TPP Negotiators on Maui Will Be Greeted by Anti-TPP Pū blowers

july29flyerTPP secret negotiations are going on right now at the plush Westin Maui Resort & Spa at Ka’anapali on Maui.

Activists on Maui are preparing to greet the TPP nation ministers with an attempt to break the Guinness World Record in beach pū (conch) blowing outside their hotel.  A tiny group of Maui residents are putting together this national event with backing and help from Kāko’o Haleakalā, AiKea, Hawaii Sierra Club, Hawai‘i SEED Hawai‘i Alliance for Progressive Action H.A.P.A, UNITE HERE Local 5, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, Flush the TPP, Popular Resistance, MoveOn, CREDO, SumOfUs, Babes Against Biotech, Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery, `Ohana o Kauai, Occupy Wall Street Maui and many more.

In the last four days since discovering that the TPP negotiators were holding meetings on the secretive treaty on Maui, they’ve gotten permission from Guiness World Records to try for a world record, created a website, TPPmaui.com, put out PSAs and press releases and coordinated with the national groups.

Maui’s noisy anti-TPP event takes advantage of Hawai’i laws which say that the beach is public property.

SumOfUs has contributed towards T-shirts for participants to highlight the opposition to the TPP.

Event organizers say:

I ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope (“the future is in the past”) – In understanding the past, we look to the future: we rally together in prelude to  Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea, Restoration Day, when after being temporarily seized by the British Navy, sovereignty was restored and Kamehameha III proclaimed before a large crowd, ua mau ke ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono (“The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness”)

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

Diplomatic Relations with Cuba Resumed

Cuba Relations Normalized with Prisoner Swap:
Today President Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and lifted the travel ban after 54 years of unsuccessful embargo.  Cuban dissident blogger, Yoani Sanchez,has written about the hardships that the embargo and the repressive Castro regimes have imposed on the citizens of Cuba.

The Castros (Raul and Fidel) have maintained an iron grip on internet access. The blockade on internet information critical of the Castro regime means that Sanchez cannot even read her own blog posts online.

President Obama, in announcing the deal pointed to the 54 years of embargo and unbroken Castro dictatorship (first Fidel and now Raul) and said, “We do not believe we can keep doing the same thing over five decades and expect a different result.”

Mary Jo Porter and Maui resident, Karen Chun,  established TranslatingCuba.com, a Worldwide Translation Project for dissident Cuban voices in 2010, as an expansion of a similar effort that began in 2008. This project has been instrumental in internationalizing these Cuban voices and their descriptions of daily Cuban life under the Castros.

The bloggers are subject to Cuba’s repressive speech crackdowns. Several of the bloggers like Angel Santiesteban have been imprisoned and Sanchez herself has been detained by police.

Porter explains,

“What is important for Americans to understand — and this is the central focus of the TranslatingCuba.com work — is that the problems of Cuba are the fault of Cubans, not of Americans or the American government.

If you ask Cubans what their three biggest problems are, they like to say, “Breakfast, lunch and dinner.” One of the most prosperous and advanced nations in Latin America has been brought to its knees not by the embargo or by a lack of diplomatic relations with the United States, but by the Castro regime and its 50-plus-year imposition of a non-democratic totalitarian regime on its people.

The task of TranslatingCuba.com has been to bring the voices of Cubans living on the island, suffering under this regime, to readers around the world. Some of these voices have become very prominent, others barely get heard, on or off the island. They represent a plurality of opinions, and often disagree with each other, like people do in a free society. These are the voices of freedom from an un-free society.

We expect the Obama Administration’s announcement today to spark an outpouring of wide-ranging opinions from Cubans on the island. TranslatingCuba.com will continue to bring these voices to a broader audience.”

Ironically, the newly freed Alan Gross was imprisoned for bringing communications equipment for residents of Cuba.