Odds and ends

• Yoani Sanchez and her husband bought tickets, boarded a boat in Cienfuegos for a coastal tour, and were removed because the ride is for tourists only. As if they would swim south to Jamaica.

• Guido Sigler Amaya, 58, is one of the twelve Cuban dissidents who opted to remain in Cuba after his release, rather than join the majority of those recently released who departed for Spain with their relatives. He changed his mind and arrived yesterday in Miami where he says “we are going to continue fighting.”

• The New York Times on the admirable work of Cuba’s longstanding medical mission in Haiti, now in a battle against cholera. “Half of the NGOs are already gone, and the Cubans are still there,” a UN official said.

• At Babalu, “Sociological Classifications of Cubans and Cuban Americans,” a succinct exposition of the moral virtue of Cubans who arrived in the United States before 1980 and those who support the U.S. embargo – and of the depravity of nearly all others, in Cuba and here.

• Jerusalem Post: The wife of jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross asks attendees at a Jewish charities conference to “contact your members of Congress and tell them to take action on Alan’s behalf. Tell everyone you know about Alan. Write letters to your newspapers. Let the Cuban government know that the Jewish community wants Alan home.”

Odds and ends

• The Spanish and Cuban foreign ministers met in New York, and El Pais cites Spainish government sources saying that Cuba will release from jail those political prisoners who have turned down the offer to move to Spain with their families. They will be freed within a month on licencia extrapenal, a sort of parole that is given to prisoners permitted, for health or other reasons, to serve out their sentences out of jail.

• ESPN Deportes reports a rumor that Cuba is “studying seriously the possibility of approving a regulation that would give its ballplayers the status of free agents to sign with professional clubs, in the United States or other countries, after eight years of service in the local league.” They would pay 40 percent income tax.

• El Pais: The United Stages in joining Spain in supporting a Cuban initiative to rebuild the main hospital in Port-au-Prince.

• BBC: Brazil is offering to help Cuba develop a small business sector; the offer was carried by the foreign minister in a visit to Havana.

• I wish I had flagged this magnificent documentary about the late Cuban bassist and composer Cachao before it aired on public television last weekend. The link takes you to previews and to the entire program. Actor Andy Garcia produced the documentary, which also highlights his friendship and assistance to Cachao in the final stages of his long career.

Secretary Clinton on Cuba

Secretary Clinton answered a question about Cuba last Friday, where she asserted her “personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would then lose all of their excuses for what hasn’t happened in Cuba in the last 50 years.”

This drew a Cuban response in the form of a commentary aired by Radio Reloj, the retro all-news AM station with the constant tick-tock sound in the background. The response said that Secretary Clinton “mixed ignorance and falsehoods,” which we can set aside, and issued an interesting challenge:

“Since the Revolution, according to Hillary Clinton, depends on the excuses that the embargo provides, suspend it for 12 months and then we’ll see what happens.”

Wouldn’t that be interesting.

Secretary Clinton also theorized, as President Clinton used to do, that every time there’s a possible U.S. opening toward Cuba, “you can almost chart how the Castro regime does something to try to stymie it.” At a certain point, that becomes a formula for doing nothing, for putting control of U.S. policy in Havana’s hands, and for avoiding hard questions. Such as: Given the nature of Cuba’s government and its repressive record, what kind of relationship serves U.S. interests – between our governments, and between our societies?

There were two other nuggets.

On Haiti, the United States “actually helped some of the Cuban doctors get medical supplies who were already operating there” after the earthquake.

And she described detainee Alan Gross as “an American who was passing out information and helping elderly Cubans communicate through the Internet.”

Odds and ends

• Herald: President Obama will attend a $30,000-per-couple fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee at the Miami home of Gloria and Emilio Estefan.

• The U.S. airport screening measures put in place after last year’s Christmas bomber are being dropped. Now, instead of carrying out extra security measures on every passenger arriving from 14 listed countries, the extra security will only be applied when the the government has information that warrants it, and then only to the class of passengers indicated by the intelligence information. Cuba was on the list of 14, which caused a big dust-up and protests by Havana. Although, in practice I never heard from any travelers returning from Cuba that the measures were actually applied to them.

• AFP: A second U.S.-Cuba meeting about collaboration on assistance to Haiti, this time at the UN. Cheryl Mills, chief of staff to the Secretary of State, spoke to Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez. The State Department spokesman answered questions, here.

Odds and ends

• OAS Secretary General Insulza calls on Cuba to head off Guillermo Farinas’ death by satisfying his demand, i.e. by releasing 26 political prisoners so they can attend to their health out of prison.

• A view of the human rights situation in Cuba from British writer John Keenan, in the Guardian: “Latin American leaders are caught in a trap of their own making, believing that to criticise human rights abuses in Cuba is somehow to support Washinghton's embargo.

• Catholic News Agency: Christian Liberation Movement leader Oswaldo Paya again calls on Farinas to end his hunger strike.

• In the Globe and Mail, Alvaro Vargas Llosa asks whether the events in Cuba are headed the way of 1989.

• The University of Miami did an exercise simulating a crisis in Cuba with scholars playing roles of U.S. officials. The scenario, according to the Herald story: “Just hours after Fidel Castro is buried, brother Raul is killed in a coup. Fighting between army units is reported, and would-be refugees are massing near the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo.” El Nuevo has a longer version of the story with more detail.

• A poll of evangelical leaders shows 63 percent oppose the embargo.

• AP: Brazil’s minister of health says it’s time to move “from emergency to strategic” aid to Haiti’s health sector, and signs an agreement with Cuba so that the two countries will work together to rehabilitate hospitals and clinics, provide ambulances and equipment, develop a primary care system, support an enhanced vaccination program, and create a center to monitor epidemics.

• An interview with yours truly in La Jornada.

Odds and ends

• Missed this from last week: a meeting between U.S. and Cuban officials in Santo Domingo, at the level of the Secretary of State’s chief of staff and a Cuban deputy foreign minister, to discuss Haiti relief. Reuters report here.

• The Guardian on the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, with links at the end to videos of famous performances.

• Reuters: The American cruise industry, especially a guy from Royal Caribbean, has a snooty attitude about passenger port facilities in Cuba.

• The New York Times reviews a Manhattan performance of Bobby Carcasses.

• In the on-line magazine Sampsonia Way, an article on blogs in Cuba by Silvia Duarte, with link to Spanish version (pdf).

Odds and ends

• Foreign Policy magazine’s The Cable blog: Cuba policy “continues to be managed, but not radically rethought inside the administration.”

• AP: Cuba’s imports of food from the United States were down 26 percent last year.

• Europa Press: 200 graduates of Cuba’s Latin American Medical School from 24 countries assemble in Havana and deploy to Haiti.

• AP: Radio Marti and the Voice of America are sharing resources in Miami and beginning joint production of a half-hour news program.

• From the Guardian, a look at Cuba’s ballet dancers, their “world-class” training and technique, and the limitation that “cultural isolation” places on their development.

Granma can't resist

All countries that provide foreign assistance deserve political credit for it, and Cuba and the United States are two that certainly seek credit for it. Nothing wrong with that.

In the Haiti context, I was struck by this article in Granma last weekend that leaped at the opportunity to take a cheap shot at the United States because medical evacuation flights were suspended for a few days. (There were questions about cost and the capacity of Florida hospitals, they were resolved, and the flights resumed.) The final paragraph questions why cost is not an issue in the deployment of thousands of troops to Haiti. Earlier, Fidel Castro had expressed alarm that U.S. troops had “occupied the territory of Haiti.”

I think that people around the world recognize the great contribution of Cuban doctors in Haiti. I also think that Cuban propagandists diminish Cuba’s contribution when they show that for them, Haiti relief efforts are part of a political competition with the United States.

Odds and ends

• Import substitution marches ahead: A factory in Ciego de Avila is doubling its toothbrush output to 11 million this year.

• Former Polish President Lech Walesa came to Miami to raise money for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba and for his own foundation. Earlier, he was in Illinois endorsing a losing candidate in the GOP Senate primary. In Miami, he spoke about his conviction that change is coming to Cuba, and about the importance of values in foreign policy, according to these reports from AP and the Herald. Neither these nor other reports say what he recommended that governments actually do with regard to Cuba policy. I guess you had to be there.

• Make your own joke: Ramiro Valdes, former interior minister and now a Cuban Vice President and Minister of Information Technology and Communications, arrived in Caracas to lead a special group working on Venezuela’s electricity woes. Opposition parties are getting “fired up,” Reuters reports.

• Radio Marti: The State Department confirms that migration talks will take place in Havana February 19.

• From the Havana Note, more on Cuba’s medical efforts in Haiti.

• Tracey Eaton has posted an eight-minute video of last year’s July 26 rally in Holguin.

• If you’re tired of your usual vacation, you can go to North Korea at any time, “not just during the Arirang Mass Games in August and September,” according to the tour operator that offers the service. North Korea is not on the United States’ list of “state sponsors of terror,” but even when it was on that list, it was on the list of Nice Communist Countries to which Americans are permitted to travel.

Odds and ends

• Los Van Van’s concert went off without a hitch last night. The Herald’s Jordan Levin reviews it here. EFE reports on the scene where 200 protestors were outside including “a group of Hondurans.” The Herald says 350-400 were protesting. In El Nuevo Herald, clarinet and saxophone virtuoso Paquito D’Rivera explains why he stayed away from a concert by a band that “has had nothing bad to say about a government that since 1959 has crushed all types of liberties.”

• Along the Malecon: The prosecution adds detail to its perjury case against Luis Posada Carriles.

• Canada’s Globe and Mail on American, Cuban, and Venezuelan aid efforts in Haiti: “All wave the flag while delivering assistance.”

• Diario de Cuba reports that a University of Havana student was expelled because of a Fecebook group he created, either because the group generated debate that went out of bounds, or because it reported on discussions in a Communist Party youth meeting.

• Granma: National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon closed the “Meeting of Cubans Residing Abroad Against the Blockade, in Defense of National Sovereignty.” In other words, the anti-exilio.

Fidel's Haiti politics

Fidel Castro publishes an article where he complains about the presence of so many American troops in Haiti – they have “occupied the territory of Haiti,” he says – and asks why “neither the United Nations nor the United States government have offered an explanation of these troop movements to world public opinion.” AP coverage here, Spanish text here.

That’s demagoguery, it’s par for the course, and it has been echoed by Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales.

In the article, Fidel also seems to respond to Washington, saying Cuba doesn’t need U.S. supplies for now. He writes that any significant aid that may be offered to Cuba’s contingent in Haiti “will not be rejected” out of hand, and would only be accepted if it fits the needs of the Cuban mission.

Until now, he says, “our modest aircraft resources and the important human resources that Cuba has put at the disposition of the Haitian people have not had any difficulty in arriving at their destination.”

This small part of the Haiti equation has been pretty simple: Haiti has huge emergency medical needs, Cuba has doctors and clinics in place, and the United States and others arrived with supplies and delivery capacity.

The Obama Administration set aside political considerations and offered to cooperate with Cuba in anything that would improve the relief effort. Extraneous Obstacle #1 averted. Extraneous Obstacle #2 is Cuban pride, and judging from Fidel’s article, that one still seems to be in play.

But Cuba has accepted a Norwegian donation to buy supplies for its doctors in Haiti, so let’s hope the point is moot.

Odds and ends

• Baylor’s baseball team is in Cuba to carry out humanitarian projects and hold some baseball clinics. The team won’t play any games, this article says, because NCAA rules won’t allow it.

• More on Cuban doctors from NPR.

• Along the Malecon reports on the run-up to the Posada Carriles trial; the judge threw out a defense pre-trial motion to dismiss one perjury charge. With links to various documents from the proceeding.

U.S. offer to supply Cuban doctors (Updated x2)

State Department spokesman Mark Toner, in this interview with CBS radio: “We, the United States, have communicated our readiness to make medical relief supplies available to Cuban doctors who are working on the ground in Haiti as part of the international relief effort there.”

[Update: “We have offered medical supplies, but the Cubans have not formally agreed to such assistance, nor have any materials been provided as yet,” a State Department spokesman tells the Herald.

“Cuban doctors save lives in Haiti” is the headline of an El Nuevo Herald article that covers the work at Haiti’s La Renaissance hospital. English version here.

And a reader poll on El Nuevo’s front page asks, “Do you believe the United States should give supplies to Cuban doctors?” As of 11:00 a.m. Saturday, 92 percent of the responses are “yes.”]

[Update: A Voice of America editorial on Cuba’s work in Haiti and its U.S.-Cuba cooperation.]

It all started with Hugo

Cuban Colada followed up on the story on Radio Reloj’s website that I noted yesterday – the one that says that the United States caused the Haiti earthquake – and finds that the Russians are saying they had nothing to do with it.

“Science fiction,” a Russian navy spokesman says. Three Russian media sources tracked the story to comments made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Venezuelan television, based on his conversation with a few Russian sailors.

Details here.

Cooperation in Haiti

I like reading Mauricio Claver-Carone’s blog because it’s link-free, so you never have to click through to read about any of the people or content he refers to. Mauricio tells you everything you need to know.

At any rate, he’s upset that some “advocates” want to use the Haiti relief effort as “a springboard for bilateral relations.” (Boldface in original, as are all the important parts.)

I agree with Mauricio. In my view, the only reason for the United States to cooperate with Cuba on Haiti relief is to improve the speed, quality, and effectiveness of the relief effort.

One example would be if the U.S. military were to speed delivery of medical supplies – surgical equipment, painkillers, antibiotics – to the hospitals where doctors of all nationalities are working so desperately and facing shortages. If someone were to check in advance to find out what the Cuban doctors need the most, so much the better.

But Mauricio seems to go further, saying that “U.S.-Cuba relations should be about the Cuban people and the abuses, injustices and deprivations that they are subject to -- in other words, Cuba's own tragedy. Therefore, it’s absolutely shameless to try to use the Haitian tragedy as an excuse to promote U.S.-Castro relations.”

Does that mean that the United States should not cooperate with Cuba at all in Haiti, and our relations should focus exclusively on Cuba’s political system? Is there a single Cuban in Cuba who would agree with that?

Odds and ends

• Yoani Sanchez explains “The making of Generation Y,” or how to start a blog in Cuba – original at Penultimos Dias, Ted Henken’s translation here.

• Cuban Colada: Chile’s President-elect has been flexible with regard to Cuba.

• CNN’s Shasta Darlington reports on the work of Cuban doctors at a Port-au-Prince hospital; text here, video here.

Odds and ends

• Reuters: Cuba’s top independent human rights monitor reports that the Cuban government is using more intimidation and harassment, and less long-term detention, against political opponents. The number of political prisoners dropped from 208 in mid-2009 to 201 now.

• Magnitude 5.9 earthquakes shook Haiti and the Cayman Islands today, with some vague press reports indicating that the latter one was felt in Cuba. The U.S. Geological Survey’s map of the past week’s many quakes in the region is here.

• “Russians Affirm that U.S. Caused Haiti Earthquake:” Cuba’s Radio Reloj runs a story on its website from a news service in Ecuador, claiming that Russia’s navy is linking Haiti’s earthquake and others to “shock wave bombs” developed by the U.S. Navy. This poorly written story refers to “these reports” and “the report” but doesn’t cite anything. It would be interesting to know if any such statement or report from the Russian military really exists. Sounds like Moscow’s old disinformation department, and its network, are still in business.

• The U.S. travel industry and Cuban officials will meet at a March conference in Cancun, just announced.

• A discussion of information technology and social media in Cuba was held in New York last week; here are comments from two participants, Ted Henken and Irving Wladawsky-Berger.

More on the Cuban doctors in Haiti

More news coverage is mentioning the Cuban doctors in Haiti. It seems that they are doing what all the other foreign doctors are doing – working like crazy under terrible conditions, with the advantage that they were already established in the country and were able to get started immediately. Many foreign doctors are working alongside the Cubans. Here are stories from Irish Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles ABC television affiliate, and the New York Times.

More cooperation with Cuba on Haiti?

After Cuba allowed the use of its airspace for medical evacuation flights from the Guantanamo naval base to Miami, Secretary Clinton said, “We very much appreciate the Cubans opening their air space for medical evacuation and emergency flights, and we would welcome any other actions that the Cuban Government could take in furtherance of the international rescue and recovery mission in Haiti.”

Here’s a simple, practical suggestion from Gary Maybarduk, formerly the political counselor in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. He suggests in a letter to the Washington Post that the United States agree to provide supplies to the Cuban doctors working in Haiti.

I wonder if there would also be some benefit in cooperation on logistics. The aid effort is being hampered by the limited capacity of Haiti’s damaged airport and by the destruction of the port facilities in Port-au-Prince (USA Today story here).

The French and others are upset about aid flights that have been turned away. Peru’s health minister noted on Saturday that two Peruvian planes were unable to land in Haiti, and he suggested that airport and seaport facilities in Cuba be used as a staging area for aid flowing to Haiti. An airlift and sealift “bridge” could then deliver materials to Haiti and perhaps solve the airport bottleneck. (Some flights turned away from Port-au-Prince are landing in the Dominican Republic and moving their shipments overland.)

Certainly there are capable airports in eastern Cuba – Santiago, Holguin, the Guantanamo naval base. If this option makes logistical sense, all that would be needed would be an agreement between Cuba and the United States, or the United Nations, to make it happen.

And some related items:

• CNN reports on a hospital where Cuban and other doctors are working; video here. Fidel Castro’s latest reflection contains an excerpt from a report from the Cuban medical mission in Haiti, and it mentions the hospital that CNN filmed. A Cuban news agency report, summarized in English here, has more details.

• An effort was announced in Miami “to airlift possibly thousands of Haitian children left orphaned in the aftermath of Tuesday's horrific earthquake,” according to this Herald article. The idea is based on the Peter Pan operation that brought more than 14,000 Cuban children to the United States under the Catholic Church’s auspices in the early 1960’s – but those children were not orphans, they were sent by their parents. This is a compassionate idea, but it’s not clear that anyone has considered that Haiti’s battered government would have to approve adoptions. As is pointed out here in the LA Times, the process is quite long. More here from the Sun-Sentinel.

• In El Nuevo Herald, experts discuss the geology and history of eastern Cuba and the possibilities of major earthquakes there. The U.S. Geological Survey has tons of information on earthquakes worldwide, including this note on a 2008 earthquake centered in the Caribbean between Jamaica and Cuba (see depiction of the fault along Cuba's southern coast near Santiago). Also, not for the faint of heart, there’s this map of all the world’s quakes in the past seven days.

Cuba allows U.S. overflights

Cuba has agreed to allow the United States to send medical evacuation flights from the Guantanamo naval base to Miami to fly directly over Cuban territory. That avoids the need to fly south then around Cuba’s eastern tip to avoid Cuban airspace, and it cuts 90 minutes off the flight. USA Today story here.