Cuban envoy says no dialogue with US while Bush is president

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) - Cuba is not interested in improving relations with the United States while President George W. Bush is in office and will wait for a change in U.S. leadership before extending an offer for dialogue, says Cuba's top diplomat in the United States.. .

In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, he said Cuban offers for dialogue with the United States made by Castro's brother, Raul, after he took day-to-day control of the government in 2006 were not intended for the Bush administration, which staunchly supports the nearly 46-year-old U.S. economic embargo of Cuba that was designed to choke off money to the Castro government in an effort to force a change in his communist system.

«When Raul spoke about it, he was not referring to the present administration,» Bolanos said. «He was speaking clearly that after the U.S. elections, the new (U.S.) government should take a position with regard to Cuba.

«That is the time when Cuba would be ready to dialogue on the basis of mutual respect, without the arrogance that has always colored the U.S. position,» he said in Spanish. «I'm not concerned what the current State Department says because we are waiting for what the next one has to say about Cuba.


Read more: http://www.pr-inside.com/ap-interview-cuban-envoy-says-no-r392949.htm

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Raul's mama certainly raised no dummy.

The US is just about the only country in the world which honors that idiotic embargo.

We are far worse off as a nation for not engaging our neighbor in a friendly and courteous manner.

The US is lucky no other countries than Russia have tried to use Cuba as some type of staing area.

Russia put in the missiles AFTER the attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, and after the U.S. has placed missiles in Turkey to serve as a constant enormous threat to Russia.

There was a specific reason those missiles were there. It would be appropriate if you brushed up on your history. It can't hurt if you plan to discuss it frequently.

was a condition of removing the missiles from Cuba.

In addition, it was Khrushchev who initiated the solution of the "Cuban Missle Crisis" not USAmerika.

As long as America continues to punish Cuba (for whatever reason it may be) this leaves Cuba open to other opportunities to benefit their country.

So if America is not doing business with them who is?

I am not Pro Cuba or Anti-Cuba...strategically Cuba is important...that's all.

from going to Cuba.

The US sanctions forbid companies that do business in/with Cuba from doing business in the uSA. Companies have to choose one market or another, according to uS law.

Its not a matter of countries (other than the uS) that honor uS sanctions on Cuba. US law makes it a matter of business practicalities.. the much larger US market, or the smaller and poorer Caribbean population of Cuba. As Presnit _Bush has said.. money trumps peace.




-

because the Venezuelan state owned oil company does business with both the US and Cuba.

You are right it is about company business transactions, but no one really is policing the trade.

The importance of oil and OPEC supersedes that of the Cuba standoff.

There are many exceptions to the US extra territorial embargo. Oil trade is one.




-

Bush doesn't talk with anyone--he issues either petulant orders that nobody follows, or petulant complaints that everyone ignores, or chintzy bribes that people cash and forget.

:shrug:

Los Cubanos, want to be treated with dignity, regardless of what they think of their leaders.

The Cubans feel they are not being treated with respect by the government in Washington.

nobody's being treated with respect by the government in Washington.

Unfortunately it's always the people who suffer for it.

:)

Lo siento, todo el mundo.

I think we should be ashamed of what our country has come to represent. I am sorry to the whole world, and hope that in the future we can move forward with mutual respect.

Yes. :grouphug:

We have to give big bribes to a couple of countries to have them side with us when the UN has a vote on the Cuban embargo.

Each year the bribes keep getting bigger. I believe last year there was only one taker.

I believe last year it was one of the poverty stricken African nations who couldn't turn down the money.

A sad way to run our foreign aid policy.

UN Votes 184 - 4 Against Embargo
http://uscubanormalization.blogspot.com/2007/11/un-votes-184-4-against-embargo.html

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The UN General Assembly on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly for the 16th year in a row to demand an end to the crippling US trade embargo against Cuba, despite Washington's pledge to keep it in place.

By a vote of 184 in favor, it reiterated its "call upon all states to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures (such as those in the US embargo) in conformity with their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and international law."

The 192-member assembly again urged "states that have and continue to apply such laws and measures to take the necessary steps to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible in accordance with their legal regime."

Like last year, four countries -- the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau -- voted against the resolution and one, Micronesia, abstained.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque immediately hailed the vote as a "splendid victory" coming less than a week after US President George W. Bush vowed to keep in place the US sanctions, which were imposed 45 years ago against the communist-ruled island following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion by US-backed Cuban exiles.

"As long as the regime maintains its monopoly over the political and economic life of the Cuban people, the United States will keep the embargo in place," Bush said.

"I think the president's remarks stand," US national security council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Tuesday in reaction to the UN vote.

The margin of support for ending the embargo has grown steadily since 1992 when 59 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The figure was 179 in 2004 and 182 in 2005.

Addressing the Assembly ahead of the vote, Perez Roque said the economic and trade sanctions were having a crippling effect, and estimated Cuba had suffered losses of "no less than 222 billion dollars," based on the US dollar's current value.

The blockade "has never been applied with as much ferocity as in the past year," he said, noting that Washington even barred US companies from providing Internet services to Cuba and was denying Cuban children access to needed medication.

And he later told AFP that the vote was "the expression of the virtual universal rejection of the policy of blockade and aggression which Bush, like no other US president, has applied toward Cuba."

He said ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro "followed the (UN) debate live and was the main architect of this victory because he embodies like no-one else the will of Cubans to be a free people despite the embargo and the aggressions we have suffered."

The 81-year-old Castro has been sidelined from power since he underwent gastrointestinal surgery in July 2006. His brother Raul Castro, 76, is serving as interim president.

Ronald Godard, the US State Department's senior advisor for Latin American affairs, blamed the communist regime for the country's woes.

"Cuba's problems derive not from any decision of the United States, but from the embargo on freedom that the Cuban regime has imposed on its own people," he said.

"We call on the international community to join together in demanding that the Cuban government unconditionally release all political prisoners as the essential step in beginning a process that restores to the Cuban people their basic human rights," he told the assembly.

Several speakers denounced the embargo slapped on Cuba on February 7, 1962 by the US administration under the late president John Kennedy.

Egypt's UN envoy, Maged Abdelaziz, said the Non-Aligned movement "reiterates its deep concern over the widening of the extra-territorial nature of the embargo against Cuba and rejects the reinforcement of the measures adopted by the US government aimed at tightening the embargo."

Pakistan's deputy UN ambassador Farukh Amil, speaking on behalf of another grouping of 130 nations, called for greater dialogue and cooperation to "contribute greatly not only toward the removal of tensions, but also promote meaningful exchange and partnership between countries whose destinies are linked by history and geography."

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Portuguese delegate Jorge de Lemos Godinho said: "we express our rejection of all unilateral measures against Cuba which are contrary to commonly accepted rules of international trade, and repeat our view that the lifting of the US trade embargo would open Cuba's economy to the benefit of the Cuban people."

-

in the U.N. vote against the embargo. They ALWAYS vote supporting this treacherous economic warfare tool against the island, even thoough they, themselves have done business with Cuba.

The enormous foreign aid package coming to them year after year after year, as permanent income from the overburdened U.S. taxpayers undoubtedly is a bribe they don't want to deny themselves.

These were German colonies before WWI, then became Japanese League of Nations Mandates, then after WWII US UN Mandates (i.e. The UN said the US could run them till they were ready for Independence). When all three became Independence, all three agree to leave the US run their Foreign Policy. So all three are in really semi-independent Countries. All three are subject to certain US Laws, but independent on others, the difference being set by the US Congress, but foreign policy is ALL US. These are all the old US "UN Trust Territories" if you include the a fourth area, the Northern Mariana Islands, which opt for Commonwealth status NOT independence in the 1970s.

More on the Marshall Islands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands

More on Palau:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau

More on the other "Associated State", Micronesia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_States_of_Micronesia

More on the Fourth Group, Northern Mariana Islands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands
Unlike Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands did NOT opt for an "Associated State" status with the US, instead it is a "Commonwealth" like Puerto Rico and thus does NOT get a vote in the UN.

Please note the chief reason for the Difference in treatment in regards to the Northern Marianas is that the most important island in the chain is Guam, but Guam has been US since the end of the Spanish-American war of 1898 and thus MISSED the German and then Japanese occupation (Except for the Japanese occupation during WWII 1942-1944). Thus, the Northern Mariana were subject to be independent by the UN as part of its UN mandate, it really did NOT want to be in political Independence of the largest island in the Chain (Guam). Thus the Commonwealth Status instead of the Free Association of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Islands

On "Associated States":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_state
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_of_Free_Association

Why did NOT Micronesia vote with the US? why did it "Abstain"? That was NOT the decision of Micronesia but the US State department. Why? or did the US vote Micronesia to abstain do to some rule of the UN, like the US Senate Rule, that permits anyone on the prevailing side of a vote to ask for a new vote? In the US Senate on a straight party line vote, the minority party will have one of its members go with the Majority just in case it can convince some Majority party members to vote its way on some future date. At that time the minority party has its member, that voted with the Majority, to ask for a re-vote. At the time of that re-vote then and only then does the Majority finds out which of its member defected.

Interesting on why the US voted to Abstain Micronesia but the State Department had the US, the Marshall Islands AND Palau vote against the provision.

Guam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam

The "Organic Act of 1950" which set up Guam's present status:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam_Organic_Act_of_1950

personally boycotting Texas till then.

Bush not only makes me ashamed of being an American. He makes me ashamed of being a human.

I've often wondered why we continue this hissy fit to punish Cuba for Castro overtaking a corrupt government that was being controlled by the Mafia and CIA agents? Was the country supposed to just let it happen? Get real.

We are #1, we are #1. Such simpleton bullshit.

But I don't understand the continuing embargo -- it makes no sense. Especially monetarily!

Grow the fuck up.

Say, whats the Democratic candidates position on this?

Every president since Castro took power has crawled subserviently to the tune of the nutjob exiles in Florida, just because that state is an important voting bloc. It is shameful.

for deep financial support in his campaigns. You may recall Monica whatever making a statement that she was "with" the President in the Oval Office once when he took a phone call from Alfie Fanjul, one of the two Cuban brother "exile" sugar magnates from South Florida, whose father used to be Mr. Sugar in Cuba.

They have been designated "America's First Family of Corporate Welfare." One gives to Democrats, one to Republicans.

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com.nyud.net:8090/socialdiary/SDimages/9.25.03/269_6914.jpg

Elizabeth Fekkai and Alfie Fanjul

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com.nyud.net:8090/socialdiary/SDimages/9.25.03/questmontblanc/268_6837.jpg

Wendy Vanderbilt and Pepe Fanjul
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/socialdiary/2003/socialdiary09_25_03.php

Their exploitative, brutal sugar plantation in South Florida was once the subject of a CBS special investigation program targeting the horrendous quality of life suffered by their sugar cane employees, the way they labored tragically without any form of protection or health benefits, and, when slashed by the machetes were simply thrown off their jobs, worked at astonishingly impoverished wages, were imported largely in large numbers from poor islands around the Caribbean and kept virtually hostage, with the constant threat that if they slowed down their feverish work outlay, they would be dumped out. The management kept their passports, kept the men living in unairconditioned, screenless shacks with notices around to not talk to anyone from the outside, kept miles from any town, without access to phones, etc., etc.

It was an overpowering program.

The workers attempted to do a group suit against them, although the Fanjuls, of course have deep pockets, and could afford a perpetual law suit, as permanent takers at the trough of U.S. taxpayers money.

From a great article by Marie Brenner "In the Kingdom of Big Sugar:"

Bernard Bygrave, a class representative of Tuddenham’s case, is one of thousands of Caribbean islanders, mostly Jamaicans, who once worked at Okeelanta for Alfy Fanjul and his brother Jose, known as Pepe. As a result of more than a dozen cases filed by Tuddenham and his colleagues, the cane cutters are no longer Fanjul employees, but they are charging in connected class-action suits that the Fanjuls’ companies engaged in cheating them of their rightful wages in a contract which they argue is "a monumental bait and switch." In May 1992, at the headiest moment in the litigation hell the case has turned into, a Florida judge awarded the workers $51 million in a summary judgment. That moment was fleeting, however, for three years later the decision was reversed on appeal and subsequently broken down into five separate jury trials. Now there are 90 crates of documents in the West Palm Beach courthouse. If nothing else, they provide an encyclopedia of a 50-year American labor scandal. Tuddenham calls the system "modern-day slavery." The Fanjuls’ lawyers see the case as "a major loss of income to thousands of decent hardworking men."

Like Henry Flagler, who brought the railroad to Florida and built the town of West Palm Beach for his laborers, the Fanjuls, after fleeing Castro’s Cuba, bought out scores of cattle and vegetable and sugar farmers in the Everglades and created nearly 180,000 acres of sugarcane fields, harvested by Jamaicans they imported under the government’s H-2 program. Cane was harvested by foreign workers because it was such brutal and dangerous work that no Americans would take it. Hour after hour the men chopped cane with machetes and stacked it in the fields. They wore metal arm and shin guards, and had to stoop over agonizingly to chop through stalks as thick as bamboo. Many were allowed only a 15-minute lunch break, to wolf rice down while standing up. Win or lose, the Bygrave cases have a powerful subtext: they are a morality play about the employment of foreign workers with marginal legal rights.

The Fanjuls are formidable adversaries. They control about 40 percent of Florida’s sugar crop, and last year they made contributions to 31 political candidates, giving more than any other sugar power. They deeply resent their nickname: the first family of corporate welfare. Little known to the American public, Pepe and Alfy Fanjul operate within the hidden world of implicit linkage, the grand club of the country’s power brokers, who routinely trade favors like baseball cards. "There is a rule to understanding life in South Florida," author and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen tells me. "Alligators don’t give to political campaigns, and the Fanjuls do." Last year the Fanjuls and Florida Crystals gave $486,000 to Democratic candidates and $279,000 to Republicans. (Alfy, who co-chaired Clinton’s Florida campaign in 1992, is the family’s Democrat; Pepe, who was on Bob Dole’s finance committee in 1996, is the family’s Republican.) "The most telling thing about Alfy Fanjul is that he can get the president of the United States on the telephone in the middle of a blow job. That tells you all you need to know about their influence," Hiaasen says. At one time, the Fanjuls’ father, Alfonso Fanjul Sr., and their grandfather Jose Gomez-Mena presided over one of the largest sugar holdings in Cuba. "One of the reasons why we get involved in American politics is because of what happened to us in Cuba," Alfy Fanjul tells me. "We did not get involved in the Batista government, and we do not want what happened in Cuba to happen to us again."

There is little chance of that. Every few years the Fanjuls and the Florida growers lobby tirelessly for the reauthorization of the sugar program established under the 1981 Farm Bill. Of all the political handouts that campaign money forces through Congress, the sugar program is one of the most controversial. Each year Florida Crystals receives about $65 million in price supports; the Fanjuls’ chief rival, U.S. Sugar, takes in $55 million. Although the price of sugar on the world market is 10 cents a pound, American sugar growers by law are guaranteed 21 cents a pound. When the farmers overproduce–as they did last year–and the price of their crop dives, the government takes the surplus at the guaranteed price and holds it in warehouses.

The sugar program adds $1.4 billion to consumers’ bills and funnels about $560 million back to the growers, Harper’s magazine recently reported. Critics of the program believe that it has outlived its purpose and become a Frankenstein monster that is protected by a coalition of interests: congressmen and senators in both sugar and non—sugar states who rely on donations to finance campaigns, corn farmers who sell their high-fructose syrup to candy manufacturers in order to profit from the elevated cost of sugar, and labor unions that fear sugar jobs could go overseas. In the 42 years since the Fanjul brothers left Havana, they have become shrewd practitioners of the quiet ways of American corporate influence. They remain out of sight.

Although the courtroom is full of Fanjul executives and sugar society for the closing arguments of Bygrave v. Okeelanta, the Crili is the only visible sign of the Fanjuls during the entire trial. "People have spent millions of dollars fighting us. Skywriters even attacked us during the Super Bowl! THE FANJULS AND THE $65 MILLION SUGAR SUBSIDY!" says Pepe Fanjul. "We consider ourselves the classic American success story," adds Alfy Fanjul. "We came here and worked very, very hard."

Click on "In the Kingdom of Big Sugar"
http://mariebrenner.com/articles.html

Apparently they were able to count on her influence then, and of course, will use her ties for Hillary's campaign, and if she wins, will be indebted to them, just like _{George W. Bush} and _{Jeb Bush} for future support.

It's a truly filthy state of affairs for U.S. politics, and I mean FILTHY. Jesus.

countries to demonstrate the model economy that Cuba was.

Come 1991, and his sugar daddy dries up, and suddenly it's all the US's fault.

The embargo is stupid, but Castro's vitrol directed toward the US is also kind of hypocritical.

So, neither side is all right, and the other all wrong. The whole situation is stupid.

From an article published in 2001:

Learn from Cuba, Says World Bank
By Jim Lobe, IPS, 1 May 2001
WASHINGTON, Apr 30 (IPS) - World Bank President James Wolfensohn Monday extolled the Communist government of President Fidel Castro for doing "a great job" in providing for the social welfare of the Cuban people.

His remarks followed Sunday's publication of the Bank's 2001 edition of 'World Development Indicators' (WDI), which showed Cuba as topping virtually all other poor countries in health and education statistics.

It also showed that Havana has actually improved its performance in both areas despite the continuation of the US trade embargo against it and the end of Soviet aid and subsidies for the Caribbean island more than ten years ago.

"Cuba has done a great job on education and health," Wolfensohn told reporters at the conclusion of the annual spring meetings of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "They have done a good job, and it does not embarrass me to admit it."

His remarks reflect a growing appreciation in the Bank for Cuba's social record, despite recognition that Havana's economic policies are virtually the antithesis of the "Washington Consensus", the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated the Bank's policy advice and its controversial structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) for most of the last 20 years.

Some senior Bank officers, however, go so far as to suggest that other developing countries should take a very close look at Cuba's performance.
(snip)

~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Six for every 1,000 in infant mortality - the same level as Spain - is just unbelievable," according to Ritzen, a former education minister in the Netherlands. "You observe it, and so you see that Cuba has done exceedingly well in the human development area."

Indeed, in Ritzen's own field the figures tell much the same story. Net primary enrolment for both girls and boys reached 100 percent in 1997, up from 92 percent in 1990. That was as high as most developed nations, higher even than the US rate and well above 80-90 percent rates achieved by the most advanced Latin American countries.

"Even in education performance, Cuba's is very much in tune with the developed world, and much higher than schools in, say, Argentina, Brazil, or Chile."

It is no wonder, in some ways. Public spending on education in Cuba amounts to about 6.7 percent of gross national income, twice the proportion in other Latin America and Caribbean countries and even Singapore.

There were 12 primary pupils for every Cuban teacher in 1997, a ratio that ranked with Sweden, rather than any other developing country. The Latin American and East Asian average was twice as high at 25 to one.

The average youth (ages 15-24) illiteracy rate in Latin America and the Caribbean stands at seven percent. In Cuba, the rate is zero. In Latin America, where the average is seven percent, only Uruguay approaches that achievement, with one percent youth illiteracy.

"Cuba managed to reduce illiteracy from 40 percent to zero within ten years," said Ritzen. "If Cuba shows that it is possible, it shifts the burden of proof to those who say it's not possible."

More:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/185.html

but, once their sugar daddy dried up under Gorby, then, suddenly, their economic problems are all our fault.

Sorry. The embargo is dumb, but so is their attitude.

Because of NOTHING?

for Cuba's economic problems. Would ending it help them? Yes. Should we end it? Yes.

But their economy tanked overnight because of the end of the Soviet subsidies.

Now, where the US does bear some responsibility for Cuba's economy is in sugar taxes and tariffs.

"Denial of Food and Medicine:
The Impact Of The U.S. Embargo
On The Health And Nutrition In Cuba"
-An Executive Summary-
American Association for World Health Report
Summary of Findings
March 1997
After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. But since 1992 the number of unmet medical needs patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment-has sharply accelerated. This trend is directly linked to the fact that in 1992 the U.S. trade embargo-one of the most stringent embargoes of its kind, prohibiting the sale of food and sharply restricting the sale of medicines and medical equipment-was further tightened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.

A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate half that of the city of Washington, D.C.. Even so, the U.S. embargo of food and the de facto embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system. The crisis has been compounded by the country's generally weak economic resources and by the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc.

Recently four factors have dangerously exacerbated the human effects of this 37-year-old trade embargo. All four factors stem from little-understood provisions of the U.S. Congress' 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (CDA):

1. A Ban on Subsidiary Trade: Beginning in 1992, the Cuban Democracy Act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba. This ban has severely constrained Cuba's ability to import medicines and medical supplies from third country sources. Moreover, recent corporate buyouts and mergers between major U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies have further reduced the number of companies permitted to do business with Cuba.
   
   
2. Licensing Under the Cuban Democracy Act: The U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments are allowed in principle to license individual sales of medicines and medical supplies, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons to mitigate the embargo's impact on health care delivery. In practice, according to U.S. corporate executives, the licensing provisions are so arduous as to have had the opposite effect. As implemented, the licensing provisions actively discourage any medical commerce. The number of such licenses granted-or even applied for since 1992-is minuscule. Numerous licenses for medical equipment and medicines have been denied on the grounds that these exports "would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests."
   
   
3. Shipping Since 1992:The embargo has prohibited ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after delivering cargo to Cuba. This provision has strongly discouraged shippers from delivering medical equipment to Cuba. Consequently shipping costs have risen dramatically and further constricted the flow of food, medicines, medical supplies and even gasoline for ambulances. From 1993 to 1996, Cuban companies spent an additional $8.7 million on shipping medical imports from Asia, Europe and South America rather than from the neighboring United States.
   
   
4. Humanitarian Aid: Charity is an inadequate alternative to free trade in medicines, medical supplies and food. Donations from U.S. non-governmental organizations and international agencies do not begin to compensate for the hardships inflicted by the embargo on the Cuban public health system. In any case, delays in licensing and other restrictions have severely discouraged charitable contributions from the U.S.

Taken together, these four factors have placed severe strains on the Cuban health system. The declining availability of food stuffs, medicines and such basic medical supplies as replacement parts for thirty-year-old X-ray machines is taking a tragic human toll. The embargo has closed so many windows that in some instances Cuban physicians have found it impossible to obtain life-saving medicines from any source, under any circumstances. Patients have died. In general, a relatively sophisticated and comprehensive public health system is being systematically stripped of essential resources. High-technology hospital wards devoted to cardiology and nephrology are particularly under siege. But so too are such basic aspects of the health system as water quality and food security. Specifically, the AAWH's team of nine medical experts identified the following health problems affected by the embargo:

1. Malnutrition: The outright ban on the sale of American foodstuffs has contributed to serious nutritional deficits, particularly among pregnant women, leading to an increase in low birth-weight babies. In addition, food shortages were linked to a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands. By one estimate, daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent between 1989 and 1993.
   
   
2. Water Quality: The embargo is severely restricting Cuba's access to water treatment chemicals and spare-parts for the island's water supply system. This has led to serious cutbacks in supplies of safe drinking water, which in turn has become a factor in the rising incidence of morbidity and mortality rates from water-borne diseases.
   
   
3. Medicines & Equipment: Of the 1,297 medications available in Cuba in 1991, physicians now have access to only 889 of these same medicines - and many of these are available only intermittently. Because most major new drugs are developed by U.S. pharmaceuticals, Cuban physicians have access to less than 50 percent of the new medicines available on the world market. Due to the direct or indirect effects of the embargo, the most routine medical supplies are in short supply or entirely absent from some Cuban clinics.
   
   
4. Medical Information: Though information materials have been exempt from the U.S. trade embargo since 1 988, the AAWH study concludes that in practice very little such information goes into Cuba or comes out of the island due to travel restrictions, currency regulations and shipping difficulties. Scientists and citizens of both countries suffer as a result. Paradoxically, the embargo harms some U.S. citizens by denying them access to the latest advances in Cuban medical research, including such products as Meningitis B vaccine, cheaply produced interferon and streptokinase, and an AIDS vaccine currently under-going clinical trials with human volunteers.

American Association for World Health
1825 K Street, NW, Suite 1208
Washington, DC 20006
Tel. 202-466-5883 / FAX 202-466-5896

http://www.cubasolidarity.net/aawh.html

Canadians go there for cheap vacations, why don't they get stuff from Canada? Russia?

Again, I do not support the US embargo, but if they were in such great shape before 1991 while the embargo was on, why aren't they now? Because they are no longer subsidized.

Other countries must not want to help them if, suddenly, they are dependent on the US for these things.

about it, apparently. You could remedy this by starting to bring yourself current by researching. You need to know what you're talking about:

The Effects of the US ’Embargo’ Against Cuba

~snip~
Imposed since 1962, the US embargo has been reinforced in October 1992 by the Cuban Democracy Act (or "Torricelli Law"), which aimed to restrain the development of the Cuban economy’s new driving forces the by hitting the inflow of funds and goods by: i) the strict limitations of the transfers of foreign currencies by the families in exile, ii) the six-months ban to enter U.S. harbours of all ships that had anchored in a Cuban port, iii) sanctions against firms doing commerce with the island even though under the jurisdiction of a third state. The embargo was systematized by the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act ("Helms Burton Law") of March 1996, aimed to harden the "international" sanctions against Cuba. Its Title I generalizes the ban to import Cuban goods, demanding, for example, that exporters give proof that no Cuban sugar has been integrated in their products, as was already the case with nickel. It conditions the authorization of currency transfers to the creation on the island of a private sector including employment of salaried staff. Still more enterprising, Title II fixes the modalities of a transition to a "post-Castro" power, as well as the nature of the relationship to have with the United States. Title III grants the U.S. tribunals the right to judge demands for damage and interest made by a civil and moral person of U.S. nationality that considers having been injured by the loss of property in Cuba due to nationalization, and claims compensation from the users or beneficiaries of this property. At the request of the old owners, any national (and family) of a third state, having made transactions with these users or beneficiaries, can be sued in the United States. The sanctions incurred are set out in Title IV, which provides, inter alia, the refusal of the State Department to give U.S. entrance visas to these individuals and their families.

The normative content of this embargo -specially the extraterritoriality of its rules, which intend to impose on the international community unilateral sanctions by the United States, or the denial of the right of nationalization, through the concept of "traffic"- is a violation of the spirit and letter of the United Nations Charter and of the Organization of American States, and of the very fundamentals of international law. This excessive extension of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States is contrary to the principle of national sovereignty and to that of non-intervention in the internal choices of a foreign states - as recognized in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice. It is opposed to the Cuban people’s rights to auto-determination and to development. It also contradicts strongly the freedom of trade, navigation, and movement of capital, all that the United States paradoxically claims everywhere else in the world. This embargo is moreover illegitimate and immoral because it attacks the social benefits realized by Cuba since years and imperils their successes -recognized by many international independent observers (in particular those of the WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF and many NGO). They are its public systems of education, research, health or culture, in plain exercise of human rights. Furthermore, the threat that this coercive operation poses for U.S. nationals and for foreigners extends the practical impact of the embargo to domains completely or partially excluded from the texts, such as food, medicines or medical equipment and exchanges of scientific information.

The harmful economic effects of the embargo

From an official Cuban source , the direct economic damages caused to Cuba by the U.S. embargo since its institution would exceed 70 billion dollars. The damages include: i) the loss of earnings due to the obstacles to the development of services and exportations (tourism, air transport, sugar, nickel; ii) the losses registered as a result of the geographic reorientation of the commercial flows, (additional costs of freight, stocking and commercialization at the purchasing of the goods...); iii) the impact of the limitation imposed on the growth of the national production of goods and services (limited access to technologies, lack of access to spare parts and hence early retirement of equipment, forced restructuring of firms, serious difficulties sustained by the sectors of sugar, electricity, transportation, agriculture...); iv) the monetary and financial restrictions (impossibility to renegotiate the external debt, interdiction of access to the dollar, unfavourable impact of the variation of the exchange rates on trade, risk-country, additional cost of financing due to U.S. opposition to the integration of Cuba into the international financial institutions...); v) the pernicious effects of the incentive to emigration, including illegal emigration (loss of human resources and talents generated by the Cuban educational system...); vi) social damages affecting the population (concerning food, health, education, culture, sport...).

If it affects negatively all the sectors , the embargo directly impedes -besides the exportations- the driving forces of the Cuban economic recovery, at the top of which are tourism, foreign direct investments (FDI) and currency transfers. Many European subsidiaries of U.S. firms had recently to break off negotiations for the management of hotels, because their lawyers anticipated that the contracts would be sanctioned under the provisions of the "Helms-Burton law". In addition, the buy-out by U.S. groups of European cruising societies, which moored their vessels in Cuba, cancelled the projects in 2002-03. The obstacles imposed by the United States, in violation of the Chicago Convention on civil aviation, to the sale or the rental of planes, to the supply of kerosene and to access to new technologies (e-reservation, radio-localization), will lead to a loss of 150 million dollars in 2003. The impact on the FDI is also very unfavourable. The institutes of promotion of FDI in Cuba received more than 500 projects of cooperation from US companies, but none of them could be realized - not even in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry, where Cuba has a very attractive potential. The transfer of currencies from the United States is limited (less than 100 dollars a month per family) and some European banks had to restrain their commitment under the pressure of the U.S. which let them know that indemnities would be required if the credits were maintained. In Cuba, the embargo penalizes the activities of the bank and finance, insurance, petrol, chemical products, construction, infrastructures and transports, shipyard, agriculture and fishing, electronics and computing..., but also for the export sectors (where the U.S. property prevailed before 1959), such as those of sugar, whose recovery is impeded by the interdiction of access to the fist international stock exchange of raw materials (New York), of nickel, tobacco, rum...

More:http://www.alternatives.ca/article876.html

problems are not. They're 'new' if Cuba was such a model back in the 80s.

If any country has 'sugar daddies' it is the US. China, Japan, the Arabs OWN us.

Do you have any idea of what would happen to the US economy if our #1 trade partner (Canada) was off limits for trade? Imagine that and throw in an extraterritorial corporate embargo being placed on America (where corporations were heavily punished for trading with the US). Imagine what a severe mess that would be in America.

That (and more) is what Cuba faced. They suffered, they toiled, they pulled together as best they could to marshal their resources in order to maintain & even excel in expanding their social infrastructure.

Before the 1959 revolution

75% of rural dwellings were huts made from palm trees.

More than 50% had no toilets of any kind.

85% had no inside running water.

91% had no electricity.

There was only 1 doctor per 2,000 people in rural areas.

More than one-third of the rural population had intestinal parasites.

Only 4% of Cuban peasants ate meat regularly; only 1% ate fish, less than 2% eggs, 3% bread, 11% milk; none ate green vegetables.

The average annual income among peasants was $91 (1956), less than 1/3 of the national income per person.

45% of the rural population was illiterate; 44% had never attended a school.

25% of the labor force was chronically unemployed.

1 million people were illiterate ( in a population of about 5.5 million).

27% of urban children, not to speak of 61% of rural children, were not attending school.

Racial discrimination was widespread.

The public school system had deteriorated badly.

Corruption was endemic; anyone could be bought, from a Supreme Court judge to a cop.

Police brutality and torture were common.

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After the 1959 revolution
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/185.html

“It is in some sense almost an anti-model,” according to Eric Swanson, the programme manager for the Bank’s Development Data Group, which compiled the WDI, a tome of almost 400 pages covering scores of economic, social, and environmental indicators.

Indeed, Cuba is living proof in many ways that the Bank’s dictum that economic growth is a pre-condition for improving the lives of the poor is over-stated, if not, downright wrong.

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It has reduced its infant mortality rate from 11 per 1,000 births in 1990 to seven in 1999, which places it firmly in the ranks of the western industrialised nations. It now stands at six, according to Jo Ritzen, the Bank’s Vice President for Development Policy, who visited Cuba privately several months ago to see for himself.

By comparison, the infant mortality rate for Argentina stood at 18 in 1999;

Chile’s was down to ten; and Costa Rica, at 12. For the entire Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole, the average was 30 in 1999.

Similarly, the mortality rate for children under the age of five in Cuba has fallen from 13 to eight per thousand over the decade. That figure is 50% lower than the rate in Chile, the Latin American country closest to Cuba’s achievement. For the region as a whole, the average was 38 in 1999.

“Six for every 1,000 in infant mortality - the same level as Spain - is just unbelievable,” according to Ritzen, a former education minister in the Netherlands. “You observe it, and so you see that Cuba has done exceedingly well in the human development area.”

Indeed, in Ritzen’s own field, the figures tell much the same story. Net primary enrolment for both girls and boys reached 100% in 1997, up from 92% in 1990. That was as high as most developed nations - higher even than the US rate and well above 80-90% rates achieved by the most advanced Latin American countries.

“Even in education performance, Cuba’s is very much in tune with the developed world, and much higher than schools in, say, Argentina, Brazil, or Chile.”

It is no wonder, in some ways. Public spending on education in Cuba amounts to about 6.7% of gross national income, twice the proportion in other Latin American and Caribbean countries and even Singapore.

There were 12 primary school pupils for every Cuban teacher in 1997, a ratio that ranked with Sweden, rather than any other developing country. The Latin American and East Asian average was twice as high at 25 to one.

The average youth (age 15-24) illiteracy rate in Latin America and the Caribbean stands at 7%. In Cuba, the rate is zero. In Latin America, where the average is 7%, only Uruguay approaches that achievement, with one percent youth illiteracy.

“Cuba managed to reduce illiteracy from 40% to zero within ten years,” said Ritzen. “If Cuba shows that it is possible, it shifts the burden of proof to those who say it’s not possible.”

Similarly, Cuba devoted 9.1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) during the 1990s to health care, roughly equivalent to Canada’s rate. Its ratio of 5.3 doctors per 1,000 people was the highest in the world.

The question that these statistics pose, of course, is whether the Cuban experience can be replicated. The answer given here is probably not.

“What does it, is the incredible dedication,” according to Wayne Smith, who was head of the US Interests Section in Havana in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has travelled to the island many times since.

No one can say with any credibility that universal education and universal health care needs to be forced on any population. Castro didn't give it to them either. Together, nearly all Cubans worked hard to create the infrastructure and systems that they felt were essential for any progressive system.

The Cuban people wanted universal health care for all Cubans, and they have it. They pushed for government that represented their ideals, and organized and formed infrastructure that enabled Cubans to create a fair and complete h-c system.

The people of Cuba wanted universal education for all Cubans, and they have it. They pushed for government that represented their ideals, organized and formed infrastructure that enabled Cubans to create a complete and world class ed system, and they have it.

Cubans want to assist the world's poor with doctors and educators, instead of gun ship diplomacy.. and that is what they have done WITH their government, not at odds with their government.

The Cuban people do all of this despite the obstacles they face.


Cubans want normalization between the US and Cuba, and they have thrown their doors open to us, but, it is our US government that prevents what the majority of Americans want their government to do - normalize relations. Worse yet, the US government, not Cuba, forbids and has criminalized travel to Cuba by Americans.




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it's already taking over the South American Continent...

The USAmerikan capitalist model is already dead and stinking up the place...

for that lobby.

maybe Pelosi would reset the table.

with a tutor.

I can understand why he would choose to wait.

Revealed: how Kennedy's assassination thwarted hopes of Cuba reconciliation


Castro 'saw killing as setback and tried to restart dialogue with new administration'

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian

A few days before his assassination, President Kennedy was planning a meeting with Cuban officials to negotiate the normalisation of relations with Fidel Castro, according to a newly declassified tape and White House documents.
The rapprochement was cut off in Dallas 40 years ago this week by Lee Harvey Oswald, who appears to have believed he was assassinating the president in the interests of the Cuban revolution.

But the new evidence suggests that Castro saw Kennedy's killing as a setback. He tried to restart a dialogue with the next administration, but Lyndon Johnson was at first too concerned about appearing soft on communism and later too distracted by Vietnam to respond.

A later attempt to restore normal relations by President Carter was defeated by a rightwing backlash, and since then any move towards lifting the Cuban trade embargo has been opposed by Cuban exile groups, who wield disproportionate political power from Florida.
Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at Washington's National Security Archives who has reviewed the new evidence, said: "It shows that the whole history of US-Cuban relations might have been quite different if Kennedy had not been assassinated."

By Michael Parenti

~snip~
Defending Global Capitalism

In June 1959, some five months after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the Havana government promulgated an agrarian reform law that provided for state appropriation of large private landholdings. Under this law, U.S. sugar corporations eventually lost about 1,666,000 acres of choice land and many millions of dollars in future cash-crop exports. The following year, President Dwight Eisenhower, citing Havana’s “hostility” toward the United States, cut Cuba’s sugar quota by about 95 percent, in effect imposing a total boycott on publicly produced Cuban sugar. Three months later, in October 1959, the Cuban government nationalized all banks and large commercial and industrial enterprises, including the many that belonged to U.S. firms.

Cuba’s move away from a free-market system dominated by U.S. firms and toward a not-for-profit socialist economy caused it to become the target of an unremitting series of attacks perpetrated by the U.S. national security state. These attacks included U.S.- sponsored sabotage, espionage, terrorism, hijackings, trade sanctions, embargo, and outright invasion. The purpose behind this aggression was to undermine the Revolution and deliver Cuba safely back to the tender mercies of global capitalism.

The U.S. policy toward Cuba has been consistent with its longstanding policy of trying to subvert any country that pursues an alternative path in the use of its land, labor, capital, markets, and natural resources. Any nation or political movement that emphasizes self-development, egalitarian human services, and public ownership is condemned as an enemy and targeted for sanctions or other forms of attack. In contrast, the countries deemed “friendly toward America” and “pro-West” are those that leave themselves at the disposal of large U.S. investors on terms that are totally favorable to the moneyed corporate interests.

Of course, this is not what U.S. rulers tell the people of North America. As early as July 1960, the White House charged that Cuba was “hostile” to the United States (despite the Cuban government’s repeated overtures for normal friendly relations). The Castro government, in Eisenhower’s words, was “dominated by international communism.” U.S. officials repeatedly charged that the island government was a cruel dictatorship and that the United States had no choice but to try “restoring” Cuban liberty.

U.S. rulers never explained why they were so suddenly concerned about the freedoms of the Cuban people. In the two decades before the Revolution, successive Administrations in Washington manifested no opposition to the brutally repressive autocracy headed by General Fulgencio Batista. Quite the contrary, they sent him military aid, did a vigorous business with him, and treated him well in every other way. The significant but unspoken difference between Castro and Batista was that Batista, a comprador ruler, left Cuba wide open to U.S. capital penetration. In contrast, Castro and his revolutionary movement did away with private corporate control of the economy, nationalized U.S. holdings, and renovated the class structure toward a more collectivized and egalitarian mode.

More:
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Sept2004/parenti0904.html

war pigs.

bunkerboy and his entire regime should be swinging at the edge of a rope for their CRIMES like Moussilini, not having a final year in OUR White House!

I am fucking EMBARASSED and ASHAMED of our country because of who's in OUR White House...

mookie - get a fucking clue...

and should contact a poster or two to get straightened out! From an article written in 1996, concerning the U.N., the W.T.O., the O.A.S., and American corporations:

The United Nations Resolution
The U.N. resolution passed in response to the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, for instance, denounced any governmental economic or trade policy which is meant to punish another country and, in turn, disrupts the free flow of international trade. Passed with a vote of 138 to 3 with 24 abstentions, the resolution shows recevied strong support. Only the United States, Israel, and Uzbekistan voted against the resolution, and, for the first time in history, the European Union acted in concert against the United States. The resolution called for all nations to abstain from taking economic sanctions against another country which would negatively influence the free flow of international trade. The resolution decries "economic and trade measures by one state against another which affect the free flow of international traffic," and specifically attacks the Helms-Burton Act as "affect the sovereignty of other states, the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation."


The Threat to the WTO
The World Trade Organization, which was created two years ago by an international attempt to regulate global trade, is currently overseeing legal procedures against the actions of the American government. After six months of negotiations, Europe brought its charges of U.S. interference with international trade before a WTO judicial panel, claiming that "the United States has violated international law by imposing penalties on foreign companies" (New York Times, 2/20/97). The U.S., though, which sees the WTO as a young, unstable organization without the proper structure to regulate international law, has refused to cooperate with the legal procedures. Although the refusal of the United States to comply with the investigation has prompted further anger in the international arena, the U.S. may have a legally binding position--the "national security exception". This is a discrepancy in the WTO treaty texts of both GATT Article 21 and GATS Article 14 (applying to trade in goods and trade in services, respectivly) which exempts nations of the WTO from trade agreements in the case of national security. In other words, if the United States claims that its relations with Cuba are a matter of security, it would be exempt from any otherwise binding trade agreements of the WTO. Whether or not the U.S. chooses to fight Europe's charges, the case presents a potential threat to the WTO's credibility. Accoring to the American Society of International Law, the WTO treaty, when given a broad interpretation, could be shown as inconsistent with actual policies, resulting in the threatened security and stability of the world trading system for which the WTO had been created to protect.


OAS Speaks Out
During the1996 annual meeting of the Organization of American States, yet another resolution against the Helms-Burton Act was presented and approved. Like others, the resolution passed by the Organization of American States also criticizes Washington's move to tighten the embargo, claiming that the Helms-Burton Act presents a threat to international commerce and law. It criticizes all laws which "obstruct international trade and investment," as well as "the free movement of persons." Along with the investigation of the World Trade Organization, the OAS resolution also called for the Inter-American Judicial Committee to "examine the validity under international law" and provide a ruling as soon as possible. The resolution had 32 co-sponsors, and was approved by every member nation but the United States--a statistic which is especially significant in the face of charges that the organization is "a group of subservient puppets manipulated by the United States" (New York Times, 6/5/96). Moreover, "coming from a forum that has always done its best to avoid controversy, the vote could only be interpreted as a stunning defeat for the United States and a rejection of the Clinton Administration's get-tough policy toward Cuba" (New York Times, 6/5/96).


Domestic Commerce Disapproval
Perhaps the most astounding response to the Helms-Burton Act, though, is the disapproval of American corporations. Fearing a loss of customers and retaliation by foreign governments, corporate America is beginning to protest the government's use of economic sanctions. The corporations are not only concerned about the effects of the tightened embargo on Cuba, but also the widespread American policy of using economic sanctions against "misbehaving" nations. Since 1941, the U.S. government has implemented over 70 unilateral sanctions--against Japan, Cuba, Iraq, South Africa, U.S.S.R., and various others. These policies limit the international market for American corporations, corporations which are then subject to retaliation and sanctions (such as Canada's Godfrey-Milikin Act) from affected nations. And, although American corporations are almost always willing to support a national government which goes out of its way to accomodate Big Business, The Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Export Council, and National Foreign Trade Council have all taken steps to express their dissatisfaction (New York Times, 9/11/96).

http://www.earlham.edu/~pols/ps17971/weissdo/iresponse.html

It does seem that the embargo hasn't exactly been a partisan issue..40 years of US politics has left the embargo in place..

for the mistake we made by trying to buy Castro in the first place.

It's also time for a presidential candidate to say "the hell with the nutcase Cuban emigres in Miami" it's about time we grow up. The travel embargo is idiotic and should be dropped a decade ago. It is time to reach out to the Cuban people...

seems as if it is a big show by the United States to say, "Look at us, aren't we great guys battling Castro?"

www.dennis4president.com/home/



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12 months left... lol...

Fidel can hang on? another four years or eight years if the next chief isn't up to his standards?
I reallly think Fidel can hang on til jan 09 but not much further.

Cubans never show him or hear him speak anymore.
that saying a lot......