CINA

본문

Well, in the coming days we'll possibly a further escalation of the power struggle(*) between the co-called "red-shirts" and the gov't on the streets of the Thai capital.

Today's al-Jazeera has a detailed report about the present situation on the "front line":  ☞ Troops return to Bangkok streets  

* Some, especially Trotskyist organisations, are already calling it a "class struggle". But as far as I know, a successful class struggle needs revolutionary mass organisations... But unfortunatelly all the revolutionary organisations in Thailand, such as the Communist Party, were "successful" (from the viewpoint of the ruling class) smashed by the the army (and internal conflicts/party disputes!!).
And after all the United Front for Democracy isn't a revolutionary organisation, not at all!

Related article:
☞ Thailand mulls a 'half coup' (Asia Times, 4.17)

본문

Hamas' "Prince" Who Was Spy For Israel

He was Israel's most valuable spy inside Hamas - and certainly the most unlikely.

For more than a decade, Mosab Hassan Yousef disrupted dozens of suicide bombings and assassination attempts by Palestinian militant groups, incl. Hamas.

Infiltrating the upper echelons of Hamas came relatively easy for Yousef: He is the son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

Yousef was recruited by the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, in 1996 after he was arrested.

Inside Israel's intelligence community, he became known as the "Green Prince" - a nod to the color of Hamas' flag and his pedigree as the son of one of its founders.

Yousef's exploits are the stuff of legend.

Yousef's astonishing career as a spy is chronicled in his soon-to-be released memoir, "Son of Hamas" (Salt River Press).

To learn more (MUST READ!!):
☞ Israel's man in Hamas just 'wanted to save lives' (Haaretz, 2.26)

While the release of "Son of Hamas" attracted/attracts a lot of attention in the int'l (of course mainly bourgeois) media, Hamas' on-topic statement (via PIC, 2.24) was somehow fuzzy:

Masri belittles pro-Israeli news fabrications against Hamas

Senior Hamas official Mushir Al-Masri on Wednesday played down the importance of news fabrications published by Israeli media outlets and some Palestinian and Arab newspapers loyal to Israel, affirming that such smear campaigns would never affect the bright image of his Movement.

In a press statement, Masri called on the Palestinian and Arab media to be precise about the news reported by the Israeli media and biased newspapers.

He underlined that it was not the first time the pro-Zionist media fabricated news in an attempt to undermine the will of the resistance and affect the spirits and steadfastness of the Palestinian people.

“There is no doubt that such fabricated news are meant to mix up cards and influence the investigation into the assassination of martyr Mabhouh, but all this will not affect the bright image of Hamas and the resistance," the Hamas official emphasized.

본문

Between last Thursday and y'day, once again, racism in Italy has been leading the int'l headlines...

Racist Attack - Migrants' Protest - Racist Pogrom

Italian authorities/cops and citizens expelled more than 1,000 migrant workers from Rosarno

Last Saturday(1.09): Between 1,000 (according to today's German 'left-alternative' daily TAZ) and 2,000 (Berliner Zeitung, 1.11) immigrants were expelled, resp. deported from the southern Italian town Rosarno after hundreds of racist residents violently attacked African migrant farm workers (*).

Locals applauded and cheered as buses with police escorts left, taking migrant workers from Rosarno to the towns of Crotone, 170 kilometres away, and Bari, around 400 kilometres to the northeast...

Last Thursday: Migrant workers in Rosarno protested against racial attacks...

...and inhuman 'living' and working conditions

But after they resisted the attacks by hundreds of (racist)residents...

...they were confronted with the 'state authority'...

...arrested and deported...

...to 'immigration centers'

* Related, resp. background articles:
☞ Rosarno: Racist attack provokes riot... (NoBordersBrighton, 1.08) 
☞ Revolt in Rosarno - immigrants rise up (IMC UK, 1.09) 
☞ Italians cheer as police deport African migrants (Observer, 1.10) 
☞ Pope urges Italy to respect migrants (BBC, 1.10)   

 

본문

Burj Dubai (since yesterday's opening "Burj Khalifa"):

The Newest Landmark of the MEGALOMANIAC CAPITALISM...

...constructed in the last five years by the manpower of approx. 15,000 migrant workers, i.e. with their blood and sweat...
Their weekly working time: approx. 72 hours!
Their average monthly income: just $175!

Related contributions:
☞ Dubai: Inside the Labour Camps
☞ Dubai: Migrant Workers Strike

본문

Well, to cut a long story short: While the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen is up to now a complete failure (surprise, surprise!!) - the German bourgeois magazine Der Spiegel headlined today "New climate agreement on the brink of collapse" - the 'Copenhagen Police Festival' is a complete 'success'(^^)...
Until now almost every protest has been (mostly) brutal suppressed and so far (between last Sat. and y'day) the cops detained - "preemptive", as they call it - at least 1,700 people, the vast majority of them just peaceful demonstrators...

Related:
☞ Yesterday's Police Violence (Photo Gallery)

For more (independent) info/news please check out:
☞ Indymedia DK

본문

European Racism Gives a New Meaning to the

Term “White Christmas”

The mayor of the Northern Italian town of Coccaglio has launched a campaign to “clean-up” the city of migrants, ahead of the Christian holidays next month.

The “White Christmas” campaign is being spearheaded by Claretti and six town councillors from Italy’s ruling conservative People of Freedom party and its junior coalition partner, the racist/anti-immigrant Northern League party.

“For me, Christmas is not the holiday of hospitality, but instead that of the Christian tradition, of our identity,” said Coccaglio’s councillor in charge of security, Claudio Abiendi, from the Northern League, quoted by the Italian bourgeois daily La Repubblica a few days ago.

The "operation" will see police officers going to every home in the town to make sure its residents have their immigration documents in order, otherwise they will lose their residence and risk deportation. The move also applies to those whose legal permit of stay expired over six months ago and cannot prove that they have begun the procedure to renew it.

Coccaglio has a population of 7,000 residents of which more than 1,550 are migrants, most of them from Morocco, Albania, and from the former Yugoslavia. The nearby towns of Castelcovati and Castrezzatoare also beginning to copy Coccaglio’s idea, La Repubblica reported.

Related articles:
☞ 'White Christmas' migrant expulsion... (ANSA, 11.20)

☞ 'White Christmas' Campaign (Spiegel, 11.23)

본문

The Indian Gov't on the Warpath Against the Communist Party(M)!

MUST READ!! Asia Times(HK) published last week(11.6) following article:

India on brink of Maoist offensive

In the lull before the storm that the central government has vowed to unleash on Maoist rebels this month, voices of caution are being heard against precipitating an armed confrontation that could further hurt marginalized and largely indigenous populations in the worst affected central and eastern Indian states.

"It would seem that the government prefers the Sri Lankan model of pursuing a military solution to insurgency rather than the United Kingdom model of political negotiation, which brought lasting peace in Northern Ireland,'' said noted lawyer and human rights activist Colin Gonsalves.

"What is the Sri Lankan model? If you need to take out two insurgents, you kill 20," Gonsalves told Inter Press Service (IPS).

Gonsalves said the government was "not going to bother" with a campaign mounted by prominent intellectuals in the country and abroad to head off "Operation Green Hunt" - code name for the deployment of 70,000 paramilitary troops in the so-called "Red Corridor" that runs through parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal states

In a letter to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, dated October 12, the intellectuals, including Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy and American political activist Noam Chomsky, charged that the government's offensive was an attempt to crush "democratic and popular resistance against dispossession and impoverishment'' and a move that seemed to be geared towards facilitating the entry and operation of "large corporations and paving the way for unbridled exploitation of the natural resources and people" in the affected regions.

Maoists - also known as Naxalites after Naxalbari district in West Bengal state, where they first led a peasant uprising against landlords in 1967, have steadily fed on rural poverty and deprived tribal populations. The cadres of the Communist Party of India (CPI - Maoist) the political wing of the Maoists, are now said to be 20,000 strong.

In a stepped-up campaign of violence targeting police, politicians and government officials, the Maoists have killed about 1,200 people since 2008. Killings, abductions, and raids on police stations are part of the Maoists' stated strategy of pursuing a "people's war" and installing a "people's government" following the revolutionary tenets of the late Chinese leader, Mao Zedong.

On June 22, the central government banned the CPI (Maoist) and deemed it to be a terrorist organization. But this has not deterred the Maoists from pursuing their path of violence and guerilla-style attacks on the establishment.

In October, the rebels ambushed and killed 17 policemen in Maharashtra state, decapitated a police officer in Jharkhand, attacked police stations in West Bengal and hijacked a train before holding its passengers hostage for several hours.

The rebels operate mostly in mineral-rich tribal areas, which have attracted billions of dollars worth of investment by prospectors, claiming they are protecting local people from exploitation by outsiders.

In their letter to Manmohan, the group of intellectuals pointed to recent research that showed that the levels of income and wealth inequality in India had increased steadily and drastically since the mid-1980s when India began a process of economic liberalization.
"A rough overview of this growing inequality is found by juxtaposing two well-known facts, they said. One, "in 2004-05, 77% of the population spent less than 20 rupees [four US cents] a day on consumption expenditure. Two, "according to the annual World Wealth Report released by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini in 2008, the millionaire population in India grew in 2007 by 22.6% from the previous year, which is higher than in any other country in the world.''

Citing the report of an expert group in India's Planning Commission, the letter also said that the widening levels of disparity and the continuing problems of social deprivation and structural violence were being compounded by the "all-out effort to restrict access to common property resources", giving rise to social anger, desperation and unrest.

On October 30, India's Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram made what appeared to be a final appeal to the Maoists to sit down with the government for talks. "The Maoists are still recruiting and procuring more arms," Chidambaram told reporters. "I am asking them to come forward for talks. If you [Maoists] sincerely espouse the cause of the poor, for their forest rights and development, if you are serious champions of the poor, come and talk."

Curiously, Chidambaram did not make the laying down of arms a precondition for negotiations. "I am too realistic to know that they will not do so," he said.

Apart from the pressure being brought on the government to desist from resorting to the military option, questions are being raised as to whether it has the capacity to carry out precision strikes against the Maoists without displacing or otherwise causing harm to already impoverished and deprived populations.

Ajay Sahni, executive director of the independent, New Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management, believes that the government should have waited to build up sufficient capacity before announcing its decision to take on the Maoists. "This cannot be done overnight," Sahni said. He calls for "strategic planning and preparation for at least five years".

Sahni, who is considered an expert on the Maoist insurgency, told IPS that the whole concept of Operation Green Hunt was flawed and the codename itself unfortunate. "I find the idea of hunting people offensive," he said.

According to Sahni, the central police forces available for the planned strike are going to be stretched too thinly across a vast geographical area to be effective. They are also going to be operating with very little intelligence against committed and well-indoctrinated cadre, he said. "There is a real danger that the wrong people are going to get killed because of poor intelligence gathering."

In fact, a June 12 statement released by the CPI (Maoist) declared that the Indian state did not have the capacity to fight its cadres across the different states they were operating in.

Sahni said the only way to address the Maoist insurgency is to address the grievances of the people, because the Maoists leadership is "harvesting grievances" and will be looking to provoke more repression by the armed forces, which will, in turn, cause greater alienation.

"There are," Sahni said, "basic issues that need to be addressed first such as the fact that 77% of the population (836 million people) are living on less than 20 rupees [42 US cents] a day and more than half that number on less than 10 rupees, which means that they are on the edge of survival."

Another issue that Sahni believes feeds disaffection with the government is the popular perception of corruption at all levels. "There is very little accountability in areas that are controlled by the Maoists at one end and, at another there are allegations that billions of dollars have been stashed away in Swiss banks by corrupt politicians and official," he said.

Skepticism regarding the success of Operation Green Hunt has also come from S K Sinha, an army general who, after retirement, served as governor in the insurgency-hit states of Assam in the northeast as well as the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir.

"After independence, the transition from a colonial police to a people-friendly police befitting a democracy has not taken place," Sinha wrote in an op-ed article published in the Times of India newspaper on Wednesday. "Insecurity of tenure and the lure of wealth have undermined police functioning."

Sinha has urged the government to adopt a four-pronged strategy of sound intelligence, good policing, security operations and poverty elimination, all of which are to be "implemented concurrently" to contain the insurgency.

As an immediate step, Sinha suggests that the $1.5 billion worth of development projects recently sanctioned by the government be speedily implemented with "close monitoring" to prevent the money being siphoned away through "ruthless action against defaulters".

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK06Df03.html

Related stuff:
☞ Rural poverty and India's Maoist revolt (BBC, 11.12)

☞ India probes Maoists' foreign links (A. Times, 11.11) 

☞ Op. Green Hunt launched. But where are the Naxals? (Times of India, 11.7) 

☞ Updated latest news, CPI(M) related (The Daily Star) 

☞ Seminar contribution/paper by CPI(M) (The Worker, 2007)  

☞ Communist Party of India (Maoist) (Wikipedia) 

본문

New figures from Germany's domestic intelligence agency show that the number of far-right crimes in Germany increased by 16 percent in 2008. Officials warn of the rise of Black Bloc-style "anarchist"(*) neo-Nazis who actively seek violence at demonstrations. The German (bourgeois) magazine Der Spiegel wrote yesterday following:

German Authorities Warn of Rise of 'Anarchist' Neo-Nazis

Authorities in Germany have warned of a worrying new tendency within the far-right scene -- the rise of violent 'anarchist' neo-Nazis.

* "National Anarchists"(NA) joining a Nazi demo in Berlin, summer 2001. As you can see it's not a new trent, but since some years the "Autonomous Nationalists" - not the NA - became a mass phenomenon.

Heinz Fromm, the president of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, warned Tuesday of a "new phenomenon" within the far-right scene. Presenting the agency's 2008 report in Berlin, he said that over the last two years a scene had emerged of 'anarchist' neo-Nazis who dress similarly to the so-called Black Bloc of far-left anarchists and who deliberately seek violence at demonstrations. He put the number of so-called "right-wing anarchists" at between 400 and 500 people.

The report also reveals there were 19,894 far-right crimes reported in Germany in 2008, an increase of almost 16 percent over the previous year. Of those, 1,042 were acts of politically motivated violence, an increase of 6.3 percent over 2007. Most of the other crimes were propaganda offenses.

The number of people with extreme far-right views in Germany is estimated by the agency to be around 30,000 in 2008, a slight decline over 2007, when it was around 31,000. Of that number, around 9,500 are thought to be prepared to use violence. However the number of active neo-Nazis in Germany increased significantly in 2008, from 4,400 to 4,800.

According to the report, membership of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) declined slightly last year, from 7,200 to around 7,000 members. However the role of neo-Nazis within the party has grown, said Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. "The neo-Nazi part of the spectrum is gaining greater influence within the NPD," he said. The NPD, which has seats in two state parliaments, officially rejects violence and avoids explicit Nazi references...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,625756,00.html

Related:
☞ Interview: "Neonazis vom Web 2.0" (taz, 5.20)

But also the "ordinary" daily racism in Germany and other EU countries is very alarming as the following example, published last week in The Guardian (UK), is showing:

Roma still face racism

Last month, the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency found that racism and discrimination across the EU is far more widespread than previously thought, with Europe's estimated 12 million Roma, or Gypsy, population particularly affected. Earlier this month it was reported that Roma in Hungary had taken to the streets in self-defence after a wave of attacks led to five of their community being murdered in 10 months. Here, Helene Weiss describes life as a Romany in Hamburg, where her family have lived for 600 years, but still suffer discrimination today:

My name is Helene Weiss. This is my name in Germany and it is the name which is written down in my passport. But my other name is Meuni, which is what my familiy and all my friends call me – family and friends who are Roma or Sinti like me. I grew up bilingually, but the Romany language is my first.

If somebody asked which place in the world I call my home, I would answer: Hamburg. I was born here and have lived here all my life. My ancestors came to this city more than 600 years ago.

Today, I work as an assistant for the Rom und Cinti Union, an organisation that stands up for the rights of the Sinti and Roma people. We advise and support our clients in every day questions, problems with integration and difficult tasks they must sort out with officials. Sometimes we talk to people who are afraid to be deported.

In contrast to this, my everyday life is quite average. In the morning I wake up and head off to my office. In the afternoon I meet my friends and my family. Three times a week I go to school to get my general secondary leaving certificate.

Still, sometimes I feel that people are suspicious of me because of my origins. Some weeks ago I went shopping in the city centre and I suddenly realised that one of the shop assistants had started following me. She observed every step I made. At one point, I turned around and said: 'Excuse me, I am not going to steal anything and I am going to leave your shop now and as fast as I can!' The woman didn’t react, but I could see that she was relieved when she saw me walking away. I have never stolen anything in my entire life and her suspicion still hurts me.

Maybe this is the reason why I don’t like to be called a 'zigan' or Gypsy, because people connect mostly negative stereotypes with this expression. Either 'gypsies' are considered rotten thieves roaming the city or people think about beautiful women, romantic music, adventurous movies and us travelling the country in our mobile homes. Well, yes, we do play great music and I did watch movies about so-called gypsies myself. But we are more than just this.

We are people, like everyone else who is living here, leading a normal live. And we definitely aren’t criminals that don’t care about their children. I don’t know anybody who lives in a mobile home. My friends all live in apartments.

There is one memory I still recall when it comes to discrimination. Four years ago, when my grandmother turned 90, she became very ill and we took her to hospital. She had to share her room with another old German lady. As we unpacked my grandmother’s things, this woman said: 'Hitler must have forgotten to put all of you up against a wall and shoot!' I was terrified. How could she say this? My father tried to talk to the doctor to make him move my grandmother to another room, but the only thing he said was: 'I don’t have time to discuss this right now.' So we took her home at once. A few days later she died.

I was close to tears when I heard what this woman said. I mean, during National Socialism the Nazis deported my grandmother and her whole family to a concentration camp. She was a young woman then. The Nazis abused her and my grandfather and even let their son, who suffered from an infection, die in front of her eyes. I grew up with her horrible memories of those days. I would find her sitting at home crying so many times. Even towards the end of her life, she knew she wouldn’t be able to die peacefully.

When I was about eight years old, I went to a new secondary school. It was a terrible experience. One morning, I entered the classroom and suddenly all the other children started shouting, calling me a 'dirty Gypsy'. I ran home and asked: 'Why do they call me a dirty Gypsy, daddy?' I never was a scruffy person – and I spoke German fluently. Maybe the children didn’t know how cruel they were being to me. I sometimes wonder whether they just repeated what they heard from their parents at home.

As I turned older, the situation got worse. I only had one friend in my class, an African-American girl. We did everything together, maybe because we suffered from a similar problem. We went to the canteen to have lunch and sometimes we would hang out together. My other classmates ignored us. Even the teacher didn’t do much to support me. One afternoon, my brother was beaten up after class. I simply didn’t want to go back to this place. Finally, we were moved to a special school – when I was fourteen.

Since then, I have somehow made it through life. I feel much more accepted now than I felt when I was a child. But I am grown up now and I know how to defend myself.

I don’t want to give the impression that I face racism every day. Neither am I afraid whenever I walk down the street. But the moments I have described, they make me wonder a lot whether I, as a Sinti woman, will ever be totally accepted. I hope that one day I will.

But then again, recently when we wanted to move office, we couldn't find anything. Everybody we called said: 'We will get back to you soon'. And, of course, they never called again. I started wondering: 'Are they not calling back because we are Sinti and Roma, because they don’t want us to rent their office?' To me, the answer is quite obvious.

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1073&catID=9

본문

For the last 50 years, Cuba has struggled under a crippling U.S. trade embargo. But this week President Obama eased sanctions on the island. The Guardian (UK, 4.15) reported from Havana on what this will mean for ordinary Cubans:

Open for business

They file into terminal 2 of José Martí international airport like any other tourists, wheeling and hauling luggage, checking mobile phones for reception, fumbling with passports. Navy blue passports, stamped with the image of a bald eagle with outstretched wings. American passports. History has yet to call time on half a century of enmity between the United States and Cuba, but these arrivals in jeans and sneakers are not awaiting a formal truce. A once forbidden island, they sense, is on the verge of opening up, and they are here to see it.

The trickle started a few weeks ago. Gum-chewing backpackers, middle-aged professionals, retirees, all bold enough to defy the US ­prohibition on spending money in Cuba, a de facto travel ban. Cubans half-jokingly call their new American visitors "los valientes", the brave ones, for carving a beachhead. Lenin, in a wry mood, might have called them a ­revolutionary vanguard. A more poetic soul would compare them to the first swallows of spring, harbingers of thaw.

The glacier in which the cold war remnant that is Cuba has been trapped may soon melt. Barack Obama this week lifted a broad set of sanctions that were designed to isolate the island. Cuban Americans, currently restricted on the amount of money then can send home and to one visit every three years, will be allowed to go as often as they wish and to send more money to relatives. Obama has also lifted restrictions on US telecommunications com­panies applying for licences to operate there, and on scheduled commercial flights to the island. Air travel is currently limited to charter flights from Miami, New York and Los Angeles for Cuban Americans with relatives on the island, and those with a special reason to visit, such as journalists.

The changes soften US policy but leave in place the economic embargo that John Kennedy imposed in 1962 - a ban on trade and investment designed to choke Fidel Castro's nascent ­revolutionary government. Over the decades the embargo was tightened and loosened, but the objective remained the same: topple Castro. It failed to do so. Cuba's ­economy staggered on and ­Castro strengthened his grip, but the embargo was maintained.

"By any objective standard, our current­policy toward Cuba just hasn't worked," says Barbara Lee, a Democratic member of Congress who recently visited Havana. "It's time to talk to Cuba. I am convinced, based on the meetings which were held, that the Cubans do want ­dialogue, they do want talks and they do want normal relations with the United States of America." Normal relations? That would upend an enduring fixture of international diplomacy. But Castro seems to have caught the mood. He has praised Obama and said his meeting with Lee and two other Congress members was "magnificent".

The tone marked a striking break from ­ Castro's usual acrimony against "Yankee ­imperialists", an accusation that resonates with many Cubans. The US, after all, has a sorry­history in Cuba. It helped Cuban independence fighters to oust Spanish overlords in 1898 only to then bully the new state. Under the 1903 Platt amendment, which Washington shoehorned into Cuba's constitution, it obtained the right to lease the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, on the island's eastern tip. Castro objected to the lease as an affront to sovereignty when he took power in 1959, but could not unilaterally break it. Every year the US sends a rent cheque for $3,085, which the comandante keeps in a drawer. Only one cheque was cashed, ­accidentally, in the confusion of the new ­revolutionary government.

The US president has moved cautiously. This week's announcements are a tweak, not a renunciation, of the embargo. Latin American leaders will besiege Obama at a Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago this weekend to abolish the embargo altogether.

Few expect an imminent breakthrough. "There are encouraging signs which could change things on the ground, but in the short term I don't foresee big political moves at governmental level," says one western diplomat in Havana. The influx of US tourists, however, has triggered a giddy sense of barriers falling. An International Monetary Fund study estimated that as many as 3.5 million Americans annually might flock to Cuba if the travel ban was lifted, an overwhelming number for an island of just 11 million.

Cubans yearn for an apertura, an opening. Spend a day with a typical family in Vedado, a district in Havana, and you understand why. You wake up in a crumbling, overcrowded house. The humidity is stifling but the fan is broken. You want to shower but there is little soap and no shampoo. You go easy on the toilet paper – it's the last roll. Breakfast is bread, ­butter and tea. You wait an hour for a packed bus to take you to work. There is talk of Washington loosening the embargo but you are not sure whether to trust the ­censored, state-run newspapers. A friend with clandestine internet access whispers that the rumour is true. At work, a shabby ­government office, you go through the motions. Your salary is 80 US cents a day, enough to buy you some tomatoes and onions on the way home. Special shops for those with foreign currency sell shampoo for $3, but you cannot afford that. After dinner, you might visit a friend with a DVD player and watch a pirated movie.

No one starves, but for most Cubans life is a daily grind. Absurdly low monthly wages of $22 have spawned a nation of hustlers and micro-capitalists. Many have a sideline, a scam, to make ends meet. This thin strip in the Caribbean is not quite the "museum of socialism" that some depict. But there is no doubting it is Fidel's living, breathing creation. It is unique. A tropical communist state carved by one's man vision, charisma and ruthlessness. Now Cubans hope an apertura will blow some ­ vitality into its moribund economy.

Change is inevitable. Castro is 82 and ailing. Power has transferred smoothly to his brother Raúl, 77, but death will catch them both sooner rather than later. The question is how fast and deep change will come. What will be the impact for Cubans? What fate awaits the government and the revolution? What of the Cuban diaspora in the US?

The Havana beloved by European and ­Canadian tourists is a time-warp stereotype: colonial-era architecture, 1950s Chevys and Buicks cruising the streets, not a Starbucks in sight, and a population ready to fiesta at the mention of rum. Crime is near nonexistent, the health service and education system are fantastic, and salsa rules the night.

Much of that image is romanticised. Up close, the handsome buildings stink from bad plumbing. Chinese buses and Skodas are replacing the tail-fins. A diet of starch and grease has widened waistlines and roughened skin. Pregnant women and infants receive stellar medical care but many hospitals and schools are foul, victims of degradation since the economic crisis in the 90s. The young scorn salsa for ­reggaeton, a blend of reggae, latin pop and hip-hop.

But there is still something special about Cuba, where fashion designers have been known to design costumes from string and ­balloons, and where subsidised theatres and art-house cinemas are packed. "Dead ordinary ­people go to the opera," marvels one ambassador. Efficient evacuations – New Orleans can only sigh – avert loss of life during hurricanes.

As the US edges closer, the uniqueness will vanish. "Step by step, Cuba will become more and more American – and this will not mean a transformation into all its best aspects," says Volker Skierka, a German biographer of Castro. ­"Subversion in the form of a McDonald's-type culture will spread over the island and into the hearts and minds of the people."

In places it has already happened. Inequality and materialism are on open display in Galerías de Paseo, Havana's answer to Harrods. Families stagger out under the weight of DVD players, computers, TVs and other consumer goods. They are the lucky minority with wealthy relatives in Florida or good official connections. They know their brands and want Sony, Nike, Chanel. Mobile phones, permitted for the general population only last year, are an obsession. High charges, however, mean owners use them to text, not call. "Talk? Are you crazy?" laughs Maria Laura, a guesthouse owner. Even so, there is no more desired status symbol.

Daniel Erikson, author of The Cuba Wars and an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank, believes US tourists could have a profound impact. "The influx of Americans would hasten a process of globalisation that's already taking place, albeit slowly. What could emerge is a hybrid society, a strong Cuban culture partly shaped by American influence." That may spoil the charm for the Canadians and Europeans, who comprised most of last year's 2.3 million visitors, but it would ease Cubans' isolation.

More tourist dollars would narrow a massive trade deficit and bring desperately needed ­foreign currency, which is why the government is building and extending resorts and marinas. The boom would also aggravate ­inequalities: white, better-educated Cubans in ­cities and the west of the island would benefit more than darker-skinned compatriots in slums and villages.

Some Cubans worry that returning exiles could try to evict them from houses seized long ago by the revolution. Or that state subsidies would evaporate in a free-market frenzy. Most, however, seem to think change will bring ­gradual improvements. Top of the wish list: vegetables, fruit, meat, soap, shampoo, toilet paper, shoes, clothes. "No one wants to turn to capitalism fully," says Disamis Arcia, 27, curator at the unfinished Che Guevara museum. "We all want to preserve the good deeds of the revolution."

Cuba's economy survived the crippling US embargo with the help of massive Soviet Union subsidies from the 1960s on. When its ally collapsed in 1990 and the lifeline evaporated, Cuba endured a horrific period of austerity. A new ally, Venezuela, has aided partial recovery through 90,000 daily barrels of subsidised oil. But the economy remains a disaster. Botched central planning and the embargo have gutted industry and agriculture, condemning millions to hidden unemployment and underemployment. "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work," goes the joke. Since taking over as president, Raúl has struggled to deliver on promises of easing hardship, not least because of hurricane damage. US tourist dollars – and a loosening of the embargo – would be a valuable boost.

The risk is loss of control. By accident or design, a pillar of the revolution has been ­isolation from the superpower 90 miles across the Florida Straits. Every gringo who lands at José Martí international is a potential evangeliser for a rival system that takes disposable income and freedom of speech for granted. "There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans," said the White House, announcing the lifting of the travel ban. Young Cubans would have fresh ways – and incentives – to obtain memory sticks, digital cameras and internet connections. Critics such as Gorki Aguila, a punk rocker who has been jailed for outspoken lyrics, could feel emboldened. "We are isolated here," he says. "Culture is stuck, music is stuck. But we do what we can."

China and Vietnam are models of how to open a socialist economy, while retaining political control. Cuba's rulers have the comfort of a feeble, divided opposition. A handful of dissidents are feted abroad but barely known, or respected, at home. What detente with Washington may do is throw into relief the competing factions in the communist party and the military, the two most powerful institutions. Some members of Cuba's elite are rumoured to have boltholes in Venezuela in case get things sticky.

In this kaleidescope of possibilities it is the militant anti-Castro exiles in Florida who could have most to lose – and gain. For decades, groups such as the Cuban American National Foundation leveraged US policy into a hard line against Havana. The point of the embargo was to isolate and oust Castro. The policy flopped, but successive presidents genuflected before the exiles' desire for revenge. Their electoral influence over Florida, a swing state, mattered more to White House occupants than having an effective foreign policy on Cuba. Engagement with Havana would break the exiles' role as gatekeepers to the island, which may explain the apoplexy in Miami as that prospect draws nearer. "But that engagement could also, paradoxically, hasten the development of a more prosperous and open Cuba, which, presumably, has been the exiles' goal," said Erikson.

As a senator, Obama said the US embargo should be scrapped. As a presidential candidate he reversed track and supported the policy, a bow to the exiles. He did, however, promise to engage with Havana and to lift extra sanctions imposed by the Bush administration. This week's White House announcements deliver on that promise. Obama will be now under pressure to go further. An olive branch to Havana would help restore US standing in Latin America, which is impatient for Cuba to be brought in from the cold. Such a move would also outflank Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chávez. "Chávez has made Castro look good," says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs thinktank. "In Washington I hear laughing references to Castro as the wise old lion king who wants an accommodation while Chávez wants confrontation."

In recent years British and other tourists have flocked to Cuba to see what it is like "before Castro goes". When he dies, goes the logic, so will his system and a unique experience in nostalgia. Is time running out for a stroll through the tropical time capsule? Probably. But Cuba seems already poised for change. Free elections, consumer culture, internet cafes, porn­ography, well-stocked supermarkets, obesity: it may come in a rush, or bit by bit, but transformation will come. The result will be an island that looks more like everywhere else. For some outsiders that may be cause for regret. So be it. Cuba is not their island and they do not live there. If Cubans want to be more like the rest of the world, warts and all, who has the right to stop them?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/14/cuba-us-sanctions-obama

Somehow(^^) related stuff:
☞ 혁명 50년, 사회주의 쿠바 (참세상, 4.20)

☞ 자본가 없는 일하는 민중의 나라 (참세상, 4.12)  

☞ Generación Y (independent blog from Cuba)

본문

From today's Guardian(UK):

Ian Tomlinson death: G20 witnesses tell of

dogs, batons and an attack by police

From G20 protesters to journalists to bystanders, those who saw the events leading up to Ian Tomlinson's death speak out

The main protests of the day had ebbed away but hundreds of people were still penned inside a police cordon near the Bank of England around 7pm last Wednesday (4.01) when newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson started on his journey home through the City. He never made it. What happened in Tomlinson's final half hour before he collapsed and died of a heart attack is now the subject of an inquiry on behalf of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The Guardian has gathered statements from 15 witnesses who saw Tomlinson to piece together a forensic reconstruction his movements. This directly contradicts the official version of events put out by police in the aftermath of Tomlinson's death. The witnesses accuse police of lashing at protesters and bystanders alike, attacking them with batons, shields and dogs. Officers are alleged to have attacked Tomlinson twice; both times from behind and as he was walking away. Eight witnesses produced photographic evidence, time- and date-stamped, that corroborates their version of events. Three said they saw Tomlinson being assaulted by riot police. Here are their accounts.

Related:
☞ Why did Ian Tomlinson die?