AN expanded meeting of the National Defense Council was held during the morning of May 12, guided by the concept, emphasized by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, President of the National Defense Council, that the complex problems which persist within diverse economic and social spheres in the country must be addressed with systematicity and perseverance.

The event was scheduled in order to review work completed during 2011 to maintain national defense readiness.

One of the topics on the agenda was presented by Minister of Basic Industry Tomás Benítez Hernández, who reported on the recuperation of fuel storage facilities.

Likewise, Division General Ramón Pardo Guerra, head of the National Defense Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented an update on the current health and epidemiological situation in the country and emphasized the need to maintain vigorous anti-vector efforts [to control disease-carrying mosquitoes].

Brigadier General Rafael Ruiz Pérez, head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Ministry Directorate, reported on results of the Active Military Service call-up and detailed the work of medical and recruitment commissions, which is progressing satisfactorily, ensuring that the personnel needs of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior are met.

Commenting on this issue, President Raúl Castro said that the decreasing birth rate in the country implies the need for in-depth studies about how to deal with its consequences within different areas of society.

José Ramón Machado Ventura, Vice President of the National Defense Council, was responsible for the meeting’s closing report and emphasized the effort made by the entire people, with the leadership of the Party and government, over the last year.

"The year 2011 was characterized by the maintenance of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of our country, media campaigns intended to discredit the revolutionary process and destabilize our social system, as well as the sharpening of the global crisis and its reflection in the world economy, and provided the context within which we continued to pay attention to the country’s readiness to defend itself," Machado Ventura said.

He likewise emphasized the need to prioritize, within the agricultural and food processing sector, efficiency in areas under cultivation; increased yields; national production of seeds and animal feed; as well as the continued development of urban and suburban agriculture, among other issues key to ensuring the nation’s sustainable food supply.

Machado Ventura, also Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, recalled that the country continues to be immersed in the implementation of decisions adopted at the 6th Communist Party of Cuba Congress, in particular, the guidelines related to social and economic policy.

COUNCIL OF MINISTERS EXPANDED MEETING

During the afternoon of the same day, an expanded meeting of the Council of Ministers was held to analyze several issues, among them the results of the diagnostic evaluation undertaken of the government’s auditing and budget control system, with the active participation of different bodies and entities. The study identified the most common difficulties encountered in the performance of these activities, as well as the causes which create these difficulties.

According to Leonardo Andollo Valdés, deputy director of the Implementation and Development Permanent Commission [created to ensure the implementation of 6th Party Congress decisions], among the deficiencies detected were the excessive number of supervisory actions which in many cases lack comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the causes of problems; plans for formal measures which do not include adequate follow-up; insufficient or unstable follow-through on efforts to address shortcomings detected by higher leadership levels; and the existence of a large number of regulations and legal norms, developed and put into effect without comprehensive consideration.

Therefore – with the purpose of providing the country with a much more efficient and timely financial control system – the Council of Ministers approved a number of basic principles which will be applied experimentally in the provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque and in Central State Administration Bodies (OACE) to guide efforts to perfect structures and improve functioning. The results will be subsequently evaluated, before changes are extended to all other government bodies and enterprises, in 2015.

Later on during the meeting, Mary Blanca Ortega Barredo, Minister of Domestic Commerce explained a proposed policy for the liquidation of over-stocks and slow moving inventories, which was approved by the Council of Ministers after the report and discussion. The policy reflects Guideline No. 312 approved by the 6th Party Congress, which calls for effective control of sales and inventories throughout the country’s retail and wholesale network, in order to minimize the paralyzation of resources and losses.

During her presentation, Ortega Barredo referred to the performance of inventories at the close of 2011, reporting that around 3% of stock was categorized as idle or slow moving. This figure could, however, be greater which, along with unsatisfactory use of inventories, has a cascading effect, producing a series of outstanding payments among enterprises and government bodies, with the consequent damage to the economy.

During the discussion, Rául reiterated the importance of not underestimating any problem, no matter how complex it may appear, saying that we have at times postponed addressing problems and lived with them instead of solving them.

The last two points on the agenda were presented by Marino Murillo Jorge, Vice President of the Council of Ministers. First he reported on the functioning of the National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI) website, which has been systematically issuing publications about a variety of issues and sectors of the economy, on a national, provincial and municipal level.

Next Murillo, who also heads the Implementation and Development Permanent Commission, described the characteristics of the survey which will be used in the national Population and Housing Census to be carried out in September this year, as well as the type of information being sought. As he explained, the Population and Housing Census is the largest and most complex statistical investigation most countries undertake and is recommended every 10 years. Cuba conducted its last comprehensive census in 2002.

Geographic, educational and economic information will be gathered during the Census, in addition to data about population and housing. Aspects of internal migration and labor mobility will also be clarified.

This year’s Population and Housing Census will expand information available about the physical condition of the country’s housing stock, potable water supplies and employment status – state and non-state – among other issues.

In conclusion, the President referred to an article published in Granma, May 11, entitled ‘Containing disorder’ (Atajar el desorden) and emphasized the need to address the long-standing problem of illegal construction across the country.

"The task we have before us is immense," he said, "but we are going to get this in order and, to do so, the Physical Planning Institute will be playing an increasingly active role."

ON May 14, 2012, the United States Supreme Court denied the Cuban company Cubaexport the opportunity to defend its right to renew the registration of the prestigious trademark Havana Club with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), given the refusal on the part of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to issue the license needed by the Cuban company to renew the trademark, which was registered in the U.S. from 1976 through 2006.

OFAC’s refusal to provide the license was based on Section 211 of the 1998 Congressional Omnibus law which prohibits the recognition and renovation of trademarks associated with properties nationalized by the Cuban government, approved as a result of maneuvers by the anti-Cuban Miami mafia and their allies in Congress who receive large financial contributions from the Bacardi Company. Bacardi is the real promoter of the measures taken against Cubaexport and intends to usurp the trademarks and markets of legitimate, genuine Cuban rum.

Since 1995, Cubaexport, along with the French company Pernod Ricard which distributes Havana Club rum, has defended its right to register the widely recognized trademark. The company’s position has been supported by the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution panel. The panel ruled against the United States and called for the elimination of the aforementioned Section, which it considers illegal.

The United States government is entirely responsible for these events. During the court proceedings which have come to their unjust conclusion, OFAC argued that it could not issue the license as required by the spurious Section 211, which would have allowed the Havana Club trademark registration to be renewed, because the State Department had directed them not to do so, indicating that such a step would not be in line with U.S. policy toward Cuba.

This action is a serious violation of the commitments the United States has made in terms of industrial property rights, which oblige the government to protect trademarks belonging to Cuban companies and institutions. This case, and others in progress against Cuban patents and trademarks within U.S. courts, has exposed the complicity of the United States government in the usurpation of Cuban rights and trademarks.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs demands that the United States government immediately grant, to the Cuban entity Cubaexport, the license which will allow the renewal of the Havana Club trademark.

Cuba has consistently respected, with no discrimination whatsoever, the obligations established in virtue of international law with regards to industrial property, which has ensured that more than 5,000 U.S. patents and trademarks have benefited, and continue to benefit, from their registration in our country.

If the U.S. government does not act, it will bear prime responsibility for the theft of the Havana Club trademark from its rightful owner, the Cubaexport company, and the negative consequences which could result from its actions in terms of reciprocal protection of industrial property.

Havana, May 16, 2012

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EXPRESSING alarm at the increase in the murder of journalists in Mexico, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova has called for an urgent investigation. The violent deaths of three Mexican journalists in the state of Veracruz in less than a week seemingly triggered this response. She not only condemned the killings but also asked Mexican authorities to do everything possible to resolve the situation and bring those responsible to justice.

According to the UNESCO director, last year was the worst in a decade for silencing journalists, with 127 murders from 2010-2011, 18 of them in Mexico.

Since the occupation of Iraq, various international institutions have warned of a notable increase in the number of correspondents murdered, far in excess of those killed during the longest and bloodiest invasions, wars of extermination or military conflicts such as that of Vietnam.

The years 2008-2009 saw a new development in terms of motives, form and region, with an increase in the murders of these professionals for reporting on issues unrelated to military conflict.

Publicly exposing the trafficking of humans, drugs or arms; protests against budget cuts or the rise in university tuition; unemployment; wage reductions; job losses; as well as the indignation of the indignados at financial agreements enriching a few while the majority are impoverished; all of these have become one of the most dangerous activities in the world for media professionals.

But we cannot ignore the currently existing contrast that while journalists in a certain nations are working in the sights of snipers, in others they are making themselves the accomplices of major interests by disseminating false reports, or exaggerating and manipulating information with the clear intention of supporting wars of conquest in countries possessing abundant natural resources, above all energy resources, or which are located in key position in terms of world geography.

According to experts, Latin America has experienced the largest number of journalist fatalities in the past two years, ahead of the Middle East region.

Reports of kidnapped journalists found dumped in plastic bags and bearing marks of torture before being killed, because they have exposed or investigated drug-related issues are frequent.

In March 2010, a report was presented to the 27th meeting of the International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC) for the period 2008-09. During this period, UNESCO condemned the murder of 123 journalists, a figure similar to that of 2006-07. The report noted that at least 80% of the deaths were the result of direct personal attacks, and that the majority of them were not international war correspondents, but national reporters covering news in their own countries, mostly in peacetime.

Other sources indicate that in Latin America in 2011, 95% of journalists killed were men, there is a large body of evidence that women are more and more being subjected to threats, particularly in the form of sexual abuse, while in the last few weeks of this year three of them were evidently executed by organized crime.

A report from the Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Journalists states that in 2011, of the 103 journalists who died as a result of violence throughout the world, 40 (42%) were Latin Americans.

It adds that in 2010, 40 reporters were murdered in six countries, which subsequently increased to 13 nations. According to the Commission, almost all of the victims were covering cases of corruption and other illegal activities.

It concludes that Latin America was the most dangerous region for journalists, particularly in Brazil, Honduras and Mexico, confirming a pattern of ever-increasing violence against media professionals.

The report points to the extremely urgent need to reconsider measures for their protection, initially proposed in the 1970s.

Last September, Mexican commentator Salvador Camarena observed, "The gag of terror imposed by crime cartels in Mexican coastal regions has succeeded in silencing newspapers, radio and television stations, and is also reaching websites and social networks."

But, as stated at the beginning of this article, this is not only about narcotics operations and wars of pillage, but the obstacles imposed on those who inform, investigate or denounce.

The more fortunate journalists might get away with a serious beating and the confiscation of their material when they report on protest demonstrations or peaceful marches, as has occurred in certain European countries, Chile and even New York, the mecca of freedom of expression. Last October, the Chilean Foreign Correspondents Association expressed to the government its "profound concern over continuous attacks on freedom of expression perpetrated by the police in the last two years." One month later, according to an Associated Press cable, journalists covering the police operation in the Occupy Wall Street camp were kept at a distance from the area and a number of them were arrested.

Some governments are unwilling to adopt measures for the protection of journalists, as if the right of citizens to be informed and the responsibility for doing so falls exclusively to them. There is an urgent need to halt these murders, as 2012 is threatening to be even more deadly for these professionals.

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The Kennedy assassination: somebody knew in advance

Gabriel Molina

GEORGE H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon were in Dallas on the day of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, one year after the October Missile Crisis. However, they deny or fail to remember this fact.

Brian Latell, a senior CIA agent, recently published the book Castro’s Secrets, prompting an insidious Miami Herald article by Glenn Garvin headlined "The Kennedy Assassination: Did Castro know in advance?". The article was reproduced in Life and Le Monde magazines.

Neither Latell nor Garvin asked where Nixon and Bush Senior were on November 22, 1963. Others have done so and the two politicians answered that they didn’t remember. But Paul Kangas and other researchers have disclosed evidence that both were in Dallas, Texas, and that they knew about the assassination.

Part of the evidence is a November 23, 1963 memo from FBI director Edgar Hoover, revealing that George Bush Sr., as a CIA officer, reported on Cuban exiles’ reaction to Kennedy’s death. Bush alleged that this was another agent of the same name, but left the impression that the FBI knew what he was saying. Fletcher Prouty, a former CIA link official, stated that Bush – by then a high-ranking officer with the agency although he also denied that fact – was responsible for organizing the Bay of Pigs invasion, involving the recruitment of Cubans later suspected by the U.S. Congressional Committee investigating the assassination of being linked to John F. Kennedy’s death.

Carl Freund, from the Dallas Morning News, interviewed Nixon on the day of the assassination, who stated during the interview that Kennedy intended to drop Lyndon Johnson as his running mate in 1964 and attacked the President for the civil rights demonstrations taking place throughout the U.S., commenting that Kennedy had offered more than he could give. The newspaper added that Nixon was attending a meeting of the Pepsi Cola Company in the city and was staying at the Baker hotel. The day before the assassination, The Dallas Times Herald published a photo of Nixon taken in Dallas with Donald Kendall, president of Pepsi Cola. Kangas refutes the argument that Nixon had already left the city, given that airport documents show that he left after the assassination. (1)

In 1991, CIA agent Chauncey Holt told Newsweek magazine that Kendall was considered by the agency as its eyes and ears in the Caribbean. The CIA is key to the close relationship between the businessman and the politician. Pepsi had a factory and a plantation in Cuba which were nationalized by the revolutionary government.

Researcher Carl Oglesby places Nixon and Vice President Johnson during the evening of November 21 at a Dallas party, which he considers the final coordination meeting for the assassination. Kennedy’s increasing confrontations with Johnson during 1963 were known in government circles and by the President’s close friends. They were sure that his corrupt connections were going to be exposed and that Johnson would not be the candidate in 1964. There was also talk of his prosecution.

The book Le dernier temoin (The Last Witness) includes the confessions of Billie Sol Estes, a financial millionaire who was sentenced in court after being investigated by Robert Kennedy, then Attorney General, and was closely linked to the Texan politician. Estes said that Johnson forced him to keep quiet about the dirty business he was doing for both of them.

"According to Madeleine Brown, a close friend of Johnson’s, on November 21, the Vice President accompanied her to a private soirée at the home of Clint Murchinson, a Dallas oil millionaire, where the Vice President made an enigmatic remark: "After tomorrow, those SOB’s will never embarrass me again." (2)

In his book, The Yankee and the Cowboy War, Oglesby reveals the presence at the party, in addition to Johnson and Nixon, of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover; Allen Dulles, former CIA director; oil tycoon Haroldson L. Hunt; John Connally, former governor of Texas; General Charles Cabell and his brother Earl, all of them John F. Kennedy haters.

On February 1, 1962, the president had replaced Cabell as deputy director of the CIA. On April 19, 1961, Cabell had tried to force Kennedy to authorize the use of fighter planes from an aircraft carrier stationed close to Cuba, an action that he stated could change the course of the Bay of Pigs in a matter of minutes. Pentagon chiefs, headed by Lemnitzer and Walker and those of the CIA, especially Dulles and Cabell virtually rebelled and continued trying to provoke direct military intervention in Cuba. For these reasons, the decision of General Cabell’s brother who, as mayor of Dallas, diverted the presidential convoy as it was traveling along Mayor Street toward the center of Dealey Plaza heading for Stemmons Highway, as planned, was highly suspicious. "On Mayor Street, continuing along the open boulevard, shots could not have reached him… at the last minute the President’s route was changed to make it pass where the warehouse is." (3) The change made by Cabell’s brother involved a 120-degree turn down Houston Street, which meant reducing the convoy’s speed to 15mph and heading for Elm Street, the location of the warehouse and a grassy hillock. This dramatic turn facilitated the work of Kennedy’s assassins lying in wait there.

Latell and Garvin must have formulated the question as to why the route was changed, particularly to George H. W. Bush, one of the few surviving suspects. The untiring labor of researchers has resulted in new discoveries implicating Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy’s replacement and the man with the most to gain, in the assassination plot

After the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, Nixon was elected President and continued with his dirty tricks. On Nixon’s orders, a group of CIA agents and officers, disguised as plumbers, entered the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington’s Watergate office complex. It was initially thought that the objective was to seek out information damaging to George McGovern, the presidential candidate, but the matter was far more serious. On June 23, 1972, President Nixon tried to have the CIA block the investigation, in charge of FBI officers like Mark Felt, who recently turned out to be "Deep Throat," the secret informant of The Washington Post, which contributed to clarifying the facts.

In the early days of the scandal, Nixon‘s aide John Ehrlichman summoned to the White House Patrick Gray, the FBI director who replaced Edgar Hoover. He told him that six files written by Howard Hunt, a CIA officer involved in the Watergate break-in, and which were in the FBI’s possession, were political dynamite and should never see the light of day. Gray took the files to his house and burned them. John Dean, the President’s advisor, did the same with Hunt’s diary. However, tapes of conversations in the White House revealed Nixon’s anxiety over the detention of Hunt and the other operatives involved. He was trying to conceal the fact that the operation would expose his connection with Kennedy’s assassination and agreed that Hunt should be given one million dollars in hush money.

Fearing the possible consequences of the scandal, Nixon leaned on his chief of personnel, H.R. Haldeman, to put pressure on his CIA buddies George Bush, Richard Helms and Vernon Walters, explaining, "The problem is that it will blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing." (4) Nixon added that they had protected Helms many times and that Bush would do anything for the cause. (5)

The agitated response of Helms, who yelled that he had nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs, shocked Haldeman. The President’s right hand man acted as ordered, but the scandal had grown too large given the revelations of the White House tapes and he was obliged to tell Nixon that he could do nothing more.

In his subsequent book The Ends of Power, Haldeman confessed that Nixon always masked any reference to the Kennedy assassination by mentioning the Bay of Pigs. The tapes are full of these references. One of the "plumbers," Frank Sturgis, confessed five years later that the powerful motive for the Watergate break-in which so much concerned Nixon was "the photos of our role in the Kennedy assassination."(6) E. Howard Hunt, who led the Watergate break-in; James W. McCord Jr.; and Cubans Virgilio R. González, Bernard L. Barker and Eugenio Martínez – all of them CIA officers or agents – were also involved in some way in the Bay of Pigs invasion. And all of them, apart from McCord, were investigated in relation to the assassination.

In his memoirs, American Spy, Hunt stated that William Harvey, placed by the CIA at the head of Task Force W to direct conspiracies to assassinate Fidel, could have played a principal role in organizing the Kennedy assassination together with David Morales, a well-known CIA assassin,. In 2004, Hunt offered other revelations in a video to his son St. John, who had asked him to make the recording when his father was nearing death from cancer. Hunt said that Sturgis has invited him to a secret CIA meeting at which Morales was present, to discuss a big event, which he later found out was the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Hunt cryptically admitted that he took part, but as a spare player, given that he had reservations.

Commenting on Latell’s book, El Nuevo Herald tried to exonerate the CIA, organized crime and other spurious interests from any part in the 1961 invasion, the 1962 Missile Crisis, and the assassination of Kennedy, events which were clearly linked.

Latell’s principal thesis is that of the lone gunman: Lee Harvey Oswald, linked to Cuba. This was precisely the initial evidence of an official conspiracy. The plot merits a different analysis.

(1) The Realist No.117, Summer 1991, P.7.
(2) William Reymond. JFK, Le dernier temoin. Editions Flammarion. Paris. 2003. Pp 259
(3) Jim Garrison. JFK, Tras la pista de los asesinos, Ediciones B S.A. Barcelona1992, P. 145
(4) Stanley I. Kutler (ed.) Abuse of Power, Simon and Schuster, New York. 1997), Pp. 67-69
(5) San Francisco Chronicle, May 7, 1977.
(6) Ibid.

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SAVE THE CHILDREN
Cuba is the best country in Latin America for mothers

LONDON, May 9.— Cuba is ranked first among Latin American countries in providing adequate support to mothers, followed by Argentina and Uruguay, according to a report by the non-governmental agency Save the Children.

The study takes into consideration a series of factors such as health care, as well as the educational and economic level of mothers. The well-being of children is measured by indicators such as infant morality rates and the percentage lacking adequate nutrition.

The lowest ranking countries in the region are Nicaragua, number 49; Honduras, 60th, and Guatemala, 68th, according to the report which evaluated conditions facing mothers in 165 nations, according to PL.

On the other hand, the best country in the world in which to be a mother is Norway, followed by Iceland and Sweden, as well as Australia and Canada.

The report indicated that in much of Sub-Saharan Africa conditions facing mothers and children are deplorable. It is estimated that women there have a life expectancy of 56 years, that one in 16 dies as a result of complications associated with pregnancy and that only 5% use modern contraceptives, while one of every three children suffers from malnutrition.

Save the Children emphasized that breastfeeding alone could prevent a million infant deaths a year, although less than 40% of babies in developed countries are breastfed, according to the Argentine Télam news agency.