Fidel outlived American democracy

A biography of Fidel Castro

This is the 2005 documentary about Fidel Castro by Oliver Stone.

COMANDANTE

To watch the video GO HERE

Fidel Castro full movie

Castro and Cuba were largely responsible for the end o the apartheid regime in South Africa

Cuba In Angola - War of Independence 1975

The Angolan War of Independence (1961–1974) began as an uprising against forced cotton cultivation, and became a multi-faction struggle for the control of Portugal's Overseas Province of Angola among three nationalist movements and a separatist movement.

The war ended when a leftist military coup in Lisbon in April 1974 overthrew Portugal's Estado Novo regime, and the new regime immediately stopped all military action in the African colonies, declaring its intention to grant them independence without delay.

It was a guerrilla war in which the Portuguese Armed Forces waged a counter-insurgency campaign against armed groups mostly dispersed across sparsely populated areas of the vast Angolan countryside. Many atrocities were committed by all forces involved in the conflict.

In Angola, after the Portuguese had stopped the war, an armed conflict broke out among the nationalist movements. This war formally came to an end in January 1975 when the Portuguese government, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) signed the Alvor Agreement.

People forget that Nelson Mandela was considered by western elites  who always suppoted South African apartheid as a 'terrorist'

Fidel Castro y Nelson Mandela

Two old friends, Fidel and Nelson Mandela, two freedom fighters!

RIP Fidel Castro 1926-2016

I can’t find the quote but this was the perfect time for Fidel to depart from the scene – as his nemisis, American imperiaiism is in terminal decay. Fidel Castro can rest in peace.

Fidel Castro represented a continuity with a world that formed me.

That has gone now as the world is seeing the danger from nuclear bombs and the spectre of near-term extinction of the human species as a result of abrupt climate change (two of the main things he warned the world of in recent times).

I chose the following among the many appreciations of Fidel Castro largely for its headline.

Fidel Castro – Death of a Titan

Alexander Mercouris

the Duran,

26 November, 2016

Fidel Castro's death removes from the global scene a political genius and colossus who transformed Cuba whilst securing its independence from the US, and who played a key role in bringing about the fall of South Africa's apartheid regime.

The death of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has provoked the usual praise of him from some and condemnation of him from others. 

What no one denies is the colossal impact he has had, not just on his own country but on the world.

This fact bears repeating because it is so remarkable.  Cuba – the country which Fidel Castro led – is small (its current population is 11 million) and relatively poor.  It has no great wealth of natural resources, and no great industries.  At the time Fidel Castro came to power its social services were primitive, its school and health systems hugely unbalanced and undeveloped, and much of its population was illiterate. 

By no conceivable stretch of the imagination is Cuba a Great Power, and before Fidel Castro became its leader it occurred to no one to think of it as one.

That the leader of such a small country was able to have such an extraordinary impact on the world stage is little short of astonishing, and says a huge amount about Fidel Castro’s personality as incidentally it does about Cuba and about the revolution he led. 

Suffice to say that by comparison the nations led by Mao Zedong, Ho Chih Minh, Ruhollah Khomenei and Nelson Mandela – the four other great revolutionary leaders of the post Second World War world – China, Vietnam, Iran and South Africa – are by comparison with Cuba all giants (in China’s case a titan) and it is not therefore surprising if their revolutionary leaders were therefore able to command world attention.

It is true but it is also trite to say that one reason why Fidel Castro and Cuba attracted so much attention was because in the 1960s they became the focus of the Cold War, with the USA and USSR almost going to war over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis on 1962.

It is trite because Cuba only became so important in the Cold War because Fidel Castro made it so. 

There have been many other left wing and revolutionary leaders in the Caribbean and Latin America before and after Fidel Castro.  None of them – not even Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – have ever come close to matching Fidel Castro’s political stature, or managed to make their countries the centre of superpower conflict in the same way.

The reason Fidel Castro succeeded in doing this was because he was prepared to do things in the Caribbean and Latin America – the US’s backyard – that no other Caribbean or Latin American leader has been prepared to do. Unlike them he carried out in the 1960s a genuine revolutionary transformation of Cuban society, something that no other Caribbean or Latin American leader has ever done.

What that means in practice is that there is no institutional continuity between pre-Castro Cuba and the Cuba today. 

The army, police, state bureaucracy, media and judiciary, are completely different, the wealth – including the lands and factories – of the old Cuban oligarchy, has been subjected to a comprehensive revolutionary expropriation, and the economy, health and education systems have been entirely taken over and recreated in Fidel Castro’s own image.

To say that this was controversial would be a gigantic understatement.  In fact it remains the main charge and grievance against Fidel Castro of the people he displaced to this day, and explains the relentless quality of their hostility to him.

It is also the reason for the US embargo. 

The revolutionary changes Fidel Castro carried out in Cuba in the 1960s made it impossible for his government and revolution to be reversed internally – the fate of every single other Caribbean and Latin American revolution before and since – because it deprived the US of the usual tools it uses to reverse such revolutions. 

The US – which never tolerates anything that remotely resembles revolutionary change in its Caribbean and Latin American backyard for very long – has been struggling to come up with a response ever since. 

The embargo it imposed on Cuba was one such attempt at a response.  Though it long ago visibly failed, the US’shabitual obstinacy and petulance and the powerful vested interests which support the embargo mean that it has continued ever since.

To say that it was the revolutionary transformation of Cuban society that Fidel Castro carried out in the 1960s that accounts for his survival and success however begs the question of how it was done?

Part of the answer undoubtedly lies within Fidel Castro’s personality.  It is clear that he possessed to the highest degree the clarity of vision, the determination and the unsentimental ruthlessness that no revolutionary leader can succeed without.

It is however important to say that Fidel Castro was able to do it because of the support of Cuban society.  The reason for that is in part because of a peculiar feature of the Cuban revolution, which is bound up with Cuba’s unusual relationship to the US.

I discussed all this two years ago in an article I wrote for Sputnik, and I will set it out here again

“The breakdown in relations between the United States and Cuba was the consequence of the Castro Revolution of 1959. This was a revolution launched from the countryside against a corrupt oligarchic elite based in Havana.

That elite in turn had extremely close connections with the United States. These extended back decades to Cuba’s liberation war against Spain in the 1890s. The United States intervened in that war in a manner that achieved for it a dominant position in Cuba right up to the point of Castro’s revolution in 1959. It would not be an exaggeration to say that throughout this period Cuba was essentially a protectorate of the United States. 

It should be clarified that this was a relationship that differed significantly from the one the United States has with nearly all other Latin American countries. The United States has been the dominant political influence — in effect the not so silent partner — in the political system of every Latin American state for most of the last century. However in no other Latin American state or country, save Panama and Puerto Rico, has US political engagement been so direct and open as it was in Cuba.

This form of US domination had important practical significance. Not only did the United States acquire a major military base at Guantánamo Bay (which it retains still) but it achieved total domination of Cuba’s economy and political system in a way that made both in effect appendages of the economy and political system of the United States.

As is well-known Cuba gradually evolved into an important playground for the American rich and not so rich. From the 1920s to the 1950s Havana became a US holiday and gambling centre to rival Miami and later Las Vegas. Moreover, many wealthy Americans had second homes there. These included the writer Ernest Hemingway and the wealthy Dupont family whose former villa Xanadu was one of the inspirations for the palace of that name in the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane. It remains a landmark in the holiday resort of Varadero to this day. 

This was the period when the Tropicana nightclub in Havana achieved its heyday, when the Capitolio building in Havana was built in direct imitation of the Capitol in Washington, when the US Hershey chocolate company built an electric railway to service its sugar plantations and when Havana became a byword for tropical hedonism and vice.

This US political and economic control went together with considerable corruption. Its status as a protectorate was incompatible with democracy and at no time before the Castro Revolution in 1959 was Cuba in any true sense one. At the time of the Revolution Cuba was actually a dictatorship led by a former staff Sergeant Fulgencio Batista. 

Behind the facade of a dictatorship the true power in Cuba actually rested, as it had always done, in an oligarchy of wealthy families (some tracing their origins back to the period of Spanish rule), the military, the US embassy and US businessmen, several of whom were well known gangsters.

The two key figures amongst the latter were the mobsters Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante, with the former often regarded as the true ruler of Cuba during this period.

The immediate pre-revolution period in Cuba was one of chronic impoverishment and neglect of the Cuban countryside combined with a frenetic construction boom in Havana itself.

This period when the Tropicana nightclub in Havana achieved its heyday and when Havana became a byword for tropical hedonism and prostitution was also a period of growing inequality and of social unrest. 

In fairness it was also a time of considerable cultural achievement, of the emergence in Havana of a substantial middle class and of the construction of a highway system of a sort unknown at this time in other Latin American states.

These intense connections between Cuba and the United States explain much about the subsequent period of protracted hostility. 

For the Cubans many of their societal problems became explicable by reference to their subordinate position to the United States, which to a proud people was humiliating and exploitative. The Castro Revolution was in a sense Cuba’s declaration of independence from the United States.”

(Bold Italics dded)

In the same article I discussed the various US attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro and how – precisely because the Cuban revolution was effectively Cuba’s declaration of independence from the US – they actually consolidated support for Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government

“The consequence has been five decades of struggle by the United States to bring Cuba back under its control. This has involved an economic blockade and unrelenting attempts to destabilise and overthrow the Cuban government. 

On occasion this had had its farcical aspects such as the plot to murder Fidel Castro with an exploding seashell or the recent attempt to recruit Cuban hip-hop artists in a plot to overthrow the government. This should not however detract from the enormous material and psychological damage done to Cuba.

The US economic and political war against Cuba has been further extended by the powerful vested interests in its perpetuation.

Anti-Castro groups managed to achieve political control of the Cuban community in the United States in the 1960s and the perpetuation of the US’s undeclared war against Cuba served both to cement their control of that community and their political influence within the United States.  Allied to various political and economic groups in the United States that were also opposed to reconciliation for ideological, economic or political reasons, they formed a powerful political lobby resisting any rapprochement between the two countries. 

However, the conflict between Cuba and the United States also serves as a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable obstacle. 

Precisely because the Cuban revolution was in a sense Cuba’s declaration of independence from the United States, US political pressure upon Cuba in the end served to consolidate support for the Cuban government rather than undermine it.“

(bold italics dded)

It is of course also true – as I also discussed in this article – that Fidel Castro and Cuba could not have won through without the critical support in the 1960s and 1970s of the USSR. 

However saying this, though true, is also trite, because the reason the USSR was willing to commit itself to Cuba in the way it did – and which it never did to any other Caribbean or Latin American revolution – was precisely becauseof the comprehensive revolutionary change that Fidel Castro carried out in Cuba, which showed to the USSR that Cuba’s revolution would be lasting and was for real.

Fidel Castro’s genius was that he was not only able to secure this Soviet support to carry out revolutionary change within Cuba, but that he was also able to leverage the USSR’s support to carry out revolutionary change in southern Africa.

The importance of Cuba’s involvement in the wars against the apartheid regime in Angola and Namibia has always been recognised by the leadership of the ANC (including by Nelson Mandela himself), though in the West it has gone completely unacknowledged, and is disputed by some people in South Africa itself. 

My opinion, having personally discussed this issue with eyewitnesses of the fighting in Angola and with people involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, is that its importance cannot be overestimated, and that the Cuban victory at Cuito Cuanavale in 1987 was crucial – as Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and many others have always said it was – in acting as the catalyst for the end of the apartheid regime.

To be clear that regime would sooner or later have fallen anyway.  Fidel Castro’s and Cuba’s intervention were however decisive in causing it to fall when it did.  Given that the apartheid regime’s further perpetuation into the 1990s would have been a total disaster for the people of southern Africa, that is something that they – and the rest of the world – have huge cause to be grateful to Fidel Castro for.

As Fidel Castro on numerous occasions admitted, Cuba’s intervention in the wars in southern Africa could not have happened without the support of the USSR.  It was Fidel Castro’s brilliant skill in obtaining that support, and the outstanding use he made of it, which was however decisive.  Since the USSR was a superpower, it was Fidel Castro’s skill in leveraging its support which for a time made Cuba a Great Power.

In recognising the colossal scale of Fidel Castro’s achievement, it is however also necessary to admit that his revolution has run its course, and that it did so some time ago.

Though the revolution has transformed Cuba – especially its formerly impoverished countryside – and has provided Cuba with what are by any standard exceptional health and education systems, the degree of political and social control Fidel Castro was forced to impose on Cuban society in order to safeguard his revolution has by all accounts been causing increasing frustration within Cuba itself, as an immeasurably better educated, healthier and far more self-confident generation of younger Cubans increasingly feels – whether rightly or wrongly – that the existing system does not give full scope to them to develop their abilities.

Despite perennial Western criticisms of Cuba’s human rights record, Fidel Castro never carried out  the sort of Terror in Cuba that has been such a feature of other revolutions carried out elsewhere, and in a region where political repression continues to be common, and where life is still cheap, life in Cuba under Fidel Castro has been immeasurably safer and more secure for the vast majority of Cuba’s people than it has been in any of Cuba’s neighbours.

Nonetheless the great challenge for Cuba today is to move forward, despite likely continued US hostility, in order to make Cuba a freer and less controlled society – one better adapted to the present needs of its people – whilst preserving its independence, and the massive social gains of Fidel Castro’s revolution. 

That is something that Cuba almost certainly can achieve but which – as Fidel Castro always knew –  given Cuba’s vulnerability and limited resources, it can only achieve with external help. 

The huge changes underway in the international system mean that the potential for such help is now there.  Already in response to Fidel Castro’s death there are signs of a willingness to provide it.

America has Cuban oil in its sights

When asked by Thom Hartmann about the connection between events in Cuba and attempts to collapse the Russian economy by manipulating oil prices Prof. Stephen Cohen said, as a professor, “I don’t know”, but proceeded to talk about how Ronald Reagan had done the exact same to bring down the Soviet economy.

No doubt whatsoever about what is going on now. 

The American corporations have Cuban resourses in their sights and aim to cut Russia out of the equation while taking revenge on Venezuela.

Cuban Oil May Prove A Boon For U.S. Companies

Ari Philips

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Think Progress,

21 December, 2014

With diplomatic relations warming between the U.S. and Cuba, oil and gas companies may train their sights on what’s off Cuba’s coast — large oil reserves. Right now Cuba produces just over 50,000 barrels per day of oil and relies on Venezuela for around another 100,000 bpd. However with Venezuela’s economy reeling from the staggering drop in oil prices this year, Cuban officials want to avoid the impacts of a sudden drop in Venezuelan support. The commitment by Cuba and the U.S. to normalize relations may allow Cuba to buy more oil on the open market, and for U.S. companies to bring expertise and experience to tap into the country’s offshore reserves.

This outcome is far from certain. With Saudi Arabia refusing to cut oil output, which would stabilize prices, and previous offshore efforts yielding unsuccessful results, many experts believe that most of Cuba’s 124 million barrels will remain inaccessible. Brazilian, Malaysian and Spanish companies have failed to produce any major wells during exploration efforts in the last few years. Pavel Molchanov, an energy company analyst with Raymond James, told Politico that there is “not going to be a Cuban oil rush.”

Even if there is no rush, the arrival of U.S. oil and gas firms could help boost production through better drilling services. Jorge Piñon, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program at the University of Texas, told FuelFix that if companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger gave technological assistance to Cuba, the country could significantly increase the amount of oil it recovers from its current wells. He also said that Cuba wants to avoid the type of economic pain it experienced after foreign aid dried up along with the fall of the Soviet Union — something that could foreseeably happen with Venezuela if oil prices don’t rebound.

With a major leap into Cuban oil looking doubtful for economic and geologic reasons, one actual benefit that may be more likely is an increase in safety measures and precautions for the drilling and refining that does take place — including responses to any spills. Cuba borders the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, and is susceptible to offshore disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion near the U.S. coast. Spill containment equipment developed to deal with Deepwater Horizon-type events will likely be held up by the current embargo because the products are produced by U.S. firms. The U.S. embargo of Cuba remains in place as Obama needs the Republican-controlled Congress to help him in normalizing these economic relations. As it stands, anything made from more than 10 percent U.S. parts cannot be sold to Cuba or a Cuban contractor.

As these economic barriers and incentives play out, the U.S., Cuba, and Mexico will have to determine how to divide up the Gulf of Mexico.

“Previous agreements between the United States and Cuba delimit the maritime space between the two countries within 200 nautical miles from shore,” the White House said in a release. “The United States, Cuba and Mexico have extended continental shelf in an area within the Gulf of Mexico where the three countries have not yet delimited any boundaries.”

The Cuban government is also looking to diversify its energy sources, and increase renewable energy capacity in an effort to improve energy security. Based primarily on solar, wind, and small hydropower, Cuba aims to get 24 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Cuba opened its first solar farm in 2013 and has plans for at least six more.

Quite a number of people now are saying that the United States (and its proxy) manipulated oil prices to attack its enemies - Russia and Venezuela

It may also, of course, be that the Saudis,as well as attacking other producers (notably, Russia) also had sale oil producers in their sights as well.

US provoked Oil Prices fall to attack Venezuela, Russia: Evo Morales

Sputnik News,

19 December, 2014

Nowadays it is impossible to remove presidents with military coups, so economic means and sanctions are considered, Bolivian President Evo Morales said, adding that the US has provoked the reduction in oil prices to 'attack' Russia's and Venezuela's economies.

The US has provoked the decrease in oil prices, to attack Venezuela and Russia, the President of Bolivia Evo Morales said to RT in an interview.

"The reduction in oil prices was provoked by the US as an attack on the economies of Venezuela, and Russia… In the face of such an economic and political attack, the countries have to be united," Morales said.

Nowadays it is impossible to remove presidents with military coups, so economic means and sanctions are considered, the president explained. Such aggressive US policies, he said, are aimed at dividing countries, dominate them politically and rob them economically.

"Whatever economic aggression with oil prices that comes from the US is not going to last. I am convinced of it," the president reassured. He explained that the US was not interested in oil prices, but in conducting economic attacks to topple certain presidents. However, "this escapade would not work. Our people are conscious. We are anti-imperialists," he said.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a rally to reject the sanctions that the U.S. government seeks to impose on officials accused of human rights violations, in Caracas December 15, 2014.

The US and the EU introduced several round of sanctions against Russia over its alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis. The sanctions targeted the banking, energy and defense sectors, as well as certain individuals. However, Russia repeatedly denied its involvement in Ukraine's internal affairs.

US President Barack Obama signed a sanctions bill against Venezuela Thursday. The sanctions target individuals who are allegedly responsible for human rights violations during February protests against President Nicolas Maduro's government.

I think, from the Cuban side, that there had to be something to bring it to the negotiating table with the United States.

Plummeting Oil Prices 

Possible Causes of US-Cuba 

Deal: Experts

Sputnik News,

21 December, 2014

Experts say that the impact on the Venezuelan and Russian economies due to a drop in oil prices could have forced Cuba to re-establish its diplomatic relations with the United States, as both will not be able to help economically as before.

WASHINGTON, December 20 (Sputnik), Anastasia Sheveleva — The weakening of the Venezuelan and Russian economies due to a drop in oil prices could have forced Cuba to re-establish its diplomatic relations with the United States, experts on Cuba have told Sputnik.

"With the decline in the price of oil, Cuba's benefactors, Venezuela and Russia, both are going to be not as able to help economically, so Cuba is seeing a decline in economic assistance from Venezuela and Russia, so that was the incentive on the Cuban part," Jose Azel, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, told Sputnik Friday.

Eduardo Gamarra, Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University (FIU) agrees with the possibility of plummeted oil prices, pushing Cuba to restore its relations with the United States.

"That timing might have been a part of the reason why the Cubans decided, right now we would better look at his situation in a different way, because we have to face the future and certainly the future is not with Venezuela, because their oil in the first place is expensive," Gamarra told Sputnik Friday.

As to the United States' incentive to reach the deal at this particular moment, both experts came to the conclusion that it was US president Barack Obama's political move.

"On the part of the Obama administration, I think it is a political move, there is a new Congress taking over at the beginning of the year, he [Obama] may be thinking of his legacy, he wants this to be part of it," Azel said.

Meanwhile Gamarra stressed that Obama "is already a lame duck" and "has no possibility after January to have any influence over Congress", so "it was fairly good timing [to ease trade and travel restrictions imposed on Cuba] before the end of the year".

Gamarra went on, by saying that "you have the anti-imperialist guru [Castro] is all of the sudden talking to Obama, so I think we should expect some interesting sets of discussions, whether that will lead to a very significant change in Russian presence in the region or Russian relations with Venezuela, or even Russian relations with Cuba".

However, the professor from FIU stressed that nothing in the agreement between Obama and Castro indicates that Russians will begin to dismantle their interests in the region.

Azel from the University of Miami said that the Obama administration did not pay enough attention to the Russian influence in Cuba.

"The Russian influence in Cuba should have been a great concern to the United States, apparently, it was not to this president," Azel said.

Both experts agreed that US Congress will not lift Cuba's embargo in the nearest future partly because Obama did not gain from the most recent negotiations with Cuba.

"He [Obama] cannot eliminate the sanctions of Helms-Burton law…he is not going to get that congressional action. I don't think Congress is going to eliminate sanctions without concessions from Cuba, remember that the president [Obama] really got nothing out of Cuba, this is very bad negotiations," Azel told Sputnik Friday.

Gamarra agreed that the embargo is not going to be lifted, explaining, however, that in might not be as exclusive as it seems.

"Part of the mythology of the embargo is very interesting, because the reality is the United States is the only country that put a quasi-embargo on Cuba. For the better part of the last decade American farmers and others have, in fact, been selling stuff to Cuba," Gamarra said, adding that there are Brazilian and European investments in the region.

Nevertheless, the experts doubted that new American investment is going to flow into Cuba, even in case the US sanctions are eliminated, because Washington would not agree to partner with the Cuban government.

On Wednesday, President Obama announced that the United States was relaxing trade and travel restrictions on Cuba. An embargo has been in place since 1961 due to Cold War antagonism between Washington and the Communist government in Havana. 

Back in summer, Vladimir Putin visited Cuba and an agreement was signed to help Cuba develop its own offshore oil reserves.

There was even talk (denied by Putin) of Russia re-opening its listening post in Cuba.

In his Q & A Putin, accused of cold war aggression by the BBC pointed out that not only does Russia spend ten times less on defence than the United States, but its has only TWO military bases (both in its 'near abroad') and had completely closed bases in both Cuba and Vietnam.

Russia’s Rosneft to help Cuba explore offshore oil reserves

RT

13 July, 2014

Russian oil company Rosneft will help Cuban State oil company Cupet explore the country's offshore oil reserves, according to one of the cooperation documents signed between Russia and Cuba during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Havana.

Putin concluded his first stop on his six-day tour to Latin America in Havana, Cuba, where he met the nation’s President Raul Castro.

Speaking at a press conference, Putin confirmed that many major cooperation deals have been signed between the two nations.

One of the most significant agreements allows the Russian oil company Rosneft to help explore and drill on an offshore oil platform on Cuba’s northeast coast. The area potentially has up to 20 billion barrels of oil, according to Cupet.

"Developing new blocks on Cuba's offshore shelf is (expected) in the very near future," Putin said.

During the discussions, Putin was joined by Rosneft head Igor Sechin in order to finalize the deal.

Cuba has limited onshore production and relies heavily on imports from Venezuela for its oil consumption needs.

Putin also confirmed that Russia is writing off 90 percent of Cuba’s debt, which amounts to $32 billion. The remaining 10 percent will be reinvested into the Cuban economy, the president added.

"We will provide support to our Cuban friends to overcome the illegal blockade of Cuba," Putin said.

Read more: Russia writes off 90% of Cuba's debt ahead of Putin's 'big tour' to L. America

Meanwhile, Russian company Inter RAO Export and Cuba's Union Electrica signed a contract for the construction of four 200 megawatt units for the Maximo Gomez power plant.

Other documents signed on Friday include a bilateral statement on the non-placement of weapons in outer space and an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the area of international information security.

During the visit to Cuba, Putin also met with former President Fidel Castro, who stepped down due to health concerns in 2008, after 49 years in power.

Putin and Fidel Castro discussed international affairs, the global economy, and Russia-Cuba relations, the Kremlin stated.

Later on Friday, Putin made a surprise stop in Nicaragua on his way to Argentina. He will then go to Brazil.

Putin denies reopening of US-targeting listening post in Cuba

RT

17 July, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin denied media reports that Russia was planning to reopen the Soviet-age SIGINT facility in Lourdes, Cuba, once was largest foreign listening post of its kind, but shut down under US pressure.

Russia can “meet its defense needs without this component” and has no plans to renew its operation, the president assured journalists on Wednesday.

Earlier Kommersant business daily reported that Moscow and Havana had reached a deal on reopening the spy facility during Putin’s visit to Cuba last week. 

When operational, the facility was manned by thousands of military and intelligence personnel, whose task was to intercept signals coming from and to the US territory and to provide communication for Russian vessels in the western hemisphere.

“I can say one thing: at last!” one of the sources commented on the news to the paper, adding that the significance of the move is hard to overestimate.

The facility in Lourdes, a suburb of Havana located just 250km from continental USA, was opened in 1967. At the peak of the cold war it was the largest signal intelligence center Moscow operated in a foreign nation, with 3,000 personnel manning it.

From the base Russia could intercept communications in most part of the US including the classified exchanges between space facilities in Florida and American spacecraft. Raoul Castro, then-Defense Minister of Cuba, bragged in 1993 that Russia received 75 percent of signal intelligence on America through Lourdes, with was probably an overstatement, but not by a large amount.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the base was downscaled, but continued operation. After Russia was hit the 1998 economic crisis, it found it difficult to maintain many of its old assets, including the Lourdes facility. In Soviet times Cuba hosted it rent-free, but starting 1992 Moscow had to pay Havana hundreds of millions dollars each year in addition to operational costs to keep the facility open.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and President of the Council of State and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba Raul Castro Ruz during a press statement at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana. (RIA Novosti/Aleksey Nikolsky)

An additional blow came in July 2000, when the US House passed the Russian-American Trust and Cooperation Act, a bill that would ban Washington from rescheduling or forgiving any Russian debt to the US, unless the facility in Lourdes is shut down.

Moscow did so in 2001 and also closed its military base in Vietnam’s Cam Ranh, with both moves reported as major steps to address Americans’ concerns. But, in the words of a military source cited by Kommersant, the US “did not appreciate our gesture of goodwill.”

No detail of schedule for the reopening the facility, which currently hosts a branch of Cuba’s University of Information Science, was immediately available. One of the principle news during Putin’s visit to Havana was Moscow’s writing off of the majority of the old Cuban debt to Russia. The facility is expected to require fewer personnel than it used to, because modern surveillance equipment can do many functions now automatically.

With the Lourdes facility operational again, Russia would have a much better signal intelligence capability in the western hemisphere.

“Returning to Lourdes now is more than justified," military expert Viktor Murakhovsky, a retired colonel, told Kommersant. “The capability of the Russian military signal intelligence satellite constellation has significantly downgraded. 

With an outpost this close to the US will allow the military to do their job with little consideration for the space-based SIGINT echelon.”

Whether by American corporations or by Rosneft it is a tragedy that Cuba's oil reserves should ever be developed.

In any case, it looks that the Americans are trying to push the Russians out of the equation and grab the reяources for themselves.

The achievement of the Cuban revolution are not only in terms of social equity and its historic role in the National Liberation struggle in southern Africa, but also in the area of conservation.

Now all of this is likely to be lost, including Cuba's hitherto pristine environment.

Castro the Conservationist? By Default or Design, Cuba Largely Pristine

Will Cuban President Fidel Castro be remembered primarily as a man of the people, an authoritarian tyrant—or a conservationist?

National Geographic

28 October, 2010

Some experts say his environmental policies may be among his greatest achievement.

Though Cuba is economically destitute, it has the richest biodiversity in the Caribbean. Resorts blanket many of its neighbors, but Cuba remains largely undeveloped, with large tracts of untouched rain forest and unspoiled reefs (map of Cuba).

The country has signed numerous international conservation treaties and set aside vast areas of land for government protection.

But others say Cuba's economic underdevelopment has played just as large a role.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union—its main financial benefactor—Cuba has had to rely mostly on its own limited resources. It has embraced organic farming and low-energy agriculture because it can't afford to do anything else.

And once Castro is gone, the experts say, a boom in tourism and foreign investment could destroy Cuba's pristine landscapes.

Eco-Legacy

"I think the Cuban government can take a substantial amount of credit for landscape, flora, and fauna preservation," said Jennifer Gebelein, a professor at Florida International University in Miami who studies environmental issues in Cuba.

More than 20 percent of Cuba's land is under some form of government protection. The island's wetlands have been largely shielded from pesticide runoff that has destroyed similar areas in other countries.

Castro handed power to his brother last week to undergo emergency intestinal surgery. His health remains uncertain, fueling rampant speculation about his legacy.

And since Castro seized power in 1959, logging has slowed significantly. Forest cover has increased from 14 percent in 1956 to about 21 percent today.

In addition, the more than 4,000 smaller islands surrounding the main island are important refuges for endangered species. The coastline and mangrove archipelagos are breeding grounds for some 750 species of fish and 3,000 other marine organisms

"Because Cuba's tourist industry has not developed quickly in regard to reef exploitation, the reefs have been spared the fate of Florida's reefs, for example," Gebelein said.

At about 1.5 million acres (600,000 hectares), the Ciénaga de Zapata Biosphere Reserve is Cuba's largest protected area and has been designated a "Wetland of International Importance" by the Ramsas Convention on Wetlands in 1971.

"The Zapata Swamp is the Caribbean's largest and most important wetland," said Jim Barborak, who is based in San Pedro, Costa Rica, and heads the protected areas and conservation corridors program for Conservation International.

Jewel of the Caribbean

Originally, Cuba was in the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean Sea. Continental drift slowly brought the island into the Caribbean some 100 million years ago, and an astonishing variety of life emerged.

"Cuba has tremendous biological diversity," Barborak said. "The levels of plant endemism—unique species limited to Cuba—is particularly high, especially in highland ecosystems in eastern Cuba."

More than half of Cuba's plants and animals, and more than 80 percent of its reptiles and amphibians, are unique to the island.

Endemic birds include the Cuban trogon, the Cuban tody, and the Cuban pygmy owl. The world's smallest bird, the bee hummingbird—which weighs less than a U.S. penny—is found there.

"Important populations of many North American migratory birds, whose declining populations require international action to conserve both breeding and wintering grounds, spend much of the year in Cuba," Barborak said.

Cuba is only one of two nations with a primitive mammal known as a solenodon, a foot-long (0.3-meter-long) shrewlike creature.

The island also has a great diversity of giant lizards, crocodiles, and tortoises.

Intellectual Infrastructure

A key player in Cuba's green movement has been Guillermo García Frías, one of five original "comandantes" of the 1959 Cuban revolution.

A nature lover with strong ties to Castro, García has pushed for a strong environmental ethic for a generation of scientists and government officials.

"Comandante García's enthusiasm for nature conservation has been critical to the successful development of a conservation infrastructure in Cuba," said Mary Pearl, president of the Wildlife Trust in New York City.

Cubans are leaders in biological research, with thousands of graduates from the country's ten universities and institutes devoted to work in ecology.

"The country has the best intellectual infrastructure for wildlife conservation in the Caribbean," Pearl said.

Students in every department at the University of Havana, for example, have had the opportunity to share a bonding experience by living in an impoverished fishing village while working to protect marine turtles.

"As a result, many of Cuba's leaders in all spheres have had a common experience reconciling poverty alleviation and nature conservation," Pearl said. "It is not surprising that this has left a legacy of concern for nature, despite the country's economic challenges."

Embargo Woes

But Cuba has earned its green credentials partly by default.

Isolated in part because of the U.S. trade embargo against the island, Cuba has been excluded from much of the economic globalization that has taken its toll on the environment in many other parts of the world.

"The healthy status of much of the wetlands and forests of Cuba is due not to political influence as much as the lack of foreign exchange with which to make the investments to convert lands and introduce petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers," Pearl said.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Cuban factories and agricultural fields have sat dormant. The island has had to become self-sufficient, turning to low-energy organic farming.

It has had to scrap most of its fishing fleet because it can't afford to maintain the ships.

Population pressure has also been a nonissue, with many Cubans fleeing the country for economic and political reasons.

However, Conservation International's Barborak says it would be wrong to think Cuba's environmental success is simply due to its economic underdevelopment.

"If this were true, then Haiti could be expected to be a verdant ecological paradise, instead of being the most environmentally devastated country in the region, with just a tiny fraction of its forest cover intact," he said.

"Cuba's stable population, high literacy rate, clear land-tenure system, large cadre of well-trained conservationists, and relatively strong enforcement of laws and regulations are certainly all associated with its conservation achievement."

So what will happen if Castro's regime falls and a new, democratic government takes root?

Conservationists and others say they are worried that the pressure to develop the island will increase and Cuba's rich biodiversity will suffer.

Barborak said he is concerned that "environmental carpetbaggers and scalawags will come out of the woodwork in Cuba if there is turbulent regime change.

"One could foresee a flood of extractive industries jockeying for access to mineral and oil leases," he said.

"A huge wave of extraction of unique and endemic plants and animals could occur to feed the international wildlife market. And a speculative tourism and real estate boom could turn much of the coastline into a tacky wasteland in short order."

"If foreign investments take a much firmer hold, more hotels will be built and more people will descend on the reefs," added Gebelein, the Florida International University professor.

"If the Cuban government does not have a swift policy framework to deal with the huge influx of tourists, investors, and foreign government interests, a new exploitative paradigm will be the beginning of the end for some of the last pristine territories in the Caribbean."