Obama chief of staff, Senators Feinstein and McCain travel to Guantanamo Bay prison

President Obama fervently promised in his 2008 campaign speeches that he will see to the end of Guantanamo Bay. After spending his first term in office, many were disappointed in his inability to close the notorious Gitmo Bay. Despite frustration from congress just like in his healthcare deal, Obama pushes on and now seems more determined to bring down Guantanamo Bay.

President Obama‘s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, along with Senators Feinstein and McCain traveled to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on Friday to review the current situation and discuss steps towards closing the detention facility. Both McCain and Feinstein have supported the closing of the prison at Guantanamo, though the House of Representatives voted on tuesday in support of keeping the detention centre open.

The trip comes several weeks after the president reaffirmed a 2008 campaign promise to shut down the facility. On Friday, it was revealed that the prison’s medical team is presently force-feeding 41 of the facility’s 166 prisoners, with a total of 104 detainees now participating in the ongoing hunger strike. “We intend to work, with a plan by Congress and the Administration together, to take the steps necessary to make that [closing] happen,” said the trio via statement following their tour.

Russia and Cuba: Remembering the Cold War

Cuba's President, Raul Castro and Russia's Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev

Russia to lease eight jets worth $650 million to its Cold War- era ally Cuba and will partially write off the country's multi-billion-dollar debt owed during the Soviet-era under agreements signed during Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Havana.

Moscow will write off part of the $30 billion debt and will offer a 10-year refinancing plan for the remaining amount, according to the preliminary agreement, Russia's industry and trade minister Denis Manturov told reporters on the sidelines of the talks.

"There was an accumulated debt on loans allocated by the Soviet Union and we have now prepared an agreement that should undergo all the necessary procedures," he said.

Manturov said the final decision on debt settlement will be signed by the end of the year.

Russia will also lease three Ilyushin-96-400 long-haul jets, three AN-158 regional planes and two TU-204SM mid-range aircraft to Cuba under the agreements inked in the presence of Medvedev and Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Moscow will provide sovereign guarantees to a syndicate of Russian banks financing the deal, Manturov said.

Medvedev and Castro were seen chatting informally and broadly smiling during the ceremony. The Cuban leader greeted reporters in Russian.

Russia and Cuba enjoyed close relations during the Cold War which was between the Soviet Union and Washington over world hegemony and supremacy.

The volume of trade between the two countries last year was roughly $200 million. Oil companies from Russia, the world's largest energy exporter, are drilling into Cuba's offshore oil deposits which has also being of interest to the United States.

Cuba and the United States: Who is tired of Who?

                               

                                 Cuban President: Raul Castro

A seven-member delegation of US lawmakers arrived in Cuba in an effort to improve political relations that have been frozen since US government contractor Alan Gross was imprisoned there in 2009.

Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, who saw Gross and met with Cuban president Raul Castro and other high-ranking officials a year ago, led the group of five senators and two members of the House of Representatives on a three-day visit to communist Cuba.

"There are obvious problems between our two countries, but we are not here to negotiate. We are here to listen and then go home and talk about what we see," according to Patrick Leahy.

"We all want to see relations improve and both sides take steps in that direction," US Senator Patrick Leahy said.

The lawmakers, all Democrats except for Arizona senator Jeff Flake, include congressmen Chris Van Hollen, who represents Gross's district in Maryland, and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts; and senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Members of the group said they planned to meet with Gross, parliament president Ricardo Alarcon, foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez and perhaps Raul Castro.

Leahy said the delegation would like to take Gross with them when it leaves for Haiti on Wednesday, an occurrence that might not see the light of day.

"There are obvious problems between our two countries, but we are not here to negotiate. We are here to listen and then go back home and talk about what we see," he said.

Despite the tension between the US and Cuba, more people travelled between the two countries in 2012, cash remittances sent to the island also increased, as did food-for-cash sales under a 2000 amendment to US trade embargo.

President Castro has lifted most travel restrictions and freed Cubans to buy and sell homes and cars over the past year, even as he accelerates efforts to reform the Soviety-style economy in a more market-friendly direction. The Obama administration has said relations will not improve while Gross remains in custody.

In addition, under the 1996 'Helms-Burton' law, sanctions cannot be lifted until Cuba's one-party communist political system is changed, a demand rejected by the Cuban government. Gross, 63, was arrested in Havana in December 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for installing Internet networks under a secretive US program the Cuban government considers subversive.

The case put the brakes on a brief warming in long-hostile US-Cuba relations during the first 11 months of Obama's first term in office. Raul Castro's mild reforms have helped in reducing tensions between Havana and Washington.

Cuba has linked Gross' fate to that of five agents imprisoned in the late 1990s for infiltrating Miami exile organisations and US military bases. The agents, known as the Cuban Five, were sentenced to long terms ranging from 15 years to life and are considered heroes in Cub.

When Fidel castro became ill, Obama extended an 'olive branch' to Cuba and Raul Castro to help bring about democratic change, a move many Cubans rejected. Now, it seems Cuba struck the US where it matters.

Prevent Social Disorder Through Money-Making: The Economist

ALBERT HIRSCHMAN knew what he was talking about when he called one of his books “Essays in Trespassing”. He was an extraordinarily peripatetic practitioner of the dismal science. Born in Berlin in 1915, he fled the Nazis in 1933, studied in Paris, London and Trieste, joined the anti-Mussolini resistance, fought on the Republican side in the Spanish civil war, served in the French army until France’s collapse in 1940, helped to organise an “underground railway” for refugees, emigrated to America, joined the army and was a translator at Nuremberg. He applied the cosmopolitan spirit that he had acquired in these years to everything he wrote.

He made his reputation as a development economist, focusing on Latin America, but he soon found himself trespassing obsessively—not only into other sub-disciplines such as the theory of the firm but also into other disciplines entirely such as political science and the history of thought. Mr Hirschman was never awarded the Nobel prize in economics he so richly deserved, perhaps because his writing was hard to classify. However, as if by way of recompense, Princeton University Press is about to publish a 768-page biography by Jeremy Adelman.

Mr Hirschman’s most famous book, “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations and States”, remains as suggestive today as it was when it first appeared in 1970, for managers and policymakers as well as intellectuals. Mr Hirschman argued that people have two different ways of responding to disappointment. They can vote with their feet (exit) or stay put and complain (voice). Exit has always been the default position in the United States: Americans are known as being quick to up sticks and move. It is also the default position in the economics profession. Indeed, when his book appeared, Milton Friedman and his colleagues in the Chicago School were busy extending the empire of exit to new areas. If public schools or public housing were rotten, they argued, people should be encouraged to escape them.

Mr Hirschman raised some problems with the cult of exit. Sometimes, it entrenches the status quo. Dictators may rule longer if their bravest critics flee abroad (indeed, Cuba uses emigration as a safety valve). Monopolies may have an easier life if their stroppiest customers find an alternative. Mr Hirschman got the idea for his book during a ghastly train journey in Nigeria: he concluded that the country’s railways were getting worse because the most vocal customers were shifting to the roads.

Exit may also reinforce the cycle of decline. State schools may get worse if the pushiest parents take their custom elsewhere. Mr Hirschman worried that a moderate amount of exit might produce the worst of all worlds: “an oppression of the weak by the incompetent and an exploitation of the poor by the lazy which is the more durable and stifling as it is both unambitious and escapable.” (Mr Hirschman wrote better in his third language than most economists do in their first.) Exit may also entail costs. If you have invested heavily in a company that starts performing badly, then you may be better off agitating for a change in management rather than selling your shares at a loss.

Mr Hirschman overstated his case. Plenty of evidence suggests that choice can act as an energiser, not a soporific. The most comprehensive study of school choice, in Sweden in 1988-2009, by Anders Bohlmark and Mikael Lindahl, found that “free schools” (private schools that are paid for by the state) were not only good for their own pupils but also forced ordinary state schools to shape up. But Mr Hirschman’s overall point was not that exit is bad but that exit and “voice” work best together. Reformers are more likely to be able to fix an organisation if there is a danger that their clients will leave. The problem with Friedman et al was that they focused only on exit and not on how exit and voice could be used to reinforce each other.

Modern technology is adding to the power of both exit and voice. Consumers can abandon expensive middlemen for electronic commerce. They can also organise online armies to protest against poor service. But companies are also fighting back—making exit more difficult by persuading people to sign long-term contracts (particularly with teaser rates) and encouraging loyalty by offering rewards such as air miles. They are also adding their own voices to the hubbub via social media.

Squawk or go

Mr Hirschman wrote so much about so many different subjects that it is easy to see why his biography stretches to 768 pages. He challenged the conventional wisdom among his fellow development economists that poor countries need “balanced growth”; he argued instead that the “disequilibria” generated by unbalanced growth might do a better job of mobilising resources. He also challenged the conventional wisdom among sociologists and historians that the Protestant ethic prepared the way for capitalism. He suggested, rather, that the starring role should be given to a group of thinkers, such as Montesquieu, who argued that the best way to prevent social disorder was to channel people’s passions into moneymaking.

The Economist claims to engage in a “severe contest” with “an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress”. Mr Hirschman was an eloquent ally. In “The Rhetoric of Reaction” he wrote that purveyors of “timid ignorance” rely on three types of argument: jeopardy (reforms will cost a lot and endanger previous gains); perversity (reforms will harm the people they are intended to help); and futility (problems are so huge that nothing can be done about them). That certainly describes the current debates about global warming, illegal drugs and countless other topics. With luck, Mr Hirschman’s exit will not silence his voice.