Cuba Has Surrounded Gitmo...

...with organic fruit and vegetables !

From: Oxfam Canada

Cuba: Organic Farming Improves Lives

Oxfam has helped the Cuban Association of Agriculture and Forestry Professionals (ACTAF) convert 13 hectares in the urban periphery surrounding Guantanamo into an organic, urban agriculture farm. 106 stable jobs were created - 51 of the workers are women. The majority live in the neighbourhood and their new union is now pushing for a day-care center for their kids.

“The people like this work because it’s close to their homes. They’re better paid then in other jobs, they can buy affordable fruits and vegetables for their families and they feel they’re doing something important”, said Oscar Borges, the Project Coordinator for ACTAF in the province. “For us it has been a great experience to work with Oxfam because there was always dialogue, flexibility, comprehension and respect.”

The fruits and vegetables are grown without any chemical inputs. Instead, the farmers produce their own fertilizer using organic compost and worms. They produce their plants in a new greenhouse. The project has contracts with government institutions to deliver produce to hospitals, child care centers and workplaces throughout the neighbourhood of 55,000 people. Their excess produce is sold to local people at affordable prices in a small shop on the farm and by bicycle around the community.

Odalys Puente manages the farm after years as an agricultural worker. For her “our goal is not to maximize our own benefits, but to contribute to good, healthy and available food for our people and be able to live our life with dignity”.

A class room has been built and equipped and is used for training farm workers as well as ACTAF members in the province. The project provided input and funds for a new edition of a technical manual for this kind of organic agriculture that will be used across the country.

Reflections on Cuba and Castro

The retirement of Fidel Castro has raised renewed interest in Cuba. Here are some resources that I found that might be of interest.

From the Pew Research Center, the article Global Views on Castro and Cuba, which states:

Fidel Castro ends his long tenure as president of Cuba with international opinion mixed on the question of whether his leadership has been good or bad for his country. While Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of Castro, attitudes in many Latin American countries are far more favorable to the longtime Cuban leader. The Pew Global Attitudes survey in the spring of 2007, for example, found that pluralities in Bolivia (42%), Brazil (39%), Argentina (39%), and Peru (38%) think Castro has had a positive effect on his country.

Opinion in Canada is also positive towards Castro, with 44% saying that his leadership has been good for Cuba, the highest percentage among the nine countries surveyed about Castro. Even there, however, opinion is mixed, with 36% saying he has been bad for his country.

From Straight Goods the article Cuba's accomplishments likely to be overlooked in media coverage, which states:

With Fidel Castro's resignation, Cuba is poised to move onward and upward, building on what he began. Whether Canada and the United States will do so as well depends on the results of the next election in each country.

In days to come, we can expect to hear media reports casting Castro mostly as a strongman, dictator, revolutionary and nuisance to American presidents. He was all of that, but those were means to an end for Castro. The end was to build a miraculous, egalitarian society on a poor mountainous island with a history of colonialism and slavery, surrounded by enemies.

Other important realities of Castro's Cuba usually go unreported in news coverage. Castro's accomplishments in a poor, post-colonial economy are extraordinary.

* All Cubans have health care and free education up through post-secondary.
* Literacy levels are so high that Cuba has been able to offer doctors to other nations — including the US, after Hurricane Katrina.
* No Cubans starve. There is no homelessness problem.
* After the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost its oil supply, it became a world leader in organic agriculture

From CBC-TV: Doc Zone the film Castro, A Life of Revolution the summary of which states:

Now, after ruling Cuba for close to fifty years, Fidel Castro has stepped down. From his childhood in rural Cuba through his fight in the Sierra Maestra to winning the revolution and transforming the country, Fidel Castro: A Life of Revolution presents an account of his life and times that has rarely been heard – the account of Castro himself, taken largely from private letters, correspondence, speeches and interviews.

The documentary concludes with a debate about Castro’s legacy as world opinion now seems divided between those who blame him for executing hundreds, imprisoning thousands and driving hundreds of thousands into exile, and those who credit him with the most influential revolution of the modern era. Exclusive footage of Castro's childhood home and his rebel headquarters in the Sierra Maestra mountains is complimented by classic archival footage, including CBC interviews with Castro when he was the most wanted man in Cuba.

Long Live Fidel ! Long Live Cuba !

The Fifth Column interrupts it's blogging holiday to wish Fidel Castro best wishes on his retirement and the people of Cuba best wishes as the revolution continues.

photo by Yousuf Karsh

Omar Khadr: al-Qaeda Says it Best

Ironically, perhaps the best description of Omar Khadr's status as a child soldier was stated by the terrorists themselves, in a biograpphy of Omar Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, in the "Book of 120 Martyrs in Afghanistan", posted online at the Al-Fajr media centre, al-Qaeda's online news service. The CBC website states that the biography praises Ahmed Said Khadr for "tossing his little child in the furnace of the battle."

Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which was adopted and signed in 2002, the use of anyone under the age of 18 in combat is illegal under international law. National armed forces are permitted to recruit individuals below the age of 18, but are strictly forbidden from deploying them into combat. Non-state actors and guerrilla forces are forbidden from recruiting anyone under the age of 18 for any purpose. (Military use of children - Wikipedia)

Indeed, do we consider "a little child tossed in the furnace of the battle by his father" a terrorist or a victim. International law requires that we consider child soldiers to be victims not warriors.