Aristide: You Can't Go Home Again

Ed's Note: Sometimes events catch up with you. Case in point, the post below, which I had written for The Mantle. I was about to post it when the news came out that Haiti had decided to finally issue former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide a passport so he could return to the country, which is the central argument of this piece.  But, I decided to publish it here anyway because it does give some background as to why things in Haiti are so bad today (hint: it's not just because of the earthquake). - E.

On its face it was one of the stranger political decisions of recent times: the sudden return of Haiti's notorious and brutal former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier from a quarter-century of exile ostensibly to help his people recover from the massive earthquake that struck the nation - a full year after the temblor devastated Port-Au-Prince and killed 300,000 people. At the same time though, another Haitian political drama was unfolding much more quietly: the decision to prevent Haiti's former democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from making a similar return to his homeland. According to diplomatic cables unearthed in the Wikileaks document dump, following the January 2010 earthquake, the United States supposedly pressured Brazil – the nation heading up the United Nations-backed security and relief efforts in Port-Au-Prince – not to allow Aristide to return from exile in South Africa. Author Gwynne Dyer contends that the United States had long kept tabs on the exiled Duvalier, who traveled back to Haiti on an expired diplomatic passport; it's hard to imagine that airport security in Paris would have missed the fact that his passport was now invalid, meaning that both countries likely knew of Duvalier's travel plans and did nothing to intercede. This of course begs the question as to why the United States would feel the need to slap such an injunction on a deposed democratically-elected president yet not on a former dictator.

Sadly it seems a case of that old maxim attributed to President Franklin Roosevelt in action: “he may be a bastard, but he's our bastard.” For nearly 40 years the Duvalier clan – first Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, then after his death in 1971, his son Jean-Claude - ruled Haiti with an iron fist. But while the years of Duvalier rule may have been ones of oppression for average Haitians, brutally enforced by their secret police, the Tonton Macoute; for Haiti's elite and international business interests from the United States, Canada and France, it was something of a golden age. After a decade and a half of misrule, Baby Doc was overthrown and driven into exile in 1986, a chaotic time followed. Finally in 1991 Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former Catholic priest, was elected president. When Aristide was subsequently overthrown, the United States actively supported his return to power as the “democratically-elected” leader of Haiti in 1994. By 2004, during his second term in office though, the United States' opinion of Aristide had changed. At this point, Aristide was making good on some of his populist pledges to try to lift the majority of Haiti's population out of poverty (Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere) at the expense of the nation's elites and international business interests. He had also disbanded Haiti's army, which most Haitians viewed not as an instrument of national protection, but rather national oppression, and had become the head of the Fanmi Lavalas, a populist/socialist political movement that enjoyed wide support from Haiti's underclass. When Aristide was deposed for a second time, the United States' official position was that this was a “domestic matter” for the Haitians themselves to resolve.

Aristide though has long contended that his second deposal was not a Haitian-led revolt, but rather one organized and funded by the United States (specifically the CIA) because of his attempts to reign in international business interests in the country and lift the rank-and-file Haitians out of poverty. It is tempting to dismiss Aristide's charges as mere sour grapes, that his powerful neighbor to the north provides a too convenient scapegoat for his own removal from power. What makes Aristide's claims even more compelling is the decision taken by the Haitian electoral commission ahead of the 2010 election, again supposedly at the urging of the United States, to not allow his party the Fanmi Lavalas to participate. Since Aristide's overthrow, the Fanmi Lavalas has not been allowed to run candidates in any national election, they were barred from the 2010 vote on the grounds that their official electoral paperwork was not in order.

Sadly the United States has a long history of involvement with Haiti that has seldom worked out well for the Haitians. Take for instance the impact the United States has had on Haiti's agricultural sector. As part of a package of neo-liberal economic reforms in the mid-1990s, the United States insisted that Haiti open up their agricultural sector to international competition. The effects on Haiti were devastating: their sugarcane industry all but collapsed and the country went from being an exporter of rice to relying on imports from the United States, which thanks to American farming subsidies, sold in Haitian markets for far less than the domestic product. Haitian agriculture was dealt another heavy blow when the United States insisted that Haiti cull all of their native hogs over misplaced fears that a swine-born illness could jump from the island to the United States mainland and decimate the American pork industry. The Creole Pig was uniquely adapted to thrive in the heat and harsh conditions of the Haitian hinterland, they also formed the basis of the rural economy: a farmer's wealth was often measured in large part by the number of hogs he owned. In return for killing the Creole Pigs, the United States offered to replace them with domestic stock, but these hogs, bred for life on American farms, were ill-suited to Haiti, needing special shelters to protect them from the tropical sun and special feed that was out of the budget of many small Haitian farmers (Creole Pigs foraged for most of their food). As a result, large numbers of farmers were forced to simply give up their land and move to the city – many to the poorly built slums that collapsed so readily in the January 2010 earthquake. President Bill Clinton himself seemed to have a change of heart about forcing open the Haitian agriculture market based on his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last March: “it may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake…I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did.” Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas staunchly opposed the neo-liberal economic reforms imposed on Haiti in the mid-90s.

Of course history and international relations are complex things, which perhaps is why conspiracy theories – especially the darker ones – about the interplay of nations, seem to find such fertile ground. It must be noted that in the days and weeks immediately following the quake, no other nation arrived in Haiti with as much material and support as the United States. Yet at the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that for much of Haiti's existence, the involvement of the United States in their affairs has arguably done more harm than good. One has to ask if that pattern is not continuing with our apparent insistence that Jean-Bertrand Aristide not be allowed to return to his homeland, especially while Baby Doc sits in Port-Au-Prince.

Update #2 – Dudus Done

A follow up now to a post I did on The Mantle a few weeks ago: “The Other Drug War Next Door.” That post focused in large part on attempts to apprehend notorious Jamaican drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke and on attempts by residents in his Tivoli Gardens neighborhood in Kingston to prevent that from happening. News from Jamaica Tuesday night is that Dudus was finally taken into custody, but how that happened is open to interpretation – Jamaican officials say that Dudus was stopped at a police checkpoint; his pastor though claims they were stopped by police while on their way to the American embassy to surrender.

Why go to the Americans? It was an extradition order from the United States on charges of drug and gun smuggling that kicked off the whole hunt for Dudus - eventually. The Jamaican government, led by Prime Minister Bruce Golding spent the better part of a year fighting the extradition request, which focused unwanted attention on the close links between the drug baron and prime minister. Tivoli Gardens lies within Golding’s district and reliably delivered large blocks of votes to his Jamaican Labor Party each election. Rumors in Kingston were that Golding finally decided to act on the extradition order after learning that the US Drug Enforcement Agency had evidence of the Golding/Dudus sweetheart deal on a wiretap of Dudus’ phones. Dudus’ decision to skip the middleman and surrender directly to the Americans may have been motivated by his own father’s death in a Jamaican jail after a fire mysteriously broke out in his cell. Meanwhile, residents of Tivoli Gardens don’t want Dudus to go to jail either in the United States or Jamaica, claiming that he (and not the Jamaican government) is the only one supplying much-needed social services in their poverty-stricken portion of Jamaica. Dudus has in the past funded schools, health clinics and job programs in Tivoli Gardens.

Another UN Fail In Haiti?

Responding to the earthquake disaster in Haiti isn’t turning out to be one of the bright spots in the recent history of the United Nations.

You might remember this story from a week and a half ago about UN peacekeepers ordering doctors to abandon a makeshift hospital, leaving behind more than two-dozen badly injured patients. Luckily for the wounded, CNN correspondent, and medical doctor, Sanjay Gupta happened to be there when the staff left – he and his film crew jumped in and cared for the patients through the night until the doctors returned the next day.

Now two more stories of pretty questionable judgment on the part of the UN have been caught on TV. On Monday a crew from Britain’s ITV network filmed an aid distribution debacle. Trucks from the UN’s Port-au-Prince warehouse arrived to distribute boxes of much needed food aid to a crowd of Haitians, some of whom hadn’t eaten in days. But no sooner had the aid distribution started than the UN Blue Helmets (their peacekeeping troops) providing security got spooked by the size of the crowd. Fearing a riot, they ordered the operation stopped and the aid packages loaded back aboard the truck, which then promptly returned to the warehouse with much of its load of aid supplies intact.

Yesterday MSNBC showed film from another attempted UN food distribution effort. Again, the peacekeepers quickly lost control of the crowd, panicked and this time used pepper spray on the hungry Haitians. At least this time they also managed to distribute one truckload of food, though a near riot erupted when a second truck (an SUV actually) approached – the crowd thought it was also carrying aid packages, though it turned out to have nothing to do with the UN effort (which also begs the question of why did the UN only send one truck in the first place?)

Again, I don’t want to be overly critical of the United Nations, it’s worth repeating that the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince was destroyed in the earthquake and that the UN suffered its worst single-day loss of life in the building’s collapse. But these are three highly publicized instances where the UN has actually made a bad situation worse, and it is becoming clear that the UN peacekeepers in Port-au-Prince are in way over their heads. If the UN can’t get its act together in a hurry, then perhaps they should step aside and let agencies from other nations/organizations take the lead until they do.

UN Shuts Haiti Medical Center – WTF?

The news out of Haiti last night was too much to believe. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta was reporting from a small, makeshift medical center operating out of a tent in Port-au-Prince where more than two dozen badly wounded Hatians were finally receiving at least some medical care. That is until a group of UN peacekeepers arrived and ordered the doctors to abandon the field hospital over concerns for their safety. They were ordered to take the doctors away, but not the patients, who apparently were suppose to fend for themselves.

Dr. Gupta was dumbstruck, so too were CNN’s Anderson Cooper and retired General Russel Honore, who helped to bring order back to New Orleans in the days following Hurricane Katrina. To his great credit, Dr. Gupta stayed as the other medical staff were evacuated to tend to the patients they left behind, he even enlisted his camera crew to serve as healthcare aides. They had no problems with “security” during the night (seriously, with the entire city crying out for medical care, why would anyone attack one of the few places providing it?)

By morning, there was a change of heart somewhere and the medical staff was allowed to return to the medical center. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon even issued a statement saying that the UN had not ordered the medical staff to leave, blaming the evac order on “other agencies” – Ban’s story is hard to believe though since the medical staff specifically told Gupta they were being ordered to leave by the United Nations, the CNN film crew has video of a UN-marked vehicle arriving at the tent site and of UN peacekeepers talking with the staff.

I have to say that I support the mission and ideals of the United Nations, and I know that they employ many bright and compassionate people. But incidents like last night at the clinic in Haiti give credence to some of the biggest criticisms of the UN – for example that it is such a massive bureaucracy that it often undermines the good work it is trying to do. Granted, the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince was destroyed in the earthquake, killing many members of the staff and plunging the UN mission into chaos (it was the largest single-day loss of life ever suffered among UN staff). But Haiti is a disaster-prone nation, in addition to the threat of earthquakes, Haiti is often struck by hurricanes – it was hit by four tropical storms in less than two months in 2008 that caused widespread damage. It would only make sense then for the UN to have had a contingency plan in place should the PAP headquarters be knocked out (the northern city of Cap Haitien for example was not affected by the quake).

Another critique the health clinic debacle is bound to bring up again is the charge that UN peacekeepers are often little more than blue helmeted bystanders. Rather than evacuating the doctors, why couldn’t a few UN peacekeepers have provided security for the clinic instead? It’s worth noting again that Dr. Gupta and crew passed the night without incident in this allegedly “dangerous” place. Surely a few peacekeepers would have been more than enough of a show of force to keep order and it is hard to argue, given the health care situation in Haiti at the moment, that they could have been better used elsewhere.

The bottom line is that United Nations projects and programs do great things in many neglected corners of the world. But if they are overmatched in Haiti – and given the losses at their headquarters it’s understandable that they may be – and they are more of a hindrance than a help, then they should step aside and let those who can provide aid in these very difficult times do just that.

Clinton Gets A Statue, Bolt Gets A Cheetah

So if you're the fastest man in the world, what animal to you choose as a pet? A cheetah, of course... Well, Olympic Champion Usain Bolt didn't exactly buy a cheetah as a pet, but he did adopt one at a refuge in Kenya, which he named "Lightning Bolt". Bolt, Usain Bolt that is, was visiting Kenya to help launch "The Long Run", an ecology campaign sponsored by a German charity, the Zeitz Foundation. Bolt was also made an honorary Masai Warrior during his visit.

But if you're looking for honors, it's hard to beat the one that Kosovo bestowed upon former President Bill Clinton. Officials in Pristina unveiled a gold-covered 10-foot tall likeness of the former president, whom many in Kosovo honor as the man responsible for ending their conflict with Serbia and ultimately paving the way for Kosovo's independence. Bill Clinton himself was on hand for the unveiling, along with at least one young Kosovar named "Klinton" in his honor. For the record, the Kosovars also have similar warm feelings for George W. Bush as well, though Bush only has a street named after him in the capital, no giant gold-plated statue.

In his speech, Clinton called upon the Kosovars to forge a multi-ethnic society. So far ethnic relations in Kosovo have focused on keeping the peace between the Albanian majority and the Serbian minority. But there are other smaller ethnic groups in Kosovo as well who say that they are being shoved to the margins of society. The London Telegraph recently ran this story about Kosovo's Ashkali minority, who claim that in efforts to build bridges between the Serbs and Albanians, their plight is being ignored. Like the Roma (Gypsies), the Ashkali have a murky ethnic lineage that stretches back to Central Asia, and like the Roma, the Ashkali often find themselves excluded from society. The Ashkali interviewed by the Telegraph say they have an almost 100% unemployment rate, their children can't go to school and that the Kosovo government largely ignores them, focusing solely on the Serbian minority.

It's something for the Kosovars to keep in mind as they listen to the words of Bill Clinton.

Small Island Nations Blast Climate Change Inaction

In December the nations of the world will gather in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference to hammer out a new agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions and hopefully reduce the impact of global warming. But already the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is saying that any agreement in Copenhagen won't be enough to keep the sea from swallowing their native lands.

This week at a pre-Copenhagen meeting in Bangkok, AOSIS was pushing for a commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade, rather than the 2C goal likely to be the outcome of the Copenhagen agreement. Their plea fell on deaf ears. "It's really setting up Copenhagen for failure or an inadequate result," said Leon Charles, the chairman of the AOSIS negotiating team. Two degrees, AOSIS argues, won't be enough to save their island nations.

The average elevation on many of the islands of members of AOSIS is less than two meters (a little over six feet for those of you not metrically inclined), so even a small rise in sea levels would have a devastating effect on the AOSIS nations. Already one AOSIS member, The Maldives, has set up a Sovereign Wealth Fund to buy a new homeland for the nation's 350,000 residents the day their Indian Ocean nation becomes uninhabitable. But for other AOSIS members, buying a new homeland is not an option either financially or culturally - many of the island peoples feel a deep bond to their land, the 12,000 Tuvaluan (natives of the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu) say they would cease to be “Tuvaluan” if forced to leave their ancestral home.

Meanwhile, in an effort to highlight the coming effects of rising sea levels, President Mohammed Nasheed of The Maldives is convening the October 17th meeting of his Cabinet 20 feet underwater. The point of the meeting will be to sign a decree calling on all nations to slash carbon emissions ahead of the Copenhagen meetings in December.

A dramatic stunt? Sure it is, but the AOSIS would argue that dramatic action is needed if they have any hope of saving their homelands.

Now That’s A Birthday Present (for Obama)

Barack Obama’s birthday was yesterday, and to commemorate the event, the Prime Minister of the Caribbean island nation of Antigua renamed his country’s tallest mountain in his honor – so now 1,300 foot tall Boggy Peak will be henceforth known as ‘Mount Obama’.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer unveiled the name change at a ceremony attended by the US’ charge d’affaires for the Eastern Caribbean, Brent Hardt, as well as Antigua’s reigning calypso monarch, Trevor “Zacari” King, who played his rendition of “For You Barack” for the occasion. PM Spencer said that he was inspired to do something “symbolic and inspiring” after seeing Obama elected last November and said that Obama embodied “excellence, triumph, hope and dignity for all people.”

Of course nothing like this ever happens without its critics, in this case Antigua’s opposition Labour Party who called the name change “silly”, others said that it was important to remember the contributions of all people of African descent, not only to honor the first black American President. But on the whole, the move was well-received in Antigua, where Obama is very popular.

PM Spencer also announced plans to create a national park on the newly-christened Mt. Obama.

US, LA at odds again over Cuba

Cuba is once again dominating relations between the United States and Latin America.

The forum this time is the annual meeting of the Organization of American States. Cuba was kicked out of the OAS back in 1962 after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. Now most of the members of the OAS think it's time for the ban to end, the one member that doesn't is of course the United States. The United States is saying that Cuba first would need to make democratic and human rights reforms before the US would back a Cuban membership bid.

So far this argument has taken up a day of the OAS meeting. And according to the BBC report, it's pointless - Cuba has said they have no intention of rejoining the OAS now even if invited. So in other words, the United States is picking a fight over an issue that, in reality, doesn't exist; and it's causing more friction between the United States and Latin America at a time when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been arguing about the need for the US to rebuild ties with our neighbors to the South.

The OAS could vote to extend the invitation to Cuba without the United States' support.

US Energy Secretary warns that islands could disappear

Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary, has used a trip to the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago to warn that if drastic action isn't taken to stem the effects of global warming, some of the world’s island nations could "simply disappear."

This won't come as news to the leaders of two of those island states Kiribati and the Maldives. Last year President Anote Tong of Kiribati said that his country could be doomed. With an average elevation of just six feet above sea level, the South Pacific nation is already dealing with widespread erosion and loss of cropland. Tong feels that moving people to what little high ground exists in Kiribati may just be delaying the inevitable.

President Mohamed Nasheed has a similar assessment of his nation (average elevation, five feet), but has a more proactive plan for the future. His government has begun a Sovereign Wealth Fund, fueled by money generated by the Maldives tourism sector. He said the nation could one day use this pool of money to just buy a new homeland for the Maldives 300,000 citizens.

Secretary Chu said the Obama administration was encouraging other nations to adopt new energy efficiency standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Guadeloupe riots, could France be next?

Though it’s been absent from the American media, there has been a public uprising going on right in our backyard.

The Caribbean island of Guadeloupe has basically been shut down for weeks thanks to massive public strikes over the terrible economic situation there. Guadeloupe is an overseas territory of France, a legal status that strangely enough gives it the highest unemployment rate (about 25 percent) in the European Union. And that gets to the heart of the protests - the feeling among the residents of Guadeloupe that they’ve been forgotten as France struggles to deal with the global economic downturn. The trouble on Guadeloupe started when a coalition of local unions, the Collective Against Exploitation (or LKP in French), began a series of general strikes in protest to the economic conditions on the island.

But the French government was slow to respond, angering Guadeloupe’s residents and prompting other groups, outside of the control of the LKP to get involved in the protests, which began to turn violent. Since then there have been riots, with the burning of some businesses and at least one union leader has been killed; dozens of other protestors have been arrested. The violence has prompted tourists, who contribute a large chunk to Guadeloupe’s economy, to flee the island and France to fly in riot police to try to restore order.

French President Nikolas Sarkozy has promised a package of 500 million Euros in assistance to Guadeloupe and France’s other Overseas Departments, but protestors are demanding that the aid package also include payments of 200 Euros a month to workers to help raise the standard of living for all on the island. Locals also say that there is a long-standing racial component to the island’s problems - much of the economy is in the hands of the whites (or “Bekes” in the local slang), who are descendants of colonial-era landlords and plantation owners, while the majority of the island’s population is black. They feel that their concerns have, historically, not been taken seriously by the French and that economic development plans leave behind the majority black population.

Meanwhile the Guardian is warning that Guadeloupe’s problems could spread back to France in the coming months. Like Guadeloupe, France is suffering from stagnant wages and rising prices - meaning the buying power of a person's salary is falling. So too are Sarkozy’s approval ratings, now tumbling down to George W. levels, about 36% according to recent polls. Worse, there is a general feeling that Sarkozy doesn’t have any solutions to France’s economic problems. Recent polls also indicated that 63% of those surveyed think Guadeloupe-style riots could come to France soon if the economic situation doesn’t improve. Sarkozy is also ruffling feathers with his fellow European Union members. Recently he said that French car makers should only get government bailouts if they keep production in France and not ship it to places in the EU where costs are cheaper - like Slovakia, a move the EU says smacks of protectionism; France is also breaking EU economic rules by running a larger than allowed budget deficit this year.

Sorry Monroe, Russia and China are playing in our backyard

In the nearly 200 years since President James Monroe stated the foreign policy doctrine the bears his name (that would be the Monroe Doctrine of course), the United States has looked at Latin America as our backyard. Now the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are holding a historic summit, the inaugural "Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development" and the United States isn't invited.

But Russia and China are.

You can only take it as another sign of the United State's waning influence in a part of the world we once thought of as "ours". Even while it seemed like the world was eagerly following this past November's presidential election, a region-wide poll found that Latin America was largely indifferent to the outcome; the thought was that neither Obama nor McCain would really focus on the region.

It seemed like it would be very different when George W. took office in 2001. He touted the relationship he developed while governor of Texas with (then) Mexican President Vincente Fox as a sign of America's close relationship with Latin America, but the region quickly fell off Bush's radar. In the end, Chinese President Hu Jintao wound up spending more time in the Latin America than did Bush. China and Russia have also seen their investments in the region triple in recent years, while America's fell by nearly a quarter. China has become Chile's biggest export partner, while Russian companies are making big investments in the energy sectors in Venezuela and Bolivia. The high-profile visit to Venezuela last month by a flotilla of Russian warships is a distraction from the bigger story: Russia's increasing economic influence in the area.

So then it shouldn't be a surprise that the United States is becoming a less important player in Latin America - just because you think a place is your back yard, that doesn't mean you can ignore it and expect that circumstances will never to change. One last thing that will probably irk some folks in Washington - the conference will be the coming out party for Cuba's Raul Castro who is making his first trip abroad since taking over the leadership of Cuba from his brother Fidel.

Time to end the Cuban embargo?

Has the time finally come to end the US embargo on Cuba?

After the Cuban exile-led Bay of Pigs invasion failed to dislodge Fidel Castro's Communist government, President John Kennedy slapped an embargo on the island nation in 1962, hoping that economic pressure would remove Castro from power. For five decades the embargo has been the bedrock of the United States' policy towards Cuba, but now there are growing calls for the US to drop this relic of the Cold War.

On Monday Caricom, a bloc that represents 15 Caribbean nations, called on President-Elect Barack Obama to end the Cuban embargo when he is sworn into power in January. Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister W. Baldwin Spencer, the acting head of Caricom, said the "transformational change" under way in Washington should include repealing the decades-long embargo. The embargo also seems to be losing support from its most passionate supporters - the Cuban-American community in South Florida.

A poll conducted by Florida International University shows that 55% of Florida's Cuban-American community now supports a change in US-Cuban relations, including the repeal of the embargo. Analysts chalk the change in attitude up to the shifting demographics of the Cuban-American community, which is now being run more and more by American-born Cuban-Americans rather than Castro-era exiles that were born in Cuba. The younger generation has a different perspective than their elders and in general want more normal relations between the US and Cuba.

The Florida Cuban-Americans have been a major reason why the embargo has lasted so long, so if their attitude is changing it could signal an end for what at this point is a terribly outdated policy. The embargo never has the success nine US presidents had hoped it would. For much of the time Cuba was a patron state of the Soviet Union, which provided it with large subsidies and was a major buyer of their exports (like sugar). Today the beaches around Havana are filled with Canadian and European tourists, and Caribbean nations send students to Cuban medical schools, while Chinese and Russian companies are negotiating with the Cuban authorities to develop offshore oil fields. So in reality, the only country not doing business with Cuba is the United States.

If the embargo didn't bring down the Castro regime for the past 46 years, its not going to do so now, so why not put to rest this relic of the Cold War and try to normalize relations with one of our closest neighbors?

Russian warships to visit Venezuela

Russian warships will be in the Caribbean Sea this November.

Four of them, including the "Peter the Great", flagship of their Northern Fleet, will be conducting a joint naval exercise with ships from Venezuela. Given Russia's annoyance and Hugo Chavez's generally poor relationship with the United States, it's hard not to see this as a move designed to bother Washington, a sort of tit-for-tat exercise of playing in each other's backyard: the US sends warships to deliver aid to Georgia, so now Russian ships are coming to Venezuela. Washington has tried to downplay the importance of exercise, with one State Department official even wondering if ships from the Russian Navy could even sail all the way to Venezuela without breaking down.

Earlier this summer Russia agreed to a $2 billion arms sale to Venezuela, and Hugo Chavez has called his country Russia's most important partner in this hemisphere. In addition to the ships, Venezuela will also play host to a number of Russian military aircraft that will be involved in the naval exercise.

Jamaica to revive railroad industry (with China's help)

Rising fuel prices have prompted the island nation of Jamaica to restart its railroad industry.

The new Jamaica railway project will link the island's main cities of Kingston, Spanish Town and Montego Bay. The project is expected to cost about $350 million, with China agreeing to fund about 85% of the cost. It is expected to take at least three years to complete.

Jamaica's railroading history dates back to 1845, it was the first place outside of Europe and North America to open railway lines. Service was stopped in 1992 after decades of operating at a loss.