http://news.linktv.org Link TV News Videos (Filtered by topics: US-Cuba relations) en-us Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:45:00 -0700 Copyright 2011 Link Media, Inc. http://news.linktv.org/videos/cuba-dumping-major-travel-restrictions?start=0 In a ground-breaking shift in migration policy, the Cuban government is about to jettison restrictive travel requirements for its citizens. Beginning in January, Cubans will no longer need expensive, hard-to-obtain exit permits to travel abroad. Those coming to America, however, will still need a visa from the US, whose officials fear being overwhelmed with requests. Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:45:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/cuba-dumping-major-travel-restrictions Visa, Politics of Cuba, Cuba, Raúl Castro, US-Cuba relations, Cubans, Cuban exile, Fidel Castro, United States embargo against Cuba, Al Jazeera English In a ground-breaking shift in migration policy, the Cuban government is about to jettison restrictive travel requirements for its citizens. Beginning in January, Cubans will no longer need expensive, hard-to-obtain exit permits to travel abroad. Those coming to America, however, will still need a visa from the US, whose officials fear being overwhelmed with requests. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012?start=0 Democracy Now! interviews Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, on her support for LGBTQ rights, ending the US embargo, and swapping the US-held "Cuban Five" prisoners for jailed contractor Alan Gross. Plus headlines, and more. Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:09:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012 US-Cuba relations, Cuba, Cuban Five, Mariela Castro, United States, Raúl Castro, United States embargo against Cuba, LGBT, Saul Landau, Alan Phillip Gross Democracy Now! interviews Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, on her support for LGBTQ rights, ending the US embargo, and swapping the US-held "Cuban Five" prisoners for jailed contractor Alan Gross. then award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, and professor Saul Landau discusses his new film "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up," about US support for violent anti-Castro militants. Plus headlines, and more. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012?start=708 Democracy Now! interviews Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, on her support for LGBTQ rights, ending the US embargo, and swapping the US-held "Cuban Five" prisoners for jailed contractor Alan Gross. Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:09:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012 US-Cuba relations, Cuba, Cuban Five, Mariela Castro, United States, Raúl Castro, United States embargo against Cuba, LGBT, Saul Landau, Alan Phillip Gross In a Democracy Now! special, we begin our hour on Cuba with a rare interview with Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro. Mariela Castro is best known in Cuba for her ardent support of gay, lesbian and transgender rights and as the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana. During a rare visit to the U.S., Castro discusses her work in Cuba battling anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In a Democracy Now! special, we begin our show today with a rare U.S. interview with the daughter of the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, and First Lady Vilma Espín. Her name is Mariela Castro. She's best known in Cuba for her ardent support of gay, lesbian and transgender rights and as the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana. Mariela Castro was recently granted a visa for a rare trip to the United States. Democracy Now! had a chance to sit down with her last week at the Cuban consulate here in New York City. We talked not only about her work combating homophobia, but also her thoughts on the Cuban Five and what's happening in Cuba 50 years after the start of the U.S. embargo. She called on the United States to release five Cubans jailed for spying on violent anti-Cuban militants in exchange for U.S. citizen Alan Gross, who was arrested in Cuba in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years on charges of subversion. She says, "Free the six." We turn now to my interview with Mariela Castro. I began by asking her about what brought her to the United States. Mariela Castro was translated by Elizabeth Coll. I presented my work at the Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, which was held last week in San Francisco. I was also invited by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Talk about the work that you're doing in Cuba. I am the director of the National Center of Sexual Education. This is an academic center that is part of the Ministry of Public Health. Its mission is to coordinate the national program of sexual education with a multidisciplinary focus which coordinates different sectors. Why have you chosen to make sexuality and the politics of sexuality your issue? You, yourself, are heterosexual. You're married to a man. You have three children. This is work that my mother began with the Federation of Cuban Women. She was the one who created CENESEX. Though professionally I worked with preschool children and adolescents, as I heard about the difficulties of LGBT people, I began to sympathize with their needs and problems. Many LGBT couples chose to come to counseling sessions with me, and as I listened to them, I started to study, to find tools to be able to help them. You've come to the United States at an interesting time. The president, President Obama, has just endorsed same-sex marriage, marriage equality. What are your thoughts about that? I think it's very valuable that the president of the United States speaks out publicly in favor of the rights of same-sex couples. Being the most powerful country in the world, what the president says has great influence on the rest of the world. Yet we do not have across-the-board law that says that same-sex marriage is accepted. And in Cuba, you don't, either. What are you doing in Cuba to change the laws? In Cuba, CENESEX is leading an educational strategy, with the support of the media, to promote respect for free and responsible sexual orientation and gender identity. We are also doing some advocacy with state institutions and civil society organizations, so that they support this educational strategy. Beyond the educational strategy and our media strategy, we are also promoting legislative initiatives that support the same rights for homosexuals and transgender people, so that, for example, the family code recognizes the rights of these people and also their possibilities as couples, the legalization of their union as a couple. Are you pushing for same-sex marriage in Cuba? I am promoting marriage, but it was not accepted by many groups of people. And so, what we are negotiating is the legalization of consensual unions and that the legalization of these unions would guarantee, more than anything, their property rights, inheritance rights. So, do same-sex couples have the same economic rights as heterosexual couples? All rights are guaranteed for all people. There is no exclusion for LGBT people. But where there is still not respect for their rights is around the guarantee that if one member of a same-sex couple dies, the survivor be recognized as the person who should receive the inheritance, or even just be allowed to enjoy the goods that they had enjoyed as a couple. Presumably, you have your father's ear, the president of Cuba. How does he feel about making it fully equal between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples? He is convinced that it is necessary, that it is part of the project of full justice the Cuban Revolution proposes. Is he supportive like you are? He has been supportive since before, from when my mother was working on these issues. And what about gay men and lesbians in the military? In all of Cuban society, there are all kinds of people. In the army, as well, there are homosexuals and lesbians. They don't manifest it publicly, but they are there. If it is known, if they are open, would they be kicked out of the military? I see that the rules have become more flexible. Of course, before, they were more rigid. I think that in all Cuban society, the policy and laws are becoming more flexible. And the same will happen in the army. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012?start=1130 Democracy Now! interviews Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Ra&uacute;l Castro, on her support for LGBTQ rights, ending the US embargo, and swapping the US-held "Cuban Five" prisoners for jailed contractor Alan Gross. Then award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, and professor Saul Landau discusses his new film "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up," about US support for violent anti-Castro militants. Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:09:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012 US-Cuba relations, Cuba, Cuban Five, Mariela Castro, United States, Raúl Castro, United States embargo against Cuba, LGBT, Saul Landau, Alan Phillip Gross Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, calls on the U.S. to release five Cubans jailed for spying on anti-Cuban militants in Florida in exchange for Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen jailed in Cuba. The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 for committing espionage in southern Florida. They say they weren't spying on the U.S., but trying to monitor right-wing violent Cuban groups that have organized attacks on Cuba. "I want the Cuban Five to go back to Cuba and for Alan Gross to go home," Castro says. "I want an end to the financial, commercial and economic blockade that violates the human rights of the Cuban people, and the normalization of relations between both countries." We return to my conversation with Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro. I asked her about the Cuban Five, the five men convicted in 2001 for spying on violent anti-Castro militants in the United States. As part of the Cuban population, I am committed to fighting for the liberation of the five Cubans, in this case, four Cubans who are imprisoned and one who is out on probation in Miami. And, really, they are serving very severe sentences that do not correspond with the evidence. There is no evidence for such severe sentences. If they had been tried justly, they would have already completed their sentences. And yet, they are still prisoners. I dare say most Americans don't even know who they are, why they're in jail. Can you explain? It has been silenced because it is a kind of political vendetta. You know that Cuba, since the beginning of the revolution, has been the victim of terrorist attempts, organized and perpetrated by terrorist groups based in Miami of Cubans who have even confessed to be killers. They have confessed their crimes, even in books that have been published and in interviews on television. But they have not been brought to justice. However, Cuba has more than 5,000 victims of state terrorism between the dead and the wounded. Thus, as a society, as a sovereign nation, we have the right to defend ourselves, and we do it peacefully. How? Infiltrating Cuban people who identify with the revolution, infiltrating them into these terrorist groups to alert the Cuban government as to when these terrorist attacks were going to take place, in order to be able to thwart the attempts and defend our population. These terrorist groups enjoy great economic and political power in Florida, and thus, judgments were made that violate the laws of the United States, and they were made in Miami by totally partial judges who oppose the process of the Cuban Revolution. Would the Cuban government be open to a prisoner swap, the Cuban Five for Alan Gross, who has been imprisoned by the Cuban government? The Cuban government has expressed interest in finding a negotiated solution on humanitarian terms, and of course it is fully disposed to negotiate with the government of the United States. But it has not received any response. Cuban-American Congress members in the United States have condemned the Obama administration for giving you a visa into the United States. Díaz-Balart, Congressman Díaz-Balart, said, "It is appalling that the Obama administration is welcoming high-level agents of the Castro dictatorship onto U.S. soil. While the Cuban people are struggling for basic freedoms in the face of increasingly brutal repression..." Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says, "Mariela Castro is part of a ruthless dictatorship that has oppressed the Cuban people for more than half a century. She wants to spew [out] the lies and propaganda of her family's failed regime and doesn't want to answer questions from a free and independent media." I am not going to respond to the mediocre yellow press that she tries to impose on me, which for 50 years has spread lies about the Cuban Revolution. I also want to say about these Cuban congresspeople that you mentioned, everyone in the United States and Cuba knows that they promote laws that violate the rights of Americans to travel to Cuba, that violate the rights of the Cuban community and Cuban descendants in the United States, who are 1.8 million people, to travel freely to Cuba to reunite with their families. These people are constantly promoting legislation that worsens the economic blockade. And with the revolutionary government of these more than 50 years, the Cuban people have found freedom and full justice. You've been allowed into the United States under the Bush administration. I entered in 2002 for another congress in Los Angeles. What would a lifting of the U.S. embargo against Cuba mean for your country, Mariela Castro? In the first place, it would mean that the government of the United States would begin to respect international law. It would mean the beginning of the end of one of the worst human rights violations: that suffered by the Cuban people because of the blockade. For Cuba, it would mean access to development that has been limited by the blockade. And Americans and Cubans could meet in friendship, without the mediation of these unscrupulous congresspeople who manipulate the policy of the United States towards Cuba in service of their personal power and economic interests, and not in function of the necessities of the Cuban people both within Cuba and beyond. Your father, President Castro, has been making a transition in Cuba. Can you talk about the changes that you think are most important for people in the United States to understand? One of the most important changes is that the new economic and social strategy has been designed with the full participation of all the Cuban population, who have participated in the debates, both to question the current reality as well as to propose what changes should be made. There is a lot of discussion of a post-Castro Cuba. What do you think that would look like? The same—with the same strategy of socialist development, which is always looking for more efficient mechanisms to support social justice and national sovereignty, and also with new public figures, because there are many people participating in Cuba in all the decisions. So that would mean new faces for the media. But for Cubans, those faces would not be new. Would you consider the presidency of Cuba? No. That job doesn't interest me. Why? I like my job. There are other socialist governments in Latin America—Bolivia, Venezuela—where there are elections. Would Cuba go in that direction? I think Cuba has publicly expressed what the mechanisms of popular election will be, and what is being proposed is to perfect them, not repeat what others do. What would it look like? Well, how we do it now is through mechanisms of popular election. It is the people who nominate their leaders. Term limits have been established, and the president, my father, is included in these term limits. This has been the result of a collective discussion, to give opportunities to others, so that they assume their responsibilities. And the mechanisms of control are being perfected so that the people have access to the control of the mechanisms of power. How is the health of your uncle, Fidel Castro? I just want to add, in Cuba, we don't have electoral campaigns, and the Communist Party doesn't field candidates. And the leaders don't receive an additional salary. And the legislators don't receive an additional salary, because they are still doing their jobs. So positions of power in Cuba do not generate economic interests in people. Fidel looks like he's doing really well. He is an octogenarian, so he doesn't have the same vitality that characterized him his whole life—that where there was a problem, Fidel was there with the people looking for solutions; that where there was a threat or danger, Fidel was right there in front of his people. Fidel is now giving us the privilege of his writing, of the writing of history. There are things that only he knows. And he is giving us a marvelous historical legacy that gives the Cuban people a spiritual strength that is priceless. How did he manage to survive? I believe it's more than 600 assassination attempts by the United States, at least hundreds. The CIA documents many of them. I think it was three things. First, his charisma and his sense of justice convinced even his executioners. Above all, he was the leader of the Cuban people, he is the maximum leader of the Cuban people, and the people have always protected him. But he is also a third world leader. And in the countries that he visited where they organized the attempts, mostly organized by the CIA, these same populations protected him. What is your assessment of President Obama? President Obama represents an imperialist government and policy. So if you were to say to me, "Do you prefer him? Would you like him as a president?" I would say I would prefer a president who responds to the interests of the American people, who protects the poor from the arbitrary actions of the rich, and that respects international law. I have a very personal impression that Obama is a person who tries to be just. But while occupying the position of the presidency of the United States, it is very difficult to be just. However, I am a person who always likes to think positively, and I would like to believe that Obama in a second term will be a better human being and a better president. You mentioned issues of poverty and equality. What is your assessment of the Occupy movement in the United States? It's very interesting to me how the American population has found new languages and forms of struggle, a new language of struggle to fight for their social demands. And they do it peacefully and with deep reasoning. I don't think they are against the government. They are against the policies that violate their rights. And I feel admiration for the courage of these people. What would you like to see most change about the United States? I want the Cuban Five to go back to Cuba and for Alan Gross to go home. I want an end to the financial, commercial and economic blockade that violates the human rights of the Cuban people, and the normalization of relations between both countries. And what would you like to see most change about Cuba? In Cuba, I want to see the socialist system strengthened with mechanisms that are always more participatory and democratic, and that the sovereignty of Cuba always be respected. Mariela Castro, daughter of the Cuban president, Raúl Castro. She is the most prominent champion of gay, lesbian and transgender rights in Cuba. She called on the United States to release the five Cubans imprisoned here in the U.S. They were spying on anti-Cuban militants in the U.S. In exchange, she says, Cuba should release Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen jailed in Cuba. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012?start=1864 Democracy Now! interviews Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Ra&uacute;l Castro, on her support for LGBTQ rights, ending the US embargo, and swapping the US-held "Cuban Five" prisoners for jailed contractor Alan Gross. Then award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, and professor Saul Landau discusses his new film "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up," about US support for violent anti-Castro militants. Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:09:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-11-2012 US-Cuba relations, Cuba, Cuban Five, Mariela Castro, United States, Raúl Castro, United States embargo against Cuba, LGBT, Saul Landau, Alan Phillip Gross Award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, professor Saul Landau has made more than 45 films and written 14 books, many about Cuba. His latest film is "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up," about U.S. support for violent anti-Castro militants. Landau joins us to discuss the history of the Cuban Five and U.S. support for a group of anti-Castro militants who have been behind the bombing of airplanes, the blowing up of hotels and assassinations. Today they are allowed to live freely in the United States. "What did Cuba do to us?," Landau asks. "Well, the answer, I think, is that they were disobedient, in our hemisphere. And they did not ask permission to take away property. They took it away. They nationalized property. And the United States ... has never forgiven them." For more on the Cuban Five, we turn now to the award-winning filmmaker, author, professor Saul Landau. He has made more than 45 films and written 14 books, many about Cuba. His latest film is called Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up, about U.S. support for violent anti-Castro militants. I interviewed Saul Landau last week when he came to New York. I started by asking him why he made the film. Well, I went to Cuba in 1960 when I was a student, because I was curious. I was curious to see how a guy who was so disobedient, Fidel Castro, and his other revolutionaries were going to last. I didn't think they could, and I went out to—I went down to Cuba to check it out. And I met people my age who were running government ministries and sleeping three hours a night and using a lot more of their brains than I was using. And I was impressed by watching people making history. And I think, like many other people who went down there at the time, this place seemed really different, that they were going to make a different kind of a revolution, and it was going to have its impact. And I think it did have its impact on the world. But that's how I got there in the first place. And pretty soon, I was working to stop the United States from invading Cuba, like a lot of people who had gone down there. And the first—one of the first talks I gave was in New York City at Town Hall. And as I came out, a guy tried to cut me on the back with a razor, a Cuban exile. I guess he took freedom of speech more seriously than I did. And subsequently, I made a film with Fidel Castro in 1968 for public television. It went on '69. And then the theatrical release was supposed to happen in New York in 1970 at the Fifth Avenue Cinema. And I think it would have happened if somebody hadn't put two bombs in the theater. So, that ended the opening in New York. So we were going to open it in Los Angeles, and the day before it was screened, the theater was burned down. The police determined it was arson. Nobody was caught in either case. Then Sandra Levinson, who was at that time a new director at the Center for Cuban Studies, was going to show it there. And the Center for Cuban Studies was bombed. This would have been 1973. In New York. In New York City. My next encounter with the Cuban terrorists was when my two colleagues, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were assassinated in Washington, D.C., by Cuban exiles working for the Chilean secret police now. So—and over the years, I've had—how should I say it—my share of credible death threats. Orlando Letelier was a Chilean diplomat under Salvador Allende. Yes, he had been the Chilean ambassador in Washington. That's where I first met him. And I had invited him to come to the Institute for Policy Studies, where I was working. And he did. And he wasn't even there a year, and he was blown up in his car on Sheridan Circle, three-quarters of a mile from the White House—very audacious act of terrorism. And you had been with him very close to the time he was killed. I had dinner with him on Sunday night. He was killed on Tuesday morning. And on that Sunday night, we had come out—my wife and I had come out of his house, and I remember talking outside with our elbows on his car, which was parked in the driveway, not knowing, of course, there was a bomb underneath the car. Do you think it was there at that point, Sunday night? Well, according to the witnesses who later testified, they had put the car on late Saturday night—actually, early Sunday morning. Had put the bomb... They had placed the bomb on the car then. And they hadn't used it until Tuesday. Yeah, they missed him Monday somehow, and so they got him on Tuesday. Yet this relates to Cuba, because the assassins... The assassins came from a Cuban group in northern New Jersey, in Weehawken, called the Cuban Nationalist Movement. Sometimes they went under the name of Omega 7. And the FBI had infiltrated them and knew from early on in their investigation that they had been the actual perps who did the thing, under the auspices of the Chilean secret police, who had ordered the assassination. If the FBI had infiltrated them, did they know before that Orlando Letelier was under such threat? No, they—well, according to what we know from the FBI agents and from the FOIA stuff, they found out afterwards. The assassination was on a Tuesday. I think Friday or Saturday their informant called up and said that it was the Cuban Nationalist Movement who did the job, and then he named the people who did it: Guillermo Novo Sampol and his brother Ignacio and Alvin Ross and José Dionisio Suárez. They were all arrested by the FBI very quickly and held in contempt for refusing to testify. Then they were tried and convicted, three of them. And two later were caught and convicted. But then the Novos got out, because the prosecutor made a procedural error. And in the second trial, their lawyers apparently learned more than the prosecutors, and they got off. And it was at that point Guillermo Novo, in the hall, just right after the trial, looked at me and then, in Spanish, he said, "And now we're going to get the rest of those commie SOBs." And I, you know, thought—very modestly, I responded by holding my finger up. And he advanced toward me very threateningly, and the FBI came between us. And then, very shortly afterwards, I was told I was on his target list, that I was—he had put a hit on me. Award-winning filmmaker, author Saul Landau. His latest film is called Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. We'll come back to the conversation in 30 seconds. [break] We return to Saul Landau, director of the new film Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up, which has been praised by, among others, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of Secretary of State General Colin Powell. I asked Saul Landau to talk about relations between the United States and Cuba. Well, I think that Cuba, in a sense, belongs in The Guiness Book of Records for disobedience, because—let me go back to a little story. There was a—in 2006, I was in Cuba with Gore Vidal and John Burton, who was the president of the California Senate, had just retired. He was termed out of office, actually. And we were meeting with a person from the United States interest section in Cuba, which is the equivalent of an embassy, but it isn't an embassy because we don't have formal relations with Cuba. And Burton asked the man from the interest section, the U.S. diplomat, "So, like, what did Cuba do to us, again?" And the man says, "Well, they violate human rights." And Burton says, "Aw, come on." He says, "The Chinese killed thousands of Americans in Korea. The Vietnamese killed thousands of Americans in Vietnam. They've both got single-party commie governments with stinking human rights records. So what did Cuba do to us, again?" And the man went on and on about Cuba violating human rights. Burton stormed out of the house. But there it is. What did Cuba do to us? Well, the answer, I think, is that they were disobedient, in our hemisphere. And they did not ask permission to take away property. They took it away. They nationalized property. And the United States, on the one hand, has never forgiven them. And on the other hand, it has hosted a strange kind of lobby. Maybe after 1981, we had an anti-Castro lobby in this country, that was formed in part through the intervention of AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee, who sort of taught them how to do it. And this is another— Why did AIPAC care? In fact, Israel has relations with Cuba. Well, they don't have—they have economic relations with Cuba. Israeli investment is obvious in Cuba, especially in citrus. They don't have diplomatic relations. But I think in the—the Reagan White House asked the AIPAC people to help the Cubans do this. I don't think it was their own initiative. Yet it's fascinating that it was anti-Castro Cubans who attempted to assassinate President Reagan, as you show in your film. Yes. They have used violence consistently over 50 years, even though it hasn't worked. I mean, if anything, the violence has helped consolidate Fidel Castro's rule and then the subsequent government. But they continue to use it. And if you ask them why they use it, they really can't tell you. I mean, if you ask Orlando Bosch why he was violent, he says in the movie, well, he's crazy. Another guy, Basulto, takes credit for all kinds of things. And Luis Posada Carriles simply denies that he did anything. And explain who these men are. Yes. José Basulto. José Basulto formed—well, he had been a CIA agent in—from 1959 on. He was recruited by a fellow named David Atlee Phillips, who recruited quite a few people in that time. He also recruited Antonio Veciana. Veciana was the CIA's top pick to kill Castro over the years. Who you feature in the film, as well. He's in the film, as well. Anyway, Basulto, also working for the CIA and sometimes working for himself, fired some cannon at a hotel in 1962, so that he could prove there were Russians in Cuba, because the Russians then complained that their people had been fired at. José Basulto then formed an organization called Brothers to the Rescue, which was originally to save the lives of rafters who were leaving Cuba after the Soviet Union disappeared. He would radio—he and his pilots would radio their positions to nearby ships. But when the U.S. and Cuba signed a migration accord, he lost his mission, because there were no more rafters. They were being picked up by the Coast Guard and returned to Cuba. So he took a new mission. He was overflying Cuba. The Cubans got word that he was going to fire a weapon or drop a weapon on them. And they notified the United States that future overflights would meet the gravest of consequences, meaning they would get shot down. And Basulto was told by the U.S. government that future flights would be very dangerous. In fact, the U.S. government sent a note to the Federal Aviation Agency saying, "Take their licenses away." And the head of the FAA sent a note to the FAA chief in Miami, saying, "Take their licenses away. Don't let them fly." But the FAA chief in Miami did not follow orders. And they flew, February 24th, 1996, and two of their—of the three planes were shot down, pilots and co-pilots killed. And this brought about— Basulto escaped and flew back to Florida. Basulto miraculously escaped. Clinton responded by signing the Helms-Burton bill, which drastically tightened the embargo and also codified it. That is, he transferred power from the executive to Congress, something that was very rarely done in the 20th century. So that was José Basulto. Yes. And then you mentioned Luis Posada Carriles. Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch had teamed up in 1976 in October to knock down a Cuban airliner in the air, a passenger plane, which their agents successfully did over the island of Barbados. The agents were caught, and they ratted on Posada Carriles and on Orlando Bosch. They were both arrested in Venezuela. And then there was a long, complicated judicial process in which very little really happened. And then one of them was freed and came to the United States. President Bush, the first, brought him in, despite the complaints by the FBI and the Justice Department saying, "Don't let this guy in. He's a dangerous terrorist." Bush ignored them and let him in. I want to go to a clip of your film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. And this is that moment that the Cubana Airlines, with 73 passengers on board, is hit. CUBANA AIRLINES PILOT: Cubana 455. AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Cubana 455, [inaudible]. CUBANA AIRLINES PILOT: We have had explosion. We are descending immediately. We have a fire on board. AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Cubana 455, are you returning to the field? CUBANA AIRLINES PILOT: This is Cubana 455. We are requesting immediately, immediately landing. Close the door! Close the door! It's getting worse! Crash landing into the sea! CBS EVENING NEWS: This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. WALTER CRONKITE: Good evening. Nine days ago, a Cuban passenger jet en route from Barbados to Havana crashed into the sea following an onboard explosion. Seventy-three persons, 57 of them Cuban, were killed. You're listening to and watching an excerpt of Saul Landau's film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. So, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles blow up this airliner, and they ultimately live freely in Miami. Yes, and the United States had—and we know this now from declassified documents from the CIA and the FBI, that they had nailed them, that Posada had told a CIA official there that "Orlando has all the information. We're going to get an airplane." It's there, right in the—and I think we put it on the screen. And the first thing they did was try to raise money off this event. And it occurred to me that this might have been, down deep, the real motivation for all this terrorism, because it didn't really—I mean, how is blowing up an airplane going to change the government of Cuba? Or how does even placing a few bombs in hotels? Or trying to assassinate? The real fact is that after all of these terrorist acts, these guys go door to door and saying, "Hey, you know, you heard what we did lately, huh? And you, you got a nice store here." And they raise money. So this is how they ended up making a living. Otherwise, it makes no sense doing any of the things they did. Well, going on with Lawrence Wilkerson's review of your film, the man who was the chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, worked with him for years, Colonel Wilkerson. He talks about Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. He says, "Clearly shown and vividly documented was the fact that the United States sponsors terrorism. In Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch alone, there are overtones of Osama bin Laden and Aman al-Zawahiri, the nefarious leadership of al-Qa'ida. In the film, Carriles and Bosch as much as tell us this in their own words. Moreover, they seem to rejoice in it." Yes. Yeah, that's who they were. That's their vocation. And they ultimately got proud of it. You know, as—Osama bin Laden's objective wasn't to take power in the United States. He had another motive for bombing the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And I think these guys didn't hope to take power in Cuba. They had another motive. And that is, to make a living. There were over 600 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro's life that the U.S. was involved with? Well, they were—the United States government—or, the CIA was involved in lots—I don't know how many, but according to a British film—they had pretty good documentation from the Cubans—there were 628 attempts on Castro's life. The CIA was involved in more than half of them. Why did they want Fidel Castro dead? Well, I think, in the U.S. government, it was thought that as soon as Fidel was gone, the Cuban Revolution was gone, and they would get Cuba back. It would be back in their pocket as they had it before. I mean, if you look at Cuba before the revolution, it was an economic colony of the United States. And I think the U.S. government felt a sense of loss, a sense of humiliation almost. Who lost Cuba? I mean, this was a discussion way back in the 1960s. Who was it responsible for losing Cuba? And Eisenhower was blamed, and Kennedy was blamed. But the thought was, look at all those corporations that used to own the island—the sugar companies, King Ranch and other huge American corporations who had huge assets there. And they were all expropriated. Oil companies, Texaco. They all worked with Batista, the former dictator. Oh, Batista was a brutal dictator. He killed, according to the Cuban figures, 20,000 people over a period of five years and practiced routine torture. And he was supported by the U.S. government until quite late in the game. So how did this scrappy group of insurgents—Fidel Castro, Che Guevara—how did they overthrow Batista? Well, I think they—Castro and his group used a combination of guerrilla war which they fought from several mountains—that is, the Sierra Maestra and the Sierra Cristal, the two mountain ranges in the eastern province, in Oriente, in Cuba, and then there was another group fighting from the Escambray Mountains—and they tried to coordinate their activities with an urban guerrilla or urban, if you like, revolutionary group that was also causing the repressive forces to put a lot of attention and men into them. They were creating sabotage, propaganda. And Batista, by 1958, was an extremely unpopular leader. Having—because he had been a sergeant and not one of the old guard army people, he really wasn't in bed with the old Cuban aristocrats and didn't owe them any loyalty. He was in bed with the mafia. He was on good terms with them, for their gambling and the prostitution and all their stuff. So he didn't feel any kinship with the upper middle class or the aristocracy, many of whose kids were being picked up by the cops and tortured or even killed. So he lost a lot of popularity. And when the revolutionaries won, they won with overwhelming popular support—that didn't last, of course. As soon as the revolution showed that it was serious about class things and distributing wealth, the upper class moved out, and they moved to Miami. And this was pretty well completed by late 1960. The richest people in Cuba had left the island. So, tell us who the Cuban Five are. The Cuban Five were intelligence agents who were part of a larger web of intelligence group called Wasp. And 12 of them either got pleas or fled, and got away. And they were charged with things like what? They were charged with failing to register as foreign agents and false identity. Has the U.S. ever done that? The United States has never tried anybody for failing to register as a foreign agent, because Americans are doing that all over the world. And they don't want to get arrested. They don't want to set a precedent for that. Generally, they'd deport people like that? They deport people. They arrest them and say, "Go home." And they expect that to happen if Americans are caught, let's say, in a foreign country, in eastern Europe, say, having infiltrated some terrorist cell in Chechnya or wherever. This is what the—this is what this kind of intelligence is all about, and everybody understands it. False identification? Of course you have false ID, or else you're going to get known. So these aren't really serious charges. I mean, they do have, you know, legally, penalties that are associated with. But these guys were charged with heavier crimes. They were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder. And, you know, really—and these carried heavy sentences. And the judge—the judge went overboard. I mean, she gave Gerardo two life sentences plus 15 years—almost unheard of. And some of the sentences, by the way, were reversed by an appeals court, which said these sentences are ridiculous, and they lessened them. They forced the judge to resentence. And one of the Cuban Five, by the way, is now on parole in South Florida, but he is not allowed to travel outside of South Florida. Anybody else would simply be deported and sent back home. The other three, outside of Gerardo, how many years do they still have to serve? One of them has a life sentence. One will be out in about four, five years, and another in about eight or 10. So, murderers and rapists get far more lenient sentences. Yes. Yeah, these guys have gotten maximum—super-maximum sentences. Saul Landau, is there any deal being made behind the scenes to free the Cuban Five in exchange for—who is Cuba holding that the U.S. would be interested in releasing? Well, the Cubans caught a man named Alan Gross, who was working as a contractor for a company that was contracted with AID, the State Department. And their job, essentially, was to promote regime change in Cuba. And it says so in the legislation, and they got the money to do this. Alan's job was to set up dissidents with super-sophisticated satellite communication systems that would work through satellite phones and laptops that were untrackable and impenetrable. And I really don't think that he was trying to keep the Cubans from learning our secret matzo ball recipe. The excuse is, he's innocent; all he was trying to do was help the Jewish community get better internet access. This is total nonsense. That was being alleged. Yes, and they're still—I mean, Hillary Clinton is still saying this, that he's innocent. Even his wife says now he was guilty. What do you mean? Well, Hillary says all he was trying to do was help the Jewish community get internet access. This is nonsense. Why is the wife saying he's guilty? Did he have an affair in prison? No. His wife's saying he's guilty because, I think, she's changing strategy. Alan Gross's defense has been he's innocent. Then came an article in the Associated Press by Desmond Butler, mid-February of this year. Somebody leaked to him his trip reports. That is, Alan had made—this was his fifth trip to Cuba. In each one, he details how he smuggled in illicit equipment using other Jews who were going down on religious missions. He had asked them to put little pieces of the equipment in their backpacks to get it through customs in Cuba, which he then reassembled. And he bought a SIM card, which made the system untrackable. In other words, these people could communicate with each other without Cuban counterintelligence finding out where they were. That's why I said I don't think it was just to protect our matzo ball recipe. This was something deeper. Alan had done this in Iraq, and he had done it in Afghanistan. So, he had a track record. Did he know what he was doing in terms of what the ultimate goal was? Who knows? I don't know, and I don't think it's relevant. But he knew he was violating Cuban law. The Cubans got his laptop. They got his hard drive. They got his flash drive. Then they got all his equipment. But then they follow him all through Cuba, so that they could track all the people he was talking to, before ultimately they arrested him when he was leaving at the airport. Alan was picked up after the first agent he talked to. The first Cuban he talked to was a state security agent masquerading as a religious person. And that was it. He was picked up. He was picked up. And the Jewish community that he went to once immediately calls the cops on him. So Alan was identified, and the Cubans followed him everywhere he went and got a list of all the people he visited, and now will have all of his equipment to boot. So I think that something that's possible that—how should I say it—reciprocal humanitarian gestures are now possible. The Cubans could free Alan Gross, and President Obama could free the Cuban Five. Saul Landau, director of the new documentary, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. He's made more than 45 films and written 14 books, many about Cuba. http://news.linktv.org/videos/aid-and-influence-senator-marco-rubio-on-us-foreign-policy?start=0 Possible Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio discusses a number of foreign policy challenges facing the United States, highlighting the importance of US aid in influencing change abroad, especially in the Middle East. Mon, 04 Jun 2012 15:23:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/aid-and-influence-senator-marco-rubio-on-us-foreign-policy Marco Rubio, Foreign relations of the United States, Aid, Arab Spring - duplicate, Republican Party (United States), Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Nuclear program of Iran, Iran-Israel relations, 2011 Libyan Uprising, Israeli–Palestinian conflict Possible Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio discusses a number of foreign policy challenges facing the United States during a candid discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy think-tank in New York City. He highlights the importance of US aid in influencing change abroad, especially in the context of the Middle East during the Arab Spring. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-16-2012?start=670 The Summit of the Americas in Colombia concluded Sunday without agreement on the key questions of whether Cuba should be allowed to attend the regional meetings and on the issue of the legalization of drugs. Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:55:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-16-2012 6th Summit of the Americas, Colombia, Cartagena, US-Latin America relations, Barack Obama, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, Drug liberalization, Latin America, Illegal drug trade, United States Historian Greg Grandin analyzes the U.S.-Colombia "free trade" deal and the deepening split between much of Latin America and Washington following the Summit of the Americas in Colombia. The summit, which was marred by a U.S. prostitution scandal, concluded Sunday without agreement on the key questions of whether Cuba should be allowed to attend the regional meetings and on the issue of the legalization of drugs. Latin American leaders said Cuba should be invited to the next summit in Panama in 2015, but the United States and Canada dissented. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa boycotted this year’s meeting because of Cuba’s exclusion. On Sunday the United States announced that a free trade agreement with host country Colombia will come into effect in May, far earlier than expected. The agreement had earlier been deferred because of Colombia’s weak record on workers’ rights, including murders and attacks on union activists. The Americas Summit concluded Sunday without agreement on the key questions of whether Cuba should be allowed to attend the regional meetings and on the issue of legalization of drugs. Latin American leaders at the meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, said Cuba should be invited to the next summit in Panama in 2015, but the U.S. and Canada dissented. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa boycotted this year’s meeting because of Cuba’s exclusion. The Organization of American States, which runs the summits, excluded Cuba 50 years ago. President Obama said Cuba would be welcome to attend in the future if it becomes more democratic. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Cuba, unlike the other countries that are participating, has not yet moved to democracy, has not yet observed basic human rights. I am hopeful that a transition begins to take place inside of Cuba. And I assure you that I and the American people will welcome the time when the Cuban people have the freedom to live their lives, choose their leaders, and fully participate in this global economy and international institutions. Several leaders also called on the U.S. to consider decriminalizing drugs as a way of combating the illegal trafficking that’s spawned violence across the region. President Obama ruled out legalization, instead announced more than $130 million in aid for increasing security and pursuing narco-traffickers and drug cartels in the region. He expressed willingness to hold a discussion on drug policy, but said legalization could lead to greater problems. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It is entirely legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws in place are ones that are doing more harm than good in certain places. I, personally, and my administration’s position is that legalization is not the answer, that, in fact, if you think about how it would end up operating, the capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries, if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint, could be just as corrupting, if not more corrupting, than the status quo. Meanwhile, the U.S. announced that a free trade agreement with host country Colombia will come into effect in May, far earlier than expected. The agreement had earlier been deferred because of Colombia’s weak record on workers’ rights, including murders and attacks on union activists. In announcing the deal, the Obama administration said Colombia had made, quote, "historic" progress on worker protections and human rights. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos hailed the agreement. PRESIDENT JUAN MANUEL SANTOS: [translated] It will generate employment. It will generate employment in Colombia, more than 500,000 jobs. It will lead to economic growth, about 0.5 to 1 percent, in a permanent form. This has many different benefits for the Colombian people and for the well-being of Colombia. And there are many sectors that have direct and immediate access to most important markets in the world. The summit was marred by a prostitution scandal involving 16 U.S. security personnel. Eleven Secret Service and five military personnel were removed from their duty and sent back from Colombia to the United States. The U.S. Secret Service is investigating claims they brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena late Wednesday and had a dispute over payment with one of the women. President Obama said he expected a rigorous probe to be conducted. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If it turns out that some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I’ll be angry, because my attitude with respect to the Secret Service personnel is no different than what I expect out of my delegation that’s sitting here. Well, to talk more about the summit, we’re joined now by Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University, author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. His most recent book, Fordlandia, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Professor Grandin. Thanks for having me. Talk about the significance of this summit, though what most people in this country are hearing about is the prostitution scandal allegedly involving U.S. Secret Service that were supposed to be protecting the President. Yeah, well, this scandal—I mean, this is just, I think, something that just came out into the open; I’m sure it’s nothing new for these kind of events. I mean, what’s interesting about it is Cartegena is a Caribbean city, so the Caribbean has a reputation as being a kind of playpen of the United States, a kind of place of sex tourism. So I’m sure that this is not going over well in Latin America itself. I mean, it kind of harkens back to the days of, you know, Fredo Corleone and Hyman Roth setting up, you know, meetings, setting up rendezvous with, you know, businessmen. So I’m sure it was—it’s something that kind of over—set a bad tone for the rest of the summit. The summit itself is a bit of a—it’s a bit of a show, a bit of a spectacle. It began under Bill Clinton in the 1990s and was very much tied to trying to move the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas along. And it started running into problems in Quebec during a rising anti-globalization movement, and then in 2005 in Argentina, which really did kind of derail the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. So, at this point, it’s unclear what the purpose of this summit is. Latin Americans themselves are creating these bodies that are excluding the United States, that are deepening integration, political and economic integration. This seems to be a venue in which they come together in order to criticize Washington, quite effectively. And these bodies are threatening to the United States. Why have they excluded the United States? And why do they agree to come to this meeting, though some of the Latin American leaders did not attend, like Rafael Correa of Ecuador, protesting Cuba’s exclusion? Yeah, and Hugo Chávez is ill, so he didn’t attend, and Cuba is excluded. So there are a number of people who didn’t attend. I think they attend because it does provide an effective high-profile venue in order to—in order to show their unity over a number of issues and voice their concerns to the United States, to Washington. What we saw in this episode, in this instance, was remarkable unity over three issues: one, humanizing policy towards the drug problem; two, including Cuba; and then, three, a kind of unexpected criticism that really did bring together, coelesce, a lot of Latin American leaders, which was Brazil’s criticism of U.S. monetary policy. And explain that criticism. Well, Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, was actually in Washington a few weeks ago, just last week, and she previewed this criticism. And the criticism is that the United States is basically depreciating its currency, and as—in order to solve its own financial problems. But that has the effect of valuing, raising the value of Latin American currency, and that creates a trade imbalance. That makes U.S. goods that much more cheaper for Brazilians and for Colombians and for Mexicans to buy, so it deepens the trade imbalance between Latin America and the United States. And it also has the effect of raising the value of debt that foreign bondholders owe or bankers owe, Latin American external debt. So it really puts pressure on Latin American economies. I mean, in the 1970s and 1980s, the United States largely, to a large degree, solved the economic crisis of that period, the crisis of Keynesianism, through a sharp austerity program that generated the debt crisis, that shifted from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism. And I think Dilma is voicing concern that the United States is trying to do the same: get out of the mess it’s created by shifting the burden to Latin America. And there’s been—it was remarkable unity. Dilma Rousseff is an interesting figure, the successor to Lula in Brazil, she, herself, a Brazilian guerrilla who was held in captivity for several years and tortured. Yeah. I mean, and she came into office on the heels of Inácio Lula’s enormous popularity. He had two terms in office, and he left with over 80 percent pop—he was much more confrontational in—around a number of issues, around trade issues, around foreign policy. And the sense that Dilma Rousseff would be more of a technocrat, more willing to accommodate Washington’s interests, maybe on some issues she has. She has kind of gone along with some of the—some of U.S. foreign policy concerning Syria and maybe even Iran. She has distanced Brazil from Iran a bit, but not completely. Her foreign policy team is still very critical of Washington policy in the United Nations, in the Middle East around the Palestine-Israel conflict. And she’s been very critical around economic issues, including this. I mean, it was quite surprising how strident, how strong and sharp her criticism was. She talked about flooding Latin America with cheap money. And— Talk about the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Well, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, you know, obviously, this is something that Barack Obama ran against as a candidate, ran against John McCain, said it would be bad for U.S. workers. And then, pretty much as soon as he got into office, he started to shift gears. He left pretty much the whole Bush team in the U.S. Trade Representative Office, and they continue to work towards passing and toward cobbling together a free trade agreement with Colombia. Colombia—there’s a couple of things to know about Colombia. Colombia is the worst country in terms of labor organizing, hands down. Last year, 40 unionists were killed, and that was 60 percent of the global total. The human rights community, the labor community in the United States has been asking the Obama administration to basically build into any free trade agreement a number of guarantees. One, they wanted to see real change on the ground, before they went forward—say, a three-year period where there would be no murders, no executions of trade unionists. The White House refused that. They asked for a mechanism built into the trade agreement that would void the treaty if executions started to rise again. The White House refused to do that. It’s largely symbolic, I think. I think the effect it’s going to have on the U.S. economy is minuscule. It really is kind of playing to domestic politics. Obama has an election coming up. He’s got to play to the Chamber of Commerce. He’s got to play to—you know, against Mitt Romney, who could position himself better on the economy. And I think what he’s doing is he’s betting his election on the backs of Colombian trade unionists. Obama said that Colombia has actually made historic progress, and his administration said Colombia created a new labor ministry, prosecution of crimes against union workers, and steps to fight discrimination against Afro-Colombians and women, had assuaged their concerns and made it possible for the free trade deal. Yeah, well, it’s kind of—I mean, all of these changes apparently went into effect two weeks ago, so there’s very little time to verify, very little—and who’s going to verify, who’s going to confirm? Again, the fact of the matter is Colombia is the worst country in the world to be a trade unionist. So if you’re willing—if you’re saying Colombia passes the threshold of what’s acceptable, then what country doesn’t pass the threshold of acceptable? And a case in point is Guatemala. Guatemala brought its murder rate of unionists down to zero in order to get—in order to get the Central American Free Trade Agreement passed. As soon as that free trade agreement was passed, the murder rate of trade unionists shot up again. And so, there’s no guarantees that this won’t happen in Colombia. The mechanisms built into it is exactly what’s in NAFTA, and there has yet been a violation or a fine based on labor—violations of labor rights. And the significance of President Obama spending three days in Cartagena, in Colombia, the longest any U.S. president has spent in Colombia? Well, I think Colombia is a close U.S. ally, despite this very interesting dissent about drugs, that it’s being led actually not by the traditional critics of the United States, but by its two closest allies, Guatemala—very conservative presidents: Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina, and in Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos. It’s fascinating. But aside from that, I think Colombia is the United States’s anchor in the region, in some ways, so it makes sense that he would spend a lot of time there. Has President Obama changed policy towards Latin America from President Obama? From—no, no. There’s—I mean— From President Bush. Yeah, there’s—I mean, the best way to think about it is a process of inertia. What started under Bush, or what actually even started under Clinton, just continues under Obama. The two main pillars of U.S. foreign policy—increasing neoliberalism and increasing militarism around drugs—continue. They feed off of each other and have created a crisis in that corridor, running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico. That’s been a complete disaster, and there’s no change.