(Prensa Latina) Persistent criticism of documented abuses and atrocities against prisoners at the US naval base in Guantamano, Cuba, in the name of the global war on terrorism, have turned human rights into a dead letter.
The more than 500 prisoners caught worldwide during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been illegally flown into eastern Cuban occupied territory, tortured and humiliated without the least concern from the UN Human Rights Commission.
The prisoners are taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, aboard flights for torture or "rendition," or sending suspected Al Qaeda supporters captured overseas to prisons at U.S. military bases. Those whom Washington considers "enemy soldiers" are in fact hostages.
A CIA source said the flights are operated by the Joint Special Operations Command, a coordinator of counter-terrorist operations together with the CIA and special military forces. This is why they enjoy the Pentagon"s blessing to land in military airports.
The practice, even prescribed by US military doctors, has been rejected by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) whose director Robert Mueller has called on his agents to not participate in prisoners" interrogations to avoid involvement in such crimes.
Many testimonies from ex prisoners detail the brutal methods used in this concentration camp, first named X-Ray, then Camp Delta, and later Camp Five, sanctified by the White House following main land maximum-security prisons" regimes.
The prisoners, whom Attorney General Robert Gonzalez denies POW status, are submitted to strenuous physical and psychological pressures. They are called by a number not by their names, which are only registered in files.
They are kept in cage-like cells like animals, are barely given 90 minutes a week outside and are submitted to successive interrogations, food and water deprivation and forced to remain in uncomfortable positions.
They remain handcuffed and hooded, are given savage beatings, threatened with rape, forced to watch while other prisoners are tortured, urinated or defecated upon, with the aim of annihilating their morale.
The above is considered to be just the tip of the iceberg within the many atrocities the released prisoners have described of the infamous conditions at "Camp Five", later on copied in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and at many other US-run clandestine prisons worldwide.
The issue attracted global attention in spite of US efforts to silence the prisoners" conditions, many of them jailed for over two years without legal counsel.
They are flown to places away from the mainland to keep them even out of reach of US laws. The victims of this global "anti-terrorist crusade" are from about 40 nations and include children and teenagers.

ELECTORAL FRAUD IN THE UNITED STATES

Not even hidden

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International—

ALTHOUGH popular groups in Ohio have observed in November’s presidential elections a veritable pattern of fraud that meant the votes were significantly modified in favor of the Republican candidate George W. Bush, in the Miami of the Cuban-American mafia, fraud was being perpetrated in full view, reaching the level of farce. The height of ridicule: the vote on the issue of gambling machines that took place at the same time as the presidential vote.

In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, registered voters had to vote on Amendment 4, which authorizes the installation and operation of fruit machines, commonly known as slot machines at horse racing enclosures and greyhound tracks. The preliminary results, announced a few hours after the polls closed, indicated that a majority were against the proposed controversial measure.

However, the following day, it was suddenly announced that voters had

approved the amendment, because the machine that tabulated the electoral results had an "internal program" designed to subtract votes when the ballots cast reached 32, 000.

Suddenly, with the complicity of the press, it was dispassionately announced that there was an error in the tabulation and, even more scandalously, that the voting machines are "programmed" in such a way that alterations in the vote can be anticipated.

It was similarly affirmed that that program should not have been used for the amendment in question and thus determined that the amendment had been approved by 97,000 votes, that it to say around 1%.

On three occasions since 1978 Florida voters have rejected measures that would allow slot machines in casinos. But, thanks to "modern" technology, history has now been changed and 51% of the votes were surprisingly in favor of Amendment 4, turning the state into a land of slot machines¼ for the underworld.

In fact, according to several observers, the approval of the bill constitutes a first step in a series of laws that will authorize all sorts of gambling machines at some point. It has been amply demonstrated that in the United States the world of gambling machines and casinos from Las Vegas to Atlantic City belongs, in general, to organized crime.

According to El Nuevo Herald, "the racetrack and gambling machine owners spent $15 million so that the proposition would be approved" by using an outrageous argument¼ that slot machines "are a good way to collect money for schools."

More than $3 million came from the generous Isle of Capri casino owners in Biloxi, Mississippi.

94% IN FAVOR OF SLOT MACHINES

An article in The Miami Herald entitled "Gambling vote glitch mars tally," by Erika Bolstad and Curtis Morgan, explained in an astonishingly serious tone how the spectacular calculation "error" occurred on November 5.

"The problem" that in one single second made 78,000 votes appear "came to light just after midnight" (sic) when the counting office for the votes from Broward county was about to close.

Opponents to the amendment told The Herald that "they began" to suspect the snare when they realized that of the 78,000 "new votes" counted¼ 94% were in favor of the measure.

The "program" was used in elections held in 2002. The operational error had been "discovered two years ago but never corrected," affirmed the article.

Different alternative press outlets have noted how the voting machine manufacturing companies have ties with the most reactionary branch of the Republican Party and the war industry. Among the computer equipment used in the last election was equipment manufactured by Diebold, a subsidiary of Kellog Brown & Roost, another subsidiary of Halliburton, the business of which Vice President Dick Cheny was executive director.

Broward county, in northern Miami, is the same electoral district where, three weeks before the elections (in October), 58,000 ballots sent to voters by mail disappeared. The height of that absurd situation: the mail service denied any responsibility. At that point, it was reported in the press that the southern Florida FBI branch, of dubious repute, headed by a "corruption expert," Special Agent Clemens, had opened an "investigation." Nothing more is expected on the subject.

In 2000, in Broward country, more than 7,000 ballots were declared null, 800 of them because the holes were not perfectly perforated; in Miami-Dade 17,000 votes were rejected for different reasons and in Palm Beach more than 12,000 votes were eliminated for being insufficiently perforated, and another 19,000 because they were perforated in duplicate.

It was also there where, at the request of Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Cuban-American criminals like Vigilia Mambisa and his boss Miguel Saavedra created disturbances in locations where a laborious recount of votes was underway, thus putting an end to the Democratic show.

According to a team of experts from Berkeley University in California, who have made a statistical study of the November vote in Florida, the electronic counting machines could have granted an excess of 130,000-260,000 votes to George W. Bush. The study reveals an inexplicable discrepancy of votes in favor of Bush in counties using computerized machines in comparison to those using traditional counting methods.

Also worth repeating is that in Florida’s "democracy," managed by Jeb Bush, 600,000 people with a criminal record, for the most part African American and consequently Democrat supporters, have been permanently excluded from the electoral lists. The eloquent result is the direct inspiration of legislation inherited from the period of slavery. The major US press outlets systematically avoided any reference to the subject.

What occurred in Miami with the vote on Amendment 4 could be a laughing matter, but this same voting system is what has imposed an emperor on the entire world. The vote on the Amendment 4 in Miami-Dade and Broward illustrates with clarity the level of corruption reached in a country that claims to dictate its criteria for democracy to the rest of the world.

"They are not even bothering to hide it," a disillusioned observer from Miami commented to Granma International.

Cuba tourism increases, as Canadians top list of visitors

Taken from Canada.com

Canadian Press

January 06, 2005

HAVANA (AP) - Tourism to Cuba increased eight per cent in 2004 compared to 2003, with Canadians topping the list of visitors, followed by Europeans primarily from Italy, France, Germany and Spain.

The rise occurred despite new U.S. restrictions sharply cutting back on how many Americans visit the island.

More than two million tourists visited the Caribbean island, the largest number ever, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero announced. Last year, about 1.9 million foreigners visited Cuba.

Marrero told reporters tourism now represents 41 per cent of Cuba's foreign exchange income - a leap from just four per cent in 1990.

Few of those now visiting Cuba come from the United States.

By mid-September, visits to the island, primarily by Cuban-Americans, had dropped 25 per cent since the United States implemented new travel restrictions June 30 cutting the number of authorized family visits to Cuba from once a year to once every three years.

Smith: Bush policy says if the intelligence doesn't fit, manipulate it

Taken from The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah

By Wayne S. Smith
Special to The Baltimore Sun
4 January 2005

The function of intelligence should be to provide as accurate an assessment as possible of a given situation to guide the formulation of policy.

But the Bush administration doesn't see it that way; rather, it sees intelligence as something it can cite to justify a policy or an initiative it has already decided upon, as happened with Iraq. And if the facts must be twisted, misstated or even invented to justify that decision, fine. There is no commitment to truth.

Selig S. Harrison, the chairman of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy at the Center for International Policy, notes in the forthcoming January edition of Foreign Affairs magazine that the administration deliberately distorted its intelligence on North Korea.

In October 2002, the administration suddenly accused Pyongyang of secretly developing a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade in violation of its 1994 agreement with Washington. It then suspended the oil shipments the United States had been making to North Korea under that accord. North Korea responded by expelling international inspectors and resuming the processing of plutonium, suspended under the 1994 agreement. We were back to a crisis situation.

But according to Harrison, a review of the available evidence suggests that the Bush administration exaggerated the intelligence and blurred the important distinction between weapons-grade uranium enrichment and lower levels of enrichment. The first would clearly have violated the 1994 agreement. The second, while technically prohibited by the agreement, was permitted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and would not have resulted in uranium suitable for nuclear weapons.

It was something the United States probably should have questioned but not something over which we should have brought U.S.-North Korean relations back to a crisis. But that is exactly what the Bush administration did. The results could be dangerous. It is as if the administration preferred a military confrontation with North Korea to continued negotiations and inspections.

And we see the same pattern with Cuba.

The administration charges that Cuba endorses terrorism as a policy and represents a threat to U.S. security. But on the contrary, Cuba has condemned terrorism in all its manifestations, signed all 12 U.N. anti-terrorist resolutions and offered to sign agreements with the United States to cooperate in combating terrorism, an offer the administration ignores.

But the most flagrant misrepresentations are those of Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, who charges, most recently on March 30, that Cuba ''is known to be developing a limited biological weapons effort'' and ''remains a terrorist and BW threat to the United States.''

Bolton cannot produce evidence of that, of course. Various U.S. delegations led by the Center for Defense Information have gone to Cuba and seen no evidence to suggest that this is the case. As retired Marine Gen. Charles Wilhelm put it after one visit: ''While Cuba certainly has the capability to develop and produce chemical and biological weapons, nothing that we saw or heard led us to the conclusion that they are proceeding on this path ''

In short, the administration has not presented evidence that Cuba supports terrorism or has mounted a biological weapons effort. It simply alleges this to be true. But just as it did in Iraq, on the basis of alleged evidence, it is moving toward confrontation with Cuba. It has virtually cut off all dialogue, has drastically reduced travel, tightened sanctions and called for the ouster of Fidel Castro's government.

Under its policy of pre-emptive warfare, the Bush administration reserves the right to take military action against any state deemed to be a threat to the United States.

It has now said that Cuba poses such a threat. It probably has no intention of taking military action against Cuba, not with troops already in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, Cuba should be prepared for the worst.

Nor is this pattern of intelligence-tailoring likely to be corrected by the intelligence-reform law. Not with President Bush's newly appointed CIA director, J. Porter Goss, now cleaning out those at the CIA who dared to voice opinions contrary to those of the administration. Goss has insisted that all hands must unwaveringly ''support the administration and its policies.''

---
Wayne S. Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, served with the State Department in Havana and Moscow.