312. Cuba: Struggle Against Corruption Continues

Max Marambio (Left) with Fidel Castro

The Economist, May 6, 2011

Cuba’s recent crackdown on corruption has just claimed its most prominent victim. On May 5th Granma, the state newspaper, announced that a court had given a 20-year sentence in absentia to Max Marambio, a Chilean businessman and sometime close friend of Fidel Castro. Mr Marambio made a fortune through a stake in Rio Zaza, which has long held a near-monopoly selling fruit juice and long-life milk on the island. The report did not spell out the specifics of the conviction, but said said that Mr Marambio and Alejandro Roca Iglesias, the former food minister, had caused “considerable damage to the nation’s economy” and “impaired the ethical behaviour of various officials and subordinate workers”.

Mr Marambio was once the chief bodyguard for Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist president. He accepted Fidel Castro’s invitation to take refuge in Cuba after Allende was toppled and died in a 1973 coup. The two men got on. In the 1990s he reinvented himself as a businessman, and was one of the first individuals allowed to form a joint enterprise with the Cuban government.

In 2006 Mr Castro fell ill and handed the country’s day-to-day leadership to his brother Raúl. Two years later Raúl formally became president, and promptly began attacking Cuba’s endemic corruption. In 2009 he started sending officials to inspect the books at the country’s state companies. Soon several executives—all of whom supposedly earn a state salary of around $20 a month—were jailed or placed under house arrest. Rogelio Acevedo, who fought alongside the Castro brothers in the 1959 revolution and was thought to be incorruptible, was sacked as head of the aviation regulator following allegations that he had leased the state airline’s planes off the books, and that millions of dollars in cash were found at his home. Pedro Álvarez, who for many years headed the government agency that buys food from the United States, fled the island before an investigation against him was completed, and is currently believed to be living in Florida. The former CEO of the national cigar producer and several of its senior executives are in prison.

Despite Mr Marambio’s ties to the elder Mr Castro, his turn was bound to come. The government accused Rio Zaza of bribing staff and ministry officials, taking a lax attitude towards theft and overcharging the Cuban government for payments to its suppliers—some owned by Mr Marambio. He has not been seen on the island since 2009, and refused to comply with the government’s order for him to return last year, telling a Chilean radio station that “there's a new government in power made up of people with few ethics and scruples” and that he was “being persecuted by a bunch of thugs". He did not send a lawyer to represent him at the trial. The Cuban authorities instead provided him with one of their own, making the verdict a foregone conclusion.

For the president, an even harder task than rooting out corruption may be replacing the crooked officials he ousts. So far, Mr Castro has mainly drawn on his former colleagues in the Cuban army. GAE.SA, a holding company that functions as the military’s business arm, has been a prime beneficiary, and is now thought to control around 40% of the country’s economy. Its president, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja—who is also Raúl Castro’s son-in-law—was appointed to the Communist Party's Central Committee at the recent party congress. Whereas Fidel Castro would occasionally trust somewhat maverick businessmen, General Raúl Castro is sticking to what he knows

311. Cuba: Black Labor Market in Agriculture, a Case Study

Orlando's Seasonal Farm Hands at Work

By Mary Murray, NBC News, May 6, 2011

Just one look at Orlando and you know he broke a bunch of rules a long time ago.

Wealth sticks out like a sore thumb in Cuba, especially with a person like Orlando – who has amassed a small fortune for over 20 years – and lives in Cuba’s generally humble countryside.

Orlando's three-story stone white house with its hand carved wooden doors and tar paved driveway sits in shiny stark contrast to the surrounding homes, most of which are four-room small rectangles topped with thatched roofs and marked by exterior walls badly in need of a splash of paint.

So, for the record, Orlando is not his real name. For the most part, no one’s real name is used in this story about enterprising Cubans who have worked the system for years just to get by, some to thrive, and who hope to continue doing so in the future – legally. Having the courage to openly tell their stories could mean trouble with the authorities.

Providing a valuable commodity: food 


All that said, it clearly wouldn’t take Interpol to figure out Orlando’s true identity – if the authorities were so inclined. It’s pretty clear Cuban authorities have turned a blind eye toward Orlando's business, perhaps because this 73-year-old farmer has performed a real service for two decades.

He grows and sells food.

Bottom line, he feeds people – and provides an honest day's work to dozens of farmhands who, in turn, feed their families.

However, under the nation's constitution, individuals are banned from employing others, an act judged as “exploitation.” Violators face heavy fines and the confiscation of their property.

But just a few months ago, Cuba's pragmatic president, Raul Castro, pushed to modify that communist principle, since the country needs to offer alternative sources of employment to offset massive layoffs. About 1 million skilled and professional workers are scheduled to lose their state jobs by 2016 as Havana tries to tackle the country's fiscal crisis. 

The family farmer said he never set out to flout the law. “How was I supposed to harvest all this without help?” he asked, standing among acres of garlic, sweet potatoes, carrots and onions.

Orlando hires most of his employees on a seasonal basis to harvest land that has been in his family for generations. The farmhands also plant and pick produce on newly acquired fields Orlando leases from the Cuban government.

Orlando is one of 140,000 private farmers participating in a government program to cultivate crops on what had previously been barren state land.

Some private farmers grow export crops like tobacco and coffee but many, like Orlando, form part of the country’s drive to become self-sufficient in food production – to cut costly food imports while putting affordable provisions on the Cuban table. At the time the program began, in 2008, some 51 percent of Cuba’s arable land – about 9 million acres – was underused.

Castro’s idea of assisting private growers counts as another radical change in direction from the communist government, which had urged farmers since the 1960s to transfer their farms to the state or merge their lands into agricultural collectives.

Dream: to buy a ‘gold-colored’ Mercedes

 
A portion of what Orlando grows is purchased by the state for public hospitals and school cafeterias.

Orlando’s family also hawks part of the yield from rustic stands set up along the back roads between the capital and the countryside.

But the bulk gets sold to middlemen who travel to the farm three times a week and haul the produce in private trucks back to the city to sell in urban markets.

Unlike small farmers in other parts of the world who often struggle to cover costs, Orlando's family makes a solid living from the land. In fact,private farmers here are some of society’s most affluent.

And Orlando has invested wisely, with holdings that flow beyond the fence circling his farm.

His adult sons manage a fleet of taxis; the family also dabbles in retail and quietly finances a handful of local eateries.

He says life is good but he does have one hefty gripe – he’s not able to spend his money without worrying about who may be looking over his shoulder.

He needs a new tractor but the only ones for sale that he knows of are stolen property – from either a state farm or a cooperative. Orlando won’t take the chance.

But his big dream is to one day be able march into a Mercedes Benz dealership to buy a new shiny full-size luxury sedan. “I would like a gold-colored one,” he said.

And if that time ever comes, when Cubans are allowed to purchase cars without first having to get a paper from the government authorizing the sale, this savvy businessman plans to pay cash.

310. The Failure of the Genome

Human Genome

By Jonathan Latham, The Guardian, April 17, 2011

Since the human genome was sequenced, over 10 years ago, hardly a week has gone by without some new genetic "breakthrough" being reported. Last week five new "genes for Alzheimer's disease" generated sometimes front-page coverage across the globe. But take a closer look and the reality is very different.

Among all the genetic findings for common illnesses, such as heart disease, cancer and mental illnesses, only a handful are of genuine significance for human health. Faulty genes rarely cause, or even mildly predispose us, to disease, and as a consequence the science of human genetics is in deep crisis.

The human genome sequencing project was based on a huge, but calculated, gamble. The then leaders-to-be of the project believed that faulty genes inherited from our parents were probably the cause of most disease. After all, many rarer diseases were already known to be genetic. So it seemed a small leap to suppose that inherited faulty genes would underlie common diseases, too.

There was, however, a problem with the basis for their confidence. The best scientific evidence in humans for genes as causes of common disease was based on comparing disease rates in genetically identical twins against rates in non-identical twins (who share 50% of their DNA). These comparisons, called heritability studies, aimed to measure the relative contributions of genetic variation versus environmental variation.

Although extremely widely used and cited, these studies were considered worthless by some geneticists. Richard Lewontin of Harvard University, for instance, called in 1974 "for an end to the measurement of useless quantities". Other critics pointed out that these experiments relied on the proposition that identical twins experienced no more identical environments than did non-identical twins, when it was abundantly clear that parents were treating their identical offspring more similarly than their non-identical twins. These arguments constituted a threat to the genome project. Ultimately they were swept aside and all but forgotten.

In 2009, one of the few remaining scientifically active leaders of the original genome project, Francis Collins, published a review paper in the scientific journal Nature, along with 26 other prominent geneticists. It was titled Finding the Missing Heritability of Complex Diseases. In it, the authors acknowledged that, despite more than 700 genome-scanning publications and nearly $100bn spent, geneticists still had not found more than a fractional genetic basis for human disease.

Since the Collins paper was published nothing has happened to change that conclusion. It now seems that the original twin-study critics were more right than they imagined. The most likely explanation for why genes for common diseases have not been found is that, with few exceptions, they do not exist.

The failure to find meaningful inherited genetic predispositions is likely to become the most profound crisis that science has faced. Not only has the most expensive scientific project ever conceived failed to reach a goal it assured the world it would achieve, but there is also the ticklish problem of why the headlines have been so consistently discrepant with reality. As the failures to find significant genes have accumulated, geneticists have remained silent.

There are still important decisions to be made. The Collins paper proposed a no doubt expensive and open-ended search among hitherto disregarded genetic locations. We should be under no illusions, however. The likelihood that further searching might rescue the day appears slim. A much better use of that money would be to ask: if inherited genes are not to blame for our commonest illnesses, can we find out what is?

309. The Mother's Index Report

Sunday, May 8th is the Mother's Day in the United States and some other places.  Other countries have chosen other days of the year to pay tribute to the world's mothers.

Indeed, mothers are usually the first source of nourishment for us all. They are crucial to the development of the next generation that makes the world in its own image. 

So, it is pertinent to seek social policies that support mothers and children.  A good place to begin to see how the world is doing in these terms is to look at the Mother’s Index Report by Save the Children, a non-governmental organization.  

The index, find Norway to head the “More Developed Countries” and Cuba to top the “Less Developed Countries.” 

Happy Mother’s Day.

Kamran Nayeri

308. Fidel Castro: The Murder of Osama Bin Laden

By Fidel Castro Ruiz, May 4, 2011

Fidel Castro, with Raùl Castro, at the Closing Session of
the Six Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in April

Those who pay attention to these issues know that, on September 11, 2001, our people expressed solidarity with the United States and offered the modest support we could provide in the area of emergency care for the victims of the brutal attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

We also immediately offered our country’s runways to U.S. aircraft with no place to land given the chaos which reigned in the first few hours after the strike.

The Cuba Revolution’s historic position in opposition to acts which endanger the lives of civilians is well known.

Unwavering participants in the armed struggle against the Batista dictatorship we were, but opposed, in principle, to any terrorist act which would lead to the death of innocent people. Such a position, maintained over half a century, allows us the right to express a point of view on this delicate issue.

In a massive public event that day at [Havana’s] Ciudad Deportiva, I expressed the conviction that international terrorism would never be ended through violence and war.

He was clearly, for years, a friend of the United States, trained by it, and an adversary of the USSR and socialism, but whatever the acts attributed to Bin Laden, the murder of an unarmed human being surrounded by his family constitutes an abhorrent deed. This is apparently what the government of the most powerful nation ever to exist did.

The carefully crafted speech given by Obama announcing the death of Bin Laden affirms, "…we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child's embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts."

This paragraph contains a dramatic truth, but it does not deter honest people from remembering the unjust wars unleashed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hundreds of thousands of children forced to grow up without their mother or their father and the parents who would never know the feeling of their child's embrace.

Millions of citizens fled far from their peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba and other countries of the world.

Nor have hundreds of millions of people forgotten the horrific images of human beings in Guantánamo, occupied Cuban territory, filing by silently, subjected to months, even years, of unbearable, maddening torture. They are individuals kidnapped and transported to secret prisons with the hypocritical complicity of supposedly civilized societies.

Obama cannot conceal the fact that Osama was executed in the presence of his children and wives, now being held by authorities in Pakistan, a Muslim country of almost 200 million inhabitants which has seen its laws violated, its national dignity offended and its religious traditions debased.

How will he prevent the women and children of the person executed outside of the law, without a trial, from explaining what happened and the images from being transmitted around the world?

On January 28, 2002, CBS journalist Dan Rather reported on this television network that on September 10, 2002, the day before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Osama Bin Laden was treated with kidney dialysis in a Pakistani military hospital. He was in no position to hide or seek refuge in deep caverns.

Murdering him and consigning his body to the depths of the ocean demonstrates fear and insecurity, making him a much more dangerous figure.

After the initial euphoria, public opinion in the very United States will eventually turn against the methods used, which far from protecting its citizens, will multiply the hatred and vengeful feelings against them.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 4, 2011

8:34 p.m.

Translated by Granma International 

307.Global Warming Reduces Expected Yields of Harvests in Some Countries, Study Says

Harvesting Wheat in North India

By Justin Gillis, The New York Times, May 5, 2011

Global warming is already cutting substantially into potential crop yields in some countries — to such an extent that it may be a factor in the food price increases that have caused worldwide stress in recent years, researchers suggest in a new study.

Wheat yields in recent years were down by more than 10 percent in Russia and by a few percentage points each in India, France and China compared with what they probably would have been without rising temperatures, according to the study.

Corn yields were off a few percentage points in China, Brazil and France from what would have been expected, said the researchers, whose findings were published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Some countries saw small gains from the temperature increases, however. And in all countries, the extra carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the air acted as a fertilizer that encouraged plant growth, offsetting some of the losses from rising temperatures caused by that same greenhouse gas.

Consequently, the study’s authors found that when the gains in some countries were weighed against the losses in others, the overall global effect of climate change has been small so far: losses of a few percentage points for wheat and corn from what they would have been without climate change. The overall impact on production of rice and soybeans was negligible, with gains in some regions entirely offsetting losses in others.

But the authors of the study — David Lobell and Justin Costa-Roberts of Stanford University, and Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University — pointed out that temperature increases were expected to accelerate in coming decades, making it likely that the challenges to food production will grow in an era when demand is expected to rise sharply.

Over the period covered by the study, 1980 to 2008, temperatures increased briskly in many of the world’s important agricultural regions. A notable exception was the United States: for reasons climate scientists do not fully understand, temperatures in the Midwestern corn and soybean belt during the summer crop-growing season have not increased in recent decades.

“One way to think of it is that we got a pass on the first round of global warming,” Dr. Lobell said.

However, the study found that in virtually all of Europe, large parts of Asia and some parts of Africa and South America, temperatures during the growing season have warmed by an average of several degrees since 1980, increasing the likelihood of extremely hot summer days. The study also looked at rainfall, but changes were relatively minor compared with the temperature increases.

Plants are known to be sensitive to high temperatures, especially if the hot days occur when they are flowering. “In many of these countries, a typical year now is like a very warm year back in 1980,” Dr. Lobell said.

Wheat, rice, corn and soybeans account for the majority of calories consumed by the human race, either directly or as meat from animals raised on grains. Because demand for these grains is inflexible and rising, the losses from climate change probably accounted for price increases of about 6 percent in the four major commodities, the study’s authors found.

At today’s grain prices, that calculation implies that climate change is costing consumers, food companies and livestock producers about $60 billion a year.

“We aren’t talking about the sky falling,” Dr. Lobell said. “But we are talking about billions of dollars of losses. Every little bit of production is valuable when we’re trying to feed the world.”

If the price estimate is correct, it makes climate change a small contributor to a large trend. The prices of many foodstuffs have doubled or tripled in recent years as a result of a host of factors, including rapidly rising food demand in Asia, government mandates to use crops for biofuel production and extreme weather that may or may not be linked to climate change.

The authors of the new study specifically excluded the effects of extreme weather like brief heat waves and flash floods because of limitations in the data that they used. For that and other reasons, Dr. Lobell said, the study’s estimate of the impact of climate change is probably conservative.

306. Those More Likely to Conspire Tend to Believe Conspiracy Theories

Global Warming Conspiracy

University of Kent, May 4, 2011

Conspiracy theories - such as those surrounding the death of Princess Diana - are more likely to be believed by people who are willing themselves to conspire, new research at the University has shown.

In a paper to be published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, Dr Karen Douglas and Dr Robbie Sutton, two researchers from the School of Psychology, found that - in keeping with the psychological process called projection - an individual’s perception that "I would do it" informs his or her perception that "they did it".

The research, titled Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire, considered the responses of around 250 UK undergraduates to 17 major alleged conspiracies, such as the 'assassinations' of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy, the 'faking’ of the moon landings and the 'orchestration' of the 9/11 attacks by the US government.

In the first study, participants were asked whether they would personally play a role in such conspiracies, if they had been in a position to do so. An example of this was 'If you were in the position of the government, would you have ordered the attack on the Twin Towers?' The more that participants indicated a willingness to conspire, the more they found the same conspiracy theories to be plausible, interesting, and worth considering.

Further, the researchers found that participants who were highly Machiavellian - defined as willing to exploit others for personal gain - were more likely to indicate willingness to conspire, and as a result, were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.

In the second study, half of the participants were asked to remember a time that they had helped someone. The research team reasoned that this would temporarily enhance participants' sense that they are moral people. As expected, these participants, when compared to a control group, were less willing to conspire, and as a result, were less likely to take conspiracy theories seriously.

'We wanted to test a new explanation of why conspiracy theories are endorsed in an internet age when people have access to a matrix of often conflicting information from a variety of sources,' said Dr Douglas.

'We found that in their search for explanations under such uncertain and confusing conditions, people rely partly on projection - the assumption that others would behave much as they would.

'We're not saying however that all conspiracy theorists are immoral or that they have arrived at their beliefs through projection. It's important to note that other factors may lead people to believe in conspiracy theories. Also, our research says nothing about the truth or objective plausibility of such theories. However what we have shown is that one reason some people endorse conspiracy theories is because is they project their own moral tendencies onto the supposed conspirators', she said.