Odds and ends

• Granma takes note of a Washington conference calling for an end to U.S. restrictions on academic travel and exchange with Cuba.

• A resolution (pdf) under consideration in the European Parliament regarding the death of Orlando Zapata. (H/t Penultimos Dias.)

• Cuba’s civil aviation chief, General Rogelio Acevedo, 69, was relieved of his job and “will be assigned other tasks” according to a note in Granma. Acevedo was a combatant in the revolution. Here’s coverage in La Jornada and The New York Times.

• Cuban Colada: President Reagan’s agriculture secretary, John Block, speaks out in favor of unrestricted travel to Cuba as “an expression of the conservative values that brought me to Washington.”

• Politico reports on efforts to press for the release of USAID contractor Alan Gross.

Grand balustrade

Odds and ends

• Herald: Hunger striker Guillermo Farinas will not take up an offer to go to Spain, preferring to stay in Cuba and carry out his protest. An earlier AP interview with him here.

• The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports on Alan Gross and efforts to get him released from jail in Cuba.

• The Kansas City Star on Chapman’s sprint training debut.

• Cuban television is running an eight-part series on the history of attempts on Fidel Castro’s life.

• Reuters: Beginning in May, visitors to Cuba will be required to buy health insurance to cover the time of their stay. So far, none of the reports say how much it will cost.

• Herald: “La Entranable Lejania” (“The Closest Farthest Away”), a play featuring both Cuban and American actors, opens in Miami Beach.

A regulatory fix (Updated)

The New York Times reports that under new regulations to be issued today, the government will no longer require U.S. companies to block free downloads of programs and software to users in Cuba and other sanctioned countries.

This is progress; the regulations are catching up to the Secretary of State’s speech on Internet freedom.

These regulations were particularly out of balance considering that under the Obama Administration’s rules governing gift parcels to Cuba, Americans (not just Cuban-Americans) can send laptops to Cubans as gifts with no restrictions on the software or programs loaded on them. But if a Cuban tried to download, U.S. regulations tried to block that. Until today, apparently. Earlier comment here.

Update: Tracey Eaton dug up the Treasury summary and the 21-page rule. Google’s reaction here.

Odds and ends

• An energy consulting company reports (pdf) a possible development in the Senate climate change bill – that among a set of provisions being offered by Alaska’s Senator Murkowski to boost oil production, is one that “would exempt American oil and gas companies from the Cuban Embargo.”

• A 1978 print of a photo of Che Guevara, shot around 1960 by Alberto Korda, went for 6,600 pounds sterling at auction in Gloucestershire yesterday.

• Reuters: A shortlived program that allowed Cubans with old cars to import newer ones has been cancelled, for reasons unknown.

• Tracey Eaton digs up recent Etecsa figures on fixed and mobile phone lines and Internet connections in Cuba.

From Calle Agramonte...

...a fire station......and a view of the Capitolio.

New poll

A new poll of American opinion on relations with Cuba has been released. Its results are different and not as clear-cut as a Fox News poll last year that showed 59 percent support for normalization of relations and 30 percent support for the embargo.

The new Harris poll was performed on-line, not by interview. It has no margin of error attached to it and Harris claims that other survey research firms are misleading to use that term. Herald story here; Harris press release here.

It says 23 percent consider Cuba to be unfriendly and an enemy, a view that increased in prevalence with respondents’ age, and the rest consider Cuba to be either not an enemy or an ally. Regarding President Obama’s lifting of travel restrictions for Cuban Americans, 45 percent say this is too much of an “overture” and 29 percent say it’s not enough. By a 57-17 margin, respondents agree that American business is definitely or probably missing business opportunities.

Thirty-eight percent would like to visit Cuba and 49 percent would like President Obama to go. Maybe he should go, and our thinking will be clearer when he gets back.

Odds and ends

• Reuters: Exporters to Cuba are offered terms to settle back payments – five years at two percent, take it or leave it.

• The Economist on U.S.-Cuba relations: “The honeymoon is over before it began.”

• A magnitude 4.3 earthquake, centered 15 miles from Santiago.

• At Global Post, Nick Miroff looks at the impact of Orlando Zapata’s death.

• All I can say about this statement from Israel’s foreign minister is that if it had appeared on April 1, we would all be able to make sense of it.

• Yahoo Sports: a “glut of Cuban defectors” in Major League Baseball.

• Thanks to a reader for providing this link to a story that corrects earlier news reports, which turned out to be big exaggerations about Cable and Wireless plans to run an undersea cable from Cuba to Jamaica. It would make economic sense compared to the Venezuela idea; maybe less bolivariana but one sixth the distance.

• A House Judiciary Committee hearing looks at the “Section 211” Havana Club trademark fight that pits Bacardi against Pernod-Ricard.

Answering the mail

It is hard for me to get grumpy about Ernesto Hernandez Busto, who writes the Spanish-language blog Penultimos Dias. Stationed in Spain, he lives about five hours in the future, his radar is always on and pointed in all directions, and his blog is a fine daily resource.

He is not quite in agreement with my views on USAID’s Cuba program and made a few new points yesterday. Not being American and not living here, Ernesto may not grasp the terrible sinking feeling many of us have when we hear the phrase, “Oh, let’s just have the government do it.” Or in this case, when we entrust relations with the Cuban people to a bureaucratic phalanx consisting of 1) USAID and the development-industrial complex, 2) licensing officers at the Treasury and Commerce departments, and 3) two low-to-no-audience government broadcast outlets – because, the government assures us, this is better than allowing American citizens and civil society institutions to act as they please. Unrestricted travel is in line with our concept of civil liberties and with the approach we took toward a number of countries where communist governments dissolved about two decades ago. As for the rest of it, I think it’s pretty apparent I wasn’t comparing Cuba and Haiti, I was noting the advice our government gives to Americans traveling anywhere abroad. And I’ll repeat that to cite foreign law is not to endorse it.

Jose Cardenas, a big wheel in the Bush Cuba policy, has weighed in with about a thousand words of holier-than-thou. I won’t belabor the USAID discussion, and I’m happy to have readers consider my views and his side-by-side. His short discussion of human rights organizations is curious, and instructive, and it’s pure bunk. They haven’t been “forced to confront” Cuba’s human rights record, they do that year in and year out. And they have never suggested that U.S. policy is to blame for Cuban abuses. Jose seems irked by the idea that someone could understand the situation in Cuba and at the same time view U.S. policy as misguided; Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House are all in that category. As for playing into Havana’s hands, I think the gold medal in that category went to the Bush Administration’s Cuba commission. Sadly, its report dismayed dissidents and many other Cubans and was a gift that kept on giving for Cuba’s state security, party propagandists, and everyone in between.

Hell hath no fury...

This could get interesting.

Ana Margarita Martinez, the ex-wife of Juan Pablo Roque, a Cuban agent who bolted Miami and his marriage just before the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, is seeking to collect on a $27 million judgment she won against the Cuban government. There being no ready source of Cuban government cash laying around within U.S. jurisdiction, she is going after the fees that Miami charter companies pay to the Cuban government for landing rights and services. The charter companies are fighting it in court.

The Miami Herald story is here, and Babalu has the press release issued on Martinez’ behalf.

If Martinez is ultimately successful, it would seem that flights to Cuba would end. On the other hand, this strategy would have been tried before by others holding judgments against Cuba, and would be used to collect from revenues that U.S. phone companies pay to Cuba, or from airlines’ payments for overflight rights, or from cargoes of agricultural products that are loaded at U.S. ports for shipment to Cuba.

In other words, my hunch is that the federal government protects licensed transactions from legal actions of this type, and that courts have upheld that protection. If anyone with knowledge of this area of the law wants to chime in, please do.

Odds and ends

• TelecomTV, a British web-based news service on the telecom and IT business, says Britain’s Cable and Wireless plans to run an undersea cable from Jamaica to Cuba to give Cuba a new connection to the Internet. Then, C&W hopes to buy out Telcom Italia’s share of Etecsa, the Cuban telecom monopoly provider of wireline and wireless telephony. The talk of a Cuba-Venezuela cable, last noted here (see fifth item) seems to remain just talk.

• El Nuevo: Aroldis Chapman of the Cincinnati Reds looks forward to pitching in Miami against the Marlins, “in front of so many Cubans.” He also says his control and off-speed pitches are improved.

• Tracey Eaton on the experience (and the difficulties) of reporting from Cuba. He discusses his own experience and comments on a Herald story on two recent books by reporters who worked there.

• It’s the thought that counts: El Pais reports that Spain’s prime minister planned to give President Obama a gift of a photo of an African-American who went to Spain to fight on the republican side of the Spanish civil war. The volunteer brigadista traveled to Spain from the United States, but it turns out he was Cuban. His identity is still unknown.

• In El Nuevo Herald, Paquito D’Rivera gives a welcome of sorts to “my old friend Bobby Carcasses,” the multi-instrumentalist and Cuban jazz pioneer who gave a concert in Miami last Friday night. El Nuevo has photos of the concert and the Herald’s Jordan Levin profiled him here.

More on Zapata (Updated)

The Cuban government is firing back on the issue of the death of Orlando Zapata, naming him in a Granma article (Spanish here, English here) and saying he was a common criminal who entered politics for convenience.

AP reports that Cuban television did a ten-minute news segment that presented interviews with doctors who treated Zapata and hidden-camera footage of Zapata’s mother thanking the doctors.

Here is video of the Cuban television report via the website of El Mundo in Spain. It includes recordings of conversations that Zapata’s mother and, separately, another dissident had with a Miami organization, the Directorio Democratico Cubano. The mother gives a positive account of the medical attention Zapata was receiving. (Update: Here's audio of a response from the mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo.)

Meanwhile, others are starting hunger strikes in protest of Zapata’s death. New York Times report here.

And blogger Reinaldo Escobar pulls back, connects Zapata’s death to other events last month, and asks what it all means. In English at the Huffington Post.

Backyard orchids

Odds and ends

• La Jornada: Following the death of prisoner Orlando Zapata, Cuba’s Catholic Church calls for dialogue and calls upon the government to “take adequate measures” so such a death cannot be repeated.

• Cuban Colada translates some of the church statement cited above, and also has more extensive quotes from Raul Castro yesterday, and a Cuban government statement on medical attention given to Orlando Zapata before his death.

• CNN: an exchange between Senator Menendez and Secretary Clinton regarding the USAID Cuba program.

• Remember this case of a Briton who showed up at Washington’s Folger Shakespeare Library with a 17^th century book, claiming he obtained it in Cuba? He goes on trial in June in Britain and just entered a not guilty plea. AP story here.

A call for solidarity

Dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe has distributed this call (pdf) for fasting and Bible readings next month as a way of “demanding that human rights, which are inalienable for all human beings, be respected for the people of Cuba.” It is signed by Oscar Elias Biscet, Julio Cesar Galvez, Regis Iglesias, and Angel Moya, and includes names but not signatures of Normando Hernandez and Ricardo Gonzalez. All are among the 75 opposition and human rights activists arrested and sentenced in the spring of 2003, and all are in the Combinado del Este prison now. Espinosa Chepe is also among the group of 75 but was released provisionally in November 2004 for health reasons.

New bill to boost exports, end travel restrictions

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson has introduced a bill that, he says, “increases the ability of our farmers to sell their products to Cuba just like they do with our other trading partners.”

It contains three provisions: an end to travel restrictions; a definition of the “cash in advance” requirement so that Cuba’s payment is required before Cuba takes possession of goods, rather than before they leave a U.S. port; and permission for Cuba to wire payments for U.S. agricultural exports directly to U.S. banks rather than through third countries, as is current practice.

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that these changes would result in increased American farm exports to Cuba. The reasons are discussed here – but scratch the part about private credit, because this bill does not go that far.

Here is the text of the bill, Chairman Peterson’s statement, and a Minneapolis Star-Tribune report on it.

Odds and ends

• AP: The renovation of the port of Mariel, a project that Dubai Ports World was studying a few years ago, is being carried out with Brazilian aid. During his visit yesterday, Brazil’s President Lula visited Fidel Castro and said he is “exceptionally well.”

• Washington Post: The Washington Nationals sign pitcher Livan Hernandez.

• CQ Politics takes an objective look at the open seat created by the Diaz-Balart resignation/switcheroo.

• Cuban Colada notes the anniversary of the 1903 agreement that gives the United States use of “lands necessary for coaling or naval stations” at Guantanamo, Cuba.

Orlando Zapata, R.I.P.

Month after month, much of the discussion on this blog has to do with the how the United States and other countries deal with Cuba. In that debate, there are legitimate positions in favor of different degrees of engagement or sanctions, but I don’t think there’s a legitimate position that ignores the cause of human rights in Cuba.

We are reminded of that by the death of Orlando Zapata, 42, a prisoner of conscience who was serving a 36-year sentence and saw a hunger strike as his only recourse, a statement of last resort. His body lost the battle yesterday at a Havana hospital.

Cuban President Raul Castro was cited by Reuters as saying the following: “We regret it very much. That’s the result of relations with the United States…We didn’t murder anyone, here no one was tortured. That happens at the Guantanamo base, not in our territory.”

It’s not clear to me how a death of a prisoner in Cuban state custody, or his incarceration in the first place, can be blamed on the United States. Either is beyond imagination, as it would be for the United States to shirk responsibility and accountability for prisoners it holds at Guantanamo or anywhere else.

Here are editorials from Madrid’s El Pais and the Miami Herald, and a statement from Amnesty International.

The El Pais editorial chides Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero for making only a vague statement about Zapata’s death yesterday. Zapatero has now called on Cuba to release all political prisoners, as reported in a news story in the same paper.

El Pais goes on to report that Zapata was buried in Banes in eastern Cuba at 7:00 this morning, under such tight security that the town resembled “a town taken by the Japanese army in the Philippines,” in the description of human rights monitor Elizardo Sanchez. Also: “The Cuban government advised foreign correspondents – the majority of whom are waiting a year for renewal of their press credentials – not to travel to Banes to cover the burial, which was treated with silence by their colleagues in Cuban media.”

More on USAID...

…at foreignpolicy.com. I’m done for now.

Defending the USAID program

A group of Congressmen have suggested that in its response to the detention of USAID contractor Alan Gross in Cuba, the Administration is “trying to appease the Cuban dictatorship,” and they urge the Administration to demand his immediate release.

Separately, I have found that if you examine the USAID program’s legal foundations and Cuba’s reaction to the program in Cuban law, one gets accused of “practically justifying the detention, assuming the judicial perspective of a totalitarian regime.” That charge was aimed at me at Penultimos Dias, as if citing a position and adopting it are the same thing.

Mr. Gross’ problem is that the Administration, Congress, USAID, and his employer sent him to carry out a project in Cuba. That means he’s in Cuba’s legal jurisdiction. It would be nice to examine some other country’s “judicial perspective,” but since he’s in hot water in Cuba, Cuba’s would seem to be the one that applies if our interest is to get him out of jail and to evaluate the U.S. government program that put him in this position.

Demanding his release is a fine idea, but that requires the State Department to make the demand face-to-face to Cuban officials. No one likes a situation where a USAID contractor is stuck in a communist legal system and our diplomats have to make a case for his release. We can assign blame to the Cuban government – fair enough, it arrested him – but the U.S. government and Mr. Gross’ employer would seem to be responsible for putting him in this mess in the first place.

I continue to believe that the best hope for Mr. Gross is that Cuban authorities come to the conclusion that they have made their point, and he can be released on a humanitarian basis. Let’s hope that happens.

But I am concerned that a public relations campaign executed last week with regard to his case may have worsened his predicament. I would say the campaign was done on Mr. Gross’ behalf, but it seems more a political defense of the USAID program than an effort to win his release. I hope I’m wrong. (See Reuters article, a fact sheet from a public relations firm, and this video from Mrs. Judy Gross.)

Some have speculated that Cuba arrested Mr. Gross to gain a bargaining chip for the Cuban Five, who are serving long sentences in U.S. jails.

Maybe so. But for now, the more salient connection seems to be that the Cuban Five were convicted of charges including operating here as unregistered foreign agents. Cuba admits that its agents were operating here but argues, among other things, that they should be pardoned because their intentions were good, they were really just fighting terrorism. That argument has gone nowhere in our government.

Last week’s campaign made the case that Mr. Gross’ intentions and activities were good. That argument is likely to go nowhere in the Cuban government.

I’m as much in favor of free satellite Internet service as the next guy, but as a practical matter – regardless of one’s views of the Cuban government, Cuban law, or Mr. Gross’ activities – assertions that the United States government has the right to run programs of its choosing in Cuba are not likely to unravel the predicament in which Mr. Gross finds himself.

Why? Because – and let’s note that people on my side of this debate are not usually the ones who have to drag this little factoid out – Cuba is a one-party state, guided by Leninist principles and defended by the closest thing to the Stasi that has ever existed in this hemisphere.

Those assertions about good U.S. intentions do, however, make for a defense for the USAID program.

What is Mr. Gross’ predicament?

Read the post below, and connect the dots yourself.

Alan Gross' predicament

“We tell all Americans all over the world 24 hours a day that you are subject to the laws of the country where you find yourself.”

– U.S. consul general in Port-au-Prince Donald Moore, regarding the case of Americans detained by Haitian authorities after they attempted to bring Haitian children in their custody to the Dominican Republic, February 1, 2010

“It’s their country. The judgment is really up to the Haitian government.”

– State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley on the same case, February 2, 2010

“It would be highly unusual for the secretary of state to intervene in a case involving the judicial process of another country.”

– Mr. Crowley responding to a lawyer’s appeal for Secretary Clinton to involve herself in the same case, February 11, 2010

“This is not the first time that unregistered foreign agents have sought to do their nations’ bidding in our backyard, in disregard of our laws and our sovereignty.” … “Today's guilty verdict and the prior guilty pleas by three other defendants in this case should serve as a strong warning to others who operate illegally in the United States on behalf of foreign governments.” … “When unregistered foreign agents believe that they can operate on our soil with impunity and disregard for U.S. laws, it undermines the national security of our country and the safety of our citizens. This case demonstrates our resolve in ensuring that activities conducted in the United States are free from illegal foreign influence.”

– Prosecutors’ statements released by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami after the November 2008 conviction of a Venezuelan national for “operating as an illegal agent of the Venezuelan government in the United States.” Three others had already entered guilty pleas. On U.S. soil, they had attempted to carry out a Venezuelan government scheme to make it appear that a Florida individual, rather than the Venezuelan government, was the source of a suitcase of cash donated to an Argentine political campaign.

“Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people. But he must and will leave Cuba.”

– Senator Jesse Helms, quoted by TIME magazine upon introduction of the Helms-Burton bill, February 20, 1995

“This is the beginning of the end for Fidel Castro…in a few years, there will be freedom, democracy, and human rights in Cuba, and we’ll all go down there and have a good time.”

– Congressman Dan-Burton, quoted by AP upon the bill’s passage, March 13, 1996

“For the purposes of this Act, a transition government in Cuba” and “a democratically elected government in Cuba…does not include Fidel Castro or Raul Castro.”

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law…the President is authorized to furnish assistance and provide other support for individuals and independent nongovernmental organizations to support democracy-building efforts for Cuba, including the following:

(1) Published and informational matter, such as books, videos, and cassettes, on transitions to democracy, human rights, and market economies, to be made available to independent democratic groups in Cuba.

(2) Humanitarian assistance to victims of political repression, and their families.

(3) Support for democratic and human rights groups in Cuba.”

– Excerpts from the Helms-Burton Act of 1996

“The USAID ‘competitive task order in support of the Cuba Democracy and Contingency Program,’ issued May 8, 2008, discussed what it envisaged. The program ‘is expressly designed to hasten Cuba’s peaceful transition to a democratic society,’ the contract task order says.

“‘Component I – managed off-island until further notice – will consist of an estimated $12 million for the Grants under Contract mechanism as well as have the capacity to respond if USAID is asked to bolster its assistance to consolidate Cuba’s anticipated market and democratic transition,’ it continues. ‘Illustrative program areas include breaking the information blockade with technological outreach through phone banks, satellite internet and cell phones.’”

– From a report in Politico on USAID’s contract with Alan Gross’ employer, DAI

“He who…distributes or participates in the distribution of financial, material, or other resources that come from the United States government, its agencies, subordinates, representatives, functionaries, or private entities [pursuant to the Helms-Burton law] faces a sanction of three to eight years in prison…”

– Excerpt from Cuba’s Law 88, a response to the Helms-Burton law, which it describes as having the goal of “breaking the internal order, destabilizing the country, and liquidating the Socialist State and the independence of Cuba.” The Cuban government used Law 88 to convict 75 dissidents in lightning trials in 2003.

“Alan was helping Cuba’s tiny Jewish community set up an Intranet so that they could communicate amongst themselves and with other Jewish communities abroad, and providing them the ability to access the Internet.”

– From a fact sheet about Mr. Gross distributed last week by a Washington public relations firm

“BGANS.”

– A U.S. official’s reference to this gizmo, when asked by yours truly what equipment Mr. Gross was providing.

Odds and ends

• Along the Malecon reports that the Luis Posada Carriles trial has been postponed pursuant to a sealed prosecution motion, and 90 percent of filings to date are secret.

• The Wall Street Journal: A story of a Cuban American’s return to his childhood home, as narrated by his wife.

• At Global Post, Nick Miroff looks at television viewing habits in Cuba, where state television “is politically biased and often tedious, [but] hardly a drab, droning monotony of pro-Castro propaganda.” The irrelevance of TV Marti shines through.

• An American conservative goes to Cuba and comes back with this opinion, which he wrote in a letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “If we want to get communism out of Cuba, end the embargo.” Speaking of American conservatives,

• Mining Weekly notes a Cuban television news report that says that the joint Cuban-Venezuelan project to activate the Camarioca nickel plant, a mothballed Czechoslovak project from COMECON days, is moving forward. In 2005, there were announcements that China would be the partner in this project and in a Camaguey nickel mining venture, but China ended its involvement without fanfare.