in the world where unemployment is still rising."

A UN report predicts that Europe will not recover the jobs lost in the 2008 financial crisis until at least 2017. One EU study found that the crisis threatens to turn the 94 million Europeans between ages 15 and 29 into a "lost generation."

All this translates into a level of economic misery that Europeans have not seen in more than 80 years. Indeed, Standard & Poor says Greece's meltdown is worse in "duration and scale" than Germany's was during the 1930s. The aid agency Oxfam reports that if the Madrid government's current austerity policies continue, the percentage of people below the poverty line in Spain could rise from 27 percent to 40 percent. United Kingdom Chancellor George Osborne says he expects his country's austerity program to continue until 2018.

The pain is so intense that it has helped fuel credible regional secession movements in Spain, Belgium, and Scotland.

But the push for yet greater austerity has less to do with a deep concern by Europe's elites over debt-it is high but manageable-than as part of a stealth campaign aimed at dismantling rules and regulations that protect worker rights, unions, and the environment.

"We are seeing some worrying signs of anti-business rhetoric among some of Europe's leaders and believe that this is not a productive and collaborate approach to take," DuPont's head man for Europe, the Middle East and Africa told the Financial Times. "Business and government need to collaborate to face the challenges of the future."

The "anti-business rhetoric" comes mainly from workers-and increasingly members of the middle class-desperate to hold on to jobs and a living wage. Ford, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, Citibank and Japan's Nomura Bank have cut jobs, increasingly moving their operations to "developing countries," that is, those with weak unions and/or authoritarian governments. While U.S. executives increased their investments in Europe by only 3 percent, they have amped up those in the "developing world" by 25 percent.

In short, corporations are saying to Europeans, give up your working conditions, wages, and benefits, or we export your jobs.

Workers have not taken this employer offensive lying down. There have been strikes and walkouts from Spain to the Czech Republic, and austerity adherents have suffered ballot box reversals. Chancellor Angela Merkel-the queen of harsh economic policies-took a beating in the last round of German state elections.

The Obama administration could help halt Europe's plunge from first world to second world status, but is has been largely silent on the austerity/debt formula. For instance, last summer an IMF study indicated that endless austerity would not only tank economies across the continent, but also increase the debt problem. However, that study has yet to be translated into policy, even though the fund's current managing director, Christine Legarde, was the White House's candidate for the post.

Much the same could be said for the World Bank. The U.S. nominated its current American president, Jim Yong Kim of Dartmouth College. Rather than stepping back from austerity programs, however, he recently warned developing nations not to use economic stimulus to improve their economies, because it would raise "indebtedness and inflation."

So, while the U.S. Treasury Department has issued a few mild dissents about the efficacy of austerity programs, the two major economic organizations that the U.S. dominates have held the course-straight for the iceberg.

One thing the White House could do is endorse the call by Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Greek Syriza Party, for a European summit on the debt. Tsipras proposes that such a gathering could do what the 1953 London Debt Agreement did to help post -war Germany recover: cut the debt by 50 percent and spread payments over 30 years.

A major concern for Washington is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), originally created in 1949 to deal with a supposed threat of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Recent archive research demonstrates that the Soviets never even had such a plan on paper. The hordes of Red armor pouring through the Fulda Gap was a construct of the Cold War, little more than a rationale for maintaining significant U.S. military forces on the continent.

But NATO's role shifted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Violating a pledge not to push NATO eastwards, the alliance vacuumed up former Warsaw Pact members, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (now two countries), and Albania, and added Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. There are currently 28 members of NATO, including the U.S, and Canada.

While NATO intervened in the 1995 Bosnia-Herzegovina war, it was not until the 1999 war with Yugoslavia that the alliance shifted from defense to offense. But the war against Serbia was still "in country," so to speak, because Yugoslavia is part of Europe. The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon changed all that. While it was the U.S. and Britain that initially invaded Afghanistan, within two years some 50,000 NATO troops were serving in the war, and NATO graduated from a regional formation to an international military alliance.

Its most recent "out of area" operation was Libya, where NATO's airpower, weapons, and Special Forces overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO is currently involved in the Syrian war, but so far only to deploy missiles in Turkey and support the insurgents with money, supplies and intelligence. Direct intervention is a possibility, but the muddled nature of the opposition to the Assad regime apparently gives some in the alliance pause. Libya's current status as a failed state, and the wash-over of that war into the current crisis in Mali, is on everyone's mind.

The U.S. has long pushed for NATO to become a global alliance that could deal with unrest in Africa, instability in the Middle East and tensions in South Asia and the Pacific. But the Afghanistan experience was a wrenching one for NATO. Rather than a quick war and some feel-good nation building, the war has turned into a quagmire. Member by member, NATO has bailed out in the last three years, and the war is extremely unpopular on the European home front.

But Europeans are not the only people turning away from foreign engagements. The Afghan War is also deeply unpopular in the U.S., which creates a problem, because military power-its actual use or threat of it-has been central to American foreign policy since the 1846 Mexican War. Besides Afghanistan, the U.S. is currently fighting wars in Yemen and Somalia, aiding the French in Mali, chasing after the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, setting up drone bases in North Africa, and increasing its military footprint in Asia and Latin America. The U.S. is also contemplating attacking Iran over its nuclear program.

But while the U.S. economy is currently stronger than Europe's, spending vast amounts of money on foreign wars is not popular. Having someone to share the bills with-financial and political-is central to strategy. That, in part, explains why the Obama administration has come down so hard on Britain's Conservative-Liberal government's plan for a referendum that could see London exit the EU. Britain is one of NATO's heavy hitters and anything that might weaken that alliance is frowned upon in Washington.

The fact is that the U.S. needs NATO, because it no longer has the resources to go it alone. That is why the Obama administration is leaning hard on NATO members to step up their military spending, hardly a popular request when the continent is on the ropes financially. The U.S. currently pays about 75 percent of NATO's bills and would like to see other countries take on more of that burden. It will be a hard sell. Italy, for instance, is cutting 33,000 troops and 30 percent of its senior staff over the next decade. Britain's Conservatives are finding their plan to spend $36.3 billion on a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines an uphill battle.

The current NATO plan to install anti-missile systems in Romania, Poland, and Turkey is ill-considered and unnecessarily annoys Russia. While the Obama administration was initially skeptical of anti-missile systems-they are expensive, don't work, and accelerate the arms race-the White House now endorses the deployment. As a result, the Russians are modernizing their missile forces and have halted talks over arms control on the continent. Since Iran has neither the warheads nor the missiles to threaten Europe, one can hardly blame the Russians for assuming the NATO ABM system is aimed at them.

The Obama administration should revitalize the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the Bush Administration dumped and stop the deployment of destabilizing and provocative ABM systems in Europe (and Asia as well).

NATO is an artifact of the Cold War and long since past retirement. It is also dangerous: if you build an alliance you will eventually use it. The debacle of the Afghan War and the chaos that the Libyan war has unleashed on Africa is a warning that the use of military power is increasingly outdated. It also drains valuable resources better used to confront the economic and environmental challenges the world faces.

This article was reposted from Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: "For the right to a life with dignity" - protest against foreclosures shares Plaza del Carmen, Grenada, with a group from the local bullfighting school, November 2012. Patrick Colgan/Flickr

90% voter turnout in Cuban regional, national elections

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:21:00 +0000

Cuba's system for choosing legislators at all levels makes up in organization and citizen participation what it may lack in U.S. style pre-vote electioneering. Its election season concluded on February 3, 2013 as 7, 877 906 voters chose 1 269 delegates to 15 provincial assemblies and 612 deputies to Cuba's unicameral national parliament.

The turnout represented 89.7 percent of those citizens enrolled in an electoral registry maintained by the National Election Commission. Some 4.6 percent of ballots were blank and 1.2 percent of them were defaced.

The balloting represented closure of a process that began on Oct. 21, when voters chose 13,127 members for 168 municipal assemblies. Second round voting, aimed to break tie votes or failure by candidates to achieve a required 50 percent voter approval level, had been set for a week later. Hurricane Sandy's passage through the island on Oct. 25, however, necessitated postponement. Subsequently two more voting rounds played out during November by which 1,410 more municipal assembly members were chosen.

The first job in their two and a half year term was to nominate candidates to run in the February 3 elections for terms in the provincial assemblies and the national parliament lasting five years. The nominated candidates had been identified by the National Candidacy Commission. That agency makes selections based on recommendations from unions, women's and student groups, small farmers' organizations, and local candidacy commissions.

Under provisions of Cuba's 1992 Constitution which regulate the entire election process, each municipality sends from two to five deputies to Parliament. One of the 25 delegates elected to Parliament from Santiago de Cuba was the leader of Cuba's revolution, former President Fidel Castro.

On February 3, voters cast two ballots - one for provincial assembly delegates and the other for local deputies to the National Assembly. In each case, they may either mark approval of an entire slate or select individual candidates,

Of those elected to the National Assembly, 67 percent are new deputies. Also, 48.9 percent are women, eight percent are less than 35 years of age, 37 percent are of African heritage, and 83 percent are university educated. Provincial assemblies now claim 50.5 percent women and seven percent of delegates under age 30. Almost half the provincial and national legislators are members also of municipal assemblies.

By February 10, provincial assemblies will have chosen their own presidents and vice Presidents. On February 24, the National Parliament will choose not only its own president and vice president but also 31 members of the Council of State including that body's president, first vice-president, and five vice-presidents. General of the Army Raul Castro is expected to be selected for a second term as Council of State President. His first term began in 2008 and in that capacity he serves as President of Cuba. Castro has suggested that Cuban presidents should be limited to two terms.

Parliament this term will have a new president. Ricardo Alarcon, president for 20 years, did not enter listings as a parliamentary candidate. The 75 year old former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations indicated that henceforth he will be devoting full time efforts to leading Cuba's campaign for release of all Cuban Five prisoners, men jailed in the United States for antiterrorist actions.

Cuban media reported on efforts taken to make voting easy and understandable. Educational materials had been circulated including DVD's. Voting took place in 29,957 locations throughout the island with provisions being made for the handicapped, inhabitants of remote areas, and voters living away from their own municipalities. Communication capabilities were upgraded in meeting places, factories, hospitals, and schools where voting took place. Telephones, internet services, and even passenger pigeons were used.

Mainstream foreign media either ignores Cuban elections as in the United States or vituperates against the proceedings as with several rightwing Spanish news outlets. As reported by ABC news there, "This Sunday again [marked] an electoral farce, more so than under Fulgencio Batista...Candidates were mostly militants of the single party. The opposition participates in non-dramatic ways by abstaining or submitting unofficial, damaged, or blank ballots."

Defenders of Cuban elections cite Jose Marti's Cuban Revolutionary Party as precedent for a single party. They point out that Cuba's Communist Party is a non - participant in elections and that not all candidates are Party members. They look back to instances in Cuba's past and elsewhere of special interests and their money permeating multi-party elections. The U.S. habit of injecting money and influence in other countries' elections is recalled.

In Cuba, Ricardo Alarcon said, citizens review and discuss important legislation before it is presented to legislators. As rendered by a reporter, Alarcon lauded Jose Marti's call for "discussion without reserve, without fear; with one heart, one breast."

Photo: People vote at a polling station during parliament elections in Havana, Cuba, Feb. 3. Cuban schoolchildren help serve as poll watchers, Franklin Reyes/AP