Sean Penn on Chavez and Raul Castro
In the cover story of this week's issue of The Nation, actor/filmmaker Sean Penn questions Cuban President Raul Castro in his first-ever interview with the foreign press. In the wide-ranging, seven-hour conversation, Castro discusses his views of President-elect Barack Obama, reflects on his role during the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, and shares details of the secret but ongoing military relationship between the Pentagon and Cuba over Guantanamo.
Penn, making his second trip to Cuba, spoke to Castro at the Presidential Palace in Havana with the knowledge of Castro's brother Fidel. In the interview, Castro:
* Expands on the secret military relationship between the Pentagon and Cuba, detailing a remarkably structured series of monthly meetings, formal response plans to crises on the base, and even a hotline and collaborative emergency response exercises held jointly between the two militaries. This cooperation belies the popular image of two antagonistic nations on the brink of conflict.
* Offered his prediction about the (then) upcoming U.S. Presidential election. "If he is not murdered before November 4," he says of Obama, "he will be your next President."
* Describes the drama and unheard details about the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion.
* Responds forcefully to allegations of human rights violations and suppression of free speech, and defends criticism of Cuba as a haven for the drug trade.
* Extends a surprising olive branch to the United States, proposing a summit with President-elect Barack Obama.
Castro, sipping tea and discussing films as well as politics with Penn, is at times defiant towards the United States. "Iraq is a child's game," he tells Penn, "compared with what would happen if the U.S. invaded Cuba." Largely, though, Castro is respectful towards the United States and it's people, challenging policy ("a blockade is an act of war, so Americans prefer the term embargo") but expressing generosity towards Americans. "The American people are among our closest neighbors," he says. "We should respect each other. We have never held anything against the American people. Good relations would be mutually advantageous. Perhaps we cannot solve all of our problems, but we can solve a good many of them."
In the article, Conversations with Chavez and Castro, Penn also travels to Venezuela as well as to Cuba with journalist Christopher Hitchens and historian Douglas Brinkley. In Venezuela, the group interviewed President Hugo Chavez at length, discussing his view of a potential relationship with President Obama, the Monroe Doctrine and human rights and freedom of expression under his presidency.
I can't edit the OP, of course, but I just wanted to note that I forgot to credit the source for the text. It's HERE.
Sean Penn praises Martelly, downplays Duvalier, and dismisses Aristide
by Roger Annis
Subtitled by the program as an ‘Actor/Humanitarian,’ Penn strongly defended the new neo-colonial order established in Haiti through the foreign-sponsored exclusion election of 2010/11 and the foreign-led, post-quake “reconstruction” plan spearheaded by Bill Clinton.
Penn made no mention of the foreign military occupation force increasingly denounced by Haitians, the United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH)....
Most notable was Penn’s strong praise for Haitian President Michel Martelly, whom he lauded for “decisive leadership” and making “great strides,” although he never named any Martelly programs that so impressed him.
Mr. Penn also defended the Organization of American States (OAS) after it brazenly and shamelessly meddled in Haiti’s sovereign electoral process to bump out of the second round the candidate of former President René Préval’s party in favor of Martelly. Mr. Penn called the OAS’s take-over of the election a “look-over” and applauded U.S. and OAS threats against Haiti’s government and electoral council as benignly “able to ultimately influence what I think was the legitimate inclusion of candidate Martelly who then became President Martelly.” (The Cuban government accurately dubs the OAS Washington’s ‘Ministry of Colonial Affairs.’)
It would truly be “historic” if the U.S. contributed to promoting democracy and “challenging the status quo” in Latin America, but this is hardly what took place.
Most shockingly, Penn called for “reconciliation” with former dictator Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, who returned to Haiti last January. Haitian citizens and human rights groups are working earnestly to have the former tyrant placed on trial for crimes against humanity and embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from the Haitian treasury during his 15 year reign....
Perhaps the best reply to Mr. Penn comes from a Jan. 23 open letter to President Martelly by about two dozen Duvalier regime victims and Haitian human rights groups who, “note with concern and indignation, after one year, Jean-Claude Duvalier is not worried at all, even though he is being prosecuted by the state and complaints from victims. The co-authors and accomplices of his crimes are not worried. The case has not progressed satisfactorily in terms of the need for justice. We object in the most formal manner against this tendency to banalize his dictatorship and disregard the legitimate claims for justice by people who have suffered and continue to suffer in silence in the face of the arrogance and threats of those for whom the law is just a joke... Mr. President, the state authorities cannot continue to play Pontius Pilate.”
Meanwhile, with regard to Aristide, Mr. Penn said he hopes the former president “will have a productive contribution to make outside of politics” [author’s emphasis]....
In the interview’s second instalment, Mr. Penn effusively praised Bill Clinton as “without a doubt the most significant foreign player in Haiti” who is “the great hope of partners of Haiti.”
“When people are critical of President Clinton in this, I think what they have to understand is that most of the billions of dollars that were raised, that they complain has not yet been spent, would not have been in existence if President Clinton had not been there to encourage raising those funds,” Mr. Penn argued.
At the same time, the actor boldly and accurately asserted that “Haiti would have been better off today had there never been a single NGO there in these last 30 years,” that the NGOs have been “a primarily destructive force.”
Unfortunately, Sean Penn is as smitten with Clinton as he is with Martelly. So he concludes that NGOs are now doing a good job and “beginning to align in a way” that is effective,“largely because of the leadership of President Clinton.” In short, Clinton and his deputy Cheryl Mills have reformed the NGO world and contributed mightily to the “miracle of what has happened in only two years.”
Mr. Penn’s pro-U.S. and pro-Martelly positions will not surprise those who read his lengthy response to Janet Reitman's devastating expose of the NGO community in Rolling Stone last September. In that letter to the magazine, the indisputably talented actor explains how he had to adopt an anti-“rich guy” posture when addressing “a group of pro-Aristide, anti-foreign ‘community leaders’” in the IDP camp he helped set up on the grounds of Haiti’s sole country club....
Sadly, Mr. Penn appears to be lending his progressive credentials (which include commendable support for the governments of Cuba and Venezuela) to bolster a rightist, demagogic critique against NGOs made by Martelly, his entourage, and his international celebrity supporters, including the former Governor General of Canada, Michaëlle Jean...
The true allies of the Haitian people, including many international organizations and NGOs, are those who recognize the nefarious intervention of imperialism for what it is and act to counter it in words or in deeds. Sean Penn, regretfully, lends his celebrity and humanitarian spirit to the wrong side of this equation during this crucial chapter in Haiti’s history.
CIA Claims Release of its History of the Bay of Pigs Debacle Would "Confuse the Public."
On the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the release of a five-volume CIA history of the Bay of Pigs affair. In response to the lawsuit, the CIA negotiated to release three volumes of the history - the JFK Assassination Records Review Board had already released Volume III- with limited redaction, currently available on the National Security Archive's website. At the time, the Director of the National Security Archive's Cuba Documentation project, Peter Kornbluh, quipped that getting historic documents released from the CIA was "the bureaucratic equivalent of passing a kidney stone." He was right. The Agency refused to release the final volume of this history, and the National Security Archive is not giving up on the fight.
The Glasnost is half full.