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"It's behind us," Fernando Gonzales of the Cuban Five said with a smile when I told him just a few moments ago that I was sorry for the U.S. government having locked him in a cage for 15 years. It was nice of the New York Times to editorialize in favor of negotiations to release the remaining three, he said, especially since that paper had never reported on the story at all.

Gonzales said there is no ground for the United States keeping Cuba on its terrorist list. That there are Basques in Cuba is through an agreement with Spain, he said. The idea that Cuba is fighting wars in Central America is false, he added, noting that Colombian peace talks are underway here in Havana. "The President of the United States knows this," Gonzales said, "which is why he asked for the list to be reviewed."

What can I be sure of after only one week in Havana? Very little. There are exceptions to every pattern, and sometimes more exceptions than patterns. But a few claims, I think, are possible:

1. The sea and this island in it are stupendously beautiful even to someone longing for people and places up north.

Today in Havana, Mariela Castro Espin, director of the national center for sexual education and daughter of the president of Cuba, gave us a truly enlightened talk and question-and-answer session on LGBT rights, sex education, pornography (and why young people should avoid it if they want to have good sex) -- plus her view of what the Cuban government is doing and should be doing on these issues. She advocates equal rights for same-sex couples and a ban on discrimination, for example.

The U.S. began a 12-day annual, multinational
Cobra Gold military exercise on Monday (February 9), despite the
biggest pro-democracy protest in months displaying coup leader Gen.
Prayuth Chan-ocha as a gigantic faux Teletubby authoritarian.

In a sign of disapproval against the coup, Washington scaled-down
Cobra Gold, its biggest military exercise in the Asia-Pacific, and
this year sent about 3,600 U.S. troops instead of last year's 4,300.

"The large-scale, live-fire exercise associated w/ amphibious landing
was cancelled," American Embassy charge d'affaires W. Patrick Murphy
tweeted on Tuesday (February 10).

Other lethal exercises will be included.

A "non-combatant evacuation" from Thailand's tourist-packed Pattaya
beach near Bangkok is also scheduled, plus a "field training exercise"
involving troops in various formations.

Thailand is a key non-NATO ally of the U.S. in Southeast Asia.

Gen. Prayuth staged a bloodless coup on May 22, toppling a popularly
elected prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

Experts have put urban violence under the microscope. You might call it the sociology of dead kids.

There’s a lot less here than meets the eye, or so it seemed when I read about a new study by researchers at Yale called “Tragic, but not random: The social contagion of nonfatal gunshot injuries.” It’s an attempt to create categories of likely future shooting victims in Chicago and, thus, determine who among us is most in danger. Well, sure, why not? But in the process, the study, at least as it was reported a few days ago in the Chicago Sun-Times, utterly depersonalized the potential victims, along with the communities in which they lived, reducing them to components in a mathematical formula.

The researchers “sought to go beyond a racial explanation for nonfatal shootings,” according to the Sun-Times. “They were trying to explain why a specific young African-American male in a high-crime neighborhood becomes a shooting victim, while another young black man in the same neighborhood doesn’t, the study said.”

“Russian aggression” – the bad faith mantra of dishonest brokers

Just as NATO allies Germany and France were undertaking a peace initiative with Russia and Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry turned up in Kiev at the same time, seeking to poison the talks before they started by spouting yet again the ritual U.S. accusation of “Russian aggression.” The incantation is meaningless without context. Its purpose is mesmerize a false consciousness. “Russian aggression” may or may not exist in the events of the past year, just like “Russian self-defense.” Reporting on the ground has been too unreliable to support any firm analysis, never mind the provocative “Russian aggression” the U.S. brandishes as a virtual call for war. 

Iran is not engaged in nuclear weapons research,
and not an "imminent threat" requiring military action, according to
Mohamed El Baradei, former director of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to
prevent nuclear proliferation.

"Anybody who is calling for a military solution for the Iranian issue
is crazy, because you will get a much worse situation than what you
have," Mr. El Baradei said.

"Nobody today is vouching that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. I
think even the U.S. intelligence [agencies], as you probably know, say
that Iran stopped any nuclear weapons research -- assuming that they
had done that -- in 2003," he said.

"That still continues to be the assessment of the U.S. intelligence
agencies, all the intelligence agencies. No, there is no imminent
threat that requires"  military action.

Mr. El Baradei made the remarks during a presentation here in Bangkok
on Monday (February 11) at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of
Thailand.

OK, president Obama professes his Christian beliefs and admits to
reading Joshua Dubois' daily devotional meditations for inspiration.
Yet he is deliberate in conceding Islam is a "great religion" in his
latest official responses to the Charlie Hedbo murders and immolation
of a Jordanian pilot. The White House refuses to link any of these
acts to the "great religion" of Islam. Though this sentiment, or
narrative if I may, is not shared by members on both sides of the
political aisle, there is one bi-partisan agreement that I have heard
reiterated by various politicians via the fourth estate-that Islam is
a "great"  religion being corrupted by radicals. This is where the
inescapable duplicitous nature of belief in the supernatural rears its
irreconcilable head.

President Obama has broken all records with respect to prosecuting whistleblowers, despite his promise to be more open that the previous administration.  He has used the Espionage Act seven times, and use other punitive measures against leakers, many of whom are seen as whistleblowers.  For all his good qualities, Obama behaves as if he works for the CIA, as he does their bidding at every opportunity. Evidently, enough people watch the TV show “The Biggest Loser” to keep it on the air. But which of the prosecuted whistleblowers is the biggest loser?

Was the United States compelled to attack Afghanistan and Iraq by the events of September 11, 2001?

A key to answering that rather enormous question may lie in the secrets that the U.S. government is keeping about Saudi Arabia.

Some have long claimed that what looked like a crime on 9/11 was actually an act of war necessitating the response that has brought violence to an entire region and to this day has U.S. troops killing and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Could diplomacy and the rule of law have been used instead? Could suspects have been brought to trial? Could terrorism have been reduced rather than increased? The argument for those possibilities is strengthened by the fact that the United States has not chosen to attack Saudi Arabia, whose government is probably the region's leading beheader and leading funder of violence.

But what does Saudi Arabia have to do with 9/11? Well, every account of the hijackers has most of them as Saudi. And there are 28 pages of a 9/11 Commission report that President George W. Bush ordered classified 13 years ago.