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WikiLeaks Launches Campaign to Offer $100,000 "Bounty" for Leaked Drafts of Secret TPP Chapters
Despite the Senate vote approving a measure to give President Obama fast-track authority to negotiate the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, opposition to the deal continues to mount ahead of this month’s House vote. Critics, including a number of Democratic lawmakers, oppose the TPP, saying it will fuel inequality, kill jobs, and undermine health, environmental and financial regulations. The negotiations have been secret, and the public has never seen most of the deal’s text. Well, this morning the whistleblowing group WikiLeaks launched a campaign to change that. The group is seeking to raise $100,000 to offer what they describe as a bounty for the leaking of the unseen chapters of the TPP. We speak to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Despite the Senate vote approving a measure to give President Obama fast-track authority to negotiate the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, opposition to the deal continues to mount ahead of this month’s House vote. Critics, including a number of Democratic lawmakers, oppose the TPP, saying it will fuel inequality, kill jobs, and undermine health, environmental and financial regulations. The negotiations have been secret, and the public has never seen most of the deal’s text. Well, this morning, the whistleblowing group WikiLeaks launched a campaign to change that. The group is seeking to raise $100,000 to offer what they describe as a bounty for the leaking of the unseen chapters of the TPP. WikiLeaks just posted this video online.
NARRATOR: WikiLeaks is raising a $100,000 reward for the missing chapters on America’s most wanted secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And this is why.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: TPP is for American businesses, American businesses, businesses, businesses.
MIKE SYNAN: It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it might not sound important to you, until you hear Democrats railing against their own president and saying your job could be on the line.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Who will benefit from the TPP?
LORI WALLACH: It is enforceable corporate global governance.
THOM HARTMANN: It is a giant giveaway to monster transnational corporations.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, telecom, big polluters and outsourcers are all salivating at the chance to rig the upcoming trade deals in their favor.
NARRATOR: All 29 chapters of the TPP are secret, but three of them have been WikiLeaked. So what do we know so far?
THOM HARTMANN: The United States has negotiated the TPP almost entirely in secret, with the help of about 600 private corporations.
NARRATOR: The TPP is a multitrillion-dollar treaty that is being negotiated behind closed doors by the Obama administration. They say it’s a free trade deal, but in reality it is anything but free. And 80 percent of it isn’t even about trade.
MELINDA ST. LOUIS: There are 29 chapters. Only five of them have to do with trade. They have to do with our freedom on the Internet. They have to do with the financial regulation, of food and product safety.
NARRATOR: The treaty covers nearly half of the world’s economy and is the largest ever negotiated. It will have implications beyond matters of trade, intruding into almost every aspect of people’s lives. The TPP bans favoring local businesses. Experts say it will send millions of jobs overseas and drive down wages and conditions at home. Multinational corporations will be able to sue the government for passing laws, including on the environment and health protections that they claim affect their expected future profit.
JOHN OLIVER: That’s right. A company was able to sue a country over a public health measure through an international court. How the [bleep] is that possible? Philip Morris International, a company with annual net revenues of $80 billion, basically threatened to sue Togo, whose entire GDP is $4.3 billion. Togo, justifiably terrified by threats of billion-dollar settlements, backed down from a public health law that many people wanted. And it’s not just Togo. Two tobacco companies sued Australia in its highest court. Philip Morris International is currently suing Uruguay. British American Tobacco sent a similar letter to Namibia, ... the Solomon Islands.
NARRATOR: Pharmaceutical companies will be allowed to expand their monopolies, restricting the availability of affordable generic drugs. The TPP requires Internet service providers to become Internet policemen, watching your every click. It is a one-way ticket. Once signed, it will be locked in place for decades. But the scariest thing about the TPP is that there are 26 chapters that cover our daily lives that we have not seen.
AMY GOODMAN: Part of a new video released by WikiLeaks today. Well, on Memorial Day, I traveled to London and interviewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he’s lived for nearly three years with political asylum. Assange faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. I asked him about WikiLeaks’ TPP campaign.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, we are raising $100,000, which we think won’t be any problem at all, in pledges, for the 29 chapters of the TPP. Now, we have already obtained four and published four, but we’d also like updated versions of those four. Now, why is this so important? This agreement covers 40 percent of the global economy, and it lays the foundations for a new system of international law that will be embedded in all the economies involved. And it is a predecessor agreement to something called the TTIP, which is the U.S.-EU version. So, it’s going—
AMY GOODMAN: Called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment—
JULIAN ASSANGE: Partnership.
AMY GOODMAN: —Partnership.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, so this is going to cover more than 60 percent of GDP. And it is the framework, if it gets through, of international law, and filtering into domestic law. It is the construction of a new world, a new way of doing things, a new legal regime. So it’s, in historical terms, the largest-ever such agreement negotiated. And so that’s the importance. But we also want to also demonstrate that whistleblowers who give information in relation to this, they shouldn’t be chased or harassed, they should be celebrated. They should be celebrated like the Nobel Prize celebrates people who do good work, for the Nobel Prize. And so, I think we can achieve not just encouragement and incentive for people to look for such information, but rather, we can award and celebrate their courage and tenacity in getting a hold of it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in a sense, you’re saying it’s not paying for the information, but it’s prize money for turning it over?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, it’s prize money for demonstrating the courage and tenacity in finding such information.
AMY GOODMAN: Can we go to the issue of journalism in the United States and how it’s being practiced today when it comes to whistleblowers, the issue of what it means to get information from a whistleblower, how you get that information? You have said you feel this is deeply endangered now and that laws are being considered that would criminalize journalism.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Right. Well, we want to take a—we also want to take a strong stand in relation to this. Now, the U.S. government, in terms of its attack on WikiLeaks, has tried to construct a theory which, if permitted, will be the end of national security journalism, not just in the United States, but also about the United States. That claim is that journalists can’t solicit information from sources and to solicit information is to be involved in a conspiracy. And—
AMY GOODMAN: An accomplice to the conspiracy.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah. And the United States, in terms of the charge types that it’s trying to charge me with—those include conspiracy and conspiracy to commit espionage—this is rubbish. We cannot tolerate this at the political level or the media level. If we do tolerate it, then that standard will be erected. Then what happens in practice? How does traditional investigative journalism work? Well, you hear a rumor about some event occurring. Let’s say it’s an assassination squad assassinating people. You hear a rumor that there might have been an event, and you go and speak to your sources, or perhaps one approaches you and says, "I heard that this happened." And then you say, "Well, that’s good, but we need to be able to prove it. So do you have information that can prove it?" And then they say, "Well, I think I might have some report on the incident." And then you say, "Well, that’s good. Can we have that report? Can we see that report?" And that’s the way journalism has always been done. Now, the U.S. DOJ—
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the smoking gun.
JULIAN ASSANGE: That’s the smoking gun. That’s—if you see the Edward Snowden case, without that, without those documents, you don’t get anywhere. If you’ve got that, then they’re undeniable, if they’re official documents. So, we cannot allow a standard to be erected, in national security journalism or other forms of investigative journalism, where that is not permitted, where that is seen to be unlawful. And a number of journalists, as a result of the DOJ pushing this line that it is unlawful to solicit tips from sources, have been—to protect themselves, they have said that they’re not. But as a result, a new standard is being erected—is in danger of being erected, where you cannot solicit tips from sources.
Now, we even fell into this mistake back in 2011, 2012, where our situation was quite precarious. Based on legal advice, WikiLeaks doesn’t solicit information. In fact, WikiLeaks is one of the few organizations, because of our infrastructure, that we do often get unsolicited information. But we think it’s necessary to hold the line and say, "No, asking for tips is a very important thing to do. It’s always been done in journalism." And we’re going to show that we do that. We are confident about doing that. We are confident that that is legal, under most judicial systems, and it should be legal also in the United States—we say it is legal under the First Amendment. And if the U.S. DOJ wants to have a fight about that in relation to the TPP or anything else, then bring it on.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, speaking inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has taken refuge for the past three years. I interviewed him on Memorial Day. You can go to democracynow.org to see the two hours of our exclusive interview [hour one, hour two].
Also go to democracynow.org for the graduation speech you weren’t supposed to hear. The response has been tremendous when we played it yesterday on Democracy Now! And now we’ve posted part two of our interview with Evan Young, the Colorado charter high school valedictorian who was barred from speaking at graduation because he was planning to come out as gay. That’s democracynow.org. When we come back, Cuba. Stay with us.
Organic Farming Flourishes in Cuba, But Can It Survive Entry of U.S. Agribusiness?
Over the past 25 years, Cuba has built a largely organic farming system out of necessity. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba lost its main supplier of fertilizers and pesticides. What will the changing U.S.-Cuban relationship mean for Cuban farmers? We air a video report from a farm outside Havana produced by Democracy Now!'s Karen Ranucci and Monica Melamid. We also speak to filmmaker Catherine Murphy, who has studied Cuba's agricultural system.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We continue our coverage of Cuba with Catherine Murphy, a filmmaker who lived and studied in Cuba in the ’90s. Her film titled Maestra explores the stories of the youngest women teachers in the 1961 national literacy campaign in Cuba. Catherine Murphy joins us from Miami.
We want to welcome you to Democracy Now! We’re going to be playing another piece of Karen Ranucci’s looking at organic agriculture, very interesting in Cuba, Catherine. But it also goes to the issue of private enterprise, not just small mom-and-pop shops, you know, restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, but what about the multinationals? How are they preparing to enter Cuba, Catherine?
CATHERINE MURPHY: Well, yes, I think there is a lot of desire on behalf of the multinationals to enter Cuba for the untapped markets, with a large buyer, even though there are only—well, there are 11 million people on the island, but there are central buyers for key food and agriculture products. So it’s a large market for the corporations. They are hungry to get into those markets. But the Cubans, I think, have both a need for increasing key imports and also a lot of healthy skepticism of not having—not giving the corporations too much space, not losing key industries on the island and not losing control over key sectors of the economy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go to this second piece of Karen Ranucci’s from her recent trip to Cuba, this one looking at organic farming on the island. It begins with Fernando Funes Jr., who runs a farm outside of Havana.
FERNANDO FUNES JR.: This land belongs to the previous farmer living here. He is now 96 years old. The land still belongs to him, and I farm the land. So it’s part of the appropriation of the land, but in another way. So you care the land, you farm the land, and until you can.
Well, we started here with one bed two years ago, and now we have more than 100 beds, in which we produce vegetables to sell directly to the consumers in the city. All what we do here is based on organic agriculture practices. And there is a criticism about organic agriculture, which is not able to feed the world. And we think it’s the opposite. We can take advantage of the knowledge already accumulated for hundreds of years of farmers and the knowledge from science. We manage the system in a way that doesn’t need the use of pesticides.
We have beehives in the farm. When you have enough beehives to start as a beekeeper, then the government starts providing you this advice, technical advice, and also inputs the boxes and other materials necessary to grow faster. And we don’t see that problem that is already identified in different countries, like in the United States, about beehive or honey collapse. We see that they are growing very, very well.
In the last year, there is more and more possibilities for farmers and for the whole population to participate in the economic relationships that follow food production or services. There is the possibility to start new businesses based on food distribution and also on food processing, in order to increase the capacity to make use of production. With organic agriculture, with agroecology, we are able to produce healthy food in order to grow healthy people in the cities and in the whole country. And when we have this kind of system, then we can also assure that we have enough labor for the people in the countryside and better expectation for them to live better from their work.
WOMAN FARMER 1: [translated] I was a librarian.
WOMAN FARMER 2: [translated] I worked in public health and then in a day care center.
WOMAN FARMER 3: [translated] I worked in a dairy factory making yogurt for children.
WOMAN FARMERS: [translated] We earn more here.
WOMAN FARMER 1: [translated] I worked in education for 10 years, and my salary equaled $15 per month. It was never enough, because I had to commute back and forth, and it was expensive. Since I came here, I am doing better economically.
WOMAN FARMER 3: [translated] I’m doing better, too. Now I can raise pigs for food, which is very expensive.
WOMAN FARMER 2: [translated] The food situation is critical, because it’s very expensive. Cuba is an underdeveloped county, but it is a good country. Here, if someone needs blood or an operation, the state takes care of it.
WOMAN FARMER 3: [translated] It’s all free.
WOMAN FARMER 2: [translated] Yeah, it’s all free. In other countries, if you don’t have the money, you die. Not here.
FERNANDO FUNES JR.: Now, we have, for two months, not rains in the farm. It’s been very hard for us. We were watering last night until 8:00 in the night by hand, in order to make better use of the water we have available at this moment. In the future, in the near future, we plan to have irrigation systems for all the beds. This well was made by hand, and we dug until the 40 meters deep by hand. And there was one man that had enough will to dig the well as much as I had, and was Juan Machado.
JUAN MACHADO: [translated] I was 14 years old when I learned to find water. Here it is. Right here, there is running water. Look! Look! I’m not doing anything, and the stick is going up. Look! Here’s the water.
FERNANDO FUNES JR.: We went already to different places around, to different farms, where Machadito identified water. And I went with him, and I am trying to learn. So we are trying to connect all the energy possibilities in the farm in order not to use oil. We pump the water with the solar panels and the solar pump. Then we collect—we capture the manure and the urine to this mixing tank. The slurry, the manure with water, goes to the biodigester. We have there a tank of 10 cubic meters. The first layer is fresh manure. The biogas press the already fermented manure, and that goes out. We’re getting out the energy in biogas that has the manure, and then we use that biogas for cooking, and we have enough biogas to cook every day as much food as we need. Michael is writing his Ph.D. thesis. Now he’s living at the farm, and we are sharing the—let’s say, the administration or the design of the farming system.
MICHAEL: For those of us involved in sustainable farming, to open relations with the U.S. or to lift the blockade means that many agrochemical companies want to invest in Cuba. These companies investing in Cuba doesn’t mean there would be enough food for everyone—1.2 billion people worldwide are hungry. Despite more agrochemical investment, despite having warehouses full of food, these are companies that make profit from the food they produce. Just because they produce doesn’t solve the hunger problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Special thanks to Democracy Now!’s Karen Ranucci as well as Monica Melamid for that report in Cuba. Our guest right now, Catherine Murphy, who was on that trip, also a filmmaker, who has lived and studied in Cuba. Can you fit the organic agriculture movement in Cuba into the bigger picture? Catherine, is Cuba the only country in the world that gave millions of hectares, of acres to people who grow and farm?
CATHERINE MURPHY: Well, part of what happened in Cuba was that in the mid-’80s Cuba had a highly mechanized and industrialized agriculture system. They had more tractors per capita than any country in Latin America, and they were investing a lot of money into national food production. But nonetheless, they were still importing 57 percent of the calories eaten on the island from the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries. So, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Cuba lost those imports immediately, within a two-, three-year period, along with a 34, 35 percent contraction of their GDP. It launched Cuba into a major economic crisis, and that was a food and agriculture crisis, as well, in a central way, because of the loss of the direct food imports and also the loss of the many other imports into the agriculture sector upon which national food production had become dependent—again, pesticides, fertilizers, petroleum, tractor spare parts, spare parts for other kind of agriculture machinery. So, they were faced with the daunting task of needing to greatly increase food production with a fraction of the resources available.
Immediately, city residents—in particular, Havana has two million of the 11 million people on the island, live in Havana, largest city in the Caribbean—Havana residents started going out and growing food on empty lots that were close to their homes, using any seeds they could find, with any tools that were available, and literally on any space that was near their homes, including some in their homes—patios, balconies, rooftops. And, you know, urban farming was increasing all around the world at that time in the ’90s with global urbanization, but what was different about Havana was that the city government and other structures started to look at how could they strategically support this booming victory garden movement, as opposed to other cities around the world where urban food production became illegal and sometimes people were run off. The Havana city government started to look at, well, how can we support food producers in the city, not only support them, but really recognize that food production is a major national priority.
So, they started finding ways to give urban food producers use rights to land through usufruct, give them sales permits to do direct sales from onsite, help them find ways to get water, and help them with training and—training and resources. But really, the kind of agriculture that’s necessary in small spaces, this highly diversified, intensive planting, was not the kind of agriculture that had happened in Cuba traditionally, so there was a whole new body of knowledge that needed to come to these already farming urban farmers. And so, a permaculture movement was born. The Council of Churches got involved—many community organizations, the Women’s Federation—in helping to strategically support the urban farmers.
And within several years, they really helped to turn around the most critical part of the food crisis, which was dramatic. I think it’s hard to imagine. The caloric intake fell by about half. The average Cuban lost 10 to 20 pounds of body weight. There were a number of health epidemics, including a neuropathy—an eye neuropathy epidemic that resulted in nervous system damage and some eye and vision damage. So, this rapid decrease in caloric intake was a serious—was really seen as the most serious problem on the island at the time and became a priority issue to solve. So, with this public-private partnership, they were able to turn it around, and within just a few years, there were tens of thousands of urban gardens around the city, and peri-urban gardens, and they were growing 30 to 50 percent of the fresh vegetables eaten on the island, introducing vegetables that had never been eaten in Cuba before, like broccoli, cauliflower, some things like eggplant that weren’t so common, and really improved the quality of the diet—I mean, a lot of those especially green, leafy vegetables, providing key micronutrients in the lack of other proteins.
And it changed the cityscape. It changed—it vastly improved the food security situation, but it also changed the cityscape. It provided tens of thousands of jobs, significantly for retired people and for women and for youth, and provided—
AMY GOODMAN: Catherine, today—
CATHERINE MURPHY: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —since we only have 30 seconds, how much food is imported into Cuba? How much do they rely on outside food? And this organic food movement, how—or farming movement, how much hope do you think it has in a new Cuba?
CATHERINE MURPHY: The figures around how much food is imported to Cuba today is hotly contested. It’s still the majority. Some figures show 50 percent, up to 80 percent, of the food is still imported. Wheat, for example, you can’t grow in the tropics; they have to import it. They import a lot of frozen chicken from the United States through Tyson Foods and others. They import rice. But they are still increasing food production on the island of roots, tubers, rice, beans, fruits and vegetables. And the third agrarian reform that’s happening now, giving land—150,000 people have asked for parcels of land in this new land redistribution. About half—
AMY GOODMAN: Catherine, we have to leave it there. I want to thank you so much for being with us, filmmaker Catherine Murphy.
CATHERINE MURPHY: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: And also this happening today, landmark act of sports diplomacy: Soccer’s New York Cosmos on Tuesday will become the first U.S. professional team to play in Cuba since Presidents Castro and Obama announced their countries would re-establish diplomatic relations.
The U.S. has formally removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, clearing a main obstacle to restoring diplomatic ties with Havana for the first time in over five decades. Cuba was placed on the terrorism list in 1982 at a time when Havana was supporting liberation struggles in Africa and Latin America. While Cuba is now off the terrorism list, most of the U.S. sanctions remain in place. We speak to historian Jane Franklin, author of "Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Cuba. The U.S. has formally removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, clearing a main obstacle to restoring diplomatic ties with Havana for the first time in over five decades. Cuba was placed on the terrorism list in 1982 at a time when Havana was supporting liberation struggles in Africa and Latin America. State Department spokesperson Jeff Rathke made the announcement on Friday.
JEFF RATHKE: We’ve issued this morning a statement about the rescission of Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. It takes—it is effective today, May 29th, 2015. And this reflects our assessment after undertaking the review that was requested by the president, our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission.
AMY GOODMAN: Former Cuban diplomat Carlos Alzugaray praised the Obama administration’s decision.
CARLOS ALZUGARAY TRETO: In the first place, we shouldn’t have been on that list ever, because Cuba has never supported terrorist activities. As President Raúl Castro has said, it is Cuba who has been the victim of terrorist activities. What does it mean? It means that Cuba can operate more safely now, that our citizens are not going to be subject to harassment because they come from a terrorist country, that our companies will be able to operate normally with banks. So, there are a number of benefits. And a very important benefit has to do with the internal workings of the United States system.
AMY GOODMAN: While Cuba is now off the terrorism list, most of the U.S. sanctions remain in place. Today we’ll spend the rest of the hour looking at the changing U.S.-Cuban relations. Joining us here in New York is Jane Franklin, author and historian of Cuba. Her book, Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History, is now available in Spanish. She’s also the author of Cuban Foreign Relations: A Chronology, 1959-1982. Franklin just gave a talk at the Left Forum called "Cuba’s Long Resistance to Miseries in the Name of Freedom." Her writings on Cuba are available at JaneFranklin.info.
The significance of the U.S. taking Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Jane?
JANE FRANKLIN: It is one of the major obstacles—or was—to normalization of relations with Cuba. When President Obama and President Castro announced the attempt to improve relations and move toward normalization, this was one of the main obstacles, along with the embargo, the trade embargo, and the base at Guantánamo still occupied by U.S. armed forces. And so, this is a major reduction of the obstacle. There are plenty left, though.
AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean, exactly? What now can Cuba do, now that it’s off the list?
JANE FRANKLIN: For one thing, it cannot be called a terrorist nation, which has a lot to do with relations with other countries, especially in Europe, and also with its relations with banks. Banks don’t want to invest in a country that’s called a terrorist country, because the United States fines banks for trading with Cuba if there’s a sanction against that. And now there isn’t, because Cuba is not on the list of terrorist nations.
AMY GOODMAN: In April, Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio of Florida blasted the Obama administration’s plan to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terror.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Well, the decision made by the White House today is a terrible one, but not surprising, unfortunately. Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism. They harbor fugitives of American justice, including someone who killed a police officer in New Jersey over 30 years ago. It’s also the country that’s helping North Korea evade weapons sanctions by the United Nations. They should have remained on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. And I think it sends a chilling message to our enemies abroad that this White House is no longer seriously—serious about calling terrorism by its proper name.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Marco Rubio, "sends a chilling message to our enemies abroad." Jane Franklin?
JANE FRANKLIN: Well, Marco Rubio’s parents left Cuba when Batista was the dictator of Cuba. So, they knew what a repressive government was like. Marco Rubio has not been to Cuba under this new government, the revolutionary government. If he went there and experienced it—
AMY GOODMAN: Meaning he hasn’t been there at all?
JANE FRANKLIN: No, no. He was born in this country after his parents left Cuba, before the revolution. So, he needs to go there and experience Cuba as it is now.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what—why this happened now?
JANE FRANKLIN: That is a very interesting question, Amy. A paradigm shift happened in 2009 when the Organization of American States voted to renew Cuba’s membership or presence in the Organization of American States. It had been suspended in 1962. President Obama made it clear he would not attend an OAS summit in 2012 if Cuba was in attendance. Meanwhile—and this is the paradigm shift—Cuba and other nations were joining together in the Latin American and Caribbean Community of Nations, CELAC, which was formed officially in 2011 in Venezuela, when President Hugo Chávez was the initiator of this fabulous organization, which contains all nations of the Western Hemisphere except for the United States and Canada. So, that switched from being an OAS, which had all the nations, with Cuba suspended, to an organization that excludes the United States. This was in 2011.
In 2012 at the summit, the countries in OAS voted again that Cuba be present at the OAS summit in 2015. President Obama and the head of the Canadian government voted against that, so there was no final statement. Obama was faced with two choices: He could isolate himself even further by not attending if President Raúl Castro attended, or he could be a statesman. He decided to try to be a statesman. And he began the secret negotiations the next year, 2013, that led to the announcements last December. So, when the announcements were made last December, the setup was for the 2015 summit. He wanted to be able to greet President Raúl Castro as a statesman. And he did do that, except for one major flub, which was, in March, he declared that Venezuela was a threat to the national security of the United States, which was such an absurd statement that he had to retract it very soon. And he ended up at the summit with Raúl Castro. So, I think it happened now because Latin America and the Caribbean states forced his hand.
AMY GOODMAN: What does this mean now, as Cuba opens up to the United States?
JANE FRANKLIN: It’s a wonderful step forward, because everything is on the table now. Josefina Vidal, who heads the delegation in these negotiations for Cuba, makes it very clear that they can talk about anything and negotiate anything. They are open to changing things. They are open to all kinds of discussion, maybe even some concessions, except for one major policy: They want to retain their independence and sovereignty. That is what they are determined to do and are doing in these negotiations.
Video Postcard from Havana: Cuban Tourism Industry Adapts During These Changing Times
As the United States moves to normalize relations with Cuba, more than a million Americans are expected to visit the island this year. How will this change Cuba? Who will prosper? Democracy Now!’s Karen Ranucci and Monica Melamid recently traveled to Cuba, where they produced this piece on the growing private tourism industry.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Cuba for a moment. Democracy Now!’s Karen Ranucci recently traveled to Cuba, where she produced this piece on the growing private tourism industry during these changing times in Cuba.
KAREN RANUCCI: In many ways, Cuba seems to be in a time warp. But things are changing quickly. Since the December 17th announcement by President Obama that the U.S. would relax some aspects of its economic and trade embargo, Americans have flooded the island, with more than a million expected to visit this year. With already increased travel, hotels are now booked months in advance.
The Cuban government has been forming economic partnerships with corporations all around the world, leaving the U.S. out of the equation. Now all the tourist buses are imported from China. They have partnered with Brazil and China in a megaproject to reconstruct the port at Mariel Bay to allow containers filled with imports to enter the harbor.
There is everything you want, if you can shop using foreign currency. But for those who earn only pesos, choices in the government-subsidized store have dwindled, causing increased economic polarization. Since Raúl Castro became president, restrictions on small businesses have been eased. Now you can earn money privately, but must pay taxes on those earnings.
Have the new economic changes been good for you?
FRUIT VENDOR 1: [translated] It’s very good, because now there are possibilities to work.
FRUIT VENDOR 2: [translated] Yeah, but it pays very little.
FRUIT VENDOR 1: [translated] It’s true, and I have to get up at 4:00 a.m. to find the fruit.
SINGLE MOTHER: [translated] I’m a single mother of two kids. I have my coffee shop. It provides me with what I need for her and the household expenses. It’s just much easier now with the new rules.
KAREN RANUCCI: Cuba Libro is a new private business started by Conner Gorry, an American expat who has lived in Cuba for 13 years. Her idea was to create a space where foreign visitors could have conversations with everyday Cubans.
CONNER GORRY: All of this tourism, all of this private business is bringing more money into Cuban coffers, so that they can dedicate that money to the social safety net—free education, free healthcare, housing, etc.—and improve all of the services for everybody written in the constitution. On the other hand, it is creating inequalities for people who can’t enter into the private sector or they can’t patronize businesses that are in the private sector. That’s a real danger. We’re seeing it happen. What we’d like to see is a network of socially responsible businesses. That provides hope for moving forward so that the two different kind of models can work together.
KAREN RANUCCI: People all over Havana are renting rooms in their homes. And Airbnb just listed a thousand Cuban rentals.
TERESITA: [translated] My name is Teresita. I rent out rooms here in my house. The hope is in the negotiations, that this absurd blockade will be lifted. This is a problem between governments and a minority in Miami who are against Cuba. The U.S. will gain. All of Cuba is buying from Spain, Canada, France, but it’s very expensive due to the distance. We are just starting to learn how to have a private business. I was born in 1951 and was formed under a socialist system. Well, it’s still socialist, but I have to learn. I have a stack of books, and I will learn, little by little.
KAREN RANUCCI: Hundreds of private restaurants have been opening in every nook and cranny.
RESTAURANT WORKER: We are in a house that dates from 1776, part of the historic patrimony of Havana. As you can see, everything here is made with love. We all feel like we are part of this place. When you work for the state, you don’t feel the same way. When it belongs to the state, it’s like it belongs to someone else. And this feels like it’s ours. We’re all invested in this place, and we care about every little detail. It’s not exactly a cooperative. It has an owner, and we are workers. We’re friends with the owner, practically family. Many of his family members work here, too. We get part of the sales, and that has made an increase in our pay. The more we sell, the more we earn. We’re very happy about the opening with the U.S. It’s a blessing, like fresh air for us. We are very happy and hope that people will come now and see what we are really like.
ROLANDO ALMIRANTE: My name is Rolando Almirante. I’m one of the people that is involved in this project, very adventurous project, a retro Soviet restaurant in the heart of Havana. I used to study in the country which doesn’t exist anymore, the Soviet Union. We captured a little bit of the aesthetics of the time, but also the taste of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarus and some other cuisines.
Come here. Come with me. This is a little private room dedicated to the tsars, the tsars saloon. And, of course, the vodka bar. The vodka bar, we also display here a kind of a varieties of vodka. We’re receiving every week like a lot of American visitors. The human necessity is arising. And the Americans are coming, I mean, more and more.
CHEF: [translated] Before, I worked in both government and private restaurants. The two are very different, you know? The pay is not the same.
KITCHEN WORKER: [translated] I worked in a factory. I earn more here.
ROLANDO ALMIRANTE: We are giving a job to around 30 people. I mean, there are 30 Cubans and 30 families which are now solving their basic problems with a big dignity. They are very, I mean, responsible with the services they provide to their customers. I mean, they will earn more. They will earn more. And this is a person who will be more happy, and he will be happy in the internal area of his family and also in the rest of—the rest of the society. The whole society is trying to not only renovate and to rethink, to rethink the meaning of this socialism.
AMY GOODMAN: Special thanks to Democracy Now!’s Karen Ranucci and Monica Melamid for that piece from Cuba. Jane Franklin is still with us. So, private enterprise in Cuba, your comments?
JANE FRANKLIN: Well, when my husband and I were there in April for the presentation of my book in Spanish translation, we found, for instance, a wonderful paladar right around the corner from our hotel, and we enjoyed eating there whenever we had a chance to eat there. The food was very good, by the way. And the waiters were wonderful. So, what we found, in general, among the Cuban people with whom we talked quite a bit is a great excitement that this is happening, a sense of happiness about the possibilities. And it means so much for the Cuban people that the whole oppressive presence of the United States as a threat to Cuba’s security has been lifted. It may not be gone, but it certainly has been lifted.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about private enterprise and socialism.
JANE FRANKLIN: Well, I think they have to find a mix, a way to balance the two. There’s no conflict as far as actual economics goes. And as Josefina Vidal has said over and over again, they welcome the chance to deal with this challenge. They’re not afraid of it, because they have their own culture, their own educational system. The main thing that we were impressed with in Cuba is the education of the average person that we spoke with. I mean, they know so much. Here in the United States, we are very misinformed and uninformed. In Cuba, they do get a lot of news, and they pay attention to that news. If you want me to go into that a bit, I was on national Cuban TV about six times while I was there. People would walk up to me in the street and say, "la escritora," you know, "the writer." And they were so excited to meet somebody who was writing about the history of Cuba. So, this is built into the culture now. It’s part of the culture.
AMY GOODMAN: Jane Franklin, I want to thank you for being with us. Jane Franklin, author and historian of Cuba. Her book, Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History, is available in Spanish and English. She’s also author of Cuban Foreign Relations. She just gave a talk at Left Forum called "Cuba’s Long Resistance to Miseries in the Name of Freedom." This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we look at organic agriculture in Cuba. Stay with us.
Headlines:
China: Hundreds Missing After Cruise Ship Capsizes
In China, hundreds of people are missing after a cruise ship carrying 458 people capsized in the Yangtze River. Five bodies have been recovered, and at least 14 people have been rescued, but the vast majority aboard remain unaccounted for. Rescuers have been tapping on the ship’s hull in a bid to locate survivors.
U.S. Accuses Syria of Backing ISIL’s Offensive in Aleppo
The self-proclaimed Islamic State has launched a new offensive in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo. The militants have pushed back an alliance which includes Western-backed rebels, capturing villages near the Turkish border and coming within 30 miles of a main border crossing between Turkey and Syria. As rebels appealed to the United States for airstrikes to counteract the assault, the U.S. Embassy in Syria accused the Syrian military of carrying out airstrikes to help ISIL’s advance. According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, May marked the bloodiest month so far this year in Syria, with more than 6,650 people killed across the country.
Iraq: ISIL Kills 45 Police with Humvee Suicide Attack in Anbar
In Iraq, suicide bombers from the self-proclaimed Islamic State rammed Humvees packed with explosives into a police base in Anbar province, killing at least 45 Iraqi police officers. The attack resembled the tactics ISIL used to take control of the city of Ramadi, deploying explosive-laden Humvees seized from Iraqi forces. Iraq’s prime minister has acknowledged security forces lost about 2,300 Humvees to ISIL when they retreated from Mosul last year. The Obama administration last year reportedly approved the sale of 1,000 machine-gun-equipped Humvees to Iraq at a cost of $579 million.
U.S. Vows to Continue Pursuing Snowden Despite Backing NSA Reforms
The White House has rejected the possibility of dropping charges against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, despite supporting a bill to overhaul the bulk phone spying program he exposed. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest urged the Senate to pass the USA FREEDOM Act, which would store phone data in the hands of phone companies rather than the NSA. But Earnest refused to consider a shift in the administration’s stance on Snowden, who has asylum in Russia.
Josh Earnest: "The fact is that Mr. Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the U.S. government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them. And that’s why we believe that Mr. Snowden should return to the United States, where he will face due process, and he’ll have the opportunity, if he returned to the United States, to make that case in a court of law."
The bulk surveillance program expired at 12:01 a.m. Monday, after Kentucky Senator Rand Paul blocked efforts to extend it. The Senate is now considering the House-passed USA FREEDOM Act, which would reform bulk spying and reauthorize two other expired provisions of the PATRIOT Act.
U.S. Journalist Casey Coombs Released by Houthis in Yemen
Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen have released a U.S. freelance journalist held captive for about two weeks. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf confirmed the release of Casey Coombs, who writes for The Intercept, BBC and Global Post.
Marie Harf: "U.S. citizen Casey Coombs has departed Yemen and has arrived safely in Muscat, Oman. He is in stable condition. The U.S. ambassador and a consular official met him at the airport upon his arrival and are providing all possible consular assistance."
Supreme Court Sides with Muslim Woman Denied Job over Hijab
In a landmark religious discrimination case, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a Muslim woman rejected from a job for wearing a headscarf. Samantha Elauf was denied a job at an Abercrombie & Fitch store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, because a manager objected to her hijab, which violated the retailer’s rules on employee attire. In a ruling supported by eight of the nine Supreme Court Justices, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, "An employer may not make an applicant’s religious practice, confirmed or otherwise, a factor in employment decisions." Only Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed.
Report: Blacks Twice as Likely to Be Unarmed When Killed by Police
A new investigation by The Guardian has found African Americans are more than twice as likely as white people to be unarmed when they are killed in encounters with police. The Guardian found 102 of the 464 people killed in incidents with law enforcement this year were not carrying weapons — that amounts to just over one in five. But among African Americans, 32 percent of those killed by police were unarmed, compared to 25 percent of Latinos and 15 percent of whites. Meanwhile in Missouri, a report from the state Attorney General’s Office has shown police were 75 percent more likely to stop African-American than white drivers last year, and 73 percent more likely to search them. Yet African Americans who were searched were less likely than whites to possess anything illegal.
Mexico: Teachers Protest Education Reform, Seize Election Offices
In Mexico, 10,000 people took to the streets of Mexico City to protest the neoliberal education reforms of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The protests came after the Mexican government announced it would suspend plans to implement teacher evaluations following mass opposition. Meanwhile, teachers’ union members ransacked election offices in southern Mexico, stealing and burning ballots, seizing 11 offices in the state of Oaxaca and blocking a storage facility of the state-run oil firm Pemex. The teachers have announced a strike to protest the education reforms and boycott Sunday’s midterm elections.
Lindsey Graham Launches GOP Presidential Bid
On the campaign trail in the United States, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has entered the presidential race. Graham launched his campaign Monday with a warning about "radical Islam ... running wild."
Sen. Lindsey Graham: "The world is exploding in terror and violence, but the biggest threat of all is the nuclear ambitions of the radical Islamists who control Iran. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no moderates in Iran running their government."
Senator Lindsey Graham’s campaign launch comes just days after fellow Republican presidential hopeful Senator Rand Paul blamed Graham and other "hawks" in the GOP for the existence of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
Jeb Bush Attends Elite Retreat with Coal Executives
Another presumed Republican presidential hopeful, Jeb Bush, is the top speaker at a secretive meeting of coal company executives in Virginia, which wraps up today. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the closed-door meeting included top Republican Party donors who each paid at least $7,500 to attend the three-day retreat.
Goldman Sachs Managing Director to Become Chief of Staff at SEC
In the latest sign of the revolving door between Wall Street banks and government institutions tasked with regulating them, the Securities and Exchange Commission has confirmed it just hired a managing director of Goldman Sachs to become its chief of staff. Before his stint at Goldman, Andrew "Buddy" Donohue led the SEC’s Investment Management Division during four years spanning the global financial crisis.
Caitlyn Jenner Breaks Internet Record with Unveiling of Transgender Identity
And the Olympic gold medalist and reality TV show star formerly known as Bruce Jenner has broken Internet records following the unveiling of a Vanity Fair cover story about her new identity as a woman. Caitlyn Jenner is the former step-parent of the Kardashian sisters. She announced her transition to living as a woman earlier this year, before unveiling her new name and appearance in Vanity Fair. After her first Twitter post Monday, Jenner broke a world record by garnering a million followers in just four hours; President Obama took a little under five hours to hit the same benchmark. Chase Strangio of the ACLU noted, "Telling [Caitlyn Jenner’s] story with care means using the right name and pronoun, but it also means highlighting the extent to which it is not the typical trans story. ... For example, the facial feminization surgery that Caitlyn describes in Vanity Fair is almost universally excluded from [health insurance] coverage." Jenner’s transition comes as a new U.N. report details "pervasive violent abuse" against LGBT people around the world, with hundreds of hate-related killings in the past few years.
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