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Published on 5 September 2014 by ACN www.periodico26.cu
Thousands of messages are at the doors of the White House on Friday demanding the release of the three anti-terrorist Cubans held in US prisons since 1998.
Supporters of the cause of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, René González and Fernando González, internationally known as the Cuban Five, are sending their requests to President Barack Obama as an international solidarity action that takes place on the 5th day each month.
The initiative, which was promoted by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Five, reiterates the world claim for justice and urges the White House to return Hernandez, Labanino an Guerrero back to Cuba.
The three Cubans still imprisoned along with René González and Fernando González, already in Cuba after serving their prison sentences, monitored Florida-based violent organizations that planned terrorist actions against the Cuban people. They were submitted to a biased Miami trial which gave them extremely long an unfair sentences in 2001.
The campaign has been joined by renown personalities, such as Professor Felix Kury, from the University of San Francisco, California, who wrote Obama a letter urging him to use his signature and power to release the three Cuban anti-terrorist fighters.
The current international campaign for the release of Hernández, Labañino and Guerrero will run till October 6 with actions in over 40 nations of the world.
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Published on 15 August 2014 by www.cubacontemporanea.com
Cuba's Labiofam company (biopharmaceutical and chemical products) will present new therapeutic products against cancer during the Labiofam 2014 International Congress, which will be held in Havana from 22 to 25 September.
The press director of the institution, José Antonio Fraga Castro reports that during the event at the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana they will discuss about natural products on human health, the comprehensive programs of prevention and control of transmitters vectors of diseases, therapy and prophylaxis in animals, bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers for agriculture and cosmetics,.
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Published on 19 August 2014 by Radio Rebelde
A Chinese credit line will allow the setting up of a multi-purpose port terminal in eastern Santiago de Cuba, the second major city in Cuba at 850 kilometers from the capital Havana.
The credit line was one of the accords signed during the recent visit here by China’s president Xi Jinping, according to Radio China International.
The investment cost amounts to over 100 million dollars said Port director general Leonardo Naranjo speaking to Cuban television.
The project includes s 200-meter pier with three cranes and two warehouses, as well as the purchase of off-loading equipment.
The Santiago de Cuba harbor project will be the island’s second deep-water harbor after Mariel, some 45 kilometers west of Havana, which harbors the first Special Development Zone in Cuba.
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Published on 1 August 2014 by Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 240
Cuba’s new direct Foreign Investment Law was implemented on 30 June 2014. Unanimously approved in March by the National Assembly of People’s Power, the law is in accordance with the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution. These guidelines were established by the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in 2010 and discussed and modified across 163,000 consultations with almost nine million Cubans, before being ratified by the National Assembly of People’s Power in 2011. This extraordinary process of participative democracy governs the principles by which the Foreign Investment Law will operate. As the introduction of the guidelines affirms, ‘only socialism is capable of overcoming the difficulties and preserving the conquests of the Revolution, and that in the updating of the economic model, planning will be supreme, not the market’.
As we have discussed previously (see FRFI 221), the new law is part of a series of economic updates begun in 2008 designed to urgently increase domestic production, productivity and efficiency. This is necessary to increase national income, eliminate a balance of payments deficit, substitute imports with domestic production and develop the productive forces to work towards the long-term aims of ‘food and energy self-sufficiency, an efficient use of human potential, a higher level of competitiveness in traditional production areas, and the development of new forms of the production of goods and services of higher added value.’
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Published on 6 August 2014 by Granma Internacional
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) secretly sent young Latin Americans to Cuba in an attempt to incite opposition and destroy the Revolution, according to an investigation conducted by the U.S. press agency Associated Press, the same agency which exposed the ZunZuneo project, based on the use of new mobile phone technology to promote destabilization in Cuba.
The report signed by journalists Desmond Butler, Jack Gillum, Alberto Arce and Andrea Rodríguez, stated that beginning in October 2009, a project directed by USAID sent young Venezuelans, Costa Ricans and Peruvians to Cuba with the goal of inciting a rebellion on the island.
AP revealed, “The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists.”
The project employed covert methods commonly used by U.S. intelligence services, such as secret lines of communication, fronts and lies; encryption of information; security measures; promoting exchanges with overseas agents; seeking intelligence information on Cuban society; psychological preparation of emissaries in the case of possible detection by Cuban State Security; use of codes in communications, among others. Nonetheless the journalists assert that the project was plagued with “incompetence and risks.”
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Published on 25 July by www.counterpunch.org W.T. Whitney Jr
In Cuba recently press conferences and new reports celebrated the ten-year anniversary of Operation Miracle, known also as “Mision Miracle,” which occurred on July 8. This internationalized project aimed at restoring vision on a massive scale took shape within the context of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America.
Cuba and Venezuela launched ALBA in late 2004. Latin American and Caribbean nations belonging to ALBA engage in mutually beneficial trade-offs of educational and medical services, scientific projects, even commodities. They are referred to as solidarity exchanges. ALBA exemplifies Cuba and Venezuela’s central role in promoting regional integration.
Under Operation Miracle, Cubans and Venezuelans benefit from surgical eye care, as do tens of thousands of foreign nationals who’ve traveled to Cuba for treatment. Cuban ophthalmologists serving in Venezuela took the lead in establishing 26 eye care centers throughout that national territory. Staff consisting of eye surgeons, nurses, technicians, and other physicians have served Venezuelans and also vision- impaired people from 17 Latin American countries plus Italy, Portugal, and Puerto Rico. More recently organizers established centers in 14 Latin American and Caribbean nations. Ten years after its start the project operates in 31 countries, some in Africa and Asia.
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Published on 26 July 2014 by Granma International
We have arrived thus far thanks to the unity of the people and their confidence in the Revolution, said Comandante de la Revolución Ramiro Valdés, July 26 in Artemisa
President Raúl Castro led the event commemorating the 61st anniversary of the assaults on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Garrisons, July 26, National Day of Rebellion, held in the provincial capital of Artemisa, west of Havana.
The Cuban people’s determination to guarantee the continuity of the Revolution and socialism was emphasized by Comandante de la Revolución Ramiro Valdés Menéndez – a participant in the historic 1953 assaults led by Fidel against the Batista dictatorship – who presented the principal remarks at the national celebration.
We have no alternative other than continuing to struggle every day for the homeland, the Revolution, and socialism, said Valdés, also a vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers.
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Published on 23 July 2014 by Cuba News
Cuba prioritizes actions to develop its recycling industry through the purchase of modern technology, the study of its potentials and the adoption of new legislation in the sector.
In tune with a new recycling policy adopted in 2012 by the Cuban Council of Ministers the performance of the sector is being reviewed and will be complemented with a new recycling law, currently in the works, plus the setting of prices that encourage the collection and recovery of recycling materials.
The new policy stipulates the development of industrial processing through the introduction of new technology and of course encouragement of foreign investment in the sector.
According to the general vice-director of the Cuban Recycling Industry Marilyn Ramos, actions have thus far included the study of the country's potential output of recycling materials, the installed capacity for industrial processing and the opportunities that the sector can offer foreign investors to create new recycling capacities.
The plan includes the purchase of new equipment to disassemble large and idle industrial facilities that possess large volumes of metal scrap; important enough is an investment in a local ship disassembling plant in western Cuba, aimed at increasing capabilities and work on all boats abandoned along Cuban coasts.
Actions also aim at setting up a new recycling plant of plastic materials in the central-southern province of Cienfuegos.
However, the sector reported the recycling of over 420 thousand tons of materials in 2013 , which translated into the saving of 220 million dollars, if the country had to import such raw materials, officials said.
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Speech by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba’s Central Committee, President of the Councils of State and Ministers, on July 5, 2014, Year 56 of the Revolution, during the National Assembly of People’s Power 8th Legislature’s third period of ordinary sessions, in Havana’s Convention Center
Compañeras and compañeros:
Over the last few weeks, we have held important meetings, among them the June 21 Council of Ministers and the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee, last Thursday. Information about both events, especially the Council of Ministers, has been broadly reported in the media.
Likewise, since Wednesday, deputies have discussed in depth, in their respective commissions, the principal issues affecting the nation’s work. My remarks will therefore be brief.
As has been reported, during the first half of the year, the Cuban economy continued to grow modestly; the Gross Domestic Product (GNP) increased by 0.6%, indicating a deceleration in the growth rate as a result of shortfalls in external income; the negative effects of weather conditions; as well as the persistence of internal economic management deficiencies.
Despite growth in the areas of transportation, communications, agriculture, the sugar industry and tourism, decreases were registered in mining and industrial production, the latter as a result of difficulties with financing and the consequent late delivery of imported raw materials.
Likewise, the negative effects of the world economic crisis continue, while the U.S. blockade has been tightened, especially with respect to the persecution of financial entities which maintain ties with our country, a topic I will address again later.
In these undeniably difficult circumstances, we have met in a timely fashion our financial obligations resulting from the restructuring of debts with our principal creditors, a fact which favors the continuing recuperation of our economy’s international credibility.
At the same time, internal monetary equilibrium has been maintained, both within the population’s sector and in the economy as a whole. The tendency toward recovering financial discipline, in terms of accounts payable and receivable, has been consolidated, as well.
To achieve a growth of 1.4% in the GNP by the end of the year, more and better work is required during the second semester, and the utilization of untapped sources of efficiency must be strengthened.
We are not satisfied with the results achieved, but neither are we discouraged, in the least. Faced with these difficult circumstances, our spirit of struggle, determination and optimism must prevail, to reverse the situation and regain the rate of growth needed to assure socialist development, based on sustainable and irreversible foundations.