Sailor;
“cubans will beg you to send them medicines from abroad”
No problem! How, and to whom?
Peace,
mangeorge
Sailor;
For the sake of argument, what if we openly offer to lift the embargo, send Elian back AND build a baseball stadium with luxury boxes in Havana IF Castro and his cronies go into exile in North Korea? We’ll even offer to throw in Gitmo to sweeten the deal. We couldn’t kill this asshole, overthrow him, or generate enough bad press to get rid of him: can we at least buy him out? If the Cuban health-care system has one thing to brag about, it will be its ability to keep him alive and healthy as long as possible, no matter how many other Cubans die of the screaming shits in the meantime. So it’s only to our shame to wait for him to die until the suffering of the Cuban people can be relieved.
Your deep sea diving suit is ready, me brave lad.
If Cuba produced anything they could sell there are plenty of countries willing to trade.
What about their well-known cigars?
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
What happened to the Cuban people (under Castro) is a tragedy of immense proportions-before the revolution, Cuba EXPORTED huge amounts of food. In fact, it was the major supplier of winter vegetables, to the east coast of the USA.Plus, the Cuban people are hard-working and very resourceful-look at what they accomplished in S. Florida. I have met many of the leading Cuban-American business leaders, and they already have Castro buried-as soon as he and his horrible “revolution” are gone, the big Cuban-American industrialists will have the place back in shape in no time!
Er, you do know that the reason that Cuba exported so much before the revolution was that around 50% of the island was owned by US Fruit. It wasn’t because they had a surplus.
Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker.
One of the oldest scams by people sympathetic to Communist dicatorships is to falsely denigrate the living standards before the “revolution”.
Despite the Batista dictatorship, despite that dictator’s ties to U.S. corporate interests and his tolerance for the U.S. mafia, Cuba had one of the highest living standards and best educated populations in Latin America.
Now it’s just a backwater. No, its not a robot-republic like North Korea starving its own people to buy better weapons but it is a shining example of the failure of communism. In Cuba, the “Elian kidnapping” is very necessary, a phony drama right out of “1984” designed to pump more blood into the system’s rotting carcass.
But does our current policy of isolation really work? Doesn’t it also keep that bearded gasbag on life support?
Following Lenin (another lawyer/gangster) hasn’t Castro opened his economy a bit by allowing some private enterprise? Why not drop the embargo for these small private companies only and see what happens.
Mangeorge, I cannot give you names and addresses but I know there are many NGOs that organize these things and can be easily found. In the US I believe it is usually churches who do this.
I do not know where you are located but I believe even Americans are allowed to send medicines as humanitarian help to Cuba and I am sure you can find plenty of groups in Miami who do this.
I can tell you I was amazed at how much stuff from Spain I saw donated by Spanish NGOs (well meaning but probably lengthening the rule of communism). The buses in Havana are the old surplus buses from some Spanish cities, still with Spanish tags and advertisements. Off the ship and onto the street they go. The large plastic garbage cans are from some cities in Northern Spain with the name still engraved (well, you can’t really remove it)
A Net searh turned up http://www.aids.org/immunet/atn.nsf/page/a-244-11
I am sure, if you are interested you can easily find NGOs who can channel the help for you.
While I was there, several Cubans asked me for help (they are grateful if you give them the tiny soap bars you get in the hotel)with medicines etc but after a while I just felt overwhelmed and decided I could not solve Cuba’s problems and it must be Cubans themselves who must solve their problems.
You can read my own (unfinished) account at http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/9886/cuba.htm
A common misconception is that americans cannot visit Cuba. While it may be true they cannot visit Cuba legally as tourists, the truth is I saw plenty of them there and Cuban authorities, hungry for dollars, do not stamp visitors’ passports. I have several american friends who have been to Cuba and returned without problem (via a third country, obviously).
The embargo hands Castro and his supporters the perfect excuse for the low standard of living: “It’s not our fault, this is being done to us by the Yankee imperialists”. Like the rationale for the Berlin wall: “We put it up to protect ourselves from the West!”
Isolating Cuba makes it easier, not harder, for Castro to stay in power. Trade means contacts on the personal level and it means exposure to ideas & goods.
Lifting the embargo and getting some sort of trade going would go a long way towards making more Cubans discontent with Castro’s regime. Some would see chances for making more money and be unhappy with the fact that they can’t. Some will actually make money and be discontent that they can’t buy that smart-looking SUV. Senior party officials will start moving themselves into positions where they control valuable assets for when the regime falls. And everybody would be exposed to consumer goods of different sorts and start wanting them.
This is not an easy process to control, as Honecker (among others) found out in 1989.
Of course, then you’d have to figure out what to do about a liberated Cuba. If these fellows are any smart, they’ll start thinking along the lines of off-shore banking along with tourism. One would presume that the exiled Cubans would return with capital & ideas. And some of the Cuban nomenklatura probably have contacts Russian robber capitalists…
Interesting times ahead!
Norman
Norman, there are already plenty of foreign investors in Cuba, they are just not American. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I tend to agree with you … on the other i see that the foreign companies pay the government (not the people) and the government uses that money for police and other oppressive ends…
I really do not know…
mangeorge, I found these links: http://www.igc.apc.org/ifco/local.html http://www.igc.apc.org/ifco/p4p.html
and also the Miami Herald has carried news about deliveries of humanitarian aid to Cuba.
Did you know that the much maligned USA is the greatest donor of humanitarian help to Cuba? It is those Cubans in Miami sending help to their families.
Thanks, sailor. I’ll check it out. I did go to the MSF site. Learned a lot.
Peace,
mangeorge
I’d like more discussion as to the why’s in keeping the embargo active against Cuba.
We’ve initiated talks with the Vietnamese government, China has favored nation status. We are giving aid to Russia.
What reason can we have to keep a country so close by in such a deep freeze? Punishment? Retaliation? It can’t still be fear, can it??
Judy
“Muck should replace ‘suck’. For ‘muck’ is yucky, while ‘suck’ feels very lucky. So, don’t stay stuck on suck, switch to MUCK, today.”
Partly political. As I understand it, the Cubans in Florida hold a fair amount of political power, and even the President wants the expatriate Cuban vote.
This is a tragic situation - I checked out some of the links (thanks, sailor) and it sounds like East Germany in the bad old days.
However, I can’t help thinking that the U.S. embargo is overkill: It’s not very effective, after all, lots of other nations trade with Cuba - and it’s a great propaganda tool for the regime. Unlike pre-1989 Eastern Europe, Cuba is a threat to noone. The worst-case scenario is one where the current regime somehow abuses the better trade possibilities to tighten its grip on power - and while that’s certainly not trivial, it won’t hurt anyone outside Cuba. (I don’t mean to sound callous here - but if lifting the embargo could turn Cuba into a threat to other nations, the risk would probably not be worth running). A more optimistic scenario would be like the old East Bloc countries: People who’ve learned all their lives that their system is superior and that all other countries are dead wrong (and not much else about the outside world) will perhaps come to realise that they’re being deprived of something. They might even revolt - with luck, peacefully. I would think the risk was worth running.
BTW, does anybody know if Castro has a crown prince lined up ?
Norman
Oh, and having just re-read the OP:
Nope, Castro is not on par with Amin or Mobuto.
I guess he’s more like Erich Honecker: He probably believes he has a just cause, it’s just a matter of time before his system will demonstrate its superiority. Until then, he’ll unfortunately have to take rather harsh measures to keep the revolution alive. Too bad, but the revolution is not a tea party - and history will prove him right. Or something like that.
Norman