Castro again defaults on payments to Paris Club, but purchases more US products for cash than under Obama thaw

What the Chamber of Commerce won't tell you about trade with the Castro regime.

Under the Trump Administration trade has increased with Cuba.

Taken from CubaBrief

The United States since 2000 has not provided credits to the Castro regime and maintained a cash in advance trade arrangement for the purchase of agricultural and pharmaceutical products. This protects U.S. taxpayers from having to subsidize the Cuban dictatorship when it defaults on its financial obligations. Their European, Latin American and Asian counterparts cannot say the same to their respective taxpayers.

Under this cash in advance agreement American companies sold over $6.3 billion to the Castro regime and have gotten paid. Despite billions in debt forgiveness  on its restructured debt less than five years ago by the Paris Club, the Cuban dictatorship in 2019 again defaulted on its payments, reported Reuters on February 11, 2020.

How did the Castro regime raise the money to purchase U.S. goods?

James Prevor, President and Editor in Chief of the publication Produce Business in the October 2002 article, Cuba Caution, reported that Cuba "had exhausted all its credit lines and, at best, was simply rotating the accounts. When the opportunity came to buy from the United States, Cuba simply abandoned all those suppliers who supported the country for 40 years and began buying from us."

The suppliers were not the ones impacted by Cuba's failure to pay its debts, the taxpayers of the suppliers' home countries were the one's left holding the bag. The dirty little secret is that profit is private but risk has been socialized in what amounts to a perversion of capitalism.

On November 1, 2013 the government of Mexico announced that it was ready to waive 70 percent of a debt worth nearly $500 million that Cuba owes it. The former president of Mexico Vicente Fox protested the move stating: “Let the Cubans get to work and generate their own money…They’re normally like chupacabras.  The only thing they’re looking for is someone to give them money for free.”

“Let the Cubans get to work and generate their own money…They’re normally like chupacabras." - President Vicente Fox

In December 2015 it was announced that Spain would forgive $1.7 billion that the Castro regime owes it. In December of 2013, Russia and Cuba quietly signed an agreement to write off $29 billion of Cuba's debt to the former superpower. Western governments pursued Cuban maritime debts seizing Cuban vessels and negotiating payment through Canadian courts.

The 2015 debt restructuring accord between Cuba and the Paris Club, according to Reuters, "forgave $8.5 billion of $11.1 billion, representing debt Cuba defaulted on in 1986, plus charges."

The 19-member Paris Club owed money by Cuba is comprised of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Companies, with the exception of American companies, doing business with Cuba when they are not paid pass the costs off to their respective governments, who in turn pass the costs off to taxpayers.

This is something to consider when the Chamber of Commerce argues that U.S. laws should be changed and the United States should join the long line of governments seeking to collect from the Castro regime, a deadbeat dictatorship.

Lastly, it is important to note that the U.S. Census Bureau documented the collapse of trade in goods with Cuba under the Obama thaw and have actually improved during the Trump Administration, despite tightened sanctions.

Tip of the iceberg: Two Cuban diplomats expelled for conducting "influence operations"

"We feel great pride that the first, very modest draft officially submitted to serve as the basis for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was written by Dr. Ernesto Díhigo, an eminent professor at the University of Havana and a member of the Cuban delegation." - Guy Pérez-Cisneros

Cuban diplomats have engaged in assaults, acts of repudiation and terrorism

Today the United States announced it is expelling two Cuban diplomats and is restricting travel of members of Cuba's permanent mission to the United Nations.  Reasons cited for the expulsions and travel restrictions were that they were trying to "conduct influence operations against the United States." 

After 2 members of Cuba’s UN mission engaged in activities harmful to U.S. national security, we asked them to leave the U.S. Members of Cuba’s UN mission are also restricted to stay in Manhattan. We take any & all attempts against the National Security of the U.S. seriously.

— Morgan Ortagus (@statedeptspox) September 19, 2019

The Castro regime and their apologists will attempt to come to the defense of these diplomats that have a long track record of not being diplomatic, and on occasion behaving more like secret police, a violent mob or a mafia operation.

Cuban diplomats for more than 50 years have plotted and facilitated terrorist attacks, beaten up peaceful protesters, threatened and bitten protesters using homophobic language, and participated in the cover up of extrajudicial killings.

Consider the following partial chronology of malfeasance:

New York City (2018)
On October 16, 2018 Cuban diplomats led an "act of repudiation" at the United Nations to prevent a discussion on the plight of political prisoners in Cuba at a side event organized by the United States.

Cuban "diplomats" try to shout down side event on political prisoners

Panama (2015)
On April 8, 2015 Cuban diplomats streamed out of the the Cuban Embassy in Panama attacking civil society representatives who at the time were laying flowers at a bust of Jose Marti in a public park nearby. Several activists were injured and at least one required surgery. During the Summit of the Americas Cuban diplomats disrupted official meetings in order to block Cuban and Venezuelan dissidents from taking part, despite being officially accredited. 

Cuban diplomats assaulted nonviolent protesters in Panama

Dominican Republic (2012)
On January 28, 2012 in the Dominican Republic the Cuban ambassador physically assaulted a 70 year old Cuban exile who had screamed "Down with Fidel! Down with the Castros!" This same diplomat had been already expelled by the United States in 1995 for beating up peaceful demonstrators in New York City. 

Mexico (2012)
In January of 2012 there were reports in the media of Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan diplomats meeting in Mexico to discuss cyber attacks on U.S. soil and allegedly seeking information about nuclear power plants in the United States. 

Cuban diplomat bit a young Norwegian woman of Cuban-Norwegian descent in 2010.

Oslo, Norway (2010)
On May 22, 2010 Norwegian media reported that Cuban diplomat, Carmen Julia Guerra, insulted, threatened, and bit a young Norwegian woman, Alexandra Joner age 19, of Cuban descent on her mother's side while she was across the street from the Cuban embassy in Oslo. She was filming a non-violent demonstration in solidarity with the Ladies in White and in remembrance of martyred Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The main national newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten,  photographed the young girl with bite marks on her hand.

San Jose, Costa Rica (2004)
Cuban counsel Rafael Dausá Céspedes utilized groups with ideological affinities with the Cuban revolution in Costa Rica to physically storm a pro-democracy event using physical intimidation and threats of violence to shut it down after it had started in what was an attempted act of repudiation. This led to a two and a half hour stand off. Meanwhile in another part of the same building the event went off without a hitch.  

Geneva, Switzerland (2004)
On April 15, 2004 when the United Nations Human Rights Commission  decided by a single vote to censure the communist regime for its human rights record a Cuban human rights defender Frank Calzon was physically attacked by members of the Cuban diplomatic delegation. According to Freedom House: "Witnesses said a Cuban delegate punched Mr. Calzon, knocking him unconscious. UN guards reportedly protected him from further assault by additional members of the Cuban delegation."

Paris, France (2003)
At the Cuban embassy in Paris on April 24, 2003 Cuban diplomats engaged in the brutal beating of nonviolent protesters with iron bars and threatened them with deadly force. "Not only did members of the embassy come out with iron bars to hit us, but one of them was carrying a firearm, which he loaded while outside the embassy," RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. "This new element is extremely serious. It is unacceptable that persons linked to a foreign embassy should commit such offences on French territory."

Washington, DC (2000)
On April 14, 2000 nonviolent protesters gathered in front of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington DC. In the early evening, a band of about 10 Cuban diplomats, alleged to have been drinking took off their coats, ties and jewelry, began screaming obscenities and yelling threats, and indiscriminately attacked 20 peaceful protesters  with fists and sticks, even injuring a Secret Service officer. Among the Cuban diplomats engaged in the violent assault, according to one of the victims, was Gustavo Machin Gomez.

Senior Cuban diplomat engaged in violent physical assault of US citizens in 2000

Mexico City, Mexico (1996)
On March 8, 1996 a group of Mexican students belonging to various universities,  a federal representative of the PAN Cristián Castaño Contreras, and a Cuban journalist were brutally assaulted by officers and employees of the Cuban embassy during a peaceful demonstration outside of the embassy. The attack left many injured. The Cuban embassy staff even attacked a student displaying a Mexican flag and tried to destroy it. The behavior was reminiscent of a Rapid Response Brigade in Cuba used to beat down dissidents in the island.

New York City, USA (1994)
 The United States expelled two Cuban diplomats on April 12, 1995, for having assaulted people last August (1994) protesting in front of Cuba's mission to the United Nations. The diplomats, Edmundo Suarez Hernandez, a counselor, and Saul Hermida Griego, an attache, and their families were told are to leave by midnight Sunday.  On August 30, 1994 protesters chained themselves to the Cuban Mission door. Cuban diplomats attacked them with sticks, screaming, "Cuba Our Way!" Two diplomats wielded a crowbar and ax handle. More than a dozen police officers suffered injuries. Four Cuban Mission employees were arrested on assault charges. All four were released after claiming diplomatic immunity.  US officials said it's unusual for diplomats to be expelled for violent behavior.

Cuban diplomats implicated in 1969 bombing plot in New York City

New York City, USA (1969)
A Black Panther plot to bomb five Manhattan department stores on April 3, 1969 during the Easter shopping rush was broken up by the indictment of 21 members of the militant group on April 2nd. The Chicago Tribune reported that they had planned to "set off bombs in the midtown stores of Macy's Alexander's. Bloomingdale's, Korvette's and Abercombie & Fitch. The bombings were to be accompanied by gunfire in the crowded stores." They had also planned to dynamite the tracks of Penn Central railroad at six location and bomb a police station in the Morrisania section of the Bronx to divert police from the railroad bombings. On April 10, 1969 Andrew Tulley reported in the Reading Eagle that that the Communist Cuban mission to the United Nations has become a financial and propaganda headquarters for promoting revolution by black militants and white radicals. ... Specifically, it was said, these include the Black Panther Party. The United States denied re-entry visas to two Cuban U.N. diplomats ..."as a normal reaction to evidence that the Cuban mission is engaged in extensive subversive activities.

Cuban diplomats planned terror attack in New York City in 1962

New York City, USA (1962)
Cuban diplomats Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband and wife team at the Cuba Mission in New York City, who in reality were State Security agents who plotted to murder large numbers of Americans. Both were expelled for their role in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962 which sought to detonate 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

Cuban diplomats Guy Pérez-Cisneros, Ernesto Dihigo played crucial role for UDHR

It was not always this way. Seventy years ago, a democratic Cuba helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and establish the UN Human Rights Commission.

Cuba’s last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected in free and fair elections and assumed office on Oct. 10, 1948. President Prio respected human rights, and this was reflected by the actions taken by his diplomats at the founding of the UN.

Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters to the Commission. Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.

Cuban delegate Guy Pérez-Cisneros addressed the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 proposing to vote for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cuban Ambassador celebrated that it condemned racism and sexism, and also addressed the importance of the rule of law:

“My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.”

This democratic Cuba was overthrown on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista and hopes of a democratic restoration frustrated by the Castro brothers in 1959.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros died of a stroke in 1953.

Ernesto Dihigo, like Pérez-Cisneros, left the diplomatic corps following the 1952 coup, but returned as Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States in January of 1959 retiring in 1960. He left Cuba in 1989 and died in Miami in 1991.

Democrats should share this history with Cubans on the island to demonstrate that civil and political rights are an intrinsic part of a shared Cuban heritage that in 1948 made world history and that the regime in the island today would like erased.

The Concert of Europe: Conservatism's successful seven decade frustration of communist aims

"Every country has the government it deserves." - Joseph De Maistre, diplomat  (1753 - 1821)

A street of Paris in May 1871: The Commune by Maximilien Luce (painted 1903-05)

Earlier today was visiting the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France and the collections of art that span 1848 through 1914. Coming upon this work by Maximilien Luce some questions arose in my mind: "What would Paris be like if the communists had succeeded in 1848? Would this museum even exist?" Think of the loss in lives, art, and treasure over the past century when communist regimes killed over a 100 million and plunged hundreds of millions more into lives of squalor.

Karl Marx announced in his 1848 manifesto the arrival of communism in Europe in the midst of ongoing revolutions. There were multiple reasons for the unrest: poor grain harvests, blight in potato crops, and depressed economies across Europe over the previous three years and conditions were ripe for revolt and radical new doctrines to be well received. Conservatives in Europe, following the disastrous French Revolution of 1789 and the continent wide blood bath of the Napoleonic wars, organized against revolution creating a conservative order. In the United Kingdom, conservatism was manifested in the writings of Edmund Burke and his critical reflection on the French Revolution. Policies of reform successfully countered revolutionary impulse.

Visiting France once is confronted with a different conservative tradition. On the European continent the conservative ideas of Joseph de Maistre held sway. De Maistre represented a counter-revolutionary and authoritarian strain of conservatism that rejected the French Enlightenment and the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke. Having suffered the effects of the Revolution of 1789 in France de Maistre "argued for the restoration of hereditary monarchy," and "for the indirect authority of the Pope over temporal matters as a prerequisite for stability in Europe." Unlike Burke, his writings are a reaction to the destruction of his way of life in the French Revolution. Nevertheless his ideas would have a profound impact on French conservatives. De Maistre died 27 years before Marx's Communist Manifesto,  but his ideas lived on to resist the bolsheviks.

Joseph de Maistre in Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg wrote in 1821: "False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing."  This can still be seen today by those who continue to circulate the writings of Karl Marx, despite the disastrous human cost this theory has exacted upon the world.

Marx and the communists organized into revolutionary transnational networks to overthrow the existing order but following the French revolution, a conservative counter-revolutionary network already existed to resist the new threat.

Édouard Dubufe (1819-1883), The Congress of Paris, 1856, Musée national du château de Versailles

 The end of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars led to an enduring peace forged by conservative European statesman. It was a peace that endured without a major war, more or less, until 1914. The architects of the peace were Klemens von Metternich of Austria, Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (usually known as Lord Castlereagh), Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord of France. Out of the ruin of a continent wide war emerged the Concert of Europe.  Wikipedia described it as follows, "[t]he Concert of Europe, also known as the Congress System or the Vienna System after the Congress of Vienna, was a system of dispute resolution adopted by the major conservative powers of Europe to maintain their power, oppose revolutionary movements, weaken the forces of nationalism, and uphold the balance of power."  The last gathering of the Concert of Europe was in 1878 in Berlin. These were statesmen who understood the necessary relationship between freedom and order. Metternich gave it context, "[t]he word 'freedom' means for me not a point of departure but a genuine point of arrival. The point of departure is defined by the word 'order.' Freedom cannot exist without the concept of order."

"Lamartine, rejects the Red Flag," Feb 25, 1848. By Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux

The Concert of Europe had no formal structures and operated as a powerful network to counter both nationalists and communists from 1815 to 1914. The weak point turned out to be France. The monarchy was restored on April 6, 1814 with Louis XVIII and was succeeded by Charles X in 1824 but the new King of France was driven out of office by the July Revolution of 1830 on August 2, 1830. The King of France was replaced by a King of the French within the constraints of a constitutional monarchy. Louis Philippe I was the new king under the more liberal Orléans line, replacing the Bourbons. 18 years later he would abdicate his rule on February 24, 1848 and flee to England. The second Republic would be declared on February 26, 1848. This was the end of the French monarchy in France. Conservative forces were able to shut down radical revolutionary projects using violent repression combined with reforms to meet the demands of the populace preventing a repeat of 1789. Metternich explained the conservative need to accommodate and shape change as follows, "[t]he events which can not be prevented, must be directed."

Barricades in Paris in 1848

Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and French provincial nobility, at a critical point in the February Revolution rejected the red flag of the revolutionaries and made the case for maintaining the French Tricolor flag:

"I spoke as a citizen earlier, well! Now listen to me, your Foreign Minister. If I remove the tricolor, know it, you will remove me half the external force of France! Because Europe knows the flag of his defeats and of our victories in the flag of the Republic and of the Empire. By seeing the red flag, they'll see the flag of a party! This is the flag of France, it is the flag of our victorious armies, it is the flag of our triumphs that must be addressed before Europe. France and the tricolor is the same thought, the same prestige, even terror, if necessary, for our enemies! Consider how much blood you would have to make for another flag fame! Citizens, for me, the red flag, I am not adopting it, and I'll tell you why I'm against with all the strength of my patriotism. It's that the tricolor has toured the world with the Republic and the Empire with your freedoms and your glory, and the red flag was that around the Champ-de-Mars, dragged into the people's blood."

The painting by Emmanuel Philippoteaux, depicting the moment Lamartine rejects the red flag is on display at the Museum Carnavalet in Paris. This "revolution" brought General Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, to power. He was the President of France from 1848 to 1852. The French Constitution barred him from running for re-election so he organized a coup d'état in 1851 and became Napoleon III, the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. His rule ended due to his defeat in the Franco - Prussian war.

In 1853 Napoleon III ordered Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann to transform Paris from a city of a dense network of streets, overcrowded, dingy, dirty, riddled with disease and lacking an effective sewage system. What today makes Paris so distinctive, "the grand, wide boulevards that march in straight lines through the city, lined with bustling cafés and tempting patisseries" is Haussmann's creation.

"Conceived and executed in three phases, the plan involved the demolition of 19,730 historic buildings and the construction of 34,000 new ones. Old streets gave way to long, wide avenues characterised by rows of regularly aligned and generously proportioned neo-classical apartment blocks faced in creamy stone."

It also made it more difficult for the revolutionaries to set up barricades and made it easier for the military to move quickly to crush any uprisings with the wide boulevards. However the Franco-Prussian war that brought an end to the Second Republic and the rule of Napoleon III gave an opportunity for the communists to take hold of Paris and set up a commune that survived two months from March 1871 to May 1871 before the French Army crushed the communist project and restored order.

Barricade boulevard Voltaire and Richard-Lenoir1871

Tragically the horrors of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars that followed were largely forgotten and in 1914 the forces of nationalism, the breakdown of the balance of power arrangement set up in the Concert of Europe, and rising militarism plunged the world into a great war.  This destroyed the last vestiges of the conservative transnational network that prevented the rise of Bolshevism. Communism would arrive in Russia in 1917 and over the next century claim a 100 million lives and ruin countless more.

However, thanks to conservative statesmen in Europe the 19th century offered a space of peace and prosperity for seven decades that led to a great out pouring of art, technology, and also the remaking of Paris into the remarkable city that it is today. This would not have existed if the communists had triumphed in 1848 or 1871.

There are important lessons for statesmen to learn from this period of time for the 21st century.

Did State Department downplaying attacks on diplomats in Cuba endanger others?

The plot thickens... U.S. and Canadian diplomats harmed. French now testing their diplomats in Havana to see if they have also suffered injuries.

Diplomat woke up in a Havana hotel to a grinding, blaring cacophony. Moved a few feet noise stopped

 The Daily Mail headline today declared "Damning evidence Cuba's launched a sci-fi sonic weapon at America: How 21 US diplomats were hit by hearing and memory loss - and even mild brain damage - after suspicious attack." More disturbing is the allegation raised by CBS News that the U.S. State Department hid what was going on from Congress and the American people. In the fall of 2016 U.S. diplomats began to complain of "mild" traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing and/or memory loss. In May of 2017 two Cuban diplomats were expelled from the United States over the matter, but it was not made known until August 9, 2017.

Now CBS says that the State Department "only admitted the attacks were occurring after CBS News Radio first reported them August 9." According to the news agency an "internal Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs document obtained by CBS News shows the State Department was fully aware of the extent of the attacks on its diplomats in Havana, Cuba, long before it was forced to acknowledge them." Now the number of American diplomats and dependents injured stands at 21. Five Canadian diplomats and their families were also harmed. Now France has tested its own diplomatic staff in Havana for potential sonic injuries.

Worse yet "experts" such as Fulton Armstrong with a track record of "minimizing Cuba’s ability to threaten U.S. interests and its continued support to terrorists" are engaged in downplaying this latest outrage. What goes unmentioned is that under international law as described below by the International Court of Justice put it in the case of US Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran (paras 38-40):

[t]here is no more fundamental prerequisite for the conduct of relations between States than the inviolability of diplomatic envoys and embassies . . . [T]he institution of diplomacy, with its concomitant privileges and immunities, has withstood the test of centuries and proved to be an instrument essential for effective co-operation in the international community, and for enabling States, irrespective of their differing constitutional and social systems, to achieve mutual understanding and to resolve their differences by peaceful means . . . [and] the inviolability of consular premises and archives, are similarly principles deep-rooted in international law…

The Castro regime has failed to maintain the "inviolability of diplomatic envoys and embassies" in this matter but also has a decades long history of engaging in the wholesale violation of this international norm.  Former Canadian ambassador to Cuba James Bartleman described events that occurred midway during his  (1981 – 1983) posting: “[h]is family dog was poisoned, a trade officer had a dead rat nailed to their door and the embassy started receiving threatening phone calls.”  U.S. diplomat Robin Meyers was subjected to cars being used against her as weapons in Cuba in February of 1996. In 2006 The Miami Herald reported how a high-ranking member of the U.S. mission found his mouthwash replaced with urine. In another case, after one diplomat’s family privately discussed their daughter’s susceptibility to mosquito bites, “they returned home to find all of their windows open and the house full of mosquitoes.”  American diplomats, like their Canadian counterparts, have also had pets poisoned while stationed in Cuba. 

This is an outlaw regime with a track record that should not be ignored, especially when doing so is leading to diplomats and their families being seriously physically harmed.   The logical question that arises is a disturbing one: Did State Department lack of response and downplaying of attacks on US diplomats and their families in Cuba lead to more being harmed?

The State Department knew since November 2016 that American diplomats were being harmed in these attacks, but didn't make it public until August 9, 2017 when CBS News broke the story. On December 7, 2016 the United States and Cuba held their fifth Bilateral Commission meeting where they celebrated progress on U.S.-Cuba relations, and according to the Miami Herald signed "11 non-binding agreements on health, the environment, counter-narcotics, and other areas of cooperation." No word on attacks against diplomats. They would continue until August 2017. Cuban officials say they don't know whats going on. This matter should have been raised earlier.
 

Human Rights Crises and turning points: Valladolid, Spain (1550), Paris, France (1948), and ???? (2018)

“All have understanding and will and free choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God . . . Thus the entire human race is one.” - Bishop Bartolomé De Las Casas (1550)

Jacques Maritain

We are in the midst of an international human rights crisis. Will we rise to the occasion once again?

Human Rights are in crisis around the world and have been for some time. At such a moment it is important to return to and reflect on first principles.  The idea that human rights predate the rules set out by governments, some important thinkers argue, is based on natural law.  In 1951 the Christian Democrat philosopher Jacques Maritain published Man and the State and on pages 84-85 of his book explored the historic and rational foundation of human rights in the natural law that remains relevant today:

Shall we try to establish our faith in human rights on the basis of a true philosophy?  This true philosophy of the rights of the human person is based upon the true idea of natural law, as looked upon in an ontological perspective and as conveying through the essential structures and requirements of created nature the wisdom of the Author of Being.

The genuine idea of natural law is a heritage of Greek and Christian thought. It goes back not only to Grotius, who indeed began deforming it, but, before him to Suarez and Francisco de Vitoria; further back to St. Thomas Aquinas (he alone grasped the matter in a wholly consistent doctrine, which unfortunately was expressed in an insufficiently clarified vocabulary, so that its deepest features were soon overlooked and disregarded); and still further back to St. Augustine and the Church Fathers and St. Paul (we remember St. Paul's saying: "When the Gentiles who have not the Law, do by nature the things contained in the Law, these, having not the Law, are a law unto themselves ...") and even further back to  Cicero, to the Stoics, to the great moralists of antiquity and its great poets, particularly Sophocles.  Antigone, who was aware that in transgressing the human law and being crushed by it she was obeying a better commandment, the unwritten and unchangeable laws, is the eternal heroine of natural law: for, as she puts it, they were not, those unwritten laws, born out of today's or yesterday's sweet will, "but they live always and forever, and no man knows from where they have arisen."

Jacques Maritain played an important role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and  in the above mentioned book described how individuals of radically different and traditions were able to come to a consensus on a fairly detailed document.

"How  is  an  agreement  conceivable  among  men  assembled  for  the  purpose  of  jointly  accomplishing  a  task  dealing  with  the  future  of  the  mind,  who  come  from  the  four  corners  of  the  earth  and  who  belong  not  only  to  different  cultures  and  civilizations,  but  to  different  spiritual  families  and  antagonistic  schools  of  thought?  Since  the  aim  of  UNESCO  [United  Nations  Educational,  Scientific  and  Cultural  Organization]  is  a  practical  aim,  agreement  among  its  members  can  be  spontaneously  achieved,  not  on  common  speculative  notions,  but  on  common  practical  notions,  not  on  the  affirmation  of  the  same conception  of  the  world,  man,  and  knowledge,  but  on  the  affirmation  of  the  same  set  of  convictions  concerning  action.  This  is  doubtless  very  little,  it  is  the  last  refuge  of  intellectual  agreement  among  men.  It  is,  however,  enough  to  undertake  a great  work;  and  it would  mean  a  great  deal  to  become  aware  of  this  body  of  common  practical  convictions."

Timing is also key and in the aftermath of World War II where the crimes of the Nazi Holocaust were exposed to the world, and the failure of the nation state not only to protect the lives of its citizens but to systematically slaughter them created a shock to the conscience of the international community that made the drafting of such a document possible. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified in Paris, France on December 10, 1948. It had happened before.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Four centuries earlier in the midst of a clash of civilizations beginning with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492 and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in 1519 and the Inca empire in 1532.  Native Americans were enslaved and mistreated by the Spanish conquerors, but this led to the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas publishing "The Devastation of the Indies" outlining Spanish cruelty against the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Artistic rendering of Columbus's expedition to the Americas

On July 3, 1549 the Council of the Indies declared to the King of Spain that the harm to the Indians and to the King’s moral standing by the ongoing conquest required an examination of what was taking place. The Council declared:

The greed of those who undertake conquests and the timidity and humility of the Indians is such that we are not certain whether any instruction will be obeyed. It would be fitting for Your Majesty to order a meeting of learned men, theologians, and jurists … to … consider the manner in which these conquests should be carried on … justly and with security of conscience.

In April of 1550 the King, Charles I of Spain and Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, ordered that all New World conquests be suspended until a special group of theologians and counselors would decide upon a just method of conducting them. This led to a debate regarding the treatment of Native Americans by the Spanish conquistadors that took place in the Spanish city of Valladolid between the lay scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and now Bishop de Las Casas that same year. It was the first time that the morality of conquest was formally debated and a universal conception of human rights discussed that challenges assumptions today.

"The Devastation of the Indies" Bartolomé de Las Casas

 In 1550 and 1948 two international human rights crises led to two debates and reflections that first during the Spanish conquest of the Americas generated the idea of universal human rights and following the carnage of WWII and the Nazi Holocaust led the international community to agree on a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

School of Salamanca

Today in 2017, human rights have been in decline worldwide for more than a decade and all signs point to continued deterioration. Will this lead to another round of debate and reflection that will turn the tide in 2018?

Auschwitz

Will a world leader stop a foreign action in order to examine the moral implications as King Charles V did in Spain in 1550? Will the international community come together as they did in Paris in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust in 1948 and forge a new commitment to human rights? 

Questions one ponders on the eve of the possible arrival of  Hurricane Irma.

Obama Administration's folly: copying French on Cuba policy

"They’re normally like chupacabras.  The only thing they’re looking for is someone to give them money for free." - Vicente Fox, Former Mexican President, in 2015 on the Castro regime

Shameful spectacle: Honor guard in France for a Cuban tyrant

Under the U.S. embargo American companies made $5.2 billion dollars in cash and carry trade with Cuba while at the same time with normal relations and financial institutions providing credits, France lost $4 billion to Cuba.

France is forgiving $4 billion dollars the Castro regime owes it on payments that are 30 years late. Meanwhile companies in the United States between 2000 and 2016 earned $5.2 billion dollars on a cash and carry basis. The Obama Treasury Department effective January 27, 2016 joined France and the rest of the world in legalizing financing of transactions between U.S. companies and the Castro regime.

This not only goes against U.S. law and the will of Congress as U.S. Senator Bob Menendez explained, but means that U.S. taxpayers will now be joining French taxpayers in subsidizing the Castro dictatorship.

This at a time when human rights continue to deteriorate on the island and the calls of international human rights NGOs, such as Reporters Without Borders, for Western countries to hold the Castro regime accountable are ignored.

Shameful.

Vive La France! Celebrating French Civilization and Rejecting Barbarism

"Tout homme a deux pays, le sien et puis la France." -  Henri de Bornier's play, La Fille de Roland (1875)

"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak." - Mohandas Gandhi

Two major terrorist attacks in Paris, France within the past eleven months. My prayers, solidarity and thoughts go out to the people of France. The flag posted above was used by Charles de Gaulle and the French Resistance during World War II. The cross of Lorraine at the center is a symbolic reference to Saint Joan of Arc. 

French writer Laurent Jauffrin spoke out tonight: "French society should arm itself with enough courage not to give an inch to the killers. It has to show both vigilance and the undying will to face the horror with the force of the law and solidarity...Only our country’s unity – as it stands strong, voluntary and carried by our values – will allow France to take its greatest challenge." 

I have been lucky enough first as a child, later as a young man and now in middle age to visit Paris, France on several occasions and have a love for the city and its people. This past May spent a few days there. The attacks on a Friday night when people are out and about enjoying life and each other are a barbaric outrage. These terrorist acts deeply sadden and anger me.

“La forma más noble de vengar una ofensa es no imitar a quien nos ha ofendido” ["The noblest way to avenge an insult is not to imitate he who has offended us."] I remember these words by the recently departed poet and former prisoner of conscience Jorge Manuel Valls Arango at this difficult time.

What took place tonight was an act of barbarism. In opposition to this barbarism let us celebrate a small example of French civilization found in its music.

First, Symphony No 3 in C minor, Op 78 completed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886. The recording is from the London proms in 2013.

Second, Gymnopédie No.1 completed by Erik Satie in 1888. The recording is from 1992 and performed by Daniel Varsano and Philippe Entremont.



Clair de Lune the third movement from the Suite Bergamasque by Claude Debussy from 1890. Recorded by pianist François-Joël Thiollier.



For civilization and against barbarism. Pray for Paris. Vive La France!