How United States gained control of Guantanamo

With all the discussion of Guantanamo Bay and allege torture of suspected terrorist.
I think we should know how the United States got control of this territory.

President Barack Obama signs an executive order closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (Jan. 22, 2009)

As one of his first acts as president this week, Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military's detention centre in Guantanamo Bay to be closed.

As one of his first acts as president this week, Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military's detention centre in Guantanamo Bay to be closed.

Though the announcement has pleased human rights organizations the world over, the Cuban government merely harrumphed. For while the prison might close, the century-old U.S. occupation of 121-square kilometres of the island of Cuba will continue.

The tale of how the U.S. came into possession of the little bay Fidel Castro once described as "a knife stuck in the heart of Cuba's dignity and sovereignty" begins in 1898. Cuban patriots were then in open revolt against Spain, which had claimed Cuba since the days of Christopher Columbus.

The U.S. dispatched the USS Maine to Havana harbour to protect American interests on the island. But on the night of Feb. 15, the battleship exploded under mysterious circumstances.

The press quickly (and falsely, it turns out) declared the ship hit a Spanish mine that ripped through its underbelly, sinking the Maine and drowning much of its crew.

Headlines screaming "Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain!" enraged the American public, and the U.S. soon vowed to help liberate the Cubans from the Spaniards.

The Spanish-American War was declared on April 25, 1898, and the U.S. Navy quickly engaged the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam – all three of which became U.S. possessions after the war.

But it took more than a month before Theodore Roosevelt – then Assistant Secretary of the Navy and commander of the "Rough Riders" cavalry regiment – was ready to lead a land assault on Cuba. The first target was the port town of Santiago on the southern tip of Cuba. But it being hurricane season, the U.S. fleet needed a safe shelter in which to force a landing.

Guantanamo Bay – a deep-water enclave frequented by local fishermen – offered both protection and an ideal landing point. The first mention of Guantanamo Bay in theToronto Evening Star was on June 16, 1898, in a wartime report about the U.S. landing in the bay.

By August 1898, Spain had given up the fight. America acquired territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean. All of Cuba was placed under a temporary U.S. occupation, but America's pretences for war (the liberation of Cuba) prevented Washington from annexing Cuba as it did Puerto Rico and Guam.

"The Cubans call the war the U.S. intervention in their Second War of Independence, snatching victory from the arms of the Cuban rebels who had almost defeated the Spanish colonialists" says historian Jane Franklin.

The occupation ended with the Platt Agreement in 1903, which stipulated that the newly formed Cuban government would lease to the U.S. the bay in which the Americans first landed in Cuba – "for use as coaling or naval stations only."

That's how Guantanamo Bay became America's first foreign Naval base. Washington leased the territory from Havana at an annual cost of $2,000 in gold until 1934, when the terms were renegotiated. Since then, the U.S. has paid Havana $4,085 a year for..Read More

Last Minute objection by Cuba and three Latin American allies

 

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BALI, Indonesia, Monday December 9, 2013 — A tense and acrimonious four-day standoff ended Saturday morning at the World Trade Organization meeting in Bali.

A last-minute objection by Cuba and three Latin American allies held up the agreement Friday night, with Cuba objecting to the hypocrisy of a “trade facilitation” agreement – one part of the so-called Bali package – that ignored the United States’ discriminatory treatment of the island nation under the US trade embargo.

Overnight, text was added to reflect Cuba’s concern even if it did nothing to resolve the issue. Call it the story of the WTO.

Leading up to this week’s meeting, the US and other rich countries had attempted to declare India's food security program in violation of the WTO's archaic and biased rules and sought to discipline the program as “trade distorting.”

More from GlobalPost: US opposition to ambitious Indian program a 'direct attack on the right to food'

India and other developing countries fended off the challenge to these programs, which support small farmers and help feed the hungry. But the final agreement is no green light.

Countries considering such programs would not be protected by the “peace clause” that will shield India and some others for the next four years. And onerous reporting requirements put the onus on the developing country to prove that its stock-holding program is not "trade distorting."

In return for the modest protections for food security programs, and a vague package of reforms for the least developed countries, developing countries also agreed here to a trade facilitation package that could benefit some of them but might demand more than they can give.

The package comes with binding commitments for developing countries to streamline customs and other trade systems. Though the timetable for fulfilling these commitments is flexible, developed countries have not promised funding to support such improvements.

A cash-strapped government, then, could end up bound to prioritize improving its port computer systems over public health or education.

In the end, the main beneficiaries of trade facilitation measures are transnational firms that are positioned to export and import and are looking for improved access to developing country markets. 

And that is the never-ending story of the WTO in the age of globalization. The Bali Package in no way deviates from that script. But the right to food won an important defensive battle in the larger war for a global trading system worthy of the lofty development ideals of the Doha Round.

The next battle will come within four short years, by which WTO members have committed to resolve this issue for good.

If they resume negotiations, they should begin with the original G33 proposal to remove WTO obstacles to Food Security, as over 300 global civil society organizationsdemanded in a letter last month. A similar call came from civil society groups from the Least Developed Countries, the Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific Group, and the Africa Group.

They could begin with the simplest solution proposed by India: agreeing to update the antiquated international reference price from the 1980s, which makes any administered price today seem like a massive subsidy.

A barely above-market price of 1,250 rupees per ton for rice looks like a 986 rupee subsidy when compared to the 264 rupee per ton reference price from the 1980s. The actual subsidy was trivial.

The US and other developed countries refused to update the reference point, arguing that they didn’t want to reopen any part of the Agreement on Agriculture. Of course they don’t. They wrote those rules, which favor rich country exporters.

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The hope is that all of this attention on subsidies will put the issue front and center in negotiations to come.

“Public stock-holding is just the tip of the subsidies iceberg,” said Martin Khor of the Geneva-based South Centre. “Hopefully we can reveal the rest of the iceberg now and try to fix it.”

Anuradha Talwar of India’s Right to Food Campaign seemed exhausted by the WTO meddling in India’s policy-making........Read More