MAKE SCOTUS A COVEN

Progressive candidate Mondaire Jones wants Democrats to add four new justices to the Supreme Court. “This is a constitutional crisis that has existed for years now.”

Addy Baird BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From
Washington, DC September 21, 2020, at 6:56 p.m. ET

Courtesy of Mondaire Jones for Congress Mondaire Jones

His Victory Was Major For Progressives. Now He Wants To Keep It Going By Expanding The Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON — At 33 and not yet a member of the House of Representatives, Mondaire Jones might not seem like the obvious choice to lead Congress in the fight to expand the Supreme Court — but come January, he hopes to do just that.

“There's not been a leader on this issue in the House of Representatives. I'm excited to be the point person in the House of Representatives on this subject area,” Jones said in an interview with BuzzFeed News on Monday. “I think that [reform like this is] the only way that we can have durable progressive legislation that will stand the test of time when faced with opposition from political hacks on the Supreme Court and in the lower courts.”

Jones won the primary to replace New York Rep. Nita Lowey earlier this year, garnering endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The district is heavily Democratic, so Jones is expected to win the seat in November. He and Ritchie Torres, another Democratic congressional nominee in New York, are likely to become the first two openly gay Black members of Congress.

And for months, he’s made expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court central to his progressive agenda. It’s an idea that has gained increasing traction among Democrats in Congress and liberal groups following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last Friday and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vow to hold a vote on her replacement this year.

“It is time we do something about the Roberts court's assault on democracy. Expanding the Supreme Court is our only option,” Jones wrote in an opinion column published by Salon in April. “Court expansion would not cause a death spiral of democracy. That death spiral is already here. And it will only get worse if we do nothing.”

Now, in the wake of Ginsburg’s death, Jones is reiterating his call, pushing for 13 seats on the Supreme Court instead of the current nine — and calling on former vice president and current Democratic nominee Joe Biden to join him in that fight. Biden hasn’t spoken on the issue since Friday but has previously argued against court-packing, saying it would set a dangerous precedent and “come back and eat us alive.”

“It is the case, and has been for many years now, that there is a hyperpartisan conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States that is hostile to democracy itself and the will of Congress,” Jones told BuzzFeed News on Monday. “There has not been a democratic institution that Justice Roberts and his majority has not been hostile to, whether it's systems of public financing of elections, or efforts to make it easier for folks who are eligible to vote to have their voices heard.”

Even under a Biden presidency and with Democrats in the majority in both chambers, Jones worries that the Supreme Court could still be a major impediment to a progressive agenda.

“I know that in 2021, when Democrats have unified control of the federal government, that we will still have as a major obstacle having the progressive legislation that we enact upheld when it is challenged in the Supreme Court,” he said. “If democracy is to be preserved, we have to expand the size of the Supreme Court and restore balance. … Roe v. Wade, the civil rights of LGBTQ people like myself, [and] the civil rights of racial minorities like myself are all at risk of being abridged by what may end up being a 6–3 conservative bloc on the Supreme Court.”

The idea of expanding the court has attracted new disciples in recent years, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings or a vote on then-president Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in the eight months leading up to the 2016 election. McConnell argued at the time the next president needed to be the one to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February that year.

Now, with just weeks to go before the election, McConnell has announced that President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Ginsburg will get a vote on the Senate floor. (McConnell argues that he blocked Garland not only because it was an election year but because the Senate and the White House were controlled by different parties.)

“Mitch McConnell set the precedent. No Supreme Court vacancies filled in an election year,” Sen. Ed Markey tweeted Friday night. “If he violates it, when Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.”



Ed Markey@EdMarkey
Mitch McConnell set the precedent. No Supreme Court vacancies filled in an election year. If he violates it, when Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.01:00 AM - 19 Sep 2020
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Several other congressional Democrats, including Jerry Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, echoed that call.

“If Sen. McConnell and @SenateGOP were to force through a nominee during the lame duck session—before a new Senate and President can take office—then the incoming Senate should immediately move to expand the Supreme Court,” Nadler tweeted Saturday.



Rep. Nadler@RepJerryNadler
If Sen. McConnell and @SenateGOP were to force through a nominee during the lame duck session—before a new Senate and President can take office—then the incoming Senate should immediately move to expand the Supreme Court. 1/2 https://t.co/BDYQ0KVmJe06:00 PM - 19 Sep 2020
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Jones’ own plan to expand the court would entail adding four additional justices to the court, bringing the total number to 13. “Just seven folks with good conscience,” he said of his proposed new bloc

“Unfortunately, the five people in the majority right now are not acting in good faith,” he added. “And I am under no illusion that someone nominated with two days of due diligence by Donald Trump and then rammed through in a month's time to be confirmed by the Senate to the Supreme Court is someone who would be materially different from the five people who already are acting in bad faith. This is a constitutional crisis that has existed for years now.”

While the House does not play a role in confirming justices, both chambers of Congress would need to pass legislation to expand the court. “This is squarely within what will be my jurisdiction as an incoming member of the House,” he said.

But Biden’s mind might be harder to change on the issue of court-packing than Jones hopes. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the calls to expand the court, particularly Markey’s, have frustrated some of Biden’s campaign advisers.

Biden said last year that if Democrats move to expand the court, “We’ll live to rue that day.” But Jones says his party is already living that reality.

“Democrats are already ruing the day,” he said. “I think Democrats rue every day. … I disagree with those words by Vice President Biden over a year ago. And my expectation is that he will change his opinion now.”

MORE ON THIS
Trump’s Swift Push To Replace Justice Ginsburg Has Democrats Rallying Around Court-Packing

Zoe Tillman · Sept. 21, 2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Death Increases The Likelihood That Obamacare Is Repealed Next Year

Paul McLeod · Sept. 19, 2020

Addy Baird is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Julián Castro Now Says Democrats Should Consider Court-Packing

The former presidential candidate also told BuzzFeed News that he thinks Biden and his campaign “understand they have work to do” to build Latino support.

Posted on September 21, 2020

Scott Olson / Getty Images
Julián Castro speaks at the Liberty and Justice Celebration, Nov. 1, 2019, in Des Moines.

Former presidential candidate Julián Castro thinks Democrats should consider adding more justices to the Supreme Court if Senate Republicans rush to confirm a justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg this year, a reversal from his belief during his presidential campaign.

“For many of us, that wasn't our preference, but the fact is you have Mitch McConnell not abiding by, not working in good faith under the Constitution. … If you have that kind of abuse of the system, then I think that, yeah, Democrats should be open to different ways that we can stave off draconian changes to our fundamental rights,” he told BuzzFeed’s News O’Clock podcast on Monday.

Castro, who said in a Democratic primary debate last October that he “would not pack the court” as president, said on Monday that with reproductive rights, voting rights, and healthcare hanging in the balance, Democrats should consider structural reform to the court.

“When those are the stakes, and Mitch McConnell is the one who’s abused this system, then yeah, I think we need to be open to considering either adding more justices or other structural reforms that will prevent this kind of abuse in the future,” he said.

Listen to Castro's full comments in Monday's episode of News O'Clock.


Adding more justices to the Supreme Court, once a fringe idea, has become widely popular among progressives in the last year. Castro became a favorite among progressives late in his race and has recently been offering public advice to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In a separate interview late last week, Castro, the only Latino to run for this year’s Democratic presidential nomination, said he believed Biden has been making progress among Latino voters but knows he has more left to do.

“I believe the campaign gets it in that they understand they have work to do,” Castro said, adding that he thinks that Biden will pick up Latino support by Nov. 3 because the campaign is now investing in voter registration, bilingual messaging across platforms, and tailored outreach to different Latino communities, rather than treating them as one unified voting block.

He said the Biden campaign has “a nuanced approach.”

“Out there in Florida where you have a pan-Latino community that ranges from Cuban Americans to Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, it’s not a monolithic community, and I think the campaign gets that,” he said.

After endorsing Biden in June, Castro has been taking part in some Biden campaign events. He’s also been talking about what matters to Latino voters, including this week at a Telemundo town hall with Sen. Bernie Sanders. Though Biden has been competitive or ahead of President Donald Trump in many swing states, his campaign has struggled to build momentum among Latino voters. A poll over the weekend showed Biden winning Latino voters over Trump 62% to 26%, similar to the Latino support that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

Castro’s campaign focused on progressive policy and racial justice issues. The former Obama cabinet secretary was the first Democrat in the race to have a comprehensive police reform plan, a progressive immigration plan, and a specific plan to address disparities faced by Native Americans. This summer, he launched the People First Future political action committee to support progressive candidates, and last week released the first episode of a new podcast focusing on underserved communities.

He has been outspoken about the lack of diversity in both parties; he criticized the minimal inclusion of Latino speakers at the Democratic National Convention recently and was vocal throughout his campaign about the disadvantages faced by both candidates and communities of color.

In last week’s interview, Castro said he’s “hopeful” but “not naive” that the US is making progress toward addressing racial inequities. He said any progress, though, is hampered by “a president who’s the biggest race-baiter, the biggest racial grievance politician that we’ve had since George Wallace on the national stage.”

Castro called Trump’s racist threats about people of color, particularly those in low-income housing, endangering white suburban communities “shameful.”

“It’s a naked ploy to stoke white fear about Black Americans and other people of color. It’s a lie. He lied about what the policy is. The fair housing rule was simply meant to provide fair housing opportunity to everybody, no matter their background. He lied about who is in the suburbs today. The suburbs are more diverse than they are when we passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968,” Castro, who served as housing secretary during the Obama administration, said.

“I believe he’s misrepresenting what’s in the hearts of many white Americans. I don't believe the majority of white Americans are sitting at home trying to figure out how they can keep Black people out of their neighborhood. He’s selling them short,” he said.

Castro said that in the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody in Minneapolis, he’s been heartened by the “vast outpouring of support for making progress in our country towards racial justice that included many white people, people of all different backgrounds,” including “a greater commitment at least in words by corporate America, by public officials, police departments, sports, celebrities, and people marching in the streets to press for racial justice.”

The question now, he said, is whether people will carry that motivation through to voting and pushing for change in corporate and nonprofit organizations.

“I’m hopeful, you know. I’m not naive,” he said. “I don’t think it's comfortable for a lot of people to do so, and I don’t think it’s second nature for a lot of people to do so either. But I also believe that most people have a kind heart and that they want to do it, most people.”

The Castro campaign’s progressive policy agenda and focus on communities of color won praise among progressive activists. Now, with the nomination of one of the least progressive candidates of the dozens of Democrats who ran this cycle, some activists have wondered if they’re being asked to shelve the progressive reforms they’ve been pushing for to defeat Trump. Castro said he’s not concerned that progressives won’t turn out for Biden.

“I’m confident that the vast majority of people who recognize what a danger Donald Trump represents also recognize that Joe Biden would do a much better job than Donald Trump, and they will turn out to vote for Joe Biden,” he said.

“Is it the case that there’s a more progressive vision out there than the one that Joe Biden has? On some issues, sure. It’s also true that Joe Biden has the most progressive vision of any Democratic nominee that we’ve ever had on a whole number of issues,” he added. “So if Joe Biden is elected we have a wonderful opportunity to do great progressive work in the next administration.”

Nidhi Prakash is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Hayes Brown is a world news editor and reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

THEY STILL DO
Opinion | Poison Pills and Deadly Powders: When Presidents Ordered Assassinations

Amid calls to target Putin, it’s worth recalling why the U.S. has stopped trying to kill foreign heads of state.


President Eisenhower at his desk on March 16, 1959. | Bob Schutz/AP Photo

Opinion by STEPHEN KINZER
03/13/2022 
Stephen Kinzer's new book is Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.

America’s rage at a foreign demon has rarely been as intense as our current fixation on Vladimir Putin. He is this generation’s Mao or Castro, its Gadhafi or Saddam or Khomeini, the rampaging and perhaps deranged foreign tyrant who personifies everything we hate and fear. Many in Washington see last month’s invasion of Ukraine as entirely his doing. Some believe the world will never be at peace as long as he lives and rules. From there it’s a short step to wishing him “sawed off” — as Dwight Eisenhower put it when he ordered Fidel Castro’s assassination in 1960.

“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” Sen. Lindsey Graham mused recently. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

In some circles it might be considered imprudent for a leading political figure to urge the murder of a foreign leader. Graham, however, was only expressing publicly what some of his colleagues may wish privately. The reasoning is simple. If Putin is the problem, “eliminate” Putin and the problem disappears.

Such open calls for political murder are rare. The Fox News host Sean Hannity jumped aboard, reasoning that “You cut off the head of the snake and you kill the snake. Right now, the snake is Vladimir Putin.” Others are less explicit about their wishes for Putin’s death or overthrow. When a spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was struck by an attack of honesty and admitted that sanctions on Russia are intended “to bring down the Putin regime,” she was quickly corrected. Yet when senators including Graham, Cory Booker, Marco Rubio and Amy Klobuchar co-sponsor a resolution accusing Russia of “flagrant acts of aggression and other atrocities rising to the level of crimes against humanity and war crimes,” they are clearly putting a target on his chest.

Two deep fallacies undermine this argument. First is the premise itself — that a different Russian leader might seek an accord to withdraw troops from Ukraine. No one who hopes to secure power in Moscow, however, could ever accept Ukraine’s entry into NATO or the presence of hostile troops on Ukrainian soil. Any Russian president who did so would be seen as exposing his country to mortal danger and quickly deposed. Removing Putin would not alter Russia’s determination never to tolerate an enemy army on another of its borders.

The second and more illuminating argument against killing foreign leaders is the poor record we have in past attempts. We’ve tried it repeatedly. Often we have failed, but even when we seem to have succeeded, the long-term consequences have been terrible. An order from the Oval Office to assassinate a foreign leader would not break a taboo. It would only be the latest in a series of self-defeating blunders.

So far as is known, Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to order such assassinations. He began by targeting Premier Zhou Enlai of China. During the 1950s, Eisenhower and nearly every other policymaker in Washington considered the “Red Chinese” to be maniacal fanatics bent on world conquest. When Zhou announced in 1955 that he would travel to Bandung, Indonesia, for a momentous conference of Asian and African leaders, the CIA saw a chance to kill him. Zhou chartered an Air India jet for his flight to Bandung. It exploded in midair, killing 16 passengers. But Zhou had not boarded. China called it “murder by the special service organizations of the United States.”

After Zhou landed safely on another flight, CIA Director Allen Dulles decided to try again. He directed the chief of the CIA’s chemical division, Sidney Gottlieb, to prepare poison. Gottlieb made one that would kill Zhou 48 hours after it was dropped into his rice bowl — presumably after he was back home in China, giving the Americans plausible deniability. This plot was aborted at the last moment when Gen. Lucian Truscott Jr., then serving as a deputy CIA director, learned of it and exploded in anger. Fearing that CIA involvement would become known, according to his biographer, he “confronted Dulles and forced him to cancel the operation.”

Gottlieb destroyed all his files upon leaving the CIA in 1973. As a result — and because of the tradition that assassination orders must never be explicit — no details of the Zhou Enlai plot have been discovered. It was the strict policy of the CIA, however, never to embark on something as serious as assassinating a head of government without presidential approval.

Evidence ties Eisenhower more directly to other plots. During the summer of 1960, he was preoccupied by political murders. His main target was the demon who would obsess American leaders for generations and still does today, even though he is dead: Fidel Castro. On May 13, 1960, after receiving a briefing from Allen Dulles, he ordered Castro “sawed off.”

“In that period of history, its meaning would have been clear,” Richard Bissell, then the CIA’s covert action chief, testified years later. “Eisenhower was a tough man behind that smile.”

Eisenhower’s order set off a wild series of assassination attempts. For more than three years, CIA planners considered plots ranging from a sniper shot to an exploding seashell. The most elaborate ones involved toxins or devices designed by Sidney Gottlieb. They included, according to a later Senate report, “poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders, and other devices which strain the imagination.”

While waiting for news of success in his plot against Castro — which never came — Eisenhower ordered another assassination. His victim was to be Patrice Lumumba, a defiant nationalist who was elected prime minister of the Congo in May 1960. Eisenhower feared Lumumba’s challenge to Western power in a huge African country that controls vast mineral riches.

On the morning of Aug. 18, 1960, Allen Dulles received an electrifying cable from the CIA station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin. “Embassy and station believe Congo experiencing classic Communist effort takeover government,” it said. “Anti-West forces rapidly increasing power Congo and therefore may be little time left in which take action to avoid another Cuba.” Dulles took the cable to the Oval Office.

From 11:10 to 11:23 that morning, according to Eisenhower’s official calendar, he held an “off the record meeting” with Dulles and other CIA officers. After hearing their report, the note-taker wrote, the president “turned to Dulles and said something to the effect that Lumumba should be eliminated. There was stunned silence for about 15 seconds, and the meeting continued.” Senate investigators later pinpointed this moment as the point when Eisenhower “circumlocutiously” ordered Lumumba’s assassination.

What does a president do after giving such an order? Eisenhower posed for a photo with the departing Ecuadorian ambassador, had lunch, and then decamped to Bethesda for an afternoon of golf at Burning Tree Club. In case anyone missed the point, he sent his national security adviser, Gordon Grey, to the next meeting of the CIA’s covert action “special group” with instructions to convey “top-level feeling in Washington that vigorous action would not be amiss.”

A couple of weeks later, Devlin received a cable from CIA headquarters telling him to expect a visit from an officer who would identify himself as “Joe from Paris.” When the officer arrived, Devlin recognized him as Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA’s poison-maker. Gottlieb handed him a packet containing a vial of liquid botulinum and told him he was to use it to kill Lumumba.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Devlin cried. “Who authorized this operation?”

“President Eisenhower,” Gottlieb told him. “I wasn’t there when he approved it, but Dick Bissell said that Eisenhower wanted Lumumba removed.” Then he helpfully added: “With the stuff that’s in here, no one will ever be able to know that Lumumba was assassinated.”

Devlin managed to organize a coup in which Lumumba was overthrown but not killed. He remained immensely popular both at home and abroad. Devlin’s efforts to penetrate his security ring and poison him, including an attempt to slip him a tube of tainted toothpaste, all failed. That didn’t discourage Allen Dulles. “We wish to give every possible support in eliminating Lumumba from any possibility of resuming government position,” he wrote in one cable. At one point Devlin and his officers considered using a “commando type group” to capture him. Then they asked if a sharpshooter with a “high powered foreign made rifle” could be found.

“Hunting good here when light’s right,” one CIA officer observed in a cable to headquarters.

The CIA’s poison ultimately went unused, but Devlin found another way to complete his mission. On November 27, Lumumba slipped out of the home where he was being held under Congolese and United Nations guard. Devlin set out to find and capture him. His key partners were intelligence officers from Belgium, the former colonial power, which had become fabulously wealthy by exploiting the Congo’s mineral wealth. Together, they had Lumumba tracked, seized, tortured and delivered to his most murderous local enemies. A Congolese squad executed him under watchful Belgian eyes. No American was present.

Years later, an interviewer asked Allen Dulles if he regretted any of his operations. “I think that we overrated the danger in, let’s say, the Congo,” he replied. Devlin agreed.

“None of us had any real concept of what he stood for,” Devlin later wrote of Lumumba. “He was simply an unstable former postal clerk with great political charisma, who was leaning toward the Communist bloc. In Cold War terms, he represented the other side. The fact that he was first and foremost an African nationalist who was using the East-West rivalry to advance his cause was played down by the Belgians, who greatly feared him.”

When Eisenhower left office in January 1961, he could count one successful assassination — Lumumba, in concert with the Belgians — and two failures: Zhou Enlai and Castro. His successor, John F. Kennedy, focused intently on Castro. Especially after the spectacular failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, he absorbed Eisenhower’s view that Castro must be “sawed off.”

“There was a flat-out effort ordered by the White House, the president, Bobby Kennedy — who after all was his right-hand man — to unseat the Castro government, to do everything possible to get rid of it by whatever device could be found,” former CIA director Richard Helms later told congressional investigators. The Kennedy administration sought relentlessly to kill Castro, even as it sent peace feelers to him through secret channels. On the very day President Kennedy was assassinated, a CIA officer in Paris passed a poison device to an operative who was to use it to kill Castro.

Kennedy also embraced another of Eisenhower’s Caribbean plots, aimed at the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Both presidents detested Trujillo and feared that his brutal rule might produce a Castro-style revolution. In July 1960, while Eisenhower was in office, the CIA delivered 12 “sterile” rifles with telescopic sights to anti-Trujillo plotters. Nine months later, with Kennedy in the White House, it delivered three carbines. The plotters carried out their tyrannicide on May 30, 1961. Democracy emerged a couple of years later, but the United States decided it could not tolerate that democracy because President Juan Bosch seemed too leftist and sympathetic to Castro. That led the United States to launch its 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic and to stage-manage the election of a former Trujillo ally, Joaquin Balaguer, who went on to dominate the country for much of the next 30 years.

The assassination that most tormented Kennedy was one that he set in motion but did not realize he had ordered. In a jumble of diplomatic missteps, and without a direct presidential command, the Kennedy administration authorized the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. On Nov. 1, 1963, assured of U.S. support, plotters carried out their coup and then assassinated Diem.

“Kennedy leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before,” General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, later wrote of the moment when news of Diem’s death landed in the Oval Office. “He had always insisted Diem must never suffer more than exile, and had been led to believe or had persuaded himself that a change in government could be carried out without bloodshed.” This killing, the historian Staley Karnow wrote, “haunted US leaders during the years ahead, prompting them to assume a larger burden in Vietnam.”

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, embraced covert action, as have all modern American presidents, but did not emulate his two predecessors by authorizing assassination. The day after Kennedy was killed, he showed a visitor a portrait of Diem and said, “We had a hand in murdering him. Now it’s happening here.” Later Johnson wondered if Kennedy’s assassination was “divine retribution.” He also expressed disgust for the plots against Castro and Trujillo: “We were running a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.”

Americans are impatient by nature. We want quick solutions, even to complex problems. That makes killing a foreign leader seem like a good way to end a war. Every time we have tried it, though, we’ve failed — whether or not the target falls. Morality and legality aside, it doesn’t work. Castro thrived on his ability to survive American plots. In the Congo, almost everything that has happened since Lumumba’s murder has been awful.

Our record in carrying out regime change short of murder is hardly better. The CIA-directed overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 cast Iran into a political whirlwind from which it still has not escaped. A year later, the CIA coup against President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala aborted a ten-year democratic experiment and set that country on a path toward civil war and genocide.

Soon after the Guatemala coup, Eisenhower invited Allen Dulles and other CIA officers to the White House for official congratulations. They presented an elaborate account of their operation, complete with charts, slides, and film clips. Eisenhower had one question.

“Why the hell didn’t you catch Arbenz?” he asked.

“Mr. President,” came the reply, “that would have set a very dangerous precedent for you.”

International Community Recognizes Victory of Xiomara Castro


President-elect Xiomara Castro, Honduras, Nov., 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @DiazCanelB

Published 1 December 2021

She leads the results with 53.3 percent of the votes, beating the National Party candidate Nasry Asfura who only achieved 34.2 percent of the polls.

On Wednesday, world leaders ratify the victory in the Honduran presidential elections of Xiomara Castro, the left-wing candidate and wife of former President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown by a U.S.-backed coup in 2009.

RELATED:
Honduras: National Party (PAN) Recognizes Xiomara Castro's Win

"Finally, my dear colleague and friend Xiomara: sooner or later, the People and history always do justice," Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernandez-Kirchner tweeted.

“I greet the Honduran people and extend my congratulations to President-elect Xiomara Castro, to whom I wish success in her duties. We will continue to work together for the benefit of our nations,” Panama’s President Nito Cortizo tweeted.

“I congratulate the brother people of Honduras for concluding their electoral process. I thank Xiomara Castro for our telephone conversation. Best wishes for success in her administration. I highlight the valuable work of former President Luis Solis as OAS Mission head,” Costa Rica’s President Carlos Alvarado said.

Until 11:00 pm on Tuesday, the Honduran electoral authorities had processed 1.9 million votes from the Sunday elections, in which citizen participation reached 68.27 percent of those eligible to vote. Although there are still ballot boxes to be counted, the National party, which has remained in power since the 2009 coup, acknowledged its defeat. A short time later, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also congratulated Castro.

The Liberty and Refoundation party's politician leads the results with 53.3 percent of the votes, beating the National Party candidate Nasry Asfura who only achieved 34.2 percent of the polls despite having controlled the Tegucigalpa mayoralty during the last eight years.

Sunday's elections were the third consecutive elections in which Xiomara Castro sought the Presidency. She will take office on January 27, 2022.

Honduras leader offers rebel deputy post to end congress crisis

AFP 

Honduras' president-elect Xiomara Castro made a last ditch attempt late Wednesday to solve a congressional crisis with hours left before her inauguration.© - Honduras president elect Xiomara Castro (right) has made an offer to rebel deputy Jorge Calix (left) in a bid to end a congressional crisis ahead of her inauguration

Last week two rival factions within her left wing Libre party elected their own duelling presidents of Congress.

Castro backs the claims of Luis Redondo of her coalition partner Savior Party of Honduras (PSH).

But Jorge Calix, a deputy within her own Libre party, has led a band of close to 20 rebels, with support from the right wing National and Liberal parties, to launch a rival claim.

Late on Wednesday, Castro tried to break the impasse by offering Calix a role in her cabinet.

"I proposed to Jorge Calix that he joins my government in the position of Cabinet Coordinator for the sake of uniting in the Reformation of Honduras," Castro wrote on Twitter.

She did not, however, explain what the role entailed, although it appears to be something akin to a chief of staff.

"Thank you President @XiomaraCastroZ, it was a great pleasure speaking with you," said Calix in a reply to her post on Twitter.



"For me and for anyone, it would be a great honor to form part of the government of resistence and national reconciliation. You will soon receive my answer," he wrote.

The offer came a day after the two rival factions held competing first sessions presided over by their respective presidents.

Redondo took office as president of the Congress in the building that houses the legislative body.

In parallel and via video link, Calix was also installed as head of Congress by his own loyalist faction.

Calix was joined by around 70 deputies while only around 40 were in the parliament building, although the Redondo faction achieved a quorum as substitute lawmakers stood in for those that were absent.

The crisis broke out last week when a group of Libre dissidents ignored an agreement with the PSH, whose support was key to Castro winning the November elections.

Rival lawmakers came to blows in the dispute.

PSH leader Salvador Nasralla had agreed to withdraw his presidential candidacy and support Castro, in return for the position of vice president and a member of his party being named president of Congress.

But the dissidents argued that Congress should be led by the party with the most members -- Libre has 50 deputies compared to just 10 for the Savior party.

Control of parliament is key to Castro's anti-corruption and political reform platform in a country battered by poverty, migration and drug trafficking.

mav/nl/bc/st

Dems: Discovery, AT&T merger will hurt diversity, workers

By ASTRID GALVAN

FILE - Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, speaks during the House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on the administration foreign policy priorities on Capitol Hill on Wednesday in Washington, March 10, 2021. A group of House Democrats is raising concerns that the proposed merger of Discovery and AT&T's WarnerMedia, a $43 billion effort to conquer the world of streaming, could impact diversity efforts in Hollywood and particularly hurt Latinos, who are already deeply underrepresented. Led by Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, 33 members of Congress wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday asking it to consider whether the merger will hurt competition, workers and diversity efforts in the entertainment industry. 

(Ken Cedeno/Pool via AP, File)

Congressional Democrats are raising concerns that the proposed merger of Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia, a $43 billion effort to conquer the world of streaming, could affect diversity efforts in Hollywood and particularly hurt Latinos, who are already deeply underrepresented.

The Democrats, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, wrote a letter to the Justice Department on Monday asking it to consider whether the merger will hurt competition and workers and diversity efforts in the entertainment industry.

Castro has long championed diversity in media, which can include everything from Hollywood movies to book publishers to news organizations. Last year, Castro and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus tasked the government’s watchdog agency with investigating Latino representation in media. The Government Accountability Office, which released its findings in September, found Latinos are vastly underrepresented in all aspects of media.

“Part of what’s different about our argument is that we also center around the exclusion of many people of color in these companies as employees and often times in terms of content,” Castro said.

Castro said Discovery in particular has a poor record of hiring Latinos in front of and behind the camera, concerns he expressed to company representatives during a meeting recently.

“I was clear that if you continue to exclude people from your company, then you don’t deserve to merge and it’s not in the country’s best interest to allow for concentrated exclusion,” Castro said.

In May, Discovery announced it was absorbing WarnerMedia from AT&T, combining giants like HBO, CNN and HGTV, along with Oprah Winfrey’s network.

Experts have questioned whether this will hurt consumers, who may end up spending more money on streaming services in the long run.

In a news release, Discovery said the Warner acquisition will increase investment and capability in original content and programming and “create more opportunity for under-represented storytellers,” although the company hasn’t laid out how.

John T. Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T, addressed the concerns about antitrust violations expressed in the letter during a virtual global conference on Monday, according to a transcript of the call.

“Not to say that we won’t get the dialogue and have a constructive conversation for people to understand that I think what’s been articulated in those letters is really unfounded,” Stankey said. “And I believe the context of our discussion with regulators up to this point have centered around those issues, and we feel very good about the data we’ve put on the table that it’s clearly indicated that there’s nothing unusual about this transaction.”

Darnell Hunt, the dean of Social Sciences at UCLA who has spent years researching diversity in Hollywood, said the merger would be particularly troubling for diversity in executive level positions.

“Bigger is usually not better when it comes to these types of mergers, and there’s less competition, there’s less opportunity for access, because there are fewer gatekeepers. And that’s not a good thing in an industry that’s already exclusionary and very insular,” Hunt said.

Mergers mean job cuts, leaving an even greater void for people of color to work in high-level positions in the industry, Hunt said.

When Comcast and NBC announced a merger in 2009, Hunt publicly opposed it, and says promises by executives to create more minority-owned networks largely fell flat.

He doubts the Discovery acquisition will result in more diversity.

“I would love to hear their plan for that, if they’re thinking about it, but it doesn’t sound like they’re thinking about it,” Hunt said.

___

Galván reported from Phoenix. She covers issues impacting Latinos in the U.S. for the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/astridgalvan

Brown, Ford, Castro

RIP

The Godfather of Soul, Mr. James Brown, the mouth that roared, the veritable voice of R&B, died on Christmas Day. It was a case of auspicious timing.

Now Christmas will ring with his voice as an alternative to all the Christmas Carols.

In the beginning was the Beat, and the Beat was with James and the Beat was James.

There aren't too many people who can say they personally altered the course of Western music. James Brown, who died early Christmas morning at the age of 73, was one of those people. There is American popular music before James Brown and American popular music after James Brown, and the two sound markedly different.

Pop radio stations will now have to format for Christmas carols and James Brown memorials. James Brown's seminal hits

"It's mindboggling to think about his impact on the world of music. But I think his legacy of giving in Augusta will continue to be giving for years to come," said Augusta's mayor, Deke Copenhaver. "He never forgot where he came from and he loved the city unconditionally."

Brown, known as the Godfather of Soul, died of congestive heart failure on Christmas morning in Atlanta at age 73. He had been scheduled to perform on New Year's Eve in Manhattan at the B.B. King Blues Club.

Brandy Martinez, left, and Nya Bin Ghi sign their names on a poster of James Brown posted outside B.B. King's Blues Club in New York, Sunday, Dec. 25, 2006, after word spread that the legendary soul singer had died of heart failure from pneumonia on Christmas day. Brown told friends that he still wanted to perform at the club on New Year's Eve in spite of being ill and in the hospital, but Brown's heart gave out before he could make it there. The dynamic "Godfather of Soul" was 73. (AP / Kathy Willens)

Commentary: Thank You, James Brown - For Your Genius

THE HARDEST-WORKING MAN IN CIVIL RIGHTS


RIP

The passing of Gerald Ford, the unelected Vice President crowned the unelected and reluctant President of the United States today. Well at least he died on a slow news day. It gave the media something to do. Finally good timing.













At least one blogger will miss the President who Pardoned Nixon and wonders if his funeral will be as big as James Browns. Hmm maybe that wasn't such good timing.....


When Gerald Ford finally does cast off his mortal coil, there had gawddamn
better be a whole week's worth of live coverage, like there was for Reagan.

And I wanna see some fat Mid Westerners burst into tears too. In fact, anybody caught not crying at Ford's funeral should be shipped off to Gitmo without the benefit of a trial.

Unlike Reagan, there seem to be no Gerald Ford fan sites. On the plus side,
that means that there's no racy Gerald Ford fiction floating around the web.

Not Dead Yet.....

Comrade el Presidente; Fidel Castro outlived both of them.......Surgeon clears Castro of cancer

Which is pissing off the CIA and Cuban Terrorist Community in Florida no end.

On Tuesday, a Spanish surgeon who recently treated Castro said in Madrid that the Cuban leader does not have cancer, as U.S. intelligence officials have speculated, and insisted that he was recovering slowly but steadily from a serious operation.

Cuban authorities have not commented on last week's visit to the island by Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, the chief surgeon at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon Hospital.

Garcia Sabrido's statements to news media represented the first independent medical assessment of Castro's condition. The Cuban government has kept Castro's condition a state secret, occasionally releasing photographs and videos of him to show he is convalescing.

See

RIP

Obituary

Castro


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James Brown, Gerald Ford, Fidel Castro, Godfather of Soul, R&B, Blues, negro, America, music, celebreties, president, Nixon, VP, RIP, obituary, death, cancer,

LEFT WING WIN

Former first lady set to become Honduras's first woman president

Barnaby CHESTERMAN
Mon, November 29, 2021

Former first lady set to become Honduras's first woman presidentLeftist opposition candidate Xiomara Castro took a commanding lead in preliminary results (AFP)

Former first lady Xiomara Castro appeared set to become Honduras's first woman president after taking a commanding lead over the ruling party candidate, partial election results showed Monday.

With just over half of votes counted, the leftist opposition leader had taken more than 53 percent with a lead of almost 20 percentage points over the ruling National Party's Nasry Asfura, according to a National Electoral Council (CNE) live count.

Castro, whose husband Manuel Zelaya was deposed from the presidency in a coup in 2009, claimed victory late Sunday, even as the CNE said no result will be announced until the last vote is counted.

"Good night, we've won," Castro told supporters, promising to lead "a reconciliation government" in a country wracked by violent crime, drug trafficking, rampant corruption and large-scale migration to the United States.

Her statement sparked scenes of celebration in the capital Tegucigalpa, with supporters setting off fireworks and honking car horns.

It was a far cry from the deadly protests that broke out four years ago when Juan Orlando Hernandez won a second successive term amid accusations of fraud.

More than 30 people died as authorities cracked down on the month-long protest.

Reports of intimidation and violence in the buildup to Sunday's election led to fears of fresh unrest.

Castro and Asfura both called for calm as they cast their ballots, but the National Party (PN) declared victory less than an hour after polls opened, earning a rebuke from the European Union observer mission.

CNE boss Kelvin Aguirre said "historic" numbers had voted, with a turnout of more than 60 percent of 5.2 million registered voters.

But he warned that "no candidate can claim victory until the last vote has been counted."

- Olive branch -

The opposition had expressed fears the poll could be rigged to keep the PN in power, which would almost inevitably prompt street protests.

The campaign was bitter, with the PN trying to discredit Castro as a communist and attacking her support for legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage, touchy subjects in deeply conservative Honduras.

Castro, in turn, branded Hernandez a "narco-dictator."

But she took a conciliatory tone on Sunday night.

"I hold out my hand to my opponents because I don't have enemies, I will call for dialogue... with all sectors," she said.

Castro's expected victory would break 12 years of PN rule and four decades of hegemony shared with the Liberal Party.

Honduras has been hit hard by gang violence, drug trafficking and hurricanes, with 59 percent of its 10 million people living in poverty.

Washington has been keeping a close eye on the election.

Honduras has been the starting point for a wave of migrant caravans trying to reach the United States.

Some 18,000 police and as many soldiers were on duty nationwide for Sunday's vote, which took place without incident in the capital.

"Regardless of who wins, we're brothers, we're all Hondurans and need to respect each other," said Leonel Pena, 57, a carpenter in a poor neighborhood.

After more than a decade of PN rule, many voters said it was time for change.

"We've tried this government for 12 years and things have gone from bad to worse," Luis Gomez, 26, told AFP in the gang-ridden Tegucigalpa neighborhood of La Sosa. "We hope for something new."

Unemployment jumped from 5.7 percent in 2019 to 10.9 percent in 2020, largely because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study by the Autonomous University.

The country was also ravaged by two hurricanes in 2020.

- 'No narco-states, only narco-governments' -

The PN has been in power since Zelaya was ousted in a 2009 coup supported by the military, business elites and the political right.

Corruption and drug-trafficking scandals have engulfed Hernandez and many in his inner circle.

"Honduras is internationally known as a narco-state. But there are no narco-states, only narco-governments," said political analyst Raul Pineda, a former PN legislator.

Hernandez's brother Tony is serving a life sentence in a US prison for drug trafficking.

Drug barons whom the president helped extradite to the United States have accused him of involvement in the illicit trade.

Asfura was accused in 2020 of embezzling $700,000 of public money, and the so-called Pandora Papers linked him to influence-peddling in Costa Rica.

The third major candidate in the presidential race, the Liberal Party's Yani Rosenthal, spent three years in a US jail for money laundering.

He scored just nine percent in early results.

Hondurans also voted to elect the 28 members of the National Congress and 20 representatives of the Central American parliament.

bur/bc/mlr/to

Hondurans vote for new president as incumbent faces extradition

Grayson Quay, Contributing writer
Sun, November 28, 2021, 

nasry asfura poster Inti Ocon/Getty Images

Citizens of Honduras voted Sunday for a new president. The results of the election could remove the governing National Party from office for the first time since it took power in a 2009 military coup that ousted leftist President Mel Zelaya, who sought to align Honduras with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Xiomara Castro, Zelaya's wife, currently leads in the polls, NPR reports. National Party candidate Nasry Asfura is in second place. His campaign has benefited from the National Party's entrenched political machine, which distributes cash payments and other gifts to voters, but has been marred by allegations that Asfura embezzled millions of dollars during his two terms as mayor of Tegucigalpa, the nation's capital city. The third-place candidate, Yani Rosenthal, returned to Honduras in 2020 after serving a prison sentence in the U.S. for money laundering.

Observers have expressed concerns that violence could erupt if a clear result does not emerge quickly. Twenty protestors were killed during demonstrations that followed the 2017 election. Political instability and gang activity in Honduras have already prompted some Hondurans to flee the country. Many of these refugees joined migrant caravans that traveled north through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

The incumbent president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of funding his campaigns with drug money and could be extradited to the U.S. if his party loses power, according to The Washington Post. His brother, former Honduran lawmaker Tony Hernández, is already serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison following a 2019 conviction for smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States.

 

Products made of plastic falsely claimed to be biodegradable are on sale at Brazilian supermarkets

Researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo analyzed allegedly biodegradable plastic items sold by 40 supermarkets and found most to be oxo-degradables, banned in several countries because they contribute significantly to microplastic pollution

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

A famous study published in the journal Science showed that some 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic polymer had been produced and discarded in human history, and that only 9% had been recycled. Twelve percent had been incinerated and the remaining 79% left to rot in landfills or garbage dumps, from which about 10% reached the coast and eventually the sea.

These numbers are from eight years ago. The situation is certainly worse now. Although some countries have announced “zero plastic” policies, factories continue to churn out 400 million tons of plastic per year, and the amount thrown away continues to accumulate.

As a result, contamination by microplastics (fragments less than 5 millimeters in length) has become one of the worst environmental problems in the world, almost as serious as the climate crisis. Microplastics are everywhere – on land, in the sea and in the air. They have even been found in the human body – in the bloodstream, heart and lungs, and in placenta.

“You don’t find microplastics only where you don’t look,” said Ítalo Castro, a researcher and professor at the Federal University of São Paulo’s Institute of Marine Sciences (IMAR-UNIFESP) in Brazil. 

Unfortunately, some attempts at solving the problem are making matters worse, as shown by an investigation of greenwashing led by Castro in which researchers from IMAR-UNIFESP visited 40 supermarkets and analyzed products the manufacturers claimed to be made of biodegradable plastic. The stores belonged to major chains in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The study sample comprised 49 different products, including plates, cutlery, cups, straws, trays, and other utensils, as well as partyware.  On average, they cost 125% more than the equivalents made from conventional (non-biodegradable) plastic. None of them, including the major brands, met the minimum requirements to be considered genuinely biodegradable.

The results are published in Sustainable Production and Consumption. The first author of the article is Beatriz Barbosa Moreno, a PhD candidate with a scholarship from FAPESP and Castro as thesis advisor. 

“To be considered biodegradable, a product must convert into water [H2O], carbon gas [CO2], methane [CH4] and biomass when discarded into the environment. This should happen relatively quickly, in a few weeks to a year, although there’s no consensus regarding how long it should take. None of the 49 items investigated met this requirement,” Castro said.

More than 90% were made of a class of material that has become known as oxo-degradable, he added. Despite the name, these materials do not degrade in normal environmental conditions. They are polymers of fossil origin additivized with metallic salts, which accelerate oxidation and fragmentation, but the fragments can remain in the environment for decades. Fragmentation does not contribute to degradation. It accelerates the formation of microplastic particles.

“Oxo-degradable plastic is banned in several parts of the world, including the European Union,” Castro said. “In most cases, the ban was due to lack of evidence of biodegradability in real-world conditions, associated with the risk of microplastic formation.”

Regulation

Oxo-degradable plastic has not been banned in Brazil, where it can legally be sold. However, quite apart from the misleading nomenclature, consumers are deceived by many companies that claim their products are certified to technical standards relating to biodegradability, such as ASTM D6954-4 or SPCR 141. “These standards merely provide guidelines for comparing degradation rates and changes in physical properties under controlled laboratory conditions, and they don’t concern the final stages of degradation. In fact, the organizations that produce the standards state on their websites that they must not be used for the purposes of certifying commercial plastic products as biodegradable,” Castro said.

For Castro, the claim that a commercial product is biodegradable when it is nothing of the kind can be considered greenwashing. “When a product that has been shown to harm the environment becomes widely used, official action should be taken to stop it. In Brazil, the Senate is debating a bill (PL 2524/2022) that would ban the use of oxo-degrading or pro-oxidant additives in thermoplastic resins, as well as the manufacturing, importing and marketing of packaging and products made of oxo-degradable plastic,” he said.

If PL 2524/2022 is passed in its present form, Castro explained, it could enable Brazil to engineer a transition to a circular economy in plastics. “This transition is urgently needed,” he said. “IMAR-UNIFESP is based in Santos on the coast of São Paulo state. In Santos, we detected an accumulation of microplastics in mangrove oysters [Crassostrea brasiliana] and brown mussels [Perna perna]. Both filter seawater for food and retain microparticles in their tissue, so that they are considered the gold standard for assessing environmental conditions in areas like this. The levels we detected were among the highest in the world compared with data from more than 100 similar studies conducted in 40 countries” (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/44773). 

In response to our inquiries, the Brazilian Ministry for the Environment and Climate Change (MMA) said it supports PL 2524/2022 but with certain amendments. “The ministry is favorable to prohibition of oxo-degrading and pro-oxidant additives based on studies showing that microplastic particles are created when these additives cause fragmentation of plastic, which is particularly harmful to the marine environment,” it stressed.

The Brazilian Plastics Industry Association (ABIPLAST) also issued a statement saying it supports a ban on the use of oxo-degradable additives in plastic products. However, it opposes PL 2524/2022, which it sees as “confusing the circular economy with a ban on plastic products and targeting a single class of material”. The text also says that “the circular economy entails a systemic change and therefore requires a macro approach involving all sectors of the manufacturing industry”. 

Meanwhile, another bill – PL 1874/2022 [establishing a National Circular Economy Policy] – includes important provisions regarding strategic resource management, promotion of new business models, investment in research and innovation, and support for the transition to low-carbon technologies by means of the creation of attractive conditions for public and private investment, among others provisions.

The statement sent by ABIPLAST says it “trusts that a serious and accurate science-based debate will promote a constructive dialogue on the correct use of plastic and all the benefits the material has brought society. The plastic sector has taken a leadership role in actions to promote a circular economy of this material, investing in technology, sustainability and innovation”.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

---

JOURNAL

Sustainable Production and Consumption

DOI

10.1016/j.spc.2023.07.024 

ARTICLE TITLE

Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

BACKGROUNDER

Cuba is poor, but who is to blame – 

Castro or 50 years of US blockade?

RECENTLY THE TRUMP EMBARGO HAS CAUSED DESPERATE CUBANS TO TRY TO GET TO AMERICA UNLIKE THE BARCADI FAMILY 

THEY GET NO SPECIAL TREATMENT AND GET SENT BACK HOME

Alongside his depiction as a “brutal dictator”, negative reflections on Fidel Castro since his death on November 25 (2016) have focused on his “mismanagement” of the Cuban economy and the consequent “extremes of poverty” suffered by ordinary Cubans.

This caricature is problematic – not only because it ignores the devastating economic impact of the United States embargo over 55 years, but also because it is premised on neoclassical economic assumptions. This means that by stressing economic policy over economic restraints, critics can shift responsibility for Cuba’s alleged poverty on to Castro without implicating successive US administrations that have imposed the suffocating embargo.

This approach also ignores key questions about Cuba after the revolution. Where can medium and low-income countries get the capital to invest in infrastructure and welfare provision? How can foreign capital be obtained under conditions which do not obstruct such development, and how can a late-developing country such as Cuba use international trade to produce a surplus in a global economy which – many claim – tends to “unequal terms of trade”?

It was the search for solutions to the challenge of development that led Cuba’s revolutionary government to adopt a socialist system. They adopted a centrally planned economy in which state ownership predominated because they perceived this system as offering the best answer to those historical challenges.

But the commitment to operate within a socialist framework implied additional restraints and complications, particularly in the context of a bipolar world. My book, Che Guevara: the economics of revolution, examines the contradictions and challenges faced by the nascent revolutionary government from the perspective of Guevara’s role as president of the National Bank and minister of industries.

Literature on Cuba is dominated by “Cubanology”, an academic school central to the political and ideological opposition to Cuban socialism. Its emergence and links to the US government are well documented. Its arguments are that the revolution changed everything in Cuba – and Fidel (and then Raul) Castro have personally dominated domestic and foreign policy since, denying Cuban democracy and repressing civil society. Thanks to their mismanagement of the economy, growth since 1959 has been negligible. They simply replaced dependency on the US with dependency on the USSR until its collapse in 1990.

These ideas have also shaped political and media discourse on Cuba. But the problem with this analysis is that it obstructs our ability to see clearly what goes on in Cuba or explain the revolution’s endurance and Cuban society’s vitality.

What did Castro inherit?

Arguments about the success or failure of the post-1959 economy often hang on the state of the Cuban economy in the 1950s. The post-1959 government inherited a sugar-dominated economy with the deep socio-economic and racial scars of slavery. Cubanologist Jaime Suchlicki argues that Batista’s Cuba was “well into what Walter Rostow has characterised as the take-off stage”, while Fred Judson points to structural weaknesses in the Cuban economy: “Long-term crises characterised the economy, which had a surface and transient prosperity.” So while one side insists that the revolution interrupted healthy capitalist growth, the other believes it was a precondition to resolving the contradictions obstructing development by ending Cuba’s subjugation to the needs of US capitalism.

Following the revolution, Castro set out to bring social welfare and land reform to the Cuban people and to confiscate the ill-gotten gains of the Cuban elite. But when the defeated Fulgencio Batista and his associates fled Cuba, they stole millions of pesos from the National Bank and the Treasury. The country was decapitalised, severely limiting the capacity for public spending and private investments. Wealthy Cubans were leaving the island, taking their deposits and taxes with them. How was the new government going to carry out the ambitious socio-economic reforms without financial resources?

We have to consider these real circumstances at every juncture. For example, when the US embargo was first implemented, 95% of Cuba’s capital goods and 100% of its spare parts were imported from the US – and the US was overwhelmingly the main recipient of Cuban exports. When the Soviet bloc disintegrated, Cuba lost 85% of its trade and investment, leading GDP to plummet 35%. These events produced serious economic constraints on Cuba’s room for manoeuvre.

Putting a price on poverty

Moving on, we should also ask: how are we to measure Cuba’s poverty? Is it GDP per capita? Is it money-income per day? Should we apply the yardsticks of capitalist economics, focusing on growth and productivity statistics to measure “success” or “failure”, while paying little attention to social and political priorities?

Ration cards symbolise poverty and shortages in Cuba. EPA/Alejandro Ernesto

Even factoring in its low GDP per capita, the Human Development Index (HDI) lists Cuba in the “high human development” category; it excels not just in health and education, but also in women’s participation and political inclusion. Cuba has eliminated child malnutrition. No children sleep on the streets. In fact, there is no homelessness. Even during the hungry years of economic crisis of the 1990s, Cubans did not starve. Cuba stuck with the planned economy and it enabled them to ration their scarce resources.

Yes, salaries are extremely low (as both Fidel and Raul have lamented) – but Cubans’ salaries do not determine their standard of living. About 85% of Cubans own their own homes and rent cannot exceed 4% of a tenant’s income. The state provides a (very) basic food basket while utility bills, transport and medicine costs are kept low. The opera, cinema, ballet and so on are cheap for all. High-quality education and healthcare are free. They are part of the material wealth of Cuba and should not be dismissed – as if individual consumption of consumer goods were the only measure of economic success.

Operation miracle

The specific and real challenges Cuban development has faced has generated unique contradictions. In a planned economy, with an extremely tight budget, they have had to prioritise: the infrastructure is crumbling and yet they have first-world human development indicators. Infant mortality rates reveal a lot about the standard of living, being influenced by multiple socioeconomic and medical factors. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is 4.5 per 1,000 live births, which sits it among first-world countries – and above the US on the CIA’s own ranking.

It is not just Cubans who have benefited from these investments. Tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, educators and other development aid workers have served around the world. At present some 37,000 Cuban doctors and nurses work in 77 countries. They generate foreign exchange of some US$8 billion a year – Cuba’s biggest export.

In addition, Cuba provides both free medical treatment and free medical training to thousands of foreigners every year. As a direct initiative of Fidel, in 1999, the Latin American School of Medicine was inaugurated in Havana to provide foreign students from poor countries with six years of training and accommodation completely free. In 2004, Cuba teamed up with Venezuela to provide free eye surgery to people in three dozen countries under Operation Miracle. In the first ten years more than 3m people had their sight restored.

Prohibiting even trade in medicines, the US embargo led Castro to prioritise investments in medical sciences. Cuba now owns around 900 patents and markets pharmaceutical products and vaccines in 40 countries, generating yearly revenues of US$300m, with the potential for massive expansion. The sector produces more than 70% of the medicines consumed by its 11m people. The entire industry is state owned, research programmes respond to the needs of the population, and all surpluses are reinvested into the sector. Without state planning and investment it is unlikely that this could have been achieved in a poor country

.

Cuban researchers developed the first synthetic vaccine against a bacteria that causes pneumonia and meningitis. EPA/Alejandro Ernesto

In the mid-1980s Cuba developed the world’s first Meningitis B vaccine. Today, it leads in oncology drugs. In 2012 Cuba patented the first therapeutic cancer vaccine. The US embargo forces Cuba to source medicines, medical devices and radiology products outside the United States, incurring additional transportation costs.

Sharing economy

Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, told me in 2009:

A great example provided by Cuba is that in its poverty it has known how to share, with all its international programmes. Cuba is the country with the greatest cooperation in relation to its gross domestic product and it is an example for all of us. This doesn’t mean that Cuba doesn’t have big problems, but it is also certain that it is impossible to judge the success or failure of the Cuban model without considering the US blockade, a blockade that has lasted for 50 years. Ecuador wouldn’t survive for five months with that blockade.

Let’s consider the embargo: the Cuban government estimates that it has cost the island US$753.69 billion. Their annual report to the United Nations provides a detailed account of that calculation. That’s a lot for a country whose average GDP between 1970 and 2014 has been calculated at US$31.7 billion.

Yes, Castro presided over mistakes and errors in Cuba’s planned economy. Yes, there is bureaucracy, low productivity, liquidity crisis, debt and numerous other problems – but where aren’t there? Castro pointed to these weaknesses in his own speeches to the Cuban people. But President Correa is right – to objectively judge Castro’s legacy, Cuban development and contemporary reforms today, we cannot pretend that the US blockade – which remains today despite rapprochement – has not shaped the Cuban economy.

Castro almost saw out 11 US presidents since 1959, but he never lived to see the end of the US embargo. New challenges face Cuba, with economic reforms underway and the restoration of relations with the United States. Next week, I will begin new research in Cuba to assess the revolution’s resilience in this post-Castro, Donald Trump era.

December 2, 2016

Author

Helen Yaffe
LSE Fellow, Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science
Disclosure statement
Helen Yaffe has received research funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
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