A NOBEL PRIZE FOR MRS. CLINTON

The never-ending document read yesterday by the Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias is much worse than the 7 points of the surrender paper he had proposed on July 18th.He wasn’t communicating with international opinion in Morse Code. He was speaking in front of the TV cameras that were transmitting his image and all the details of the human face that tends to have as many variables as a person’s fingerprints. Any intent to lie can be easily discovered. I was observing him carefully.Among those watching the television, the great majority knew that Honduras had had a coup d’état. That medium gave information about the speeches made at the OAS, the UN, the SICA (Central American Integration System), the NAM Summit and other forums; they had seen the violations, the assaults and the repression inflicted on the people engaged in activities that brought together hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the coup.The strangest thing was that when Arias was laying out his new peace proposal, he wasn’t delusional; he believed what he was saying.Even though very few in Honduras were able to see the images, in the rest of the world many did see them and they also saw when he proposed the famous 7 points on July 18th. They knew that the first of them said, verbatim: “The legitimate restitution of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the presidency of the Republic of Honduras until the end of the constitutional term for which he was elected…”Everyone wanted to know what the mediator would be saying yesterday afternoon. The acknowledgement of the rights of the constitutional president of Honduras, with the powers reduced almost to zero in the first proposal, was relegated to sixth place in the second Arias plan, where the phrase “to legitimate the restitution” is not even being used. Many honest people are amazed and they perhaps attribute what he said yesterday to some dark manoeuvres of his. Perhaps I am one of the few in the world that understands that there was an auto-suggestive element rather than a deliberate intent in the words of the Nobel Peace Laureate. I noticed that especially when Arias, using special emphasis and laboured phrasing on account of the emotion, spoke about the multitude of messages that presidents and world leaders, moved by his initiative, had sent him. It’s what was going through his mind; he doesn’t even realize that other Nobel Peace Laureates, honest and modest individuals such as Rigoberta Menchú and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, are outraged by what has happened in Honduras. Without any shadow of a doubt, a large part of the civilian governments of Latin America, the ones who knew that Zelaya had approved the first Arias plan and were confident in the good sense of the perpetrators of the coup and their Yankee allies, breathed in relief; that lasted only 72 hours. Seen from a different angle, and returning to the things that prevail in the real world, where the dominant empire exists and almost 200 sovereign states have to wrestle with all kinds of conflicts and political, economic, environmental, religious and other interests, the only thing missing is to award the brilliant Yankee way of thinking of Oscar Arias, trying to gain some time, strengthen the coup, and dishearten the international bodies that supported Zelaya. On the 30th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, Daniel Ortega, bitterly remembering Arias’ role in the first Esquipulas Treaty, declared before a huge crowd of Nicaraguan patriots: “The Yankees know him well, that’s why they chose him to be the mediator in Honduras”. At that same event, Rigoberta Menchú, of indigenous descent, condemned the coup. If the measures agreed to at the foreign ministers meeting in Washington would be merely fulfilled, the coup d’état would not have been able to survive the non-violent resistance of the Honduran people. Now the perpetrators of the coup are already moving around in the oligarchic spheres of Latin America, some of which, from high state positions, no longer blush when they speak of their sympathies for the coup and imperialism goes fishing in the choppy waters of the river that is Latin America. Exactly what the United States wanted with the peace initiative, while it accelerated negotiations to surround Bolivar’s homeland with military bases. We must be fair, and while we await the last word of the people of Honduras, we should demand a Nobel Prize for Mrs. Clinton.

-Fidel Castro Ruz - July 23, 2009


Coalition Letter Urges President Obama to Restore Academic Travel to Cuba

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2009 – With a new academic year quickly approaching, NAFSA: Association of International Educators and a diverse group of 17 organizations today sent a letter to President Obama urging him to remove current restrictions on academic travel to Cuba.The letter applauds the President’s recent actions with respect to Cuba and asks him to take further steps toward his goal of setting U.S.-Cuban relations on a new path by restoring academic travel between the two countries.Citing the many benefits of academic exchanges and their history of success in advancing democratic change and strengthening relations between the United States and other countries, the letter suggests that a policy of open academic travel between the United States and Cuba would align well with the President’s interest in expanding opportunities for exchanges between young people around the world. As President Obama recently said to a group of students in Turkey, "exchanges can break down the walls between us."Unfortunately, study abroad among Americans to Cuba has declined precipitously since the Bush administration imposed restrictive regulations on academic travel to the island in 2004. According to the latest data available from the Institute of International Education, only 220 American college students studied in Cuba during the 2006-2007 academic year. Three years earlier, ten times that many students had done so. In addition to urging the President to restore academic travel to Cuba via general license, the letter supports the granting of U.S. visas for Cubans coming to the United States for exchange purposes and the announcement of a policy favoring academic, cultural, religious, sports and professional visits, and also urges Cuban authorities to grant exit visas for students and scholars accepted by US academic institutions.

The letter was signed by the following organizations:
American Association of State Colleges and UniversitiesAlliance for International Educational and Cultural ExchangeAmerican Institute for Foreign StudyCIEE – Council on International Educational ExchangeCommunity Colleges for International DevelopmentCuba Academic AllianceEmergency Coalition to Defend Educational TravelFund for Reconciliation and Development Latin American Studies AssociationLatin America Working GroupNAFSA: Association of International EducatorsNational Foreign Trade CouncilOrbitz WorldwidePartners of the AmericasSocial Science Research CouncilThe OpenCuba.org CampaignUSA*EngageWashington Office on Latin America

The full text of the letter is available here: http://www.nafsa.org/_/File/_/POTUS_Cuba_July_09.pdf,