Today's Stories

May 24, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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The Politics of Unequal Exchange

The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

By NELSON P. VALDÉS

"The populace may hiss me, but when I go home and think of my money, I applaud myself. " 

Horace (c. 25 BC)

"Unequal exchange, as practiced by the conquerors with the natives purchasing gold with mirrors, marbles and European trinkets, must  cease."  

Fidel Castro, 1998

In fiscal year 2008-2009 the United States government has budgeted $45,000,000 to finance the opposition against the revolutionary government in Cuba. The money is used to fund rightwing exile organizations, eastern European rightwing politicians involved with Cuba and money oriented "civil society" promoters. Some of the money ends up in Cuba.  The details of such counterrevolutionary program is little known by the world. The Cubans within the island who receive the so-called "assistance" claim to be involved in promoting "civil society" and "democracy." They maintain that what they are doing is not subversive. The official line from the United States government is that the money it supplies  has a humanitarian intent. The recipients, however, are agents of a foreign power if we follow US law definitions. [1] It is unknown how much money the United States government is really spending to bring an end to the revolutionary government in Havana. [2]

The videos, photos, documents and phone conversation logs transmitted over the Mesa Redonda TV program  in Havana during three consecutive days (May 19, 20, 21) disclosed some of the mechanisms used to provide money payments to dissidents via  Marta Beatriz Roque, a sort of dissident paymaster/accountant in Havana. She describes herself in her emails to rightwing exiles and US officials, as Tia McPato (as in the Disney character - Aunt Scrooge McDuck. )

The money provided to the "dissidents" seem to be mere peanuts, when compared to the total amount of money appropriated by the US Congress. Indeed, it is obvious, that the "dissidents" provide the "cover" for the real entrepreneurs in Florida to enrich themselves. One can very well assume that if the US AID grants a lump sum of, say, $5 million to a Miami "democracy promotion organization" and then the organization puts the money in a bank to get yearly earnings - the earnings might be sufficient to finance the "dissidents". Miami, of course, will keep the lion's share of the grant. And the "grant" [our tax dollars at work] will be renewed the following years. Both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress approve of a "foreign aid" that ends up in Coral Gables and the Florida keys.

In a sense, the "dissidents" in the island face all the political and economic costs but receive very little of the financial benefits - when compared to exile “donors.” Granted, a monthly payment of $200-1,500 US dollars is certainly 100 times what the average Cuban earns. Yet, the island "dissidents" thank the exile "donors" abroad when in fact; the exile entrepreneurs should be thanking the "dissidents." Or, to put it differently, the "dissidents" are the proletarians while the Miami hustlers are the bourgeois employers.

The logic of such political opposition is NOT to be too successful in the REAL recruiting of thousands of political opponents inside Cuba. To do so would be a major logistical and financial conundrum - for that success would imply much more financial accounting. Rather, the best strategy is to CLAIM a lot of political proselytizing in order to obtain as much funding from abroad as possible.

The Miami promoters/handlers need the "dissidents" but do not want them to get too much of a claim over the capital available. This is accomplished by obtaining invoices for all services rendered. In a sense, this whole enterprise moves millions of dollars in Florida and elsewhere, but it comes to "penny capitalism" in Havana.

Marta Beatriz Roque distributes an average of $200 per "dissident". Thus, if 10 "dissidents"= $200x10=$2000; 100 "dissidents", $20,000 and so forth. By playing such a role Marta Beatriz Roque is not a political "leader" but rather a financial "accountant." She knows so and calls herself Tia MacPato. How much money she receives determines how many people she could, potentially recruit. Of course, she could increase the monthly payments of those who are already recruited. On the other hand, that some of the "dissidents" do not seem to get any money payment, perhaps behaving on the basis of “moral incentives” or not realizing that everyone gets a fee for services rendered.

Interestingly, the money is supplied on a monthly basis rather than as a lump sum. Tia McPato would like to get lump sums - that would provide her with discretionary power. But it will reduce the political influence that Miami would have over Havana. The one with the money commands. Thus, payments are done on a monthly basis - although this is a cumbersome logistical mechanism. But it is revealing what the method accomplishes:

1. It reminds the recipient of the funds who is the boss - that is Santiago Alvarez. 2. It makes the recipients financially dependent on a monthly basis, which is a form of control: you don’t deliver political acts, you don’t get paid. This is measured on the basis of the foreign press reporting on the actions. 3. The monthly payments, delivered by Marta Beatriz, is a form of political control. The money payments is a tool of political recruitment and a form of retainer, from month to month. 4. The monthly payments allow the people with the capital in Florida (who received the money from the US government and other undisclosed sources) to set up an account that earns interests. Thus, if AID supplies the "non profit" organization in Miami with the capital, then the money is put in an interest earning account.

The relationship between the Miami promoters/bourgeoisie and the Havana "dissident"/proletarians is a very unique exchange. Miami has US-government supplied financial capital; Havana "dissidents" claim to have political capital. The latter is seemingly correlated with time served in a Cuban prison or openly challenging the Cuban authorities; both generate more political capital in the eyes of the Miami and Washington DC promoters of long-distance "democracy". Those who have been arrested or answer to the behest of the US Interest Section have a higher exchange value than those who do not. Moreover, those who served some prison time but do not continue their day to day "demonstration politics" then do not get pay as much as those who do. Tia McPato who is the money distributor among the "dissidents" claims the political leadership over the proletarians.

In such a relationship, it becomes imperative for the proletarians to try to extort as much from the employers abroad. This requires that the actions of the "dissidents" be covered by the foreign press. ["If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"] In other words, political "show and tell" is the very stuff of such "demonstration politics". No TV time or press headlines, no pay. It is imperative, then, to cultivate the foreign media stationed in Havana. The foreign media plays the part of the stock analyst who keeps the market ratings on "dissidence" high. Seemingly, the correspondents' job is to tout the market value of the "dissidents" whose  stock would be worthless if their real value were exposed.

The Cuban government has challenged the US government, the foreign media stationed in Cuba, or the island's "dissidents" to answer head-on the evidence that has been disclosed and the substantive charges. It is doubtful that any of the players will do so. Meanwhile the commercial enterprise called "democracy promotion" will continue.

Perhaps the promotion of democracy should begin with exporting to Cuba some legislation from the United States.  I propose that our country persuade the government in Havana to adopt from the US Code 18 U.S.C.A. § 953 [1948] - better known as the Logan Act.

The Act reads in part, "Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both." [3] All that would be necessary is for the Cuban government to replace the phrase "United States" and include "Republic of Cuba."

Now, that might be an interesting way of furthering democracy.

Nelson P. Valdés is a Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico.

This essay was originally published by Cuba-L Analysis.

Notes

[1] See the essay by Salim Lamrani: 05/07/08 - Rebelión (Madrid) - Las contradicciones de Amnistia Internacional.

[2] There is a concurrent effort, also financed by the United States government, to prepare the "transition teams" that will be sent once the Cuban revolutionary regime is overthrown. Just on May 8th, 2008 AID requested proposals to the tune of $30 million from five US corporations who have been involved in such "transitions" elsewhere. Source:  AID email, May 8, 2008 entitled: COMPETITIVE TASK ORDER SOLICITATION IN SUPPORT OF THE CUBA DEMOCRACY AND CONTINGENCY PLANNING PROGRAM (CDCPP).

[3] See: U.S. Code, Title 19, Part I, Chapter 45, § 953

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