Today's Stories

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

May 13, 2009

A Tale of Two Summits

Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

By ROBERT SANDELS

The April summit appeared to be a grand success. No, not the one in Trinidad and Tobago; the one in Cumana, Venezuela, where Bolivian President Evo Morales said, "If we do not change capitalism, humanity will be at risk, including the same people who concentrate wealth in a few hands."[1]

A lot of media energy was burned up to tell us that nothing of importance happened at the Fifth Summit of the Americas (April 17-19) in Port of Spain. We know this because none of the leaders there agreed to sign the summit's final declaration - except the prime minister of the host country -- and he more or less had to. When you have a summit and no one agrees with what was done there, did you really have a summit? Journalists and pundits were reduced to discussing whether the president of the United States should have shaken hands with the president of Venezuela.

Recalling the relentless US campaign to get rid of, and failing that, to demonize Hugo Chavez, should the question not have been whether Chavez should have shaken Barrack Obama's hand? No one asked if it was correct protocol for Obama to carelessly claim a while back that Chavez was an exporter of terrorism.[2]

Obama was given universal credit at the summit for not being George W. Bush. He talked about not imposing US will on other states in the hemisphere; about being a partner. He even alluded antiseptically and briefly to some US mistakes of the past.

Two weeks earlier, a hopelessly miscast Vice President Joe Biden attended the Progressive Governance Conference in Chile. "The time of the United States dictating unilaterally, the time where we only talk and don't listen is over," he said progressively.[3]

Negating all that, Obama told the 33 other leaders in Port of Spain that he would not lift the blockade (embargo) against Cuba until President Raul Castro did what he asked: release political prisoners, and so on. The ball, it was said, was now in Cuba's court because Obama had done his part by rolling back the harsh rules on family visits to Cuba set by Bush in 2004 and by allowing US telecommunications companies access to the Cuban market.

The summit's final declaration dutifully went along with the pretence that the summit was about "Securing Our Citizens' Future by Promoting Human Prosperity, Energy Security and Environmental Sustainability," when it was really about Cuba and US interventionism, particularly the economic blockade of Cuba and the refusal to seat Raul Castro at the summit table. Chavez remarked that the final declaration was "totally lost in time and space as if time had not passed."[4]

Reading the declaration and comparing it with those of previous summits is a depressing exercise. They are eye-glazing lists of problems that were not resolved at the last summit. They have all the conviction of those heartfelt wishes for world peace one expects from contestants in beauty pageants.

One of the few times when real world issues intruded on these proceedings was during the 2004 Mar del Plata summit when an open rebellion erupted against Bush's ambitions for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). That declaration took passing notice of objections to the document but pledged to carry the cadaver of free trade on into the future anyway. There is no mention of free trade in the Port of Spain Declaration except for the promise to "continue to insist on an open, transparent and rules-based multilateral trading system," the very terms that had already killed US hopes for the FTAA.[5]

For an idea of the real agenda in Port of Spain, we have Fidel Castro's reflection of April 19. In it, he quotes at length from an address by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega reviewing a century of US crimes and interventions including Reagan's war against the Sandinista revolutionary government, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the ravages of neoliberalism, and the exclusion of Cuba from summit like this one. "I am embarrassed to be attending this summit in the absence of Cuba." Ortega said.[6]

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said that the draft declaration "does not reflect the economic crisis we are experiencing, which is not a temporary crisis but a crisis of the capitalist system, and . the document suggests solutions by legitimizing those responsible for the crisis, for instance, the International Monetary Fund."[7]

What got in the way of signing the declaration was reality. With nearly unanimous support for the uninvited Cuba and expressions of dissent by the six members of the Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America (ALBA), there was no decorous way to end the affair but to have the host, Prime Minister Patrick Manning, sign it for them. The official statement afterwards was that the declaration had been adopted "by consensus." Its weak promises to do something about the unchanging list of problems have now been forwarded to the OAS secretariat with no mention that the document was adopted by a phantom consensus among leaders who did not buy it.

Why are summits like this one held? Perhaps to give counter-summits an agenda.

Summit trashes summit

A draft of the Port of Spain document -- two years in the making -- was leaked weeks beforehand. This allowed Chavez to call an Extraordinary ALBA Summit in Cumana one day before the Port of Spain Summit to denounce it.[8] ALBA members promptly said they would not sign the Americas declaration. That, at least, was some kind of consensus.

The ALBA declaration rejects the Port of Spain draft declaration as "insufficient," because of its failure to adequately address the economic crisis, the exclusion of Cuba and its silence on the regional opposition to the blockade. It called for a debate on the theme of "capitalism putting an end to humanity and the planet." Referring to climate change, the ALBA delegates called for a new model, "a system in harmony with our mother earth and not with the plunder of our natural resources." It called for an end to US sanctions against Cuba and to all forms of intervention, including media wars and the financing of destabilizing groups. It also asserted that free migration, healthcare and education, energy, water and telecommunications should be considered human rights. [9]

By comparison, the Port of Spain declaration follows the usual formula. First, state a problem: "We recognize that.," We promise to "consult," to "exchange information," or to "continue our efforts to.." This is followed by expressions of desire to meet again in some other resort hotel. The following language is typical: "To strengthen our efforts to reduce social disparities and inequality and to halve extreme poverty by the year 2015, we commit to exchange information on policies, experiences, programs and best practices." Addressing the economic crisis, it declares that its (non-signing) members are "committed to addressing" them and are "determined to enhance our cooperation and work together."

Where the Port of Spain summiteers tinker with things as they are, the ALBA declaration offers a structural appraisal of the global economic crisis. Its language echoes statements made by Fidel Castro and recently by Morales about the unsustainablity of the current corporate, consumerist economic model. It asserts,

"Capitalism is putting an end to humanity and the planet. What we are experiencing is a systematic and structural crisis, not just another cyclical crisis. Those who think the crisis will be resolved with an injection of tax money and some regulatory measures are very mistaken.. This is not a 'failure to regulate the system' but rather a constituent part of the capitalist system that speculates with all goods and stocks in hopes of obtaining the highest possible profit."

It is safe to say that no such language has ever been used in a Summit of the Americas document. There is a growing world consensus that the effort by the United States to isolate Cuba has backfired. It is Obama and the United States who are isolated, left with pockets of support in Poland, Palau, Israel, the Marshall Island, parts of New Jersey and the Republic of Miami. It is always possible that Obama may be driven by events into calling off the war with Cuba. There have recently been talks with Cuban diplomats from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, DC. But shortly after these talks were held, the State Department issued its annual list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba is still on it.

A travel rule is not a foreign policy

Actions like that are extensions of Bush's Cuba policy and beg the question, just how meaningful is Obama's relaxation of the Bush travel restrictions, which got so much attention in Port of Prince? Answer: not very much. The new travel rules Obama announced, which had already been legislated by Congress the previous month, are tactical details and should not be confused with policy.

The policy underlying the regulatory minutia of travel licenses, per diem travel expenditures, cash remittances or the definition of a "relative" remains, as it was in 2004, the destruction of the Cuban revolution. Determined to find a hint of policy change in Obama's announcement, the media generally forgot that Bush's hardening of the rules on family travel and remittances took up only a few paragraphs in the first Report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (2004).

The rest of the 450-page report is an overthrow manual. The grand objectives of the report are: "Bring an end to the ruthless and brutal dictatorship; assist the Cuban people in a transition to representative democracy; and assist the Cuban people in establishing a free market economy." The role of the travel restrictions in that scheme is to help "reduce the regime's manipulation of family visits to generate hard currency." Little was said about the damage to families aside from quite illogically claiming that reducing family travel and remittances would somehow preserve and promote "legitimate family ties and humanitarian relief for the Cuban people."[10]

In 2006, the commission found more ways to get rid of the Cuban revolution and issued a second report.[11] Obama's "reform" should be read in the context of these reports. With the Castro government gone, the commission expects the United States to engage in neighborly acts of kindness reminiscent of the previous interventions of 1898-1902 and 1906-1909. It would busy itself fixing roads and ports, sewers and water purification plants, installing US models for education and healthcare, US-style multi-party elections and, of course, "business."

The commission insists that the Castro government has impoverished the Cuban people. To remedy that, it recommends further tightening the economic blockade by such measures as setting up a Cuban Nickel Targeting Task Force to strangle Cuban cobalt and nickel exports. Nothing coming out of the Obama administration so far appears to deviate from the fundamental policy. The Washington Post reported that, according to White House officials, lifting the travel and remittances restrictions would support Cuban dissidents with money.

As for allowing US telecommunications firms to do business in Cuba, the officials said that move would "flood Cuba with information while providing new opportunities for businesses."[12] We may be forgiven for thinking Obama wanted people in the United States to visit their relatives in Cuba, take them some cash, maybe some underwear - that sort of thing. What they would really be doing, says a White House Fact Sheet, is supporting "the Cuban people's desire for freedom and self-determination."[13]

The next time you see Obama, ask him which of the other Bush "recommendations to hasten the end of the Castro dictatorship" he would like to abolish next.

Sanctions still preferred

When you look for signs that Obama is about to distance himself from the sanctions policy and enter the unexplored land of diplomacy with Cuba, you find that sanctions are still the weapon of choice. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently thinks the proper role of diplomacy is to get other countries to help apply crushing sanctions.

In an Asia Times piece, Shahir Shahidsaless notes that Clinton recently told Congress, "We actually believe that by following the diplomatic path we are on, we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime [on Iran] as tight and as crippling as we would want it to be."[14]

Assuming that Cuba remains bound by the unshakable insistence of Fidel and Raul Castro that it will not surrender the revolution to win approval from the United States, it is unlikely that Obama will in the near future lift the blockade. To do without the concessions Obama demands would, after 47 years of low-intensity warfare against the island, hand the United States a historic defeat and force upon it a humiliating admission that a socialist alternative to capitalism is viable and acceptable.

Robert Sandels is an analyst and writer for Cuba-L Direct. This article was written for CounterPunch and Cuba-L Direct.

Notes

1 Mercosur Noticias, 04/19/09, .

[2] In a January 2008 interview with Univision, Obama repeated the Bush-era rhetoric that Chavez was "a force that has interrupted progress in the region." This, despite the fact that Chavez's closest friends in the region are among the most progressive. Obama accepted as fact the discredited claims by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that Chavez was in league with the FARC guerrillas, saying that, "We need to be firm when we see this news, that Venezuela is exporting terrorist activities or supporting malicious entities like the FARC." (Washington Post, 01/19/09. Univision has not released a transcript of the interview.) Chavez justifiably replied that Obama was an "ignoramus."

[3] Merco Press, Montevideo, 03/30/09, < http://en.mercopress.com/.

 [4] Agence France Presse, 04/16/09.

[5] "Creating Jobs to Fight Poverty and Strengthen Democratic Governance," Declaration of Mar del Plata, 11/05/05, .

[6] Reflexiones del compañero Fidel: La Cumbre Secreta, 04/19/09, http://www.trabajadores.cu/reflexiones-de-fidel-castro/reflexiones-del-companero-fidel-la-cumbre-secreta.

[7] ACN (Havana), 04/19/09, .

[8] Attending were: Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Raul Castro (Cuba), Manuel Zelaya (Honduras), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Roosevelt Skerrit (Dominica) and Ralph Gonsalves (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines). Observers were Fernando Lugo (Paraguay) and a representative of Rafael Correa (Ecuador).

[9] Documento de los paises de la Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA) para la V Cumbre de las Américas, Cumana, 04/17 /09, .

[10] Report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, 2004, .

[11] Report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, 2006, .

[12] Washington Post, 04/17/09.

[13] White House, Fact Sheet, Reaching Out to the Cuban People, 04/13/09, .

[14] Shahir Shahidsaless, White House miscalculations linger, Asia Times, 04/28/09, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KD28Ak02.html.

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