Enlightening interview about Cuba's parliamentary elections and Alan Gross

[flamingdem]

http://www.cfr.org/cuba/talking-cuba/p29879

Council on Foreign Relations interview with Julie Sweig

How should we read Cuba's parliamentary elections scheduled for February 3?

As another big demographic and political development: some 67 percent of the candidates for 612 spots are completely new picks, and of these, more than 70 percent were born after 1959. Women comprise 49 percent of the candidates, and Afro descendents 37 percent. Cubans will be asked to check yea or nay from this new list--so it's not a direct competition between candidates. But if you want to understand where the successors to Fidel and Raul may come from, I'd look closely at the new group that comes in next month.

These elections also tell us something about decentralization: the municipal and provincial deputies are going to have a lot more power to tax and spend than ever before--on everything but health, education, and the military, as I understand it--while the new National Assembly may well start passing a lot more laws than before, to implement a slew of economic, legal, and governance reforms that are under way or coming down the pike. Finally, Ricardo Alarcon, who served as National Assembly president for the last nineteen years, before that as UN ambassador, and who for decades has taken the lead on U.S.-Cuban relations, will not appear on the electoral slate.

---- snip -- interesting about the documents regarding Alan Gross

Well, like governments resolve issues, they get in the room and they talk. And they put the issues on the table that are connected indirectly and intrinsically to that particular issue. By the way, the DAI (Developments Alternative International), which was Alan Gross's employer, just released the contracts (PDF) between DAI and Alan Gross, and there is a lot of information in there about the equipment that Gross brought down there and reasons why he was bringing that equipment. And that will just, unfortunately, reinforce the sense that this wasn't just benign development or benign Internet assistance.

This was part of a program funded by the U.S. government intended to destabilize the Cuban government, and the documentation really clearly shows that. And the lawsuit, now that the Gross family has filed against the State Department, also says that USAID should have trained Gross in counterintelligence.

[flamingdem]

1. Link about the documents, I'll post them if I find them

http://www.ww4report.com/node/11899

Cuba: documents describe US "transition plans"

New information about the inner workings of the Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program (CDCPP)--a multimillion-dollar program administered by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) ostensibly to promote democracy in Cuba—were made public on Jan. 15 when a major USAID contractor filed program-related documents in federal court in Washington, DC. The documents are being used in an effort by Maryland-based Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) to win the dismissal of a $60 million lawsuit against it and USAID by the family of US citizen Alan Gross, a DAI subcontractor now serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for his work there for the CDCPP. The DC-based research group National Security Archive posted the documents on its website on Jan. 18.

The papers include a May 8, 2008 solicitation by USAID for bids on a $30 million CDCPP project and a memo by DAI describing an Aug. 26, 2008 meeting between USAID and DAI representatives. The CDCPP is intended to "[s]upport the [US government's] primary objective of hastening a peaceful transition to a democratic, market-oriented society" in Cuba, the USAID officials explain in the documents. The US has "between five to seven different transition plans" for Cuba, including "plans for launching a rapid-response programmatic platform." "CDCPP is not an analytical project; it's an operational activity," officials noted, and it requires "continuous discretion." However, the USAID didn't classify the project, in order to maintain the appearance of transparency; as a result, project documents can be made public.

Gross won a contract with DAI to distribute communication devices to members of Cuba's Jewish community as part of the CDCPP project. Cuban authorities arrested him in December 2009 on charges of "acts against the independence or integrity of the state," and he has been imprisoned ever since. Currently he is poor health and is being held in a military hospital, although the nature of his illness is in dispute. "[M]y goals were not the same as the program that sent me," Gross told National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh during a meeting at the hospital last Nov. 28. Gross called on the administration of US president Barack Obama to resolve his case and other bilateral issues through negotiations.

Analysts have questioned the claimed purpose of Gross's mission. "[T]his isn't simply a matter of supplying equipment to the tiny Jewish community in Cuba," José Pertierra, a DC-based attorney who has represented Venezuela in its extradition request against Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "asset" Luis Posada Carriles, told the Mexican daily La Jornada. The purpose was "to establish an alternative network of dissidents used in the interests of the US," he said, adding that "this is illegal in Cuba and in all the countries in the world—no sovereign government accepts a foreign power involving itself in internal activities aimed at promoting regime change."

[flamingdem]

2. The documents:

* sorry if this was posted before as part of the Peter Kornbluh interview - didn't check it yet

Document l: USAID "Competitive Task Order Solicitation in Support of Cuba Democracy and

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB411/


Contingency Planning Program (CDCPP), May 8, 2008.

Document 2: Memoranda of Conversation between USAID AND DAI officials, "Meeting Notes from USAID CDCPP Meeting, August 26, 2008.

Document 3: Alan Gross, "Para La Isla," Proposed Expansion of Scope of Work in Cuba Proposal, September 2009.

Document 4: Declaration of John Henry McCarthy, DAI Global Practice Leader

Document 5: Defendant Development Alternatives, Inc.'s Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support of Its Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Subject-Matter Jurisdiction and Failure to State a Claim, January 15, 2013.

Document 6: Cuban Court Ruling Against Alan Gross, March 11, 2011, certified English translation.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Looking forward to studying this information. Thank you for the chance to see it. n/t