Cuban Leader Fidel Castro (photo courtesy of Agencia Brasil)

The leader of the Cuban Revolution announced that the task of avoiding a war with North Korea is one of the most pressing challenges that humanity faces today, particularly since the majority of the world’s population lives in Asia and would be devastated by a nuclear assault.

In an article published as one of his usual “reflexions” columns in state-run local newspaper Granma, Castro stated, “If there were to be such a war, the people of both parts of the (Korean) peninsula would be terribly sacrificed, without benefits for any country.” He added that if the United States escalates the conflict to the point of a nuclear attack, “the government of Barack Obama in its second term would be buried by a plethora of images that would make him the most sinister character in the history of the US.”

In his published message, Castro declared that the current crisis is “incredible and absurd,” and, “one of the gravest risks of nuclear warfare since the crisis of October 1962.” He reiterated that the responsibility of avoiding a nuclear war today falls not only on North Korea but also on the United States.

Castro affirmed Cuba’s amicable relationship with the Asian country, adding, “The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea has always been friendly with Cuba, as Cuba has always, and will continue to be to her.”

The former head of state ended his commentary on the current crisis by praising the scientific and technological advances made by Pyongyang but warning that it is crucial for the international community to remember that by using these advances in weaponry, “it is unjust to forget that such a war would affect…more than 70% of the population of the planet.”

The article was published as tensions continue to escalate internationally in regards to the status of nuclear arms in North Korea and confirms the high level of global concern. The country has now reportedly moved a second equipped missile to its eastern coast and its neighbour to the south is now tracking missiles from war ships in the area. The United States has also sent ships to patrol the area over the past several weeks, concerned that US territory might be targeted, as a military base in Guam has been indicated in particular. The US announced yesterday that it would initiate a missile defence system in Guam in the wake of the threats.

President Evo Morales gave a speech marking the launch of the coca eradication 2013 campaign, praising its focus on human rights.

“In Bolivia we have a different model to fight against drug trafficking,” he said, adding that he hopes the “Joint Task Force (FTC) will demonstrate once again, to Bolivians and the people of the world, that with dignity and sovereignty we contribute better to the fight against drugs”.

His speech was held in Chimoré, in the region of Chapare, known for its cultivation of coca plants, in front of an FTC contingent.

The FTC will count on more than 2,000 soldiers whose task will be to destroy “a minimum of 5,000 hectares of coca plantations” by the end of the year. However, in recent years these targets have been largely surpassed with over 10,000 hectares destroyed.

This increase in results has coincided with the “nationalisation” of the struggle against cocaine production with the refusal of United States’ participation and the expulsion of the DEA in 2009.

Man holding a Coca leaf, Bolivia (Marcello Casal Jr., Wikimedia)

“Before this eradication task, with coca zero policies, was handled by external agents, specifically the United States, and brought no results. If it did bring any results, it was the violation of human rights and of our sovereignty,” Morales said.

Larry Memmott, Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of the United States in Bolivia, has praised Morales’ policies and called the results in recent years “impressive”.

“We estimate a net reduction of 13% [of illegal coca plantations in 2012],” Memmott said.

The new policy put in place by Morales’ government tolerates a certain type of coca cultivation, called acullico. Acullico is a small ball of coca leaves mashed together and placed in the mouth to chew on. It is a traditional part of Bolivian culture and is believed to help with altitude sickness and digestion.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Bolivia has eradicated over 36,000 hectares of illegal cocaine plantations since 2009.

Morales’ campaign counts with the support of 168 UN countries and has led Bolivia to regain its place among the countries abiding by the Vienna Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs.

After announcing yesterday that the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) had captured former Foreign Affairs Minister Augusto Blacker Miller in the Albanian capital of Tirana, Peru learned that Blacker Miller had later been released, despite an international warrant for his detention. The former official is wanted in his home country for his participation in 1992 “auto-coup”, in which former president Alberto Fujimori seized legislative power.

Yesterday, anticorruption attorney Julio Arbizu confirmed that according to Interpol agents, Blacker Miller “effectively has been captured” last Thursday.

Yet this morning, he announced that Blacker Miller had been detained and later set free. “We made contact yesterday with Interpol and we were informed that he has effectively been released, but not the reasons. It has also been confirmed that Blacker Miller had been detained on Thursday,” Arbizu said during an interview with RPP Noticias.

The Peruvian government’s next step appears to be to bypass Interpol involvement. “We will evaluate the circumstances of the case to solicit a new extradition, this time from Albania,” Arbizu declared. As Peru and Albania do not have any standing extradition agreement, “the said request would have to be made under the principle of reciprocity alone”.

As of yesterday, the Albanian government denied Blacker Miller’s detention altogether. “It is not true that we have arrested Augusto Blacker Miller. I assure you,” said Leonard Olli, spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior. The opposition Partia Socialiste e Shqipërisë (“Albanian Socialist Party”) accuses Albanian president Sali Berisha of deliberately refusing to detain Blacker Miller, who, according to Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, had listed a company in the National Registry Centre last July.

Before entering Albania, Blacker Miller fled the United States, defying an order to remain in the country. According to Albizu, for that reason, upon Blacker Miller’s capture, the United States government may wish to try him, in which case “what would correspond would be an expulsion from Albania to the United States.” Otherwise, “the extradition process [to Peru] would activate immediately”.

Bolivian Minister of Communications Amanda Dávila reported yesterday that the United States government had violated the Andean nation’s sovereignty by conducting a covert military operation in the country between June and September of 2012.

The operation, allegedly financed by the U.S. Department of Defense (though other sources cite the U.S. State Department as the financial backer), “consisted of sending researchers [to Bolivia] to conduct experiments regarding the adaptation of soldiers to high altitudes”, according to Dávila.

She continued: “This constitutes not just interference, but a violation of our national sovereignty as well. It amounts to an invasion, seeing as it was conducted for military purposes.”

The investigation was led by U.S. scientist Robert Corwine Roach, Jr., director of the Altitude Research Center based in Aurora, Colorado. He and 23 other researchers, dressed as civilians, presented themselves as tourists to Bolivian Immigration upon arrival in the capital, La Paz.

The experiments were conducted from 12th June to 15th September on the mountain Chacaltaya on the outskirts of La Paz, approximately 5,200 metres above sea level. Bolivian authorities affirm that the researchers were sent to study the effects of high altitudes on soldiers to be sent to conflict areas such as Afghanistan.

Washington has claimed that the delegation was sent for scientific and touristic purposes.

Government Minister Carlos Romero stated “This is a colonialist and imperialist action, considering that they [the U.S.] can enter a territory and do as they see fit.”

The incident is one of the many that Bolivian authorities claim as evidence of U.S. interference in the country’s internal affairs, and which they plan to present to President Barack Obama.

In an official referendum called by the Puerto Rican government, 61.82% of Puerto Ricans voted in favour of becoming the United States’ 51st state.

The two other options on the ballot were to maintain their actual status as an unincorporated territory of the United States, or independence; these options respectively got 32.89% and 5.29% of the vote.

Puerto Rico Capitol in San Juan (Wikimedia)

Although the United States Congress must approve any change to Puerto Rico’s status, President Barack Obama has publicly supported the referendum and pledged that he would respect the will of Puerto Ricans if there was a clear majority.

The referendum’s first question was whether Puerto Ricans were satisfied with the current political status of the island, to which 53.83% answered no.

Puerto Rico is officially part of the United States since 1898’s Spanish-American war; up until then, it had been part of Spain’s territory. Since 1917 people born in Puerto Rico are granted United States citizenship but are not allowed to vote unless they are residents of one of the 50 US states.

The status of “unincorporated territory” was granted in 1952 and in the three referendums held since then, in 1967, 1993, and 1998, Puerto Ricans had rejected both independence and full state membership. Puerto Rico’s status has been controversial throughout the 20th century. Despite having restricted rights they have been subject to duties such as military service and drafts, effectively fighting wars started by a congress they had no say in.

Governor Elect Alejandro García Padilla (Wikimedia)

The referendum, in which 2.4m were eligible to vote, was held on the same day that the island voted for its governor, in which Alejandro García Padilla, from the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) won by a narrow margin. Padilla had said in an interview with Efe recently that he was in favour of maintaining the current political status of the island.

Padilla defeated incumbent governor Luis Fortuño from the New Progressive Party (PNP) that has had a difficult term marked by constant conflict with the Puerto Rican trade unions that led to general strike in 2009. Since his election four years ago the outgoing governor has failed to pick up the island’s economy with unemployment at 15%, while an increase in drug trafficking-related violence led to  more than 1,100 deaths in 2011.

In a nationally broadcasted speech today in recognition of National Rebellion Day, Cuban President Raúl Castro reiterated his desire to open a dialogue with the United States.

Castro spoke in front of thousands of citizens in the Revolution Square Marinana Grajales in the Eastern state of Guantánamo. The leader stated, “the Cubans are a peaceful people… we like to make friends with all, including the United States.”

He stated that from the perspective of the Cuban government, “the table is set” for a dialogue, provided that the discussion is “open and between equals.”

Although the leader expressed openness to discussing topics such as human rights, freedom of the press, and democracy, he emphasised that such a conversation could only be possible with “equal conditions, because we are neither subjects, nor colonies, nor puppets of anyone”.

The leader further stated, “If they want confrontation, let it be only in sports, preferably baseball.”

Castro has expressed a desire to open a dialogue in the past. Relations between the two countries have advanced slightly under the administration of Barack Obama, however, the US systematically states that any possibility for further dialogue or increased bilateral relations is dependent on certain conditions, among them the creation of a multi-party system on the island.

In the speech given not far from the US’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the leader expressed, “One cannot direct the world, that is crazy. And much less based in lies, in repeated lies…That is what they do”. Just before President Castro’s speech, Cuban Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura denounced the presence of the US military base in Cuba and labelled it a violation of international law.

Today, Castro also criticised Cuban dissidents, stating that they seek to destabilise the country and hope to create the conditions in Cuba that would allow “that one day what happened in Libya would happen here.”

National Rebellion Day recognises the 26th July 1953 attack on two military barracks occupied by the forces of Fulgencio Batista, the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes garrisons.  The assault, lead by young revolutionaries, including Raúl Castro and his brother Fidel Castro.

Although the revolutionaries lost that morning, the battle is recognised as the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, which lasted until 1959. Indeed, Castro’s revolutionary movement came to be known as the ‘26th July Movement’ in commemoration of this very attack. Both Castro brothers were captured during the attack, but were freed in 1955 when Batista released all political prisoners because of political pressure.

Ceremonies began early this morning in Guantanamo, as more than one hundred students staged a dramatised commemoration of the historic battle.

Argentina has submitted a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) against both the United States and Japan claiming their restrictions on Argentine exports are “unjustifiable.”

The Foreign Ministry submitted the complaint claiming that both the US and Japan have been putting up unfair barriers against Argentine meat and citrus fruit.

In an official statement the Foreign Ministry said, “There is no scientific justification for the long delay in recognizing Argentina’s health status and sanitary conditions, which is already recognized by the World Animal Welfare Organization.”

They argue that the refusal to accept Patagonia as a region free of foot-and-mouth disease is unfounded and that fresh, chilled and frozen meat is perfectly safe.

In addition, the ministry questioned the delay in the reopening of the North American market for citrus fruit. The US has been limiting and denying Argentine lemon export permits for the past seven years.

Japan, on the other hand, has been putting up barriers against Argentine packed meat.

“Argentina leads various developing countries in the conception of sanitary measures and technical regulations without fundamental science that normally restricts agricultural exports from developing countries in an arbitrary and unjustified manner,” claimed the Foreign Ministry.

They added that these restrictions create an “unbalanced trading system” that even further widens the gap between developed and developing countries.

Argentina’s beef industry is the third largest in the world behind Brazil and Australia. However, beef exports are not an essential part of the Argentine economy, in large part because Argentina consumes most of its beef. This has prevented it from becoming solely an export industry.

Right now the US has set an annual restriction on importing Argentine meat at 20,000 tonnes.

The production of citrus fruit has increased in the country according to a semi-annual US Department of Agriculture report on the Argentina citrus industry for 2010/11. However, exportation rates do not reflect the spike in production, as they are expected to increase only slightly.

The citrus industry includes lemons, oranges, tangerines/mandarins, and grapefruit.

A United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent shot and killed a suspected drug trafficker during an early morning raid near Brus Laguna, a village in northeastern Honduras.

The raid occurred on Saturday morning, after a suspected smuggling plane landed at Brus Laguna’s airport. Four helicopters with Honduran police and members of the DEA’s Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team (FAST) followed the plane’s passengers and cargo into a wooded location. According to US embassy spokesman, Stephen Posivak, four suspects surrendered to arrest, but a fifth reached for a weapon, at which time the DEA agent fired.

The squad seized several weapons and 360 kilograms of cocaine at the site. According to an agreement between the DEA and Honduras police, the agent acted within strict procedure and fired out of self-defence.

The incident highlights the growing involvement of the US in Central American counternarcotics operations.

In May, protests erupted in Honduras after a US-owned helicopter carrying DEA and Honduran police fired on a fishing boat during a drug raid, killing four people, including two pregnant women. The shooting happened near Ahaus in northeastern Honduras when a boat carrying suspected smugglers began firing at the helicopter.

Lucio Baquedano, the mayor of Ahuas, says the four fatalities were innocent civilians not involved in the drug trade.

In response, protestors set government buildings ablaze and demanded US drug enforcers leave.

FAST is a commando-style squad led by former Navy SEALs members, with origins in Taliban-linked narcotics investigations. Now, FAST is commonly deployed to small Central American countries to help resident speciality units fight narcotics trafficking.

Honduras is a popular spot for cocaine shipment headed from South America to the US.

The Colombian-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect at midnight last night, after US president Barack Obama signed the pact yesterday.

Colombian businesses commemorated the agreement with a celebration in Cartagena this morning by sending off of the first US-bound containers, including 4,200 boxes of flowers by plane to Miami. A shipment of textiles and apparel is expected to arrive on US soil in eight days.

“FTA will be a formula for growth [...] as it contributes to growth through the elimination of obstacles and uncertainties,” said Trade minister Sergio Diaz-Granados. It will see Colombian-US trade incur minimal, if not non-existant, import/export tariffs.

Hernando José Gómez, who is the appointed ‘FTA czar’, responsible for the legal and commercial management of the pact, told Colombian daily, The Spectator, that FTA is expected to increase domestic exports to the United States by 35-40% in the next year. It is also thought to generate US$3 billion annually for the South American country.

The FTA was signed in 2006, but was not brought before US congress until last year. Obama pushed the treaty forward at this year’s Summit of the Americas, which took place in Colombia during April. US president Barak Obama announced that the agreement would in fact be implemented after years of stalling, and put into place today.

Problems which have arisen with the agreement has taken six years to put into practice, due to a number of problems, such as Colombia’s poor track record with worker’s rights.

Labour unions complain that the FTA still ignores these human rights abuses, as Colombia reportedly has the highest number of trade union deaths in the world.

Emergency Rally for Human Rights in Colombia (Photo: mar is sea Y)

At the Summit of the Americas in April, US president Barack Obama announced that a free trade agreement with the host country, Colombia, would go into effect on the 15th May 2012, months earlier than expected. The agreement, originally signed in 2006, has stretched over two US administrations, reputedly due to Colombia’s notoriously poor record on workers rights, with the highest level of trade union deaths worldwide.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama publicly opposed a bilateral agreement in a televised debate against John McCain, vowing that he would not push the deal forward until he was “certain they are not killing union leaders.” Four years later, in the face of mounting economic pressure, the Democrats have dismissed previous qualms, seizing the opportunity to intensify trade and investment, on the grounds that Colombia has made “historic progress in workers protections and human rights.”

For Angela María Orozco, a former Colombian minister of trade, the postponement of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is due largely to the “extreme polarity of party politics” in the US; as well as to “Colombia’s delay in negotiating the deal.”

Figures reveal that violence against unionists is slowly being curbed in what is considered to be South America’s most pro-US nation. But, with 40 trade unionists killed in the last year alone, 60% of the total global figure according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), exercising labour rights in Colombia is still a highly precarious act.

Agricultural Exports 

Over the past decade, improved security and foreign investment have bolstered the Colombian economy, which has an expected growth rate of 4.7% in the next year, according to IMF figures. The US has, however, lost US$1bn in agricultural exports to Colombia over a two-year period due to regional accords and international competition.

Total US agricultural exports to Colombia plummeted from US$1.8bn in 2008 to US$827m in 2010, while Argentina’s agricultural exports to Colombia rose from US$457m in 2008 to $1bn in 2010, according to a report by the US Senate foreign relations committee. Colombia currently applies tariff protections on all agricultural produce, including some of over 100%. The FTA will provide duty-free access on 77% of all agricultural products, accounting for 52% of US exports to Colombia.

Farm workers carry sacks of coffee beans in Colombia's southwestern Cauca department. (Photo:Neil Palmer (CIAT))

In the short term, Orozco predicts, “displaced employment” is probable. But, she argues, “in the medium and long term, this will mean greater competitiveness for the country and will bring in foreign investment, both from the US and from other countries which have trade agreements with Colombia.”

In October, Obama stated that the implementation of the agreement “will significantly boost exports that bear the proud label ‘Made in America’, support tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs and protect labour rights, environmental and intellectual property.”

The ratification of the FTA is a victory for Obama, and for advocates of the belief that foreign trade can prop up the US economy in the face of rising protectionism across party lines. But the economic benefits of the removal of trade tariffs are reported to be “negligible” for the country, according to a federal agency estimate in 2007, with an increase in gross domestic product of US$14.4bn, or approximately 0.1%.

Moreover, the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), a trade preference system designed to promote alternatives to illegal drug production, already boasts Colombian exports.

Many US exports to Colombia, on the other hand, are subject to duties as high as 35%, which has caused the US business community to argue that the FTA would put US producers on a level playing field, granting them equal access to Colombian markets.

At a time when Latin America is deepening regional integration, cultivating strong ties with Colombia is seen as a strategic move on the part of the US government. One which, undoubtedly, bears domestic political currency in the lead up to the 2012 presidential elections.

Colombia might also thank China for the ratification of the agreement. Evidence from the US Senate foreign relations committee forecasts that China, already Colombia’s second largest trading partner, will oust the US if an agreement is not implemented.

Obama’s support for the measures has provoked outrage among his political base, including labour groups who fear that foreign competition will lead to unemployment back home. According to US union leader Richard Trumka, the signing of the agreement is “deeply disappointing and troubling” since it “perpetuates a destructive economic model that expands the rights and privileges of big businesses and multinational corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, and the environment.”

Violence and Impunity

Since 1991, Colombia’s National Trade Union School (ENS) estimates there have been 2,245 killings, 3,400 threats and 138 enforced disappearances of trade unionists in the country. Impunity in these cases is over 90%. The Attorney General’s Office, which oversees the prosecution of such crimes, has opened investigations into more than 1,300 cases of anti-union violence. However, of the 298 cases of trade unionist murders between 2002 and 2004 under investigation, only four have resulted in a sentence, that is to say, just over 1.3%.

Human Rights March against the violence in Bogotá 2009 (Photo courtesy Nuevo Arco Iris)

According to Luis Celis, the political coordinator of NGO Nuevo Arco Iris, the high level of violence is attributed to the “affiliation of local governments, armed forces and police with the paramilitaries.” Moreover, the persistence of the armed conflict and territorial struggles are also contributive factors.

In response to increasing pressure from the US, the Colombian government has launched a new Labour Ministry to oversee the Action Plan Related to Labour Rights, initiated in April 2011.

For Orozco, the trade agreement has prompted measures which will ensure a “greater transparency and flexibility in administrative procedures.”

But, Celis argues, institutional impunity is still entrenched in the system and continues to “generate a logic of violence. The government needs to send out a message that trade unionists’ crimes will not go unpunished, strengthening the physical, political and judicial protection of trade unionists,” if this is to change.

“The aim is to reduce the death toll to zero,” says Celis. Such was the case in Guatemala, leading up to the ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2006. But since its implementation, trade union violence has skyrocketed and corporate rights remain prioritised above labour concerns.

Human rights activists have argued that while the Action Plan requires Colombia to create new programmes nominally dedicated to protecting unionists, it sets no benchmarks for reducing the homicide rate. They have petitioned accordingly for a number of guarantees built into the agreement, including a mechanism which would void the agreement in the event that violence escalates again.

The US government has refused to meet with the request. But, in an attempt to fend off opposition, the Obama administration has established various programmes by which workers, displaced by foreign competition, are offered retraining schemes and financial aid.

Harmonising Intellectual Property

Besides the controversial lack of union safeguards, the FTA also demands that Colombia abide by US intellectual property legislation.

The copyright bill Lleras 2.0 was pushed through Congress in just 18 days, the shortest period of time on record for a piece of legislation to be passed in Colombia. Critics have challenged the legislation on the grounds that it concentrates on importing homogenised US-style cyber enforcement procedures, while failing to provide protections and limitations for producers and consumers.

In response, a group of international academics have sent a letter to the Colombian legislature, asking them to recalibrate the balance between rights holders and other citizens by introducing flexible limitations and exceptions into the national law. Sean Flynn, a US expert in intellectual property, considers Colombia to be a “starting point in the global ramping up of intellectual property protections through trade agreements” which will lead to a “harmonisation of US norms.”

Encoded in FTAs are regulations which concentrate solely on obligations with regard to proprietor rights, while failing to safeguard other interests that include free expression, access to educational materials and technological innovation, as enshrined in the US Fair Use system.

Intellectual property governs creativity, free expression and innovation, that is to say, domestic policies. According to Flynn, a “one-size-fits-all intellectual property protection law” is likely to harm recipient countries developmentally and hamper economic growth, as well as market opportunities for US pharmaceutical companies and internet service providers.

Regional Alternatives

The revival of support for free trade, initiated by the Bush administration in 2006, comes at a time when both Democrats and right-wing Republicans have adopted anti-trade positions, albeit on different grounds.

Such agreements, which eliminate tariffs and other policies protecting domestic produce, are generally considered to benefit developing nations by creating a common market which jumpstarts industry and reduces poverty. But it is equally clear from recent studies that such deals are also liable to create “enclave economies,” the benefits of which are confined to the international sector and do not translate into growth and prosperity, as is the case with NAFTA in Mexico.

While FTAs continue to require developing countries to eliminate or reduce protection on agricultural and manufacturing exports, they perpetuate an economic model that plays straight into the hand of multinational corporations at the expense of local workers, thus reinforcing US dependency.

Latin America’s internal trade accounts for only 22% of its total commerce. But the increasing presence of Mercosur and the Community of Latin American States and the Caribbean (CELAC), recently created in response to the global economic crisis, is gradually shifting the regional economic landscape. Such blocs offer less rigid, regional alternatives in the face of deepening trade imbalance with the US, carving out a space for burgeoning economies to compete on a level playing field.

“The current commercial networks in Latin America offer enormous opportunities for increasing manufactured exports and added value, since they are the primary consumers of Colombian products,” says Orozco. “Creating a cohesive value chain within the hemisphere” is a priority for the immediate future.

Click here to find out what Argentines think about free trade agreements between Latin American countries and the US.