Radio Havana Cuba-22 March 2002 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 22 March 2002 . *PRESIDENT OF BOTSWANA VISITS HAVANA *CUBA GEARS UP FOR POPULATION CENSUS *UNIVERSITIES IN THE MARKETPLACE: CUBA IS THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE *MONTERREY: FRENCH PRESIDENT CALLS FOR "COALITION AGAINST POVERTY" *THE SECRET MONEY-LAUNDERING SYSTEM OF BIG BANKS, CORPORATIONS *ARGENTINE BISHOPS ISSUE SCATHING CRITICISM OF POLITICAL LEADERSHIP *OPPOSITION JOURNALIST FLEES COLOMBIA AFTER DEATH THREATS *COMMISSION SAYS SWITZERLAND CONTRIBUTED TO HOLOCAUST AND NAZI WAR MACHINE *EU TO TARGET GEORGE BUSH IN UPCOMING STEEL TRADE WAR *Viewpoint: THE GREAT CASINO'S PROFITS . *PRESIDENT OF BOTSWANA VISITS HAVANA Havana, March 22 (RHC)--The President of the Republic of Botswana, Fetsus G. Mogae, is scheduled to arrive on Saturday, in the Cuban capital. Invited by Cuban President Fidel Castro, the African leader and an important delegation accompanying him will visit the island until Wednesday, March 27. During his official visit, the president of Botswana will hold talks with his Cuban counterpart and tour places of economic and social interest. Cuba and Botswana established diplomatic relations in December 1977. This will be the second visit to Cuba of a Botswanan head of state. Four years ago, Qett Ketumile Masire -- predecessor of the current president -- paid an official visit to Havana. *CUBA GEARS UP FOR POPULATION CENSUS Havana, March 22 (RHC)--More than 100,000 volunteers will be mobilized over the next few months to count the number of people on the island. The census, which will actually get underway in September, will also provide demographic and social information. Cuba's Minister of Economy and Planning, Jose Luis Rodriguez, told reporters in Havana that the statistics obtained by the census will serve as a database for more profound social studies in the future. He recalled that the last census was taken 21 years ago -- at which time more than 3.3 million homes were visited. Cuba's population at that time registered a little over 11 million inhabitants. Noting that training will begin in April, the minister of economy and planning said that more than 60,000 university students would attend the first sessions. Another 20,000 supervisors -- made up primarily of professors -- will be incorporated over the coming months. According to Juan Carlos Alfonso, the national director of the Population and Housing Census, the questionnaire will be published and widely available before the census begins, allowing people to be familiar with the questions they will be asked when the process gets underway during the first week of September. *UNIVERSITIES IN THE MARKETPLACE: CUBA IS THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE Havana, March 22 (RHC)--Almost every university in Latin America has been affected by neo-liberal globalization, with the exception of Cuba. According to Angel Sanchez, a Nicaraguan trade union leader who attended a recent international convention on higher education in the Cuban capital, universities are rapidly being privatized throughout the region. Angel Sanchez -- who serves as the president of the Federation of University Workers of Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean -- spoke with reporters from the Cuban weekly Trabajadores. He noted that international lending agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank are pressuring governments to cut public expenses, including educational budgets, as part of neo-liberal recipes for economic growth. This has forced many educational institutions to look toward private investment in order to survive. The trade union leader said that the marketplace has seriously affected public education, emphasizing that the university has lost its role as the critical conscience of society. As the secretary general of the Nicaraguan Federation of Professional Teachers of Higher Education, Sanchez said that many subjects are being cut at his country's universities -- including History, Philosophy and Television Production. He said that Nicaragua has almost no original television programming and exclusively imports U.S.-made programs, filled with violence and examples of excessive consumer spending. Referring to the dramatic state of education in his country, the Nicaraguan teacher's union leader said that more than 700,000 children do not attend classes and illiteracy now stands at 35 percent -- having been reduced to 12 percent during the Sandinista administration in the 1980s. Sanchez praised the Cuban model of universal education for all, emphasizing that compared to the floundering and bankrupt educational institutions throughout Latin America, Cuba is the exception to the rule. *MONTERREY: FRENCH PRESIDENT CALLS FOR "COALITION AGAINST POVERTY" Monterrey, March 22 (RHC)--At the International Conference on Funding for Development, French President Jacques Chirac Friday called for a "coalition against poverty" along the same lines as the coalition in the so-called war on terrorism. Chirac said that whatever can be done to fight terrorism should also be done to fight poverty and in favor of a humanized and controlled globalization. He said more thought should also be given to an international tax on financial operations. The French president's words coincided with those of numerous speakers who Thursday warned that if rich nations want a world free of terrorism, they will have to pay for it. UN General Assembly president Han Seung-soo said in the wake of September 11, poor countries will forcefully demand that development, peace and security are inseparable, that the world's poorest areas are "the breeding ground for violence and despair." Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo affirmed that to speak of development is to also speak of a strong and determined fight against terrorism. World Trade Organization director-general Mike Moore stated that poverty in all its forms is the greatest single threat to peace, democracy, human rights and the environment. In another part of the French president's speech, he took particular aim at Washington's anti-environment policies, calling for a clean planet and noting that due to runaway and illogical consumption natural resources are no longer capable of regenerating themselves. In reference to the Kyoto protocol on global warming -- which the US refused to sign -- Chirac said that contaminating gas emissions are threatening ours and our children's lives. *THE SECRET MONEY-LAUNDERING SYSTEM OF BIG BANKS, CORPORATIONS New York, March 22 (RHC)--An investigative journalist has found that the world's biggest banks and multinational corporations have set up a shadowy system to secretly move trillions of dollars that can be exploited by tax evaders, drug runners and even terrorists. An article entitled "Explosive Revelations" published in the latest edition of the alternative news magazine "In These Times" asserts that in the tax haven of Luxembourg, a little-known outfit called Clearstream handles billions of dollars a year in stock and bond transfers for banks, investment companies and multinational corporations using a secret bookkeeping system that allows its clients to hide the money that moves through their accounts. The New York journalist Lucy Komisar, who has spent the past five years investigating the international offshore bank and corporate secrecy system, found that Clearstream handles more than 80 million transactions a year, and claims to have securities on deposit valued at $6.5 trillion. Some of the firm's activities include carrying an account for a notoriously criminal Russian bank for several years after the bank had officially collapsed, camouflaging the destinations of transfers to Colombian banks and hiding a dubious arms deal between French authorities and the Taiwanese military. Many of the charges were first made in a controversial book entitled "Revelation$," by French journalist Denis Robert, and a former top official at the clearinghouse, Ernest Backes, who helped design and install the computer system that facilitated the undisclosed accounts. Six European judges called the book "the black box" of illicit international financial flows. Top Clearstream officials were fired as the scandal made headlines in big European newspapers, TV networks broadcast special reports and the French National Assembly's financial crimes committee held a hearing. Investigative journalist Lucy Komisar affirmed that Luxembourg authorities ordered an investigation and then carried out a cover-up. "Revelation$" remains unpublished and relatively unknown in the United States. *ARGENTINE BISHOPS ISSUE SCATHING CRITICISM OF POLITICAL LEADERSHIP Buenos Aires, March 22 (RHC)--Argentina's Catholic Church has issued its most scathing criticism to date of the country's political leadership. A document released late Thursday by the church's Permanent Episcopal Commission charged that the country's inept political leaders are unwilling to change the errors that have degraded the nation. This lack of leadership, stated the 20 Argentine Bishops who form the commission, prevents Argentina from walking down the road of honest political representation, social equity and legal security. Taking aim at what it called the public immorality and irritating privileges of political leaders, the document affirmed that not only have they lost credibility, but that Argentines also no longer believe in the country's future. The Catholic Church called for an eradication of political and financial corruption and an end to corporate tax evasion. *OPPOSITION JOURNALIST FLEES COLOMBIA AFTER DEATH THREATS Bogotá, March 22 (RHC)--A Colombian journalist critical of right-wing paramilitaries and the country's right-wing presidential candidate has been forced to flee the country after receiving death threats. The local news daily El Tiempo reported Friday that Fernando Garavito, columnist for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, recently wrote articles on the close relationship between paramilitaries and a number of politicians recently elected to Congress and critical of presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe -- who has promised to adopt a hardline attitude towards leftist guerrillas. Garavito was reportedly followed on several occasions from his house to a university where he gives journalism classes. Two weeks ago eight journalists in the capital city of Bogotá received postcards announcing their respective funerals. In other news, an independent leftist lawmaker and candidate for Congress has charged that at least one-fourth of the legislature's new members stole more than $77 million in state funds to finance their campaigns. Congressman Gustavo Petro said the money came from a rural development fund that was sacked through the use of secret computer codes, vowing to bring charges in a court of law. The denunciation coincides with publication of a World Bank report asserting that administrative corruption in Colombia generates annual losses of more than $2.2 billion, constituting 80 percent of the country's fiscal deficit last year. *COMMISSION SAYS SWITZERLAND CONTRIBUTED TO HOLOCAUST AND NAZI WAR MACHINE Zurich, March 22 (RHC)--An independent international commission has concluded that Switzerland's political and economic establishment contributed to the Holocaust and the Nazi war machine. Following a five-year inquiry, nine historians, economists and lawyers said the Swiss government preached neutrality during World War II, but that in several key instances failed to practice it. The Independent Commission of Experts found that Swiss authorities knowingly turned away and sent to their deaths thousands, mainly Jews, fleeing from Nazi-occupied Europe. Swiss historian jean-Francois Bergier, who led the Commission, said that this assessment is "perhaps provocative in form, but nonetheless in conformity with the facts." The study also found that official financial aid and trade with Nazi Germany by some private companies often went "too far"; that the United States and its European allies went out of their way to hush up details of the Swiss arms industry's business with Nazi Germany; and that Swiss banks, museums, insurance and trust companies neglected their responsibilities after the war by failing to return assets and works of art to their rightful owners. After years of controversy, Swiss authorities finally agreed to set up a $165 million fund for Holocaust victims, and a restitution program for bank accounts never returned to survivors and family members of Holocaust victims. Swiss banks have also been forced into a $1.25 billion court settlement with Jewish groups and Holocaust heirs in the United States. *EU TO TARGET GEORGE BUSH IN UPCOMING STEEL TRADE WAR Brussels, March 22 (RHC)--The European Union is planning to politically target US President George W. Bush in its retaliation for Washington's steel tariffs, according to the Wall Street Journal. The EU is reportedly drawing up a list of what's being called "smart levies" on goods produced in areas where Bush only narrowly won in the 2000 presidential elections, and which are crucial to his hopes in this year's mid-term elections. The retaliation is due to what is widely seen as a political move by the US president to win support in steel-industry areas such as Pennsylvania, which are important to his hopes of retaining control of the House of Representatives. The EU is drawing up a list of tariffs it wants to impose on an estimated $2.1 billion of US goods that come into Eruope every year, including Harley-Davidson motorbikes from Wisconsin, and orange juice from Florida -- the key state in Bush's election victory. The EU, South Korea and Japan are lodging formal complaints with the World Trade Organization, while China is preparing to launch its first WTO complaint since joining the global trade body last year. *Viewpoint: THE GREAT CASINO'S PROFITS The world's economy hangs precariously from a precipice, judging from the growing role played by speculative capital, which has become fashionable in recent years as neoliberal models expand. Cuban President Fidel Castro, in his brief address to the United Nations Conference on Funding for Development, warned that for each dollar used in world trade, more than one hundred dollars are employed in speculation. The Cuban leader was referring to a phenomenon related to the cyclic crisis in the international economy like the one we are currently experiencing, which has sparked recession in the United States for the last year. Certainly, the staggering increase in speculative capital threatens to keep growing as more and more tycoons use it to make quick profits, a tendency that has been gaining ground as capitalism and globalization expand. Since neoliberal globalization foments the elimination of barriers erected to prevent capital flight, today in the blink of an eye an entire country or region can find itself without financial underpinnings. Executives of the international financial institutions involved in this type of transaction buy stocks, in shares, bonds or national currency, when they receive information that prices will go up and they sell when the stocks finally hit their peak, keeping the difference. Speculators are very well-informed about the countries in which they invest. If they suspect that the economy may decline they quickly rid themselves of their stocks and bonds and pull out their invested capital, all of which exacerbates the crisis, as happened in Mexico in l994 and in Asia in l997. The common denominator of international lending agency speculation is that it operates in non-productive sectors, which is why it appears only in operations of enormous quantity, but unstable as the stock market itself. International organizations estimate that the entities dedicated to this type of operation make speculative transactions worth more than $3 trillion daily, without stimulating the production of any goods or services. The money simply attracts money as part of a chain of motion. Those fabulous fortunes could be used for far more noble objectives. While the captains of international finance gamble their capital, humanity laments the destruction of nature and the growth of poverty, under which 80 percent of the world now lives. Experts suggest that if financial speculation becomes unstoppable by virtue of the interests at stake, just a tiny tax on these kinds of operations would help solve some of the world most distressing problems, for example, the spread of AIDS, which now affects forty million people. It is an idea that would allow for directing resources towards humane causes, from that "gigantic casino" which, according to Fidel Castro, our world has become. (c) 2002 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= rhc-eng-1585 2002-Mar-24 22:35:01