Fly Clear – the stupidest idea ever

Luckily, Machetera isn’t a frequent flier anymore. However, her recent vacation allowed her the chance to review current events at a couple of U.S. airports, and she can report that the recent airline cutbacks have definitely not improved the mood of the remaining employees, who generally behave as though thinking costs extra. Not that Machetera blames them. When Delta is charging $4.50 for a plastic bag, why not get in on the deal?

Oddly enough, the mood of the TSA employees seems to have improved in direct proportion to the decline in courtesy at the airlines. Perhaps it’s an indicator of who’s in control now.

With that in mind, Machetera calls your attention to the latest in brilliant ideas for airport security – the Fly Clear card. With this card in hand one can supposedly avoid the indignities of passing through airline security with the masses, and according to one breathless review, feel “like a rockstar.” Actually, you ought to feel like a moron, but more on that in a minute. All one needs to do if you’re not Evo Morales or Robert Johnson is show up at a designated office with two forms of ID in hand and submit to a rectal search, fingerprinting and an iris scan, fork over $128 (for one year’s worth of clearance) and voilá, you’re free to breeze through a special express aisle reserved for idiots just like yourself with a taste for fascism. If you have children under 12, they can hand over their biometric data for free. Suckers!

Freedom of the Press: What they don’t teach you in J School

Finally! Machetera returns from her well-earned vacation, and for your reading pleasure, she’s pleased to present a series of five articles filed by the very talented journalist, Diana Barahona, from her recent visit to Cuba.

By Diana Barahona

July 22, 2008

La Habana – The United States has one of the highest levels of press freedom in the world. We know this because four different press freedom organizations say so. The fact that all four receive generous funding from the U.S. government doesn’t seem to matter.

Fidel told Frei Betto in an interview that he considered freedom of the press to be nothing more than freedom of ownership, and this is true: money is power, and the U.S. press has the power to choose our political leaders for us. Just ask Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards and Ralph Nader, and they will tell you how they were disappeared from the 2008 presidential race as quickly and definitively as any Soviet leader who fell into disfavor with Stalin.

The current definition of freedom of the press was developed by the monopoly press, with the support of the state, and the tortuous logic goes like this:

Granma’s editor offers context behind Helms-Burton

By Diana Barahona

July 19, 2008

La Habana – The offices of Granma, are neither large nor elegant. They have the Spartan look one expects of the “Official Organ of the Communist Party of Cuba.” Granma is the least pretentious national daily in a world full of pretentious newspapers. On Friday it devoted one of its sixteen pages to Fidel’s reflection and another to the text of decree No. 259, signed by President Raúl Castro, dealing with the distribution of unused land for agricultural production. This may not seem like big news, but with the new prioritization of food security and incentives offered, many ordinary people are interested in taking up farming.

The paper’s editor-in-chief, Lázaro Barredo, is also a member of the National Assembly. His office has a brightly colored painting of Che Guevara, and a poster-sized reproduction of a letter Fidel wrote to his comrade-in-arms Celia Sánchez in 1958. The letter’s content reflects Barredo’s interest in Cuba’s security in the face of U.S. aggression: “Upon seeing the rockets they fired at Mario’s house, I have sworn to myself that the Americans are gong to pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war ends, for me a much longer and greater war will begin: the war that I am going to wage against them. I realize that that is going to be my true destiny.”

Barredo had written an editorial celebrating the death of Jesse Helms (R-NC), in which he said that the senator “felt a profound hatred for the Cuban Revolution […] and supported all the actions undertaken by the U.S. administration to overthrow it and assassinate Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro.” When we met, he asked if we were familiar with the events leading up to the passage of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the economic blockade against Cuba.

Cuba’s real libraries

By Diana Barahona

July 18, 2008

La Habana – The José Martí National Library is located in the Plaza de la Revolución, across from the José Martí monument and museum. This is the famous plaza where huge public spectacles take place, dominated by the image of Ché which takes up the side of a tall building.

The library, which houses Cuba’s patrimony, was moved into its current building in 1958, and it has the modern style of that period. Undoubtedly a major reason for its move away from Habana Vieja is the fact that whenever there is a major storm, the parts of city closest to the ocean are inundated.

My acquaintance with the library began several years ago when I was visited by two L.A. area librarians who, along with others across the country, were supporters of Cuba’s libraries and of their Cuban colleagues. Their professional association, the American Library Association, was plagued by the impertinent demands of a New York City library employee named Robert Kent, who had made a few trips to Cuba in the late 1990s in support of a small number of paid dissidents who claimed to be independent librarians. Kent wanted the ALA to condemn Cuba for allegedly harassing these noble employees of the United States government and proclaim its institutional support for them. As ridiculous as the whole thing seems on its face, some actually allied themselves with Kent, including Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice and some Eastern Europeans—especially the professional anticommunist Vaclav Havel.

One problem Kent had was that he was finally caught with a fake passport, instructing one of the dissident librarians (an undercover agent) to take photographs and study the security of the house of Cuba’s first vice president, Carlos Lage Dávila.

Journalist accreditation in Cuba

By Diana Barahona

July 17, 2008

La Habana – Today we met with Armando Briñis of the International Press Center. This was a little awkward, given that I’m an independent (not employed) journalist, and the CPI is there for real working journalists, who come to Cuba from all over the world to denigrate the country. Cuba puts up with 150 resident foreign correspondents (probably including technical workers) and for big events, like the pope’s visit, may receive up to 4,000. However, Briñis, like everyone else who deals with foreigners, was respectful towards the journalists, laying the blame for their lousy reporting on owners and editors. On the positive side, they bring in money, so at least they are contributing something to Cuba.

CNN is ensconced in the Habana Libre, and other big media companies such as the BBC are at another site. Exactly what they do all day is a mystery, since there are not that many Cuba stories going out on CNN. A local assures us that every time there is a problem, such as a fire or a carefully-staged show by dissidents, they are on scene with cameras and microphones, but are nowhere to be found when an important change in the law is being debated.

Journalism as it ought to be

By Diana Barahona

July 15, 2008

La Habana – The Cuban Journalists’ Union (UPEC) is a voluntary association that brings together media workers from all over the country. It has 3,680 members. This year, UPEC held its first congress in nine years. We arrived too late to attend, but information about the proceedings can be found here.

This is what the president of UPEC, Tubal Páez Hernández, had to say about the mission of Cuban journalism: To inform with veracity, without triumphalism or apologetics, in an analytic and deep manner, to help it in its primordial task: to better defend the Revolution and socialism.

Evo Morales on the WTO Negotiations Round

In Regard to the WTO Negotiations Round

Evo Morales

Translation: Machetera

International trade can play a major role in the promotion of economic development and the alleviation of poverty. We recognize the need for all our peoples to benefit from the increased opportunities and welfare gains that the multilateral trading system generates. The majority of WTO members are developing countries. We seek to place their needs and interests at the heart of the Work Programme adopted in this Declaration. – DOHA World Trade Organization Ministerial 2001: Ministerial Declaration

With these words, a round of negotiations began at the WTO seven years ago. Were economic development, the alleviation of poverty, the necessities of all our people and an increase in opportunities for developing countries really at the heart of the ongoing negotiations at the WTO?

The first thing I must say is that were it so, the 153 member countries and above all, the great majority of developing countries should have been the main players in the WTO negotiations. But what we’re seeing is that a handful of 35 countries are invited by the Director General to informal meetings in order to substantially advance in the negotiations and prepare the agreements for this “Development Round” of the WTO.

The WTO negotiations have become a fight by the developed countries to open the markets of developing countries in favor of their big businesses.

Will the U.S. Interests Section head in Tehran be a bagman too?

Because that’s what the Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Michael Parmly, has been for years and clearly the State Department has finally taken note. It must have been so frustrating all this time to have had no better source on possible U.S. friendly “dissidents” inside Iran besides the cultish PKK people outside Iran – you’d have thought they’d have figured out the Interests Section gig a little sooner. Well, better late than never.

Now, inquiring minds want to know…will the Interests Section in Tehran also have a Times Square type scrolling electronic bulletin board where the U.S. can broadcast propaganda? Will it have Internet dedicated computers inside the building that are off limits to U.S. citizens but reserved for Iranians who’d like to enthrone Reza Pahlavi? Will the Interests Section hold training courses in U.S. style propaganda (a.k.a. “journalism”) for Iranians who are willing to write anti-Iranian articles? Will they set up videoconferences so that Bush can talk directly to his Iranian followers? (They evidently exist in Cuba, so why not Iran?) Will they put Santa and his reindeer in lights on the front of the building at Christmastime? Just so Iranians can get into the shopping spirit too?

And what’s this about direct flights between the U.S. and Tehran? Aren’t they getting a little ahead of themselves? The least they can do is keep those flights off limits to U.S. citizens, and only let Iranians go once every three years, if they ask really nicely.

This is called a pressure cooker

Machetera has one, and highly recommends it, although admittedly she found it rather scary at first. But if you live at high altitude, you need to overcome your fear because you will never be able to make a decent potaje without it. All over Latin America, it is also considered indispensable and has many unusual applications.

Argentina’s Wealthy Celebrate the Senate’s Stabbing of the Government

Gara

Translation: Machetera

The unexpected vote against the raising of taxes on grain exports, by the Argentine Vice President Julio Cobos, destroyed the government’s plan. The agrarian bosses immediately celebrated their victory in Buenos Aires’ richest neighborhoods. No official statement has come from the government. Cobos was the one to speak. After expressing his satisfaction with the meaning of his vote, he stated that he was not thinking of resigning.

The Argentine Vice President, Julio Cobos, delivered a hard blow to the government of Cristina Fernández, with his vote against the governmental proposal to raise taxes on grain exports. His surprising decision, which broke the tie that had existed in the Senate until that moment, is a hard setback for the executive power which has faced off against the agrarian producers since March.

Argentinean Vice President Cobos makes his bed

Argentine Senate Rejects Tax Increase on Agricultural Products

Setback for Cristina Fernández; the country’s Vice President breaks the tie with his vote

Stella Calloni – La Jornada

Translation: Machetera

Buenos Aires – July 17. In a hard ending and after more than 18 hours of discussion, in the early morning the Senate rejected the law that would establish an increase in taxes on exported agricultural products, thanks to a vote from the House president and government Vice President, Julio Cobos, who used his vote against the proposal, breaking a tie between the government and its opponents. Cobos stated that he was not going to resign his vice-presidency.

This evening, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner alluded to both the Vice President as well as the Peronist senators who voted against the official proposal, when she said that “with the eyes of the men and women of the people upon us, it’s good to know that we’ve never been traitors and that we will always choose an unwavering path: the representation of the interests of those with less and a return to being a link between society’s various sectors.”