One solution - Revolution!

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On this edition of Conversations with History, UC Berkeley’s Harry Kreisler is joined by linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky to discuss activism, anarchism and the role the United States plays in the world today. Series: “Conversations with History” [6/2002] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 6568]

 Socialist Party deputy general secretary Hannah Sell speaks at the Socialist Party Congress 2008 on the continued struggle for socialism and the prospect for the development of socialist ideas in Britain. Part 1

Socialist Party: www.socialistparty.org.uk
Committee for a Workers’ International: www.socialistworld.net

Plaques still commemorate dissidence against the BUF

The U.S. embargo against Cuba is condemned by an ever larger and by now overwhelming majority of member-states of the United Nations General Assembly. However, it continues to be imposed by the U.S. government’s isolated but stubborn will.

In spite of the United Nations repeated injunctions, notably its resolution 56/9 of the 27th of November 2001. The purpose of this expose is to denounce this embargo in the strongest terms for the violation of law it represents, and for its total lack of legitimacy. These measures of arbitrary constraint are tantamount to a U.S. undeclared act of war against Cuba; their devastating economic and social effects deny the people to exercise their basic human rights, and are unbearable for them. They directly subject the people to the maximum of suffering and infringe upon the physical and moral integrity of the whole population, and in the first place of the children, of the elderly and of women. In this respect, they can be seen as a crime against humanity .

Imposed since 1962, the US embargo has been reinforced in October 1992 by the Cuban Democracy Act (or “Torricelli Law”), which aimed to restrain the development of the Cuban economy’s new driving forces the by hitting the inflow of funds and goods by: i) the strict limitations of the transfers of foreign currencies by the families in exile, ii) the six-months ban to enter U.S. harbours of all ships that had anchored in a Cuban port, iii) sanctions against firms doing commerce with the island even though under the jurisdiction of a third state. The embargo was systematized by the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act (“Helms Burton Law”) of March 1996, aimed to harden the “international” sanctions against Cuba. Its Title I generalizes the ban to import Cuban goods, demanding, for example, that exporters give proof that no Cuban sugar has been integrated in their products, as was already the case with nickel. It conditions the authorization of currency transfers to the creation on the island of a private sector including employment of salaried staff. Still more enterprising, Title II fixes the modalities of a transition to a “post-Castro” power, as well as the nature of the relationship to have with the United States. Title III grants the U.S. tribunals the right to judge demands for damage and interest made by a civil and moral person of U.S. nationality that considers having been injured by the loss of property in Cuba due to nationalization, and claims compensation from the users or beneficiaries of this property. At the request of the old owners, any national (and family) of a third state, having made transactions with these users or beneficiaries, can be sued in the United States. The sanctions incurred are set out in Title IV, which provides, inter alia, the refusal of the State Department to give U.S. entrance visas to these individuals and their families.

The normative content of this embargo -specially the extraterritoriality of its rules, which intend to impose on the international community unilateral sanctions by the United States, or the denial of the right of nationalization, through the concept of “traffic”- is a violation of the spirit and letter of the United Nations Charter and of the Organization of American States, and of the very fundamentals of international law. This excessive extension of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States is contrary to the principle of national sovereignty and to that of non-intervention in the internal choices of a foreign states - as recognized in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice. It is opposed to the Cuban people’s rights to auto-determination and to development. It also contradicts strongly the freedom of trade, navigation, and movement of capital, all that the United States paradoxically claims everywhere else in the world. This embargo is moreover illegitimate and immoral because it attacks the social benefits realized by Cuba since years and imperils their successes -recognized by many international independent observers (in particular those of the WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF and many NGO). They are its public systems of education, research, health or culture, in plain exercise of human rights. Furthermore, the threat that this coercive operation poses for U.S. nationals and for foreigners extends the practical impact of the embargo to domains completely or partially excluded from the texts, such as food, medicines or medical equipment and exchanges of scientific information.

The harmful economic effects of the embargo

From an official Cuban source , the direct economic damages caused to Cuba by the U.S. embargo since its institution would exceed 70 billion dollars. The damages include: i) the loss of earnings due to the obstacles to the development of services and exportations (tourism, air transport, sugar, nickel; ii) the losses registered as a result of the geographic reorientation of the commercial flows, (additional costs of freight, stocking and commercialization at the purchasing of the goods…); iii) the impact of the limitation imposed on the growth of the national production of goods and services (limited access to technologies, lack of access to spare parts and hence early retirement of equipment, forced restructuring of firms, serious difficulties sustained by the sectors of sugar, electricity, transportation, agriculture…); iv) the monetary and financial restrictions (impossibility to renegotiate the external debt, interdiction of access to the dollar, unfavourable impact of the variation of the exchange rates on trade, risk-country, additional cost of financing due to U.S. opposition to the integration of Cuba into the international financial institutions…); v) the pernicious effects of the incentive to emigration, including illegal emigration (loss of human resources and talents generated by the Cuban educational system…); vi) social damages affecting the population (concerning food, health, education, culture, sport…).

If it affects negatively all the sectors , the embargo directly impedes -besides the exportations- the driving forces of the Cuban economic recovery, at the top of which are tourism, foreign direct investments (FDI) and currency transfers. Many European subsidiaries of U.S. firms had recently to break off negotiations for the management of hotels, because their lawyers anticipated that the contracts would be sanctioned under the provisions of the “Helms-Burton law”. In addition, the buy-out by U.S. groups of European cruising societies, which moored their vessels in Cuba, cancelled the projects in 2002-03. The obstacles imposed by the United States, in violation of the Chicago Convention on civil aviation, to the sale or the rental of planes, to the supply of kerosene and to access to new technologies (e-reservation, radio-localization), will lead to a loss of 150 million dollars in 2003. The impact on the FDI is also very unfavourable. The institutes of promotion of FDI in Cuba received more than 500 projects of cooperation from US companies, but none of them could be realized - not even in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry, where Cuba has a very attractive potential. The transfer of currencies from the United States is limited (less than 100 dollars a month per family) and some European banks had to restrain their commitment under the pressure of the U.S. which let them know that indemnities would be required if the credits were maintained. In Cuba, the embargo penalizes the activities of the bank and finance, insurance, petrol, chemical products, construction, infrastructures and transports, shipyard, agriculture and fishing, electronics and computing…, but also for the export sectors (where the U.S. property prevailed before 1959), such as those of sugar, whose recovery is impeded by the interdiction of access to the fist international stock exchange of raw materials (New York), of nickel, tobacco, rum…

The harmful social effects of the embargo

The U.S. government’s announcements intimating that it would be favourable to the relaxation of the restrictions concerning foodstuffs and medicines went unheeded and cannot hide that Cuba has been the victim of a de facto embargo in these domains. The reduction of the availability of these types of goods exacerbates the privation of the population and constantly threatens its dietary security, its nutritional stability and its health. A humanitarian tragedy -which seems to be the implicit objective of the embargo- has been avoided only thanks to the will of the Cuban state to maintain at all costs the pillars of its social model, which guarantees to everyone, among others, a staple food for a modest price and a free consumption in the crèches, schools, hospitals, and homes for the elderly. That is the reaffirmation of the priority given by the authorities to the human development, which explains the established excellence of the statistical indicators of Cuba concerning health, education, research, culture… and this despite the extremely limited budgetary resources and the numerous problems resulting from the disappearance of the Soviet bloc. However, the continuation of the social progress in Cuba is impaired by the effective extension of the embargo.

The pressures exerted by the U.S. Departments of State and Trade on the suppliers of Cuba have concerned a wide range of goods necessary for the health sector (medicines destined for pregnant women, laboratory products, radiology equipment, operating tables and surgery equipment, anaesthetics, defibrillators, artificial breathing apparatuses, dialysis apparatuses, pharmaceutical stocks…) and went as far as to prevent the free supply of food for new-born babies and of equipment for unities of paediatric intensive care . The production capacities of vaccines conceived by Cuba are hampered by the frequent lack of spare parts and of essential components that have to be imported, as well as water treatment centres. This embargo provokes today an unjustified suffering of the Cuban people. The shortages affecting many medicines, which are not produced in Cuba, complicate the immediate and complete implementation of the procedures of treatment of breast cancer, leukaemia, cardiovascular or kidney diseases, and HIV for example. Moreover, the U.S. authority’s infringements on individual freedom of movement and scientific knowledge… (restrictions on travel of U.S. researchers, the disrespect of bilateral agreements on Cuban researcher’s visas, refusal to grant software licences or to satisfy the orders from Cuban libraries of books, magazines, diskettes or CD-Rom of specialized scientific literature…) have in fact led to the extension of the embargo to areas formally excluded from it by the law. One of the most fruitful opportunities to develop cooperation between nations on a solidary and humanist basis is therefore blocked.

The embargo is also in contradiction with the principles of the promotion and protection of human rights, which are desired by the U.S. people for themselves and for the rest of the world.

For all these reasons, this unacceptable embargo has to cease immediately.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has been accused of Islamophobia, faces trial in his own country for inciting hatred.

Nicknamed “Mozart” because of his mane of platinum blond hair, he was voted politician of the year in 2007 by the Dutch political press, partly because of his “well-timed one-liners”.

But his opponents see him as a provocateur.

The British government has tried to ban the Freedom Party leader from the UK on the grounds that he poses a threat to public security - a move later overruled by the courts.

He had tried to visit the UK in February 2009 to show his controversial film Fitna - roughly translated as “strife” in Arabic - which links the Koran to terrorism, but was turned back at Heathrow airport.

No TV company would broadcast the 17-minute film, which some Dutch politicians tried to ban before Mr Wilders posted it on the internet in March 2008.

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen complained the furore over Fitna could endanger Dutch companies, soldiers and residents abroad.

That followed Denmark’s experience in 2006, when the publication of Danish cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad sparked protests across the Muslim world.

‘Not my problem’

Former colleagues describe Mr Wilders as a 24/7 politician with no time for other interests.

He lives under police protection because of earlier death threats, and has told the BBC his intention has only ever been “to have a debate about freedom of speech and the threat of Islamisation of our Western societies”.

“It’s not my intention to have anything at all to do with violence. On the contrary, I despise violence - I just want a debate.”

The Dutch MP had upset the Muslim world before Fitna, by calling for a ban on the Koran and likening it to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

When asked about the impact of his film in 2008, Mr Wilders said: “It’s not the aim of the movie but people might be offended, I know that. So, what the hell? It’s their problem, not my problem.”

‘Mozart’

Born in the Limburg town of Venlo in 1963, Geert Wilders came from a Catholic background and went to a Catholic secondary school.

He is no longer religious and once told a friend he knew little about Easter, despite regularly speaking out on the Netherlands’ Judaeo-Christian heritage.

The son of a printing company director, his own career began in social and health insurance. It was socio-economic policy that brought him into politics, as a speech-writer for the liberal VVD party.

He was elected as city councillor in Utrecht in 1997 and MP the following year.

Because of his party’s support for Turkish entry into the European Union, he left the liberals in 2002 and struck out on his own.

He has prompted comparisons with Pim Fortuyn, the maverick political leader who famously described Islam as a backward religion. Fortuyn was murdered by an animal rights activist in 2002, shortly before an election.

Racist or not?

But it was in November 2004 that Mr Wilders’ career dramatically changed after the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh by a radical Islamist, Mohammed Bouyeri.

Together with ethnic Somali politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Van Gogh had produced the short film Submission, which featured an actress in see-through clothing with Koranic script on her body.

Although he had no involvement in the film, Mr Wilders was given a permanent bodyguard, as was Ms Hirsi Ali, because of their outspoken views on Islam.

Mr Wilders set up his Freedom Party (PVV), later attracting widespread political support for his call for a ban on the burka, the Muslim garment that covers most of the body.

In March 2006, he told the BBC that he thought that 5-15% of Dutch Muslims were sympathetic to radical Islam.

“I believe we have been too tolerant of the intolerant. We should learn to become intolerant of the intolerant,” he said.

“People like Mohammed Bouyeri who killed Theo van Gogh, they should be arrested under administrative detention for the safety of Dutch families.”

He has seen administrative detention without trial used in Israel, which he has visited on many occasions.

After the release of Fitna, the Dutch Muslim community reacted to Mr Wilders in different ways, according to then-National Moroccan Council Chairman Mohamed Rabbae.

He said some saw the MP as a friend of Israel, some saw him as an opportunist promoting fear and hate, while a minority did not see him as an enemy at all, but rather “as a kind of Don Quixote, fighting against things and presenting goals which will never happen”.